Guild Wars 2

I was browsing around available posted builds tonight and ultimately decided to make something I didn’t find elsewhere. Thought I’d share, for opinions.

The Traits:
Fire – 30 – VI, VII, XII
Earth – 30 – VI, II, XII
Water – 10 – VI

30 Points in Fire for the benefit of ALL that POWER and the boosts to fire skill damage, recharge rate, and might.

30 Points in Earth for toughness. Eles are fragile, but this should help. VI provides some extra damage at close range. While you don’t HOPE to be at close range as a staff Elementalist, sometimes in dungeons you are in close quarters or can’t help mobs being all up in your face. Get them down faster with this trait. Since we are using all Signet utilities, II is handy to help them come up faster, and XII allows us to keep the extra movement speed, crit chance and toughness those signets give us, even when we use them.

10 Points in Water, mostly to boost the HP a little. My gear is all damage focused, so I needed some extra HP. VI gives extra damage when your health is above 90%, but there is probably some flexibility in the choice here.

The Slot Skills:

Signet of Restoration: Grants you health every time you cast and provides a significant heal when activated. IMO it’s the best of the healing options.

Signet of Air: 25% increase in movement speed and upon activation blinds target and nearby enemies.

Signet of Fire: Improves critical chance and upon activation burns your enemy (a loooooong burning effect of 11 3/4 seconds).

Signet of Earth: Improves toughness and upon activation immobilizes your enemy. I like to use this just before laying down Lava Font to make sure the mob stays in my fire field just that much longer.

Elite: Your choice. I have been using Glyph of Elementals but am just now finding that Conjure Fiery Greatsword is a heck of a lot of fun, for YOU and someone nearby! Who wouldn’t want a huge flaming sword? xD

The Gear:

Power/Prec/Condition Damage with Superior Runes of the Elementalist (Exotics in my case.)

Weapon – Ghastly Staff of Corruption, from the AC vendor. I need to upgrade my sigil, which right now is Major Sigil of Corruption. I’ll be looking into that soon.

Jewelry – Beryl Orichalcum Amulet, Earrings, Rings of the Valkyrie (Power/Crit/Vitality). Without this, my HP was still a bit too low for my taste so the extra vitality (320 with these pieces) is expected to be very useful. Power isn’t ever bad for an ele, and some extra crit can’t hurt either.

I have a Rampagers Spineguard of the Rampager (Power/Prec/Condition Damage) at the moment, not the best probably but hey, it’s what we’ve got.

The Stats:

(Standing still, at level 80, not casting. (First number is what comes from traits/signets.)

Power: 2222
Precision: 1543 / 1453
Toughness: 1306 / 1216
Vitality: 1331
Attack: 3333
Critical Chance: 34% / 30%
Armor: 2226 / 2136
Health: 14995

While casting in fire attunement, power goes up to around 2502 and attack to 3613 due to might stacks from Fire XII.

Playstyle:

Although you will primarily be using fire attunement, since that’s where you’re getting the most bonuses, an Elementalist should never be narrow minded and avoid other attunements. Make use of your own combo fields with finishers from Earth, or take advantage of combo fields from group members using the Earth finishers. Fire will deal the most damage, but with this build damage from the other attunements is better than it was with other builds I have tried, and all attunements should be used as needed by the situation. There are plenty of guides out there on this so I won’t go into more detail than that here.

Anyway, I hope some of you out there will try this and let me know what you think. Please excuse the hasty post as it’s spontaneous and done at a late hour! Enjoy!

5% dmg in melee range is wasted on staff-take 5% to bleeding foe’s instead since most of the time in a dungeon group they will have bleeding on them,also change the water trait
to cleansing wave since you have no cond removal other than the 45sec cd rain(piercing shards is crap on staff you get 20%increased damage on ice spike and thats it)
I also dont like that you dont have any stunbreakers.
All in all its a nice build

Fair enough, might consider changing those traits.

I don’t find condition removal to be much of a problem personally, I get combos with a guildie guardian for that, but if he’s not there it’s something to think about.

What would you recommend doing about a stunbreaker?

hmm, this is my opinion in what you should do with the build.

1- change to a 30/10/20/0/0 here you are http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAGhMmYbvR3GACPIAhEGKARERhHA;TYAqaM1IqxWjrGZNA( just copy paste)
as you might have noticed you have 10 trait points left and these can do good wherever you please.

2- the gear. maybe you don’t have the gold for it but here is what i would have done in a “gold free” world.
go knight gear with ruby jewels and divinity runes with battle sigil.
why?

• knight gear support your healing from your healing signet. and also provides with power and precision ( the best stats for dps) you could swap in some berzerker gear aswell if you feel comfortable with it.
• ruby is because no other jewel can challenge the 3% crit dmg it gives.
• divinity, no rune can match it’s dmg and those who are close are not nearly as useful as the divinity for a ele (we benefit from every stat point, keep that in mind).
• battle. if you dance for a bit this can easily give you 6 might stacks constantly. running fire for 10 seconds and then make a quick rotation on the other elements and then back to fire again will grant you its maximal effect.

:edit: ops wrong buildlink.

I still don’t see your build. Interesting ideas. Might give that a shot after running what I’m doing for a bit. Can you fix the link though?

jjujju.7630:

I still don’t see your build. Interesting ideas. Might give that a shot after running what I’m doing for a bit. Can you fix the link though?

copy and paste it into your browser bar. easy. don’t klick the link. it’s broken but if you copy and paste it it will work.

I use something similar to the original poster…However I use Earth 2, 3, and 12 as well as Water 5 and Fire 3, 9 and 12. I don’t use the Signet of Fire normally as I DPS in Fire/Earth Primarily and most of the time the mob is burning.

I would rather lose some stats on my armors and go on 2/5 knight stats armor and 3/5 berserker armor and knight stats staff as well. Back, rings, accessories and necklace will go with berserker as well.
On traits I put on max damage as possible, but some traits needs to be defensive like debuff removal from water trait or gain buffs by changing attunements. I’m still good to go with 1370 toughness.

My personal build:
30: VI, VII, XII
10: VI
0:
10: V
20: V, VIII

My stats are:
2120 power
1370 toughness
1642 precision
41% crit
70% critdamage

My staff elemental have: 2.4 k power. 61 % crit chance. 99% crit dmg.
14 k hp. using: Ether healing.. Mist form.. fire crit % signet.. 25 % movement..
And Greatsword summoning for faster traveling.

I only have vitality on my 2 accessories power/vital /crit%..
and my staff: power / vital / crit %.

pve is easy.

Even using this in wvw.
But because fireball traveling speed is so crappy.. its hard.

But, my highest fireball crit whith my 7 might stack, and 5 vulnerable on enemy.
was: 4.5k crit.

normaly its around 3 – 3.5k crits. IF they ever hit anything.

Basically any build you end up with a series of choices:

Raw damage vs Condition damage: Basically Raw damage is Fire/Air and Condition damage is Fire/Earth. Our raw damage is pretty meh all around (not enough burst) without stacking a lot of power/crit such as through boons (might/fury). Our conditions are surprisingly good having a lot of long duration burns and bleeds but like all conditions suffer from max stacks in a group and your damage can be cleansed in PvP.

Stunbreaker/Condition Removal vs Raw tanking power: This basically “boils” down to (hah hah…) Water vs Earth. Water has a crapload of Condition Removal and it’s Cantrip support gives you a lot of stun breakers. Earth gives a lot of high toughness and with signets some on demand CC (root, chill, blind, etc) but no real stun breakers making you have to take the damage.

Boons and Swapping vs No Boons and Less Swapping: or Deep or Shallow Arcane. Boons are very strong for both offensive and defensive purposes. Being able to swap allows for more cross attunement combos which is really effective with spammable abilities in x/D.

Once you make those decisions you pretty much decide how you want to put your character together.

Condition Damage and Raw Tank power = 30 Fire, 30 Earth, 10 (wherever) with Carrion (Power/Cond/Vit gear) giving you lots of power, lots of condition lots of tough and lots of vitality.

Raw damage and Stunbreaker/Condition removal = 20-30 Fire/Air, 30 Water, 10-20 in Arcane with Berserker (Power/Prec/CritDmg gear).

Raw damage via Boons and Stunbreaker/Condition Removal and boon defenses = 10 Air, 30 water 30 Arcane with Berserker or Soldier (Power/Tough/Vit gear) gear depending how defensive you want to be.

etc.

From there you can see why certain builds are more popular than others. The last one mentioned (the “standard” 0/10/0/30/30 build) offers a lot compared to other build types. This doesn’t mean that other builds (such as 30/0/30/0/10) aren’t viable only that they don’t offer as much. Many people see a lack of a stunbreaker and immediately think a build is worthless. Again you have to ask yourself what situations you are going to put yourself in and whether or not you need it. An Elementalist who joins a large zerg probably won’t need many stunbreakers cause you’re one in a giant crowd and less likely to get focused.

Personally I’m waiting to see what they do with the traits that they keep saying they are going to take a look at and review. I am hoping they actually make the incentives for going a 30/0/30/0/0 build much greater than the losses felt when deviating from the standard 0/10/0/30/30 build.

put 30 in water for cantrips instead of 30 in earth. Cantrips are way better for keeping you alive than 300 toughness