Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,

Let me just say that I am a Zerk Ele through and through. I have always played up close and personal, I’m always on edge in dungeons because one wrong move can screw me over and I’ve always put the parties interests before mine i.e. sure I can sit back with my staff just so I don’t get downed at all, but I’d rather be in some bosses face stacking Might and providing fury with everyone else while bashing him with a lightning hammer.

I’ve always loved this play style. However….

I’ve started on the road to crafting ascended, etc and I’m finding myself doing a lot more world bosses nowadays for the dragonite ore. I’ve noticed the majority of worthwhile bosses can’t be critically hit which means I always swap to my secondary soldiers set which isn’t really optimised rune-wise and it feels like a bit of a half-bummed attempt considering all my trinkets and weps are still Zerk.

After doing quite a bit of Teq I’ve noticed that when I stand in the ranged party, I struggle to do any decent dps as it seems to be an awkward range for most of the staff skills unless I go forward alone and get battered. If I go in the melee group then I tend to get downed pretty quickly and spend most the time running back from the waypoint.

I was thinking of swapping to a full support build purely for World bosses where I can’t crit as other than my occasional meteor shower I don’t have a massive amount of DPS to provide and I think it would be more beneficial to be dropping down water and fire fields and blasting them for might and healing and letting other people do the hard work.

What do you guys think of think of the linked build I’ve come up with? It’s based around Cleric stats and the Water + Arcane trait lines. I would have gone in the Earth line but felt Arcane gave more benefits for the attunement cooldowns and boon durations with some useful traits.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQFAWnMISLD24AWPAfEGYAwIvEOCJxQBgyxh5wSE-TByHABmo+TNK/q9CAcpSQAeAAopD4i9Hky8HhAQuFA-e

I’m really just looking for feedback on whether this build is viable and whether keeping people alive in the melee party at teq will be more useful than doing the occasional meteor shower with a slow auto-attack at range.

I wouldn’t normally go for a ‘Healing’ build but with the amount of people attacking bosses like Teq I don’t really think my DPS is going to massively missed.

Ele’s have great DPS so using cleric gear , vit/toughness runes and only 2 points in power line is bad imo.

Build I use:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQFAWnMISLD24AWPAfEIgAQImsY4ARWIqUp3A-TBSAwAKV+xT9GAm/2t/QLdAWUC+4CAQ4BAQIABbBA-e

Just camp fire for dps: lava Font, MS, AA till Lava Font is up again
Think you maintain around 7’ish might stacks just by using your skills

Switch to water when you get feared so you can put down water fields

For teq, switch Cleansing Fire for Lightning Hammer for burn phases
Earth2>fire2>Arcane Wave>Arcane Briliance>fire5>icebow 4>fgs4>fgs3>LH 4>LH AA on DD spot

Go full PVT and still feel like a DPS God!

Ah thanks Acotje, that’s really helpful! Would be a lot cheaper than having to buy a full set of cleric’s as well as I mostly have full Soldier’s already apart from the trinkets.

Do you find yourself sitting in the Melee or ranged dps party at Teq?

I try to get on an Northern Lights[NL] overflow(on Eu) and they only use 1 DPS stack
But just stay on the Commander, if he knows what he is doing you won’t get a lot of dmg
(moving out the AoE and stuff). Also, with the PVT gear you have loads of time to react to stuff.

I have 2 ele’s and I’m glad I geared 1 of em for world events you cant crit on, cause I know how much it hurts in zerk gear :p

Hey man. Couple recommendations based on your specifications:
1. Definitely take the trait that reduces the cooldown of water weapons by 20%. That’s so important if you want to be laying down constant water fields.
2. Consider the same for fire fields.
3. Look into clerics armor and your runeset can definitely be changed to something like dwaynas or whatever they’re called, I forget

I’d say that in any disorganised world boss event, your water fields are going to be wasted and the heals you supply to the mob will be relatively ineffective (compared to dps, and especially compared to doing enough damage to get credit dps for champs etc.). Stick with soldiers gear, take reasonable survivability traits, AoE might stacking, general dps stuff.

In any organised one... your water fields are going to be blasted mostly by other players, so your own healing abilities don’t matter nearly so much. Stick with the soldiers gear, dps traits... whether you spec specifically to stack might depends on the group you’re with (but as an Ele folks will probably assume it’s your job or a Guard’s job rather than theirs).

I like to run my giver’s guardian at world boss events just for fun. Boon dispensing, healing, making things run more smoothly for others. It’s not like you need full DPS at world bosses.