Guild Wars 2

Hey guys im somewhat new to Elementalist but not to GW2 I have a Necromancer, Guardian, Thief, and Engineer all at lvl 80 and i consider myself to be decent with all of them.

Im usually not a fan of the “meta” builds but when a build is flat out better than everything else ill play it. The purpose of this post is just to get some feedback on a build I made for PvE. Keep in mind that I am new to ELE and could have totally missed something so keep the flaming to a minimal.

BUILD
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmmboRzwjEAkCoEZQADTGdohogFA-jwxAYfAyPQyrIasF3ioxqrxUuER1G8ioVLFwoCjA-e

The idea here is to maximize +% to damage under reasonable circumstances, in total this build gives me +75% damage.

Ill break it down
Internal Fire +10% damage while attuned to fire (reasonable)
Burning Rage 10% damage to burning targets (after dec 10th patch, and burning is easy to keep up)
Stone Splinters 10% damage to enemy’s under 600 range (easy to get)
Serrated Stones +5% damage to bleeding foes (while you may not focus on bleeding the change of a mob not having some bleeding on in pve is nill)
Enduring Damage 10% while endurance is full (depends on battle but its up a lot with vigor)
Vital Striking 10% while health is above 90% (if you know the fights and you position yourself well this is reasonable in pve)
Bolt to the Heart 20% while enemy is under 33% health (situational for sure but 20% damage is a ton for a 10 pt trait)

That’s 75% bonus damage 55% of which is up in most situations, add in another 20% from runes/sigils and 10% from food and your effectively have 105% dps increase (85% most of the fight)

Now i play with a Guardian and a Engineer that like to stack might and eles are not without our own blast finishers so having 25 stack in my group is no big deal.

The big question is what am I losing by going for all +% damage and ignoring some other cool traits, is there a crucial combo that im just not seeing or is this a good build?

As far as survivability goes ill get all kinds of different gear this is just my full glass cannon build and I know the fights/when to dodge so im pretty confident i wont be dead.

On targets that wont move too much, this build will deal good and consistent damage, at medium range (you want to stay within 600).

I see you mainly using the Fire Attunement, providing the following to the group:

- damage (crits & burning)
- fire fields

The traits and playstyle appear, for the lack of a better word, a bit selfish (as you rely on your teammates (PUG or organized) to provide mightstacks, vulnerability, bleed and regeneration etc. pp.).

If you like I can go into detail and expand my thoughts, but to keep things short:
You sacrifice utility for consistency.

The real question is: what is it that you are looking for.

Well put, for this build the aim was to be a dps powerhouse, I did feel a bit weak on the support but overall our group (very organized) is well covered.

What would you think about taking points from air and putting them into water. Would I want to swap my utilities?

Variants of this build are already in use by Eles. I would go against putting more points in Water; this build Is going for power and you only need 10pts for Vital Striking. Nothing else in water is going to help you.

Personally I also take Fire Alacrity, since you spend most of your time in fire anyway you need to max your skill cooldowns to dish out more damage. I also take the Pyromancer Gm trait for self-sustaining might stacks, I can keep myself at 10 might stacks or so without any additional effort or assistance.

My current building use blasting staff, after dec. 10 my build will g stronger as blasting staff goes down to adept, freeing up 10 more points for some other +DMg trait.

30 into fire would make the build lose a % amplifier in exchange for a GM trait that gives might. However, if might-stacks are covered by other group members, he would favour the bonus %

In this case, on a [Staff], I think, 25/10/25/10 pretty much covers it.

You can always swap out your utilities:

[Signet of Fire] will top off your crit-chance.

[Glyph of Storms] and/or [Arcane Bolt] also deal nice additional dmg to groups or single targets.

Another option: just add [Conjure: Lightning Hammer]. You will get bonus precision and crit-dmg, on top of your staff-stats, and the hammer’s auto-attacks hit pretty hard – 3-hit chain, the third hit is the strongest, blinds all enemies hit, and is a blast finisher. This would maximize your damage output, as long as you can manage being in meele range.

This would be the glassiest of cannons.

About[Lightning Hammer]: There are builds that specialize in dealing as much damage with LH as possible.
These builds often have 20 points in the [Water Attunement] for the [Vital Striking] and [Piercing Shards] traits.
The idea would be to stack might and fury, and all the other stuff, then conjure the hammer, swap to water and swing away.

That lightning hammer build is very far from this one, since you swap to water, losing out on the 20% Dmg bonus of staying in fire and keeping opponents burnt. There’s no synergy.

May i propose another build instead?

Try using 30/10/10/10/10 post patch.

30 Fire for:

Persisting Flames: This will allow you to maintain your lava font longer, and it will tick more often dealing insane damage.

Pyromancers alacrity: When paired with Persisting Flames you’ll have a permament fire field.

Internal Fire: Self Explainatority

10 Air:
Bolt to the heart: Self Explainatority

10 Earth:
Stone Splinters: Self Explainatority

10 Water:
Vital striking: Self Explainatority

10 Arcana:

Blasting Staff.

Blasting staff will synergize with your offensive nature, it’s better than throwing in another 10 points for damage modifiers, because the AoE on your lava fonts and stuff will be huge. Meteor shower will hit a lot more often too, and fireball gets crazy cleave range.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmmboRzwjFAkCoEeQADFMK0hogFlC5A-jwxAYfAyPQyrIasF3ioxqrxUuER1G8ioVLFQEDjA-e

link for the build. Note that Arcana has a wrong trait selected since i can’t include blasting staff on the 10 point line yet.

Not sure if Blasting Staff adds to the dps-output.

The persisting flame trait for longer firefields does – wether or not its worth the loss of 10% would have to be calculated.

About LH: you dont have to be traited for it to do high dmg. Hence my sidenote that there is the possibilty of having a build solely built around LH – but it is also possible here.
With all the %dmg amplifiers, this build could use LH just fine, sitting in fire for the duration and swapping alacrity for burning precision.

I could see dropping the air traits and going 30 in fire, longer lava font and extra fury would be nice. Don’t know where I would putt the extra 5 points… maybe the new diamond skin.

30/10/10/10/10 is actually the build I will be using once Dec. 10 hits. The only reason I’m doing 30/20/0/0/20 or 30/10/0/10/20 is because of Blasting Staff.

I used to take Persisting Flames, but I changed it to Pyro Puissance (spelling) because the might stacks were great. You can usually maintain about 10 might stacks by yourself easily — with others giving stacks it goes higher up, in many 5-man groups I easily hit 25 stacks almost constant. If your opponent isn’t attacking you and you don’t need to kite, you can easily maintain around 14 stacks by yourself.

Hedonismbot.3697:

Not sure if Blasting Staff adds to the dps-output.

it makes more meteors hit due to increased area of effect per meteor
and since meteor shower is pretty much the strongest skill in the game, that alone is worth it

also being more able to hit targets that are being kited or changing targets or otherwise moving effectively ups your dps