Guild Wars 2

Note: This is a PVE build and a remake of an earlier thread. It is not meant for PvP and I do not wish to discuss PvP.

UPDATED THREAD: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/83561-hamartias-sd-elementalist-build-dps-might-stacking/

UPDATED FORUM THREAD:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Hamartia-s-S-D-Might-Fury-DPS-June-25th/first#post2309790

Rotation video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qdmUz_WE7g&feature=youtu.be

With Elemental Attunement and Boon Duration for more support:
[url=“http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQJArYlw1iMWZQzAOyAApAKhHEwQBlHzkTMA-jgyAYLhQCCIZBI5psm9EELdht6GtybQ01YKXioaA-e”]http://gw2skills.net...tybQ01YKXioaA-e[/url]

With Scholar Runes/Ruby Orbs and Evasive Arcana for More Damage/still maintain 25 stacks of might:
[url=“http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQJArYlw1iMWZQzAOyAApAKhHEwQBlHxkjNA-jAyAYLhQCCIZBI5psm9EELuFRjVXjpcJiqBA-e”]http://gw2skills.net...FRjVXjpcJiqBA-e[/url]

Balanced Gearing Option: 2x PVT, 5x Zerker, Celestial Trinkets.
[url=“http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQJArYlw1iMWZQzAOyAApAKhHEwQBlHxkjNA-jAyAYLhQCCIZJIJvFtm9CYxtIasqaioadNGA-e”]http://gw2skills.net...tIasqaioadNGA-e[/url]

Note that in most situations, Arcane Power will be swapped for Arcane Shield, because everyone needs a bit of survival. Arcane Power is the pure high DPS option.

What this build sacrifices versus standard builds:

Your only condition removal is Water 5, Phoenix, and Ether Renewal. If you find you need more than that, swap your choice of Arcane skills for Evasive Arcana.

You lose 100% fury and swiftness uptime to party. I feel that other classes bring fury while sacrificing less than an Elementalist has to. Or, if you have another Elementalist in your party, they will be bringing these buffs.

I’m not happy with Elementalist meta builds, I feel like they give up too much damage in favor of support, and that the support provided is not an adequate recompense. This is my attempt to fix things.

What it brings:
25 stacks of might to party, great damage, great AOE. Feels incredibly fun and versatile.
Can also do great damage in PVT and Celestial gear; doesn’t need to be full zerker if that’s not your style.

Rotation:
Take a deep breath

The gist of this is to pop all of your combo finishers inside of Ring of Fire (fire 4) to stack AOE might and some additional burning.

Start in Air or Water.

Swap to Fire and before reaching target, use 2, Dragon’s Tooth. Use 4 to throw down your fire field under Dragon’s Tooth and at your target. Use Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave. Use Fire 3 inside of your fire field. Use Fire 5 from melee range, use Fire 2 again.

Swap to Earth. Use 4. (Use Arcane Shield if its your utility choice) Begin cast 5, swap to air, 3, 2, swap to water, 4. Earth 5 finishes casting, back to fire.

Stay in Fire until your Earth cooldowns are available and then repeat. Use Arcane Blast and Wave on Cooldown unless you need them available to stack more might.

If you are using scholar runes + Evasive Arcana, do not wait for a second Dragon’s Tooth before swapping to Earth. Instead, Earth-dodge before Earth 4 and 5.

I recommend using Glyph of Elementals as the elite. I’d pop Fire Elemental before beginning your rotation, and use your Water heals to heal it up after Earth 5. Water Elemental is good for when your group needs some healing, since it attacks from range it does the best job staying alive. Earth Elemental can be useful in some situations since it tanks very effectively.

If you are able to run with Arcane Power, you want to pop it before Fire Grab (Fire 5) so that it crits Fire Grab, Fire 2, Earth 4, Earth 5, Air 2.

During “downtime”— when all but your fire moves are on cool down, feel free to use Earth 2, and water heals and evasive arcana for a minimal DPS loss. Whenever a long cast is going, swap to air for 3 and 2, which are off the GCD.

Also use RTL as a damaging move in PBAoE situations.

You can also use earth 3 blind before churning earth, and air 3 blind DURING Churning Earth to keep the boss unable to hit you while you use your big attack. In some situations, you might want to try and use Earth 3 and Air 3 to try and save your party from hard hits—think of blind as reverse Aegis.

Why is this build good?
The damage. Every fire move other than 1 hits hard. Arcane and Air moves hit hard off the GCD. Earth 4 and kitten hard.

25 stacks of might without making any sacrifices to obtain it.

You still bring good healing and buffs via Elemental Attunement.

Possible Tweaks

For utility skills, you need Arcane Blast and Wave. The third can be Arcane Shield or Mistform for survival—I prefer Arcane shield since it benefits from the 20% CD reduction and does nice damage. Arcane Power is a pretty huge DPS boost since you can pop it right before your 5 super heavy hitters.

If someone else in your party is bringing some might, you can swap Persisting Flames for Ember’s might for a 5% damage boost. If you usually run with a friend who provides a few stacks of might, this will make the most sense.

If your party has lots of boons going around, swap out Elemental Attunement for Evasive Arcana to add some conditional removal and damage.

If you aren’t running boon duration runes, swap out Elemental Attunement for Evasive Arcana.

Ether Renewal is the best heal when you need some additional condition removal, but I feel that the Human Racial heal provides the big, fast heal you more often need in PVE content, with water 3 and 5 for downtime.

Alternative Gearing Option
Standard is nearly full berserker; PVT in 3 slots to make it easier to spend a lot of time in close range and get off your churning Earths. Perhaps a better player than me could pull off full zerker. Theoretically, chest or legs with knight armor, rest zerker might be an even better balance than PVT in 3 slots.

Since you are using Arcane Power and arcane blast, which guarantees crits, you can theoretically go with a much tankier PVT/Celestial mix, rather than full zerker.
This will allow you to still benefit from crits at the most intense parts of your rotation for nice burst damage.

Balanced Gearing Option
Zerker hands, feet, shoulders, weapons. PVT helm, legs, chest. Celestial trinkets.
I’ve tried this one out personally and it feels infinitely survivable with great damage.
Why Celestial? Scepter benefits from the condition damage, time spent in melee range will make your 3, 5, and dodge heals a bit more in demand.
Obviously lower damage than going pure Zerker, but this feels like a balance that I am happy with in casual play.

Leveling Build
This also happens to be the most fun and powerful leveling build I’ve tried across several classes. You can change the order you grab the talents to suit your own needs. I usually just ran with 3 signet to be lazier—air for movement speed, earth for toughness, fire for critical chance. Swap in the level 80 utilities for fun, practice, or when they start to feel effective. Arcane Blast/Wave and Signet of Air is probably a healthy balance. This follows the same rotation as the level 80 build.

Level 10—Start investing in points to get 10 Arcane.

Level 20—10 Arcane for Elemental Attunment—the burst of protection before casting churning Earth helps a lot along with the CD reduction on attunement swap.

Level 30—10 fire for 10% damage in fire and the Power stats.

Level 40—20 Fire for Cooldown Reduction, 10 Arcane.

Level 50—10 Water.

Level 60—30 Fire for Persisting Flames, 10 Arcane, 10 Water.

Level 70—30 Fire, 20 Arcane, 10 Water.

Level 80—30 fire, 30 Arcane, 10 Water.

Thanks for Reading/Critique away please!

Other Scepter Notes:
-Rock Barrier provides 250 Toughness. Using it as a damaging move provides 5 projectile finishers—great for extra burning, regen, or condition removal in a light field.

-Frost Aura, Lightning Strike, and Blinding Flash can be cast off the GCD while another move is channeling. This also applies to Arcane Wave, Shield, Blast, and Power.

-Phoenix provides vigor and condition removal.

On Elementals:
A much more viable choice after recent buffs.

Fire Elemental does the best damage, and great AoE. However, it only has 9300 health.

Air elemental has 14,500 health, deals less damage, and does no AoE, but it attacks from range and provides swiftness—the better choice for heavy AoE fights where Fire elemental will get downed. The damage difference between air and Fire is not that huge in single-target situations, and it will stay alive far more often.

Ice and Earth both have 21300 health and attack in melee. Earth Elemental does less damage than Fire and Ice, but is very hard to kill and provides a small amount of AoE Protection. Great choice if party starts wiping and your heavies start going down and you need a quick tank.

Ice Elemental does meh damage, but chills enemies and, on a 25 second cooldown, can cast cleansing wave for a 6570 heal.

No comments? =(

First off, I just wanna say that your build made me pick up Ele and fall in love with the class. My playing time is limited, but I’ve been glued to my Ele since I got it up and running. Here’s the variation I use: Ele. I’m working on the ascended trinkets, as I hope to replace the rings with Celestial and use zerkers on everything else, for some small survivability since I’m forgoing Water. I’m also trying out Final Shielding over Arcane Mastery. Still, love this build. A lot of fun.

Just wanted to say I’m loving this build at the moment. The DPS is insane!

Adding my word of thanks here for sharing this build. I play PVE almost exclusively. I picked up this build after struggling with staff for the first 20 levels. I’m now at level 72 and have never looked back. Love the damage and the synergy of the rotation. Everything just flows very smoothly from one attunement to the next. I was not looking forward to leveling my Ele with my previous build. With this one, everything is so fast and easy. Thanks.

Looks promising. I’ll test it out later, but it does seem to have nice damage output, and options to retreat quickly enough. Thanks for sharing!

Very happy to hear this is working for people, and thanks for the kind words!

The next patch is going to be awesome for this build.

If the leaked patch notes are correct, this build will now provide 100% fury uptime, making it, in my opinion, an obvious choice over standard d/d builds.

A 30/30 variant is also possible, given that Arcane is not actually THAT necessary for this build to work… I would certainly love the extra precision and crit damage.

30/30/0/0/10 to grab the vigor trait. Swapping between fire and Air when air procs.

This build just became quite insane for group damage support.