Guild Wars 2

If you want to be a potent damage ele in sPvP, S/F fresh air is your best bet. It can 1v1 6/9 classes (war, DH, rev, ele, necro, and thief) it is countered by only two, (mesmer and druid) and it stalemates engineer. After playing scepter/focus extensively recently, I have determined that it is exactly where it needs to be, it needs no nerfs, and it needs no damage buffs. Fighting an S/F fresh air ele is worse than fighting a war or dh. With war and Dh, you can at least outkite them, los them, SOMETHING, but S/F ele is so skill cap oriented that none of that works against a good one. The only buffs it needs is some QoL changes (like adding blind or something to shatterstone and making dragon’s tooth more usable as a whole). All the defense you need is from your kiting from your fresh air procs. If you need any help with learning how to beat other classes, send me a mail. I’m happy to help my fellow eles.

Yeah Scepter/Focus and Scepter/Dagger both feel competent. I’m happy to see Ele having different builds to use. There are many Eles playing non Auramancer builds right now. Sage rune me is the new Cele amulet.

Feel free to send me a mail on how to beat warriors lol

I don’t it why they are posters can say with a straight face that fresh air is absolutely where it needs to be with a straight face? And then throw it all on skill ceiling. I absolute don’t get it. There is a difference between having a high skill cap build and straight up outskilling your opponent.

Look a good example of a high skill cap high skill floor build is an thief. Thiefs cannot win any 1 v 1’s and are pretty much decap bots at lower levels of play, Go a bit higher up the ladder and they may now actually stand a fair chance against necromancers, Go higher and they can now beat power mesmers, go higher and druids are next, go higher, revenants are now on the radar and it becomes an equal match-up. Go higher and revs can be beaten now, then druids, come. Heck infact chronophantasma shatters were getting wrecked by thiefs even in the tournament of legend wich were having a quite a few of prominent rosters banned.

Thief is actually a build where the skillcap actually provides more and more counters in 1 v 1 the higher up u go and it’s simply not because u are a massively more skilled player then your opposition. Where u can simply kite around and not have your enemy be able to do anyhting about it.

Fresh air is the complete opposite. it’s a working build that works when u outskill your opposition.

Like kiting and positioning aren’t foreign concepts to high level players heck even in gold can u see that happening.

The reason this build is used less and less the higher up u go is exactly as u said. your only defence is kiting and positoning. Where the meta requires even dps builds to be akin to what we would call bruisers pre hot.

I’m not doubting your skill OP and I definately appreciate your offer to send mails to help the ele community but i honestlly cannot see fresh air as anything other then a working build.

U still got my respect.

1 gimmicky skill does not make a weapon set viable for all builds. Outside of fresh air S/F it is a confused weapon set (i play s/f exclusively), ranged, but slow range attacks, heavy dependency on condition, but no covering conditions + you need to either go auromancer or invest heavily in toughness/healing. Also water is has weak healing skills so you main source of heals is aura.

Am pretty surprised aswell someone saying you can solidly 1v1 6 of 9 classes.From my observing others need to be really bad,fail to hit you with most big hits and eat all your bursties,you need to interupt at best moment and still most classes will just outsustain your dps.Only thing good on ele is kitting and the fact you can dps while kitting or from mid range.So you can shine in fights where the other dude is just sitting on point and eating dmg,and only if he dies fast enough,before you get outnumbered.

Chewing through double endure pain,double shield of courage,blocks or cele form is pretty undoable.Only good fights are worse thieves and necros.Thou necro is one of worst 1v1 so not an achievment there

Can you post a video of you exceling in pvp,can be even unranked,i would love to see you 1v1 those 6/9 classes,and i mean it honestly,no salt.mara/demolisher/berzerker ele i want to see,thank you.

Its problem remains the same as always. While it looks, feels and plays as a pretty strong spec, it always lacks tactical value, impact on the match. Its good 1v1 matchups are moot since it can’t hold a node, its good spike damage suffers from the lack of mesmer/thief tier mobility, and its 2v2 to teamfight potential remains average.

None of what you say is wrong, but the winrate just isnt there. It doesnt have the ace up its sleeve like mesmer does portal, thief steal and mobility, warrior on node matchups and resilience to 2v1s.

agree. Ele makes a good duel build but won´t kill fast in most cases, and other burst classes are more mobile on the map. I play a hybrid ele. Kind of jack of all but it´s exactly that all and nothing in one. Average damage, average mobility, average teamsupport and average to good survivability. The thing you can build for to be top is support.

So i see three ele options,

Full support = very good in teams.
Full damage (fresh air) = funny but very low survivabiltiy and outclassed by thiefs/reve/war
Hybrid = jack of all that is outclassed in most roles, but good in many 1:1 or 2:2 can be used as joker in solo Q.

Needs more damage to be competitive at higher levels, because I don’t see any other utility we could bring.

Tomiyou.3790:

Needs more damage to be competitive at higher levels, because I don’t see any other utility we could bring.

This ^

-Dragon thoot cast time + After cast reduced

-Phoenix CD reduced to 12/15sec so we can use it everytime we go to fire

-FGS cd reduced to 90sec

S/f 1v1 ability means nothing in a conquest 5v5 gamemode.
Fresh air ele is too squishy for 2v2 and it actually implode in team fight.
So we can just nuke from range, but dragon thoot hit only people that are ressing (most time they can be ressed even before dragon thoot drop) and Phoenix most of the time get mitigated from all the passive damage mitigation people are running (passive weakness proc, protection, defy pain etc etc).
So if you waste Phoenix in someway you are providing like 0damage in teamfight

FA is nice when it can be fast. But its long CDs on CCs and slow skills don’t allow for much speed. I propose reducing the cast time of Dragon’s Tooth and maybe a slight reduction in its drop delay. Shatterstone of course needs a buff in…every way, and Water Trident could use a small CD reduction. A little more CC on scepter would be good too. Maybe Shatterstone could chill and Rock Barrier’s follow up could knockdown for 1 second (only one knockdown per player as an ICD). Just some ideas.

Lower DT cast time, reduce phönix CD a bit. increease shatterstone radius, make trident an AE spell like 600 around you not GT.
And make earth outo an 1/2 Sec cast attack chain maybe inflicting bleed/torment/poision not only bleed.

The 1v1 is detrimental when you will always lose the cap because of the kiting. Other classes will just sustain with more health, blocks, and invuln duration while on point. You have to stick to a role similar to Thief in order to be effective for your team when playing this build, imo.

play this in ranked you will get rekt

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJArdhcMoyhdOwwB8RMIBYUPYFUDqnQTIJILgAQFE-TJBFABE8AAEvMAS7PAwJAAA this is my favorite build in the game.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJArdhcMoyh9MwzB8RM0AY0RoG8DqC5VYKIVgAwHE-T1SAQBLUti+dCAMwBEYCPAgNqMAAHIg/t/gKVC2RleNUVl9pngUAeNzC-w

this is the build I use. The sPvP variant is with demo ammy (against power classes) and marauder (against condi or hybrid, but marauder works best overall). The rune is pack, eagle, or scholar. Sigils are air/blood. This is the build that I use to farm warriors, dragonhunters, revenants, thieves, necros, other and other eles.

Poelala.2830:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJArdhcMoyh9MwzB8RM0AY0RoG8DqC5VYKIVgAwHE-T1SAQBLUti+dCAMwBEYCPAgNqMAAHIg/t/gKVC2RleNUVl9pngUAeNzC-w

this is the build I use. The sPvP variant is with demo ammy (against power classes) and marauder (against condi or hybrid, but marauder works best overall). The rune is pack, eagle, or scholar. Sigils are air/blood. This is the build that I use to farm warriors, dragonhunters, revenants, thieves, necros, other and other eles.

This seems a build for wvw …. for spvp i think the history can be different …