Guild Wars 2

I have a question between those 2 skills if i am runing arcane briliances, arcane wave and arcane shield with the arcane CD reduction. which one should i choose Evasive arcane or elemental surge?? thank you

Evasive arcana is generally better, but you can make some fun builds with elemental surge. Quite niche though.

Elemental Surge is basically only good for really gimmicky builds. Evasive Arcana is superior in almost every foreseeable situation.

elemental surge has one use:
instant immobilize

Elemental surge is only ever worth using if you want to set up some burst by immobilizing with earth. The other effects are useless, but instant-cast, aoe ranged immob (from arcane wave for instance) can have some use.

Regardless, evasive arcana is better in 95% of situations you will find.

Elemental Surge works great with a Condi-build FGS if u use Arcane Power in earth attunement and summon FGS and use Fiery Eruption=Immob and guarantee of full condi-burn
Icebowburning
Really Elemental Surge is usually good +Arcane POwer and condition builds imo

A grandmaster trait should be build defining – and not just give you the option to use a gimmick move by using an elite on a 3 minute timer + utility. As the others have already said, Evasive arcana wins hands down in 95% of all combat situations.

Yeah, Evasive Arcana is way more optimal though.
However, if you were to use arcane power+arcane mastery and retribution, it’d work well with a zerker build because you’d get soooo many crits off if u did choose to go that route.
But i still might take evasive arcana if i were to invest 30 into arcana

yea i try both … arcane evasive is better. imo in pvp.. d/d or s/d its alot easier to used than staff ele.

EA all the way!

Elemental Surge has one big problem:

The trait is designed for condition builds while Arcane skills synergize with high crit damage. It can be used effectively (certain combos are really strong) but for the most part it’s only an ok choice. Once hybrid builds are viable Elemental Surge is a really good choice but that won’t happen any time soon.

I feel like s/d has no real survivability without arcana in it, but I always miss surge after swapping out of it. The immobilize is not enough to keep it in. You can get extra damage with your dagger sigils that eliminate the need for immob.

This topic actually inspired me to use ES for the aoe affect with wave. It was a lot of fun. Arcane wave having no animation is fantastic.

I use Elemental Surge on my Elementalist since I was using Evasive Arcane pretty long … And it gets really boring in my opinion. The elementalist lacks on “finishers”. Stunning the enemy and finishing him like a Warrior is not possible with Evasive Arcane beside “Updraft” on Dagger 5.

Instant Immobilize and some more damage seems really cool, especially in groupfights i think that its more useful than Evasive Arcane. Its even useful for stacking chilling on your enemy and you could do some cool combos with “Arcane Power” and “Glyph of Storms” with Elemental Surge. There are some cool combos, you know. Instant immobilize is much more useful as “Signet of Earth” active effect.

Anyway it clearly lacks survivability. Evasive Arcane is great for condition cleanse and additional healing. When going on Elemental Surge you will have to use Arcane Skills … wich means less Cantrips for survivability. Anyway its really fun to have it and it feels powerful along with instant immobilize. I could root up a thief for 5 seconds or longer on one place … But its still not enough for my staff damage :/

Depends on the build, if u go pure burst and arcane utilities than ele surge is much better, simply cause they give u more options of handling situations in pvp with chill, immob, on demand blind(fresh air). It also opens up new burst combos with immob+phoenix+air burst.

Just to save people time who are considering arcane power as a util/trait: don’t

It gives you 5x crits, which are actually individual HITS, not attacks. So if you lightning whip and it hits 3 people x2 procs, you just used up all of your procs. The immob/burn/chill/blind might be nice (they are now immobed for 2s each), but it is definately not enough to win a fight. Perhaps in a 1v1 you can use it for bursting with burning speed, ring of fire/other burn, firegrab, but you still are better off with another arcane utility.

If it actually made ATTACKS crit, it would be decent, but its currently per hit.

At least that is how it worked when I tested in the HotM on the large golem group

BlackBeard.2873:

Just to save people time who are considering arcane power as a util/trait: don’t

It gives you 5x crits, which are actually individual HITS, not attacks. So if you lightning whip and it hits 3 people x2 procs, you just used up all of your procs. The immob/burn/chill/blind might be nice (they are now immobed for 2s each), but it is definately not enough to win a fight. Perhaps in a 1v1 you can use it for bursting with burning speed, ring of fire/other burn, firegrab, but you still are better off with another arcane utility.

If it actually made ATTACKS crit, it would be decent, but its currently per hit.

At least that is how it worked when I tested in the HotM on the large golem group

That is how it works, it is less effective vs. groups. The only use is 1v1 elemental surge procs.