Guild Wars 2

I have not played guild wars 2 for about 7 months but have decided to come back and try elementalists. I was always a necromancer but I have always been drawn to the melee caster hybrid ( I picked for the same reasons).

After playing around with the weapons and elements I have come to the con conclusion that I really like dagger/dagger and am interested in dagger/focus. My favorite element without a doubt in this game has to be earth. I very much like the bleeding slow heavy damage game play that it offers mixed with short burst of fire for added pressure and air/water for defense.

I will be mostly pvping so any help on what works mostly with earth focused builds, dagger/dagger and sigils etc would be appreciated. I am only aware of certain benchmarks and stat weights that works well with necros so i am at a bit of a loss when it comes to elementalists. Right now my build has come down to this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhImYbxx2QlDIkHvgJwCjHagI0hlCzAA-TgAg2CrIASBkDIDQyds7A

I can the build has offered various layers of protection up time, good healing between condition rotations especially mixed with using air for miss direction/shielding, and moderate condition damage.

Any other builds I tried to press fire and earth more for higher damage had me dying to fast to actually apply damage. What is the consensus on poison? elemntalist have no access of it outside of weapon swaps yet I think it may add more pressure to a fight then just stacking more bleeds through geomancy.

Are there any successful power builds utilizing earth/ fire. elementalist traits seem to have a crazy high amount of raw damage . Coupled with the fact that airs first trait can be a executioner trait (20 extra damage and low health) where most classes have to wait till their final trait to unlock it seems promising. Air/water may be better to pursue this because of the way air damage and easy water vuln stacking is however.

What are some useful utility skills I may not be reading into? I picked mostly signets because they looked like they would be affording me the most use all the time. The skills with 75sec and 90 sec timers didn’t seem like they were worth it in a fast paced pvp setting where you would only have them up for maybe 1 in 5 encounters.

What is the best healing skill in you opinion? The one that heals over time and clears conditions has been very useful to me combined with earth toughness channeling trait( along with waters channel and fire channel). The glyph has afforded me some awesome regen however and more protection uptime.

The signet that heals every cast seems a bit low to counter the burst being thrown out condition wise or direct.

How is flame axe? would it possibly be better to swap my signets for conjurs like flame axe to push damage and utility?

After a few more days of tinkering I have settled on this build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhEmYbvx2QlEABFGgw4BIiQiowDlCzA-ToAgyCuI2RBkDIzOSgsANCY6B

it is condition/power heavy that uses signets / dagger auras to maintain near infinite protection/fury/swiftness uptime with some added might due to constant fire shielding.

My attrition build has come down to this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhEmYbxx3QlDAkHmcCLjHZIyIlCzA-ToAg2CrI2RBkDIzOSgsANCY6B

Really easy to tank damage, dot’s are still decent and water can full heal me every now and then. Also fairly easy to keep protection up for long periods of time.

I have been trying to get a lava axe build to work. lava axe has some interesting mechanics going for it when it is combined with glyph of elemental power that can let you spam chill,burn, weakness, cripple depending on what your attuned though even when doing fire damage. it also seems to get whatever attunement damage bonuses you have for whatever attunement your on. It has a pretty lengthy fire application and a pretty fast auto attack for the base damage it has.

I be messing around with lava axe and a air/war auto attack build for max % damage via traits and vulnerability stacking.

If your heart is set on signets, I will suggest signet of air. The passive is pretty meh for a d/d but it offers an instant blind (good for downing foes) and a stun break.

I run a S/F build:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/S-F-Selfish-Aura-sPvP-build/first#post2287598

That is my usual build at the moment I’m playing around with a derivative of the way anet wants us to play. It has 100% protection uptime (by 100% I mean 12-20 seconds at any one time). It really has less prot uptime, but uses the Earth rune x4 set to boost the prot (prot on hit) a bit further. The first linked build can sustain almost 100% prot when using the auras off cd (can end badly). For those moments when your prot is down it offers invulnerability, reflect and the standard 2 interrupts.

Good to see another fellow running an aura build. Not many of us.