Guild Wars 2

Is it viable compared to an attunement swapper? Maybe, maybe not. However, I did stumble upon this build that may have some potential and I wanted to share it with the Elementalist community. What say you, viable or not?

Runes
Rune of the Ice

Traits
Elemental Surge
Arcane Mastery
Blasting Staff
Aquamancer’s Alacrity
Shard of Ice
Piercing Shards

Skills
Arcane Power
Arcane Blast
Glyph of Lesser Elementals
Glyph of Elementals

The first thing this build aims to achieve is permanent chill. First, the player casts a quick Arcane Blast to slow the target. Then, they can spam some more chill by combining Arcane Power with Water Blast (this causes 5 hits of 3 seconds chill each). By then, the elementals will have caught up to the target and start spamming their own chill fields. And of course, there’s also Frozen Ground (which can be comboed with Arcane Blast for even more chill). Once your target is slower, it’ll be rather easy to hit them with Ice Spike for a nice 1000 damage per hit (every 3.5 seconds or so).

While doing the above, you’ll also cause quite a bit of vulnerability, which (apart from its own effect) gives you 20% added damage. Healing of course comes through the other water skills.

So what would be your opinion? Would something like this work?

Note that the author of this build does not recommend staying in one attunement. Kids should only attempt this build under adult supervision. Lost dogs will not be replaced.

I’m curious about this one…personally, I think it won’t be viable though.

My concerns are basically that it has a myopic focus on chill, which can be purged, and seems to be very, very vulnerable to stun and conditions. You’ve got cleansing rain sure…but if you don’t switch out of water, that’s it…and it has a cast time.

Anyway, let us know how it works.

if this is for PvP ull have major issue with hitting with ice spike if the enemy is any decent. and that is like 70% of ur dmg output and while chill is lovely its only 1condition making it easily removable.
if this is for PvE. u might have issue regarding cooldowns to maintain consistent chill considering the long cd and slight dependence on elementals which can be kill pretty easily by certain mobs.

u might consider swapping arcane power for glyph of elemental power if u want a slightly more sustained ability to apply chill. added bonus that it is currently bugged to give chance to apply w/e condition u casted it in even in another attunement.

hmmm it sounds like you could throw the ice bow in there somewhere.
being already chilled would make it easier to cast the deep freeze which has a pulsing chill on it.
it also has that additional %20 condition duration.

Sorry you won’t be even 25% of the real power of elementalist with this setup. That is the truth and a single attunument setup like this will never work. Gosh would you event want it to work. Sorry to bash this to the ground, but if you want real feedback, here it is.

You will do poor damage and you will do poor healing.
Best healing comes from blasts (Eruption & EA earth dodge), EA water dodge and Healing Ripple swap – which you would have none of.
Obviously this is for PvE purposes but I’m still going to say you are relying on one condition for control, infinite duration of chill can be cleansed with a single condition removal.

Running with pets but still wanting mobs to be chilled to kite? They stand still on ur pet anyway.
I don’t quite understand whats this Chill obsession for pve purpose? Prolly result of actually trying to make this build – result of the poor dps, aka feeling problems with surviving and kiting. Which wouldnt be problem when mobs die 5 times faster.

This is not the approach you should take for elementalist for any purpose.
But if you absolutely must have your targets snared most of time use Superior sigil of hydromancy to freeze on swap, 15 earth to cripple on swap (20 for reduced cooldown) and water cd reduce. And 40% condition duration food. And just do proper attunument rotations.

To be honest, this is mostly an academic endeavour and not an actual practical build. My main goal is to see if single attunement builds can be done in such a way that the contribute something meaningful to the fight.

On a side note, I should probably mention that through the use of just the Frozen Ground and Arcane Power, it could probably cause perma-chill already. So it could also be incorporated in a swap-based build.

ThiBash.5634:

To be honest, this is mostly an academic endeavour and not an actual practical build. My main goal is to see if single attunement builds can be done in such a way that the contribute something meaningful to the fight.

On a side note, I should probably mention that through the use of just the Frozen Ground and Arcane Power, it could probably cause perma-chill already. So it could also be incorporated in a swap-based build.

Nope, not practical at all, and only thing you will achieve is to be kicked from the group :P

Mjk.7562:

Nope, not practical at all, and only thing you will achieve is to be kicked from the group :P

If I run into people like Sabull then I’d say that’s pretty likely. :-)

Your DPS would be barely more than spamming fireball and doing nothing else (no lava font and no burn). And it would be less than a mono fire build doing it (since it’d have fire traits like might on fire spell cast)
Chill is cool, but you can get almost as much chill by just swapping to water whenever frozen ground is up, and using the frost bow. Water isn’t something you can really stay in and hope to be successful. The best a one-element elementalist can do it not really be truly single element, but have a main element plus momentary swaps to other elements.
.

Oh I just had an idea. The -20% cooldown on X element spells should be paired with a reduction in that element’s attunement cooldown as well. Many other classes’ similar traits give some kind of extra bonus, or even affect multiple weapon types at once.