Guild Wars 2

This is EXACTLY what I was waiting for! Thanks so much phoenix! One question for you if you have time: I am a faithful user of Ether Renewal. My build was very similar to yours in that I was 0/10/10/20/30 and I was using Obsedian Flesh especially when I was using a staff so the channelling would increase toughness while healing. I also find it to be an AMAZING condition removal. And with only 15 sec CD it seemed the most viable. So my question is why use the Glyph and not Ether Renewal?

I am allways happy to read one of your posts daphoenix, thanks a lot for all work you’ve done

RawkFist.1935:

This is EXACTLY what I was waiting for! Thanks so much phoenix! One question for you if you have time: I am a faithful user of Ether Renewal. My build was very similar to yours in that I was 0/10/10/20/30 and I was using Obsedian Flesh especially when I was using a staff so the channelling would increase toughness while healing. I also find it to be an AMAZING condition removal. And with only 15 sec CD it seemed the most viable. So my question is why use the Glyph and not Ether Renewal?

glyph is instant and much faster to cast.

plus, each time he auto-attacks, he gets health back. D/D attacks a lot.

@daphoenix: have you tested out a build with 30 points in earth for the trait “Written in Stone” since you appeared to move toward signet of restoration rather then glyph of EH?

EDIT: i’m also curious about the switch in healing abilities and the corruption sigil over power.

When I had tested, was a while ago, written in stone + signets cd faster you would have 2x the passive effect for about 18 seconds on sig of restoration. Not sure if they have patched this out, but the other signets would provide double bonuses as well (only for 5 sec though).

What are your thoughts on Glyph of Elemental Harmony verses Signet of Restoration in this build? The build does not take advantage of the GoEH perma swiftness, so what is your reasoning on that?

RawkFist.1935:

This is EXACTLY what I was waiting for! Thanks so much phoenix! One question for you if you have time: I am a faithful user of Ether Renewal. My build was very similar to yours in that I was 0/10/10/20/30 and I was using Obsedian Flesh especially when I was using a staff so the channelling would increase toughness while healing. I also find it to be an AMAZING condition removal. And with only 15 sec CD it seemed the most viable. So my question is why use the Glyph and not Ether Renewal?

Obsidian Focus is a horrible trait. Even if you would channel constantly, it can never reach an efficiency of more than 170 stat points (and you will not even channel half the time, so it is worth at best half that).

The lowest value any trait should give you is about 200-250 points average. (30/30 fire/air heavy artillery WvW build is basically the only exception, and it gives up a lot to make Meteor Shower into something really dangerous)

As for earth, the best trait from the first tier is Earth’s Embrace if you have the Soothing Disruption trait. And occasionally you can see people sacrificing 10 points from Water or Arcane to get it. (if you are playing Staff, then you can also choose to drop Zephyr’s Boon instead as)

But both the Water and Arcane 30 point traits are really good and works extraordinarily well in groups, while Earth’s Embrace is self only.

I have to ask how many of you actually use your heal skill? The reason I ask this is that I realized the other day I only pop heal for swiftness or when kitten absolutely hits the fan. Any other time I attune to water and heal that way.

Yeah i noticed that too. If i use the signet, healing with water is enough in PvP and when I’m really getting bursted I use the healing skills while running away. The buff from GoEH is nice in pve while moving about without the auras swiftness, but in pvp I’ll never cast the healing skill for the buff if I don’t need to heal.

@daphoenix

Whats the reason for the different rune setup between sPvP and WvWvW?
I’ve just bought 3 superior divinity runes, would you recommend me to just replace them with the boon duration runes instead?

Thanks for making all these guides btw. I don’t think ive said that before.

I have been running exactly this build for a few weeks now. I was running the 0/10/10/20/30 build before but that was a little too defensive for me.

With all the boon duration runes you constantly have 5-6 boons up all the time so that 25 minor water trait gives a 10-12% damage buff. And the 100% fury uptime from the 10 air trait and attunement switching gives you a pretty good crit rate even when you don’t take much precision. Plus the constant swiftness makes it a lot easier to stay within range to land all those 300 range skills.

After trying several runes in the mist I was really shocked on how good buff duration is. At the end of a battle with the big special NPCs I have over 10 stacks of might that still have 20 secs on them, 20 or less of Fury, 40+ secs of vigor and swiftness, 30+ secs of regeneration, and protection lasts for almost all the battle.

I think someone already calculated that 33% less damage from protection equals to 1300 toughness. Boons in this games are just too good. They equal to a big chunk of stats.

I personally have 10 in earth for protection from auras + protection from switching to earth and armor of earth cantrip is a lot of it. Not that killing the npc is any sort of achievement, but i can kill it without dropping bellow 80% health and without using my signet heal active ability when everything works right.

I just though of an extra perk, but in WvWvW with all that boon duration, you could have a lot of stability from tornado cancel. I believe default is 16 secs of it so 70% boon duration would make it a little over 27 secs of stability without counting armor of earth.

NdranC.5107:

After trying several runes in the mist I was really shocked on how good buff duration is. At the end of a battle with the big special NPCs I have over 10 stacks of might that still have 20 secs on them, 20 or less of Fury, 40+ secs of vigor and swiftness, 30+ secs of regeneration, and protection lasts for almost all the battle.

With the boon runes you can maintain 9-12 stacks of might just from the sigil alone. Plus you get might everytime you go into fire and you can dodge roll into your fire fields for even more might. It isn’t too hard to get 20 might stacks since each stack lasts for 30+ seconds.

I have 1 question regarding the water traits .
Cleansing wave and cleasing water seems to do more or less the same no ? as they both remove condition when attuning to water ( with regen popping up when attuning to water from the elemental attunement from air )
So isent the cleansing wave a “lost point” ? or is it purely focused on group condition removeing ? Or do they stack maybe ?
Personaly i can see alot more benifit in cantrip mastery then speaking from a Spvp PoV .

Verdican.5138:

I have 1 question regarding the water traits .
Cleansing wave and cleasing water seems to do more or less the same no ? as they both remove condition when attuning to water ( with regen popping up when attuning to water from the elemental attunement from air )
So isent the cleansing wave a “lost point” ? or is it purely focused on group condition removeing ? Or do they stack maybe ?
Personaly i can see alot more benifit in cantrip mastery then speaking from a Spvp PoV .

Those 2 traits actually stack with each other. So when you attune to water you remove 2 conditions, heal yourself, and apply regen…all in an aoe around you. Plus it allows you to remove a condition everytime you use a cantrip since they apply regen to yourself.

Gothir.3604:

NdranC.5107:

After trying several runes in the mist I was really shocked on how good buff duration is. At the end of a battle with the big special NPCs I have over 10 stacks of might that still have 20 secs on them, 20 or less of Fury, 40+ secs of vigor and swiftness, 30+ secs of regeneration, and protection lasts for almost all the battle.

With the boon runes you can maintain 9-12 stacks of might just from the sigil alone. Plus you get might everytime you go into fire and you can dodge roll into your fire fields for even more might. It isn’t too hard to get 20 might stacks since each stack lasts for 30+ seconds.

So true, i still don’t know how much power/condition damage you get from might tho, but I’m sure its a hefty boost to damage. In the particular build i was using i didn’t have Evasive Arcana, my only source of might was switching to fire, battle sigil and earthquake/churning earth over fire ring, even then i could easily maintain 10+ stacks of might over the whole fight and start the next fight with the next npc with all those buffs already on me. Add the damage you get from 25 points in water and you easily have 12% extra damage most of the time. Just popping armor of earth you get Protection, Stability, Regeneration and Vigor. That equals to 8% damage increase for more than 10 secs. It turns cantrips into a defensive/offensive power machine.

Yes Bountiful Power really synergizes with all the boons you can get/maintain as an elementalist.

Each stack of might gives you 35 power and condition damage.

NdranC.5107:

I think someone already calculated that 33% less damage from protection equals to 1300 toughness. Boons in this games are just too good. They equal to a big chunk of stats.

33% less damage is 50% more survivability or simply put 50% more armor. So it can be everything from 916-1500+ toughness worth.

When doing my trait comparisons, I generally use the following values

• Protection/Vigor/Stability – 1000
• Swiftness – 500
• Regeneration – 400
• Fury – 300
• Might – 70

For some builds, some stats may be worth a bit more or less. But I think those values paint the general picture.

@daphoenix – Just wanted to add to your armor list that it looks like (if I have this right) the #3 HotW exotic vendor set is also PVT and it’s better looking.

P.S. If you agree, lets get some guild groups running HotW!

Thanks, Shep

Do you guys know which dungeon, AC or HoTW is faster and easier to earn tokens for PVT armor?

Pridecry.5293:

Do you guys know which dungeon, AC or HoTW is faster and easier to earn tokens for PVT armor?

if you want his setup, you need to do AC explorable regardless because that’s the only place you can get monk runes from.

How important do you consider Condition Damage to be? I noticed that previous builds and videos seem to have more of it than the current one. Are you unhappy with the return for the points invested, or do you simply consider the other stats to be of greater importance?

@aurum
I use the same traits across everything , PvE, WvWvW, sPvP.

@mars Hill
I could cover some S/D later I am quite familiar with s/d too. I just was never a fan of it since its so easy to dodge and counter / isn’t as versatile as d/d

@Malykk
thanks :P

@The demonic spirit
I’ve seen that build floating around before, the only downside I see from it is no evasive arcana (which is the best trait for eles imo) and no air traits either (so no perma swiftness). It looks more tanky and less mobile though, with a drawback of less healing too and less DPS as well (no 2% dmg per boon trait)

@TimeBomb
I had originally assumed d/f was useless since nobody ever talks about it, but after using it a little bit more I can conclude the following:

D/F is more focused on melee ranged abilities, and the focus puts more emphasis no defense than mobility when compared to D/D. It doesn’t have as many gap closers as D/D, so it does have a pretty big drawback when fighting against opponents that kite heavily. Since the mobility is much lower than D/D, D/F users would be forced to fight losing battles should they be in that situation and cannot retreat as easily.

S/F is more so for teamplay reasons

@Superkav

Signet of restoration is chosen over glyph of elemental harmony because it grants passive healing which allows for a more sustained combat situation.

It may seem mediocre at first, but signet of restoration actually procs on several things you may not have known:

1 spell = 1 dodge
1 spell = 1 evasive arcana spell
1 spell = 1 attunement swap

You can see where this is going. I constantly swap attunements in battle, and utilize almost every evasive arcana spell on CD recharge (not so much air though) and I dodge quite frequently with vigor on. That adds up to alot of passive healing.

I only actually cast signet of restoration when I’m down to 1-5k HP and need to run away.

@Rawkfist
Ether renewal does heal much more compartively per given time frame to all other healing abilities that an elementalist has, but the only drawback to it is that its a channeling ability. Channeling abilities are interuptable by knockdowns, stuns, etc. When your fighting several enemies at once, you will be CC’d alot. Having your heal disrupted can get you killed very easily. Signet of restoration on the other hand, is a passive heal with an emergency active heal. I don’t have to waste time casting heal abilities when I can just constantly bash my enemy to death while healing.

While the condition removal from ether removal is pretty godly, you already have loads of ways to remove conditions. A D/D elementalist already has the most means of removing conditions of any class already out there.

@Mik
Thanks :P

@Nvmvoidrays
I have looked into that “written in stone” which lets you use your passive signet effects even while the signet is on cooldown. The greatest potential from this skill is for signet of restoration. You get a passive healing on all spells with a 25second CD hard healing ability to boot on top of that.

However, the only drawback with this is that this trait requires you to invest 30 earth. This means you have to sacrifice some healing/condition removal from the water trait line, healing from evasive arcana, or perma swiftness from the air trait line. None of those are really worth giving up for this trait in my opinion, as the price for this trait is too high.

“Written in stone” is best used for a less mobile ranged build such as Scepter/dagger, staff, and S/F. the Passive 25 earth trait gives you an incentive not to dodge in order to get an additional 10% overall damage.

The other drawback to “written in stone” is that you have to sacrifice a cantrip utility for an additional signet to maximize this trait’s effect. Cantrips are pretty godly in my opinion as they remove a condition upon cast and grant regeneration using the water traits I posted in the build. There not worth giving up =P

@Tg Slasher

I’m not entirely sure what you mean. Do you mean the passive effects on SoR are stacking (double passive effect healing for 5 seconds?).

@Mobott
You actually don’t need GoEH for perma swiftness. The extra 40% boon duration from runes allows you to stack perma swiftness indefnitely with the zephyr’s boon trait. Swapping to air attunement, using air3, and water4 are all the skills you need to maintain permanenet swiftness. You could also use air 5 as well, but I tend to reserve that incase I really need to use it.

I usually prepare my boons before a large battle starts, using GoEH to further boost my total duration on swiftness. Right before the battle starts, I swap to SoR and build boons on neutral mobs.

@Wildclaw

Yea the great part about arcana and water is that your CD recharge time is lower, and you can swap attunements faster (which means more buffs to allies). Also another thing to note is that all boon duration effects that you have are transferred over to your allies as well. So having boon duration runes not only benefits you, but your entire team.

@TheGuy
I only use it when running (SoR)

@Ndran
Casting the signet of restoration puts you at a disadv if you use it since you lose the passive healing effect

@Hagnefelt
Np :P. As for your rune question, the 2 major runes of water can be replaced by divnities, since those runes are not as good as the superior runes of monk / water.

No don’t replace those runes. Get a new set of AC armor and keep those pieces for an alternative backup armor set:] (afterall divinity’s runes are expensive)

@Gothir
That was what I thought too when swapping to this setup

@Ndran
Its 25 seconds approximately b/c I primarily use tornado in WvWvW. I use it for shoving people off to their doom (instagibs are always nice), stopping enemies from resurrecting, and for the stability reasons. Most of the time I just cancel it after I use it.

@Gothir
I usually maintain 16-25 stacks in battle all the time

@Verdican
Cleansing wave allows you to remove one condition on you after swapping to water attunement. Cleansing water removes another since your getting regeneration upon going to water attunement. With both traits on, you remove 2 conditions upon swapping to water attunement. Its more focused on keeping yourself alive then worrying about teammates.

@Wildclaw
Yes your math is right. I don’t use values for referencing, because comparing offensive stats to defensive stats doesn’t make much sense to me

@Bleeds/Pridecry
I don’t get AC armor for looks, just for stats. Thats what fine transmutating stones are for =P. I dunno what HotW armor looks like, but finding a group for that is generally harder and the runs are generally longer as well.

@Nvmvoidrays
Yeah, AC armor actually comes with 6 Superior runes of the monk already for the full set of armor embedded into it.

@nilgoow
I primarily focus on defense since I get most of my offensive stats from might, fury, and +10 condition damage per kill weapon. Sometimes my condition damage is as high as 1100 and my power up to 2700, with that nice tanky shell to boot with it.
I consider defense to be much more important than offense, because a dead elementalist is a useless elementalist.

I’ll probably throw in some updates to this guide this week, and maybe upload another video.

Here’s my most recent video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ-c0wK13Ww

@daphoenix: i’m still curious over your decision about using the corruption stacking sigil rather then the power one. any reason for that? your build seems like it’d get more benefit from the +power or the +healing sigil, rather then the +condition damage.

or, do you use corruption to offset the fact that you have literally no +condition damage in your build? you said you use PVT armor/weapons and cleric accessories. as far as i know, that’s 0 condition damage.

P.S. your new video is awesome.

daphoenix.4283:

@Tg Slasher

I’m not entirely sure what you mean. Do you mean the passive effects on SoR are stacking (double passive effect healing for 5 seconds?).

Yes, double passive effect, with both written in stone and 20% cd on signets, after you heal has finished its cd. I would call this a bug, and probably shouldn’t be exploited but still interesting.

When you use your signet heal, you technically lose the passive effect of the signet and a secondary passive effect is applied for a certain time (I think its about 40 seconds not 20 / 25 as it should be). When your heal has finished its cd you have the original effect applied back to you, but there is still around 19 sec of the secondary passive applied.

You have 2 signet buffs on your character and when you attack you have double healing from the passive for that 19 sec, then all is back to normal. Its like they once had the signet heal on a 40 second cd, but changed it later without changing the traits that match like they aren’t using variables but have hard coded the timers.

This bug is also present in the other signets skills but lasts a much shorter duration ( I believe these only work with the 20% signet cd trait as well)

Without the 20% signet cd trait I think its around 15 sec of double effect.

I haven’t been able to check to see if this is still the case. Just stumbled onto it a while ago when playing around with a aura build (boy was that a bad idea, so weak, aura and signet traits are all over the shop).

I run a staff 0/0/30/30/10 build, mainly focusing on passive regen and mass condition removal while maintaining fairly high condition damage, a truck load of armour and a decent amount of healing power to boot. I used to run with evasive arcana but I’m starting to find that I can live without it, it’s more of a bunker build with support built in, I guess I can’t heal as much as other builds (EA means I can’t combo field as well) but heavily investing in earth isn’t that bad, well for staff at least but for D/D I’m not too sure. Though I do want to ask your opinion, it’s something I’ve been debating, do you think that S/D would be better suited to this build? I feel like loosing out of healing rain would be too much, it’s like a triple edged blade on this build.

Also is there a chance to see sPvP/Paid Tournys at any point? I’d love to see some decent Ele action in those areas to help me along, great guide, keep up the great work, you’ve done a lot already.

daphoenix.4283:

@TimeBomb
I had originally assumed d/f was useless since nobody ever talks about it, but after using it a little bit more I can conclude the following:

D/F is more focused on melee ranged abilities, and the focus puts more emphasis no defense than mobility when compared to D/D. It doesn’t have as many gap closers as D/D, so it does have a pretty big drawback when fighting against opponents that kite heavily. Since the mobility is much lower than D/D, D/F users would be forced to fight losing battles should they be in that situation and cannot retreat as easily.

S/F is more so for teamplay reasons

D/F is a moderately odd gameplay style, and it lacks mobility and is below par in regards to AoE and range. I find that the numerous defensive capabilities of a D/F user, especially when built well, makes up for this in most scenarios.

D/F is, in comparison to S/F, slightly more offensive and much more capable of taking advantage of signet of restoration due to the overall faster casts. A lot of focus abilities synergize very well with melee abilities; some even better than their synergy with ranged abilities.

D/F is very capable of retreat. This is in large due to the oh so many very useful focus abilities. Even in WvW, I’ve taken 10-20 enemies on by myself and stayed alive efficiently for ~30 seconds. At that point, either all of them have stopped paying attention to me and I’d remain alive, or I still have several on me and, being out of defensive maneuvers, I slowly but surely get killed. The build is very, very sturdy.

Due to the lack of range and AoE, D/F is, for the most part, not good for dungeons or WvW. That’s the biggest downfall of the weapon set. If you like playing defensively, D/F works quite well for PvE and SPvP.

D/F rocks with Arcane Wave and Arcane Blast which makes up for your lack of offensive skills. Very good for killing rogues for instance. The downside to the build is the lack of additional healing spells, only having Cone of Cold. 30 air/20 water/20 arcane and you are golden!

Ugh, another one of those water/arcane builds. At least you tried to get a tiny bit of crit damage.

TGSlasher.1458:

Yes, double passive effect, with both written in stone and 20% cd on signets, after you heal has finished its cd.

…

I haven’t been able to check to see if this is still the case. Just stumbled onto it a while ago when playing around with a aura build (boy was that a bad idea, so weak, aura and signet traits are all over the shop).

This no longer works, must have been patched at some point, I just checked

Malcastus.6240:

Ugh, another one of those water/arcane builds. At least you tried to get a tiny bit of crit damage.

I find this build to be quite balanced. It is well know to use eles that 20 arcane is almost necessary. If you read daphoenix’s other post (linked in the first post of this thread) you will see that he has put alot of time and research into making a good build.

50% crit (47 near enough) with around 100% up time and about 30% crit damage, a nice mix of power makes this build dish out the hurt as much as it can take it. Your health pool isn’t lacking and the heal power is nice enough to not worry about your signet heal. You almost always have 5 boons or more, giving you 10% bonus damage and you almost always have 9+ stacks of might. While the build lakes the damage modifiers of the other trees (as well as the prec, crit damage and power), it is made up by the buffs applied and the boon duration gear / arcane 30. Water tree also helps to keep those pesty conditions off and grants extra boons.

This isn’t just another water/arcane build, its actually a really good water/arcane build. It has been well thought out and researched.

Pridecry.5293:

Do you guys know which dungeon, AC or HoTW is faster and easier to earn tokens for PVT armor?

The PVT set requires 1200 AC tokens vs. 1380 HotW tokens. The shoulders, chest and pants are 50-70 tokens cheaper from AC.

daphoenix.4283:

Armor and Weapons:
Weapon setup:
3 Exotic Ascalonian daggers (Power, toughness, vitality) from AC dungeon
Superior sigil of battle (3 stacks of might on weapon change) – attunement swap is a weapon change
Superior sigil of corruption (10 condition damage per kill)
Superior sigil of fire (Alternative weapon set once you get 25stacks of corruption. Has 30% chance on critical to get a 5second AoE burst)

Have you tried using a superior sigil of perception instead of the corruption sigil in WvW? Without any other crit damage than the 10 from air you have 60% crit damage and full stacks of the perception sigil would give you an additional ~12% crit chance. That extra crit would be about a 7% increase in your direct damage and would make the sigil of fire more consistent as well when you swap that in.

I think you should include a section in your guide for food to use in WvW too. The food gives a ton of useful stats…either defensive or offensive depending on what you want. Plus you can stack it with maintenance oils, tuning crystals, or sharpening stones. The +40% condition duration/70 condition damage food works pretty great with d/d by really extending the time of your CC like immobilize, chill, and weaken.

@daphoenix – true enough
@zzled – thanks for the breakdown

I watched a couple of your vids. You’re a good ele, much better than I am. How many hours have you played, if you don’t mind me asking? Also, I’m only 71 but I’m going to work towards this build. How viable is this build with lesser gear? I don’t know how much time I have to grind for that AC stuff. Thanks for all the info.

-SQLOwns

Daphoenix,

How do you do in tournies? I’m curious because watching your videos is like watching myself play.. we have almost the exact same playstyle. I can destroy in WvW all day and get top score in Spvp 80% of the time. But where I feel I come up short is in tournaments. It’s like playing a completely different game in tournies because the skill level of your opponents are on a completely different scale. Most of the players I face in tournaments have learned how to counter D/D. Every single time I attunement swap they will predict whats coming next, and they are VERY good at keeping me locked down.

Maybe the problem is I’m usually solo jumping from point to point instead of participating in the bigger fights, where I could probably provide more utility.

Anyways, how do you do? Do you have any tourney videos?

I prefer a variation of 20-10-0-0-30-10 for D/D and mostly hang out in water throwing ’rangs. Support comes from aura sharing or condition removal. With ~400 healing and heal signet they keep up me up well.

Great job so far! It looks good and still in the early stages!
Just a few notes I think might help you out.

Anylon’s Elementalist Guide

Different forum, but I found this to be extremely helpful when I stumbled upon it just before launch. I would recommend taking a look if you’re here for the guide, and for daphoenix, I’m hoping that it will help you as far as formatting and organization goes.

Last tidbit: I’m currently playing a D/F build Here in sPvP that I love. It definitely has enough survivability even without the extra healing from Evasive Arcana, and the condition damage is really nice; you’d be surprised at how many people won’t remove burning if it’s the only condition you put up But I can see how D/F would be undesirable for WvW (staff all the way!)

Edit: If you get a Bad Link for the build, copy and paste this
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEIQJAodhMmYbvR5gjDAEFmoy4RIgQSRxM4A;ToAgyCuoAzAmAMLYOwkgNWYKC

@Bufferfish

I am using that guide to make my guide =P. There’s just not that much information though comparatively to what I know

@Curring
I don’t have a team assembled for paid tournies. If I had a good team I can make better commentary videos. I could just do random PUGS in sPvP, but its just not fun playing against easy people

@Gothir
I have thought about the +precision per kill but didn’t go through with it. Precision bonuses is actually useful when you already are gaining lots of power + condition damage through might anyways. I haven’t had time to figure out whether +precision or + condition damage is better, I just went with condition damage

@Rhoto
Ihaven’t played any tournies recently. I do very well in tournies actually, but the thing that brings me down is I don’t have a good team most of the time and elementalists in higher tiered sPvP are geared more toward teamwork as opposed to solo gameplay styles
—
@ everyone else. I’m going to only answer direct questions now since writing this and replying to everyone takes ages.

—
I don’t think the 30 replies / posts I made for reserving the thread is actually enough for me to post everything I know thats relevant. I might have to put all this info somewhere else in the future (like a website I might make later).

I stuck some stuff up on basic fire/ water abilities

I would like to add some thoughts about DD myself.

Firstly, I exclusively play sPvP and tPvP, and the only experience I have with WvW was from the BWE’s.

My favorite amulet to run with is the Valkyries with a Berserkers jewel, this setup offers high power, good toughness, healing and critical damage, for excellent sustainability. I often run with the Runes of Svanir since they are pretty much OP atm. You basically become invul for 5 seconds when you reach 20% hp, and if you have a stun break, you can heal yourself for the rune’s duration, it is extremely good for surviving solo and lasting as long as possible without dying.

All D/D builds I have run end up leading to 30 in Arcane, it feels forced, but every time I try to put less into arcane and go for more damage, it ends up not being worth losing Evasive Arcana. The 25 point trait is water I like getting on every build, even when I run S/D with 20 in Arcane for higher burst damage (something like 0/25/0/25/20 for S/D). Though recently for me the benefits of auras in D/D just seem too appealing to pass up.

What makes this build shine is you pretty much can win any 1v1 by simply outlasting the opponent with a huge amount of boons to always have the upper hand. I find it much easier to kill guardians (any class really) with the extra healing and toughness from Valks amulet despite the fact that most would think Berserkers would do more damage, the extra sustainability actually helps you come out on top much more often, which I love doing.

As far as playstyle goes, getting into the fray is what you do best, if the enemies try to focus you, you can turn it really fast by chain CCing the enemies and healing to full by switching to water . My favorite thing to do when I get caught alone in front of 2 or more players is see how long I can survive before escaping (obviously if I see two thiefs with basi venom I run, sometimes its better to escape alive then test your luck).

Sorry if this seems like a useless jumble thoughts, I just felt like giving some tips from experience to see if they could help someone out.

Also if you need any opinions on any specific sections, or elementalists in general, I would be glad to follow this thread for a while and offer my opinion based on my approximate 400 ish hours of GW2 PvP played.

I have to admit, I was very skeptical about this build. Nothing in the top two tier trait lines, I wasn’t sure if it was going to work. But from what I’ve tested, this build owns serious kitten I hope nothing gets majorly changed in the upcoming mega patch (unless it benefits this build more/fixes general Ele problems).

Also tested this build, and I love it for dungeons, very cool to play, much funnier than spamming with staff !
I had planned to play with 30 in earth with a focus on the use of signets but after testing the two builds, I find your template much more valuable, it is really great

Any reason why you switched from the power, vit, condition damage gemstones to the default ones?

hello i use a similar build ,
0 0 10 30 30
sigil of vigor + lyssa rune

i ve play lot of on spvp and tpvp with D/D ( 300 heures in D/D and 300 heures in S/D ), you tell , the best build for survive is D/D , i think you have wrong , i think specter/dague is bester for survive :

thats ,
1 vs 1 specter/dague > dague/dague
it s difficult with D/D kill a good rogue
specter dague you can distance dps .
more 2 blinds , earth armor , reomove 3 condition with fire + vigor .
and more blast finisher , and best heal .

dps specter / dague = dps D/D so many people think D/D is bester DPS , is wrong !

sorry my english isn t good for more developping my critique .

so now i speak for spvp and tpvp

and i use always D/D on roamer WvWvW

Hey I was just wondering if you could post for any sPvP players your most recent setup for runes, amulet and skills. I’d really appreciate it personally… I saw the 2 water 2 monk 2 divinity and if you still run them, I was wondering why not 6x divinity, earth or lyssa.

Divinity frontloads it’s an option, but the benefit of 2 Water, 2 Monk gives a huge boost to boon duration meaning that you’re tougher, have more energy for dodges and are able to maintain more stacks of might longer. Other runesets do give duration benefits to specific boons but Monk/Water covers the bases on all of them.

@mindless
thanks for the input:D

@eleazy
There probably going nerf elementalists in some way

@Kratos
Thanks

@Dedalus
I find survivability to be more important. Toughness and healing power are really important stats to have in terms of sustainbility.

@semprena
It all depends on the situation. In a 1v1 or small combat situation, a D/D elementalist will outperform a S/D elementalist. If going in melee range is just a really bad option, than a S/D would be great.

S/D suffers in the fact that abilities are extremely easy to dodge. Air is great for long range DPS, but its not as useful at close range distances against a melee attacker. S/D users will have a harder time killing thieves who stealth though, since D/D’s PbAoE is one the strongest counters to stealth.

S/D does have the higher damage burst, but in terms of sustainable overall DPS a D/D elementalist is much better in my opinion.

@Drunk
I did some tournys today, and I run 2 sup rune of water, 2 sup. rune of monk, and 2 sup rune of divinity. The great thing about using this setup is that its versatile. I can play a bunker point elementalist, roamer, anti bunker, treb destroyer, and practically any role that I can think of.

I usually use multiple weapons during a battle, and swap skills during battle (not in combat). I also swap amulets depending on the situation too. Sometimes I need more DPS over healing in a 1v1 cap point situation, or I need more defense while holding off2 people from capping. Sometimes I might need a mixture of both – since I’m not getting targeted heavily while at the same time I need lots of DPS.

I use a total of 3 daggers, 1 focus, 1 scepter, 1 staff, and 4 or 5 amulets in competetive PvP.

@Whimsical
Thats why I chose those runes xD

Your build is amazing! I belive it’s core (healing + boons + removing conditions) can be used in many other builds. Do you think the arcana evasive is really necessary though? I did some tests in which I got even more CD and it really speed up the killing, I was running 0/10/20/30/10 with different runes, I couldn’t kite a mob of thieves as I could when using your original build, but the damage done was enough to kill 3-4 players everytime I jumped into a mob.

Daphoenix, I think Powerful Aura deserves a mention. In dungeons it is basically a must have trait whenever you don’t need the condition removal.

In WvW it can be very useful in group combat as well. You sacrifice some self survivability in exchange for more swiftness/fury on your group. (not to mention that the auras themselves can be very useful. The shocking aura can stop a a burst spec in its tracks, and frost aura is incredible against both ranged and melee opponents)

Dolores.5471:

Do you think the arcana evasive is really necessary though? I did some tests in which I got even more CD and it really speed up the killing, I was running 0/10/20/30/10

200 condition damage is nothing. A single dodge into a fire field with Evasive Arcana will give you 105 condition damage and 105 power for 26-34s (latter with boon duration runes). In addition to the attunement specific Evasive Arcana effect.