Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,
I’m fairly new Elementalist and, although I noticed the D/D trend, I’m curious about the S/D set. How would you guys compare both in a WvW roaming scenario?
Pros/cons? If you could link builds in your posts that would be fantastic!
Thanks!

I tend to do D/D.

for me S/D is too single-target based to be good when roaming. I tend to roam alone, so if more than two people come to fight me, having S/D instead of D/D is a guaranteed loose.

Assuming typical builds for both sets for roaming:

Pros of D/D: decent sustained damage with occasional high burst, high survivability, great mobility, great soft and hard CC, point blank AoE attacks for everything
Cons of D/D: can be hard to recover from burst damage, only melee, rather slow and somewhat predictable rotations which can leave you vulnerable to some experienced players
Example video
Base build for typical D/D is x/x/x/4/6

Pros of S/D: ranged, more unpredictable, very high and instant single target burst quite often, high but slow AoE burst/area denial
Cons of S/D: Thief prey, cooldowns, not very great sustain, not the greatest mobility, hardly any CC
Example video
Base typical build for S/D is x/6/x/x/2

In general, D/D is “better” just for it being more forgiving than S/D and more flexible in fights or group compositions. Personally I think S/D is more fun (I play D/D), but it can be frustrating in comparison to D/D.

Thorp.7982:

Assuming typical builds for both sets for roaming:

Pros of D/D: decent sustained damage with occasional high burst, high survivability, great mobility, great soft and hard CC, point blank AoE attacks for everything
Cons of D/D: can be hard to recover from burst damage, only melee, rather slow and somewhat predictable rotations which can leave you vulnerable to some experienced players
Example video
Base build for typical D/D is x/x/x/4/6

Pros of S/D: ranged, more unpredictable, very high and instant single target burst quite often, high but slow AoE burst/area denial
Cons of S/D: Thief prey, cooldowns, not very great sustain, not the greatest mobility, hardly any CC
Example video
Base typical build for S/D is x/6/x/x/2

In general, D/D is “better” just for it being more forgiving than S/D and more flexible in fights or group compositions. Personally I think S/D is more fun (I play D/D), but it can be frustrating in comparison to D/D.

Thanks for the reply.
The S/D videos don’t show any close or outnumbered fights though, or even fights agains warriors/guards. Seems like a “fun” build to burst low levels and light armor professions, while not really effective on close fights against skilled players.
S/D probably shines when the attention is not on you, like 2-5 man group roaming and you are free to burst people with low hp and AOE burst them to prevent res.
Has anyone tried S/D extensively to contribute to the thread?

I haven’t played S/D extensively in WvW so I can’t help you with anything more than I’ve already said, but this video might be more interesting to you: link

I’ve played S/D for a good amount of time in spvp, and I plan to run it in WvW roaming/small groups eventually, when I have the means to acquire the gear for a usable build.

Basically D/D vs S/D is all about what you want to do in roaming.

Do you want longer drawn out battles of sustain and mobility? Or do you want to blow up a squishy opponent in a few seconds? Those are the types of things you should ask yourself.

I will say that S/D is considerably more difficult than D/D, as you need to perform burst combos with exact precision and speed to be effective. Some of the above posters critizicize (spelling!!!) S/D for its lack of control, however that can be remedied with a hydromancy sigil, which is very useful in increasing the overall effectiveness and damage of your bursts, as many of them involve chaining lighting flash to a target with hurl, earthquake, fire grab etc., and then switching to air while you’re on top of your target and hitting 2 and 4 to finish off the basic burst. The other sigil could be battle or air or fire or force or energy depending on your needs, and as for runesets, any power prec or ferocity rune would probably work well.

This video was very helpful to me in learning basic burst rotations, and I still have a lot to learn and refine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gAif9qE4WY

If doing stuff like that interests you, I recommend giving S/D a try! Needless to say, its more difficult to perform these bursts on moving players, but its very much possible, because you can get the burst done so fast to the point where no one will be able to react to you.

Lets see anything else….

I find that S/D is a bit better in small group fights and skirmishes since you can pick off and focus targets with your burst, and you’ll have buddies to help you out if things go wrong. S/D’s many blind inducing skills also make it much better than D/D against things like warriors that use slow and powerful attacks. For WvW you also don’t need to go completely glass, but its probably best to run with less toughness and more power than you would for D/D. I’m still playing around with the optimal gear set up, but I feel like a valkryie/zerker/knight’s/cavalier mix is ideal, and celestial isn’t really, because S/D burst builds have less of a need for healing power and much less of a need for condition damage, but zealots could work in a more defensive set up. I also find that glyph is typically the best heal because ether renewal prevents you from doing damage for a few seconds, and SoR is a bit better for tanky D/D builds, but it could work.