Guild Wars 2

Feeble wave

Hello all. So, haling from Necromancer and not much else, I am very, very inexperienced with the Elementalist as a whole. Looking at this class and all that it has to offer, I see a few things that excite me, namely the water element and the frost bow skill. You see, in fantasy settings, whether they be in a video game or on a tabletop, I have always been utterly in love with ice magic. That in mind, I come to you, humbly, with but one question:

Is it possible to create a decent to very good to fantastic build focused around the frost bow skill?

Knowing what I desire, please keep in mind that I am already quite sure that this build will not even be close to meta, or op, or anything of that nature. I simply want to have fun tossing ice magic around with my character well enough to survive with relative ease.

To all those that consider my post and provide me assistance, I thank you.

Bows

Frost bow is a great compliment to any build! Play around, and once you feel you have enough survivability on your build, see if you can fit the bow in.

The only issue I have with your post Celtus is that I want the frost bow to be my premiere ability, the one that I focus on rather than something that simply compliments my build. What I mean is, I want to build around the bow rather than the other way around.

I apologize if I was not clear on this in my original post. That said, I do greatly appreciate your hasty reply!

So here are some ideas:
no.4 on the frostbow is by far the strongest skill.
So how does one compliment it?

here’s an idea:
arcane power + trait that lets arcane spells and signets cause vulnerability
Water trait that lets you do 20% more damage on vulnerable foes while in water atunement.
Runes of Ice (7% more damage on targets with freezing on them which icebow 3 gives abundantly.
So that’d be a solid 27% extra damage + vulnerability ofcourse.
There’s also the scholar runes (10% more dmg while above 90% of hp) + the trait that gives the same bonus. + the air trait that gives 20% more damage to targets below 33% hp + the trait that lets you do 15% more damage after using an arcana trait.
Could be combined with signet of earth to keep the target in place during the assault
Get a focus off-hand and use obsidian flesh as a set up so you don’t get interrupted.
AAAAND frostbow 4 does bleeds so take the trait that increases damage on bleeding target by 5% AAAND use a build that gives you 25 stacks of might easily.

So the sequence would be (after stacking):
earth-obsidian flesh → Frost Bow → Signet of Earth → frost bow→ 3 for chill (optional). →Arcane power (for vulnerability) → Frost Bow 4.

Basically that could end any fight I think.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAodhMM6cW9wvBf0AaAGpPw4AwEIDW+HMDyBA-TJxHwADeAAa2fAwJAoYZAA

This build involves switching elements for boons, countering cc spikes and burst, while trying to maintain frost bow in water element. The lightning flash allows you to surprise people with spikes, aka 1800 range deep freeze. The build will force you to leave the bow and use your D/F skill set, but with Water being such a useful element for the build, you will still feel like you are playing the freeze game. (Also, don’t forget that if you are only auto attacking with frost bow, you aren’t dealing much damage; also people can steal your weapon. )

Signet of earth can be changed, but it can near guarantee some burst if used right, or allow an escape. (since this build has such poor mobility)

Good luck, and feel free to experiment with alternatives. I just cooked this build up in a few minutes.

So I went to the mists to try out the theory. And with everything maxxed out you can beat a medium armor engi with just this one rotation.

tried it out on the test golems and with some luck on the falling of the comets you can take down the heavy armor golem as well

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArdhMMqeWzwvBfEBWAB5zy3hJPiCKdD-TJRGwAAeAAD3fIxJAAaZAA

This is what I made

Wow! Swimsasa, Loboling, thank you so much! I am in awe of both your fast replies and excellent information! I will surely try these suggestions out.

Bows

Two very different builds, It looks really interesting too. Give them both a try and let us know how they work out.

Most definitely!

okay so after some practicing I went into tpvp with the build I posted but I slightly edited the build to be a fresh air top dmg zerker build with frostbow as the imba kill.
With 5th trait being vulnerability on crit I could lose the 6th in water since on crit is a more reliable vulnerability source.

So the result was a big win, didn’t get downed not even once and got 16 kills
Every time my team was about to get downed I used frostbow 4 on their area while in water atunement and basically downed and killed whomever it was trying to get the stomp :p
It was soooo fun. Also got a mesmer say to me that ele is unbalanced in a hotjoin game :p

Here’s the changed build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArdhMMqeWzwkBfEBQAGxZQMYUFQcDIAkBLNEA-TJRGwAAeAAD3fIxJAAaZAA

Very cool! I will have to give that version a shot for sure. Does this revised build utilize the same general rotation as before or has it, too, been slightly altered?

If you like Ice Magic especially, you’ll love Water attunement underwater. It’s quite fun with “detonating” skills

Katakari.8490:

Very cool! I will have to give that version a shot for sure. Does this revised build utilize the same general rotation as before or has it, too, been slightly altered?

Rotation is generally the same except instead of signet of earth for the immobilize you can utilize the ice bow no. 5. Or you can just look for your team mates to grab the opponnents attention. I’m guessing this could work well with a hammer guardian’s no. 5

My recommended use for the frost bow is as a situational utility skill. If you find yourself in the right situation, use it, blow through your rotation (3542 for me) then immediately drop it and go back to normal skills. You can pick up the second one about ~20 seconds later to repeat.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

My recommended use for the frost bow is as a situational utility skill. If you find yourself in the right situation, use it, blow through your rotation (3542 for me) then immediately drop it and go back to normal skills. You can pick up the second one about ~20 seconds later to repeat.

This is basically how I tend to use my conjured weapons. Though some of the auto attacks can be quite nice. If you went for a tanky healer build instead the frost bow auto attack could do amazing healing for you while still being able to apply soft CC, hard CC, big damage and vulnerability debuff.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

My recommended use for the frost bow is as a situational utility skill. If you find yourself in the right situation, use it, blow through your rotation (3542 for me) then immediately drop it and go back to normal skills. You can pick up the second one about ~20 seconds later to repeat.

This is basically how I tend to use my conjured weapons. Though some of the auto attacks can be quite nice. If you went for a tanky healer build instead the frost bow auto attack could do amazing healing for you while still being able to apply soft CC, hard CC, big damage and vulnerability debuff.

I’m mostly sPvP staff, so if I wanted that I would use the water #1 skill anyway just because it doesn’t cut down on my CC/Damage like it does on FB (charges).
I feel like the only conjure autos worth using are LH in PvE and Fire Axe in PvP for the might from both.

But yeah, a lot of people think they’re underpowered because they’re not standalone weapons like kits, but conjures on eles are still utilities, really.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

My recommended use for the frost bow is as a situational utility skill. If you find yourself in the right situation, use it, blow through your rotation (3542 for me) then immediately drop it and go back to normal skills. You can pick up the second one about ~20 seconds later to repeat.

This is basically how I tend to use my conjured weapons. Though some of the auto attacks can be quite nice. If you went for a tanky healer build instead the frost bow auto attack could do amazing healing for you while still being able to apply soft CC, hard CC, big damage and vulnerability debuff.

I’m mostly sPvP staff, so if I wanted that I would use the water #1 skill anyway just because it doesn’t cut down on my CC/Damage like it does on FB (charges).
I feel like the only conjure autos worth using are LH in PvE and Fire Axe in PvP for the might from both.

But yeah, a lot of people think they’re underpowered because they’re not standalone weapons like kits, but conjures on eles are still utilities, really.

frostbow gives increased healing and condition duration so if you first cast your water and ice fields and then pick up the frost bow you get increased chill duration and increased heals.

I’ve been leveling my ele with frostbow, but in the end I found out that I can do much more using staff and supporting it with frostbow.

I’ve been using similar idea to the one posted before, camping on the water for 20% damage and taking every possible damage bonus, like arcane lightning, bolt to the heart, etc.

The biggest problem is that you don’t have any reasonable access to fury if you want to camp with the frostbow and that is a huge waste of DPS. Even if your party can stack fury for you, you can still do much more using ice storm and meteor shower for example.
…but yea, if you want to just level up your character and play for fun, it works like this.

In the end I decided that playing with all elements is much more interesting, so I’m using:
Ice Spike
Shockwave
Eruption
Lava font (combo with eruption = 3 stacks of might)
Arcane Wave / Arcane Briliance (combo for another 3 stacks)
Flame Burst
Meteor Shower
Lightning Surge
Ice Spike
Frostbow
Frost Fan
Ice Storm
Throw frostbow
repeat

It also gives you much better control, you can use Frozen Ground, Static Field, Unsteady Ground. Chain them correctly and you can stop group of enemies in place and nuke them from the safe distance.