Guild Wars 2

Can anyone recommend a good keybinding setup for this build or elementalists in general?

I’m using 0/10/10/30/20 atm since the EA nerf, And I feel pretty nice. When a zerg was on my tail, trying to snare me, the auto-armor of earth safed my life, with stability and the other 3 triggered boons (protection, vigor, regen).

@donttread.9304 I strongly recommend you a naga mouse, I use 1,2,3 q(for 4),e(for 5) the key to left of one for the 6.
Then with the naga mouse, I use 1 for f1, 2 for f2, 3 for f3 and ctrl+1 for f4
For 7, 8, 9 and 10 I use the naga too.

Krulz.6245:

@donttread.9304 I strongly recommend you a naga mouse, I use 1,2,3 q(for 4),e(for 5) the key to left of one for the 6.
Then with the naga mouse, I use 1 for f1, 2 for f2, 3 for f3 and ctrl+1 for f4
For 7, 8, 9 and 10 I use the naga too.

I second this. Until GW2 I only used a normal mouse. The one I have now only has 3 extra buttons but they have changed the way I play completely. Well worth the small outlay in costs.

Papaganoosh (SPvP Officer, The Unnamed EU)

http://www.the-unnamed.com/spvpapp – recruiting skilled players for TPvP

Alright, I have been following this guide since I was level 50, awesome stuff. The setup works great !! I just hit 80 and am looking to get the gear you recommend. The AC daggers are called the ghastly dagger correct? Just want to make sure I grab the right stuff. Also, as I do not have enough to grab all the armor/weapons at once, is there an order you recommend? Thanks again!

10 15 0 25 20 here, Cleansing Fire, Frost Bow and Lightning Flash, Fiery Great Sword of great justice is my elite. Knights or Beserkers with Knights Ammy

Thats right, pure offensive, with boons to build the defense.

Since builds are locked in tournys I run, 10 10 0 30 20 with Knights or Soldiers.
Since I cant get good condition removal during the match I put the 5 from air into water for the condition removal.

My very first dagger dagger build was 0 0 10 30 30, very similar to daphoenix’s tanky ele build. It was infact a direct copy of my friends staff op bunker build minus the blasting staff. The benefits of daphoenix’s 10 in air were way better then the boons every 90 seconds from earth’s embrace. However I did try daphoenix’s 10 in air at first, but went back to 10 earth. It wasn’t until I could no longer get 24 sec of stability from armour of earth that I made the change permanent.

Trying out some new stuff, particularly after the EA nerf put me into 10 fire, I had been looking for a while what I could give up, but 30 water (particularly 25 water) and 30 arcane were too good, and 3 stacks of might vs fury and swiftness didn’t seem worth my time. I was also playing around with the 15 point damage traits. Air was lightning bolt (scepter 2), it hit for decent damage but its use was not to boost dps. Reluctantly I dropped 5 from water to get 5 more in air.

15 points in air is amazing vs some classes, but will get you killed vs others. For e.g. without massive condition removal you have to take cleansing fire or die and even then, you can only remove 3 conditions + 1 cleansing wave. However, vs Guardian, if you start the fight in water, then as he enters range of lightning bolt switch to air you auto remove his aegis, allowing you to open with an interrupt or MG. Or if he knows your and ele, he might pop his aegis as you hit him to get 2x block, so switching to air will pop the fires then rtl at him will pop the second. Starting water leaves the old Air → Fire → Earth open for those of you who never change.

This leads me to my actual topic:
(Note: Everything I say in my posts is mostly pvp related.)

Unconventional attacks / Openers
A predicable ele is as good at damage / defending as a dead ele.
Getting stuck in particular rotation that is the same as every other eles rotation or building you build to every other eles build can be a bad idea. If I had a gun and you had a shield and every fight we had I opened by shooting you in the head, then every fight you would counter by raising your shield to protect your head every time and I would be down a bullet (bar the first 1 or 2 when we first met). However, if I shot you head the first 2 or 3 times, then, expecting you to block you head with your shield, I shot you in the leg, then we would have the opposite outcome.

The same is true for RTL Updarft combo. If you are a fast moving invisible (due to bug) sprinting mist man or a ball of lighting, I’m gonna dodge as you reach me and your down an updraft. If you do this every fight then you will always be down an updraft and I will still have mine (d/d ele vs d/d ele here).

Daphoenix goes on about openers, I’ll add a bit here.
Lighting flash into updraft, your foe was on the advance, now you are and you can get some damage in (burning speed/drakes breath and fire grab).

How about we start in earth then head lighting without wasting out blast finisher, or after our might stack combo? So we start with in earth (either at the start of the fight or after might combo) then we use our magnetic grasp (earth 3) we follow this up by changing to air during then we get a free updraft on our foe who cant dodge without using a skill or condition removal due to the immobilize. If you started the fight this way the you can go fire for fire 3 into fire 5, or even to water to get the chill 3 off before your foe recovers.

What about some RTL then lighting flash (the then is very important, if you try to LF straight after RTL it will bug out and you will go nowhere) then earth 3 to get up close and personal and perhaps throw in an earth 2 into earth 4. So you’ve put a bit on cd, but you have traveled to your foe, saved you updraft (you can even save you earth 4 as well if you want to).

Just used updraft into burning speed? You foe knows there is a flame grab coming after this, how about a mix up, don’t use the flame grab, use fire 4 then your might stack combo, or even earth 3 fire for a nifty fire shield, buffs and then a free un-dodgeable (unless they blow a skill) KD and churning earth might stack combo.

You might say, he was on the ground and you could have got a free fire grab, sure, but using a long high damage cd at the start of the fight puts you foe on the defensive but puts you out toward the end of the fight (unless the fight will last longer the the cd). If you save your fire grab, you can use fire 2 then fire 5 later to burst your foe down. Heck you might even still have some good stacks of might.

Why do you use cleansing fire and not mist form or armour of earth like everyone else Slasher? That’s a good question, with a simple answer, cleansing fire and lighting flash have the shortest cds and therefore I can get my buffs up quicker. MF I don’t use in Tourneys because the point will neutralize too quickly when I bunker and its cd is horrid. Amour of earth, that is a skill I use in tourneys instead of cleansing fire, unless I decide not to run a summon weap, its too good to pass up in bunker situations, but unfortunately it doesn’t last long for its cd.

If I’m not fighting a condition class I use my can trips offensively, no-one expects a cleansing flame, swap, fire grab (till now) or a fire grab with cleansing wave during. Or the lighting flash updraft combo yet.

Mix it up guys, do something different and confuse you foes. Doing the same stuff and running the same build makes you too predictable. And as I said, a predictable ele (anyclass even) is as good as a dead ele.

Fighting out of the Ring
Fighting out of the ring is a style that I use when bunking a point (I wont say that I use it exculsivly or that I was first to come up with it but I have never seen anyone else using this style). It requires good knowledge of the surroundings as well as your limits and enemies positioning/status. This style will not work well against someone opening with stability when you engage them. You may also be back capped during fighting out of the ring.

The basics of Fighting out of the Ring style is quite simple, fight out of the ring. The longer your foe is in the ring the more chance you have of being neutralized (the point becomes neutral – no one gets points). Neutralization occurs very quickly when you don’t count toward capping (mistform, stealth, invulnerable) or an annoying guardian with his knocked you out with his “doesn’t say its a knockback but actually is wall skills”. If your not fighting in the point it cant be uncapped under you now can it. My fighting style is to look like I’m defending a point the actively engage the foe (only if there is 1, taking on 2 outside the point will lose you the point) as he approaches your bunker position.

Mention above is the lightning flash into updraft combo, very affective at putting your foe off guard and keeping him away from the point. You can also try lighting flash into earth 3 into updraft for the free un-dodgeable updraft. RTL out then lighting flash into range of earth 3 then earth 4 or wait till the imob is over, puts alot of your skills on cd, but keeps the fight away from the point, you want to do this against less mobile classes, otherwise keep your rtl to beat your foe back to the point.

Now that your out here, what next? You still have a good arsenal for kiting, remember your stopping your foe from reaching the point, so reverse kite him back is a good tactic here. Earth 2 – cripple, earth 4 – KD, water 3 – chill, water 4 – chill aura, lighting 3 – stun aura (the 2 auras need your foe to hit you to work).

Dapheonix mention using lightning hammer, if your using this as well then hammer 5 and hammer 3? are good to keep foes away (stun field and knock back), use this while kiting, the hammer has a relatively short cd, use the control skills then drop it and follow with your weapon skills. You can also teleport with the hammer, so instead of lighting flash -> earth 3 -> updraft you can now go lighting flash -> hammer 3, hammer storm (4?) hammer 5 after they get up, drop it and continue with your other control skills you have saved.

The above combo works well with the frost bow. Frost bow 5 is a 4-5 second stun that cannot be self broken. Lighting flash within ranger then let bow 5 fly and freeze them solid. Walk up to your foe using bow 2 then plant a bow 3 at point blank to stack up the freeze. You may use bow 4 if you want but to use the out of the ring style, drop it before your foe unfreezes.

If you use armour of earth (a very good bunker ability), save it till you get back to the ring. This will allow you to stay in the ring. And not be knock out. Now just bunker as you normally would, some of your skills will be coming of cd soon, so you’ve added around 10-30 seconds of points, then started bunking, instead of possibly losing the point during.

I did say you need a good eye, and to save your RTL didn’t I? What happens when a foe back caps while your not there, RTL back to that point and call 2 incs to your roamer/spiker, if your fast enough you can make it before they take neutralize it.

Thats it for my Fight out of the Ring strategy. Hope to see you guys on the battlefield, and hope that Daphoenix can corporate some of this stuff into his guide.

@Uwenthil Isilienda

I think i mentioned that somewhere (maybe Idk, but its always a good refresher for everyone)

@Goblin
Good necros take ages to kill, and its usually a battle of attrition for the last man standing. If I’m fighting several enemies with a good necro, I’ll run away and pick off any lone stragglers (and the necro if possible). Necros also use your conditions against you, so they can be a real pain to deal with.
Also be wary of lich form (necro turns into a gigantic towering ghost demon thing). It does alot of direct dmg, but leaves them defenseless for the most part.

@Cirax/mouse
yes it does, i wikied it too

@donttread/Uwenthil Isilienda
yup, if you can handle a bunch of real players just fine, brainless NPCs are no problem :P

Yes your right you do need staffs at certain points. The one part that comes to mind is in ARAH, against lupis. A staff is just much better than d/d there.

@mahanaxar
:D I hope that thread answered your questions

@Phoebe
in a 1v1 situation, its fairly easy to win or stalemate against a thief. In a 2thief v1 situation, it gets incredibly hard to survive if there both good and are burst oriented.

P/D and D/D are the most common types of thief weapons. Just know that D/D can spike u in 2 seconds if your not careful and P/D likes to condition harass you. Dodge and CC’s are your best friends for these situations

I’ll make a more indepth coutner guide for thieves later (I have alvl 67 one, so I do know how to play a thief pretty well :P)

@Kwon/Krulz
yeah ive been always running the same thing, lol

@Donttread/papaganoosh
I copy pasted an old thread comment I made, it should answer your questions
Its in the guide (right after weapon / armor setups)

@Zarel
I would get armor first. You can always just use toughness, heal power, power daggers anyways. (+armor is cheaper in cost at AC anyways)

Yes there called ghastly daggers. They shine at night too!

@TGSlasher
I like all the PvP related comments, and I do agree with you on all of them. Unconventional openers are always best imo, because there so unpredictable.

I just find it strange that you dumped off evasive arcana over 10 fire. The cantrip stack might from the fire10 trait is 20 seconds iirc, and evasive arcana blasts are 30seconds iirc. You get way more using 30 arcana over 10 fire imo.

I added notes for your stuff at the bottom of my guide (before videos) :]
Couldn’t fit everything, so I just linked page 6, lol

Put in lots of updates to build / gear/ videos/ keyboard/ stuff. I’ll put a table of contents in the next guide probably, its getting confusing where I put everything

Daphoenix, i’d like to know wich ‘backpack’ you are using (Ascended). If you dont have one yet, wich stats would you choose? The one with most ‘split’ stats, isn’t that good imo because it includes magic find. The others are stronger but focus more on one of the stats. 50 ecto + 250 t6 mat is expensive so I don’t wanna waste on the wrong one.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vial_of_Condensed_Mists_Essence lists all, if they have same list of requirements, they have same stats, just other look, so don’t click twice on the one with Vial of Powerfull blood (both same stats).

Also to some people, just my knowledge of DD ele. Putting points into toughness is a huge help. going from 0/10/0/30/30 to 0/10/20/20/20 or 0/10/10/30/20 is like night and day, can take quite a lot more damage as well.

I like your videos because you’re a very fast player. Just remember that build and stats will help somewhat but the reason why most players won’t be as good as you is because of your speed.

To be just nearly as fast as that would require hundreds if not thousands of hours of PVP.

All your build links in the “Alternative Traits” post are identical, did you know that?

I have a question about gear. This setup being tanky and durable relies on toughness/vit/healing power. Does anyone run a bit more of a crit chance mixed in? Couple of knight pieces or berserker weapons? Different set of runes or orbs?

Or just stick with the plan and outlast your opponents while delivering constant damage? I do not run solo, but mostly in a group where I passive tank and cause distraction/panik while the rest of the group drops the enemies. BTW, I am currently only lvl24 and miss all the synergies and still can contribute to the group. Having a blast

Hi guys! Since this thread has turned itself into indepth Ele analysis meeting point (kudos to daphoenix for it), I’ve decided to link my vid here. It got somewhat similar play style as daphoenix, although i use a litle bit different gear choices( basicaly somewhat more precision/crit dmg at the expense of overall vitality)
There are 2 versions, the first one is shorter, cuz Ive cut ’some of the fights! Hope you like it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpgq7pDlUxM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71-sODcc_x8

So I have full PVT armor (AC gear), PVT rings, Clerics earrings and neck and Clerics Daggers. Runes are 2 x water, 2 x monk, 2 x Divinity. I currently sit at 12% crit unbuffed, and can get it to 32% with Fury up. Is 32% enough or should I be working to find more crit?

@daphoenix

First of all I would like to say “Thank You” for writing this guide.
I came across your guide several days ago and have been following your guide to level up and practice play skill. It helps me a lot in the PvE environment so far and I am looking forward to practice it further to put it in use for my WvW play.

Now, a few of my pals shared your Youtube videos on our forum last night and started discussing how amazing your were and what build you are using.
Just when I found out it’s your work, I thought maybe I could help them by translating your awesome work into Chinese/Mandarin. (They play GW2 also for learning English, but rarely do they come read the official forum)

Therefore, here I am asking for your permission to post your guide in our guild forum and another much bigger GW2 forum that has at least 20~30K players, so more elem. lovers can benefit from your guide.
I already started translating, but of course will not post it unless I get your permission.

Thank you again for your awesome guide:)

Is it worth it to get condition damage over power? Fire and earth have a lot of bleeds and burns and I feel like it might be worth it. I’m not sure if it’s better to get PVT armor, power toughness and healing power armor, or condition vit tough armor.

What are your thoughts on using a Power/Toughness/Healing set instead of Power/Toughness/Vitality?

Toughness and healing complement eachother very well, because your “rather small” health pool suddenly becomes worth much more effective HP. More healing power means you can refill your health pool more quickly.

I know this has been covered extensively: but I’m also playing around with the idea of lowering either the water or arcana trait to 20 and putting 10 points into earth, picking up the “auras grant protection” perk. Protection just sounds too good for a rather defensive build. Yet you’d lose out on some boon duration, switching and Evasive Arcana.

Alternatively: putting 10 more points into Air would give us access to Alacrity. Cooldown reduction on the lightning aura and updraft sound amazing as well.

My old build was close to 20-10-10-10-20. My boon duration was much shorter and I lacked health/healing power, but thanks to fury and the fire-perk that caused crits to burn (as well as the extra damage vs burned targets) my damage output was quite high. As long as my aura’s were up I was pretty tanky due to the protection perk in earth. But my healing skills were non-existant compared to your build. And I missed out on all the remove-condition options.

So thanks for the guide, I enjoyed your videos as well!

Oh boy! It seems your guild moved to JQ? I’ve noticed a lot of GODS members there (Im on SBI) Does that mean I might actually get to duel you in WvW? Awesome! You never learn more then you do when dueling someone!

@Phoebe

I would choose any power, vitality, toughness ascended back

@Chris
Evasive arcana is too good to give up =P

@Calae
:D

@Belazor
I updated it on the links

@niedawow
I like outlasting my enemies, but you could always go for a more offensive setup. Toughness should not really be sacrificed, but vitality / healing power can be exchange for power / precision / crit damage. Its all pure preference though.

Healing power is best for long sustained battles, and vitality is good for shorter term battles/heavy burst from strong enemies (like champions / bosses). You would sacrifice one of these stats depending on the situation your generally in, for more DPS stats

@LaoYe
Feel free to translate. Just make sure I get credit (w/ links to this page), and link my youtube page /videos.

@SecondtoNone
Condition damage does a fixed amount of damage, regardless of enemies armor. It can get removed unlike normal regular damage though. I did a study on my old thread, I believe that 100 power adds about 7.5% damage on the base skill, and 100 condition damage adds about 7.5% damage on base skill. They both are equal statwise, but it all depends on the situation

For instance, a warrior generally has high armor and fairly low condition removal across most builds. Condition damage would be ideal, as direct damage is reduced by armor.

A necromancer can use your conditions to their advantage (i.e. they can heal more with conditions on, or transfer it back to you), and their base armor is rather low. Direct damage is better against a necro in most cases.

A guardian has high armor, and condition removal. A mix of both damage types is needed to kill a guardian , with covering conditions on your burning/bleeding.

Thieves have barely any condition removal and medium armor, so either damage works. Plus they stealth, and condition damage is best against stealthers

D/D elementalists have lower armor, but lots of condition removal. Direct damage is best.

Mesmers have low armor and low hp, any damage works particularly AoE types against clones

Rangers/ engineers you can use whatever you want too

@Kailoq
My general opinion on these stats is the following:
You want toughness on every item, but you want to interchange vitality and healing power depending on what you like. For instance, if you only have 14k hp and die from burst from bursty thieves, then you want more vitality. If you run into a mob and die too quickly, you need more vitality. If your fighting a long sustained battle to which your HP constantly drops at a fairly linear rate, you want healing power.
For instance on sPvP, I run clerics amulet + soldiers jewel. I found that using clerics amulet + clerics jewel caused me to overheal way too much at 14k hp, so I dropped the jewel for a soldiers jewel for increased HP to app. 15k hp.
Basically if your not recovering fast enough in the situations you are in, get more healing power. If you overheal or die too fast from burst, get more vitality.

Auras grant protection adds 3 (maybe it was longer with boon duration?) seconds on each aura (could be a different duration for each aura, I forgot), and 33% damage reduction from protection is effectively 50% more armor. I always found the protection added on was situational, because you cannot really control when you need the protection, and when to apply it (i.e. you wouldn’t cast an aura purely for protection when needed)

Not a big fan of alacrity, I like traits that are good for any attunement.

@Raif
Might be a different [GODS], or something I don’t know of. Nope I’m still on Fort Aspenwood :S

@daphoenix: Thanks for the quick reply! You raise a very good point about protection not being available whenever you want it. I hadn’t considered that because I used to auto-cast the water and air aura’s whenever I swapped to these attunements (a trick mentioned by Wooden Potato’s right after launch). I also regulary cast fire 4 + earth 3 to get the earth aura. Additionaly: attuning to earth would grant protection too. I’m not sure if this protection could be maintained throughout the battle though.

On top of that, maintaining protection sounds easy when you can just use the same spell rotation constantly (i.e. in PvE), but I can see why this tactic would fall to pieces when applied in PvP

@daphoenix

Thanks so much for these guides to d/d ele. I never had the patience to figure out how to survive at such close range, but I’m having great success while leveling my 53 ele. Seems all I needed was tons of toughness and healing power. I’ll keep checking up on this thread, thanks again!

I have to give a big thanks to this thread too. I have attempted to make ele alts multiple times, and each time, I was bored with it, and felt I was too squishy for the damage I was dealing. As dd, holy crap this is fun. It’s kind of a bit more of a high risk/high rewards atm though. I am still trying to get my gearing down as I level. I only hit level 14 so far, but that’s 9 levels further than ever before and with a much more motivated outlook on it.

I see you are suggesting toughness on every piece of armor for pvp, but what would one be looking for for PvE? I have about equal toughness, precision, vitality, and so far, no healing.

Hm, then being the king of versatility, it seems then a balance of both condition damage and power might be best. Really useful info though daphoenix. Thanks! I think I’m gonna go carrion armor with sapphire jewelry. Really nice mix of stats. No precision, but I don’t think that’s needed as an Ele unless you’re going glass.

@daphoenix
“I just find it strange that you dumped off evasive arcana over 10 fire. The cantrip stack might from the fire10 trait is 20 seconds iirc, and evasive arcana blasts are 30seconds iirc. You get way more using 30 arcana over 10 fire imo.”

Started using the fire 10 might after the EA nerf, haven’t really gone back to it (been lvling some and mainly doing the monthly / daily pvp)

For some reason I had only looked at the EA as a blast finisher, and had always used it as such (had energy sigil just in case I needed an immediate dodge). Totally left my mind that it is a free cleansing wave every 10 seconds, or dodge (in fire applies burning) into fire grab. I was enjoying pressing a cantrip and looking at the 3 buffs though and since I use the cantrips offensively its always 6might + churning earth or 3 to 6 might + fire grab. So whenever I’m going for my big hitters I can up my damage.

Might give EA another shot, the healing from it seems to be worth it, the blast finisher makes it fun even if I lose 3 to 9 might (up to 4 cantrips, 1x blast finisher is 3 might 4x cantrip is 12 might).

@daphoenix

About ascended rings/back items. I was surprised you wan’t to get soldier type ascended gear. Specially because i remember you mentioning we benefit really well out of Divinity type trinkets (like Triforge or the Karka Earing) what are your thoughs on this? Specially regarding Lunaria and Solaria http://www.gw2db.com/items/trinkets/rings?filter-item-rarity=8

After trying out this build some more in WvW, all I can say is: wow! The innate tankiness is amazing. I’m currently using a mix of power/magic find/crit/precision/vit lvl 70 rares and even now I can afford to dive into large groups, disrupt/burn them and make it out safely thanks to all the condition removers. In a straight up 1v1 switching to water is like getting a second life. This seems to be especially strong on ele’s because we have several escape spells as well, which can be used to gain enough distance to heal up.

I’m still debating what kind of stats I want on my armor though. A soldier/cleric mix would increase my sustained fighting capabilities, but I like TGSlasher’s approach as well: stack some more offensive stats and rely on your traits for sustain.

According to the wiki, signet of restoration’s passive effect grants 10% of your healing power every time you cast a spell. To me this makes a cleric build sound very tempting (because even during your offensive spell rotation, you will be restoring health), but as Daphoenix pointed out, stacking too much healing power without health can cause you to overheal. I find it hard to assess whether or not this will be a major problem though. Though I’ve heard other people complain that the scaling on healing power is quite low, so dumping too many armor points into it might be overkill.

What runes is everyone using? I heard boon duration ones got nerfed? I’ve always been a fan of earth runes, mainly because of the protection duration and the magnetic aura it grants. But since I removed 10 points out of earth, my aura’s no longer grant protection, rendering this rune quite useless

what food u use for WvW?

I’d like to run a 0/10/10/20/30 build.
I just wonder if 10 in earth are better than the +10 in water. I dont need these many cond. removals on water since I run ether renewal and maybe go for cleasing fire as well.
I just wonder about if these +2%/boon are these strong to pass em for more defense.
What about air 15? Is the dmg okay? I might as well consider to take air to 15.
What are ur experiences with conjure weapons? Are there any really usefully ones? Okay, I see the benefit of Lightning Hammer sometimes…but tbh, it’s not needed, isnt it?
Armor of Earth <> Cleansing Fire. Any ideas? I know that both cantrips are special in different things but isnt fire better in most cases? Less cd, dmg, cond. removal. earth seems only decent when casting churning.
Does anybody use 20% cdr on cantrips? Since all cantrips do have high cd, I guess that it’s VERY helpful to have these 20%.
Do u guys ever use another weaponset besides D/D? I simply love D/D. It’s so funny and special in its own way. But do u use a staff maybe for siege defense or for dungeons and stuff? How viable is the D/D build in dungeons and FOTM? If it’s possible I’d love to play D/D 24/7. It’s just my most prefered weaponset.
Anybody tried to go with 0 in air while using http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_the_Centaur or http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_Altruism ? How good is healing power on D/D? I’m thinking about going for more aggression instead of playing full vit/tough/heal or sth. Might be personal preference to find the perfect balance between def and off.

Hey @daphoenix, great build; I’m really enjoying it.

I’m currently working my way through fractals (and finding I can survive agony without AR atm btw) and looking forward to getting some ascended items and have been crunching the numbers to see what works best.

My current setup is (I think) the same as yours, with full PVT armour with runes of water (major, minor) and monk, PVT daggers, standard rare PVT backpack, Sapphire Jewelry, Ancient Karka Shell, with a Sapphire Orb on the backpack and the shell.

If my calculations are correct, this gives the following stat bunuses from gear:

Power: 828
Precision: 25
Toughness: 679
Vitality: 391
Condition Damage: 25
Critical Damage: 3
Healing: 510

Now I remember from one of your previous posts that you liked the idea of the celestial rings (+39 to all stats with 5% crit) but I couldn’t find a way to include them without reducing both power and toughness, which I wasn’t keen on. There could be a good way of juggling them but I decided I’d try an easier approach and take the PVT rings and ascended backpack, and compensate by substituting the armour body, gloves, and leggings for Clerics.

This gave the following:

Power: 872
Precision: 25
Toughness: 696
Vitality: 404
Condition Damage: 25
Critical Damage: 3
Healing: 508

This does not include an additional 15 points available from three defensive/offensive infusions (at least one defensive and one offensive, with a choice for the third).
This would increase power, Toughness, Vitality, and potentially healing if you used the infusion slots.

However I wanted to try adding some condition damage in there too. One way to do this is to change the backpack to Condition Damage/Precision/Toughness.

This gave the following:

Power: 816
Precision: 60
Toughness: 696
Vitality: 369
Condition Damage: 81
Critical Damage: 3
Healing: 508

Once again these numbers don’t include bonuses from infusions.

Clearly there’s lots of choices available, but I just wanted to throw this out there and see what people think. Has anyone tried adding ascended items and if so which ones did you choose and how are they working out?

For reference, here’s the list of currently available ascended items.

I was disappointed to find that the link to the build did not seem to work. No traits or anything were picked it was just a blank ele build.

@Kailoq

I’m not a big fan of autocasting my auras, because I intentionally don’t cast it almost everytime its on cooldown. I usually cast it right before I swap into another attunement.
For instance, I like going air > cast random air spells > shock aura+instant burning speed 0.l seconds after. I close the gap and use a shock aura to punish ranged enemies attacking me, and give them no option but to run / dodge/ backpedal away.

Sometimes I might decide to just spam auras for the sake of perma swiftness and fury, but in battle I think twice before blowing it off. I also like using frost aura against P/D thieves right as they unload, so they can get 10+ seconds of chill on them and I can freely kill them using fire2/ mid range spells and preventing any CnD attacks from thieves coming into melee range.

Using boon duration armor, the protection is up to 8 seconds. Cooldown on earth attunement is 9 seconds, so protection is up most of the time anyways. Obviously your not going swap to earth on every 9 seconds CD, but it would be more so something like 10-12seconds, which is basically having protection up 3/4ths of the time anyways. Having an extra 1/4th duration from the original 3/4ths from a trait is not really that great imo (this is just an approximate estimate)

@Minibiskit
:D

@troponin
I use pretty much the same setup for PvE, WvWvW, and sPvP. Doesn’t really matter what you use for early on though, because all your armor is going be random stats anyways. I would just pick out armor that has healing power and toughness (and vitality if you need more). Just make sure your armor is up to date and buy blue/green armor from auction house then sell it to a merchant when your done using it.

@SecondtoNone
Having a mix of power and condition damage definitely does add more versatility (which is what elementalists are all about =P). Thats why I like trading off some power for condition damage, I mentioned in the previous response how against certain classes/builds, condition damage or power/direct damage is preferable.

@TGSlasher
Yeah i forgot to put in the guide about EA fire dodge+fire grab. It adds onto the unconventional opener idea / confusing veteran players, so EA is nice for that :P (also adds lots more versatility and tactic options).

Most of the time I don’t need to dodge anyways. Its good that you can just blow off a dodge just for the purpose of might stacking, and the water heal roll is great for burst healing (swap to water attunement +EA water roll at the same time is like a 4-5k heal)

@NdranC
You have to sacrifice toughness for those all around stats. Toughness adds directly to armor more or less, and armor reduces damage against you (not condition damage)

Damage taken is inversely proportional to the amount of armor you have.
Lets say you have 1 armor, and you take 10 damage.
If you have 4 armor, you’ll take (1/4th) of 10 damage, or 2.5 damage
If you have 10 armor, you’ll take (1/10th) of 10 damage, or 1 damage

^ thats just an oversimplification. You’ll get diminishing returns with armor. So having less toughness for other stats is not that big of a deal imo.

Now for your question:
Ascended PVT rings provides a total of 103+68+68 or 239 total stats
Ascended Solaria / Lunaria = a total of 234 stats, 1% magic find, and 5% critical damage.

Both rings give about the same number of stats, but solaria /lunaria gives you 5% more critical damage. All stats are useful imo. If you want to go for a more tanky type setup, just get PVT rings. If you want more DPS/all around setup, go for the solaria/lunaria for the critical damage bonuses. The difference b/w toughness for the lunaria/solaria and PVT rings is 29 toughness per ring.

Triforge is superior to all other amulets, because the amount of total stats gained outweighs the stats gained from sapphire amulets. I believe sapphire. I think it was about 60 more stats iirc. Same goes with karka shell.

@Kailoq
Healing power might scale low according to some users (at 10% per stat return is sorta low) but do realize this is an observation coming from other classes, not just the elementalist. The D/D weapon setup has multiple methods of healing, so healing is extremely useful even if the stat returns are mediocre.

Boon duration is not nerfed for PvE/ Wv3. Its nerfed for sPvP (15% duration is 10% duration for sup. rune monk/water)

Rune of earth is kinda useless imo, because you don’t wanna rely on an aura thats only situationally useful and when your almost dead. You want traits / runes that are useful throughout the entire battle.

@Foher
Master tuning crystals
Mango pies

@Whizzy
I like conjured weapons, especially hammer,bow, and shield for sPvP.
Hammer grants you point control in sPvP, cause you can knock enemies outside capturing zone. Bow for trebuchets. Shield for teamplay reasons.

Air15 is good, having a free single target damage spell every 9seconds is useful

rune of centaur is useless, because you do not need the swiftness buff from it. Perma swiftness is easy to achieve already

rune of altriusm is useless too since its might effect only works if you cast your utility 6 ability, and does not work on water2 or water5 spell.

@Hunter
I agree that the easier path to take in terms of stat is just to go PVT Accessories (rings+back) from ascended, and just use clerics armor (power,healing, toughness). Thats an ideal way of going, but then you’d miss out on all+stat gear though. I put an indepth repsonse to NdranC’s question, I think that should answer it for now?
Sorry for the short response, am getting tired and going go to sleep =P

@Alcuin
It works fine, you might have to just copy paste the link instead of clicking on it.

Why on earth is this not stickied yet? One of the best and most dedicated ele gurus on the forum, give him some love.

@lagrangeify, simply because it’s kittening HARD to play this properly, this isn’t a build for everyone. Sticky posts are for general use builds.

In your traits, what is the purpose behind having Cleansing Water/Elemental Attunement and Cleansing Wave?

Cleansing Wave removes a condition from you and your allies when you switch to Water. Elemental Attunement gives you regeneration when you switch to water, and Cleansing Water removes a condition when you give yourself/ally regeneration—so switching to Water will remove a condition regardless of whether or not you have Cleansing Wave.

Do you have it just so you can cure conditions from allies, too? Or does switching to Water, with all three of those traits, now cure two conditions?

Thank you for posting this guide and build daPhoenix. I’ve been loving my ele since I started playing it this way!

@AmagicalFishy: The major argument for using both those traits is the follwing. Thanks to the water III trait your cantrips will grant you regeneration. Switching to water attunement grants regeneration as well. This means you have up to four methods of removing conditions (three cantrips + water attunement swap). You’ll be using your cantrips in panic-situations most of the time. Lightning flash/mistform to gain distance AND remove any stuns? Yes please!

I believe switching to water will remove two conditions yes, one for the switch, one for the regeneration effect.

As for granting condition removal to your allies, Daphoenix posted this: To my knowledge, you can even remove additional conditions off yourself by giving allies regeneration at the same time, because all boon effects from swapping to attunements are applied to allies within app. 300 units of range around your character.

@Wolf Fivousix: It might be hard to execute this build to its maximum potential, but I can attest to the fact that it’s one of the best builds regardless. As are small deviations on it ofcourse (for example TGSlasher’s 10 fire variety, or other people’s builds which sacrifice some defensive equipment for offensive).

But in general, stacking boons through aura’s and attunement swaps, taking a lot of arcana and water traits for defensive purposes and faster switching and last but not least, keeping a high damage output thanks to the water 25 trait and might stacking (sigil of battle, etc.) seems like the most sensible way to play D/D elementalist. I started out as D/D and I’ve been constantly getting WRECKED by PvE. In WvW I was just running around, dying often, getting kills when I got lucky. Our innate defense is so so low, we can’t afford to go class cannon with a short range dagger build. With this build my PvP and WvW have gotten a lot better. Glass cannon builds don’t seem as effective in this GW2 imo, control and mobility are the names of the game.

Granted, I’ve gotten better as a player too. And finally acquiring exotic armor with some health and toughness probably helped a lot as well. But even then, I think this build is one of the best starting points for any aspiring D/D elementalist. Unfortunately, starting out as a level 1 D/D dagger (and leveling to about level 30) is a horrendous experience. I think most new players would be discouraged by its seemingly ineffective damage output and defensive capabilites.

The build link on the first page is not working…comes up blank. Tried to cut-n-paste too but no dice.

Daphoenix do you have a guild? I would like to be in it XD

Daphoenix how would you suggest going about this build for a lvl 30 ele?

EarthlySaint.4523:

The build link on the first page is not working…comes up blank. Tried to cut-n-paste too but no dice.

yeah – the same – using different browsers too ( chrome ff opera )

citationx.2398:

Daphoenix how would you suggest going about this build for a lvl 30 ele?

He posts a guide on when to allocate your trait points when leveling that I found helpful. I will say that I was a bit discouraged in early leveling (10-25) because I still seemed so squishy. I almost gave up and toyed with a Guardian for easy mode shudder. That was until I hit the 5-point Water trait that grants regeneration when attuned. What a game-changer! I would argue that you should trait for that first before Zephyr’s Boon just for survivability early on but I guess it’s a matter of preference.

@lagrangeify / Wolf Fivousix

ty lagrangeify =P. Wolf is right, nothing gets stickied unless its a general guide (if its stickied, its like Anet supports d/d elemenetalists more than thieves. Anet does not want to show bias when it does not have to)

@AmagicalFishy
“In your traits, what is the purpose behind having Cleansing Water/Elemental Attunement and Cleansing Wave?”

I think Kailoq answered most of the question, but to give you my response here it is:

You should be removing conditions off allies anytime you give them regeneration ( I haven’t tested this yet). The reason for this is because Zephyr’s boon (applies swiftness fury on auras) in conjunction with powreful auras (applies auras to nearby allies) work together. You can give your ally swiftness by using shock aura, basically. The same should be true with cleansing watergiving your ally regeneration. You should be removing an extra condition because of this (I forgot whether its an extra condition on you, or your ally. Skill descriptions kind of vague).

@Kailoq
Thanks for putting your input and your low level viewpoint. I played s/d and staff when levelling up, so I don’t know too much about low level D/D

@EarthlySaint/Damador
I made a new image to show build
http://imgur.com/wjkYZ

Wierd seems to work everytime I use it. I did name out every trait I used in words though, so you don’t really need the link actually.

0/10/0/30/30 means 10 points in air, 30 points in water, 30 points in arcana

In the build description:
(I.e. Arcana 6 means Trait VI in arcana tree). Water 3 means Trait III in water tree.
Incase you forgot roman numerals
I = 1
II=2
III= 3
IV=4
V=5
VI=6
VII=7
VIII=8
IX=9
X=10
XI=11
XII=12

@CachoDm
I haven’t played too much lately, so I don’t know how much that will benefit you. I do read all my youtube comments and gw2 thread/look at other gw2 threads all the time. You can always pm me in game too for any specific advice =P.
I’m more likely to respond to a question in the post though, cause I don’t log in half the time when I look at forum (aka I don’t see private msges till later lol)

@citationx
I mentioned it in the thread near the top. Use Control+F “Guide to early levelling up”
Yeah I need to make a table of contents, and hyperlinks later :S

@Mahanaxar
I put your suggestion into the thread:]. I think I tinkered around with water 5 too early on levelling up, its really useful!

Due to a discussion with Intigo, another great D/D ele (http://www.youtube.com/user/IntigoGW2?feature=watch), I’ve been trying out Valkyrie’s amulet with a soldier’s jewel in PvP. Basically I sacrifice some healing power in exchange for more crit damage. I really like the fact you can deal quite a bit more burst damage when you really need it, i.e. when you need to dispose of an opponent really quickly.

The downside is my crit chance is only around 30%, even with fury.

In PvE/WvW there are numerous other options though, like mixing ruby jewels with cleric’s trinkets (jewels are amazingly stat efficient when it comes to crit damage, see: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/12dmi5/tip_stat_optimization_with_crit_damage/ ), or even going full berserker on some trinkets/jewels. Alternatively emerald/knight’s looks promising as well (that’s what TGSlasher is using IIRC). I’m trying to build an excel cheat at the moment to try out different combinations of invader/cleric’s armor and invader’s/cleric’s/berserkers jewels/trinkets. Unfortunately valkyrie grants vitality rather than toughness in PvE

All credit for these ponderings go to Intigo ;p

EDIT: I can also confirm the usefulness of the water 5 trait when leveling!

Aww I see… I never saw you when I was on FT. Aspenwood, kinda wish I can see you fight/duel you.

I’m using the same spec as you are but I’m still playing around with my gear, I’m trying to go a little more offensive than you do. I’m using head/chest/pants as PVT gear and the shoulders/gloves/feet as berserkers with berserkers daggers and a PVT backpiece now am playing around with the jewelry. So far I’ve tried all berserkers gear with 1 PVT ascended ring and I’m now using all clerics with 1 PVT ascended gear. Damage took a noticeable drop as does my crit rate, but that’s to be expected, but my ability to survive seems to have increased, need to check it out more.

Stats with clerics jewelry (rare) and 1 ascended PVT ring:
Attack: 2759
Crit: 19%
Crit Damage: 32%
Armor: 2292 (1379 toughness)
Health: 16375

Stats with berserkers jewelry (rare) and 1 ascended PVT ring:
Attack: 2858
Crit: 39%
Crit Damage: 53%
Armor: 2072(1159 toughness)
Health: 16375

Next up is to test it out with Valkyrie and Knights gear. I think that 16k – ish health is good enough, but that toughness seems to add a lot, and I think I want a little more. The damage with the berserker set is good, but survivability lacks a tiny bit whereas the clerics set has the bit more survivability but lacks the punch that the berserker set does. So it’s either the precision or the crit damage, and I’ll have to go look for it. I can take on about 3 or 4 people and win or get away (depending on specs/how good they are, sometimes they just get me) but with either one I can run into 50 man zergs do some damage and GTFO and not worry.

I run around with either Loaf of Omnomberry Bread/ Sharpening Stones/Chocolate Omnomberry Cream/Bowl of Truffle Ravioli. Depends on what I got in my inventory at the moment and what gear I’m using. Mango pies seems to be something I might look into though.

I’m still not sure how I want to run my ele though. The clerics setup is certainly nice, and the damage is not that much lower than with the berserker setup either. But I will say I do crit less, and I haven’t seen 4k burning speeds with it yet :p. I think I’d have to use a mix of Knights gear with that to see those kinds of numbers, though I’m about to pick up a ascended knights ring, so Ill be about 20% crit and 40% crit damage. Then I can keep the earrings/amulet on for some extra healing punch and toughness and I’d end up using the Loaf of berry bread for the 100 vitality and 70 toughness and the sharpening stones for the power.

What do you think? I know you prefer all out defense, but I’d like your input on the balance of things.

The final stats would be around (no food):
Attack: 2772
Crit: 20%
Crit Damage: 40%
Armor: 2340 (1379 toughness)
Health: 16375

Can anybody tell me how viable D/D is in FOTM or in dungeons?

EDIT: Here’s a quick summary of all my number crunching, so you don’t have to go through this entire post
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-D-D-ele-12-20-12/1141370

Hi everyone,

I found this nice calculator on reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/115mln/power_vs_precision_vs_critical_damage_what_do_we/c6jn8f7), but unfortunately it didn’t have the option to mix trinkets/upgrade components. I modified the excel sheet a bit to allow this manipulation. Hope you guys find it useful! All credit goes to the original publisher, I just made some minor adjustments. Also, I haven’t changed the rune section to allow mixing different runes yet, but for now you can use the ‘misc’ row to add the stats manually.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlZUN9OfsZ7DdG0yQnYxbWZjLWxPcmU4elQwS2xlQkE

Download it and open with excel or copy it to your own google docs to edit it. Somewhere along the way I removed the drop-down menu functionallity, but you can just change gear by checking the right name in the “stats” sheet: i.e. invader/knight/whatetever for armor and weapons, saphire/ruby for trinkets and jewels, 2 water, 2 monk and 2 divinity runes.

EDIT: Turns out someone already made an optimised version of this! It offers drop-down menu’s well, so it’s much more user-friendly in that regard. http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/136aa7/pve_gear_calculatorefficiency_optimizer/

EDIT2: My thoughts so far! Starting from a standard full invader armor/weapons + cleric’s trinkets set, the most optimal way (stat efficient) to improve your damage is by putting berserker jewels in the trinket’s upgrade slots. Because of this, berserker jewels are the only sensible upgrade components for anyone looking to increase their damage. Knight’s jewels do offer precision, but as far as upgrade components go, anything offering crit % damage would be much more efficient.

Adding ruby/berserker jewels to the cleric trinkets raises your crit dmg % by 18 (from 1.64 to 1.82 damage), crit % by 5%, power by 60 and “effective damage” by 220 damage. You lose out on 150 healing power and 90 toughness. The latter is what worries me the most.

From this point on, any points spent in precision or crit % damage, are better off being invested in power instead. But since all of our equipment adds power already, the 2nd most efficient stat is precision.

Swapping out invader armor for more cleric pieces results in a much lower effective HP, because you end up losing vitality for healing power.

If anyone is wondering, the total stats you gain from armor+weapons are 495-352-352 vs trinkets 504-343-343.

Changing weapons is another option, but again, you lose out on tankiness. Replacing invader’s daggers with Knight’s is the most conservative option. You lose some vitality, but actually gain some toughness. Power goes down a little, but since you add more precision your overall damage increases. As I mentioned earlier, adding power is more stat efficient than both precision and crit damage in our current build, but out of the latter two, precision is more efficient stat-wise for everything but jewels. So going Knight’s daggers seems like a possibility for anyone willing to trade some health for an even higher damage output (mainly due to a higher crit chance).

I didn’t play around with condition damage, but others might be able to figure out interesting stat combinations. The main reason crit damage appeals to me is because it increases burst (which is the one thing “lacking” from my original build) and it ties in great with the constant fury uptime thanks to the aura traits.

Hmm, anyone else though of dropping the boon duration runes for something else and try using food which gives boon duration (20% with chocolate omnomberry cream) or would it just be better using e.g mango pies/the foods which gives health on crit?