Elementalist WvW build
I’ve personally had an extremely difficult time roaming in WvW on my ele. A fact I attribute mainly to my extensive use of staff. However lately I’ve been using a weird D/D build to some effect. While I can’t exactly expertly pick apart your build, I can make a few suggestions.
Use Travelers runes instead of Divinity. The extra 25% run speed will change everything.
You should have a precision stacking weapon set, your crit damage is halfway decent but your chance is abysmal. Using Maintenance Oils (utility) will also help with this.
Foods are generally very play style oriented, but I’d recommend condition duration subtraction. Loafs of Saffron Bread is a nice food to have when you run into the inevitable stun-you-forever warrior.
Since you’ve gone fresh air you’ve forced yourself out of 30 Arcane for Evasive Arcana, which means your self healing ability will be greatly diminished, despite the regeneration from cantrips. You may find healing your larger HP pool more difficult than you planned, and may want to adjust for additional toughness. Switching your trinkets to Knights will increase your toughness and compensate your power loss with additional critical hits. More toughness will increase the effectiveness of all your lower ticking healing blurts throughout the fight.
I run full celestial gear, which means I don’t actually have to chose between anything. I would recommend it over mixing things.
Bluefox Matari – Elementalist – Maguuma
You make a very good point. I feel as though celestial will be decent but I would like to be more focused on my defensive and offensive stats, although it is a very attractive option to gain that healing power.
My intention with the armor was to attempt to go full soldiers but since that is impossible in the accessories, rings, etc I mistakenly put in valk where I should have been placing knights because of the low crit chance and the extra armor.
The travelers runes look very nice as well. My question would be if it stacks with the air atonement (5 pts in). it truly does not matter so much but is an added incentive to change to those runes. (which I will probably do)
In terms of my overall spec, I do like what I have now and realize the evasive arcana is a valuable asset to my survival. With my off hand dagger running Leeching and with my change to knights off set armor do you feel I can perhaps get away with keeping my spec? I am currently testing to see the difference in specs, I do enjoy fresh air, however seeing the cleansing option I have is definitely something to look at.
Overall I greatly appreciate the input, and look forward to any in the future!
Do you want a build for roaming, or for raiding? The two are going to be different, just like PvE and WvW would be different.
I’m not going to say Evasive Arcana is absolutely necessary, but to be quite honest, if you’re here on the forums asking for advice for such a thing, you probably want to go ahead and spec for it.
I’m also going to be quite blunt to you that, in the current PvP meta, Elementalists make terrible solo roamers. You’ll probably want to run with friends if you do that so you can support each other.
Your primary job in a raid (a large, organized WvW group) will be playing Staff and providing Water fields for others to blast finish in (assuming your guild is organized enough to pull off such a thing). For that, you’d want to have 30 in Water for Cleansing Water, Cleansing Wave, and Aquamancer’s Alicarity. Similarly, you’d want 30 in Arcana so you can get back into Water Attunement as quickly as you can. Staff Elementalists in raids are mostly utility characters, for the most part.
Basically, here’s the thing I’d ask you. Does your server/guild coordinate Water and Fire fields for heals and might stacking? If the answer is yes, then 0/0/10/30/30 with a Staff is probably your best bet. If your server has not yet developed to reach that point, then it’s going to be much harder for you to use a Staff build, since its primary selling point in a raid is using it for the Water field.
Dagger builds in raids are a bit greedier, and tend to be a bit like what you’ve posted here (though I personally go for 0/10/0/30/30 for Aurasharing, which is nice to share with your frontline). Your job is mainly to burst people who are low and finish the downed. Similar, really, to a D/D Ele in roaming with allies (you’re probably best off letting others DPS and then using AoE to help finish off enemies who are low).
Stick with gear which is Power Primary – Berserkers and Soldiers. I’d suggest full Soldier’s gear, and then sub in pieces of Berserkers until you feel comfortable.
If you read a bit more carefully the d/d spec was a roam build not raid. I have not yet started discussing staff raid builds and I hope I made it clear that I was looking for both and the particular one I have been discussing was the roamer build. I am only new to the class and have a decent idea on how I want to play. I am not asking for advice, but simply wanting to constructively discuss the class to open my knowledge up about it being a new ele.. thank you for inputting a staff build and variant of D/D
Severely lacking in cleanses. That’s all there is in wvw now is conditions and cc.
This is 8 seperate cleanses Plus I have 10/10 in both guard defense and guard offense for 2500 more hp, and 250 more power and condition damage. Condition damage goes up again from might stacking combos, usually an average of 14 stacks, and another 250 power from bloodlust. Then I swap to force. I do condition damage, confusion damage, direct damage, cc, heals for about 1200 on water dodging. It’s lacking in burst vs guardian and warrior. Use FGS as an escape from blobs. You get the option to swap out a cleanse for aura share or fall trait (of which makes it easier to heal when kiting in the borderlands, and drop static cc while you prep FGS). This spec is not new, but extremely high in survivability providing you don’t waste your water cleanses, and instead only use water when you need to heal up. Breaking out of roots and immobilize can be the straw that breaks the ele’s back. Don’t waste a water dodge in immobilize because it won’t work, as you cannot dodge or even turn in it. Lightning flash will not break it, but it will proc a cantrip cleanse in water, you just won’t move. The spec I have here, only mist form breaks the stun, heal (5), and CFlame. I use heal on crit food that partially makes up for the lack of signet use, but regen food/vitality might be worth a shot, too. Other food I use is -condition uptime/vital.
I also have a knight’s set with traveler runes if I need more burst/toughness/mobility. I just lack clerics trinkets to help it along, and end up using soldiers with it.
daphoenix mixes a lot of different pieces from different sets, which I haven’t tried, but may be a better choice for survivability. I just like having different sets for different things. I had full boon duration on my invaders set, that I switched to full melandru. Both of which are lackluster damage. Both my invaders and clerics gear sit in the bank forever (or until I attempt Tequatl again lol).
I have a dagger in the bank with leeching on it that I’ve only ever used once. Being able to dodge as often as possible is a huge plus for any class. Hammers OP!