Guild Wars 2

Hi guys!

After a lot of constructive feedback I felt confident in taking the next step in order to get closer to the pros…I’m now ready to give up some healing power to increase the damage and to readjust some traits in order to maximize conditional damage.
The runes have also been changed (cheap option…since I’m a casual player) increasing boon duration, which increases might up time, improving your damage output

So here are the builds:

D/D:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhEmmbwR5wjDAEFucyQhIfUeQzM2A-jEDBoLBkkGgEBM7RINFSassNsVXBp8KaqZER16kYmxDRzSO1CBMZNA-w

S/D:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmmbwR5wjDAEFucyQRHfUegzM2A-jEDBoLBkkGgEBM7RINFSassNsVXBp8KaqZER16kYmxDRzSO1CBMZNA-w

Staff:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmmbwR5wjDAEFucyQhGfUeszM2A-j0CBoLAkIAZPCppQSjltht6KIlXRTNjIqWnEzMeIaWypWIgJrBA-w

As always any feedback is realy welcome, and don’t forget the purpose of this guides is to help other players (like me) to increase their skill and to understand the path the overpowered elementalists took.

Hope this helps

If i’m being completely honest those builds are way too over kill on defense, maybe slot in a few knight pieces with a standard zerker build, but that is way too overkill. Condition damage is a no go on elementalist for pve, healing power is also a no go, basically focus on damage stats and add in a bit more toughness or vitality. You keep mentioning you are a casual player, while I would consider myself better than an average player 2.6k armor and 17k health really necessary? I run with 2.1k armor and 11k health on my guardian and do all dungeons and 49 fractals no problem, I suggest you buy yourself a full set of zerker armor, go d/f with 30,30,0,0,10 and die a lot at first. After a while you will get better and dodge stuff. I think the saying is baptism by fire.

Painbow.6059:

If i’m being completely honest those builds are way too over kill on defense, maybe slot in a few knight pieces with a standard zerker build, but that is way too overkill. Condition damage is a no go on elementalist for pve, healing power is also a no go, basically focus on damage stats and add in a bit more toughness or vitality. You keep mentioning you are a casual player, while I would consider myself better than an average player 2.6k armor and 17k health really necessary? I run with 2.1k armor and 11k health on my guardian and do all dungeons and 49 fractals no problem, I suggest you buy yourself a full set of zerker armor, go d/f with 30,30,0,0,10 and die a lot at first. After a while you will get better and dodge stuff. I think the saying is baptism by fire.

It’s a pvp build. Noone runs a condi/cleric ele with 4% crit chance in PvE.
If I’m not wrong, this build is a hybrid power/condi with the cleric and boon duration runes there for sustain. However, don’t you think you might be a bit weak offensively
with low attack and 4% crit chance, as well as zero critical damage? I’m honestly not sure if you will get more out of swapping the carrion pieces for some more power/crit based armor choices.

Oh i’m sorry then ignore me

Dunno why you had to make Part 2, could’ve just edited your post in the first one :P

Gonna copy my response:

1) In all those builds I think it’s a huge mistake not to take Rock Solid. With 20 points in Earth it’s silly to take anything other than Rock Solid. I can see you’re going for condi damage but it just doesn’t make sense to sacrifice such awesome traits for minor condi traits.
2) Renewing Stamina = best Arcana adept trait. After the latest patch Ele is the only class that can maintain perma-vigor now, without it D/D has no source of vigor. Vigor = lots of dodges, dodges = lots of Evasive Arcana, you live longer, etc.

It’s nice to see people trying out different things, but I think it’s just a fact that Ele’s are hard-locked into their absolute best traits in order to stand a chance against other classes/builds. There’s almost no room to experiment with Arcana traits, and especially no room to attempt condi builds with a class that is absolutely horrible at applying conditions.

To Painbow: In fact this is a build oriented to WVW…hence the need for extra defense. But this is also a case study of the evolution of a casual gamer through the profession of elementalist, I’m doing several iterations of builds until I get to the point when the build is accepted as “professional”. When I arrive to that point I’ll make a post with all I’ve learned and all the builds…giving another young elementalists an idea of the path to the professional builds.
Even for wvw this build can be improved in two major ways:

Swap conditional damage for critical chance and damage (next iteration)
Reducing healing power to 400 to further improve damage output.

The idea is to give steps to allow players find the one they prefer the most…and to also show arena net how difficult it is to play this profession comparing with hummm dare I say it…warrior

To Cassiel: Yes I think you’re right…the next evolution of the build will be to swap conditional damage for critical chance and damage. But take in consideration that all this builds have been tested in wvw and solo duel vs champion mark II golem in orr and all have proven effective. It’s a matter of selecting what adjusts better to your play style. Conditional damage even for an elementalist can be effective, depends on the opposition and their builds…gotta try until you find their weakness.

To Wintel: Yeap…perhaps I should keep all this together and change the article as I learn. Thanks for your feedback and for now I’ve learned:

1200 healing power is wayyyyyyyyy too much…I was able to reduce it to 800 and still solo champion mark II golem in orr, I also kept the ability to dive into the zerg vs zerg clash zones drop fire fields and get out alive…which is a goal of this guide.

Conditional damage for elementalist is really underdeveloped since we don’t have poison or torment or retribution or confusion.

Earth at 20 is good for conditional but bad for mobility and for dagger dagger mobility is everything

So as soon as I’m able to buy a new set of armor and to do several nights of testing I’ll advance for the next stage of the builds:

->Swap conditional damage for critical chance/damage
->Reduce healing power to around 400 (still need testing)
->Change earth 20 to air 10

when I do so I’ll try to write a guide to strategies and good/bad things about all the stages of this builds. This will allow young players to see the evolution of a elementalist and select which build is better for them.

Hope you keep on giving feedback since the idea here is to make elementalist evolution easier…and to also show arena net how difficult it is to master one.

If you are really going for healing and condition damage as well as damage, then you really might want to use celestial gear.

Personally i would only go for full power based builds (and neglect condition damage). When it comes to duels, I have more trouble against players that deal high damage than against players that heal a lot and try to wear me down over time. Elementalist has only very few skills that apply conditions and its only one or two distinct conditions in each attunement, so you cannot condition bomb your enemies like real condition classes can. You have no real cover conditions – that means your conditions are easily cleared away. Ele also has no access to poison, torment or confusion, which are really strong in condition builds.

This is a build that I would personally prefer:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmKbyx5gjDAkHwYCLiCPUekzM2A-jUDBYjBkEBkKAI5TQMBSZtMMaVNBp8Ks6aYKXJVFTQ2ebIa2cpWKgIWGB-w

I consider myself a pro at D/D, and I will definitely say that D/D build won’t get you anywhere. It will be great in duels vs power classes, especially burst characters.

But there aren’t only power classes in roaming. Both spvp and WvW.

Mbelch.9028:

I consider myself a pro at D/D, and I will definitely say that D/D build won’t get you anywhere. It will be great in duels vs power classes, especially burst characters.

But there aren’t only power classes in roaming. Both spvp and WvW.

dude, u cannot be serious

No I’m quite serious. Really? 800 condition damage? This build is a mess as a condi build.

It will hit like a wet noodle, and as I understand it, Xun, he’s trying to give a good way to be overpowered, and you and I know that goal won’t be fulfilled by this condi build. The most dangerous ele is he who has mastered covering up his lack of defense with knowledge, dodges and boons so that his hits are like a truck.

I didn’t understand u were talking about that specific build sry.
I tried to explain a different point of view on the dd builds and I think that trying his one on the field could help him to understand why some choices are done by “experts”.
Getting new exotics is easy :P

To Columbo: Thanks mate, great build…gonna use it for the redesign on this guide Thanks for the support on my learning process

To Mbelch.: Thanks for the criticism, and i must admit you were dead on…on my testing in wvw I did well against power builds…but as soon as I found conditional/bunker builds the errors on my build started to show. I’ll redesign and include this mistakes on the process hoping to allow other elementalists to avoid the same mistakes i did.

To Xunleashed: Yeap, for me this has been a wonderfull learning experience…to fail and learn from the mistakes is always the best way to learn. Gonna redesign the post and hopefully give an idea of the evolution of an elementalist

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-to-an-Overpowered-D-D-Element-Final/first#post3441542

For the final part with all I’ve learned.