Guild Wars 2

Hello I’ve recently got my elementalist to level 80, and the current build i’m using it’s fun when doing group content with friends since they do most of the damage. I was wondering what could i change to make my build pump out more damage alone, even if i have to forgo defenses for the purpose. Thank you all for your help.

This is my build:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJArYhMMacW5wwBd0AhAB5tmrRBlnLXB-ThSBABOqE8Jlf4oeAQq40g5Hs2fIFtEI8gAiRHAAnQgAAHAEMuUAIrMC-e

Thanks Again

fracture.9754:

Go to metabattle and use staff conjurer. Your build is about as bad as it gets DPS-wise.

Without being as negative, you should really take a look at the builds on metabattle, see what they include, and see if your build can be improved with the elements you’ll learn from there.

Okay, so, I’ll explain why you need to change things rather than just point you to a website and tell you to mindlessly follow a build.

For one, healing power is crap. Even on an Ele who can get the most out of healing, in PvE and dungeons, it’s not anywhere near as good as damage. The majority of the time your healing ability and dodging will be good enough. The only times that I have to focus on healing are: the endless mob room in CoF2 and various fractal bosses at 20+. (AKA, situations where burst damage really isn’t as important as surviving).

Secondly, toughness is one of the three factors that increases your threat generation. It’s only use is reducing damage; however, with healing and dodges, you shouldn’t need this in a typical dungeon run. Vitality is a bit more useful, but you really shouldn’t stack it. I do use Valkyrie armor with Berserker weapons and trinkets. Sure I lose a bit of crit, but that tiny HP boost has kept me alive more times than I can count.

Next is weapon set up. While scepter is great at might-stacking, it can only do good damage when given a lightning hammer to augment it. I used to play a Fresh Air Scepter/Dagger build with no LH, so I say this from experience. It’s fun and cool, but you’re nowhere near as powerful as a Staff and Dagger.

Honestly, starting out, I would recommend a Staff build. The one on dulfy.net or the meta-battle one are both very good (though I recommend reading the elementalist class guide on Dulfy’s site as it goes into a LOT more detail). While you’re best damage will be in melee, you won’t be unable to fight at range. It’s a bit boring in terms of rotation, but you can focus on the fight more.

And for the utilities. Ethereal Renewal has its uses (bomb run and lava run in CoF2, Legendary Grawl Shaman in Fractals), but most of them that I use it for pertains to really non-combat situations. Cantrips again have similar uses, but for the most part, very niche in typical dungeons.

Overall, I don’t recommend the meta-battle build as it lacks any stun-break and relies on an organized team-comp that’s focused on the meta. My go-to build for when I don’t really want to put any effort in is this: 64220 with (VI, VII, XI) in fire, (VI, VII) in air, (VI) in water and earth with Arcane Brilliance, Arcane Shield, Arcane Wave, Signet of Fire, and the Elite Glyph. Keep Lava Font under your target and keep the Arcane Lightning buff up by cycling between Brilliance and Wave (though don’t be afraid to do the former sooner to stay alive. Dead DPS is NO DPS). Use Meteor Shower on CD.

While you won’t get as much support doing this, you’ll be able to keep a constant fire field down that supplies both might AND fury as well as bring plenty of damage. So I recommend Valk armor, zerk staff and zerk trinkets. You’ll have the same power and ferocity as a typical zerk build, but a smidge more HP.

For future classes you run, always try to run Berserker armor and weapons in a dungeon group. Your ability to support comes from utilities and traits rather than armor.

The build you posted resembles more of a WvW or PvP build where survivability is a consideration. Assuming you are looking for a PvE build, players generally look for max DPS in that environment as the best form of hard CC is death when it comes to monsters/mobs.

Renewing Stamina is about all you need in regards to defensive traits. Depending on your team comp you may need a few defensive utility here and there, but that depends on what instance/event you’re trying to complete.

Fade gets a +1.

2 IMO’s to start… first, the fun part of this game is you can play whatever weapon set you like, and second, play whatever trait distribution you like, especially when roaming. With that said, yes it is true that some weapon sets have parsed higher than others, and s/f with lightning hammer or staff are the highest potential dps output available to our class. You should know how to play those specs correctly “IF” you want to be the most useful you can be in semi-organized or better dungeon groups. I choose to assume that even with pug groups, everyone knows what they’re doing in the dungeons I run most (CoF, CoE), so I generally enter with my s/f might stacking/perma fury lightning hammer build. If there are multiple warriors in my group, then I assume they know what they’re doing and I swap to staff (b/c they can maintain 25 might easier than I can, and a conjurer staff build provides better dps). If there is no one else maintaining might, then I’ll stay s/f. Those builds can be found on meta battle website…

OK, with the mandatory “BEST DPS EVAAAA” disclaimer out of the way… I would recommend start moving towards either berzerker or assassin gear. The biggest hurdle in this game is learning that healing is secondary for damage mitigation. This is different from every other mmo I’ve played, including the original Guild Wars. It’s hard to retrain your thinking. The most important dmg mitigation tool you have is dodging. As you play this game, you’ll start to learn which are the “big hits” that different enemies deliver, learn to save your dodges, don’t ever waste them… we all still do, and then you’re party is having to get you back up, it’s embarrassing and we’ve all been there.

So I would say transition from high survivability to high dps in a few steps, don’t do it all at once. I’m also going to make two assumptions, first, that you enjoy playing s/d and I’m not going to tell you to change, you don’t have to. Second, I’m going to assume you know the might stacking rotations for ele.

OK, first things first, dump the healthy gear and change to either berzerkers or assassins. It’s the most expensive on the TP for a reason, it’s the best gear for every class, and everyone wants it. That alone will increase your dmg output substantially. And second, I would transition to a Fresh Air build, sacrificing “SOME” of your survivability traits in exchange for more dps. Just this first step alone, you will see your numbers jump a lot. Try this first, and remember that with Fresh Air, your CD on air attunement will come off whenever you crit (5 sec CD, but good enough), so every change you get, swap to air, air 2/3 for a big hit and a blind, then go about your business.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJArYnMISLDWyAGQAfEIwBwIWDiBj+AijABgOYpsAA-TRRBABXt/o8DPdAA8AAoU9HzUCCA-e

Once you are comfortable with a pretty straight forward Fresh Air build, you can start backing off of the vitality and arcane traits, and start putting them in power. More like this.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJArYnMISLDWyAGQAfEIgAwIlECGAOAjmBiLBVgYIA-TRRBABXt/o8DPdAA8AAoU9HzUCCA-e

Finally, if you want to be the most useful in dungeons, you have to add the fury upkeep, so you’re transitioning to something like this.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJArYnMISLDWyAGQAfEGgAwCHAOADgRzAxlgKQME-TRRBABXt/o8DPdAA8AAoU9HzUCCA-e

This gives you almost no survivability, but it’s the warrior and guardians jobs in your group to help with that. Also, getting rid of that off-hand dagger and learning how to use focus will help resolve any problems you have with dmg mitigation, thanks to swirling winds and obsidian flesh.

In this game, it’s important to know what you can bring to the table. Ele’s have 3 things they can do as well or better than anyone else, might stacking, perma fury and aurashare (which I didn’t go in to, b/c your question was about more dmg output). If your group needs might, then s/f or s/d is the way to go, if you have warriors providing it (if they know what they’re doing, it’s easier for 2 warriors to maintain 25 stacks than 1 ele) you swap to staff to maintain fury upkeep, a little bit of might stacking to top off the stacks, and extra dps. All in all, as long as you’re bringing something to the table, you don’t “have” to play meta, but it’s good to know how to do it, and then tweak it in a way that makes you happy.

Thank you all for your advice. I’ve already started changing my ele to your reccomendation little by little, since i’m new to the game and don’t have that much money to spend on TP, and i’m already seeing changes in my numbers. Still trying to get use to know when to dodge which attacks, but as i do more content i’m going to learn. Thank you all again.

IfIFear.7210:

Thank you all for your advice. I’ve already started changing my ele to your reccomendation little by little, since i’m new to the game and don’t have that much money to spend on TP, and i’m already seeing changes in my numbers. Still trying to get use to know when to dodge which attacks, but as i do more content i’m going to learn. Thank you all again.

In the beginning most folks ran a mix of Soldier (P+V+T) and some cleric.

You can get soldiers for a bunch of badges anyway.

When spending your laurels use them on celestial trinkets before anything else.

Also Sceptor builds are usually used for High Burst.

IfIFear.7210:

snip

This build looks like a good SPvP build (Staff instead of Scepter) if you learn a few tricks. Scepter looks incredibly weak in this build.

Once you switch to Staff the dynamics of the build will change. A water healer is okay if your dungeon group is very inexperienced. Know that this is a crutch and you (and your friends) should not rely on this in the long term or else your gameplay will become crippled. We want to develop a strong gameplay instead of a crippled one.

Most people posting here will be giving you high-level of play advice and generally this build doesn’t provide much in the hardest content and the usual way people efficiently tackle said content.

Offtopic: Keep this gear for WvW (Use your AC dungeon tokens for Monk Runes) and take off autotarget. Take target off while in water attunement and spam 1 on your feet to pump out a lot of AoE healing.

Now that we got that out of the way… On to the good advice!:
I’m going to apologize now because this is going to be a really long read… Sorry :/

Gw2’s PvE is a non-sustain model. Compared to WoW for example, tank(s)+healer(s) provide the mechanical and statistical sustain to survive encounters, then damage dealers kill things. Gw2 doesn’t have tanks(generally), it doesn’t have healers, aggro can be easily lost depending on the NPC.

Knowing this: How should we approach group dynamics? GOOD THING YOU ASKED FELLOW ELEMENTALIST!!!

Group survivability generally comes from Blinds,Protections,Weakness,Aegis, Stuns, Reflects, Dodges and Dead Stuffs ™ (Dead Stuffs ™ do no damage to your group) Also, since there’s no dedicated healers/tanks/damage dealers, it means everybody needs to be bringing damage to create Dead Stuffs ™.

Now that we know everyone is a damage-dealer… here’s 3 major aspects that group members want to fill: Defensives (the above mentioned survivability mechanics), Offense buffs (Banners, Vulnerability, Might, Fury) and Reflectors(and other anti-projectile).

Eles in particular can bring a very good amount of these: Lets start by looking at this build as an example: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQFAWnMISLD20AWPAdEGgAQCHIyAxlyMq0bA-TxRBABXp8jm9HwTHQeXAAAeAAUq+jZKBBA-e (If you need to understand damage dealing maths, I posted about modifiers recently, check my past posts)

The major things this build brings:
Lots of high area damage, including Ice Bow, which the 4 is an incredible amount of burst damage! (Drop the Ice Bow if you aren’t 1 shotting things) Once this build does its openers, it wants to stay in Fire as much as possible for it’s damage.

Glyph of Storms (Air’s Lightning Storm can allow you to stack 25 Vuln alone with high damage)(Earth’s Sandstorm allows a big area, good duration blinder AND IT ISNT A SMOKE FIELD) In very long fights where you sit in Fire attunement all day Firestorm is better than a Fireball, so it’s still worth using… but Signet of Fire’s crit% may be preferable.
- Quick Glyphs trait helps bring this cooldown down. ’MORE’+’BETTER’ = ‘MORE BETTER’! I crack myself up sometimes!
- – Glyph of Elementals gives us a good tank (Earth, high toughness and hp) to sit bosses in 1 spot your group blows them up. Fire Ele is also solid damage. Quick Glyphs helps here a little too.

Persisting Flames: This makes Eles a really good Fire Field blaster since not only does it provide Area Might it also provides a lot of Fury. Lightning Hammer builds depend on this trait a lot to give huge amounts of Fury and Might to parties. However, it’s also boosts our Lava Font so it’s really strong for Staff too! More fire fields, more fury, more damage.

Other minor things that start adding up :
Arcane Wave is a good instant blast+damager, Arcane Lightning boosts our short term damage and makes this utility a good for a lot of frontloading damage. (Area Might+ Fury, Ferocity, Damage)
66002 unlike similar builds, this contributes to vulnerability stacking. More Storms.
64xx2 64022 or 64202. When storm isnt needed often (use Signet of Fire as a placeholder to save the cooldown) and vuln doesn’t need to be brought you get +10% dmg.
62222 When vuln is capped this is the highest sustained damage with double +10% modifiers.

I hope this read helps you understand the advice everyone will give to you and how to contribute to a group!

shrugs

I use a 0/0/2/6/6 variation all the time in pugs that are inexperienced.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWnMISLDW9AGOAdEGIEII/0cNKocd5KA-TFSGABA8AAAZ/hHV/RKlgDp0LKlBkpjwgLAAA-w

I only use staff conjurer when I run with a group I am comfortable knows what they are doing.

Main difference is I run a mix of celestial and beserkers so I can make both work.

The PvE Meta is geared towards experienced players who have dungeon runs down pack and thus can go full glass cannon, because they know all the boss fights or know how to exploit the map.

Dungeons take a LONG time when your 4 glass cannon dps aren’t dpsing, because they are down or dead half the time. They relatively take less time when I can give them a little forgiveness with a support staff setup.

Of course, people will argue that you should just gtfo and leave the noobs behind, but that’s not how I roll.