Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone,

I’ve been doing some dungeons and focusing on gearing up my ele and I’m at a loss as to what stats I should shoot for. Right now I’m running Knight’s gear, with knights prefix on my daggers.

I’ve been focusing mostly on power and defensive stats, is there anything I should change?

My trait build is 30 fire, 10 air, and 30 arcane, with elemental effects on arcane cast, 20% CD on arcane, the auras providing fury and swiftness from air, and pyromancer’s puissance, alacrity, and 10% more damage while in fire from the fire line.

I’m also looking at using Superior Runes of Hoelbrak since I spend time in fire and being able to build might faster and keep it up looks nice.

You really don’t need any special gear for PVE. Since the enemy AI is predictable you can kite any groups of mobs even as a glass cannon build by simply using water skills. If you’re looking to experiment with runes and builds I suggest trying them out in the Heart of the Mists. That would also allow you to pinpoint weaknesses in some of your gear and trait specs, since you would be playing against more difficult opponents.

you mention blasting staff though, which means you are typically running staff right?

I’m looking for more advice on what gear to run based on my traits and my weapon choice. I’m aware I don’t have to run perfect in PVE, but I like to get as much oomph as I can so I’m looking for tips for that specific subset.

I run D/D in PvE, but staff in a dungeon. I actually do not like using staff at all, but the benefits to my group in dungeon areas far outweighs my antipathy toward staff.

I swap to staff for certain things, like taking out the totems in HotW, but I like to run d/d in groups even so. I feel the mobility, some of the effects I can inflict and things of that nature work well for me.

I appreciate the advice for what its worth though.

Yeah man. I wish I could help more, but I think in most PVE you will be successful. You’re a braver man than I running D/D in a dungeon.

I prefer Carrion gear for D/D and S/D. Power, Condition Damage, Vitality. Condition damage is a large part of your damage with those weapon sets because of how easily you keep up burning and bleed.

I would also recommend carrion gear for D/D in particular — nice mix of both types of skills.

I hadn’t considered Carrion just because of how stacking condition didn’t feel right when I ran staff. But I do like popping off my earth skills now that I’ve figured out how to use Air 3 while churning earth is charging. Is vitality stacking better than tough stacking for us these days?

Be aware that stacking conditions like bleed has its own set of problems with respect to dungeon bosses. You can only stack conditions like bleed to 25, which is a problem discussed in a number of other threads in the forums. Imagine being in a dungeon group with a necro and a thief. In that case, if you are a condition based elementalist, much of your damage may go to waste. I’d think power crit would be safer. Not to mention if you ever venture into WvW, many people run heavy condition removal builds. Just food for thought.

Magoslich.6857:

Is vitality stacking better than tough stacking for us these days?

Not sure. I run carrion gear with cleric accessories because I prefer more balanced stats in general, and I like my nearly 2k heal on attuning to water (for me and friends!) . Carrion daggers with Superior Sigil of Hydromancy (can probably swap this out for PvE, I mostly WvW) and Superior Sigil of Battle (has a 10s internal cooldown but you will swap attunements often enough in D/D to make it well worth it imo).

I run Carrion in PvE as D/D & S/D. It works extremely well unless you have a necro/thief/engi in the group, even if they aren’t condition spec. Bleed stacking isn’t too bad, I cannot maintain 25stacks by myself anyway. Keeping burn on a target is effortless and is massive damage, but the way GW2 handles burns from multiple sources is very silly. All it takes is an engi to get their burns up and the mob may as well flash a ‘No Vacancy’ sign in your face until it dies.

I don’t think I will ever go back to staff for PvE/Dungeons. It is incredibly s-l-o-w and to be honest, any sort of support you can give your team from it is easily out-done by many, if not all other classes. My healing shouts warrior alt blows my staff ele (forgive the pun) out of the water when it comes to usefulness. The better your group gets at dungeons, the less requirement for heavy support as well. That said- there are still a few areas in dungeons where a staff is handy due to obscene amounts of damage taken at any range not maximum.

For general world-pve, I can drop any basic mob in orr with a single Signet of Fire cast and no other damage. I typically round up a bunch of mobs, ring of fire→earth attune→glyph of storms→earthquake→churning earth→go make a cup of tea during the animation→loot

Gear, spec & playstyle is entirely useless for WvW of course. For every lucky kill you get on someone with a bleed/burn, you will have 20 that simply shrug it off or effortlessly remove thanks to trait/skill/profession synergy. Used to be fun loading up gate bashers with a bajillion bleeds and burns, but nowadays all it takes is a couple of ele/mesmers dropping rain/null fields at the gate to ruin your day.

Fantastic information Siv. Out of curiosity, do you run full carrions, or do you perhaps use zerkers or something in the jewel/accessory slots? I like power and precision, but having a bit more condition could be nice.

What kind of trait build do you run? I enjoy my trait line as above, but I wouldn’t be averse to seeing what kind of results you get out of other builds. Just dunno if I can give up my arcane line as its soooo good. I love being able to pull out some immobilize with arcane skills while in earth, or chill or what have you.

Gear, spec & playstyle is entirely useless for WvW of course. For every lucky kill you get on someone with a bleed/burn, you will have 20 that simply shrug it off or effortlessly remove thanks to trait/skill/profession synergy.

I find it’s harder in WvW if people have removals, but with carrion still not impossible. Just takes a bit longer (probably moreso for me than you, heh, thanks to my cleric jewelry). Of course I do as little “stand on wall and nuke” action as possible; thus I prefer roaming/fighting at smaller objectives like camps, where there are no walls. You can also definitely join in on melee pushes, as long as you know there may be a point where you need to GTFO back to your friendly lines if you get focused.

@Minoru
You can’t kite ANY group of mobs in glass cannon build. Because almost all mobs in Orr have tons of ranged CC like immobilization, pull, chill and knockdown in melee.
So better to have some defencive gear or spec in defence with offensive gear.
As for me, I use valkyrie armor and berserker weapons/accesories with defencive spec in PvE. Not bad survivability with good damage.

@Magoslich
I run full carrion. Took me a bit to get my carrion jewelry set so I was running green berserker/Valkyrie gear in there for a bit. I find crits with the ele pretty lackluster, especially given what pretty much any other profession can put out. (again- my warrior chews things up much better with a quarter of the effort and gearing) The 20k health in a dungeon outdoes any sort of toughness stacking (another expensive mistake I made) as long as you play smart and bank a dodge. That opinion changes for pvp, as I’m sure many people will point out. I don’t spvp though, given the state of the meta/thieves/bugs. I’d rather play a 16v16 2fort sniper only server than endure gw2 pvp at the moment

My build is pretty much set against the rest of my team…well, actually the guardian I run with. I find a lot of our stuff syncs well with their stuff and we have a really good melee setup going. Retaliation is king. Anyway, 20/20/20/0/10. Traits change constantly, depending on the dungeon. eg: AC explorable I’ll take burning fire since I’ll slot Cleansing Flame for the stun breaker. +3 ticks of burn works well here.

@Kreit, I’m not going to respond to hasty generalizations.