Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, im trying to decide on which gear i should use end game aside from the traditional gear that daphoenix mentioned on the first page and i was thinking of :

Both Daggers Berserker (Pow/Prec/Critdmg)
Trinkets all Knight’s (Tou/Pow/Prec)
Soldier’s Armor (Pow/Vit/Tou)

Is this viable / any good? Mind you im not level 80 yet and have just been thinking. Any input is appreciated.

Thanks.

@Daphoenix

I’ve fought a Lv 45 Mesmer in sPvP yesterday…. He was a realy hard opponent! I Kept throwing a lot of conditions on me AND a huge spike of direct dmg, couldn’t keep the healing or even dmg him equaly… I realy don’t know about mesmers, but in your experience you probably have come across this kind of build, since it seems pretty good build, what would you suggest?

Kailoq.3051:

Hi everyone,
….

Awesome find. Thanks for the link.

I’ve been playing around with it and I think I am going to try swapping out the jewels for Valkyrie jewels. Jewels are the most efficient way to get a DPS boost because the Crit dmg on them is by far more efficient then any other piece of gear.

Using Valkyrie instead of Berserkers allows me to pick up more HP then I would have had with clerics. Hopefully helping to make up for the Toughness loss. Basically loss 90 Tough gain 90 vit. Lose 150 Healing Power(this might hurt more then I realize) gain 60 Power and 18% Crit dmg. Not as much of a DPS boost as Berserkers but close and with a lot less of a tankiness loss.

After that I don’t think the cost is worth it to trade any other equipment for Valk or Berserksers. Gloves, Shoulders, Boots should be the next most efficient(slightly better then the daggers) but they come at a huge loss of toughness and possibly vit.

@dapheonix
How much do you notice the mango pie food in fights? I’ve been playing with a couple of different consumable options but it’s hard to tell how much the mango pie helps. I can’t really find a good way to test it outside of WvW to see how much the food is actually helping and in WvW i don’t pay attention to it while fighting.

Wolf Fivousix.4319:

@Daphoenix

I’ve fought a Lv 45 Mesmer in sPvP yesterday…. He was a realy hard opponent! I Kept throwing a lot of conditions on me AND a huge spike of direct dmg, couldn’t keep the healing or even dmg him equaly… I realy don’t know about mesmers, but in your experience you probably have come across this kind of build, since it seems pretty good build, what would you suggest?

Sounds like a shatter staff build. Did you happen to see what conditions he was putting on you? If he was a confusion spec then you probably did a lot of damage to yourself. Mesmers can get a good amount of confusion stacks on you. Remove the confusion and dodge his shatters. If he’s using a ranged weapon then you should see the illusions come charging at you.

If he was a condition shatter build then that’s different. Dodging shatters is still the same premise for the most part. You should have plenty of condition removal to deal with those. You won’t want to be right in melee range though. Odds are he has a trait that puts his shatters on himself as well. I believe it has a 240 range so you have to stay outside of that range to avoid that dmg.

Also if you get immobilized then odds are you are about to get a big amount of spike dmg so counter accordingly. Mesmers using sword in their MH love to use a combo of #3 That sends out a clone to the target and then you can swap to it immobilizing the target, followed by #2 which does big dmg but roots them in place, since you are immobilized you can’t get out of it. At the same time they shatter so you get spiked by 4 mind wracks while all that is happening.

To be honest though I don’t know how easy it would be to beat that Mesmer build 1v1 with this D/D build. I’ve only just begun playing Ele(and using this build) but I’ve played a Mesmer for a long time. I’ve run into very few people that I can’t 1v1 on my Shatter/Staff build. It’s very tanky and has great burst potential.

I’ve only ever run into 1 D/D Ele that gave me any kind of a problem and that because it was a 2v2. I had a tanky Guard with me and he had a DPS Warrior. We didn’t have the DPS to burst the Ele but he couldn’t kill us. Staff Mesmers are very tanky because of chaos armor spam. He used his skills very well though to keep me rooted at the right times so the warrior could put the hurt on me. That combined with D/D mobility just made it impossible for me to get away long enough to take the heat off me so eventually they killed me and then could focus the guard.

I would imagine I would stalemate most D/D Ele’s in a 1v1 but I’d never be able to get away and they could run anytime they wanted, eventually they could call for help. It’s possible I haven’t fought a really good D/D yet though and I am no where near good yet on mine to have a reference.

http://www.gw2builds.org/create/bwe_1/elementalist#1.0-3.4.10.9.3-0.25.0.15.30-4.9.4.6.9.8

This is what I am running in PvE / WvW – here with some little changes and with staff for defense, the healing skill can be adjusted as well as other skills for specific bosses, dungeons etc.
Basically straight forward – 0/25/0/15/30 with berserker stuff, might stacking sigils etc…
it works great if you know what to do and where the limitations are. At least I can support pretty well (that is what eles do) and do decent dps, no matter the weapon I use.
You just have to jump around like master joda (too bad I am no asura), take care of your surroundings and don’t rush any red dot you see on the screen… this is no bunker, this is dps/sup

i recently bought the superior sigil of battle for my main dagger and while in combat, noticed that my might was not increasing at all when i switched attunements(except for fire of course). i was thinking that they may have changed this during a patch, so what would you suggest i put on my main dagger to replace that? how do you keep your might at 25 stacks? last question, what breathing apparatus do you use?

Swarley.8642:

i recently bought the superior sigil of battle for my main dagger and while in combat, noticed that my might was not increasing at all when i switched attunements(except for fire of course). i was thinking that they may have changed this during a patch, so what would you suggest i put on my main dagger to replace that? how do you keep your might at 25 stacks? last question, what breathing apparatus do you use?

It still does, that didn’t change. Do you have a on crit sigil or something else equipped? Do you have boon duration?

Sigil of battle is something that I would never ever want to change out. If your using something else that is on crit such as the sigil of fire or the sigil of air then that is why. Those sigils share cooldowns and you’ll only get the proc for one of them.

I must concur, i also upgraded Sigil of battle to a superior one, I tested it, and the 3 stacks might rarely activated, and seem to have a way to short duration. If i do a battle for 3 secs, i end up with 4 stacks might maximum, wich makes no sense, battle (with boon duration), should end up with at least 6 if not 9 stacks.

About the sigil of battle:

All sigils with “on swap” AND “on crit” effects, share an internal cooldown. This means that combining a sigil of battle (9s iCD) with a sigil of fire (5s iCD) means you can’t gain any might for 5 seconds right after the sigil of fire procs (and vice versa).

References: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jncAIlBbNk
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10ilke/how_sigils_work/

That’s one possibility why you’re getting low might stacks.

Other possibilities are: low arcana trait points. Arcana increases our boon duration, which allows for quicker might stacking. The same goes for runes of the monk and water. That being said, even without runes it’s easy to get some might stacks going. Remember you have to be in combat and you only gain might if there’s 9s between attunement swaps.

The third factor that allows for high might stacking is setting up combo fields. The easiest way for us to stack might is opening up with fire4, swapping into earth attunement, dodge rolling INTO the ring of fire (only if you have evasive arcana, the earth proc counts as a blast finisher if you land INSIDE a combo field, not if you dodge OUT of one), followed up by earth 4 and 5 (both blast finishers that grant might). You’ll get an extra 3 stacks of might because you swapped attunements. Alternatively you can start out in Air and use air4+5 as an opener, so that when you switch to fire you’ll gain even more might.

Sigil of battle is too good to pass up on elementalists, because we HAVE to swap often to either do a full rotation, or switch to whatever the situation calls for (gap closers, heals, damage, cc). This means we’ll always be stacking might. Might is amazing because it increases all sources of damage, both normal and condition. The ele being as versatile as he is, profits greatly from this; we have a lot of normal as well as condition damage (this is the main reason why Daphoenix likes divinity runes as well, not only is it incredibly stat efficient, but ele’s profit from all stats because of how versatile we our, both offense/defense-wise).

If you’re looking for a sigil for your off-hand dagger, I would suggest either a “stacking” one, like the might/condition/whatever you fancy, or a standard sigil of force. 5% damage is nothing to be scoffed at!

I read this guide on and off on the way to or from work on my phone, every day. Great stuff. My (giant Charr, maybe slight disadvantage to the smaller eles) Elementalist has hit 80 and he is golden on any team – I roll with a guildie who follows a more defensive build with 10 in earth instead of air, so we make the perfect combo for our guild with fury+protection on auras.

Anyhow, I -just- came in here to ask about why one would not get a sigil of fire, and lo and behold, you dedicated kittens are actively discussing it at the end of the thread! Thank you for the info.

I am using a sup. sigil of battle+corruption on my two daggers at the moment, and I was just about to argue that there has to be something better than sigil of force, but it looks like you expected that from people too, Kailoq. But what other alternatives are there actually? I am just curious now. You have me completely convinced already.

I just wanted to tell you daphoenix- great idea with this guide, because this thread showed me, a PvP player (on break though :P) that most PvE players had no idea of playing D/D ele. You made great work with it for them.

I am so supprised becasue everything what is posted here is so well-known in PvP and obvious, that I am supprised in most questions here. This build and all its aspects was/is what we, PvP D/D eles were playing like from months in tPvP. It is very popular build and really powerfull for team playing as a roamer and DPS/support.

My three cents is that more PvP players should make guides like this one for PvE players. Things that are natural and old for some might be totally new and great for more players than we can think of in PvE world. I think OP made great move for all those PvE and WvW players who never touched Tournament PvP. Maybe even some of them, who will get really good in D/D and ele will want to try PvP, which would be great achievement for this guide.

I hope in other classes there will be similar guides to this one. And more PvP players will start sharing their experience and gameplay with other players. I think this thread may inspire more players to do so, and help community as a whole.

Keep up good work. Hope we can meet in WvW some day.

For the build, I was wondering if switching out the weapons or jewels for berserker’s or knight’s would be viable. I was hoping that I can give up a bit of tankiness and healing power for more damage. Can someone confirm if this is viable or gimpy?

Whizzy.5723:

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

The OP says the build suits dungeons just fine and I believe him. I ran AC story last night (my first dungeon ever, I might add) with my level 47 d/d Ele and I had a blast! Dungeons in previous MMOs were the usual tank and spank variety where you stood largely in one place and did your dps as a mage archtype. D/D Ele couldn’t be further from that! I was zipping all over the place swapping attunements depending on the situation, making and using combo fields, throwing in support heals and boons, and dealing out solid dps all the while being super survivable (having 3 cantrips helped a ton). I had a staff just in case but never had to use it. Granted I know that’s the lowbie dungeon but I had a great experience and I’m hooked.

I made this character because after seeing a group of 6 of us or so get repeatedly owned by one elementalist in wvw (I had my warrior at the time) I had to figure out how he did it. I made this build to PvP with but I’m glad it is still viable (and FUN) to use in PvE!

Mahanaxar.1386:

Whizzy.5723:

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

The OP says the build suits dungeons just fine and I believe him. I ran AC story last night (my first dungeon ever, I might add) with my level 47 d/d Ele and I had a blast! Dungeons in previous MMOs were the usual tank and spank variety where you stood largely in one place and did your dps as a mage archtype. D/D Ele couldn’t be further from that! I was zipping all over the place swapping attunements depending on the situation, making and using combo fields, throwing in support heals and boons, and dealing out solid dps all the while being super survivable (having 3 cantrips helped a ton). I had a staff just in case but never had to use it. Granted I know that’s the lowbie dungeon but I had a great experience and I’m hooked.

I made this character because after seeing a group of 6 of us or so get repeatedly owned by one elementalist in wvw (I had my warrior at the time) I had to figure out how he did it. I made this build to PvP with but I’m glad it is still viable (and FUN) to use in PvE!

In all fairness you can run AC in just about any class with any build and have zero problems. I’m not saying this to be mean, it’s just the easiest dungeon and is super easy to pass. I run AC a lot for gold and I’ve seen a lot of awful people that had no idea how to play their char survive through it easily. Path 1 and 3 are the hardest and having 1 Ele with Ice bow make those paths a breeze. So I wouldn’t use AC as the basis for comparing if a build will work in FoTM.

That being said. To Whizzy’s question. The build should work fine in FoTM they are more about knowing the fights and knowing how to avoid dmg while doing dmg and this build provides a lot of support to the group by just swapping Water 11 trait with Water 12 trait. A lot of FoTM have ranged mechanics though so you will probably be using staff most of the time but the build works well as a staff support build also.

For WvW you should be caring around a Focus in your inventory at all times because of Air #4. Most WvW Ele’s know this but not a lot of PvE Ele’s think about this. There are some times in FoTM where I could see Swirling Winds being very useful.

Oh I’m very aware that AC is easy. I was just saying that, having never tried any dungeon before, that D/D ele was a ton of fun!

It is a lot more fun to play in dungeons then Staff IMO. I use Staff if I am the only Ele. If there is another and they are using Staff then I go D/D. Some AC speed run groups I’ll stay D/D even if I am the only Ele just because of mobility to skip and the mobs and we are smoking everything so fast the Staff support really isn’t needed.

Why would you use staff as the only Ele? Sorry if it’s a dumb question but I’m not nearly familiar with the staff and am new to dungeoning in general.

@ristomursu: Sounds like a viable option if you have enough gold to keep that up. You could go full divinity then (or even upgrade your armor with jewels) for extra stats. But you’d lose out on some other amazing food buffs. And your overall boon duration would be shorter than a combined monk/water set.

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

@brickforlife: You should check out my last post on the previous page. I linked to a gear calculator and elaborated a bit on berserker jewels. Just be aware of the fact I’m still a relatively new player myself, just one with a soft spot for theorycrafting.

I’ve played around some more and at the moment I think invaders armor, knight’s daggers, cleric’s trinkets with valkyrie jewels might be the best route to take if you want a bit more damage, without sacrificing too much tankiness.

Compared to invaders armor/daggers, cleric trinkets with berserker jewels (hereafter refered to as 1) and invaders armor/dagger, cleric trinkets with sapphire jewels (hereafter referered to as 2), your total HP takes a 400 point hit compared to 1 and 2, armor (from toughness) is 50 higher than 1 and only 40 lower than 2. This means that, the more you rely on healing, the more effective this build will become compared to 1 (because healing augments toughness, the more toughness you have, the better healing becomes).

You gain around 260 “effective damage” compared to 2, which is only 40 less than 1. This large increase in damage is due to the amazing stat efficiency of +crit damage in jewel slots.

If you take cleric’s armor and invader’s trinkets instead, combined with invader daggers and valkyrie jewels, you’d gain a tiny bit of damage (20), armor stays the same, health goes up by 300, but you lose 40 healing power.

As for the viability of a more offensively-orientated D/D, I can’t speak from experience. From what I’ve seen so far though, is that while Daphoenix can make his bunker build shine, there are several other players (Intigo, TGSlasher) who prefer a more offensive spec. I’d say your best bet is to play some SPvP so you can try out different stat combinations free of cost.

@Soyuchi: Same as above

@Orikx: You might find the above build interesting as well

@Draahl: As I mentioned earlier, I’m in no way a professional/veteran player! I’m currently using a sigil of force myself, because I feel it’s the most consistent source of damage. In WvW I do go down from time to time, which is why stacking sigils don’t appeal to me. The same goes for SPvP, where I feel their an all-or-nothing approach. If you’re dominating you become even stronger, but if you’re behind, that sigil is worthless. Every time you die, you lose out on your buffs, whereas a sigil of force provides a constant damage boost.

From a support perspective, for dungeons, staff is better then D/D IMO. You have access to one less Aura. However the things you pick up are huge.

1. The Heal abilities in Water are easier to get the whole group and seem to provide slightly more healing.
2. You have access to 2 Water fields, Blast finishers do an Area Heal that is great for burst healing. D/D get 0 water fields.
3. Access to a Lightning field, projectile finishers give vulnerability, so you range team members help make everyone else do more dmg.
4. Fire field that is on a 6 second CD.
5. Less Condition dependent which means you aren’t fighting for DPS with other classes that use conditions.
6. The obvious advantage of range that is needed in some fights and makes others easier. Though to share attunements you need to be standing close so I still stay in close even with staff most of the time.

Staff is just much more support focused. However the trade off is most of your dmg comes from one attunement so when you aren’t in it you aren’t helping DPS the boss. So if my group isn’t needing the support I tend to stay in D/D to still provide some support and DPS. If the group is having a hard time though Staff can make or break the group. Nothing in D/D out weighs those 2 water fields.

I’ll keep that in mind, thanks! Still, if the group is doing alright I’d much rather prefer to stay with D/D if for no other reason that it’s the most fun.

you all should try out a hybrid damge/def build ( 25 air 15 water 30 arcane)
Knight gear + juwelary wv3 wepons ( power, toughness vita)

all ruby orbs
5% crit
might buff sigle on swap

and very importatnt the 66% lifesteal bufffood and presion buffood.

I think this is a very good compromiss between survivalbility and damage.
As help skills is use:
Acane blast, mistform and teleport or i change blast for rock armor.

@kailoq Thanks for the suggestion, I’m now running PVT on wep/armour and sapphire+ruby jewel on acc.

I’m wondering whether to go from 0/10/0/30/30 to 10/10/0/30/20 or 0/10/10/30/20.

the reasoning behind this is that I dodge a lot. It’s not random dodging but I like to reposition myself a lot during a fight and I feel like by doing what I usually do I won’t make use of fire4, dodge, earth 4, earth 5 for full might stacks. I’ll probably be dodging in and out and everywhere and it’s just a habit of repositioning myself and I can’t get rid of it. So which one would you suggest out of the two?

I want to 1v1 you daphoenix >_>

brickforlife.1364:

I’m wondering whether to go from 0/10/0/30/30 to 10/10/0/30/20 or 0/10/10/30/20.

the reasoning behind this is that I dodge a lot. It’s not random dodging but I like to reposition myself a lot during a fight and I feel like by doing what I usually do I won’t make use of fire4, dodge, earth 4, earth 5 for full might stacks. I’ll probably be dodging in and out and everywhere and it’s just a habit of repositioning myself and I can’t get rid of it. So which one would you suggest out of the two?

If you just get into the habit of swapping to water every time you reposition in the fight, you’ll be getting regeneration boons. That alone would be worth it imo. And I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to get rid of it if you really wanted to.

The best advice ofcourse is, try out both builds and see what you like! I’ve been using evasive arcana a lot to get regeration and might stacks (or apply burning so I can open up with a fire5), but I’m going to switch back to 10 in earth one of these days just to compare the feel of the build!

EDIT: A quick summary of all my number crunching:

• Ruby vs beryl jewels results in a 75 effective damage output difference (due to higher precision for ruby) and +900 hp for beryl.
• Soldier vs knight daggers results in +128 vit (1280 hp) for invaders, but 40 less effective damage output (invader has higher power, but less crit chance) and 52 less toughness/armor. One soldier and one knight dagger is in between ofcourse.
• Sapphire jewels grant you an extra 150 healing power. The reduction in healing for the other builds will play a greater role in builds with high toughness compared to vitality. Sapphire also adds 90 extra toughness/armor. The effective damage output is a whooping 265 points lower than ruby (mostly because of less precision/crit chance) compared to ruby and -188 compared to beryl. When comparing knight dagger builds, this difference will grow a bit larger because of the synergy between precision and crit damage.
  EDIT2:
• Soldier/knight trinkets with ruby/beryl jewels (using 2 soldier daggers) respectively grant you 20K/18K HP (coming from 17.5K), ~2.9K effective damage (~100 more than knight daggerx2 + ruby jewels in cleric trinkets) and 2462/2558 armor, while giving up 400 healing power.

Kailoq.3051:

brickforlife.1364:

I’m wondering whether to go from 0/10/0/30/30 to 10/10/0/30/20 or 0/10/10/30/20.

the reasoning behind this is that I dodge a lot. It’s not random dodging but I like to reposition myself a lot during a fight and I feel like by doing what I usually do I won’t make use of fire4, dodge, earth 4, earth 5 for full might stacks. I’ll probably be dodging in and out and everywhere and it’s just a habit of repositioning myself and I can’t get rid of it. So which one would you suggest out of the two?

If you just get into the habit of swapping to water every time you reposition in the fight, you’ll be getting regeneration boons. That alone would be worth it imo. And I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to get rid of it if you really wanted to.

The best advice ofcourse is, try out both builds and see what you like! I’ve been using evasive arcana a lot to get regeration and might stacks (or apply burning so I can open up with a fire5), but I’m going to switch back to 10 in earth one of these days just to compare the feel of the build!

EDIT: A quick summary of all my number crunching:

• Ruby vs beryl jewels results in a 75 effective damage output difference (due to higher precision for ruby) and +900 hp for beryl.
• Soldier vs knight daggers results in +128 vit (1280 hp) for invaders, but 40 less effective damage output (invader has higher power, but less crit chance) and 52 less toughness/armor. One soldier and one knight dagger is in between ofcourse.
• Sapphire jewels grant you an extra 150 healing power. The reduction in healing for the other builds will play a greater role in builds with high toughness compared to vitality. Sapphire also adds 90 extra toughness/armor. The effective damage output is a whooping 265 points lower than ruby (mostly because of less precision/crit chance) compared to ruby and -188 compared to beryl. When comparing knight dagger builds, this difference will grow a bit larger because of the synergy between precision and crit damage.

Thanks for the extra advice. Which trait do you pick when you put 10 in earth. I’ve evaluated some of them but I’m not entirely sure which is the most useful. I’m leaning towards 10 in fire mostly because it’s more offensive than 10 in earth which is defensive. I can’t pick one because there’s just so many situations where both would apply and be good.

I can’t kick the habit because it’s an old one from a lot of dagger necro and s/p thief play.

EDIT: I’ve figured to go back to 30 in arcana after much experimentation. Even if I do randomly dodge, a random attack in the fray every 10 seconds is actually very, very useful. 10 in fire gives me a very situational might which I hesitate to use and 10 in earth means that I don’t exploit the trait enough. Armor of Earth on a 90 second cooldown on a trait is a bit meh-ish because I hover around 1/2-3/4 health a lot.

Thanks for the help!

brickforlife.1364:

Thanks for the extra advice. Which trait do you pick when you put 10 in earth. I’ve evaluated some of them but I’m not entirely sure which is the most useful. I’m leaning towards 10 in fire mostly because it’s more offensive than 10 in earth which is defensive. I can’t pick one because there’s just so many situations where both would apply and be good.

I can’t kick the habit because it’s an old one from a lot of dagger necro and s/p thief play.

Probably III or V. There isn’t another viable choice. You could also try putting another 10 in air for VI or IX and pretty nice minor trait.

I asked this question in another foum but it didnt get answered.

I do not like glyph of elementlas (elite). I think the greatsword is FAR superior. You get two, one equipped and one for anyone else to use, or yourself once the first one runs out, does tons of dmg and has decent mobility. How does this not trump the glyph of elementals?

I think glyph of elementals is more for the leveling process. Tornado is what he uses in WvW and underwater. Other than that it’s up to your personal preference.

@Notsure, while you’re wielding the flame GS you can’t use your regular skills, which means you’re locked from your CC’s, Conditions, Heals, Fields and Combos. The Glyph of elementals, instead, makes a good dmg with fire elemental, or a great beating earth bag with earth elemental while you still do your regular dmg and support.

@Orikx, I definitily saw an Chaos Storm and there was a lot of confusion too, that’s what messed me up, maybe I even killed myself and didn’t realise… Probably the second scenario. I need to find a good mesmer to practice in sPvP. No problems against regular Mesmers, but that one gave me a huge beating XD. Since you’re an experienced Mesmer, what do you say that are the weakeness of that kind of build? Illusuonary Leap and Blurred Frenzy have 12s and 10s cool down, which isn’t even close to our full combo of Fire+Earth with 30~40s cooldown (and he probably won’t wait for it anyway). What kind of atribute that build uses? Toughness and Vitality too? What would you recomend other then dodging the runing ilusions? And not being imobilized.

@wolf I may not be able to, but again why would I want to? the GS does SO MUCH dmg, and still has mobility, that I would rather use that than the glyph.

I would like to see if thee is any way I can play an Ele that is specced to use the weapons. Not concerned with top DPS (average DPS is jsut fine, I pve, I do NOT pvp at all), I am not into bragging about how much dmg I do, or how many champion mobs I can solo. I just want to have fun and relax, as this is my escape after work.

@Wolf Fivousix
Well with the recent patch notes I learned about a Mesmer bug that’s been fixed that I was not aware of. So it’s possible you fell victim of that. I hadn’t played Mesmer in a bit so was unaware of this bug.
Basically it allowed Mesmers to do 2 shatters with the same 3 clones without them shattering first. Thus giving them way more benifits and DPS then they should. It was like an instant 19 stacks of Might and Vulnerability(which is way more then intended). Then using utilities they could spawn 3 more clones quick and shatter again to do more dmg then was ever intended in a very short time frame. They just took a nerf and bug fix that hurt this a ton so you shouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.
Shatter is still a good spec though.

As for tips to beat them I’m not sure I could answer that 100% yet because I’m still new to my D/D Ele. Basically because of experience my Mesmer self could pretty easily beat my Ele self right now. I feel like once I have my timing down with my Ele then Ele would win or they would stall out on each other.

There are some things that could give you the upper hand.
1. Abuse LoS. D/D doesn’t need LoS with many of the abilities, daphoenix does this very well. A recent patch mad Mesmer summons fail if you dodge, reflect, of LoS while they summon. Most are instant cast so you won’t be able to watch for a cast animation but you could use weaving tactics to stay inside or behind the Mesmer making some of his abilities fail, they still go on full CD.
2. The tank from staff is around having lots of Chaos Armor from leap finishers. Chaos Armor gives protection so Con dmg is going to be supreme here since we don’t have much in the way of boon removal.
3. Dodge the alpha I spoke of.
4. If they go from 0 to 3 clones fast they just used Utilities to spawn clones fast so they can shatter so be prepared for the Mind wrack that is coming soon.
5. Clones take very little dmg to kill so AoE is going to wipe them out easily. They may apply conditions on your when the clone dies, depending on the memser spec but we have so much condition removal that shouldn’t be a problem.
6. CC’s are obviously going to be good Shocking Aura should be great. They don’t have a lot of long cast time stuff so you won’t be able to look for those things to interrupt.
Except Moa form(which blows in WvW) but some Mesmers use it a lot in sPvP because it’s a great ability for duels. Its a 1 second cast so fairly easy to interrupt.
7. GS Mesmers need range to do good dmg. The GS Auto attack does good dmg for an auto attack but requires them to be 900+ range for max dmg. So get in close our mobility should make it easy to avoid being kited by them.

The biggest trick to beating a Mesmer is not falling for their tricks. Play a Mesmer for a while and you learn how they move. I can spot the real Mesmer in clones 90+% of the time so I’m not wasting DPS on clones. They cloak and I generally know where they will come out. They use Phase retreat and I immediately know to switch to the Mesmer standing behind the other. Predicting their movement makes them much easier to kill but they are still tough if they know there class well because they have tons of tools at their disposal.

I fought an ok Mesmer last night on my Ele and absolutely destroyed him 1v1. I could see a lot of stuff he did wrong so it’s hard to say how I would have done against a good one but it gave me hope for the future knowing I’m hardly a good Ele yet. I did a lot of stuff wrong also.

Question i had after running around in WvW with some guildies last night.

Is Aura share also effected by the max 5 target limit? When I run with a party I use Water 12 instead of 11 to give them huge amounts Fury and Swiftness. I noticed at times when we’d meet up with a few other people that it appeared as though they didn’t all get the visual effect of the aura if I’d use one. So I’m guessing it’s 5 max also.
I thought they were supposed to prioritize party first but at one point standing at the portal keep near the WP I was trying to stack Fury and Swiftness before we all ran off and it didn’t appear that my other 2 party members would always get the boon effects even though they were right next to me. There were quiet a few other people AFK at the WP but they should be second priority in theory.

In addition do attunement swaps have a 5 target limit. When with a zerg on the front lines I wasn’t sure who all benefits from my attunements. It’s my understanding that everyone in the Fire field gets the Area Might though.

@Kailoq

Valkyries is generally considered to be better/more versatile for tPvP from what I’ve been reading too. Clerics is used primarily for bunker hold points in PvP

I used emeralds/knights and its definitely pretty good :P

@Raif
I haven’t WvW’d that much lately :P

Your right, I do prefer defensive stats over offensive. I honestly don’t know what half those items you eat are, lol.

As to stats, I’m not entirely sure. It goes purely by preference, if you find yourself needing more defensive stats, take more healing power + toughness. More offensive stats would be to go knights / valkyrie for the precision /critical damage.

I can’t really formulate a good opinion without physically trying out both types of stats. 16k HP is good enough in my opinion, albeit the toughness is somewhat low to my standards. I prefer at least 15k HP, and 1500 toughness from my experiences. The more crit damage/ crit chance the better if you don’t need the survivability :P

@Kailoq
I found those theorycrafting reddit threads to be really useful =P. Thanks for linking them! (I put links of them in thread too :P)

I like the input provided here, I’m going try it out myself ;P

@Ristomursu
I haven’t tried really anything besides boon duration gear tbh. I originally used doylak and divinities, but the boon duration stats are too good to sacrifice imo.
I could be wrong though =P

@Soyuchi
I think Kailoq answered most of those questions :P
Crit dmg on daggers is unefficient statwise
Knights set is pretty good

@Wolf
He’s probably running a shatter build like this one

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/guide-WvWvW-Shatter-cat

I personally never used it as a mesmer. I know that it requires you to summon several phantoms at once, and is negated by line of sight. Also iirc the mesmer generally teleports to you and stunlocks you with something very similar to pistol whipping from thieves, and blows up his mesmer phantasms onto you like bombs during the stunlocking. Usually you’ll die unless you dodge/break stun the pistol whipping – like skill

@Orikx
Mango pie provides 70hp/sec. I don’t think it scales with healing power. It provides a good amount of hp. I like to think of it in terms of how long it takes the mango pie to give me 1k HP. 1k / 70 is approximately 14 seconds. So having a 1k heal every 14 seconds is not really that bad in my opinion, although its purely preference. You could always go boon duration too :P

As to the shattering argument, I’m fairly certain that the effectiveness of the shatter setup is practically negated once you stunbreak ASAP upon The sword’s 3rd ability. By doing so, you can dodge out of the impending shatter / explosions from the mesmer’s clones, and then his large damaging spells will be on CD.

@Narhim
I could see this build working really well for PvE, where conditions are not really a problem most of the time: P. Having that extra vulnerability from the air 25 trait seems very useful, especially against bosses. The only downside in PvE is no aura sharing

For PvP and Wv3, it would definitely work well in teamplay situations for spiking down enemies as quickly as possible due to air trait 15 and the vulnerability procs as cover conditions for burning/ bleed.

@Swarley
I forgot what breathing apparatus I use, can’t login atm to check :P. I bought it from Orr, where the stats are maximized though. Breathing apparatuses’s bonuses don’t apply on land though.

@Kailoq
:D +1 to all your responses, lol. Couldn’t have answered that any better =P

@Draahl
:P glad you find entertainment reading this

@Voltron
Thanks for the long feedback =]. I think we’ll eventually get to the point of having super long guides everywhere, lol

I think it has already, theres a S/D PvP guide =]

@Brick/Mahanaxar
I uploaded a video recently of me just ramboing fractals level 5. Should answer your question :p

@Orikx
Yeah I definitely need to use my focus more for that air4 ability :P

As to the whole staff in dungeons, I think it all depends on how many elementalist you have on your team. I find staff to be extremely useful for its water field + regeneration combos, so it all depends on whether you want to be a tank / initiator / dps (D/D), or support / healing /long range DPS (Staff). I’m sure staff is way more useful in higher level fractals though

@Snizzle
I tried it out and it works great :P

@Brick
If you dodge alot, you need evasive arcana!

@Kailoq
+1 again, :P you answer everything lol

@Notsure/Wolf
I agree with everything wolf says about fiery GS. You limit yourself to alot of viable CC’s heals, etc when wielding that sword. Sure it does alot of damage, but some of those abilities are extremely easy to dodge against an experienced player. PvE is a different story though. Glyph of elementals is just a free summon basically, and does not interfere with your skillbar

As to the usefulness of using the fiery GS to travel around (GS’s 3rd and 4th ability help you move around faster), the only downside is that casting the elite requires you to stand still. If your running away / chasing someone, having to stand still and cast it can be a problem. But conjured lightning hammer does not have this issue, you can cast it and spam its 2nd ability to leap right away.

@Orkix
I’m not an expert at mesmer, so I can’t add anything onto what you’ve said :]

As to the aura sharing and limitations of stacking boons, the reason why your allies get swiftness is due to a combination of the water 12 trait (powerful auras) and zephyr’s boon(air1 trait). You share auras to your allies, and any boon duration effects that you get from the auras applies to your allies as well (including boon duration bonuses from runes and arcana). The limitation of how many people can be affected ay once by powerful auras should be 5, since that is also the current limit of how many people can be healed at the same time in a water field (I could be wrong here). Powerful auras does have some visual bugs associated with it (still a bug I believe), so the best way to check if someone has the aura is to physically look at their statuses (boons, auras, conditions on them, etc).

I have no clue how the game prioritizes targeting with auras when theres lots of people. Attunement swapping should be limited to 5 people as well, due to the healing argument earlier. Doesn’t make much sense to limit the amount of healing someone can get in a water field when you can just swap to water and apply regeneration to more than 5+ people.

Might stacking is a blast finisher+ a fire field. If it was a water field, it would heal past the 5 person limit. So I’m not really sure if might stacking is for everyone, or just 5 people.

@Notsure. Fiery Greatsword IMO is good for pve. Mind you I haven’t gotten past 50 yet. My friend informs me that at higher lvls the Elemental is very helpfull. But the fiery greatsword is just amazing.

From a PvP point of view I find that the FGS is very situational. Whenever I use the elemental many players drop it before even caring about me, however I still prefer to use it in serious matches like Tourneys. If you down someone out of the ring and you have an elemental it will aggressively try to finish it off. So if they are a thief and they teleport your elemental will got to where they ported, unless aggroed by something else. Its funny watching your accidentally cast earth elemental do no damage to a downed foe preventing him from resing.

The FGS has its place in Legacy of the Foefire for 2 reasons. 1. if there are 2 of you going for the base the large door will be incinerated in 3-6 seconds. 2. you can pull 1 soldier at a time down the stairs by carefully placing your fire storm and then you can whirlwind into the corner of the ramp and that mob is almost dead.

If you want to up your damage even more try this out. Switch attunements just as you use your skills. So switch to fire then use whirlwind. That will grant you fury and 20% more chance to crit if you are in at least 5 arcane. If not don’t worry about the above.

My gripes with the FGS is that you have to stand still to cast it. Its an elite, why can I cast the non elites on the move but not this one?

What ascended ring you recommend to use???

The PVT ones??? or the ones with a bunch of every stat in it.

First, thank you for the in depth build, daphoenix! I’m still levelling my elementalist (52 at the moment) and I tried this build at my level 40 reset. Have to say I’ve enjoyed it a lot. Its a lot of fun. At first I had a hard time adjusting, but I think I can attribute that to too few points in arcane (still levelling!) so I couldn’t switch attunements quickly enough. Things started clicking together when I hit about 50 though. However, I did switch back to S/D after awhile, and here’s why.

I should mention beforehand that currently the elementalist is my first character, and that at the moment I’m mostly focusing on levelling up and enjoying the PvE content. Never done any PvP, nor have I done any Dungeons. Also, what’s a Fractal? (jk I looked it up.) I switched out for a few reasons.

First – space. You need space to make this build shine, and in some of the more confined locations in PvE (IE tunnels, mountain ledges, small walkways ect) there simply isn’t much space to work with. Sure I can pull out the hammer and go zap crazy in those locations but I’m not really making full use of the build… Just the hammer. If anyone has any suggestions on how to handle situations like this I’m all ears. I found if I tried to use this build to full potential in a tight space I’d end up either aggroing more than intended or embarrassingly… Flinging myself off the side of a ledge by mistake.

Second – WORK! It feels like I have to work so hard for every kill. Yes I know that’s part of the enjoyment of the build and I DO enjoy it but there’s times where I just need to go out and farm stuff. While its still effective, it seems like a lot of work for a simple task. I love the amount of control and how tough you are with this build, and I actually managed to solo some group events with it, but… For simple tasks like farming crafting mats while levelling I found a good S/D or S/F condition build to be quite effective without all the work.

I’m going to give the build another try at 80, when I have all traits unlocked… I get the feeling that every single trait point matters in this build. At least, the 30pointers definitely do.

After several days of playing D/D ele I must say how much fun it is. Makes playing a lot more interesting for me.

@Banzai – Why do you need space? I find that using RTL or Fire 3 (whatever it’s called) can have its advantages when targeted at a wall as far as damage is concerned. I find that being in close quarters can be something of an advantage when it comes to your non-directional AoE attacks. But, again, it all depends on the situation. If it’s an enemy with a strong AoE of its own or just one you shouldn’t be close to in general you should always have a backup staff and switch before the fight to bombard from afar and/or provide support. Know your enemy!

Firstly, I wish to thank daphoenix for your in-depth guide. My D/D Elementalist is my first and only character and have been playing for a week :p level 30 ATM.

As I love to plan in ahead, I would like to have some advise for these points:

1. Is it better to use 6 x Rune of Divinity or 2 x Rune of Water/Monk/Divinity? Correct me if I am wrong, 6 x Rune means each armor would have +60 to All Stats and 12% Critical Damage. Compared that to 2 x Rune of Water/Monk/Divinity, is the 15% boon duration stacked on top of each other getting 60% increase in boon duration?

2. Can 2 x Superior sigil of battle be used on both daggers, getting 6 Might instead of 3 during weapon swap?

3. In your opinion, 10/10/0/20/30 compared to 0/10/0/30/30 (your build) is the 3 might stack gain from cantrip worth the sacrifice of 10 points from water? Since eventually, I will be mainly WvW and PvP in a 3 man party. Water 11 or 12 worth the sacrifice?

4. My final point :p I read somewhere in Elementalist section where we can do this combo, Earth 5 then when the Earth 5 is almost completed casting, RTL to the target. I have been practicing this combo but never once pull it off. Have this combo been patched or I am just simply too lousy to execute the timing?

ChaosDoom.8459:

Firstly, I wish to thank daphoenix for your in-depth guide. My D/D Elementalist is my first and only character and have been playing for a week :p level 30 ATM.

As I love to plan in ahead, I would like to have some advise for these points:

1. Is it better to use 6 x Rune of Divinity or 2 x Rune of Water/Monk/Divinity? Correct me if I am wrong, 6 x Rune means each armor would have +60 to All Stats and 12% Critical Damage. Compared that to 2 x Rune of Water/Monk/Divinity, is the 15% boon duration stacked on top of each other getting 60% increase in boon duration?

2. Can 2 x Superior sigil of battle be used on both daggers, getting 6 Might instead of 3 during weapon swap?

3. In your opinion, 10/10/0/20/30 compared to 0/10/0/30/30 (your build) is the 3 might stack gain from cantrip worth the sacrifice of 10 points from water? Since eventually, I will be mainly WvW and PvP in a 3 man party. Water 11 or 12 worth the sacrifice?

4. My final point :p I read somewhere in Elementalist section where we can do this combo, Earth 5 then when the Earth 5 is almost completed casting, RTL to the target. I have been practicing this combo but never once pull it off. Have this combo been patched or I am just simply too lousy to execute the timing?

Answering from my phone at the hospital so excuse the typos.

1. One of the strengths of this build is the huge amount of boons going at all times because of the duration from runes. You get prema fury from air #1 trait. Without the duration you wouldn’t keep that up. 20% chance to crit is huge. Ecause of the low perception. Also might stacks last about 30 seconds because of ruins. Giving you a steady 10-15 stacks of might. That’s 350+ power/con dmg. Which is way better then 60 to all stats.
12% crit dmg isn’t that great when you crit chance is only 10% because of loss of premades fury.
Is spvp some run 2*divinity for the other 2 ruins.

2. No. Battle has an internal cool down of 9seconds. So once it process on one dagger it can’t price again for 9seconds regardless of how many you equip. They also share a cool down with on crit sigils. So do.t use those either or it will cost you a lot of might. That is why he suggests the force sigil.

3. Some people run 10/10/0/20/30. I run phenoixs build and have tried both though I didn’t do 10fire long. I noticed the loss of condition removal and love switching to aura share trait for my small WvW group. Plus at 25water you get the 2% dmg per boon. Another reason. For the ruins. You have 6 active boons most of the time.

4. It’s not RTL you use with earth 5. It’s lightning flash. You can start the cast of #5 then prepaid the utility to teleport to the enemy pack at the last second. This allows you to sit back avoiding interupt until the last possible moment.

Heh Okay here’s what happened @Mahanaxar. I don’t remember the details too clearly but generally…

I was in a dredge infested mine, exploring. There was a bugged event downstairs, something about blowing the supports so the mine shaft would collapse sealing the mine complex or whatever. Problem is you couldn’t interact with anything, and mobs were re-spawning about 30 seconds after you killed them. Of course being the genius that I am, I chose that moment to go exploring the mine since I couldn’t do the event.

So, in that context here’s what I did… Came up to the start of a walkway, killed 2 dredge. They are in pairs mostly, one with the gong, one with the rifle and the occasional wandering construct that summons more dredge. So I killed the 2 started my way up a spiralling narrow walkway to the top and ran in to two more.

Easy I thought. Earth 5, Lightning flash, Earth 4, Fire 2… They’re taking a ton of damage at this point, but then their buddies downstairs aggro and come from behind while the gong guy stuns me. The new gong guy stuns me again right after so I break the stun with the utility skill… ( Not sure if its a daze or a confuse? Can’t remember it happened so quickly.) By this point I’m thinking its time to reposition so I can set up a Fire 4 combo and nuke them to kingdom come so I dodge forward… Smack in to a wandering construct that was coming around the corner. He starts summoning more dredge so I’m overrun by this point, seven of the little pricks all out for my blood, all on a very narrow walkway. Time to beat a hasty retreat!

So I switch to lightning thinking I’ll RTL to the furthest one and then run to lose aggro! But… I missed targeting him and RTL took me right over the edge. A longgg way down… Splat. Hahaha. I fell right in front of a guardian. Think I gave him a fright, ball of lightning drops in front of him from above and a flashes then a dead body appears. SO embarrassing! In hindsight, I should have used mist for instead of RTL for more control while trying to escape but bleh.

Yes its an extenuating circumstance but I get into a lot of situations like this in game. Heh its actually why I really love the PvE, you get yourself in to so much trouble. This is what I mean by space… Whenever I try to set up a Fire 4 combo I need a little space to get things rolling. It was mostly my own mistake yes but yeahhh… Space. I love how dynamic the build is in open world but with an S/D condition build I find I don’t quite need as much space since you’re mostly stationary when setting up fire 4 burst combos.

Its probably me getting used to the fact that dagger fire 3 moves you quite a distance, so I’m a little afraid to use it sometimes. Also possibly because I didn’t have access to evasive arcana yet so I couldn’t make full use of the blast finishers. Hence… I want to give the build another go when I hit 80.

Thanks Orikx. You saved my day

How about using 4 x Rune of Altruism so that you have 4 x armor with +15% boon duration and use either 2 x Monk or Water? I believe extending the boon duration would be the key to this build. Would it be a +60% boon duration from armor or my understanding is wrong?

Thanks also for your feedback on 10/10/0/20/30 and daphoneix build 0/10/0/30/30. Now I don’t need to test on 10/10/0/20/30 anymore since aura share or condition removal are much more valuable than might stack.

Lol Lightning Flash :p now I know the trick. I have been experimenting with RTL for the last 5 days and it’s painful and sad to not be able to execute. It’s me who misread the actual combo.

By the way, I am not sure if I am doing it the right way. From level 1 to 20, I actually uses Condition Duration/Damage based items. I had a extremely hard time leveling. Now I have changed to Fine/Masterwork +Vitality and +Toughness items, leveling become a breeze though my damage still suck big time compared to my warrior friend. I believe D/D elementalist is a late bloomer profession.

For fractal rings and backpacks, which stats would you choose on them? HP/P/P or P/T/V?

WvW still has this annoying bug where you overshoot your RTL or your magnetic grasp pulls you too far

ChaosDoom.8459:

How about using 4 x Rune of Altruism so that you have 4 x armor with +15% boon duration and use either 2 x Monk or Water? I believe extending the boon duration would be the key to this build. Would it be a +60% boon duration from armor or my understanding is wrong?

Unfortunately rune of altruism only procs when you use a healing skill. Daphoenix uses sigil of restoration and mostly relies on the passive to heal him. If you prefer ether renewal (I’m toying with it, condition removal + only a 12s CD), then altruism makes sense!

Thanks also for your feedback on 10/10/0/20/30 and daphoneix build 0/10/0/30/30. Now I don’t need to test on 10/10/0/20/30 anymore since aura share or condition removal are much more valuable than might stack.

I’d still suggest you try out both builds in PvP. This will allow you to experience the differences of the builds yourself. Perhaps one build just feels better to you. Overall though, I wouldn’t go lower than 25 in water, because the extra damage based on boons is one of my favorite traits.

Lol Lightning Flash :p now I know the trick. I have been experimenting with RTL for the last 5 days and it’s painful and sad to not be able to execute. It’s me who misread the actual combo.

RTL into updraft works for me? You just need to spam 5 even before your RTL ends.

By the way, I am not sure if I am doing it the right way. From level 1 to 20, I actually uses Condition Duration/Damage based items. I had a extremely hard time leveling. Now I have changed to Fine/Masterwork +Vitality and +Toughness items, leveling become a breeze though my damage still suck big time compared to my warrior friend. I believe D/D elementalist is a late bloomer profession.

They are. I had a terribly hard time leveling up. We are very very very trait dependent. Once you get your first water/arcana traits things will become easier. Also: upgrade your armor every 10 levels, or you’ll just get stomped. Don’t go full glass cannon, or you’ll just die. Try to get an elemental ASAP to tank for you. USE COMBO’S or indeed, fights will last for ages. Still, slow but steady is better than dying. Play lots of WvW/craft to gain levels too, just grinding is hard And story mode quests often throw huge amount of mobs at you, which can be quite hard for a leveling elementalist. The main issue is that you need to make use of all your attunements to the fullest, but without some points in arcana the CD to switch is just too long.

Kailoq.3051:

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.

thank you for this. almost got my elementalist to 80 and i loooooove the process of optimizing for min/max purposes. this will be very very helpful to me soon

Banzai.5681:

Heh Okay here’s what happened @Mahanaxar. I don’t remember the details too clearly but generally…

I was in a dredge infested mine, exploring. There was a bugged event downstairs, something about blowing the supports so the mine shaft would collapse sealing the mine complex or whatever. Problem is you couldn’t interact with anything, and mobs were re-spawning about 30 seconds after you killed them. Of course being the genius that I am, I chose that moment to go exploring the mine since I couldn’t do the event.

So, in that context here’s what I did… Came up to the start of a walkway, killed 2 dredge. They are in pairs mostly, one with the gong, one with the rifle and the occasional wandering construct that summons more dredge. So I killed the 2 started my way up a spiralling narrow walkway to the top and ran in to two more.

Easy I thought. Earth 5, Lightning flash, Earth 4, Fire 2… They’re taking a ton of damage at this point, but then their buddies downstairs aggro and come from behind while the gong guy stuns me. The new gong guy stuns me again right after so I break the stun with the utility skill… ( Not sure if its a daze or a confuse? Can’t remember it happened so quickly.) By this point I’m thinking its time to reposition so I can set up a Fire 4 combo and nuke them to kingdom come so I dodge forward… Smack in to a wandering construct that was coming around the corner. He starts summoning more dredge so I’m overrun by this point, seven of the little pricks all out for my blood, all on a very narrow walkway. Time to beat a hasty retreat!

So I switch to lightning thinking I’ll RTL to the furthest one and then run to lose aggro! But… I missed targeting him and RTL took me right over the edge. A longgg way down… Splat. Hahaha. I fell right in front of a guardian. Think I gave him a fright, ball of lightning drops in front of him from above and a flashes then a dead body appears. SO embarrassing! In hindsight, I should have used mist for instead of RTL for more control while trying to escape but bleh.

Yes its an extenuating circumstance but I get into a lot of situations like this in game. Heh its actually why I really love the PvE, you get yourself in to so much trouble. This is what I mean by space… Whenever I try to set up a Fire 4 combo I need a little space to get things rolling. It was mostly my own mistake yes but yeahhh… Space. I love how dynamic the build is in open world but with an S/D condition build I find I don’t quite need as much space since you’re mostly stationary when setting up fire 4 burst combos.

Its probably me getting used to the fact that dagger fire 3 moves you quite a distance, so I’m a little afraid to use it sometimes. Also possibly because I didn’t have access to evasive arcana yet so I couldn’t make full use of the blast finishers. Hence… I want to give the build another go when I hit 80.

Ah, well fortunately dungeons don’t usually reflect the most annoying dredge cave (and environment, IMO) in the entire freakin game! I know exactly where you’re talking about and I hate that place.

In situations like you described it’s almost better to utilize the d/d’s supreme escape ability and run for it. In places where there’s ledges and just in general it’s always key to be completely aware of your surroundings. I too don’t use RTL or Burning Speed unless I am absolutely certain I’ll land it. If you’re just wanting to explore that area and don’t wanna deal with the mobs it might be best to just alternate shock and frost auras for the swiftness to just run in and out!

Kailoq, thanks for your feedbacks. The combo is cast Churning Earth then teleport with Lightning Flash to the front of the mobs. I misread Lightning Flash as RTL therefore unable to execute.

By the way, “Play lots of WvW/craft to gain levels too”. What and How to do for WvW specified to leveling? Thanks again for your advise.

@Notsure. Yes, the Fiery GS is AWESOME! I love to use it in low lv areas just for fun and stuff. Then some dudes think I’m an warrior (since I’m using a kitten set combination – and I’m a Norn xD) and BAM!! Elementalist here dude! HAHAHAH It’s fun, just showing off though xD. Anyway, I particulary don’t use the F GS in PvE or PvP since I like to play agressively so I agro everything, pull them for a hot spot, my party starts to nuke while I take a short break to heal and come flaming back to do my drills mighty combos! I find it realy fun, try doing that in the Charr Fractal (Urban Battlegrounds Fractal) lv 18+ and see how fast you go down if you don’t do it right hehe, but you can’t do that with F GS =(.

@Orikx. Yea, I saw about that fix and thought about it, since I’m not squishy at all and, hell, Full HP + one dodge while changing to water + watter attuning + Water 5 + Water 2 + one dodge still in water + regen are a LOT of healing (usualy enough to get my kitten up full HP after loosing 90% health to agony) and he still killed me! …. Well, after that I DID created a mesmer! HAHAHAHAHAH I’m playing it a little bit, getting to know the skills and it’s effects first, then I’ll look at the shatter build and stuff. But thankyou very much for the response! It has a lot of information I can pay attention while in the battle field for predicting my enemies movement.

And about the LoS…. I’m still having trouble with that! Certanly one of the main reasons why Daphoenix rocks so hard those dudes in WvW !!! =D

@Daphoenix. What about making one or a collection of videos about moves going wrong? You probably have lot’s of them =P, like a Fail Compilation, just for fun =D
Thx for that – big – link, I shall read it fully during the day, lot’s of videos there too (and I like to see it all)

ChaosDoom.8459:

By the way, “Play lots of WvW/craft to gain levels too”. What and How to do for WvW specified to leveling? Thanks again for your advise.

Personally, I find WvW to be more fun than most PvE areas. So if you get bored of leveling and getting killed by mobs, just run around a bit in WvW, join the zerg/commander squads and you’ll gain experience for capping points whilst having fun.