Guild Wars 2

So me and a few other elementalists have been testing out the s/d fresh air build out again. It’s super bursty, almost too bursty. It kills people (albeit not bunkers) before they can even react and use defensives. On top of the damage, it also has ridiculous survivability with Water3 and Earth2, and has the same mobility of d/d.

You guys think this will be the new meta over d/d cele? I feel like this build is very underrated. It’s super strong. Try it out and see.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_S/D_Fresh_Air

Not really new meta since it has it’s own drawbacks, however, I thoroughly enjoy playing S/F fresh air build now a days. People normally don’t expect burst damage from ele and hence, we get the advantage out of it. Here is a match I had recorded a couple of week ago:

Diva.1476:

Not really new meta since it has it’s own drawbacks, however, I thoroughly enjoy playing S/F fresh air build now a days. People normally don’t expect burst damage from ele and hence, we get the advantage out of it. Here is a match I had recorded a couple of week ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6UbfqX06WM

The advantage is short lived and not really worth it, you have less dmg and sustain than a med guardian while requiring 5x the effort

The reason why this build is not considered a meta is the same reason why Power Ranger or Power Necro are not consider in the meta. They are good build that can turn the tide of a battle, they are real killing machine, but they are too one sided and lack in diversity.

The goal of the game here is to win, not to kill. Sometime to win you need to kill, but you also need to stomp, to rez, to have mobility, to be able to keep a point against two guys, etc. That’s why brawler build like D/D Ele and Shoutbow Warrior are so popular. They can kill, but they also keep a point if they need to. They also work super well in group since they can support each other. Shoutbow will get destroy by some build in 1vs1, but a shoutbow or D/D giving might, condi removal and healing at mid will keep your whole team alive faster.

The other reason is the focus. When you fight a team with a power ranger, a fresh air ele or a power necro who will be your first focus is a SUPER easy decision to make. Two seconds and you know exactly who will be your target for the rest of the game.

That doesn’t mean that those build are bad at all. But that’s the reasons why they are less popular in conquest mode.

^

100 times this

A lot of people migrated the Fresh Air scepter builds over to S/F from S/D.

Basically /Dagger is 5 melee attacks (2 CCs), a 1 cleanse/heal, mobility move, and defensive frost aura. Focus is 4 ranged attacks (3 CCs), a projectile destroy, a 3 cleanse/missile reflect, a damage immunity, and a fire aura.

A lot of people prefer the defense that Focus Earth 4/5 and Focus Air 4 provides against projectile based classes like the ever growing popular Power Ranger. Straight up damage immunity doesn’t hurt either. Meanwhile /Dagger has no answer to projectile classes and often times has to straight up eat most of the damage if caught.

Both still have merits. Even if not as popular, /Dagger still provides those two strong AOE melee CCs (Updraft and Earthquake) which are great for getting groups of people off downs (yours or theirs) and RTL is always great mobility. Focus just has more what people are looking for these days again going back to all them Rangers.

Buell.3701:

it also has ridiculous survivability with Water3 and Earth2, and has the same mobility of d/d.

lol

I personally always felt they were one trick pony gimmicks. Once you get over your power trip of one shotting a motionless/unattentive squishy, you feel like doing something else. It’s more a duel thing than something useful for what I like to play. To each his own I guess…

TomoHawkx.8139:

lol

Gr8 feedback m8 i r8 8/8. I rel8 and str8 appreci8 next time we should convers8.

lol

S/D is great but majority of players prefer safer builds.

Buell.3701:

TomoHawkx.8139:

lol

Gr8 feedback m8 i r8 8/8. I rel8 and str8 appreci8 next time we should convers8.

Very appropriate counter response! +1

is this thread sPvP only? seems like it, so yeah I’ll agree with s/d still not quite worth it, although for wvw roaming, pve and dungeons, s/d is a lot of fun. Burst is great and conjured weps make up for the dps loss while the burst rotation is on CD.

There are times when I see one or two turret engis on the enemy’s roster, I quietly stow my shout bow and D/D ele away and use my Fresh Air ele instead. Of all the classes that my Fresh Air ele can handle 1v1, zerker hammer/gsword war, sw/torch mesmer and condi ranger are the worst counter. Power ranger, thief and power necro are a joke. Unless your team use voice com, it’s better to go offensive against the rise of turret zombies in solo Q.

Well full burst is kind of easy avoid and shorter burst works only against glass cannons. It take some skill use these combos and actually keep up what enemy doing at the same time. Every player can learn these combos, but good player actually know when to dodge, when to cancel burst and how to stay alive. I usually burst and after that i look if enemy is dead. Usually enemy will block or evade whole kitten and i have only auto attack left. I have always find S/D survivability to be kind of bad, but i don’t know how to play and i don’t have any healing power.

And then a thief joins the match and shows you why fresh air builds can be lacking

Yea theyre great in a lot of situations and the best eles can probably win tourneys as one (though probably s/f not s/d), but I doubt they will be “meta” anytime soon.

Really fun to play though, so for non tournament level players thats what matters

S/D actually almost completely fell out of use, won’t be meta anytime soon. If you want to play burst ele, go S/F. The build you linked was in fact archived for these reasons. S/D does not have the sustain to make it truly viable atm.

Sizer.5632:

And then a thief joins the match and shows you why fresh air builds can be lacking

Yea theyre great in a lot of situations and the best eles can probably win tourneys as one (though probably s/f not s/d), but I doubt they will be “meta” anytime soon.

Really fun to play though, so for non tournament level players thats what matters

With a venom share teammate, a fresh air S/F ele can counter thief really easily. During team fight, it’s all the matter of positioning and enemy awareness. If I know the thief will jump on me, I’ll pre-cast Dragon Tooth on top of myself and get ready to queue all the aoe burst on top of myself. Thief has stealth but they lack invuln/evade and the ability to kite of mesmer who is far more annoying to counter.

On the tourney level, it’s the matter of rotation. The job of the thief is 1. to focus on power class, 2. roam and get objectives, 3. defend your squishy (aka, counter enemy thief). IF the Fresh Air ele has a supportive team, he can put out so much pressure. It’s hard to see this scenario comes to play as good Fresh Air ele are few and far in between and they don’t have a team ever.

Iris Ng.9845:

With a venom share teammate, a fresh air S/F ele can counter thief really easily. During team fight, it’s all the matter of positioning and enemy awareness. If I know the thief will jump on me, I’ll pre-cast Dragon Tooth on top of myself and get ready to queue all the aoe burst on top of myself. Thief has stealth but they lack invuln/evade and the ability to kite of mesmer who is far more annoying to counter.

Quite the contrarily. With the longer CD added into blurred frenzy long time ago, mesmer can’t afford to wait for the second blurred frenzy without swapping weapon. Distortion’s CD is too long, and mesmer stealth also has long CD so majority of time mesmer will be target-able. Phase retreat will nullify many CC-set up event and make melee dagger offhand difficult to land, but fresh air burst should still be able to reach it. The advantage of fresh air burst is shorter set up time (over mesmer, necro) and shorter time frame burst (over ranger), which allows ele to land burst more readily and efficiently whenever target is present. Once you get familiar with mesmer rotations and habits, you’ll know when to strike.

Been trying out scepter/dagger recently, not sure if the melee offenses worth it when you sacrifice most range protections. Condi is also a problem so I had to slot ether renewal or cleansing fire, but again condi is always a problem for fresh air eles lol.

S/D is just awful for team fights and therefore will never become meta in Spvp. D/D has major killing power, good might stacking, good condi cleanse, good team healing, and can defend a point for ages.

S/D can burst…thats about it, too squishy for long fights, next to no team value. Their burst isnt even that good compared to a thief and thieves can burst way more often.

IMO,

Fresh Air builds are good for 1v1s, small scale group combat. They are not nearly as good for conquest, or bunkering a point.

I dont think that they are survivable enough to become the meta for elementalist.

However, people get bored of Celestial or Knights D/D, and want a change which is a bit more balls to the wall, and Fresh air S/X is a LOT of fun once you master the burst combos.

I beg to differ.

Fresh Air is good for conquest, too. It specializes in training and finishing bunkers of the enemy team so the fight won’t drag out too long. With the rise of turret zombies in Q, Fresh Air can contest a point camped by a turret engi and even win that 1v1 fight. They can act as roamers and engage enemies coming for side points, or provide sneaky range attack at mid point if given any high ground advantage

However, playing Fresh Air takes a lot of risks. Firstly, you need to not get hit at all. It takes a lot of map awareness so as not to get focused by more than two enemies at once, and have someone readily peel for you. Secondly, you need to know how to set up your burst so that your target cannot recover from it. Since Fresh Air is not a point holding class, it will be not as easy to build an efficient team synergy around it. In fact, it’s too demanding to become close to meta.

I’m trying some S/F fresh air variation right now, with more defensive gear… it’s not that bad, sure I have smaller crits due to lower ferocity (177%) and only 34% crit (which is not that bad + you have fury on weapon swap for air spikes), but the power is still very high so dmg is quite good… and for this you get much higher survivability than usual S/X ele so you are no longer a 1 hit thief food…

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArdhMMqbWywnBd0AOAGxiQMQcEIA0BLWFWCA-TJBBwAAeAA02fwcZAInAAA

I’m still wondering about some traits, water and arcane adepts, I’m not sure… maybe vital striking and arcane cooldown? or vigor on crit?

what do you think?

Soldier ammy is bad.

why? what is better while keeping high power and not being 1-shoted by thief? I agree that I have a bit too much vitality, because I use water traits, but I don’t see better option

maybe Valk, Cavalier, Knight… but I prefer high power amulets, because main source of dmg is from air spikes, so I think I wouldn’t utilize celestial that much… and I wont use Berserker, because it’s not fun getting 1-shoted… this way it is more forgiving while still having solid dmg

Most of Fresh Air damage isn’t coming from spamming the channeling #1 while waiting for your #2 and #3 off cool down. The channeling is a stream of small critical hit damage that allows your sigils of Air and Fire to proc. That is your first spike. Your second spike is the automatic Lightning Rod that procs whenever you swap into Air Attunement. Thanks to Fresh Air (CD 5 seconds), whenever you crit, Air Attunement is ready. Your third spike is to land Phoenix on top of your opponent, and if it crits, he is already half dead. As I mentioned over and over, your crit chance is hugely important. Without at least 60% crit chance (80% is my preference), your sigils and Fresh Air won’t proc when you want them, and it becomes much more difficult to set up a burst combo with different skills on top. I’m afraid that Fresh Air will not give any solid damage without zerker ammy. It is a punishing build and has a decent skill floor.

If you want more sustain, go with different utilities or different builds entirely. In this current set up, your auto attack in Air won’t pose any threats. Any zerker classes is still able to one shot you. Power necro, ranger, shatter mesmer, gsword warrior, medi guard and other zerker fresh air ele can kill you without the need to get stealthed like a thief.

If you are afraid of thief, the only thing that helps counter them is position awareness: Know when thief jumps on you, block and get ready to retaliate with your burst combo, interrupt their stealth combo, drop dragon tooth on top of their sword/shadow step port to anticipate their return, etc…

ok now I understand, thanks… I will maybe try knight amulet with divinity runes and both fire and air sigils, 53% crit (or 58% with eagle runes) could be ok, but with less than 14k hp I will be more vulnerable to condis, but I think I should be able to handle them with cleanses… if it wont be enough I will risk the berserker, but I would like to learn a bit S/F playstyle at first, I was never playing focus much and scepter is my least used main hand from what I remember…

Phantaram uses a version of Fresh Air that uses Evasive Arcana (06xx6). You can give it a try. You have an extra blast, a blind, a heal and cleanse when you’re in a pinch. I honestly think it’s more offensive and defensive that the 06044 build. You can also give Rune of the Pack a try. Whenever you get hit, you get Fury/Might/Swiftness. The fury tends to accumulate for quite a bit after team fight. The Swiftness means you don’t really need Signet of Air anymore and can opt out for Arcane Shield, Lightning Flash and something else. It’s a Power rune so it provides the Power bonus your build is sorely lacking.

Another rune I’m playing with is Flame Legion. You have some access to burning so the damage modifier is always there for u.

S/F ele is 100% viable in a PvP setting.. you just gotta be good at it.
I also said someone say that thieves completely counter it? Not the case at ALL.
But yea S/F ele definitely has it’s niche role for a team, you just gotta know how to exploit it and use it to its max potential.