Guild Wars 2

Heya =)
I have a newb-question concerning the following quote

Armor
Exotic: The most cost effective choice is full Zerk armor due to its availability. Full Assassin’s armor can sometimes give you higher DPS for some builds, but the difference between the two with appropriate stacks and food is often less than 1%. While learning to play, use Knight’s armor, swapping out to Zerk/Assassin shoulders, gloves, boots, chest, pants, and helm, in that order, as you become more comfortable with content.

I am a new Elementalist and am considering a more forgiving gear-setup in the beginning. Something that – at least – tries to get over 14k HP and ~8% dmg reduction. Therefore, I was wondering if you meant to recommend the Soldiers set with +vit and +toughness, instead of the Knight’s set?
Or is the Precision from the Knights set so important as to ignore the vitality bonus?

My plan is to mix up Zerker shoulders/gloves/boots and soldiers helm/chest/legs. That is, if you don’t think that this is a particularly bad idea xD

Best regards,
Sepher

Hey Sephereen

It seems that Keyz has taken some time off from posting on this forum. Technically I am gone too, but somehow I still lurk in the neighbourhood
I believe that her paragraph on armour is a little outdated: we used to have different ratios of stats on a number of pieces, but this has been harmonised. Now, any combination of attributes on any piece can be efficient depending on what you aim to achieve.
My advice is that you do not rely on defensive gear. Instead, it is economically and technically better to use defensive traits. This is because gear is costly so you do not want to invest your resources into something you will discard as you improve your elementalist performance; and because it is more efficient to get used to the zerker mindset from the very start. I suggest that you take a look at the defensive trait templates that I develop in my guide. Best of luck!

Amazing guide. I’ve been away for a while and this helped me get right back in to it.

Did some updates, but not complete. Video updates coming soon.

DEKeyzToChaos Will you be posting here with the updates? Or are you gonna create a new thread?

Im new here and Im watching some of your vids .

Yes, I have updated this thread with all build updates.

DEKeyzToChaos.7381:

Yes, I have updated this thread with all build updates.

Hi!

I just wanted to ask if we should be expecting updates on the guide for the new stuff that got implemented yesterday!

Aggelos.4130:

DEKeyzToChaos.7381:

Yes, I have updated this thread with all build updates.

Hi!

I just wanted to ask if we should be expecting updates on the guide for the new stuff that got implemented yesterday!

I updated the videos today and will work on the text guide over the next couple days. I expect some balancing to occur so I may drag my feet until Tuesday.

Since the specialization patch, I haven’t seen anyone post a DPS DD Elementalist build yet (probably because it falls behind other DPS Ele builds) but I thought I would post the one I use anyway.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vFQQJAoYnMICtMgdOAmNA8RgBBALCAFgDgcJDBpgaT2E/kA-TBSBAB0s/goqq8wJAgS1KMTJ4VK/wTPAAPAgAAHA/23A48zP/8zPvf/93f/93SBM2UL-e

The build is pretty bursty relying on Burning Speed, Ring of Fire, Fire Grab and Churning Earth for some large spikes and then Lightning Whip for some sustained damage.

It has access to 2 fire fields that in total last 13 seconds and 5 blast finishers allowing for solid might stacking capabilities. The Strength Runes make it pretty easy to maintain at least 10 might in combat.

Scholar Runes are a viable alternative if you feel Strength Runes aren’t as beneficial or are too expensive.

Lightning Flash is a good defensive utility if you need to get out of combat quickly, otherwise it can be used offensively as it deals damage if you teleport onto an enemy.

My real suggestions is play around with a build editor and find what works for you. I run a burst build and with the new system i’ve hit I think insane numbers

Hey there, I’ve got a few questions regarding Dungeon specific builds:
-Can you rank the 3 builds by their DPS (Assuming I run with PUGs, and they don’t stack Might very well), and how significant is the difference between them?
-Does a S/D build has to be paired with LH?
-Is there a guide somewhere about a D/D build? I gotta say it’s my favorite setup, though I don’t really understand how does it do in PvE …
-In CoF P2, I constantly die at to the Lava rock due to it’s fire shield, it stacks like 10 burns on me when I Dps it. How do I counter it…?

• Staff >>> Scepter/Dagger + Hammer > Scepter/Focus + Hammer > Dagger/Focus
• Yes. Scepter has no cleave and all of its autoattacks have low coefficients
• I don’t support D/D in PvE. It’s super fun for sure, but it is out DPSed by other builds and doesn’t bring the utility of D/F to make up for it.
• Stand back and use staff. Take Ether Renewal as your heal.

hey, have you posted an updated text guide for PVE staff ele yet?
been away for awhile so relearning how to play so the video kind of helps but also a bit confused at some parts that would probably be anwsered via an in depth text guide.

thanks

DEKeyzToChaos.7381:

Staff Rotations

• Base Rotation: Eruption – Air – Glyph of Storms – Fire – Lava Font – Meteor Shower – Lava Font – Fireball x3 – Lava Font – Fireball x3 – Lava Font – Fireball x3 – Lava Font – Fireball x4 – repeat from 1st Lava Font

If i understand right we are using Glyph of Storms only once per fight?

Demonel.8132:

DEKeyzToChaos.7381:

Staff Rotations

• Base Rotation: Eruption – Air – Glyph of Storms – Fire – Lava Font – Meteor Shower – Lava Font – Fireball x3 – Lava Font – Fireball x3 – Lava Font – Fireball x3 – Lava Font – Fireball x4 – repeat from 1st Lava Font

If i understand right we are using Glyph of Storms only once per fight?

In most fights, your target shouldn’t last long enough for a second GoS. In the case that it is off CD before your target is dead, either cast it in fire for a small DPS gain, or flip through the attunements starting with Air and utilizing FGS 5 and 4 to help keep your DPS up.

I will update soon now that FB4 has been nerfed hard. It’s still useful and can be a DPS gain for eles in some circumstances.

Is the original post relevant in today’s meta?

The content in the guide as a whole (minus a few edits for FB) is up to date. The preface may not be, though :X

DEKeyzToChaos.7381:

The content in the guide as a whole (minus a few edits for FB) is up to date. The preface may not be, though :X

Looking forward for the update of your guide !

hey i see your guides and i have some newbie Q.

i just start to play i lvl 25 and want to know what is the best element to fucus and upgrade that help me kill best in pve until lvl 80.

and also what will be best to learn to play whit staff\dagger\scpter+ hamer.

my goal is to pve and dungen and stuff like dis but not pvp and wvw only pve.

i try to read the guide you make but i just cunfuis me even more =\

I think it’s sad that this guide totally ignores FA builds. FA is the absolute best way to pump out damage as an Ele and has been since the introduction of that master trait.

inflictioN.6287:

hey i see your guides and i have some newbie Q.

i just start to play i lvl 25 and want to know what is the best element to fucus and upgrade that help me kill best in pve until lvl 80.

and also what will be best to learn to play whit staff\dagger\scpter+ hamer.

my goal is to pve and dungen and stuff like dis but not pvp and wvw only pve.

i try to read the guide you make but i just cunfuis me even more =\

Hey, I’ve been maining Elementalist since beta. I even made them useful at the beginning when the forums were full of people complaining about how they were worthless.

This guide is pretty good, but the guy ignores the best Elementalist build.

In the game up till now, dungeons have pretty much been dominated by staff elementalists running fire based builds. I always thought that was boring, though it’s great for sustained AoE damage. How you play depends on what you want to play like. Conditions are definitely worth your time now, but that wasn’t always the case. Dagger builds have potential for extremely high damage from bleeds and burns. And earth-based bleed build is probably the best for getting used to attunements as a new player, in my opinion. It’s forgiving because it can be very survivable (you build lots of condi damage and toughness) while also pumping out a good amount of damage. And if you build in some healing power, then you can take the Written In Stone master trait in earth, which is huge for survivability when paired with Signet of Life. I always thought it was fun to just stack up the bleeds and watch the condi numbers just fly off. It used to be a lot more fun, though, when huge bleed numbers just spewed out of the enemy’s head at like 10-20 ticks of damage per second when you had high stacks on the enemy lol. Plus, daggers force you to get good at attunement dancing since you gain SO much mobility and utility from swapping fast. Also, remember that alternate builds (condition damage and support) will be necessary for groups to have in raids, so they’re not bad to keep in mind.

If you want to do the most damage against champions and bosses (or even instagib groups of mobs) the best thing to do is run a Fresh Air build. That’s scepter/focus going into air, fire, and arcane specializations. Build as much ferocity as humanly possible, which will come at the expense of precision, but that’s ok because when you’re done with the build, you’ll have at least 75% crit chance anyway. Even higher with food.
The idea behind this build is to keep rolling scepter air skill 1 repeatedly for as long as possible without any interruption. Most of your hits will crit and your crits will burn, apply vulnerability, and cause a lightning strike (extra high base damage hit). As often as possible, you swap to another attunement as soon as you start channeling air 1. Since the skill channels for a few seconds and hits like 10 times, you’re basically guaranteed to crit several times during it. As soon as you crit, the Fresh Air trait recharges your air attunement and you swap back to air, causing another lightning strike, but you need to swap back before the skill finishes so the next one starts without interruption. Also, you use the instant cast arcane abilities give you constant extra ferocity with an arcane specialization trait. If you swap to another attunement late in the channel, you can always use an instant arcane skill, which always crit, and then you don’t have to worry about the last couple hits of your channel critting.
Now, one thing I don’t like about the above guide is he says that scepter has “weak auto attacks”. That’s a lie. Scepter air 1 is the most powerful auto attack in the game. That’s because it keeps stacking damage the longer it goes without interruption. Even at lvl 80 in good gear, the first hit will do under 300 damage, but by the 3rd or 4th cast, you’ll be doing easily over 10k per tick and you’re ticking 3 times a second. When I’m in a group with lots of might and such, I regularly see my ticks going over 30k each and I can keep that up for a long while. That’s 100k damage per second from your auto attack. Weak auto attacks…PAH! Best thing about the focus is when you swap to earth to wait for a crit, you can use focus earth 5, which is instant so it doesn’t interrupt your channel and it gives you invulnerability for 4 seconds, adding some good survivability for taking burst hits.
Sometimes you will have to be interrupted because you need to use your heal skill or you need to dodge or you get knocked down or something. Then you’ll have to start building up the damage on your auto attack all over again. It’s ok, though. When that happens, you take the opportunity to do your insane fire burst damage. You use focus air 5 to knock down (if the enemy can be knocked down), then swap to fire, use scepter 3 just behind the target so they get hit 3 times (on the way out, at the blast location, and on the way back) and then scepter 2 (it’s delayed, which is why the knockdown is helpful, but it’s ground targeted now, so you can anticipate the target moving if you need to). Scepter 3 will almost definitely have crit at least once, which means air attunement is back up, so you swap back and keep going.

You would be amazed at how fast you can take down veteran Mordrem if you start off with the fire burst.
The only problem is after playing that build for so long, I’ve gotten kind of tired of air attunement haha. I can’t wait for HoT so I can go back to a cool condi build with dagger/dagger tempest.

Pinkerton.5643:

Now, one thing I don’t like about the above guide is he says that scepter has “weak auto attacks”. That’s a lie. Scepter air 1 is the most powerful auto attack in the game. That’s because it keeps stacking damage the longer it goes without interruption. Even at lvl 80 in good gear, the first hit will do under 300 damage, but by the 3rd or 4th cast, you’ll be doing easily over 10k per tick and you’re ticking 3 times a second. When I’m in a group with lots of might and such, I regularly see my ticks going over 30k each and I can keep that up for a long while. That’s 100k damage per second from your auto attack. Weak auto attacks…PAH!

Scepter AA damage only adds up visually. Check combat log for proof.

PeteMerc.3745:

Pinkerton.5643:

Now, one thing I don’t like about the above guide is he says that scepter has “weak auto attacks”. That’s a lie. Scepter air 1 is the most powerful auto attack in the game. That’s because it keeps stacking damage the longer it goes without interruption. Even at lvl 80 in good gear, the first hit will do under 300 damage, but by the 3rd or 4th cast, you’ll be doing easily over 10k per tick and you’re ticking 3 times a second. When I’m in a group with lots of might and such, I regularly see my ticks going over 30k each and I can keep that up for a long while. That’s 100k damage per second from your auto attack. Weak auto attacks…PAH!

Scepter AA damage only adds up visually. Check combat log for proof.

There must be some weird bug with it in the Heart of the Mists. If you go out into the world and start hitting stuff, you will see that the hp of your target starts dropping faster the longer you run the ability. And I mean A LOT faster. Such a huge difference that it’s hard not to notice. Trust me. I’ve been running it almost exclusively since Fresh Air came out.

Pinkerton.5643:

PeteMerc.3745:

Pinkerton.5643:

Now, one thing I don’t like about the above guide is he says that scepter has “weak auto attacks”. That’s a lie. Scepter air 1 is the most powerful auto attack in the game. That’s because it keeps stacking damage the longer it goes without interruption. Even at lvl 80 in good gear, the first hit will do under 300 damage, but by the 3rd or 4th cast, you’ll be doing easily over 10k per tick and you’re ticking 3 times a second. When I’m in a group with lots of might and such, I regularly see my ticks going over 30k each and I can keep that up for a long while. That’s 100k damage per second from your auto attack. Weak auto attacks…PAH!

Scepter AA damage only adds up visually. Check combat log for proof.

There must be some weird bug with it in the Heart of the Mists. If you go out into the world and start hitting stuff, you will see that the hp of your target starts dropping faster the longer you run the ability. And I mean A LOT faster. Such a huge difference that it’s hard not to notice. Trust me. I’ve been running it almost exclusively since Fresh Air came out.

It must be for your game only then because all of us don’t see this happening. Neither the HP bar nor the combat log shows any indication of what you are claiming. You are simply wrong. You can ask a Dev or ask in a ticket if you don’t believe us.

Pinkerton.5643:

PeteMerc.3745:

Pinkerton.5643:

Now, one thing I don’t like about the above guide is he says that scepter has “weak auto attacks”. That’s a lie. Scepter air 1 is the most powerful auto attack in the game. That’s because it keeps stacking damage the longer it goes without interruption. Even at lvl 80 in good gear, the first hit will do under 300 damage, but by the 3rd or 4th cast, you’ll be doing easily over 10k per tick and you’re ticking 3 times a second. When I’m in a group with lots of might and such, I regularly see my ticks going over 30k each and I can keep that up for a long while. That’s 100k damage per second from your auto attack. Weak auto attacks…PAH!

Scepter AA damage only adds up visually. Check combat log for proof.

There must be some weird bug with it in the Heart of the Mists. If you go out into the world and start hitting stuff, you will see that the hp of your target starts dropping faster the longer you run the ability. And I mean A LOT faster. Such a huge difference that it’s hard not to notice. Trust me. I’ve been running it almost exclusively since Fresh Air came out.

that doesnt make sense lol, that means if u keep up the attacks at some point u 1 shot everything..

its like the guy says

10 hits
each hit hits for 10 dmg
on your screen youll see 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 etc..
while your combat log shows correct values of 10 10 10 10 10 dmg each hit.

this is like on my P/P thief i can do up to 60k of dmg in matter of seconds spread over multiple mobs/players but if i look in my combat log it shows separated dmg logs..

imagine when thiefs or other people who have channel skills start hitting people for 50k+ cus they keep channeling their stuff perfect

You’re both right. The coefficient per strike of scepter air AA (Arc Lightning) increases from .1 per hit for the first 3 hits, to .2 per hit for the next 3, to .3 per hit for the last 4. However, the damage displayed over a target’s head is the sum of the damage from that skill. Engi Flamethrower auto has the same effect except provides constant damage.

Also, guide (finally) updated for HoT. Sorry for the delay >.<

Scepter Air AA increases in its damage per hit over the full channel, from .1 for the first 3 hits, to .2 for the next 3 hits, to .3 for the last 4 hits. The overhead damage is summed, but the increments are displayed in the combat log.

Also, guide has been updated for HoT. Sorry for the delay.

DEKeyzToChaos.7381:

Scepter Air AA increases in its damage per hit over the full channel, from .1 for the first 3 hits, to .2 for the next 3 hits, to .3 for the last 4 hits. The overhead damage is summed, but the increments are displayed in the combat log.

Also, guide has been updated for HoT. Sorry for the delay.

Hey, mam, may I add you in game in case I need pointers?