Guild Wars 2

I do not play a main elementalist, but my girlfriend has almost reached 80 with hers and feels it is lacking compared to her condition/toughness/pet necromancer. She has a few specifications she needs for a build.

1) Little to no attunement switching. I know this one is very difficult, but she wants to avoid hard and complicated strategies.
2) Great survivability. She wants to be able to do PvE without being too squishy. She does no PvP at all.
3) Overall just an easy to us build.
4) Rune and Sigil suggestions

Please let me know your suggestions. I’m sure there are others out there that have someone they want to introduce guild wars to and if they are interested in the elementalist maybe this kind of build can help.
Thanks a ton!

I’m going to preface with this: there may be points where what I’m about to say comes off rude. That’s not my intention at all.

I fear your g/f might have chosen the wrong profession based off your description. Attunement switching is a MUST. I do it incredibly often and I don’t know a good elementalist that doesn’t. This is almost the crux of the elementalist. Stray from there and it really doesn’t matter on gear, build, runes and sigils.

Just my 2 cents.

RawkFist.1935:

I’m going to preface with this: there may be points where what I’m about to say comes off rude. That’s not my intention at all.

I fear your g/f might have chosen the wrong profession based off your description. Attunement switching is a MUST. I do it incredibly often and I don’t know a good elementalist that doesn’t. This is almost the crux of the elementalist. Stray from there and it really doesn’t matter on gear, build, runes and sigils.

Just my 2 cents.

Ya I know attunment switching is a core mechanic of the elementalist. Is it possible to make a build based on only 2 attunments then? I think she is just more worried about using more than 2 attunements.
I don’t want to go to her and say “tough luck, you’re stuck not enjoying your class.”

It will be hard to pull off something effective, but I think that a signets water/earth build might do well with that.

It also depends a bit on whether she will be in wvw (I presume not, as the ‘less complicated’ thing tends to lead toward a less competitive playstyle). If thats the case, then a support role with a staff might ideal.

Something like 30/20/20 Earth/water/arcane might do her justice. It’s a fairly obvious build, run signets with Written in stone (30 earth), signet heal instead of the glyph and use the earth skills for damage and water for healing. It might be wise to swap to fire now and again for a quick damage boost but I imagine it would be safe to stay earth/water most of the time.

Regardless of how its done, in the current setup, it will be pretty difficult to find a highly effective build without stance dancing.

Good luck!

Can you tell us what weapon she’s primarily using? I’m going to go out on a limb and say staff. Personally, if I had to choose 2 elements, I’d go with Fire & Water. Very difficult question though because I do use Earth quite a bit. Air while all the others are on CD and I need a “fill in”.

Interesting challenge. My wife is the same, likes it simple.

Try this, just stay in fire, cantrips provide regen and condition removal as well as extra might, happens automatically. More fire spells keeps ramping up her might buffs too so gets better as she goes, also automatically. Staff for good range and less twitch required. Should hit hard enough. For travelling she can switch to air and get a good speed buff but the air points could be moved to earth for more protection too.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEQQFAWhImkbwx4gjDAkHn4CLhHKQQCiCXA;ToAA1CtoyxkjIHbOuck5MIYSA

(edit: copy and paste it in, doesnt seem to work direct link)

30/0/10/30/0 staff with glyph of storms, arcane shield and double elementals can do it pretty well with just earth and fire swapping. Soldiers gear for extra survivability.

Though having said that, surviving anything other than normal mobs requires skill to kite things and usage of water and air skills too.

Are you talking about dungeons or general pve?

Well I can try to address this more directly.

1 and 2 just don’t go together. The most survivable builds will have you swapping nearly off cd.

3 is in the eye of the beholder. At first attunement swapping is hard a week later it will be natural.

4 not knowing what your gf wants to run makes this difficult. However battle, corruption, bloodlust, and air are all good choices.

The logic is this (beside some bunker builds which are only useful in SPvP) your going to swap all 4 attunements at some point in a fight thats longer that 15 seconds. Each one gives you access to a new bar with pretty much lets you spam skills in a very organized manner (for most).

About 2 attunements only. Is it possible? Its possible. However PvE open world would be a pain. In dungeons you could do this on staff at max range with water earth but she would end up being a piss poor ele overall.

The best advice I can give you is to have her just learn to swap.

Honestly I get why your asking for an easy build. I had created an ele early on and deleted it because I found the swapping too hard. Eventually I got bored and saw a vid of an ele (daphoenix) soling a champ and 2 vets. I recreated an ele and leveled it to 80 in a week. Once I figured out the swapping I realized I was playing one of not the best PvE class there is.

I am going to point you to a few post that should help

Our Least broken weapon set right now is D/D the others are fine but D/D was hit the lightest by the patch:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Tanky-DPS-Elementalist-Videos-11-14-12/page/6#post689566

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-D-D-ele-11-17-12/first

Keybind Advice:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Keyboard-and-the-Elementalist

General guide:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Elementalist-101/first

Gl

Just keep in mind though that the elementalist’s greatest advantage and utility comes from the fact that they can switch between 4 attunements which enables them to cast a lot of great spells. But if you want to keep it simple then here’s two builds you can use that are easy.

DPS Damage Elementalist
Full Berserkers Gear (Pow, Prec, Crit Dmg) – 6x Ruby Orbs
Full Ruby Orichalchum Jewelry – 6x Exquisite Ruby Jewels
Staff (sigil of fire) or Scepter/Focus (you can use sigil of fire, might, etc)
30 fire 30 air 10 (wherever you want, probably arcana though)
Straightforward critical hit damage elementalist. 10k dragons tooths, 5-6k per proc firestorms, fairly straight forward.

Healing Elementalist
Full Cleric’s Gear – Full Set of Dwayna Runes
Full Sapphire Jewerly – 6x Exquisite Sapphire
Staff (sigil of water)
10 Earth, 30 Water, 30 Arcana
For traits you can just set it for purely defensive with evasive arcana as the trick.

Those two builds should work pretty fine if you want it to be clear and simple. Long as you two can play together, that’s great. If she wants to hit “next level play”, she can work on attunement switching, but that will come in time with experience and confidence. Enjoy.

I think the best compromise is that she have two attunements she’s happy to be in, and switch beyond that only for healing or defense. My first thought is to go staff, planning to rely on mainly:

Fire #2, #3, #1 (unfortunately), #5 (for the fun of it)
Earth #2, #1, #5
Both Elemental Glyphs
Arcane Wave & Arcane Blast
The heal (let’s say Glyph of Lesser Elementals)

I leveled with that for a while, and it went pretty well.

Defensive/emergency skills available include Fire #4, Earth #3, Water #5, Water #3 with an Arcane Blast set off inside it.

Traits could include:

Water — condition clear (Cleansing Wave)
Arcane — arcane skill cooldown (Arcane Mastery)
Air — glyph cooldown (Quick Glyphs)
Earth — bleeding duration (Serrated Stones)
Fire — cooldown (Pyromancer’s Alacrity)
Earth — cooldown (Geomancer’s Alacrity)

The above list requires 80 trait points, so she could get any 5 of the 6.

http://en.gw2codex.com/build/4163-brimstone

This build. But take the 10 points out of AIR and put them in water (add some cantrips for heals with the Soothing Disruption trait). She will stay in Earth 95% of the time. Stacking bleeding damage via Earth 1 skill. This is a condition based build.

This will give her 2-3 heals without ever leaving earth, and the Condition Damage will down any PVE mob within a couple seconds.

agreed with all above. It’s not gonna be anywhere near optimal without attunument swapping. But here is very simple way to go and based on 2 attunuments.

Weapon: Staff
- because it’s ranged, safe and good
Spec: 30/0/0/20/20
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEQQFAWhImKbyR4gjDAEFvYS4BBMkQRxM7A;ToAA1CtoyxkjIHbOuck5MIYSA
- because bigger aoe fields for staff, good healing, good condition removal, good 1 attunument damage.
Gear: anything. Power toughness vitality. Berserker.

Playstyle:
-DPS with first 3 skills of fire
- When you loose health swap to water (regen + aoe heal + condition removal automaticly)
- If you need more healing you can use 3 and 5 in water. (blast with arcane wave for extra healing) and make sure to use water 2 before leaving back to fire.
- if you need snare or get away from the enemys. Use fire 4 or water 4
- use fire 5 if you have friends with you to pull big packs of mobs

Ofc I’m biased but I think 20 water 20 arcane is the standard for a multirole staff, which all above builds lacked.
Thus I think this build is way better for her purposes than glass cannon builds / aura builds suggested above.

Later she should learn to get swiftness from Air and the extra crowd control for trouble times. And include earth to her aoe rotation. Among many many other things she can do with elementalist.

Personally, I would suggest she go warrior, guardian, or thief. Low skill cap needed for all those classes and they can do everything you list way better than an ele. You can pretty much use only two buttons on those classes and do really well all the way to 80 and beyond.

If she is set on making an ele, I would highly suggest she learn to use attunement swapping; it is intergal to ele, period. This is not like other games where you pick an element and focus on it. If you do that in GW2 on an Ele you won’t do so well and more than likely won’t enjoy it either.

This may not be much help but I know there is a PvE build that uses lightning hammer, I think it is supposed to be high survivability.

I prefer the faster attunement swapping builds (I favor d/d) so I guess take this with a grain of salt. The signet aura build might work.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEUQFAWlMGyN2bw2AeOBApQLBFEgw4hIgQiowDA;ToAA1CtoyxkjIHbOuck5MIYSA

It is decently tanky and has decent mobility in some situations (using the signet gives you a fire aura which procs protection, fury, and swiftness boons). The earth signet lets you immobilize mobs in your fire aoe fields (you mostly sit in fire attunement with this spec although earth works as well). I wouldn’t use this in pvp or anywhere you’d expect to be hit with a lot of burst damage as you’ll fall over. The healing signet works well and you can use it without losing the heal on cast effect. So you can effectively mitigate constant but lower incoming damage.

Probably about the most straight forward build I can think of.

Edit: Only problem is it requires a high level to make this build effective…but lower level pve isn’t that hard so it shouldn’t be as big an issue.

Just get her a razor naga use the numkey pad as the 12 at her thumb then she can set 1-4 as her attunements and hit them like it is second nature.