Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I’ve been playing an Elementalist since GW2 launched and it has remained my main through the years. After trying out all the weapons the Scepter and Dagger combo felt the most enjoyable to me and I’ve pretty much been using it exclusively. I use my Ele in outdoorsy stuff and in story quests, so this is a question about the Open World application of the build.

My current traits and skills are: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJArYhUMKc23wqBdEBCAClwBS8Y0tqtHD-e

The way I play the spec is to start in Fire, use all the skill, then move to Air, use all the skills there as well, then go Water>Earth, until Fire is off cooldown and I start the whole thing again. I enjoy using all the skills I have, from healing random people with my Ttident to CCing mobs with earthquake. Constantly changing Attunements also lets me give surrounding players lots of boon support thanks to Elemental Attunement.

Now i know this isn’t optimal, but I was wondering if anyone has an actual idea of how much worse I am doing than the Meta builds, and if I should change some skills or traits while keeping the same playstyle. I was thinking about changing from my Berzerker to Celestial gear, since I pretty much use all the stats, but what I’ve read about Celestial says that it is only good for PvP.

One quite minor change that I think you’ll get significant benefit from involves swapping a couple of traits. Remove the trait point from the water line, and add it to arcana In the first arcana trait slot take Renewing Stamina (trait II) and in the third slot take Evasive Arcana (trait XI).

The effects from Evasive Arcana can be used once every 10 seconds, per attunement, and provide excellent utility - you can dodge into a foe while attuned to fire to do damage and apply some burning, or heal and remove a condition in an area while attuned to water, all while dodging enemy attacks. Renewing Stamina, particularly with gear that grants precision like berserker’s, gives very high uptime for the vigor boon and lets you dodge much more frequently.

From your post, it sounds like you could also improve your rotation through attunements - there’s no need to cast all skills before switching attunements, and with 6 points in arcana you’ll be able to swap pretty regularly (which grants those Elemental Attunement boons all the more frequently). All skills have some use in some situation, yes, but you’re much better saving them to combo together than just throwing whatever you have whenever it’s off cooldown!

EDIT: oh, and with your traits, too - you’ll benefit much more from taking Persisting Flames (Fire XI) instead of Pyromancer’s Puissance. The might from every fire skill sounds nice, but that’s... not really that much might, since you’ll usually be swapping between attunements regularly. Persisting Flames lets you get good uptime for the fury boon, so much more regular critical hits... and applies this boon to nearby allies, too!

Thanks a lot for the suggestions! I’ll try them out as soon as I get in the game.

Sceptre/Dagger have a good burst and might stacking capability, but have terrible auto-attack, making it the worst Elementalist dps set. That’s why sceptre/x build always bring Lighting Hammer to patch up that deficiency.

Just to give you an idea. The auto-attack of the Lighting Hammer have almost 3 times more dps than the Sceptre Air auto-attack. In total by simply not using the Lighting Hammer you handicap yourself of around half of your potential dps.

Your trait pts allocation make you lose 300 ferocity and 300 precision compare to a 6/6/2/0/0 S/D + LH build. That’s minus 15% in term of dps.

For you trait themselves you lose Bolt to the heats (around a 6% dps) and Internal Fire (around 8-9% since most of your dmg should be done while in fire but not of it).

Arcane Lighting would give you around 4-5% more dps.

Arcane Fury give you around 20% uptime in fury, while Persisting Flames would make it 100% for a lost of around 9% of your dps.

Pyromancer’s Puissance, Elemental Attunement and blast should keep you at around 11 constant might, compare to 12-14 constant might with a standard S/D + LH build. That should only be a 1-3% lost in dps.

In final, a meta S/D + LH build would do around 2.5 times more dps than your build. That take into account that you would use a full beserker gear. But of course that only count the DPS and don’t take into account the defensive ability of your build over a meta build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJArYhcMKc24woBdEBEACpkhDUYwoZFX/F-e
This’d be better but even then I’d swap out to either D/F, D/D or Staff.

Scepter only works for condi and fresh air.