Guild Wars 2

I’ve been gearing up by doing flame citadel to get Berzerker exotics and I’m doing P1 often in Flame Citadel still to get more gear. But for example, every time we get to the pillar part just before the last boss, I die very quickly, even in water attunement while spamming myself with healing skills and with full water traits, I die quickly. Should I give up on berzerker gear and if so, which set should I try to get?

Thanks very much.

You need atleast around 400 healing , 2.4k armour and 16k vit before going even lower.

Zerk gear hits hard but its not something you start of with.

you could probably run full clerics, ping zerk gear and carry an icebow/LH none would be able to tell the difference unless they have incomming healing checked in their combat logs.

Zerker armor, Knights/Celestial trinkets. Good balance between DPS and survival. Cele is especially good since you eles can make full use of the healing stats.

More important then that, learn to cycle your skills. Hop attunements, use every CC and defensive skill you have. Ele’s have a high skill ceiling for a reason. Only stay in one attunement when the only thing you need is DPS and you can afford to be lazy.

Raggy.4602:

I’ve been gearing up by doing flame citadel to get Berzerker exotics and I’m doing P1 often in Flame Citadel still to get more gear. But for example, every time we get to the pillar part just before the last boss, I die very quickly, even in water attunement while spamming myself with healing skills and with full water traits, I die quickly. Should I give up on berzerker gear and if so, which set should I try to get?

Thanks very much.

It would help to know what kind of stats you have on your armour including runes today. Trinkets, backpack and rings/earrings are also important as those weight as much as your armour for total stats. What kind of stats do you have on your weapon and what kind of sigils are you using?

Rhyse.8179:

Zerker armor, Knights/Celestial trinkets. Good balance between DPS and survival. Cele is especially good since you eles can make full use of the healing stats.

More important then that, learn to cycle your skills. Hop attunements, use every CC and defensive skill you have. Ele’s have a high skill ceiling for a reason. Only stay in one attunement when the only thing you need is DPS and you can afford to be lazy.

Raggy, attunement swapping with Elemental Attunement and Evasive Arcana might help you or even go for Elemental Contingency instead of EvA, if you stay more in Fire as then you will have Retaliation for short duration (with Might from EA).

Runes and Sigil can also make a big difference for how offensive or defensive your character will feel. Sigil of Purity (which trigger on swapping of attunement) will clear condi each time you switch between attunement. With Hydromancy you will have short chill (which prevents NPC form using skills and to move). Then you have Sigil of Bloodlust which stacks +10 (25 stacks) power on kills or Battle which will provide you with 2 stack of might for 20 sec. on swap.

You would want to look into how some runes might work better together with some traits in Fire or Air and the same kind of runes (and sigils) which trigger more direct damage or add more damage in a combo of conditions (burn) and damage. It is also important to keep an eye on how more points in one attunement will change how other attunement work and also related utility/elite skill.

For Fire you will want condition duration as high as possible, but need to make a trade of with Arcanas boon duration and shorter time between attunement swapping. The same goes for aura sharing as you will need to use a full water line to get that (grand master trait). The more water, the more healing power and vitality you will add to your stats in your Hero panel.

Next thing to look into would be what kind of food and tools (consumables) that might help you to get more damage and still get critical hits/more power/conditions. Tools like Sharpening Stones, Maintenance Oils or Tuning Crystals will help you with this last bit, if you can not get enough out from your gear, runes, weapons, sigils and trinkets.

cont.

This is the build I am using right now in SW: D/D Fresh Air/Arcana

It works well enough for both go solo (to some degree; three Teragriff and you have hard time to stay alive) and to provide buff to people around from EA+EvA. If you change from full Arcana to Water in trait line to get Aura sharing, then you will also provide for your party with some protection from Elemental Shielding (Earth) and swiftness and fury from Zaphyr’s Boon in Air (this work for all auras independent of attunement).

Something that is important to notice here are that aura sharing (especially boons) will have some more duration from choco omnoberry food. If you use fire field and blast it with earth (EvA) or Arcana Brilliance/Wave during fight, then you will also be providing might up on your fury boon (it is not a very large field for dagger, so it is only for people standing in the field that will give more might).

Sometime I have a hard time to regain health during battle from my healing skill and it is first after battle I can see it go back to full. This behaviour might be because of how low my healing power jump when I pick Arcana trait line instead of Water. Dagger/dagger have, as you can see from link down here, magi+zerk stats which work well as long as you can keep up your protection from auras (water/air) and CC (earth). You will get an aura if you go from fire field to earth and make a leap (skill #3). I don’t know if this also will have boons, but in any case, you have plenty with defensive skills. What you need to keep track of is conditions as Cleansing Fire have a duration of 40s (32s with water trait 20% CD). If you want to remove conditions and don’t have enough from your utility, then it might be better to go for fire (major) or water (weapon skill “cleansing water” will also remove one condition).

If I instead take Silence staff (with +128 healing power) for the same kind of fights, then I can see my healing will go faster (remember to also use blast finisher [arcana brilliance and arcana wave – earth have also one finisher] on water field to get more healing). This staff have Sigil of Hydromancy and Purity to reduce movement/skill from enemy and to cleans conditions on swapping of attunement, which work better then my bersker staff with Sigil of Bloodlust and Sigil of Stamina (refill endurance on kill).

Did you check your combat log (chat) to see what went wrong before you get downed and die? It might be that you need to adjust cool down for water attunement skills or/and cantrips. Maybe your healing skill need to be replaced with something else? I switch between Arcana Mastery (20% CD reduction for arcana skill/utility) and Renewing Stamin (to get more dodges; movement) in synergy with Evasive Arcana (dodge in water heal both your and nearby party during combat).

If you use staff with EvA, try first to dodge in Earth (as this skill take some time to finish) and place Lava Font in that field. In this case you use a finisher before you use a combo field to get both to trigger. It is the same thing you have to do to get more healing from water during fights.

Raggy.4602:

I’ve been gearing up by doing flame citadel to get Berzerker exotics and I’m doing P1 often in Flame Citadel still to get more gear. But for example, every time we get to the pillar part just before the last boss, I die very quickly, even in water attunement while spamming myself with healing skills and with full water traits, I die quickly. Should I give up on berzerker gear and if so, which set should I try to get?

Thanks very much.

Never give up

This event is quite easy for elementalists. Contrary to what most people tell you in this thread, the best way to overcome this challenge is to focus on killing the waves of attackers rather than tanking them.
Of course this means that you should use an offensive build, therefore you will die even more easily. But here is how you can make sure to stay alive long enough to kill many waves:
- Glyph of storm in earth: constant blind for more than enough time it should take you to get rid of the first attackers (maybe wait until a number of them are on you before using this)
- Glyph of elementals in earth: will take hits for you and give you protection, there is a reason why we call it the best thank ever
- Use a focus off-hand: the invulnerability in earth is better than any heal you could ever use instead
- Ice Bow: the ice storm will shred foes to pieces. It requires to stay still for a while though, so use it while your elemental tanks or in conjunction with arcane shield. Also make sure to aim the IB cast near a friend, so your party can use it too.

Or OP can use lightning hammer while kiting around the pillar.

Iris Ng.9845:

Or OP can use lightning hammer while kiting around the pillar.

Yeah that works too but it’s so scepter-like in terms of gameplay, so, meh! :p
lalala I’m never biased lalala

LH works without scepter too :p

F4 → Sandstorm
Arcane Shield + Icebow 4

full zerk
eruption > unsteady ground > magnetic aura > lava font
watch mobs melt and help teammates at the other braziers

There’s actually a few factors that go into the encounter you’re facing. For example if you’re with a Mesmer or Thief I find it’s very common for them to stealth and their mobs can suddenly come to you. This will put you over the target cap and sometimes you can just get mauled. It happens.

When starting out like you are, I always recommend gearing a bit more defensively. Soldiers (Power/Vit/Tough) is generally my recommendation and it can be gained doing Ascalon Catacombs which is an extremely easy farm dungeon that can be done alongside CoF. Alternatively if you have a lot of WvW badges you can buy a suit that way, but don’t put anything expensive in it as you can’t salvage WvW gear. Getting a Soldier suit of gear isn’t a terrible investment as it’s useful in places like WvW as well as potentially HOT with new PvE changes coming up (hard to say at this stage).

There’s also a variety of utility skills we can put on to help with small burst scenarios. For example Armor of Earth will give you a strong 6s of Protection/Stability. This will let you face tank some damage for those seconds while you burn the mobs down. Particularly strong burn Utilities like Conjure Frostbow → Ice Storm (4) will let you obliterate 3+ mobs on you for those 6 seconds duration. There’s also the extremely strong Water/Earth Elementals which should survive long enough (if cast right before you enter) and their use skills are more defensive (a melee knockback+heal and AOE Protection).

In addition to Utilities, you should get comfortable with your weapons. Using Staff Air to Static Field and Gust (which Pierces) can be handy. In addition there’s Staff Earth for Unsteady Ground and Shockwave both which can keep things away from you. When you use Staff Water to refresh with Geyser and Healing Rain don’t forget to use Frozen Ground to give you a patch of Chill to allow yourself to kite them around. Offhand Dagger has CC’s like Updraft and Earthquake and soft protection with Frost Armor applying Chill and reducing damage incoming.

Over time as you get more comfortable using your utilities and your weapon skills you can slide back into that Berserker gear because you won’t be dying as much. You also should be looking for only be joining Berserker groups with Berserker gear. Many normal groups run much slower and playing with Berserker gear in that scenario can be frustrating. I’ve seen some groups take so long that we had 3 respawn waves of mobs with that Pillar encounter for example because the DPS was slow on the gate killer. However in a maximum Berserker team this won’t be the case and they should be able to kill it fast and let you simply move on with no trouble.