Guild Wars 2

NOTE: This build will NOT function in sPvP for a myriad of reasons. It’s best not to even consider the possibilities.

Since Cantrip Ele is beyond nerfed and everyone seems to be gridlocked into x/x/x/30/30 or some variant of Fresh Air, the goal of this build/thread is help bring some build variety back into the Ele while working with what we’ve got. As someone with >100 hours with Ele, I am not remotely qualified to determine whether this build has any future in it’s current state. This is where you come in:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmYbtR3gjEABFCgw4RIiQiowDlC5A-jACBoeBkKBkIAI5rIasFhDRr6KsqaER1qbYSBAx0I-e

Pros:
Celestial gear is taken because the three attunements you’ll be using benefit heavily from all of them. Fire is a mixed bag of power and condi damage. Water is mainly healing with some condi and Air is all crit damage. The toughness and vitality Celestial provides go to improving your otherwise miserable armor and health.

Naturally, being a jack of all trades means you’re a master at none, so you’ll be getting extra bonuses from your signets. Signet of Fire brings your crit chance to an acceptable level, while Signet of Restoration provides enough passive healing to make up for your low health pool. Activating your signets is essential to proccing auras, which in turn provide might, fury, swiftness and protection for up to 7 seconds each. Naturally these boons are short lived, but your 40% boon duration thanks to your runes keep them around long enough without sacrificing too much in the process. The two auras on your daggers also provide these buffs, totaling 4 auras available in any attunement, 6 in total. These make you tanky, fast and powerful. Sounds great right?

Cons:
Your condi removal is pretty kitten. period. You can remove 2 conditions passively every 10 seconds but that’s hardly enough to counter the meta. Cleansing wave will cure one extra condition but that’s on a 45 second cd and from there you’re pretty much screwed. Signet of Water can be swapped for Cleansing Fire but you’re going to lose access to an aura as a result.

CC is also difficult to deal with. Signet of air will break stuns but after that you’ll have to wait until Armor of Earth procs at 50% health to have any safety from stuns. Once your mobility and range is subverted you’re essentially defenseless to this approach. VI in Arcane can be swapped to III for a stunbreaker at 25%, but perma-vigor is a large price to pay.

Earth attunement is also completely useless. Earthquake can’t be cast without a stun set up and there is no feasible way to pull off Churning Earth without Lightning Flash. The bleeds cannot be stacked in any effective fashion from your auto and Ring of Earth and although Magnetic Grasp/Leap are great combo finishers, they are also very, very, very slow.

PvE doesn’t merit discussion because it’s inherently a faceroll. Focus works well here due to all the projectile mitigation.

From there I’m pretty lost as to how to accommodate to the build’s weaknesses. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

switch out the heal for the condi clear one. You need it despite your grandmaster earth trait. You can use your churn defensively as well. If you pop it then stop it in 2 seconds it will go on that 3s cooldown. This will force players to back up. Can also stack might that way. Your healing power is nice, but you lose out on the EA heal and the heal when you attune to water. That makes your water attunement completely useless. If you can survive well in this build it would be very overpowered.

I think that your power is honestly a little bit low. The rest of your stats are pretty good. Maybe I would swap the sigil of purity for battle to offset that. Otherwise, I agree with what frowny said about the heal and the water attunement. Even though it means giving up your signet and a aura, you would be able to survive condis a lot better. I would debate on getting rid of 10 in earth for 10 in water so that you could get something to scale healing power with besides regen.

I find this kind of build to be much better in a non condition meta as the protection duration is very high.

Currently I run a 20 15 10 15 10 build utilising signets but for spvp. The trait setup you have is what I used to use to beat D/D bunkers in spvp (however I used S/F and still do and a lot different gear wise)

For WvW I would suggest signet of earth, the immobilise is very good and if your foe doesn’t condition clear it you could get off a churning earth or earthquake.

Ether heal, while tacking away from your signet synergy will help with condition removal.

With your boon duration and the D/D set keeping 100% boon uptime should be no problem and you get a nice boost to your armour of earth proc.

Sigil of battle would help boost your damage and sigil of bloodlust if you don’t die often.

Personally I like Sigil of Doom to wear my opponents down. But that’s personal

Note: I don’t play WvW. But I have run a similar build in sPvP for the last 9 months.