Guild Wars 2

Hello!

After playing Warrior for a long time as been my main and only proffesion ( my heart just couldn’t get attracted to anything else), I decided try Elementalist. After further playing and experiencing, I couldn’t but fall in love!
One object(s) that caught my eye was the conditions I create and the damage I produce as an Elementalist. I’m well aware that Critics based builds are very strong and powerful, and are the most found build used in the game currently, however I decided to try and revive the old unpopular way of playing as an elementalist, and that is mastering the Condition Damage.

My build is concentrated mostly on a balance between D/D DPA/DPS and Staff support, allowing you to roam between the two play styles / weapons without been limited or need to retrait.

Awaken the Dead -

The Build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmYbux3gjDAkCmMeAiHkUeMDP2A;T4AgzyuEcJ5S1liLqmMNJay2krJZTDRmLA

(Clicking on it doesn’t work, you’ll have to copy it)
The build is focused on a balance between toughness and vitality, with toughness having a priority, and having a decent balance between Power and CD. It also gives you the free options to simply roll a staff and play support without changing anything! It’s one of the main reasons for this build. A balance between the two weapons was needed for me to fully enjoy ele as I can’t be limited to one weapon.

Equipements:

Daggers with offensive CD stats, as I view D/D as a very offensive build which is mostly used in PVE outside of dungeons. You can play it anywhere you want – I just feel like Staff Support is far superior and more useful than D/D in dungeons.

Sigils: The best options are pretty obvious. 1x Sigil of battle gives you 3 stacks of might on a weapon switch (Attunement swap counts) with a 9 seconds cool down. 1x Sigil of Corruption for a further CD boost. You can get up to 250 extra CD!

Armor & Jewlery: It can be varied really. Some might prefer to have higher Vitality, some will prefer higher Tough. I do believe Tough is eventually better, so I favored it here. Havin an awful vitality tough might be painful, so I didn’t leave it behind.
I went for a full Carrion set with Superior rune of the Undead, and half Cleric, half rabid jewlery for extra healing, cd and toughness. Don’t forget you get a lot of toughness from the Earth trait.

Description:

The build tries to fully use Signets and CD as it’s main play style. You also have decent healing with SoR and the water skills. Don’t forget Evasive Arcane where you can heal on Dodge if you are attuned to water.

Basically, your main play style should be aggroing a group with either Air or Fire, burning your foes, and eventually leaving either ring of fire or Burning speed as the last skill to use. After using either, you simply switch to earth and cast earth quake -> churning earth. You should be having already ~7 stacks of might with you. If you happen to get your Churning Earth canceled, simply cast Signet of Air, and you are simply protected (it’s really close to invulenrable) for a second or two. Heal with the water skills and SoR as you need, and spam Signet of Fire whenever possible. Use Evasive Arcane with any attunement you like. Don’t forget that Evasive Arcane’s earth spell counts as a blast finisher!
Notes:
Signet of Earth can be easy replaced with any skill you like. I like replacing it with Glyph of Storms when I’m rolling staff. While attunning to earth, you can have blind for 10 seconds. Basically, invulenrable for 10 seconds!

The second Arcane trait can be replaced with Blasting staff when you are rolling a staff.

There isn’t much to note about staff playstyle…Mostly use Eruoption as your main skill, roaming between it’s combos for either heal or might.

Some small Pro’s and Con’s:

+ It doesn’t matter how much armor the enemy has, CD ignores armor!
+ Together with the Earth trait, it provides with excellent defense together with damage
+ Elementalist has options for both Burning and bleeding.
+ With~1300 Condition Damage, you can create massive, massive damage. I’m talking about almost 2500 damage per second when coordinating correctly, from CD ONLY.
+ Gives you free rule to roll either Staff or D/D (and S/D) without having to change almost anything
+ Besides CD, my raw damage is pretty awesome. My normal DPS is between 400 to 700, and my skills can cause around 2000 damage per skill.

- CD has it’s flaws. IF there is another CD player in the party, you will be less effective. It doesn’t neutralize you tough.
- Conditions on you will be a problem as you don’t have many removal options
- The CD durations are quite bad, and it might be a little less effective against Champtions and veterans (or long fights), but you still produce massive damage, so just re-apply the conditions.
- Your critics chances are very very low and you shouldn’t be based on it in any chance.

This is it for now…I will continue to try and update this post to avoid mistakes. I made this thread quite fast as I was hyped into posting it already, so I might have missed some information and details, and my english wasn’t on top today.

Another flaw with Condition damage that really hampers its play is objects don’t take damage from conditions. This is a real problem in fractals in situations where destroying objects or object-like enemies quickly is better.

I tried a condition build too, still have the gear in case I want to swap to it and give it another go. Mine was a 20/0/30/0/20 build and it worked decently, doing something like 120-130ish dmg per bleed tick and able to keep a good amount of bleeds up. What I cannot stand about the build (and it transitions to your build too) is how ineffective the signets are. I feel it’s wasted having them recharge faster when…they don’t do that much.

Namely, I used the fire, water and air signets (and restoration). Even with getting fire shields + protection with each signet use, their effectiveness pales to even glyphs, not to mention it does lack good condition removal. This is fixed by taking Ether Renewal but that’s just 1 signet left to benefit from Written in Stone.

I think the next time I try a condition build, I’ll skip signets and perhaps focus on another utility type.

That depends really. Some glyph are very powerful, but some signets are very useful. Signet of air actually saves my life on occasion, is a very nice speed boost, and does some little aoe damage. Signet of fire also shines on single targets, love it. Sor i dont think i need to mention. The fourth signet is rather a problem i agree. Both water and earth are not convincing, which is why i switch it with other skills ( for example glyph of storms for staff, conjure bow for AC Burrows etc).

tbh if you need to kill an object, icebow just rocks. And it increases your condition damage so anything you have up before summoning it starts doing more damage.

emikochan.8504:

tbh if you need to kill an object, icebow just rocks. And it increases your condition damage so anything you have up before summoning it starts doing more damage.

condition DURATION… not dmg… so no increased dmg… condition that u apply with the bow last longer… nothing more ^^

still it is pretty awesome against large structure ^^

Idk why would you go d/d for a c. dmg build. Isn’t scepter or staff much better?

Signet of Air is bugged. It says 25% increase in movement speed but gives 10% actually.

I go with DD because i prefer it the most. It has great damage and i like daggers. The. build is also viable with staff, which is not always better than DD. spamming wruption is extremely effective tho. Lately i have been using Arcane Wave for the extra might stacking.

Signet of air grants 25%, but only shows as giving 10%.