Guild Wars 2

Let me start by saying: I’m not very good at PvP. Mostly been playing WvWvW lately.

Been running around with a Staff and appropriate build, but I feel so very passive rather than active. Raining fire is fun, but compared to simply pressing 2 on my dagger thief, doesn’t get the same kill satisfaction.

I have seen and looked up many D/D builds, so I attempted to switch. However, I feel I’m laying on the ground even more than before. Is there any guides on what I should be doing? Getting a build right is only part of the fun. Apparently I’m not using the right skills at the right times or in the right order against foes. Any tips/hints on how to learn D/D?

2. Badges? What qualifies me to earn a badge of honor? Sometimes I can play for hours spamming the kitten out of things with my staff, watching my xp go up, but yet, no bags ever seem to drop? I get lucky to get 10 badges a night (excluding the JP). Yet others boast claims of 100+ badges a night. Obviously doing something wrong, but what?

Find yourself a champion mob and practice using your dd combos and CC. I’ts all muscle memory and rhythm. Champion mobs have tons of hps so you can practice for a good long while.

I think whoever is bragging about getting 100+ badges in one night is full of kitten. I think 10 in one night is pretty good. Sometimes I’ll play for a couple hours and only come out with 4. You do have to spam your F key constantly cuz the loot bags drop at your feet and are easy to miss. I have a guardian friend that said when she switched from support spec to GS, her number of badges increased drastically. So, maybe it’s the same concept of farming where you have to hit the mob, and you or your group has to do 10% of the total dmg.

Mek.2947:

I think whoever is bragging about getting 100+ badges in one night is full of kitten. I think 10 in one night is pretty good. Sometimes I’ll play for a couple hours and only come out with 4. You do have to spam your F key constantly cuz the loot bags drop at your feet and are easy to miss. I have a guardian friend that said when she switched from support spec to GS, her number of badges increased drastically. So, maybe it’s the same concept of farming where you have to hit the mob, and you or your group has to do 10% of the total dmg.

It completely depends on how much you play and how many kills you get. I’ve been out in WvW for the past 3 hours and got ~60 badges. This was from roaming with a small group up to running around with a 20 man guild group capping and killing stuff as more and more people joined in.

Checked yesterday got 450 badges and our raid wasn’t done, think went for couple hours after that. I banked all my badges before that so it was all from there. You can get kittenloads aslong as you kill kittenloads.

You get badges from bags, and you get bags by being combat with the dying enemy – doing dmg to it. I don’t think the dmg requirement is that high, healing doesn’t help much (none?). Same way as you get kill sigil procs and other stuff like that.

Sabull.5670:

Checked yesterday got 450 badges and our raid wasn’t done, think went for couple hours after that. I banked all my badges before that so it was all from there. You can get kittenloads aslong as you kill kittenloads.

You get badges from bags, and you get bags by being combat with the dying enemy – doing dmg to it. I don’t think the dmg requirement is that high, healing doesn’t help much (none?). Same way as you get kill sigil procs and other stuff like that.

Can you clarify? What class? Were you in a party? What was the time played?

When playing my staff ele, it doesn’t seem to matter how many fire I can make it rain from the sky, I will get xp in large amounts, but the loot bags just never seem to drop.

I like my elementalist, but it is such a shame I can play with my sub 20 thief and get so many more bags, simply by being a heart-seeker noob.

Sabull.5670:

Checked yesterday got 450 badges and our raid wasn’t done, think went for couple hours after that. I banked all my badges before that so it was all from there. You can get kittenloads aslong as you kill kittenloads.

You get badges from bags, and you get bags by being combat with the dying enemy – doing dmg to it. I don’t think the dmg requirement is that high, healing doesn’t help much (none?). Same way as you get kill sigil procs and other stuff like that.

Dmg only, damage by party members counts for you as well as long as you have hit a player/mob at least once.

Key to dagger survivability right now is switch to water attunement to be healed, roll to be healed (evasive arcana) then leave water asap so you can do it again soon while maintaining protection boon from switching to earth attunement.

Cookie cutter build has you using 3 cantrips with the regen/vigor on cantrip use trait in water.

Biggest mistake I see elementalists do is wait until they’re really hurting to switch to water attunement for the heal. Don’t do that. If you’re missing some hps, switch to water early. Sooner you do that and then leave water, sooner you can do it again. With 30 in arcane, it’s just a 9 second cooldown before you can go back.

When I go into water, I use dagger 4 immediately if it’s up (frost aura, instant, can be used while using other skills), dagger 3 if I’m close for the chill, then pop dagger 2 for the ice cone and switch attunements while it’s channeling.

Beyond going in and out of water often, just as important is going in and out of earth often to pick up the protection boon. It can be good to switch to earth from fire attunement after using fire 4. If so, switch to earth while fire ring is down and you are on your opponent,, earth 4 (knockdown, gives you 3 stacks of might in the combo field) then earth 5 (another 3 stacks of might). Switch out of earth attunement while earth 5 is casting. If they ran away and it’s channeling, use lightning flash to port to them and hopefully hit them with it. Some experienced players will know to avoid this by just dodging as churning earth ends even if they aren’t in range, or hitting you with a CC. In WvWvW I usually go for it though. Also for consideration is switching to earth, using 2 (cripple), then 4(knockdown), and simply leaving earth. In that case, it can be nice to not have come to earth from fire attunement, since while they’re knocked down you can go into fire and hit them with some of the good stuff while they’re down.

There’s a reason a lot of people run 0/10/0/30/30 with boon duration runes and a sigil of battle (might sigil). That’s because it synergizes with itself very well. Tanky elementalists like boon duration and switch attunements extremely often to take advantage of the 10 point elemental attunement trait in arcane giving them lots of protection and regen, along with of course the heal and condition removal of switching to water. The 10 in air lets you keep plenty of swiftness and fury up from auras which doesn’t disrupt your play, since both shocking aura and frost aura can be used while using other abilities. While the effect of the aura itself is not affected by boon duration anymore, the swiftness and fury you get from aura use is.

Unless I’m chasing a runner down, I let which attunements are up decide what I do next, rather than what abilities I want to use within the attunement. Finding the right mix for you that allows you to use as many abilities as possible while still putting attunements on cooldown so you can then switch to them again soon is what will allow you to thrive in pvp (and often in pve, honestly)

At first it feels difficult, there’s some learning curve. It isn’t too bad though.

learning d/d: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-D-D-ele-12-16-12#post656535

The best way to earn medals is to do jumping puzzles.

EgonVenkman.1907:

Can you clarify? What class? Were you in a party? What was the time played?

Elementalist staff (our daggers get just the same or more) and played around 6hours with a guild raid.

You are not gonna get many badges if you run around solo or with pug zerg.

Sometimes I get 2 badges per kill, sometimes one, a lot of the time I don’t get any badges even for a solo kill.
If you claim 450 badges in 6 hours you’re saying you got an average of one badge every 75 seconds.
I guess it must be true because no one has ever lied on the internet.

For medals Area completion with your toons

Occam.9841:

Sometimes I get 2 badges per kill, sometimes one, a lot of the time I don’t get any badges even for a solo kill.
If you claim 450 badges in 6 hours you’re saying you got an average of one badge every 75 seconds.
I guess it must be true because no one has ever lied on the internet.

It’s quite different playing in a roaming wvw guild than solo :P. Can get upto 1.5k kills a day, 1k standard.
We got player with above 100k wvw kills, (world first? wouldn’t be suprised), so playing like that, you kitten badges from every hole.

Anyway sorry to blabber out of the main ele topic.
In short:
Go for SAFE STANDARD 0/10/0/30/30 aura DD with full Cantrips, works super good solo, group and raid.
Use P/V/T armor with boon duration runes or soldier crests or ruby orbs.
For tips and tricks prolly on the topic linked above, but the specs are most likely outdated and just too many different opinions, so go for the standard.

I made a silly math mistake above…450 badges in 6 hours is a badge every 48 seconds.
Sorry for my error.