Guild Wars 2

I’m not sure exactly how to build traits on the new ele I made, any tips? I’d like to go more towards a damage build over supportish healing

I’ve been finding 20 fire and earth and 10 in everything else to be adequate for my needs; it’s tanky enough to take a hit while still dishing out great damage. The specific traits themselves should vary wildly based on your chosen weapons/utilities.

I recommend 30 arcane, the attunement cooldowns are unbearable otherwise. It’s even better if you are rolling a staff, all your aoe will grow much larger with the Blasting Staff trait.

Paah.6758:

I recommend 30 arcane, the attunement cooldowns are unbearable otherwise. It’s even better if you are rolling a staff, all your aoe will grow much larger with the Blasting Staff trait.

The reduced recharge rates aren’t worth losing out on the damage, armor, and health boosts the other trait lines offer, especially given the cool downs that the skills themselves have. What’re you gonna do with 30 Arcane, swap after every autoattack?

Mister Stranger.3986:

Paah.6758:

I recommend 30 arcane, the attunement cooldowns are unbearable otherwise. It’s even better if you are rolling a staff, all your aoe will grow much larger with the Blasting Staff trait.

The reduced recharge rates aren’t worth losing out on the damage, armor, and health boosts the other trait lines offer, especially given the cool downs that the skills themselves have. What’re you gonna do with 30 Arcane, swap after every autoattack?

I agree, unless you’re planning on using blasting staff (which does seem pretty useful), I don’t know that the cooldowns alone justify points in Arcane.

Personally I think I’m going to leave 10 in Arcane to get the boon when switching between attunements, and the rest is going in Earth and Water. I’m trying for a more condition-damage / survivability build though. It works pretty well except that without the power-buff from Fire my straight-damage is pretty weak, which is especially an issue underwater.

SammyIAm.1726:

Mister Stranger.3986:

Paah.6758:

I recommend 30 arcane, the attunement cooldowns are unbearable otherwise. It’s even better if you are rolling a staff, all your aoe will grow much larger with the Blasting Staff trait.

The reduced recharge rates aren’t worth losing out on the damage, armor, and health boosts the other trait lines offer, especially given the cool downs that the skills themselves have. What’re you gonna do with 30 Arcane, swap after every autoattack?

I agree, unless you’re planning on using blasting staff (which does seem pretty useful), I don’t know that the cooldowns alone justify points in Arcane.

Personally I think I’m going to leave 10 in Arcane to get the boon when switching between attunements, and the rest is going in Earth and Water. I’m trying for a more condition-damage / survivability build though. It works pretty well except that without the power-buff from Fire my straight-damage is pretty weak, which is especially an issue underwater.

Hmm, take 10 out of water and put those into fire. That extra damage (and condition duration!) will help you out much more than the extra 1000 health if you’re using your crowd control properly and can position yourself well.

for my staff build I go 20 into arcane, to get the staff AoE increase. The first major trait goes to the “boon on attunement” one, which is immensely helpful.
For the rest it depends on what I’m doing. sPvP I got specced 30 into earth and the remaining 20 in fire and water iirc, not too sure about those last ones.

Mister Stranger.3986:

Paah.6758:

I recommend 30 arcane, the attunement cooldowns are unbearable otherwise. It’s even better if you are rolling a staff, all your aoe will grow much larger with the Blasting Staff trait.

The reduced recharge rates aren’t worth losing out on the damage, armor, and health boosts the other trait lines offer, especially given the cool downs that the skills themselves have. What’re you gonna do with 30 Arcane, swap after every autoattack?

I don’t even get to do any autoattacks because I constantly have (aoe) damage spells available with the fast attunement swapping.
I have not tried this with other weapons but it works really well for staff.

Mister Stranger.3986:

Hmm, take 10 out of water and put those into fire. That extra damage (and condition duration!) will help you out much more than the extra 1000 health if you’re using your crowd control properly and can position yourself well.

Hmm, the only reason I was going to go all the way with Water was for the little extra condition removal from Cleansing Water, but 10 points in Fire does seem to have a lot of bonuses… might have to try that. Thanks for the tip!

So as a staff wielding fire ele throwing full fire with some air for crit isnt good?

I use staff mostly and this is my planned build

Fire 30
Earth and Water 20 ea.

Would like to hear your opinion people on it.

What I use and has worked very well for me in PvE, all the way up to level 80:

FIRE
30 Points
Major Traits:
Internal Fire: 10% More damage while attuned to fire
Pyromancer’s Alacricity: Fire magic skills recharge 20% faster
Pyromancer’s Puissance: Every fire magic skill adds a stack of might for a few seconds

AIR
20 Points
Major Traits:
One With Air: Move 25% faster while attuned to air. 5% for every 5 seconds you’re attuned to air.
Bolt to the Heart: Deal 20% more damage to foes under 25% health

ARCANE
20 Points
Major Traits:
Final Shielding: When you drop under 25% health, you gain Arcane Shield, which explodes after blocking 3 attacks, damaging surrounding enemies.
Blasting Staff: Area of Effect spells have increased radius.

It gives amazing AoE damage while attuned to Fire, allowing you to clear several enemies at once fairly quickly. For survivability, I have the Arcane Shield trait, plus I put another one into one of my utility slots. That way, when in a bad spot, I can block 6 attacks, with two damaging AoE blast after every 3 attacks. Combine that with a Glyph of Lesser Elementals to summon an elemental to fight alongside you, and you’ll rarely have trouble while PvE-ing. Even less so when you combine it with the Glyph of Elements elite skill. Shortest cooldown of all your elite skills, and it summons another, stronger elemental. So it’s you, and two elementals. You can choose which type of elementals to summon, depending on the situation you’re currently in. Want to melt that mob of enemies? Summon 2 fire elementals. Wanna put a wall between you and those nasty, tough enemies? Summon two earth elementals. And the movement speed boost from the Air trair is just such a lifesaver. Constantly moving 25% faster will make life in Tyria a lot easier for you.

EVERY elementalist should have 10 pts in arcane at least (my personal opinion, but it’s hard to argue with). Using elemental attunement, you get a free group AOE boon EVERY time you change attunement (might for fire, regen for water, swiftness for air, and toughness for earth).

It’s just tookittengood to pass up for a measly 10 points…

I’ve been enjoying a 20/0/20/10/20 set up. Reducing my CD on Earth, Fire, and Water. Leading with earth, you can get 12 stacks of bleed, (switch to fire) burn, and 5 stacks of might (combo fields ftw) on you prior to the enemy reaching you. All the things I mentioned are AoE based gaining a benefit from the 20points in Arcane.

I only recently hit 80 and I’m in a set of lv75 magic find gear but I haven’t encountered any real problems in general PvE. I primarily use a staff.

I mostly play Scepter/Dagger and Dagger/Dagger, though I’m trying to get myself into playing the Focus some more. Staff I only really use in WvW.

I would love to be able to switch between two builds.

I personally really like using signets. I usually have two signets (3 including the heal), Water and Earth mostly, and an arcane spell like arcane wave or shield.

I’m having a lot of fun so far using:

20 in Fire
Internal Fire
Pyromancer’s Alacrity

30 in Earth
Signet Mastery
Serrated Stones for longer bleeding
Written in Stone to maintain passive effect of signets

10 in Water
Cleansing Wave, sometimes Shard of Ice for vulnerability

10 in Arcana
Elemental Attunement for the boons

I actually do not have an issue with the recharge rate on attunement swap, so I don’t really feel the need to put more than 10 points in Arcana. I’m debating taking them out completely and putting another 10 points in Fire. While the attunement boons are nice, I played without them long enough to think of them as an added luxury.

I move in close with air, lead with earth to bleed and cripple everything, switch to fire to burn and damage everything that hasn’t already bled to death. I just don’t use water much unless I need condition removal.

In general, whatever you pick, choose traits that benefits the utilities and skills you use and the style you want to play. There are traits that benefit cantrips, signets, arcane skills. Or ones that give you generally power, swiftness, condition duration, etc. Pick a theme and build everything around it.

sPvP is a nice way to try out traits before you spec them in PvE, considering the cost to reset your trait points once you’ve picked them.

v For a while I used pretty much the build that Selix posted down here, also very nice. I just didn’t really make good use of the 3 stacks of might, because I always use mist form and lightning flash to get away from the fight, not towards it :P

I run with:

20 Fire
Spellslinger (3 stacks of might on cantrip usage)
Internal Fire – 10% fire dmg

20 Air
Quick Glyphs (Decreases my heal CD by 5 seconds)
Air Training – 10% air dmg

20 Water
Soothing Disruption (Regen and Vigor on cantrip usage)
Cantrip Mastery (20% cantrip cd)

10 Arcana
Elemental Attunement – For the Boons

I enjoy the build as both S/D and D/D, I have yet to try it as D/F. I use Lightning Flash, Armor of Earth, and Mist Form as my utilities. I have a sigil of rage and sigil of strength, for quickness and stacks of might. I’ve had upwards of 20 stacks of might in pvp running at one time, and the cantrips + elemental attunement provide near constant regen and vigor as well.

i feel if you are running staff you should put 30 into arcane, not necessarily because of the swap cd (although that’s nice too) but because evasive arcana synergizes so well with the staffs combo fields. Also i want to punch a kitten when i see someone running staff but not running blasting staff. Overall the traits in arcane are both the most important and most unique and fun. Stacking everyone might to 25 with a little help from your guardian buddy by using a semi elaborate set of dodges set-ups etc. is way more fun than "oh look my skill came of cd 1 s earlier.
i also feel staffs attacks aren’t fast enough and the play style doesn’t reward staying in one attunement enough to warrant 30 fire to stack 5s might but that’s just me.
Pyromancers is awesome on dd though.

I like my 30 fire, 10 Air, 30 water. I may have really low survivability but its always fun to see gigantic crits on bunnies haha.

I’m looking at 25 air, 20 earth, 15 water, 10 arcane, pretty much just say a dungeon build support.
-Air: soothing winds, inscription (the 25 points here is just to push up precision to add to healing)
-Earth: embrace and serrated stones, bleed damage is awesome
-Water: Alacrity, heals recharge faster
-Arcane: to get boons

this is really based around dungeoning.

Getting 30 arcane is a waste of traits, simply because when you switch between four attuments and use all dps skills you don’t even feel the CD on attument change.