Guild Wars 2

I recently hit level 80 on my d/d elementalist and before I started paying lots of gold for items I wanted to get some tips. My d/d elementalist is by far my favorite character to play. The combat style is just so incredibly fun and rewarding. Constantly switching attunements and managing 20 abilities while being a melee range caster is awesome. I’d like to stick with this character but i also don’t want to be useless in dungeons and such.

Normal PvE is easy for me to do but I’ve never done a dungeon and I know they are a bit harder. Do dual dagger elementalists need to spec their traits a certain way or use certain utility abilities or focus certain stats on gear to be able to be successful in dungeons? Or can you really just do what you want?

I’m currently using all signets for my utility skills as I really like the buffs you get from them and having those passive buffs helps me focus on my 20 abilities from the daggers. I know when this game first came out stacking signets as your utilities was kind of seen as a ‘noob’ build since you really didn’t have to do much with them. However, if certain utility abilities MUST be used on a d/d elementalist please let me know and I will learn!

As for armor/stats…Are there certain stats on armor that I should be focusing? Currently I’ve been pretty much focusing power and vitality on my gear since I feel like I need a lot of survivability as I will usually be in melee range during fights. But I feel like maybe my damage is lacking. I’d like to get an idea of which stats I should be focusing more before I start shelling out gold for items.

Now onto trait points. I feel like I have my trait points just where I want them. I have 30 in fire, 20 in water and 20 in arcana. But maybe someone has a much better trait point set up they could suggest.

Hopefully some fellow d/d elementalist can give some input!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-D-D-ele-2-16-12/first

That’s a guide to the cookie cutter fotm build that 90% are using. There’s also variations on the builds as well you can look at.

I’m testing out builds right now and looking for glassier options. Currently running 0/25/0/25/20

Nice! thanks for pointing me to that. I will give that a read

Welcome to 80 It’s a long road to get Ele to 80 but worth it, so now you finally get to shine. BTW, you asked for it, Wall of Text incoming in 3… 2… 1…

- Dungeons –
Well, the most important learning curve for dungeons is learning the dungeon itself, start with Ascalonian Catacombs, mainly because you’ll probably want to get your exotic armor from there (most D/D ele’s wear PVT armor, easiest place to get it). Also, unlike standard “run around by yourself” PvE, dungeons focus more on group play, so you may consider speccing into the things that benefit your team. Do you know your might stacking chains on your different weapon sets? Do you know about aurashare? Start thinking about team mechanics not just your own damage output.

- Utilities –
There are lots of different ways to play ele’s, so I’d experiment with each of them and find what you like best before you settle on one. For a while go with each of these heavily specced to benefit them, a Glyph Builds, Signet Builds, Cantrip Builds or Arcane Builds. I’d try to spec a build into each of those categories for a week or so and see what you like and what you don’t and then come up with one that works for you. Then you can pick and choose the things that you like the most out of each.
1. Signet Builds – There are certain signets that are fine I guess. But if you’re running signet shouldn’t you have 30 in Earth to take Written in Stone so you can spam those signets active affects as well as maintain the passive? Also, you’d be using the healing signet here.
2. Glyph Builds – I run a Glyph build when I’m running support staff in WvW. Glyph of Storms is amazing from sandstorm – damage, bleeding and reapplied AoE blind? Yes Please.
3. Cantrip Builds – Please at least try out a cantrip build for a while. If nothing else it will teach you other things about your class. Six months ago when the game was brand new and all us new Ele’s were first hitting 80 we were trying tons of different things, you’ve got the benefit of not having to fight through the same mistakes we did by asking questions. Below is a build to play with for a while to LEARN more about your Ele. I’m not saying this is a good build to run, but it will teach you a ton about managing boons and aura’s, which are the lifeblood of the D/D ele. For about a week of play, try putting 10 pts in each of the 5 categories and the other 20 wherever you want, I recommend at least taking water up to 25 so that you can get increased damage per boon, which you will have a lot of. Consider taking the traits, Spell Slinger (Fire), Zephyr’s Boon (Air), Elemental Shielding (Earth), Soothing Disruption (Water), and Elemental Attunement (Arcane). The other 20 pts are up to you, but by taking Water up to 25 pts you get 2% additional damage per boon, and with the build above you will have 7+ boons at all times, that’s a lot of extra damage, far more than the 200 pts in power you’d be sacrificing. Take 3 cantrips instead of your sigils. I don’t ever use Mist Form anymore, haven’t for months, but a lot of ele’s like it because it’s a good “Oh Crap I’mma bout ta die!!” button. I’d take Lightning Flash, Armor of Earth and Cleansing Wave. Again, this isn’t a good build to play on all the time by any means, but it’s a great way to learn more about the class.
4. Arcane Build – Arcane Wave will never leave my utility bar… ever… like ever… no matter what weapon set I’m running having an insta-blast finisher is just too good to get rid of. See a Mesmer field? Pop and you’ve got chaos armor; see a light field from Mes or Guardian? boom retaliation; see a poison field from a Necro or Thief? blast for AoE weakness… it’s just so beneficial. Arcane Power adds a nice guaranteed boost for you Churning Earth or Fire Grab when you absolutely need it to crit.

~~ Continued ~~

- Traits –
I haven’t run a Signet heavy build in a long time, so you may have your traits set up perfect for how you like to play your signet build, but they may be all wrong for other options… or all wrong entirely once you’ve tried some other stuff and come up with a solid mix of things. So since you’ve played “Signet Heavy” builds, now go make, as I suggested above a “Glyph / Cantrip / Arcane Heavy” builds and then work them all together. Lightning Flash and Arcane Wave are two skills that will rarely leave my utilities bar. The other depends on situation, something it’s Glyph of Storms, sometimes it’s Frost Bow, sometimes Cleansing Wave… just depends on the situation. In fact, once you run more dungeons, you’ll constantly be swapping that Utility out depending on the situation. Especially Ascalonian Catacombs… there are a couple section on two of the three paths where having an Ele who knows what they’re doing on p1 and p3 makes everything run sooooo much smoother.

- Armor -
Last but not least. My personal take on Armor is, start thinking more survivability and as your skill as a player increases move towards more damage output. I have 3 armor sets, my standard PVT, a Prec/Vit/Healing Power set I wear when I’m running support staff in WvW and my magic find gear when I’m farming. All my crafted trinkets are Zerkers (my Ascended stuff is a mix because it’s from drops) and my daggers and scepter are CoF zerkers. My staff in Prec/Vit/Healing power (but again, when I run staff it’s for a very specific reason and build).
Also – DO NOT Waste the money on buying Exotic Crafted armor… Exotic Crafted Trinkets are fine, but DO NOT BUY Exotic Crafted Armor. Get the best lvl 80 Rare (yellow) armor you can and run your dungeons. Exotic Crafted Armor stats are less then Dungeon or Karma Armor, and cost a small fortune, don’t wast 10-15g buying something you’re going to replace within a week or two anyway. Once you start running dungeons you’ll be extremely surprised how quickly the money rolls in. If you only have 1 character over lvl 35 then it will take you 7 days, 1.5 hrs per day to run AC enough to get your Dungeon Armor… that’s barely a grind. You’ll also end up with 20+ gold by the time you’re done. If you have the time, and multiple characters, you can cut that down substantially. It will take 20 dungeon path completions to get a full set of armor, each path takes about half hour on average and nets a little over 1g per path. Can only run each path once per day to get full 60 tokens per path. The only faster way to make money in game than running dungeons is T6 mat farming in Orr, where I can make 5-6g per hour, but who really wants to just run and chop, run and pick, run and mine… I’m way to ADD for that.

SlimGenre, the last time I checked Crafted Exotic armor are the same stats as dungeon armor. Correct me if I am wrong.

Here’s the best advice I can give you. Buy a staff to compliment ur daggers. There will be times when you will need to swap from d/d to staff to support your group or fight a boss that has a giant circle of death around him.

Too many eles fail because they cannot adapt to a situation.

ChaosDoom.8459:

SlimGenre, the last time I checked Crafted Exotic armor are the same stats as dungeon armor. Correct me if I am wrong.

I actually think your right… thanks for the catch… it’s pretty clear on Wiki that the attribute stats are the same, but for the life of me I can’t find the defense stats on the crafted armor page… for instance, exotic dungeon and karma armor is a total of 920 defense… is crafted the same?

I’m sure I was thinking about Order armor or Tier 3 armor which stats are lower then exotic (which doesn’t make sense to me, but whatever, I just used the skins over a dungeon set I had)

Either way, I still think it’s a waste to pay for crafted armor personally, I haven’t done a lot of research but I do think there are some attribute combinations that are available crafted but not dungeon… and vice versa (like Giver’s or Valkyrie)