Guild Wars 2

I just hit 80 on my Elementalist and I have a few questions/musings about the profession. Keep in mind every question I have should be taken from a PvE standpoint. As of now I am not concerned with WvW or PvP.

First of all I’d like to address the incoming nerf to Critical Damage, as it is being allotted into a new stat called Ferocity. If you haven’t heard of this, basically Critical damage will work like precision does, granting Critical damage per X amount of ferocity, however, this bonus will have diminishing returns the more you stack it, making it a bit harder to stack up crit damage.

I’ve long heard that Celestial is far and away one of the best equipment types for Elementalists at the moment. However, given the incoming Crit D changes, the Celestial stat set will likely suffer very badly from these changes, possibly making Celestial no longer viable, being that it had some of every stat, but Berserker-levels of Crit D on EVERY PIECE.

So, at this point, would it be worth it to invest the mountains of gold it will take to craft some celestial armor/weapons/trinkets, or should I go with more traditional stats? If so, which are best? I’ve heard a mix of Knight’s and Valkyrie is usually a good route, but that of course depends on your build, which brings me to my next set of statements…

Builds. I am so lost here. Elementalist’s are so flexible, I’m finding it a bit daunting to work out a decent build on my own. I want to play a support-ish Elementalist, and I’d PREFER to use a staff as my main weapon. As far as I can tell, the staff is probably the least damaging-condition-oriented weapon that Elementalists have access to, as most of the fire and bleed skills in the fire attunement and earth attunement respectively sit on relatively long cool downs, and do not allow for 100% condition uptime in most cases. (Unless of course I’m missing something here, which I probably am.) Which to me would suggest a setup of valk/knight equipment would be ideal.

That being said, a guildie of mine mentioned a build which utilizes the frost bow and endless might stacking. It sounds interesting, but I have no idea how to go about building something like this. I also really like the arcane utility skills. However they don’t seem to offer much in the way of group utility.

Any pointers anyone can give me about any of this, or point me in a direction where my questions might be more easily answered, and I might more fully understand this insane profession, would be much appreciated.

u gotta tell tho if u want it for wvw/dungeons/etc

for dungeons there is a guide stickied i think, not sure

Go with the celestial acc. and backpack. Hold off on Armour.Go for soldiers mix with some cleric for now. Get your legendary since you can change stat any time(i have 2) so u will never be affected by anything thrown at you.

Ferocity changes have been calculated to mean an average drop of a toal of 10% crit damage overall. Expect that in the upcoming 18th of March Patch.

Your post is long, but there is really small amount of information to help you. Celestial can be good but it depend on what you are doing and right now i don’t suggest you to get ANY celestial gear or assassin gear because it seem that these two gear will be the more affected by the incoming change to crit damage. Don’t expect the change to come on the March 18th. Don’t know where Fuzzion got that. This change will more probably come in April or even May 2014. Also i never heard of the diminishing return you talk about ferocity compare to precision. Anet didn’t say that and precision don’t have diminishing return (except if you reach 100% crit chance and that doesn’t apply to crit damage).

Now you are talking about a build with ‘’the frost bow and endless might stacking’’ This seem like the meta S/X Light Hammer build, because he give you huge amount of might stacking, but you don’t use Frost Bow (except in specific situation) and use more Light Hammer.

If you want use to help you, you need to give more information on PvE, sPvP or WvW, what kind of gameplay you prefer, and what you want to do more with this build.