Guild Wars 2

Currently level 56 and have switched to staff from d/d.
Aiming for a strong survivable build, somewhere between glass and bunker.

This is what i’ve come up with, suggestions welcome/appreciated:
http://tinyurl.com/akuscqd

You might benefit from a few things, maybe swapping your pyromancer’s puissance out for evasive arcana, because you have lots of combo fields with staff, and you can get some really things from rolling in earth with them. Also, if your heal is on CD, or it gets interrupted, you can’t remove conditions (apart from water skill 5, which is a long cd/cast time), so you might want to swap out icy mist for cleansing wave, I find cleansing wave really good for just quickly removing a chilled or crippled while running away from stuff too.

why limit yourself to one? as long as you have 20 arcana (blasting staff) you can switch it in at any time you need range
i regularly swap between d/d and staff

This isn’t a bad base of a build. Personally I went more 20(30)/0/0/30/10(20).

The reason is because the removing conditions on Regeneration is huge at a 30 point water trait. We also have many ways to generate regeneration: swapping attunement, glyph heal in water, healing rain, any and all cantrips with Soothing Disruption and more. This basically makes conditions a non factor in this build for us and since most of those are AOE for our allies as well.

The small amount of +healing we get from 30 point water also acts as a decent boost to healing without focusing on healing gear. While you’re certainly not going to win any healing competitions your heals aren’t 100% worthless either especially since Regeneration gets the most from +healing amount.

Where the build varies is what you want to do. Personally I’ve started to take 30 in Fire simply because 40 Arcana seems rarely worth it. I mean slightly bigger AOE is neat and all but it’s rarely needed for PvE. Most things are either clustered enough to get hit with the base Lava Font or spread out enough you should be using Air auto attack (there are of course exceptions to this). Instead you get might on each fire spell which should be pretty much 5 might stacks at all times. Combined with Eruption -> Lava Font, Arcane Wave and gaining Might on Fire attunement you can stack some pretty decent Might stacks. The loss of 20% attunement swapping speed sucks a bit but you get used to it pretty quick.

Offensively speaking it’s all about Fire with Air as a backup. Fire’s damage is super good and also gives you the only mobility skill in the staff arsenal (Burning Retreat). Think of it as a third evade. Most of it is just auto attacking, burning as needed, and placing Lava Fonts. If it’s safe to be melee then do Arcane Wave for blowing up Might stacks. Typically I am fairly lazy and won’t concentrate on always keeping maximum might stacks with Eruption -> Lava Font unless I’m already in Earth. This is because the DPS loss while stuck in earth isn’t worth the 3 might stacks you’ll pick up. Air is typically used when mobs are spread out a bit and you can get some good bounces with the main attack. It’s also used as a backup if you were in Fire, swap to Earth or Water and then don’t need to do anything and can swap back to Air to keep doing DPS.

Defensively speaking you got Water and Earth. Water is great at mass removing conditions and pumping out a decent regen heal. It’s also great for dropping a Chill if you need to kite a bit. There’s also, of course, Earth which can root, snare and reflect projectiles as needed. The fairly standard combo is Eruption -> Geyser then Arcane Wave and you get 3 area heals (2 instant). Also remember while in Earth to summon the Earth Elemental as it has pretty good survivability where as the other 3 tend to just instantly die in scenarios like dungeons.

The biggest, most frustrating aspect to the Elementalist is that you often times will in fact swap to one attunement to do something only to find it’s not needed. This occurs a lot in dungeon groups. For example if you swap to Water to AOE condition remove, you may find that the single swapping to Water removed it in combination with a Shout Warrior. Now you’re stuck in Water with Fire on cool down. This is where you want to swap to Air to continue DPS. Do not just sit there in Water and try to ride it out as often times that’s just all around for your DPS and the temptation to throw away a cool down (such as Healing Rain) when it’s not needed as much is high. This is why I always swap to Earth first, then decide where to go from there. This way I choose to swap to Air to continue DPS, prep an Eruption -> Geyser, use Earth utility to help kite a creature/mob or decide to ride it all out and setup a mega Might combo for Eruption -> (wait) Eruption -> Fire (5) -> Lava Font (3) -> Arcane Wave (3) -> Cantrip (3) and then continue fire attacks (5) which is quite a few might stacks.

When soloing I pretty much just ride out Fire and kite using evades, cantrips (for survivability), and Signet of Air for increased speed while kiting. This and Dynamic Events are were Blasting Staff comes in handy. Non events it gives Lava Font a bigger area to kite around in and for Events it’s very handy in Orr to have larger fields to tag mobs in for credit. However, as previously stated, I’ve began to not spec like this because I’ve managed to get away with the smaller fields.

Thanks for the comments.

Think i’ll stick to 30 in Fire, then need to decide between 20 in Water for Cleansing Water or keep Arcane at 20 for Blasting Staff.

Found i’m not really using the Armor of Earth utility so I think i’ll swap it out for a signet (probably air)

[edit]

After thinking about it think i’ll go 30 in water, switch the utilities and as i’m now only using 1 cantrip drop Soothing Disruption and grab either Shard of Ice or Cleansing Wave.

So: http://tinyurl.com/ab6r5a6

Brullyra.1592:

Thanks for the comments.

Think i’ll stick to 30 in Fire, then need to decide between 20 in Water for Cleansing Water or keep Arcane at 20 for Blasting Staff.

Found i’m not really using the Armor of Earth utility so I think i’ll swap it out for a signet (probably air)

[edit]

After thinking about it think i’ll go 30 in water, switch the utilities and as i’m now only using 1 cantrip drop Soothing Disruption and grab either Shard of Ice or Cleansing Wave.

So: http://tinyurl.com/ab6r5a6

That’s pretty much what I run in dungeons only I swap out Signet of Air for Cleansing Fire if I don’t need the speed. Mist Form is pretty much mandatory in dungeons I find because there’s way too many “gotchya!” style moves on encounters.

Otherwise I tend to rotate a lot between Lightning Flash/Cleansing Fire/Mist Form. Like right now while in Orr I got Lightning Flash, Cleansing Fire and Signet of Air.

Armor of Earth’s huge 72s cool down for 7s of buffs is just silly. The only time I’ve ever used it was when I was leveling and got it passively from 10 in Earth as a trait using a Cantrip Conjure build. That’s something else you should consider as well, as 20 in Fire opens up +10 conjure charges and you can use Lightning Hammer which has a massive AOE blind every 1.5s which will basically make you take zero damage. It was the way I leveled and I found leveling to be a joke on the ele past 40 with it (20/0/10/20/0 with last 10 in air and water as you level).

That’s kinda the disappointing thing once you play other classes, you realize that all this same utility is on other characters but with drastically lower cool downs. For example Mesmer Blink vs Lightning Flash or Guardian’s prot/stab buff vs Armor of Earth those other classes have noticeably lower cool downs despite them doing the exact same thing.