Guild Wars 2

Hey there! I’ve been considering rolling an elementalist and I’d like to see if any of you seasoned Eles can help me with a couple of questions regarding the profession. I’ve seen my questions answered across the internet but they are 1+ year old information and I’m sure things changed pretty much… So:

- How viable is an Ele that don’t use as many atunements? Like just 2 or even staying in just 1? I think I may get tired of atunement dancing once in a while.
- I know it’s the squishiest profession but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard something about a very tanky build. Such thing still exist? It’s good for solo?
- A build that revolves solely on conjured weapons is viable in PVE?

Last question:
- What is the one reason that keeps your love on top for Elementalist?

If you camp fire on staff in PvE you’ll at least deal moderate damage. That’s you’re only option though. Doing it with any other attunement will end up being pathetic.

Tanky builds aren’t really a good idea. This game is about active defense, so you will always be hindering yourself the tankier you spec for.

Scepter/X + lightning hammer. It’s not something you should strive to be doing though because it’s not really best to use unless you’re in organized teams. The best LH build most of the time is 6422 piercing shards, because it is assumed your teammates will be helping with vuln. You can deal higher DPS with different trait point setups but lower crit chance is less reliable and you generally don’t use this without taking ice bow either, so you have to try to find a balance for everything.

Anyways, this is a vid I recorded to just demonstrate the general idea behind an LH rotation. It is by no means anywhere close to optimal but I set it up so that it could be repeatable and therefore helpful for people trying to understand the type of build. Hope it helps: http://goo.gl/zcwVGC

And my biggest reason for loving elementalist is that it’s simply the best. Fun, has depth, tons of utility, incredibly strong in all game modes.

Single Attunement
If you want to camp one attunement your best bet would be to grab a staff and stay in Fire

S/F + Conjures can technically stay in water but beyond the raw DPS the group value in this build is the startup rotation which offers competive might stacking. Lightning Hammer and Flame Axe are the two most common conjures for this build which burst damage being supplemented by Ice Bow and Fiery Greatsword.

D/F is also one of those you weapon set where you could stay in one attunement (Air), but the popular build for this weapon set offers a similar startup rotation for might, and then the combat revolves are switching attunements for burst damage/utility and then returning to Air.

In short, you can camp in particular Attunements based on your weapon set, but you will be missing out on a ton of potential.

Tanky build
One of the most defensive setup for an Ele is 0/0/0/6/6 where you have 2 points leftover that are floaters and can be moved into the remaining 3 attunements based on what you need. The defenses from this build come from superior boon access, cleansing, and high regen/heal. For the most part builds such as these are used highly in WvW/PvP where Ele’s play more of a support class. In PvE, Ele’s are expected to be offensively specced for their high DPS and offer offensive support.

Conjure Build
There’s not really a build that can work on purely on conjures. the Scepter/Hammer builds are about as close as it gets, but even then there is a dependency of your primary weapon sets for additional utility and damage.

Why I love the class
I watched Avatar: The last airbender, and I wanted to be just like Aang.