Guild Wars 2

Lokki

Big thanks to ThiBash I totally forgot they were called elites. got that fixed.

Hehe, no problem. You got a nice guide going here, and, more importantly, you’re open to suggestions and tips from other people. If I can help out, then I will.

But speaking of Glyph of lesser does anyone have some numbers on this?

Unfortunately, I cannot give you exact numbers but I would like to point out that all the ‘elite elementals’ have an additional skill compared to the lesser versions. The fire elemental has a firestorm-like area of effect attack (in addition to the blast finisher) and the air elemental gets a stun.

Also, if you use both the lesser and the greater elementals together, their blast finishers can empower both elementals. So if they activate their finishers in a fire field, they will both get +6 might instead of +3 might on 1 elemental.
That may be a bit nitpicky, but there are certain reasons to get the larger elementals. But I agree, the water and earth versions’ heal and prots are pretty neat as well.

If I get time, I’ll compare them a bit and see if I can get some numbers for you.

I was actually testing the Lesser Elementals this morning, and they’re the same as the Greater in every respect apart from damage. The Lesser versions appear to do approximately 10-15% less damage than their bigger cousins, but that’s really about it, from what I recall.

I would have put the difference between lesser and greater elementals in damage at closer to 20%, but we’re in the same range. I use the dummies in Lion’s Arch near the Mists portals and keep my eyes open.

The greater elementals do also have more skills, at least in the case of the Water guy, whose heals are pretty substantial. (Think 6K or so.)

I didn’t realize fire elementals had blast finishers. Nice.

CurtMonash.3498:

I didn’t realize fire elementals had blast finishers. Nice.

Oh yea. Popping one of them in team play and keeping your fields up with your staff will make for a very happy group. The fire elemental can heal and buff if you learn to time your fields with her. Fire elemental and Water are the only reason I don’t go Great sword full time.

Though I swear in dungeons if I could make a macro the first one I would make is a party message that says “Group up for fields” Because I say that nearly once a fight. It’s painful to have all those fields down and all those combos going only for your PUG to ignore them.

Yeah dmg difference between lesser and greater is not that big… Health/defense difference at the other side….

Just did some comparing at a Medium Armor – Target Golem. Comparing the greater elemental’s auto attacks averages to the lesser ones:

Fire: 900/720
Air: 379/287
Water: 890/700
Earth: 490/330

On average, this means that the greater elementals’ auto attacks deal 25-30% more damage than their lesser counterparts. Also, I noted the following:

Air Elementals attack rapidly for less damage per attack.
Fire Elementals (both greater and lesser) grant area of effect might on their special attack.
The greater Fire Elemental’s ‘super attack’ can deal more than 2000 damage (on the medium target golem).
The greater Air Elemental’s stun attack is single target and deals no damage.
The greater Earth Elemental has an aoe ‘stomp’ that grants aoe protection.
The greater Ice Elemental has healing and freezing combo fields.
All elementals seemed to have a more or less similar attack speed, but the air elemental launches a burst of attacks (4 or 5 times at once) where the others just attack once.

Hope this helps the discussion forward.

EDIT: I do not know wheter the greater earth elemental’s stomp counts as a blast finisher.

really nice guide, thank you!!

im no expert but i have been using conjures in my builds as much as possible.

There are really important factors to note about conjures.

1. traits effect them. 10% damage while attuned to fire makes the weapon do 10% extra damage while attuned to fire. Its just that its not obvious. When i realized this some of the trait combos start making more sense.
use waters +20% against vulnerable foes and take air trait 25 to cause vulnerability on crits. thats a decent conjure combo.

2. they can be cast and used from mist form. (least they used to be. been playing the Halloween games…)

3. fiery great sword can fire and hit when not facing the target. so you can run away an attack.

ThiBash.5634:

Just did some comparing at a Medium Armor – Target Golem. Comparing the greater elemental’s auto attacks averages to the lesser ones:

Fire: 900/720
Air: 379/287
Water: 890/700
Earth: 490/330

On average, this means that the greater elementals’ auto attacks deal 25-30% more damage than their lesser counterparts. Also, I noted the following:

Air Elementals attack rapidly for less damage per attack.
Fire Elementals (both greater and lesser) grant area of effect might on their special attack.
The greater Fire Elemental’s ‘super attack’ can deal more than 2000 damage (on the medium target golem).
The greater Air Elemental’s stun attack is single target and deals no damage.
The greater Earth Elemental has an aoe ‘stomp’ that grants aoe protection.
The greater Ice Elemental has healing and freezing combo fields.
All elementals seemed to have a more or less similar attack speed, but the air elemental launches a burst of attacks (4 or 5 times at once) where the others just attack once.

Hope this helps the discussion forward.

EDIT: I do not know wheter the greater earth elemental’s stomp counts as a blast finisher.

thibash did you note whether or not traits have any effect on golem damage?
for example +10% while attuned to fire.

Excellent guide and so deserving of a sticky. Thank you so much for all your hard work.

crunchy

thibash did you note whether or not traits have any effect on golem damage?
for example +10% while attuned to fire.

Did not try that, sorry. Also, please note that I didn’t do any indepth or large sample tests. I simply walked up to the target dummy, took a few samples, and posted them here.

I got about the same numbers as you ThiBash about a 30% increase in damage going from lesser to greater. traits don’t seem to have anything to do with their damage though the numbers are fairly low so it was hard to tell.

The thing with that Crunchy is your traits don’t effect your conjured weapons either. What they effect is you. You deal more damage when XYZ is met. No matter what you are using, from your normal skills, to conjured weapons to any environmental weapon. It seems that the elementals would fall into this category because they are technically your damage. But it seems the damage buff is on you specifically. Again though the damage they do is fairly low and a little sporadic so it is hard to tell if there is a 10% difference or not. So it might be working but we would need a good sample to tell.

I agree that this is a terrific guide. What I would also like to see are more combo attacks based on weapon selection like the one chain you demonstrated for D/D.

Nice guide looking forward to more.

10% is not easy to tell but 30 and 40% are pretty easy to see.
Some of them say specifically “your spells” i havent tried those with any environmental weapons but conjures are basically environmental weapons.

water trait 4 + passive water trait 25 + aura’s + air triat 1 gets 30+% by themselves and are easy combos.

Ill try it if i get a chance. I suspect that elementals are not effected but it would be good to know if they are or not.

A problem I have with the guide is that Focus should have the highest survivablity. Staff and Focus both have 4 stars. When you look at all of the healing water skills most are 20sec cd but all of the spamable heals will heal you for ~1400 damage in 20sec.

Healing rain has a long cd and you have to stand still to use it meaning it is not the best for solo combat, while the focus comparable survivability skill is obsidian flesh which make you immune to damage for 4sec. When a enemy or enemies are attacking you which would you rather have?

You can daze them with comet or knockdown one gale both can be used to start a combo chain or run. Also, Focus has multiple ways to deal with range based damage (swirling winds, magnetic wave, obsidian flesh). The only thing staff has over focus in survivability are slows.

Hey Ulion

Focus is great for survivability and if we were only talking initial survivability I would agree with you hands down Focus is better than Staff. But that would be playing favorites. After the initial phase of combat Staff really starts to shine because of its healing per second (HPS).

Vanila HPS of the staff is nearly double any other weapon set we have (190.6) and when you add in that the staff has our only water combo fields and with 2 projectile and 1 blast finisher it gets close to the HPS of our healing skills! That’s right with a staff you can basically have 2 heals without specing into anything, just combos and timing. This is why pure bunker builds, builds that are only tasked to survive for as long as possible in tPvP use staff.

This isn’t to say that focus isn’t as good. Personally I feel that focus is less popular because people don’t know about them because people don’t use them because they are less popular(<-Repeat). And there are definitely things a focus Ele will survive that a staff ele cannot like short very high bursts from multiple opponents. As in my examples in the guide a focus ele can get 10 seconds of 100% pure immortality and breaking that up correctly can feel like 15-20 to an enemy. But with high toughness gear the staff bunker would do a lot better in most prolonged fights because healing to full constantly resets the fight. This is why I gave them both a 4

If you haven’t tried one especially in a high toughness build and you love survivability, grab some cheap clerics gear and try staff out. its pretty amazing. a warning though your damage will suffer for it. Staff bunkers are very hard to kill but cannot kill much at all. Bring some allies in whatever content you are doing.

The major bonus to the focus is that it gives great survivability without such a hit to damage. Because its survivability is based around not taking damage at all instead of simply healing it back. So you can stat for DPS and bring even more DPS to the table since you are using a scepter or a dagger.

Great guide. I’ve been playing PvE all the way up to 80 and more using staff & my own personal trait build thinking I’ve been doing pretty good so far. I see now I should probably branch out a bit and see if there are ways to improve based on your suggestions. Thanks!

I only tried a bunker build back in beta but decided against it since condition spec can easily destroy someone with low hp. I think I had around 13k hp and 3100 armor back then. Other than that bunker builds have great survivability. I guess their are few players that spec for conditions in tpvp with some professions that have group condition removals available.

Ulion.5476:

I only tried a bunker build back in beta but decided against it since condition spec can easily destroy someone with low hp. I think I had around 13k hp and 3100 armor back then. Other than that bunker builds have great survivability. I guess their are few players that spec for conditions in tpvp with some professions that have group condition removals available.

We can get some great condition removal. With Cleansing Fire, Cleansing Wave(the skill and the trait), and Evasive Arcana you can be nearly immune to conditions. It is a complaint from necros, that the bunker builds not only ele, are quite adapt at removing conditions.

Nice guide, but where’s the advice on Gear? That is, which stats on gear are the best for an Elementalist?

Cheers.

Lokki.1092:

We can get some great condition removal. With Cleansing Fire, Cleansing Wave(the skill and the trait), and Evasive Arcana you can be nearly immune to conditions. It is a complaint from necros, that the bunker builds not only ele, are quite adapt at removing conditions.

In beta was using a signet/aura type build with signet of water and cleansing fire. Condition builds can stack up alot of damage within 10sec and easily reapply it. It was just the low hp that I had issues with.

Lankybrit.4598:

Nice guide, but where’s the advice on Gear? That is, which stats on gear are the best for an Elementalist?

Cheers.

Got that up for you Lanky. Still updating!

Updated! /15char