Guild Wars 2

So until Anet decides to let Ele’s do competetive damage, we are all stuck with building for defense, Not too many of these defensive builds favor D/D. Well I discovered a build that gives you all the fun of D/D and great survivability AND you can actually kill people!(with tons of pitiful dmg over time).

So here is the build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEIQJAoYhMmmbxR5gjEAEFn4yoQIiCPUeMDO2A;ToAgzCvo2xsjYH7Oudk7MEZSA
copy and paste into a new tab if it doesn’t work

I named it Hydrospike because your lifeline is switching to water often for heals, and earth for protection buff. While in earth you will see spikes coming up from the ground everywhere, very often, so thats where the ‘spike’ came from.

This build will give you pretty much constant swiftness, protection, and regen. You will almost always have vigor up, and your enemies will be chilled very often. All you have to do is play like any other D/D build, except remember that switching to water is pretty much a 50% heal everytime(attunement bonus, dodge heal, regen), so keep it available for when your health starts to dip.

You will find NO burst with this build, but you will be able to 1v3 scrubs all day. The only 1v1 fights I have trouble with are very well played evis warriors, mesmers, and thieves. The only group fights I have trouble surviving are ones with ranged dps.

Because of the survivability, mobility, and healing support of this build, it is GREAT for tournies.

Here is short video I recorded just to show some of the point defense capability of this build. This is not my best fight by any means and these are not great opponents. This is just one of the only recordings I have done because recording drops my framerate so low that its almost unplayable.. so I don’t do it often.

http://youtu.be/PgH3vZCa5Ss
Best viewed at double size, not fullscreen

NOTE Take a look at how often protection, regen, and vigor are up.

EDIT: Updated the link the most current build I am using, very slight changes. I find myself using signet of restoration as my heal more often now, but glyph is still very useful when you use it in earth attunement.

I’m using exactly the same build but the difference is I use the valkyrie amulets and different runes for more damage.

Ran something similar with D/D and yes, that warrior in that Vid was absolute trash. Good build/vid anyway!

So someone pointed out to me that a very similar build has been around afor a while and posted before on the forums. This build accomplishes what my build does except it has better runes.. here is the link: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Tank-or-glass-still-only-1-viable-elementalist-build/first#post359909

Edit: So I still like full earth runes better, its nice having 60% buff duration but the loss of toughness is definitely noticeable, but I am enjoying sigil of battle more than hydromancy, you notice less chills on the enemies but I think the buff to dmg is worth it.

minion.6245:

Ran something similar with D/D and yes, that warrior in that Vid was absolute trash. Good build/vid anyway!

And by warrior you mean guardian.

I would suggest switching the clerics jewel for soldiers. Your healing is already pretty high but your health isn’t much off a buffer.

After looking at it I think your right Nikkle. But instead of soldiers I think I’m gonna go with Valkyrie jewel, little more dmg and with fury up all the time I actually crit pretty often in this build.

Thanks for the suggestion

This is depressing because I saw a warrior in a similar 1 vs 2 situation. He one-shotted the first player and then took out the other player within a second or two. On the other hand it looks more fun because it’s more of a challenge.

Is most elementalist PvP like this then?

Yes, the majority of your spvp fights with this build will look like this.

wow TONS of ele’s running similar builds lately. This particular build got nerfed a bit due to the Runes of earth nerf, but I’m still having a blast. Glad to see so many eles out lately, people are starting to complain about us being OP.

get rid on your healing skill glyph get aura of restoration 200 life per cast your attacking so much your missing on 1000 life per 2 secounds

how would you get 1000 life per 2 sec if you can only attack once per sec?
or is something broken where you can ultra mash the button and get life each time u spam it?
if so… fix that.

other question is, how are you guys keeping auras up for so long, are you just using the standars TWO or are you using some kind of combo field to put them up, (If so how )

I will try this out tonight, but I have actually been playing BETTER this weekend. I just sat down for 12 hours on saturday and 7 hours lastnight and just tried to play FASTER and better. I hardly call the secpter dagger combo, with toughness VItal runes build I run with now effective at keeping me alive as people claim.

12.8k hp….yea….I’ll pass on this one. I’ll stick to my Staff with 21.1k hp, 160 less armor, 230 more power, and double the healing output. Maybe with a Soldier’s Amulet you could get something done against someone who wasn’t a complete vegetable (gives another 6k hp to work with). But even with that fairly high armor value, that little of a health pool means Bola —> Bullrush (because you would obviously remove the Bola) --> Hasted Hundred Blades = your Arcane Shield just procced.

you have 3 cantrips to get away from a warrior 100b……

I never said this build is better than splishsplash or whatever staff builds out there… but its much more fun and fast paced.. I can guarantee that. I only tried staff support for one day because it was sooooo sooo slow.

Jay wilson.1702:

get rid on your healing skill glyph get aura of restoration 200 life per cast your attacking so much your missing on 1000 life per 2 secounds

You know when I was coming up with this build I thought I would be using my heal everytime it came up so I didn’t consider the signet. But lately Ive noticed I usually have my heal up for a good majority of my fights. I’ll try the signet, thanks for the tip.

I’m not saying I don’t want fun or anything, but nothing about needing the APM of a Korean StarCraft player to do “okay” with a class in comparison to similarly skilled players of any other class is ever going to be fun. So if I wanted some good ol’ fashioned ultra-violence fun, I would have rerolled some 700 hours ago (600 on live, then another 100 between the beta weekends and stress tests).

I see what you are saying.. and ya its a little discouraging.. I have faith that Anet will eventually give us some sort of competitive DPS soon. For now atleast we can be a tanky nuisance.

I actually just posted almost this exact build in the build thread. Been using it with Valk’s for a while now. I use Signet of Earth for 8v8 to land those Fire Grabs. Extremely fun, and pretty effective.

Rhoto.8791:

I see what you are saying.. and ya its a little discouraging…For now atleast we can be a tanky nuisance.

That’s all I’m saying man, it’s very discouraging putting forth 2-3 times the effort to barely be up to par dps/crowd control wise and subpar on the dps (though the fields do considerably boost party member’s dps and we do have the best group healing in the game).

The damage of that build is unfortunately very low. Too much work for almost no pay off imho. You are just delaying the inevitable in the end if you can’t dish out enough damage. Why not focus on high condition damage with a solid defense instead?

D/D 20 fire/30 earth/20 water with focus on condition damage is flexible, has a very decent defense, can avoid snares and be deadly. Conditions are not affected by an opponents toughness, so a mere signet of fire and churning earth alone has the potential to kill someone if not treated. Using “Burning Fire” allows the signet of fire and cleansing flame to tick for another three seconds, which is around 2085 extra damage. It is easy to re-apply the conditions if they are removed. Works very well.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhEmYbxx5gjDAEFn4SQhBMMeEiHaA;ToAgyCuo0yolQLrWOtkaNCYKA

Give it a try.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhMmYbwx5gjDAEFn4SQhCMMeAiHkA;ToAgyCuo0yolQLrWOtkaNCYKA
(this is the signet heal alternative)

Before switching to this build I did try a similar defensive build with con dmg, and to me it felt less powerful. Also it made me switch to S/D because IMO those weapons are better for con dmg, and I enjoy D/D playstyle so much more. The build just wasn’t as fun and didn’t seem to dish out as much damage as this build.

That war was horrible. He never interrupted earth 5. Huge cast time with that and he just lets you get it off over and over again. Wish i played against bads like that.

i pretty much had to sit down for an entire day and try to play FASTER. not BETTER… not SMARTER.. just press more keys and do it faster. no laying back in my chair… no no.. sitting up in my chair clicking fast and i actually work up a sweat playing like that.
then I go back to playing my gun warrior and press 3 buttons, vulnerability, stack bleeds, use channeled, then back to stacking bleeds. and i get more kills with half the effort……..
and think about it… gun warrior isnt even called a POWERFUL or good spec. yet its STILL better for less effort than my ele.

tarnin.1690:

That war was horrible. He never interrupted earth 5. Huge cast time with that and he just lets you get it off over and over again. Wish i played against bads like that.

It was a guardian and a thief. No they weren’t the best players, regardless it is very easy to survive 1v2’s even against GOOD players if you time your CD’s correctly. This is just one of the only clips ive taken because recording reduces my framerate so much. Ignore the video, try the build, its awesome.

BishopX.6453:

i pretty much had to sit down for an entire day and try to play FASTER. not BETTER… not SMARTER.. just press more keys and do it faster. no laying back in my chair… no no.. sitting up in my chair clicking fast and i actually work up a sweat playing like that.
then I go back to playing my gun warrior and press 3 buttons, vulnerability, stack bleeds, use channeled, then back to stacking bleeds. and i get more kills with half the effort……..
and think about it… gun warrior isnt even called a POWERFUL or good spec. yet its STILL better for less effort than my ele.

The fast paced gameplay is what I enjoy about this class/build, though I disagree with your comment about not playing smarter, knowing when to dodge/LOS/KD/use shocking aura/cleansing fire, is critical.

I have actually learned alot more playing this build against classes than playing my previous dps D/D build. Because the fights last long enough for you to pick up on players patterns.