Guild Wars 2

I have a few questions that I am hoping that I can get some help with. I am more than happy to do the reading myself, but I am not sure where to look for reliable information and, in my own research, I see a lot of conflicting suggestions – points of view all without a lot of empirical data or supports. While I am interested in WvWvW – my interest and questions are pointed at PVE dungeon content.

Am I under valuing vitality and/or toughness?

Like I said, all my gear has vitality, but I have been going for CD – Power – Vit gear (I have mostly exotics). Should I instead be going for gear that has toughness and vitality on every piece?

Am I choosing too many offensive skills?

I have been trying to maximize combos as often as possible, since I feel like (and I might be wrong) that is the best path to success. So, in doing so, I have been trying to take arcane blast and or wave as often as possible – should I stop doing that and forcus on signets or defensive skills like earth armor?

Am I under valuing magic find?

I honestly never see yellows (or it feels like it), which I am only concerned about for ecots for crafting. So, I guess I have two questions: a) does MF greatly increase the drops throughout the spectrum or encourage drops to be on the higher end of the loot spectrum and b) does MF affect gathering and salvaging?

I have a ton more questions, but I guess that is a good jumping off point!

Thanks for your help -

You can always jump onto the wiki to see what you actually get from Condition damage, regens, rejuves, and the formulas assosiated with each if you’re looking for some harder number crunching. That might be the best bet there as I’m not sure people have posted much about the “NUMBERS OF ELE” and such. For dungeons I’ve noticed a huge increase in survivability with having both toughness and vitality. I usually go into earth for the toughness and vitality on the gear. Works out pretty well.

Combos—You can always do your own combos. Get a feel down for what you like to do in a rotation. As for your dungeon friends—they just need to pay attention to your fields, which isn’t something I’m sure everyone is doing yet.

MF won’t “feel” better. But you will get a few more items here and there. Even with pretty high MF you won’t see a difference and be jumping for joy. The MF bonuses are meant for long haul changes. If the drop chance is 1% and you have 100% magic find—you double the drop chance to 2%. Over the course of a week you could see real number changes that would be meaningful.

b)As for gathering/salvaging, I’m not sure. I’m curious too!

If you are dying too often in dungeons you either have too little vitality and toughness or you are misreading the mobs and under-reacting to their attacks. Agro too is the worst enemy of a light armor wearer.

High vitality and toughness take care of many ills but the really best crafted and karma gear and jewelry is really really expensive lol. In the meantime you could load up with some defensive traits, weapons skills, and optional skills to provide more defense.

Try to identify where the damage is coming from. It’s pretty easy to avoid melee damage, for example, or at least to see it coming. The ranged agro on the other hand can be a real bear. A Focus in the off hand can be a big help there.

Dodge is your best friend.

I posted something similar.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/PvE-WvW-Elementalist-End-Game-Built-Gear

I believe dungeon gear needs to be mix of Toughness and Vitality. Knight set + Valkyrie accs are best for that setup. When you get your dungeon tokens, you can also buy the Power Toughness and Vitality set. Every second you are downed, your dps drops greatly. My result after switching to Knight is improved survivability yet dps remained quite good.

A separate set of full MF is defn warranted outside of dungeons. Loot are crap in dungeons now. Do not bother. Only when you do events like in Cursed Shores, put on the full MF gear. Green quality is enough.

A full set MF is around 130% base. Take omnomberry and you will have 160%. You would want Superior Rune of Pirate + Sigil of Luck on your weapon. The difference is HUGE. The rate at which yellows drop is a drastic difference. Try it!

It really depends on your build and how quickly you react to a large extent. Personally I prefer toughness with some vitality throw in. Don’t be afraid to mix your gear sets until you’re more comfortable. Remember you won’t be contributing if you’re downed.

Perhaps if you posted a few builds you use for Dungeons and PVE we could help you figure out a good match of dps and survivability.

And please feel free to ask any questions, you’ll likely get many different opinions which are great!

I just started doing dungeons, so I acknowledge I’ve yet to learn more than I know. My experience so far:

- How the group prepares and plays is most significant; if they play dungeons like PvE, it won’t be fun
- If you can, bring a guardian (yes, tank)
- Eles have a broad skill-set—“…master of none”—and I can see the impact I have on the group, meeting needs as they appear: CC, healing, damage, buffs, combo fields
— This, naturally, makes the ele player’s skill more significant
- I have a hard time not putting 20-30 points in water; the vitality with intrinsic healing seem indispensable (sure, you can use earth instead but that’s only if you plan on going toe-to-toe with foes, which is futile, especially with a smaller health pool)
- Likewise, I have a hard time not putting 15-30 points in arcana to have all my skills available when I need them
- I am using Traveler’s gear and MF runes (+pow/prec), whch rounds out my damage a bit, which is nice for 10 air/30 water/30 arcana. I pretty much use the Myagi defence: “the best defence is not to be there” (so, yes, I use a staff).

Don’t think that you have to take your own finishers, you may have one or two, but do not build just for self comboing, you’re in a group, so hopefully they know you are providing gobs of fields for them to play in. Keeping defense on my right side has worked great for me to stay alive in dungeons.

Just ask before you get started how many fields and finishers and what types your group has and set your weapons and abilities by that.

I’d be going for a combination of both toughness and vitality.
Reason:
If you have a ton of HP, but no toughness, you still get hit hard and high HP won’t be all that great except for the initial spike.
If you have a ton of toughness but no extra vitality, you may get hit less, but have a lot less HP to go with. Less HP also means being weaker to conditions.

I don’t plan on, and really so far never have been, getting smacked in the face with blunt weapons, so condition damage is my primary concern, which means water points in water with points in it and after that, some points in water.

Having that, I can’t see putting more points into earth since I’m not seeing any practical benefit to survivability and no increase in damage or utility.

I wonder if the other classes feel so limited in choices..?

I am speaking purely of dungeons since PvE is /faceroll and I don’t care to s/tPvP (and if I did, ele wouldn’t be my first choice).