Guild Wars 2

I run zerker guardian but maybe I just know how to play him effectively after 1.5years

But i tried to gear all zerker and scholar on my ele and I just get wrecked too easily.

What’s the current meta for ele fotm at the moment? Should I wear celestial?

Tip – Going full zerker on the class with the lowest health and armor is not the best of ideas. You might be able to kill people fast, you will also die in seconds if your burst misses.

There is no meta really, mostly because ele is so skill-dependent that you will do roughly as well no matter what spec you run once you get used to it.

However, I wouldn’t go full zerk unless you want to try to pull off a high-damage staff build (probably one of the most difficult builds if you aren’t zerging) or gimmicky fresh air burst.

was quite easy with s/d LH (30/20/0/20/0) up to ~25lvl fotm. than I switched to fire staff (30/20/10/10/0). yesterday in grawl shaman 38fotm live better than 2 clerics guardians and ptv warriors.
full zerk +scholar + arcane brilliance. no break stun, no heal (except grawl shaman fotm) (coz you almost all time use it to blast fire).
Idk about celestial, but bers works good enough

Staff and renewing stamina along with keeping your distance with lw or staff.
Celestial will make you miss your big numbers but you’ll feel much tankier.

It all comes down to practice and denying to stack when people fail to deploy their projectile eaters properly.

Oh, fractal of the mists not flavor of the month.
Well that’s awkward. Pure DPS fire staff (though incredibly boring) and s/f Lightning Hammer are the meta I believe.

Edit:
I blame Ash for saying people and burst.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

I blame Ash for saying people and burst.

Why blame me?

I have been hit for instant downed in Factuals. Burst isn’t always the best way to go. I am more of a Tankish-Burning sort of build. I only run with Staff in certain ones, The Atherblades one can be a nightmare. The one with the 2 dudes as the final boss is a nightmare as pure melee as well. These 2 i would go with staff 100%.

I run 30/10/10/20/0 s/f build with LH and full zerk gear. I mean ofc it all depends on the other 4 people in your team :P but with focus you have a bit more defense with you.

Going full zerker on a Guardian is a lot more forgiving because it naturally has high base Armor. You can go Full Zerker on Elementalist in Fractals too but you will probably have a hard time in higher levels and you will need help from your allies for boon/heal sharing (gotta love guardians).

It’s either you put in some toughness (get some Cavalier gear maybe) and/or learn to dodge though you will only have limited dodges so it’s better that you get some more toughness.

Dear OP, what level of fotm are you working on? From my experience, any thing below 30 shouldn’t be an issue to zerker/scholar elementalists given with both melee D/F builds or mid-range staff builds. The zerker ele has a very little room for errors. The only reasons to get wrecked are 1. not understanding the boss mechanics, 2. abusing your defensive utilities and 3. having a bad pug. A successful fotm run depends heavily on a good amount of reflection, cc and line-of-sight bursting. If pugging fotm 40+ is your thing, then I advise you to look for a regular coordinated group instead, or just roll your guardian or a mesmer. That said, a good zerk ele is a great asset to any fotm groups. Ele utility skills truly shines in each and every fractals.
if you’re in EU, I’ll be more than glad to invite you into my fotm daily run.

Edit: Don’t forget to bring your focus to fractals.

Also, this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Strategy-against-dungeon-and-fractal-bosses/first#content
I’m hoping to bring up a new subject weekly or biweekly.

Like mentioned above, Focus is the key for Fractals.

Focus allows for more survivability (Obsidian Flesh and Swirling Winds mainly, but Magnetic Wave and Gale can be life-safers) and a slightly longer Firefield than /D allowing more dodging without losing precious Might(/Fury) stacks. Only downside is that /D has a bigger Firefield in case of moving targets. S/F has amazing might-stacking potentional with a slightly lower damage possibilities than D/F, D/F has less Might, but a bit more DPS.

Another possibility is going Staff, your DPS will be high, you’ll permanently provide Firefields to your team and it’s incredibly easy rotation-wise, neither does it require as much close-positioning (damage-loss when you move out of 600 range, but can be done if you need a breather,) making this an incredibly easy build to learn mechanics even better. But I feel this build lacks a bit in non-orginized teams, likely since Swirling Winds have saved my life and my teams too often.

For more information on the builds I recommend this guide:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-DPS-Elementalist-for-PvE/first
It’s aimed at organized teams more than anything, but you can likely find a build fitting your needs in there and the writer is way more experienced and capable of providing information than I am.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

I blame Ash for saying people and burst.

Why blame me?

I have been hit for instant downed in Factuals. Burst isn’t always the best way to go. I am more of a Tankish-Burning sort of build. I only run with Staff in certain ones, The Atherblades one can be a nightmare. The one with the 2 dudes as the final boss is a nightmare as pure melee as well. These 2 i would go with staff 100%.

I saw the “might be able to kill people fast” and immediately assumed pvp.
Not really your fault, the new culprit is sleep deprivation.

One of the main differences between playing guardian and ele in pug fractals is that if you’re a guard and your group is ranging, you can still usually melee safely. If you’re an ele and your group is ranging, you’ll run out of dodges and invulns pretty quickly. So with that in mind, I recommend D/F (melee) or staff (ranged) for fractals. Once you’re used to the mechanics you’ll be able to do just fine in berserker armor, though while learning don’t be afraid to swap in a piece of knight’s armor or two.

I’ve done some fractal video guides with a specific focus on eles, available at http://tinyurl.com/elefracs/ to supplement what’s in my text guide that Esmee already linked.