Guild Wars 2

My ele was my first character. I got him to 80 and tried a glascannon build which didn’t work at all. I got frustrated and put him on the backburner for a thief.

Now that I’m bored with how easy the thief is, I’ve focused my attention back toward my ele and started gearing him into a bunker build.

I chose p/t/v armor and weapons along with 2 superior monk, 2 superior water, and 2 major water runes for healing and boon duration.

However, I’m having trouble choosing accessories. I’m not sure if I should go all clerics for best survivability, or if I should throw in 2 emerald earrings so I can pack a bit more of a punch. Would those 2 earrings be worth the tradeoff from the healing power?

Also, sigils. I’m not a fan of sigils like Bloodlust or Restoration where I have to spend time in WvW killing mobs to get my stacks if I’m not in a zerg. I was thinking sigils of Battle & Energy would be good for my daggers because of all of the attunement swapping?
I have no clue what I would put on a staff. Maybe superior sigil of Water?

Any advice would be appreciated.

I mostly play WvW so this is based heavily on that style, however, I can do any PvE content with this build quite well also.

I run a variation of the standard bunker which is a bit more balanced for crit/dmg than healing and I survive very well most of the time. Traits are 0-20-0-30-20, zephyr’s boon, air CD reduction, cantrips & aura share (or cleansing wave for solo-roaming), boons on swap and vigor on crits. 3 standard cantrips for utilities and greatsword elite for mobility. This is the absolute fastest build I could create, I can escape from or gap close on dang near anything.

I use the normal runes/armors like you have but I run with knight’s amulet/rings and valkyrie’s earrings, with one dagger of each knight/valkyrie. Sigils I prefer are battle and fire, since I agree about the building stacks of bloodlust on mobs and then being more scared of downed because of losing my stacks. When I tested with battle+energy, it would only proc the sigil in main hand, apparently they share a cooldown, not sure if that has been changed. (I don’t have the monk runes, because I’m not a huge dungeon fan haven’t been able to bring myself to “farm” them yet, so I just stuck a couple emerald orbs in the extra armor slots)

My build has over 50% crit with fury (always up unless hit with boon removal) and 41 crit damage, with a good amount of HP and defense. I find it a good balance between not getting oneshot by anything but still dishing out some good damage.

Sigil of Battle and Energy share cooldown so you can only run one of them at a time. I’m not sure about fire, doesn’t that share cd too? I run Battle and Force at the moment.

I’ve got the same dilemma too, clerics accesorries or go for more damage output.

Battle & Fire is a no-go. Battle & Force is a good combo (and what I use as well for solo work, using Restoration over Force for guild WvW).

Cleric accessories are for people who want to spend all their time kiting or use the Signet. Man up and use Invader’s / Knight’s / similar with Berserker Jewels.

The reason you should have crit damage in your accessories’ upgrade slots is because you lose fewer stats doing so: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/12dmi5/tip_stat_optimization_with_crit_damage/

I am not a fan of Cleric + Signet heal, but some enjoy it.

As for battle and fire sharing a cooldown, I think the wiki is misleadingly worded. I run both, and with fire in offhand (according to the wiki, it should never proc) the flame blast procs regularly and I get stacks of might every 9 sec on weapon swap.

From what I understand, and what appears to happen in practice, sigil cooldowns are shared within type but not global to all sigils. Thus, two “on weapon swap” sigils would share a cooldown but an “on crit” sigil wouldn’t share the same cooldown with an “on weapon swap”.

This is just from observation, however, I have not run a timed test or anything.

Thrashbarg.9820:

As for battle and fire sharing a cooldown, I think the wiki is misleadingly worded. I run both, and with fire in offhand (according to the wiki, it should never proc) the flame blast procs regularly and I get stacks of might every 9 sec on weapon swap.

From what I understand, and what appears to happen in practice, sigil cooldowns are shared within type but not global to all sigils. Thus, two “on weapon swap” sigils would share a cooldown but an “on crit” sigil wouldn’t share the same cooldown with an “on weapon swap”.

This is just from observation, however, I have not run a timed test or anything.