Guild Wars 2

I’ve heard as a general statement that if your glass cannon Berserker’s set of gear you’re wearing is making you die too often, add in some Soldier’s gear.

How much is some? I’m really just talking about running around in the new zones (Auric Basin, etc). Do you replace all of the armor but leave the trinkets, or vice versa? Just a few pieces? What do you veteran Elementalists do when out soloing maps?

I am using full zerk with 2 knight’s assecoires. It really is just preference.

None. ‘Soldier armor for learning zerk’ is just a really dumb statement used to brush off nabs who ask too many questions as vets usually can’t be bothered to actually help new players as they usually have their heads up their kitten. If you want to maximize passive defense with the least amount of DPS loss you’re gonna have to use a calculator. I’m currently running with 2283 power, 2788 armor, 13.2k life, 59% crit, 195% crit damage, 422 healing power and 75% boon duration, all unbuffed. These aren’t perfect stats to be fair but that is quite impossible as you cannot freely change stat on gear. You will always have abit of excess in some areas. Right now I could do with lower precision as there will be situations where i’m above 100% and then its wasted. I could do with more ferocity. If there were ferocity stat infusions I’d be using those. These stats do however provide a more all round stat distribution and unlike celestial gear allows me to focus certain stats and neglect others. E.g. celestial gives somewhere around 650 healing power however I feel around 400 is sufficient to get some good regen going. Especially with my boon duration. Celestial also has low power and crit chance, somethign I have alot more of. Soldier really only adds a bit of toughness and vitality and you end up with low crit chance, similar ferocity as me and not enough toughness to feel much of a difference. Not to mention useless vitality. In a PvE situation, where you never really experience stacked conditions like in PvP, having alot of vitality would actually hurt you more than help you. It makes it harder to keep bonuses from Water trait, Scholar Runes, and Diamond Skin up, it makes your healing less effective and generally the things that one shot you would usually require a near doubling of your life to make a difference whereas alot of toughness can easily halve the damage you’re taking. My advice: use gw2 power to calculate your stats and decide from there how much damage you want to sacrifice for how much passive defense. Using that tool ensures you give up the least amount of damage.

Awesome, thanks for the thought out response.

I run all Soldier’s ascended armor with all beserker’s ascended trinkets and a beserker legenadry weapon. I calculated the stats along time ago and they came out to be close to what was, by one opinion or another, an ideal WvW elementalist, at least, at the time.

I mostly run this in PvE, because I can’t really bothered to have two sets of armor nor do I think the stat lost from not going full zerk is the end of the world in casual PvE. Some people have a real hard on for dungeon speed runs and kitten, but I’m not one of them.

I’m getting close to crafting my first ascended piece. As far as insignias go does it look so far like HoT is going to have the same “zerker or kick” mentality in raids? Or is it still too early to tell for raid gearing? I might just hold mats till raids are released before deciding on which insignia to use.

You van cheaply switch ascended stats once you have it

roelvanesch.2817:

You van cheaply switch ascended stats once you have it

Did not realize this. Excellent, thanks for the reply.

I run full zerk, armor/tinkets and weapons (I am contemplating stealing my mesmers assassin gaer and pop it on my ele though).

When I have problem with staying alive I look at 2 things:
1: traits/skills. I might swap “signet of fire” out and use “arcane blast” for more healing or “lightning flash” for insta mobility so I dont need to stop my meteor shower mid cast. or change my heal from AB to ER. Or in the traits, I might take “gale song” (new tempest trait) and swap out Arcana trait line.

If I still have a problem, then
2: Think for a sec and see if I was doing something wrong. I know, this is the l2p bla bla bla, but really 90% of the times I die, when I look back I know what I did wrong and what to improve.

I am a casual player and I really dont have a problem staying alive. alot of it is learning ele and where to stand and what skills to use.

I have been playing my revenant abit the last days, more hp and more armor, and I die.. ALL the time.. I am really bad at it.. like REALLY bad, and I dont even really know what to do, but I also know that it will come, in 10 more hours of revenant play I will not die nearly as often and I will be better at placing myself safely.

Re-reading this I know it might come of as the useall l2b bs, pls dont hate I really mean it well, and changing a few of your skills to utilitys will do alot, often more the full soldier, btw, I also run full zerk in wvw (unless its vs. a good guild group that all use retaliation all the time (that thing kills ele’s), but changing traits and utilitys will make you able to stand on the commander and take a … load of dmg without a problem. Go take a look at wvw traits/skills and see if you can adept some of it into your playstyle.

roelvanesch.2817:

You van cheaply switch ascended stats once you have it

Just beware that you will lose the rune if you do this. Therefore, don’t put your expensive runes (like strength) into your gear until you know what stats you want.

BlackBeard.2873:

roelvanesch.2817:

You van cheaply switch ascended stats once you have it

Just beware that you will lose the rune if you do this. Therefore, don’t put your expensive runes (like strength) into your gear until you know what stats you want.

Also good to know. Thanks again.

Forget sprinkling your zerker gear with soldiers.
If you want a boost to survivability, get full zerker and slot them with Runes of the Earth. They will provide you with more than enough survivability.

Once you improve over time, replace those runes with Runes of the Scholar to maximize DPS.