Guild Wars 2

How viable are these builds for roaming or/and sPvP ? Im still leveling my ele and im kinda new to the game but by watching streams, youtube videos and reading i found the idea of S/F and S/D ele really fun, it fits my playstyle exactly (well from other mmos), high risk high reward, insane burst but lacks defensive abilities/mobility but either way i really like the idea of playing either of these two builds especially in wvw as a roamer once i hit 80. With all that said i wanna ask again are they any viable ? I know that S/D got nerfed or something not too long ago and its not a good fit for current meta (at least thats what meta battle says) however S/F fresh air is still listed there as viable however for sPVP. What about roaming ? Are any of these two any good for it or you should only play it if you really enjoy the playstyle of these builds and shouldnt expect good results from playing it ?

Since you know pretty well that it’s a very high risk/high reward playstyle, it’ll be easier to explain.

PVP – it’s viable in pub games but is overshadowed by D/D celestial elementalists in both pub and ranked games.

WvW – If you solo roam especially in T1, I wouldn’t recommend playing s/x at all especially since you said you are new to the game. Spend time in PvP learning proper burst rotations before putting it in action in WvW because you’ll probably be spending most of your time defensively if you can’t properly land your burst.

However, IMO s/x works great if you have a group of 3 or more to pressure your target and divert the attention away from you so you can have more breathing room to drop your burst. But still, most of the time decent players will target s/x elementalists first before any other class except maybe necro and ranger.

TL;DR – since you’re new to the game…
• Practice your burst rotation in PvP first (NPCs then pvp matches).
• Find a roaming group. Avoid fighting alone until you have enough experience and confidence to handle the pressure of getting focused.
• 0/6/0/2/6 is not the only viable burst S/X build. Spend some time tinkering with your build and traits. Preferrably, don’t go full zerk right off the bat. Go get some Vit and Def and slowly convert them to Zerk as you gain more experience.

Fresh air SF is viable (but not optimal) in sPvP. The only real issue with the build is that, while the burst is extreme, the sustained damage is actually not great for a zerker build compared to the defense you give up. So fresh air potentially ends up taking longer than D/D cele to down certain tanky builds.

Only real problem I’ve encountered running fresh air in WvW (either 06026 or 66002 yolo) is the skill lag. Fresh air is extremely unforgiving, and WvW lag can really mess you up. At least for me, sometimes in WvW my skills don’t go off when I press the corresponding hotkey. Having phoenix or stone flesh not activate at the precise moment you want it to often means the difference between victory or defeat.

In contrast, most of the other WvW roaming builds are extremely forgiving and don’t suffer nearly as much from lag: PU mesmer clones continue to attack no matter what the player is doing, warriors are naturally tanky + often have the passive endure pain proc to cover up mistakes, most thief builds can reset fights at will, etc.

But if you aren’t experiencing these lag issues in WvW, then fresh air works fairly well there. You can wreck PD condi thieves, which many other builds struggle against.

if you don’t play pvp at higher level , i think s/f fresh air is very viable in pvp . it is a lot more difficult to use than celestial d/d : combos requests much more timing abilities ( so making it a mechanic is hard ) and you have to be much more tactic. You have to go on your target from a direction that let you execute your burst combo’s effectly . In some maps like home point on forest , i sometime find difficult to land the burst.
On the other end it is really fun to wreck down an enemy in a really short time . The only problem is that it is a build really good only for 1 vs 1 … so the best way to play it is to roam around looking for alone people to take down….but it is really not easy to use. . For wvw it works quite well for roaming

Guys, stop comparing S/F ele to D/D; they serve two completely different roles for a team. I have played Fresh air ele for a long time now at a high level of play and it is 100% viable for PvP although you do have to be careful with your team comp. ResJudicator was right when he said it does lack its sustain dmg, but that only really shows against it’s hard counters. S/F’s hard counters are D/D cele (You will never kill a good one 1v1) and you don’t have the sustained DPS for bunker guards (Idk why you would try to 1v1 a bunker guard anyway). The thing it is strong at in-game however, once you get to a certain level it is a thief killing machine, you can use S/F eles to offensively peel for your teammates which is the role I usually play. The sustain on S/F is incredible too, it’s really hard to kill on if he/she knows how to kite and use the map and teammates effectively. Another big thing it lacks though is mobility (FGS is good, but 180s cd is bad), this is why an S/F ele should never replace the role of a thief, it just can’t keep up.
In terms of Solo Q’s however, everyone seems to underestimate the power of fresh air eles and I find it extremely easy to go into a queue and just dominate (I have been playing this build for a long time of course). Anyway I hope that answered your question, feel free to message me in game if you have any other questions.

I agree with you Bitty but freshair s/f is much more difficult to play … only the finger agility to land super fast combo’s is not simple to get …. compared to d/d . I was not saying it was not viable . only that it is much more hard to learn

Okay so totally missed the question – S/D is fun and all, and I really wish I could run that rather than S/F, but the reality is that you can’t survive using S/D playing the role of a roamer. The focus just brings way too much utility with very little damage loss.

Thanks a lot everyone, especially you Bitty. I’ve never been the one to stay away from challenges so thats not an issue, cant wait to start learning S/F fresh air ele, thanks again !

S/F ele – very fun to play, is very powerful, has some awesome moves. I wouldn’t recommend this for a new player as you will get rekt a lot. This is viable at low and mid levels, but unviable at higher levels. Its also sub-optimal for its role and you are generally better to take a mesmer or thief. S/F is the build you play on ele after getting some experience and wanting a change of pace. It also will improve your mechanics due to high risk/high reward.

S/D – This is straight up worse than S/F and not viable as a zerker. Thieves will crap on you 24/7 and there is NOTHING you can do about it. If you want to play S/D, you need to build tankier, but then you are just a bad D/D ele due to scepter having abysmal sustained damage, especially without fresh-air lightning procs.