Guild Wars 2

After endlessly dying to the opponent’s team-mates after bursting people down with S/D and thus have my handiwork undone so simply, I have resorted to trying more haphazard builds. And I think I have found the best one by far, using what is, imo the most effective Ele trait by far.

Lava Tomb.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImIblRAxjFAkCpEKEwoQHCFWARRBO7A-TkAg0CnIwRhjDHDOScs4MsA

For use in:
sPvP hotjoin with a friend or two.

How to use:
This build involves going full berserkers and laying down your strongest Aoes, Static Field, Meteor Shower and Lava Font, then going full YOLO into the fray with Lightning Hammer/FGS in Water Attunement and mashing 1, Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave. Final Shielding will also provide an extra oomph when it explodes. If you get downed? No worries, the +damage steroid traits combined with Lava Tomb will pump your damage high enough so that the produced Lava Font will tick for 2k-5k per second and your super fast casting downed number 1 skill will hit much higher than when you are alive at 2k-4k each, ensuring either a guaranteed rally or deter your opponents enough so your friends can revive you. If the ambitious Mesmer/Engineer attempts to distortion/S-shrink stomp you, congrats! Simply Vapor form away and after your teammate picks you up you can hug onto them and kill them the next time you’re down.

What not to do:
- Using this in soloQ or tPvP unless you are willing to risk ranks.
- Trying to play normally and being afraid of being hit – you do not want to get downed away from people, in fact you should WANT to get downed but oddly enough you probably won’t most of the time unless you violate the following:
- Running in by yourself without others to assist you.
- Vapor forming too early/too late. Try to delay so by the end of vapor form, 10 seconds have passed so you can generate another Lava Font at the end of Vapor form but don’t try too hard.
- Not being downed in Water Attune will drastically decrease your downed state damage output.

Variants:
- S/D or D/D will give you an extra sigil slot. Blasting staff still recommended to make your Lava Tombs big enough to melt people’s faces.

It’s really fun in a crazy way. Everyone should try it when doing your PvP dailies

Haha, love this. I’ve been running a similar build in hotjoin because trying to play Staff normally became too frustrating.

For extra lulz I sometimes bring Earth Shield for the AoE pull. If I’m fast enough I can pull a bunch of people to me, daze the most dangerous one in front of me, drop shield, switch to Air, Static Field→fire→Lava Font→Water→Frozen Ground→Ice Spike. Then I die and my Lava Tomb procs.

It’s like….50-50 effective lol. But when it does work it’s hilarious. I even had a thief QQ at me: “wtf why do you do so much damage AFTER I down you?”

Elementalist: the only class that is downed so frequently that building for the downed stat is actually a thing.

Thanks for sharing, I might just try this out.

I ran a nearly identical build, except with 30 air and 10 arcane, with scholar runes and S/D. It was fun doing more damage when downed. A problem is that people can stomp you easily from outside the Lava Font, which ruins its awesomeness. It still makes for fun hotjoin suicide missions.

We need something that does more damage the lower our hp is. Then we can go with a bang. That would be so awesome for kamikaze. Like a supernova explosion or something

Yea, lava tomb is a good one, if you can live long enough in down you can use your mist form to proc another.

33% damage + lava tomb, anyone in that being held by grasping earth = dead. It’s actually funny that you seem to do more damage with this then you do when your up.

Ptolomy.6984:

We need something that does more damage the lower our hp is. Then we can go with a bang. That would be so awesome for kamikaze. Like a supernova explosion or something

Fire Grandmaster: Out with a Bang: “While in fire you do 10, 20, 30, 40, 50% more damage when below 50, 40, 30, 20, 10% hp respectively and you gain quickness when below 33% hp. If you go down within 5 seconds of reaching 50% hp you explode forfeiting your rally causing damage equal to your downed health in a range equal to Fire Storm.”

This really speaks volumes for the current state of elementalist. I don’t know if I should laugh or cry.

Glenstorm.4059:

Haha, love this. I’ve been running a similar build in hotjoin because trying to play Staff normally became too frustrating.

For extra lulz I sometimes bring Earth Shield for the AoE pull. If I’m fast enough I can pull a bunch of people to me, daze the most dangerous one in front of me, drop shield, switch to Air, Static Field->fire->Lava Font->Water->Frozen Ground->Ice Spike. Then I die and my Lava Tomb procs.

It’s like….50-50 effective lol. But when it does work it’s hilarious. I even had a thief QQ at me: “wtf why do you do so much damage AFTER I down you?”

Yeah I stopped trying to be serious with S/D and just being out-sustained and out-damaged by some random rifle using warrior and went full kitten with LH.

TGSlasher.1458:

Ptolomy.6984:

We need something that does more damage the lower our hp is. Then we can go with a bang. That would be so awesome for kamikaze. Like a supernova explosion or something

Fire Grandmaster: Out with a Bang: “While in fire you do 10, 20, 30, 40, 50% more damage when below 50, 40, 30, 20, 10% hp respectively and you gain quickness when below 33% hp. If you go down within 5 seconds of reaching 50% hp you explode forfeiting your rally causing damage equal to your downed health in a range equal to Fire Storm.”

Hmm I should try 4x Balthazar Runes and 2xDivinity Runes to get some quickness.

Jabberwock.9014:

This really speaks volumes for the current state of elementalist. I don’t know if I should laugh or cry.

To beat broken builds, you have to use broken builds :P
After pondering the traits I decided to try out LH with Lava Tomb against people’s protests.
I’ve had more success in beating necroes and stun-warriors with Lightning Hammer than trying to fancy Fresh Air burst my way through their tankiness and Death Shroud or Healing Signet. Too bad LH isn’t always up.

Believe it or not, even Lava Tomb had been nerfed.
It used to have no cool-down and Vapor Form once functioned differently with the downed state so you could beat anyone 1vX as long as they are downed.

zencow.3651:

To beat broken builds, you have to use broken builds :P
After pondering the traits I decided to try out LH with Lava Tomb against people’s protests.
I’ve had more success in beating necroes and stun-warriors with Lightning Hammer than trying to fancy Fresh Air burst my way through their tankiness and Death Shroud or Healing Signet. Too bad LH isn’t always up.

Believe it or not, even Lava Tomb had been nerfed.
It used to have no cool-down and Vapor Form once functioned differently with the downed state so you could beat anyone 1vX as long as they are downed.

I can take down necros and some stun break warriors with my S/F aura build. Some warriors I have trouble with, but the general FOTM builds I take down quite easily. Necros pose almost no threat to me unless I’m out numbered, then its decide weather I should just drop the necro for the lols or get out of there.

Lava tomb got nerfed to its new cool down, but does 33% more damage now.

My favourite thing about the ele was when RTL didn’t lock your skills, so you could RTL into a foe, then sceptre 2 and 3 them on the way.

I can handle necros and warriors with D/F as well. Focus in general seems vital against the current condition/stun meta. However if I get caught with my pants down against a cheese mace warrior (mist form, earth armor, and arcane shield all on cooldown) I stand no chance. But I guess that is any class against such a broken spec.

Jabberwock.9014:

I can handle necros and warriors with D/F as well. Focus in general seems vital against the current condition/stun meta. However if I get caught with my pants down against a cheese mace warrior (mist form, earth armor, and arcane shield all on cooldown) I stand no chance. But I guess that is any class against such a broken spec.

Go enough defences?
Obsidian flesh, mist form, arcane shield and amour of earth wow.

I only have obsidian flesh :/

SnD is a fad. You will soon get sick of it and realise why 0/10/0/30/30 is still the best way to go.

Fuzzion.2504:

SnD is a fad. You will soon get sick of it and realise why 0/10/0/30/30 is still the best way to go.

I have been using S/F since Christmas time.

Though if you live in a crappy net country you probably would too

TGSlasher.1458:

Fuzzion.2504:

SnD is a fad. You will soon get sick of it and realise why 0/10/0/30/30 is still the best way to go.

I have been using S/F since Christmas time.

Though if you live in a crappy net country you probably would too

Actually i mastered SnF for 6 weeks then Staff for another month and SnD for 2 weeks before using DnD like forever. If you run group style all the time, especially 5 to 8 man groups SnF/SnD are both viable.

So in short

DnD is best for 1v1 or small roaming grps with subjective zerg warfare use since most of the time u will hear the commander shout “blast finishers” water fields" blah blah blah, and with dagger, how are u gonna do a water field combo?

SnF/SnD is best for small grps all the way to keep take

Staff is best for zerg warfare all the way to keep take.

This can be argued till the sun explodes

The best type of DnD ele knows when to swap

I literally cannot play D/D.
0 15 0 25 30 zerker with doom sigil was my favourite ele build when I put up with it. 300+ ms affects the D/D ele so much that I have given up even trying. When 30+% of my skills fail duel to lag I refuse to even try to bear it any more. S/F it will be.

Also I play sPvP not WvW, D/D is not as good in spvp as it is in wvw.

Ele can be stronger in WvW since there’s no balance in WvW. The higher stats from gear makes the differences in health and armor relatively lower and allows the ele to be more on equal footing and the versatility starts to shine, especially with the celestial set. In sPvP Evasive Arcana’s Water Attunement heal is also halved and you don’t have crap like PvE consumable and WvW Vitality stacks from killing guards. It makes me feel nauseous that GvG is now used to refer to 20v20 zergfests instead of the grandeur of actual GvGs in Gw1.

Alot of Gw1 players would still be playing it if they didn’t slap in Dervish overhaul and made the Ele completely OP unnecessarily even though they didn’t need it before stopping the Gw1 balances. The irony.

In sPvP, if you try to bunker with clerics/shamans/pvt your sustain is too poor to survive against anything 1v1 for a prolonged period of time, lack of stability means you get flung off the point. Having to get off point and out of range to Ether Renewal lest it gets interrupted is also not an option since you lose the cap point.

Berserker’s amulet lets you have small chance at killing other people but it’s very high risk low reward compared to thieves who can get around much quicker and can actually burst people down without dying in the process.

The middle ground, the Celestial Amulet in sPvP means you are just bland, don’t do enough damage to assist in kills and you’re just deadweight since you don’t exactly fulfil a role.

@zencow
Funnily enough, I bunker with Berserkers. Mind you I do prefer 5v5 hot join over rated matches, and use my build as a roamer in soloq.

I also dislike how those PvE / WvWers try to make GvG sound awesome as a 20 v 20 when guildwars GvG was always 8v8, 20v20 coming closer to alliance battles.

We all know 20 v 20 GvG would just be a mess, even 8v8 would be (and is) a mess with this game’s design