Guild Wars 2

So I have a small little team of friends (5 of us) who are running Dungeons.

Myself – Elementalist
Necro
Guardian
Warrior x 2

We’re all a bit weird I’m afraid, the Guardian decided he wanted to play a burns based DPS build, and the Necro decided he wanted to play a tanky build… hardly fotm but they enjoy it and that’s what we’re about – fun! So far it’s worked out really well, surprisingly well in fact and we’ve had zero problems in explorable’s which we do without skipping anything! I went support, staff support specifically because I genuinely like staff gameplay. You will not convince me to go D/D Aura share, so please don’t try!

I’m running this build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEQQBFiYSuVGTDOOAQe8iJsIKUR5xMyYDA (please copy and paste)

So it’s pretty average. And I found myself taking Runes of Altruism for the fury and might boon. I spend a lot of my time switching attunements doing euption -> lava font, lava font again whilst dodging into it in earth, healing everytime it’s on cooldown, along with arcane wave for lots of might stacking, switching to water to stack vulnerability and heal etc…

Yada yada yada. I’m sure I don’t need to explain the basics of the build, that’s not what this is about. What I can say is the two warriors and the guardian are our DPS, whilst the Necro fills more of the traditional tank build and I decided it’d be pretty straight forward to take the healing role, and so went clerics gear.

It wasn’t until recently I looked at the wiki and actually did the maths on the +healing co-efficients. I realised that with an investment of 1700 + healing (and that was a random number I picked from vague memory not being online) I gain a whopping 300 HP for every blast finisher AoE heal I do on people (according to the wiki calculations)… 300 HP extra for all that stat investment…

Now, it all adds up, I get that. My team is also always in melee range (when they can be) stacked up ontop of each other for combo field goodness. Geyser is easy to hit with etc etc… but that only heals for about 1k extra ¬.¬

My question is this: With my group set up, is the clerics gear worth it? Or should I change to something else, and if I were to change to a different item nomenclature, which one should it be? Would it be worth going full damage and loosing the +300 HP on blast healing, or the 1k HP on Geyser, or the 200 or whatever it is on water blast, in favour of getting mobs down faster with fireballs and AoEs? (Let’s consider some AoE will be nerfed in future too)

I won’t be changing my traits or playstyle, it works extremely well with my group set up, it’s just the item nomenclature I’m looking at.

Oooo Ooo edit: Does +Healing effect revive rates at all as well, is that something to consider?

a lot of ppl consider healing power to be a week stat. witch it is imho. you need to play a very specific roll with it and have alot of people around you with lots of toughness in order to be efficient.

now your skill build is pretty solid, the glyph heal + storm + a catrip of your choise+ arcane wave + elemental is one of the most default settings a ele can have in a pve
environment.

now, i wont try and convert you to the aouramancer side buuut. what if i told you that you could be a auramancer using a staff ? would that be interesting? would it be interesting giving your entire group around 80% uptime of fury and swiftness? if yes, check out this build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImSbzxygjDAkHvYSJiCPUekzO2A

only thing about your traiting that i think is sub-optimal is not taking blasting staff as a staff ele. yeah it’s a bit buggy, but it increases the areas by a lot.

also the waterXI trait is week in pve due to most mobs lack of major condition dmg. the clense in water + water5 should be enough. ( note that warriors and necromancers have alot of cleances them self so no need to over do it)

the choice between arcaneV and arcaneVI is usually depending on what dungeon you are playing. but keep in mind that the arcaneV have a rather low range ( lower then 400)

and taking water trait and healing power gear can’t leave you with much dps.

and i don’t know why u don’t like auramancers? is it because they are dagger dagger? or just the play style? i play a auramancer staff. and it works great for my team and me

if you can afford celestial stats on a pice of gear you should take it, you as a elementalist gain from all stats no matter if you are building full support or full dps.
if you want i can give you my entire gear build.

armour : berz
runes divinity
staff : berzerker,
sigil : 3x 20s might on attunement swap ( battle i think it is)
amulet+ earrings : (pow , prec, tough) with zerker jewels.
back: zerker
rings: the celestial stats from the fractal ( used to use same as current the earrings)

i make up for the lack of major stats of healing power because i’m going 30 into water.

i’m thinking of changing my Armour for some pvt/knight gear and making a mix of them as i start to feel the pain is coming to me at fractal 30.

but if i were you and were unsure of what to do, go with some rare berzerker armour and feel for yourself. "do i need more defence, then go for toughness in your earrings / rings, if you need evne further change some of the armour to pvt/knights and if you feel you need more you need to start learning to dodge. if you find yourself in a spot where you don’t realy feel you are contributing to the team as much as you could then try diffrent types of build and change it as you go along. i used to have a 20/10/0/10/30 build then converting it to a 0/25/0/15/30 build and then a 0/20/0/20/20 and then finaly to the 0/10/0/30/30 auramancer build wich does increase the overall dmg on the party by a lot. but test. maybe you like a 30/10/0/10/20 build, who knows.

Hi there!

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question, your post is quite interesting reading. I have a thing against D/D Auramancer, not necessarily a staff one, I just hadn’t considered it before considering we only have the one aura on the actual weapon set :P

The reason I haven’t taken blasting staff is because my entire team is always in Melee and we communicate over skype whilst in Dungeons, I’ve found it’s not needed for the blast finishers and combo field mechanics that we use, and because we’re bunched up, mobs bunch up too (this also helps with the boons on attunement trait)… Of course saying that, you are correct, my damage is not amazing by a long shot, but I’m mainly there for the might stacking, cleansing and reviving

But again, thanks for your reply, it’ll make some interesting experimenting.

Towren.1745:

Hi there!

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question, your post is quite interesting reading. I have a thing against D/D Auramancer, not necessarily a staff one, I just hadn’t considered it before considering we only have the one aura on the actual weapon set :P

The reason I haven’t taken blasting staff is because my entire team is always in Melee and we communicate over skype whilst in Dungeons, I’ve found it’s not needed for the blast finishers and combo field mechanics that we use, and because we’re bunched up, mobs bunch up too (this also helps with the boons on attunement trait)… Of course saying that, you are correct, my damage is not amazing by a long shot, but I’m mainly there for the might stacking, cleansing and reviving

But again, thanks for your reply, it’ll make some interesting experimenting.

you have a frost aura. through frost field -> blast finishers, here is how you utilize it at its best:

W4 , go to earth , E2 , dodge into frost field , arcane wave.

this will grant your team 3 frost auras if you switched from water to earth and started eruption early enough ( this require some training to get right but you should get a hang of it quite quickly) the 3 frost auras will give your team the zephy’s boon proc 3 times, witch will grant them 15sec of fury. and combined with magnetic aura it will give 20sec of fury! as long as all stay within the blasting area witch you said you didn’t have any problem with.

and note that this is you who is applying the boons thus this will increase the boon duration with how much extra boon duration you have witch should be 30-50% depending on what food you are eating. giving us a grand total of 26-30sec of fury. from you alone. onto the entire team.
and we look at the cd on these spells, all a 30seconds cd except for the frosts field witch has a 32sec cd. witch will only give us a very small window where the team don’t have fury ( you still have it due to arcana5 minor trait) however as a warrior he should have his own fury. to gap this very small window. and if u think it’s to much fury. cut down on one of the finisher and use it on lava front like you said.and remeber that this stack very nicely with water25 minor trait ( 2% extra dmg per boon) because this is basicly 2 permanent boons. couple it with might(and in my build also vigor) you should easily get 4+ boons on you at all times. giving you 8%+ dmg basically all the time. this trait is huge!

the traits is yours to chose and if you don’t use it you could at least have a better utility like the dodge one, ( the aura you gain from reviving is not shared but yolu still get the boon buffs) and if you have 20% critchanse from fury all the time you will have some descent vigor going on aswell.

Combo auras don´t proc powerful auras.
They do however gain the boons from the other aura traits, it´s the blast that applies those auras and boons.
Therefore powerful auras really isnt worth the investment for staff, cleansing water is imho superior.

Strang.8170:

Combo auras don´t proc powerful auras.
They do however gain the boons from the other aura traits, it´s the blast that applies those auras and boons.
Therefore powerful auras really isnt worth the investment for staff, cleansing water is imho superior.

hmm. didn’t know that was how it worked. well magnitic aura is a strong aura nevertheless. and a few extra seconds of fury cant hurt. i wont swap it out for cleansing water however. i’d rather take quick glyphs from air. but then i lose the water 25 minor trait. witch gives me a quite nice boost.

ill probably run a 0/10/0/30/30 build anyway. but you can do what ever you want with those points. go with quick glyphs and zeph boon in air maybe? that was my last build and was pretty descent. but cleansing water in pve is quite week for the moment because most dungeons don’t have any significant condition dmg. the other party members should be able to hold themselves clean anyway. i’d rather have the magnietic aura party wide for 5sec…