Guild Wars 2

So much fun!
Actually way better than pre-specialization patch.

What?
…no, of course not with scepter… Scepter is bad.
What?
Evasive Arcana? Why would you want that? Useless trait.

This is how you are supposed to run it:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-o3c;2B2-V0z4gNkY0;9;4321;0147036057;4Iw0;3F-03F-03a0k

High damage and high survivability ( if you know how to play ) at HIGH SPEED !

The superspeed is a huge deal here and zapping the enemy for around 1k each time you go into air is pretty nice, too.
Once they tasted your lightning whip you can see mesmers and thieves sweating from fear when you come running at full speed towards them! Hilarious!

If you already have superspeed and go for cantrips why signet of air instead of armor of earth? Then you could also take diamond skin or stone heart in your traits instead of written in stone. Then this build would look very interesting to me on paper.

Stunbreak and blind on 20 second CD + you keep the runspeed in the other attunements as well.
Written in stone also allows you to use your heal.
Diamond skin and stone heart don’t make much sense since you don’t want to tank many hits anyway – you avoid them by good positioning with your superior mobility and using your defensive cooldowns at the right moments.

This build is so dumb I might try it. If it’s good delete this thread before nerf

I’d say it requires way too much skill to be considered OP, so we should be safe.

I’m actually runing a similiar build with fire instead of earth and I’m doing great with scepter. I should try dagger

Fire for that awesome CD reduction [13 seconds phoenix!)

I’m not really sure water line is doing you much, certainly cleansing water only procs on cantrips (average 1 every 20-30s) and the frost aura trait (which is made for tanky builds that take a beating), and cantrip mastery is only reducing the CD on 2 skills and 1 trait.

You would get as much cleanse from fire, more defense (from blinds), and more damage.

Even arcana without water would do you more, giving you a free arcane shield and either evasive arcana (for cleanse and blind) or bountiful power (so those boons do you some good).

lol WORSE build ever OP.. come on man. stop trolling

BlackBeard.2873:

I’m not really sure water line is doing you much, certainly cleansing water only procs on cantrips (average 1 every 20-30s) and the frost aura trait (which is made for tanky builds that take a beating), and cantrip mastery is only reducing the CD on 2 skills and 1 trait.

You would get as much cleanse from fire, more defense (from blinds), and more damage.

Even arcana without water would do you more, giving you a free arcane shield and either evasive arcana (for cleanse and blind) or bountiful power (so those boons do you some good).

Good feedback. But you didn’t consider the vigor from the cantrips and that shorter CD on lightning flash helps you get in and out of fights a lot. Also you forgot about Earths Embrace proccing on 50%. Thats another cantrip.
Since you go in and out of fights with this build all the time, I feel the uptime of the frost aura is decent enough and helps getting out of harms way. Stop, Drop and Roll is a good option with all the vigor and energy, too.

I feel taking fire would require you to camp fire attunement a bit too much to make it worth it…

Arcane is okay and Bountiful power might be cool. I will try that.

Siobhan.3582:

lol WORSE build ever OP.. come on man. stop trolling

I will remind you of that comment once Phantaram starts playing something similar on stream. Basically I was trying to recreate his d/f FA build that he played a couple months ago.

It’s a different playstyle. It’s closer to SD thief than to DD ele, if that tells you something…

I fail to see the utility of fresh air now that you can AoE burn for 2-3k ticks. Fire just seems like a better line to me, except for the mobility nerf.

The mobility is a big deal though!
Let me illustrate: There is absolutely no reason a current meta warrior should hit you with anything while using this build! Maybe they can charge you from behind with GS or rampage and hit you once, but that’s it. Everything else you can easily dance around, while throwing your stuff at them. Air signet makes them look pathetic when they try to hammer you.

It makes a big difference against thieves and mesmer, too: They are not used to enemies ( besides thieves ) that can stick close and put the pressure on them.

Okay, this version might be much better:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-o3c;2B2-V0D5gNkY0;9;43G1;0147158057;4Sw0;3H7W3H7W3a0D

Definately more vulnerable to condition bombs, but a huge boost to damage.
Just hitting golem in HotM I see the lightning attunement zap hit for 1,6k and lightning whips averaging between 1,4 and 1,5.

Cerpin.9152:

Okay, this version might be much better:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-o3c;2B2-V0D5gNkY0;9;43G1;0147158057;4Sw0;3H7W3H7W3a0D

Definately more vulnerable to condition bombs, but a huge boost to damage.
Just hitting golem in HotM I see the lightning attunement zap hit for 1,6k and lightning whips averaging between 1,4 and 1,5.

Earth line offers practically nothing in this build seeing as how your sustain is not high enough for passives to have a significant impact in fights. It’d be better to take Fire for blinding ashes and extra damage (for this type of playstyle, at least).

Final Shielding is not as reliable as taking Arcane Shield. D/F is melee and you decided to go marauders. Arcane Shield as a utility is necessary if you want to have any type of defense against large bursts such as those from Thief or Mesmer. (I’d switch out signet of air for arcane shield).

Bottom line is fights as a marauder ele won’t last long. Either the enemy dies quickly or you die quickly. You won’t often see Signet of Water’s passive proc more than once, so taking cleansing fire will be better.

Evasive Arcana is more useful than you think. Blast finisher on your Flamewall, Blind on dodge, and additional Cleanse in water will be more useful than any additional damage bountiful power offers. Even if you don’t decide to take Evasive Arcana, Elemental Surge still seems a better choice than Bountiful Power, especially since it allows for your crits to do more damage after your arcane shield pops up (and it reduces the cd of arcane shield too so that’s a plus).

If you decide to take the Fire line instead of the Earth line (which I highly recommend), then you might as well switch out One with the Air for Zephyr’s Boon. You still have access to high mobility with perma swiftness and lightning flash, plus Zephyr’s boon offers perma fury for your bursts to guarantee crit.

I know these suggestions make your build unrecognizable, but they seem like better options for an offensive D/F ele. And also, I would experiment with the other Air grandmasters than Fresh Air. I don’t really see any point in going Fresh Air with D/F since all it offers is lightning whip.

Nope, you don’t quite get how this build works as a playstyle. I can’t blame you. It’s a bit outside of how ele build usually work, so it’s hard to imagine just from looking at the build. And not trying to be smug, but : It’s quite skill-based, so some people just might not be able to pull it off…

Wish I could post a video, but I don’t have a YT account and creating one turned out to be all kinds of dumb… Someone know a good alternative?

Anyway, I will try to explain some more, as this build doesn’t feel squishy at all if you play it well.
Okay this is how it works:

You engage with burning speed ( + LF maybe ) and switch into water for frozen burst. Immediately into air to proc the attunement zap and start lightning whipping them into submission. Okay, maybe they try to fight back at this point.

Now your lightning whip does have a range of 300 which is a pretty important fact, as you can easily dance in and out of this range as needed while negating / avoiding anything your enemy can do to you. I’ll explain that in a bit…
( If I would random dodge in my firefields like your normal ele, that would be dangerous indeed )

So for damage you use burning speed when it’s up, lightning whip while circling around the enemy and switching attunements as often as possible. The switch to lightning can crit over 1700 damage even without full might stacks. At basically no cooldown, at range and pretty much unavoidable! That adds up.
You easily proc Fresh Air with Frozen Burst and Ring of Earth ( which can crit really high too btw ). Perhaps my biggest argument for why scepter is the inferior Fresh Air weapon: Try proccing FA just as fast with those slowwww scepter skills…

Okay, now how do we survive? Aka: How do we keep the enemy from hitting us?

For melees : Just walk out of their range. Yep.
Look at the build : You got 10 seconds of chill that you can throw onto them. You proc 3 seconds of cripple when switching into earth and Ring of Earth will cripple even more. They want to lock you down? Too bad, you have a stunbreak and instant on demand blind on a 20sec CD. Also Geomancers training reduces any movement impairing condis on you. Let’s not forget you are faster than anyone baseline: 25% movement speed at all times + lots of superspeed.
I shouldn’t have to mention this, but you can also pop LF, FGS to get away or into LoS. Or you just run. Fast.

So for more damage mitigation, we also have 2 skills for projectile destroying, not even counting RoE. Earth ofhand skills are also on a lower CD, because earth line offers no sustain just like that…
Aaaand you actually got a heal on 20s CD which you can safely use while covering yourself with your defensive cooldown or superspeeding around a corner for a moment.

Thats all I care for to write for now.
If you give it a try: Thank you and you are welcome.
If you try and fail: Don’t feel bad. It takes some skill…

i do play a similar build from time to time but would recommand scepter for it as a 20 sec stunbreak still is 20 sec without stunbreak and on scepter u can maintain range + more blinds.

Cerpin.9152:

Wish I could post a video, but I don’t have a YT account and creating one turned out to be all kinds of dumb… Someone know a good alternative?

nVidia ShadowPlay (Free)
Microsoft Movie Maker (Free)
Upload to YouTube (Free)

Alternative: Vimeo

d/f FA was fun before the spec patch. After I heard FA was losing the icd, I was excited to pull it back out. Now that the icd is ACTUALLY removed, I’ll be playing this build a bit more. Fire/Air/Arcane with Arcane shield, air sig, and LF. This build has loads of stomp support with Swirling Winds, earth focus, air sig, and shield. It is much more of a team fight build as it plays a lot like a thief (damage and reset). The superspeed is very important for catching up or resetting and really makes FA shine. It certainly isn’t meta, but if you are an experienced ele, it’s a solid build.

That said, I agree with a lot of the input in this thread. Earth doesn’t seem to do much. It feels like it’s meant for sustain builds, not burst builds. Water is kind of in the same boat (hehe… boat). Water signet especially doesn’t seem worthwhile as it will have almost no impact in any battle. People do underestimate the power of Air signet though. It’s a stunbreak and can be used as an insta-blind against things like Earthshaker and downed cc’s of some classes.

last couple of shadowplay minutes in reduced. i basicly ran his build but arc instead of water and with scepter instead of dagger. earth is love esp with focus offhand and is THE hardcounter line for everything. and theres no point in running fire if u run fresh air as the blinds out of it r enough and blinding ashes is jumping the shark.. only valid point i see in running fire is reduced cooldown and an overall desire for more dmg.

“and theres no point in running fire if u run fresh air as the blinds out of it r enough and blinding ashes is jumping the shark..”

my bad as i forgot u want to run dagger.

Scepter is good, but all players are just bad. D/F is like turret engi or minion master. Total boring easy mode.

Junkpile.7439:

Scepter is good, but all players are just bad. D/F is like turret engi or minion master. Total boring easy mode.

Scepter is just not good, period. Low tier, average and high tier players say the same. The other two sentences… are just… I… wont even comment.