Guild Wars 2

I find the elementalist the hardest profession, although im new to this game . How should I build my elementalist, i want a bit tanky and alot of damage. I find water attunement to be kind of useless. Earth to be surprisingly powerful. Any suggestions?

Water is your Best attunement by the way, since staff, S/D, and D/D all have decent heals, and when you combine it with utility heal, you become very survivable. If you go staff bunker build, you have enormous healing potential. Personally i use S/D, but feel free to ask about any weapon choice or build.

spvp or wvw? Solo pvp or zerg? d/d or s/d or staff? Water is your surivabilty trait, your life depends on it.
I personally use 0/10/10/20/30 traits along with power/toughness/vit gear.

I guess ill try water, but I really dont like staff at all, I do like s/f, haven’t tried s/d or d/d but looks good. Arcane seems even more useless to me then water, Im talking about the utility skills, havent read any of the raits for any attunement btw. Hahah sorry if i sound like a noob cuz I am. I like fire alot, because of the damage, and burning condition.

Focus is just bad for pvp.. Arcane utility is so so. Use cantrips since they boost your survivability a LOT.
Ele is a class with 4 attunments, sticking to 1 is a recipe for disaster. Check some vids of very good players and you will notice they are swaping attunments constantly. And that where arcane traits come in handy.. lower cd on swaping as well as some universal traits that (sort of) help on all attunments.

Unfortunately you wont be dealing big damage if you want to boost your survivability. All elements are essential, you will realise this once you become more familiar with the class. Water skills don’t do much damage (though #2 on dagger and also #2 on staff are decent) but if specced right, switching to Water will cure all conditions on you, heal you and allies, and a dodge roll will also remove conditions. That’s pretty neat imo, and the enemies hate it.
It’s not easy and takes a while to get good at the Ele in PvP but once you know which traits you need and where all your skills are in all elements then it’s quite rewarding. Just never stand still.

I would also like to add:
Seriously rethink playing ele. Its kitten hard to play and not even close to beeing rewarding like other classes.

Spvp- Just play other class , Rank is account -bound so you don’t need to get kitten kicked in order to “lvl” your elementalist.
Wpvp- Staff support spec which is loved by everyone except yourself (I found that it is hard to get contribution from staff dps),
Or D/D spec which is pigeon hold to 400m aka melee range.
Or re-roll other class.

I found a good tanky build that works for me. But is d/d good on elementalist? Or should i stick with s/d

I’m currently playing a damage build. I focus on might stacking. Statying alive is a pain and I often die but after playing bunker for so long, I feel like it’s worth it. I usually crit with Firegrab for 10k and having a lot of area attacks I often drop entire teams. But they quickly learn to target me first so getting the chance to do that is hard. But eh, a lil’ bit a challenge is always fun.

Could you provide detail to the build, like traits, skills, and weapons used.

Yes I have to agree with some ppl in saying that the Water trait line is the key component.

Healing is easily the elementalist “X factor” in terms of dictating a battle. Not to mention, you want your ele to have as much vitality as possible. Toughness is also your friend too but there’s many things that can give toughness for an ele

Go dagger and dagger, I have found the most important stat to be tanky on the ele isn’t toughness or vitality it’s Healing power. Put at least 20 points into water to get the heal every time you attune to water and the heals will be amazing, combine that with cantrips provide regen, and elemental attunements 10 pt arcane trait that gives you regen every time you attune to water and you are looking at some great tankiness from self heals. Toss toughness and power into the mix and you can be a monster.

A bit of tanky and a lot of damage you said. None of the water/arcane/earth builds with no real investment in air and crit damage gear will do any life-threatning damage sadly. Not against opponents with a condition removal and skill anyway.

This build works neatly, if you want burst with survivability.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhImmbwR5gjDAkHn4CLiHPURDlCzA;ToAg0CnoqxUjoGbNuak1MEZKC

You can try an all around build that performs rather good in every attunement. That way you can really make use of every skill and they will feel worth casting (unless it is a crummy skill to begin with of course). I really like this, because you have decent condition damage, burst, healing, boons, mobility and survivability. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQJAoYhImibwR5gjFAEFn4SogCjChIU8QFlCzA;ToAAyCsoqxUjoGbNuak1MIYSA

Sorry but both those links keep coming up as bad links

Hey aurum important thing for ya, don’t choose your spec based on the stat points, they are only there to add a second benefit to picking traits, pick you spec based on traits you want. Example, don’t be like hey I don’t have any toughness in this spec ill put points into earth for the toughness it gives, take a look through the traits and find what will benefit you most defensively.

Also is this for pvp or PVE?

I run a 30 arcane 30 water 10 earth spec, with clerics gear/amulet and have NO problem killing players/mobs. Usually end up with 15+ kills a game.

I use the same build u are using, but find myself with not as many kills. What do you think of a pure damage build 30/30/10/0/0 build?

Aurum.9534:

I find the elementalist the hardest profession, although im new to this game . How should I build my elementalist, i want a bit tanky and alot of damage. I find water attunement to be kind of useless. Earth to be surprisingly powerful. Any suggestions?

Tanky = Take a hit with no damage being dealt

Damage = You Can’t take a hit but deal a lot of damage.

If you want a in between. Than check out this thread…I also reccomend looking over threads before posting a new one.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Tanky-DPS-Elementalist-Videos-included-updated-11-2-12/first

yesterday I tested a heavy bleed and signet-auramancer build with s/f.
I defnitly handed out more butt then I recieved although I was very squishy. (i Really do not nknow if this build is old news)

spec was 20/10/30/10/0 gear was heavy on bleed duration and condition damge as well as the weapons plus an additional bleed on crit sigil. pretty much stayed on earth as long as possible.

The fun thing about it was that it had a delayed burst feeling to it and that it caused your opponent to underestimate the rain of pain.

what i did was preload Attack 2 and stated then with attack 1 while unloading 2. Victim always ended up with at least 8 stacks of bleed and burning at which point i hit them with signet of water – applying also chill and 3 stacks vulrnability.

any attentive opponent realizing 4 conditons on them would now pull all the condtion removal they have and start raining pain on me. the ones who did not died miserably or started running away (which is not a good idea) tails because after the next round of 6 bleeds singet of fire adds more condition damage and pepole started panicing even more.

but lets go back to the decent player that anticipates whats happening. If they pull condi removal I hit them with sigil of earth and/or activated magnatic wave when they attacked from range while starting to fire autoattack again. magantic wave is short but also very subtle in its animation and people mostly do not realize it. (i had quite some lols with rifle warriors) thos reflects are alos guranteed to proc some bleeds or even a burn since you have fury up through you auras. i hit dust devil and start the kite by switching to lightning. – knock down, swirling wind another blind then of to fire for the next round of burn or water for more control. back to earth – rinse and repeat – you get the picture.

had a lot of fun and i will try to optimize it – just saying there are options besides dagger/dagger

disclaimer:

- this is WvWvW and spvp not tpvp
- it is only strong against 1on1 so you need to pic you fights or stay with the pac
- its not at all god mode – dieing is part of the learning curve
- it is very stong running as a pack and having someone call out targets
- mobility is key (Which is generally true for ele)

in addition – and i know thats probably not a relevant factor – but this build was the strongest on all the training opponents (professions and golems) in the mists i have ever tested.

might wanna check it out – thats the coolest thing about this game

Aurum.9534:

Sorry but both those links keep coming up as bad links

You have to copy the link and paste it in the browser. The particular site always appears as a bad link, not sure why this forum doesn’t display it properly.