Guild Wars 2

A question regarding http://www.gw2db.com/traits/1643-enduring-damage “Deal 10% more damage when your endurance is full.” (and similar traits), does it increase the damage of conditions – or just direct damage?
If it is only direct damage, it doesn’t really make sense to have those kind of traits in the Earth line:/

@ Daphoenix : How is that you decided to change from Cleric’s ( healing, power, toughness ) to “soldier’s” ( power, toughness, vitality)??

Do you think your healing power is enough with your new setup ?

Great thread so far….keep up with the good stuff

@Fazhu

It’s dependent on the last time you attacked your enemy, and the distance you are away from him. For instance, I could attack you, run a few feet away and neither of us do anything for 2 minutes, and I will still be engaged with you in combat.

@Aesa

No idea :S. You could test in the heart of the mists, turn on the trait and turn it off when doing condition damage to see if it works.

@Velzevul
I decided to change from clerics to “soldiers” b/c my overall defense was a little bit low. I need to maintain my overall HP to roughly 18k (I find that to be a happy medium of HP), and have an increase in toughness. I found that in order to get this extra toughness, I needed to sacrifice some of my other stats, namely condition damage and precision.

So basically when considering my armor + amulet set, I was originally running
Clerics Armor (Power, toughness, healing power)
Jewelery (Power, Condition damage, Vitality)

I wanted to get change that condition damage to toughness while retaining all other stats, so I came up with
PVT armor (Power, Toughness, vitality)
Clerics Jewelery (Power, Toughness, healing power)

Btw

I made my first video with commentary. I’m trying to get feedback on this video so I can make better commentary videos in the future.

http://www.youtube.com/my_videos_edit?ns=1&feature=vm-privacy&video_id=V-nfbDmfw6s

I’ll upload more cooler videos later

Thanks for this build. It got me to level 80 when all I could find was despair.

I was in a ‘bird of feather’ kind of way happy to see in your videos all the problems I was having as well:

• Mashing the skill button and having it not activate, so you adopt a unconscious multiple button mash.
• Having to carefully select groups of enemies since you can’t survive 3 on 1 for long.
• Running away lots, often with barely any health left.
• Not doing any real damage over a long, long, time to bosses until someone comes along to help (solo champion video).

However, I have to shelve my Ele. It still doesn’t stack up. I had to quit last night, unable to clear all the mobs on my level 70 personal story, pay 9silver in armor repair, and play guardian. Then I realized something playing in the shiverpeaks… The NPC ele’s are just as lame as the real ones. I saw a red ring I could casually stroll out of the red ring before the ice would drop.

Not only are the player character ele’s lame, but the monsters are too.

Remember in GW1 when you were actually scared of Elemental monsters? When just going out the door of Lion’s Arch was hazardous because of the fire imps? I want that.

Daphoenix, many thanks for posting your build and the vids are excellent! Keep’m coming.

What key binding do you use, I’m having real trouble with attunement swapping using the standard F keys. I’ve tried a few different sets but nothing feels right.

I’m using a standard keyboard and a mouse with 2 extra buttons.

Options: Turn off auto targeting

I left my f1 to f4 keys the same as they are right now
skills 7,8,9,10 are z,x,c,v respectively
Q is look backwards
E is dodge
Mouse 4 is nearest target
Mouse 5 is next target

Pretty much all I’m using at the moment lol. Nothing seriously fancy

If you are having trouble swapping attunements with bindings try this, z, x, c, v for the attunements, for my heal i use caps lock (easy to hit in the midst of everything as its a big button that you cant miss) for utility skills I use Q, shift+ E, R.

@daphoneix

Thanks for the reply, I’ll try working it out and see what the range is.

@Aethelitt

This is the current key bind that I’m using and I find it very effective, all focused on/around my left so I don’t have reach very far. It always take some time to get use to the change in key bind so I would recommend hoping into PvE and try practicing it until your brain adjusts to the keys and then test it out in PvP..

http://taugrim.com/2012/06/27/guide-to-guild-wars-2-keybinds/

I made another wv3 video :s

This video just shows how annoying this build can be to the enemy team

Props to you man! that was awesome to watch That churning earth at 8:20 lol. Keep making videos!

I’m lvl 27 right now, would you recommend this as a leveling build as well?

@Strodor

yeah 8:20 was kind of rofl just for fun. I was hoping to break up their army formation doing that :p.

@iJuan

At level 27 you only have 17 traits. I would recommend putting 10 of those into air for zephyr’s boon, and then the next 15 into water .
Personally I went S/D when I first started as elementalist. I don’t think builds really matter pre-level 80s though.

Hello! I play on FA too We should do some infiltrating sometime hit me up IGN: Zytrix
Also run DD Ele, your build inspired mine with a few tweaks I use all the attachments regularly, but can’t find a use for earth ;3, guess it doesn’t appeal to me

yeah if you guys play on FA pm me in game. I want to make a 5 man coordinated d/d ele team to fight impossible odds

@daphoenix…

Hey, would you accept me… poor under skilled d/d ele that you did battle with 1v1, and defeated me.

If you don’t remember who this is.. my character name is → Zakkhaios

Still learning and practicing..

So over the last few days I have had a little time to play around with crit and to run some test on Arcane Precision.

Granted I should test it out some more but I use the the Dummies in Heart of the Mist and did all of my testing with around 76% crit (high enough that I could get moderate results)

Condition that procs –
Fire – Burning
Water – Vulnerability
Air – Weakness
Earth – Bleed

My raw numbers are semi rough but I can tell you that by using lighting whip it took around 24 hits to kill a heavy dummy and I crit 18 out of 24 on avg. ( Reconfirming the crit rate above)

On avg (ten dummies killed) Weakness proced 0-4 times
– 0% to 22% chance for Arcane Precision to proc on a CRIT
– 0% to 17% chance for AP to proc on any hit

NOTE – this was with a 75% to crit as well. Imagine the percent if your crit is lower (20% and under)

So I truly believe that this skill is complete worthless in its current from. As a 25 point minor trait it is horrible, i personally believe that for 25 points it should be “Skills apply a condition on a critical hit.” I dont see it as OP because even if you run with a moderate crit % (20-30) that is still low for a said condition.

I hate to say it but looking over this build I dont see a reason to worry about the crit percent. Granted I might try to hold mine around 20% just for the little extra damage. I believe that it would much more beneficial to take any extra stat room and use it for condition damage OR fit in vit/toughness.

EDIT – If fine with an even lower crit rate (10% or under) I would say push condition damage or even healing

Feyd Rautha.7298:

• Having to carefully select groups of enemies since you can’t survive 3 on 1 for long.

D/D is really not that good spec for running solo vs multiple enemies. It is best in 1vs1 and small group battles.

1vs1 is a best case scenario where you will get maximum effectiveness from all your health regeneration (less incoming damage equals longer fight equals better value).

In small group combat is where you can really shine. The D/D elementalist has a decent amount of AoE burst+control cds that it can quickly unload early on in a battle to turn the balance. It also has the active survivability needed to be a first engager and the mobility to get both in and out. And finally, the health regeneration to recover and get back in for the second round.

If you are alone vs more than 1 enemy, it is really just best to stall/annoy them while perhaps picking of any arrogant enemy that gets too kitteny. (or is an upscaled easy target)

At least, that is my experience so far.

@Omega

Your welcome to join my Wv3 group teams. Doesn’t really matter what skill level you are, as long as you want to learn

@FannonCodder

I had the same feeling for arcane precision. Seems to be a pretty useless trait in my opinion. What was the overall % proc rate you got from critical hits? I’m kind of confused what your final % proc rate is on criticals.

SP Procs on regular hits would simply be (%Crit chance)(%proc rate)

@Wildclaw

I have the same experience too. I usually try and CC/dmg mitigate all the strong opponents as much as possible in a small team fight, and quickly try and spike the weakest of the bunch asap.

1v1 D/D elementalists do shine because of the mass damage mitigation and heals, but they do indeed shine the most in small battles. Its not the direct damage that you do as an elementalist that counts, its the massive AoE + survivability that really wrecks enemy teams.

When it comes to large scale battles, the D/D elementalist shines a lot more comparatively to small scale battles. The reason for this is due to more psychological effects.
For instance, lets say there are 2 armies fighting each other and there are 20 guys on both sides. Lets say both armies are at a stalemate, and neither team is gaining ground. As the D/D elementalist frontliner, you can easily use churning earth+lightning flash to engage, and then swap to fire to do more damage. This mentally confuses people (and therefore destroys their morale) as it is not expected for an elementalist to rush up to the frontlines, survive for a long duration of time in the midst of the enemy army, and do mass aoe damage. I can couple that even further by running back and forth between their front and backline, causing enemies to lose focus of my own army backing me up. Whatever time is spent with the enemy trying to kill me, my allies are killing my enemy team for me The end result is usually the enemy army fleeing due to my initiation, and then you get to pick off people afterward running away :P. Also the enemy cannot simply ignore my initiation because I still do ALOT of damage through mass aoe and DoTs. That being said, it also takes at least 2 or 3 people to take me down usually, so there is a need for the enemy team to focus fire me. By me getting focus fired, my team gains ground and is able to cause much more damage.
^Even if my team is completely outnumbered (and therefore won’t be able to win the battle regardless of what I do), jumping into a big army and harassing them / breaking up their formation is still fun

Here’s a video I made showing what I was talking about

@daphoenix

yea the problem is that the skill doesn’t give a exact percent on its proc rate (unlike the 25 point air trait)

So going by the rough figures I have and then with some “fuzzy” math…

- 18 crits on 24 hits = 75% crit rate (which was what the game was telling me )
– AP procced 0-4 times per mob (for math sake we will use an avg of 3)
– so the skill has a proc rate of 17% on a critical hit
– in this test case AP procs 3 out of 24 hits so 12.5% (this was with 75% crit rate)

Now I will try and update things late but I want to retest some things as well. My concern is that there might be a conflict in using lighting whip. The skill hits twice, and each hit can crit independently. I am wondering that because AP says it has a chance to proc per “skill use.” In my testing it took 24 hits with lighting whip to kill a target but I only used the skill 12 times.

EDIT – I retested things… and yea it is still bad

- used a staff and skill1 with same crit rate as above. (10 target sample)
– 20 hits to kill target
– 15 crits per target
– AP proc a burn 6 times over the 10 targets(WTF) burn only ticked once as well…
– simply put on 200 hits I got 5 procs with a 75% crit rate
– that is a 3% proc per cast

If this is the case then simple logic would say to double the % above to get it on skill use. But I will retest with some different skills to find out for sure.

That being said, I still believe the skill is very sub par for 25 points either way. The burning proc under fire is very quick, I think I got 1-2 ticks at most. AP procing on any crits would be ok, honestly I love to have 50% chance for an aura to proc on crits instead…. One can wish right?

Crit Rate in General

I have really come to the understanding that not a lot is needed. With Zephyr’s Boon (Air 10, #1) you jump over 30%, and by dumping damage after auras you should be able to the most out of Flurry then. you have three auras that you have have with d/d (not sure if it procs when you hit 25% health and gain arcane shield)

I agree with @daphoenix in that a health pool around 18k is ideal, any less and just doesn’t help survive. If you are downed/dead then that 25%+ crit rate really doesn’t help does it?

@daphoenix
@ Wildclaw

d/d shines in large battles, 1v1, and spvp. It just takes time to adapt to the different battles. D/d is a chaos making machine, and drives other players nuts, if you dont give them some respect they will destroy stuff.

I was messing around in Spvp with a p/d thief and I had a d/d ele in a few games. you simply cannot ignore them. D/D eles make the other team adjust and react, they can make you burn dodges, and retreat from AOE areas. Many times I wish I was playing ele to just deal with other thief’s using stealth builds. Stealth or not you still get hit by AOE.

@Daphoenix, So your build and playing has really turned me back onto my Ele. Today I was considering quitting my Ele and playing a mesmer. I only have a few questions for you if you dont mind my stupidity.

1# Is the PVT gear you switched to from SE? I am not finding it anywhere else.
2# Where did you find the PVT daggers?
I am still learning but am trying to get the gear rolling in my favor so I dont look like a wet cloth anymore XD
Thank you again
-Neer

@hidden

rias.6872:

daphoenix.4283:

Full Vigil Armor (Power,Toughness,Vitality) < Not sure if I can get this though…I’m not a vigil member. Maybe I can make another class to unlock it? Anyone know?

Mix of Jewelery (Toughness, healing power, and Power) and (Condition damage, vitality, power). I personally want toughness in every item possible.

Only problem with this build is that I can’t find jewelery with the stats I want… condition damage needs to be sacrificed to get toughness. I personally find precision to be a stat that I don’t really want as the effects are diminished when you have an already +20% crit chance from fury on most of the battle.

PTV set is available in few different sources.

• Dungeons – AC, SE and HOTW
• WvW Tokens
• Karma Vendors in the Cathedrals @ 42k/piece – 252k tokens Total (AFAIK only 5/6 set are available)
  http://dulfy.net/2012/09/08/gw2-templegod-karma-armor-sets/

I think to fully complete a customized set, you need gear from dungeons too. They have a variety of different options. There are only 2 healing types of gear. Perhaps those could be used as your some-healing-but-not-too-much set.

Precision Vitality Healing – AC, HOTW, TA
Vitality Healing Condition – CM

Dungeons sorted by Armor
Sorted by Armor Types:
Power Precision Condition – AC, CM, COF, COE, TA
Power Precision Toughness – SE, Arah
Power Precision CritDmg – COF, COE, Arah
Power Vitality Toughness – AC, SE, HOTW
Power Vitality Condition – SE, COF
Power Condition MagicFind – COE
Precision Toughness Condition – CM, TA, HOTW, Arah
Precision Vitality Healing – AC, HOTW, TA
Vitality Healing Condition – CM

Weapon wise I think you can get the same stat weapons from the same areas

FannonCodder thank you so much!!! Sorry I probably looked really stupid.

@daphoenix

I did some rough calculations (excluding runes and legendary amulet) on your “planned future” build…let me know if this is in line with what you were thinking (just armor, jewelry, gems, backpack, daggers):

The build you are planning on going for mostly focuses on Power (~700 bonus stat points), Toughness (~650), and Vitality (~550). It also has a decent amount of healing power (~335). However, Condition Damage is really neglected at only around (~150) points.

I am just wondering the reasoning behind the low condition damage..I know its mostly a secondary stat for this build…but do you think it would be worth sacrificing a few points from PTV area (mostly from power, imo) to increase condition damage to at least 300 points?

In general, I really do think this “balanced” build can sacrifice power and condition damage due to the significant amount of might stacking (sigil of battle + attunement boons)..but reducing power and increase condition damage would balance the build out even further and actually provide more overall damage – no?

Thoughts?

PS: My calculations might be off..but nature of question would remain the same.
____________

Update: I forgot to account for trait bonuses, which would increase stat bonuses to the following:

Power: 700
Vitality: 750
Toughness: 750
Healing Power: 535
Condition Damage: 250

This is actually quite nice and well balanced..though I still think Condition Damage needs a little more boost…something closer to 700/700/700/500/385…but not bad overall…can’t have everything. I’m going to figure out a way to scrap a little from the other 4 areas and beef up condition damage, as it is quite frequent on many of our spells.

hidden.9743:

@Daphoenix, So your build and playing has really turned me back onto my Ele. Today I was considering quitting my Ele and playing a mesmer. I only have a few questions for you if you dont mind my stupidity.

1# Is the PVT gear you switched to from SE? I am not finding it anywhere else.
2# Where did you find the PVT daggers?
I am still learning but am trying to get the gear rolling in my favor so I dont look like a wet cloth anymore XD
Thank you again
-Neer

I may not be daphoenix, but you get PVT armor from karma vendors in those Orr areals. Here is a nice and clean site to see where to get which piece:
http://dulfy.net/2012/09/08/gw2-templegod-karma-armor-sets/

The easiest way to get PVT weapons is doing ascalonian catacombs and collecting marks from it. Another way would be to get honor badges out of WvW. If you don’t have any karma to spent you can get the armor from these guys too.

@reQuiem
Can you please tell me how you calculated stat bonuses ??
Why so low on POW bonus and so high on T and V bonuses ?
I did my research too Everything got power as bonus attribute so
with build 0/10/10/20/30, karma PVT set, guild backpack (PVT), carrion daggers
and sapphire jew (with chrysocola gems) and divinity rune we got following bonus stats (including traits):

power: +910 !!! ( total 1826)
prec: +160 (1076)
tough: +652 (1568)
vit: +715 (1631)
healing: 536
cond dmg: 405
Detail in attachment. I hope i did everything correct.
Don’t know how we can lower power bonus.
If we take PVT daggers instead of carrion we got more toughness (and overall T,V bonuses like in your post) but Power bonus is still higher.

Another question. Im i blind or there is no karma PTV pants ?

EDIT: I think i did one mistake. Counted HP as vit*10 but it should be base HP+ VIT*10 so 10805+7150=17955 HP

@volfie

I was going to say something about how VIT looked a little low and I might rework to try and get around 18k. Then I saw your edit.

Power is pretty high which personally I think is fine, I would much rather have raw damage then relying on things like crit damage. That being said condition damage could use a boost.
I have looked at either using the +con damage on kills which would push it up another 250. Either that or I believe using the +5% sigil boost condition damage as well as raw damage.

Granted my abilities in Wv3 and spvp are getting better but I dont know if I would ever be able to get the max benifit out of the +con per kill. PvE it would be amazing.

EDIT – I cant find anything with con/vit/toughness, at least in rings/amulets/ears.

So my thinking is to change all the accessory’s to power/toughness/healing and then mix in Vit/healing/con armor to try and get stats around -

power – 1725
prec – 1075
toughness – 1550
vit – 1650
healing – 525
con – 500
hp – with above it should be around 18k

@ volfie – Thanks for that attachment! I’ll look it over, when I have time.

I might of messed up somewhere..this is what I got excluding runes (divinity), what am I missing?

Traits

Air: 10 (100 Precision, 10% Critical Damage)
Earth: 10 (100 Toughness, 100 Condition Damage)
Water: 20 (200 Vitality, 200 Healing Power)
Arcane: 30

Armor (6/6)

45 + 34 + 101 + 34 + 67 + 34 = 315 (Power)
32 + 24 +72 + 24 + 48 + 24 = 224 (Toughness)
32 + 24 +72 + 24 + 48 + 24 = 224 (Vitality)

Backpack (1/1)

20 (Power)
14 (Toughness)
14 (Vitality)

Jewelry (5/5)

40 + 40 + 64 + 48 + 48 = 240 (Power)
40 + 40 + 64 + 48 + 48 = 240 (Toughness)
56 + 56 + 90 + 67 + 67 = 336 (Healing Power)

Gem Upgrades (6/6)

25 + 25 + 25 + 25 + 25 +25 =150 (Condition Damage)
15 + 15 + 15 + 15 + 15 + 15 = 90 (Power)
15 + 15 + 15 + 15 + 15 + 15 = 90 (Vitality)

Daggers (2/2)

90 + 90 = 180 (Power)
64 + 64 =128 (Toughness)
64 + 64 = 128 (Vitality)

Total

Power: 315 + 20 + 240 + 90 + 180 = 845
Toughness: 100 + 224 + 14 + 240 + 128 = 706
Vitality: 200 + 224 + 14 + 90 + 128 = 656
Healing Power: 200 + 336 = 536
Condition Damage: 100 + 150 = 250
Precision: 100

FYI – I’ll check over this later today, when I get home…but if you see something – let me know. Also, I think I am going for boon duration runes instead of divinity- as I found divinity runes to have very little impact on spell effectiveness (damage/healing), when I tested in the Mist.
______

Correction: I had Power and Vitality figures reversed in Armor stats above. This post has now been corrected.

Thanks guys for all the calculations. I haven’t had time to bother doing it lol :P

I edited the youtube link i linked earlier. Didn’t realize i had wrong link up

@FannonCodder

so I guess the skill is useless then. Still doesn’t hurt to have a free condition lol

Yeah AoE and PBAoE is a thiefs worst nightmare. Some of his skills rely on staying stealthed within an area zone, so just shooting random AoE (drakes breath comes to mind) will hurt the thief alot. Plus if you cast magnetic grasp right before he cloaks, it can still connect. If it does connect, you can guarantee land a few extra spells and hit 100% of the time because u know exactly where he is.

@fannon and silvershadez

thanks for answering the question for me

@ReQuiem

I still never tested power vs condition damage theories on diminishing returns / which stat is statistically better. It is much better to my understanding to have more condition damage and slightly less power, as n elementalist relies on versatility to deal damage.

I haven’t gotten all my armor sets yet for PVT gear, so I’m not sure yet. I don’t really want o sacrifice PVT stats just because this is the only gear type that gives both vitality and toughness+ an offense stat all in one gear.

I countered the condition dmg loss by adding that +10 condition damage per kill on my dagger. Also by having a much higher survivability, it is much easier to stack on those stacks of might for an extra 35 condition damage and 35 power per stack

@volfie and Fannon

I havent did the actual calculations for my gear but I’ll tell you what my final result is once I get my items

@ReQuiem
@Daphoenix

I forgot to mention, that with Wv3 and PvE you can can make up the lower con with food and such, not sure what kind of a food would be the best, maybe go with a +healing and +con

also

Master Tuning Crystal –
Nourishment(30 m) Gain Condition damage equal to 6% of your toughness
Gain Condition damage equal to 4% of your vitality
+10 Experience from kills

with this you would gain +159 con damage

This way in pve and Wv3 you could easily up your healing and con damage without have to sacrifice other areas, not to mention Crystals and food is pretty cheap

Do you recommend that run this builds and all the set for S/D ele

@Fannon
Yea there is always those consumables :P
I also like using mango pies for +70 hp /sec

@Mike
S/D should probably focus more on fire bursting, so I would recommend altering it into some of the fire tree traits (10% more dmg under fire attunement). There also tends to be less mobility as well, so zephys boon from air isn’t really needed either. For S/D, I would probably use an entirely different build.

Try something like this for S/D
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.1.0.13.0.16.0.34.0.3.14.10.9.24.8.7.7.6.0.0.0.0.0.33.32.42.50.0.0.65.0.0.10.0.30.15.15

daphoenix.4283:

@Fannon
Yea there is always those consumables :P
I also like using mango pies for +70 hp /sec

@Mike
S/D should probably focus more on fire bursting, so I would recommend altering it into some of the fire tree traits (10% more dmg under fire attunement). There also tends to be less mobility as well, so zephys boon from air isn’t really needed either. For S/D, I would probably use an entirely different build.

Try something like this for S/D
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.1.0.13.0.16.0.34.0.3.14.10.9.24.8.7.7.6.0.0.0.0.0.33.32.42.50.0.0.65.0.0.10.0.30.15.15

While that is certainly an awesome Signet/bursty build, for anyone who wants to run the usual 30 Arcana & 15+ Water, I actually feel Air is a better thing to pick up. When it comes to sustained and reliable damage, Air is superior to Fire versus anyone with the slightest clue. The instant damage you get from switching + #2 nuke + RtL as you cycle through attunements is actually really high. That’s why I run 20Air/20Water/30Arcana right now whereas I used to run 10Fire/10Earth/20Water/30Arcana.

Of course, that changes somewhat when you have Signet of Earth, but for the most part it holds true. Especially as smart opponents will blow their immunity when they see you line up the Signet Dragon’s Tooth combo.

Also, makes more sense to get 20 Water 10 Arcana in that build so you pick up the Cantrip trait. You have 3 of them, after all. I don’t know if I can ever play with 10/15 Arcana again after rolling with 30 for so long.

Thanks so MUCH!

I have been staff-bashing all the way up to level 80, and 100% map completion. I really like the AoE on staff, but i was having trouble with 1v1, even found PvE hard!

This is so much more fun that staff ele, Ride the lightning and burning speed are so addictive!

What do you feel about a sigil of the hydromancer? (I can’t really afford the one that stacks power :c)

I really like this build. Honestly I love it. I all but abandoned my thief leveled my ele over the week and play it main D/D. It reminds me of my favorite class every rush mage from shin megami tensei. So my thanks go out.

Puff Pure.8631:

Thanks so MUCH!

What do you feel about a sigil of the hydromancer? (I can’t really afford the one that stacks power :c)

There’s 3 version of the Sigil of Bloost lust (power stacks). Minor, major and superior. The first two are pretty cheap (on my server). First one is less then silver and second one i think 3 silver. Superior is 3-4g. Atm i use the major one. Pretty cheap and still very usefull. Can later upgrade to superior when i can afford it.

@Intigo

Air is good but usually the biggest burst that you get is from the fire dragons tooth + phoenix combo. Air is more or less a way to constantly apply damage to your enemy from a distance. Earth is situational for damage, and water is almost useless when it comes to damage.

S/D has that problem with dragons tooth as it is not easy to hit an opponent that actually knows how to play. Usually you use air 5 (updraft) or signet of earth to land it properly, but both of those skills have rather long cooldowns.

I agree with you on the arcana. I feel comfortable having at least 20 arcana, otherwise the CD on my skills would be way too long.

I made a few S/D builds that might be useful:

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.2.0.13.0.16.0.34.0.3.14.10.9.24.8.7.6.0.0.0.0.0.0.33.32.42.50.48.0.65.66.0.0.0.30.20.20

Here’s a better version of the build I just posted.

It does a significant amount of damage, has a the necessary arcana, healing, and defense to survive. I don’t find air (Zephyrs boon) to be all that useful in this case since you only have 1 aura on your skillset (not going to count runes).

@Puff Pure
I found sigil of hydromancy to be pretty decent. I did some tests, and the range of the chill effect is approximately 250-300 units away from your character. Having a 3second slow every 9 seconds makes a difference in PvE when kiting

@TheGuy
Glad you like playing elementalist

@Phoebe
Major is still pretty useful like you said, it adds 2 stacks instead of 3 per weapon switch. Its not that expensive, and having +35 power +35 condition damage is extremely significant at lower levels (because your base power and condition damage probably sucks at low levels :P)

—
I’m also currently looking for a competitive sPvP guild at the moment. I can’t seem to find any groups on my server that does sPvP, and I wanted to make commentary videos against really skilled players. Plus it gets boring killing noobies in Wv3

daphoenix.4283:

I’m also currently looking for a competitive sPvP guild at the moment. I can’t seem to find any groups on my server that does sPvP

I’m also looking for some sPvP guys, our guild is full of WvW players. We’ve got about 4 constant for tPvP, and need to convince some others to play. I think they don’t like it because there is no cheese greater helms with +10 stats on everyone else available.

I’m mainly looking for a group of people to do some tourneys with that don’t care for class make up, as me and my friend wish to play together and we are both eles.

I do like the looks of this build, I’m currently running d/d (previously s/d) with 0 0 10 30 30, typical defensive build and was taking on 3 people in sPvP last night, so much fun till a thief rocked up and ruined my day, 3 balanced builds are easy to take on, 3 balanced builds and 1 pure damage is a nightmare lol.

Had a fun tourney day before yesterday, 4 eles and a guardian vs a premade typical thief, mesmer, guardian, ranger, ele

Smashed the first match, but without voice com, found the second to be another premade and they smashed us

I’m guessing your from America, if you are in aus or on at aus times give me a yell, Sophea Of Elements is my pvp toon.

@Daphoenix You have a lot of great posts which obviously unfold over the course of the past month. I’m trying to sort through all the links… did you post what gear you use in Wv3 anywhere? The build calculator you’ve chosen to use only hits the sPvP armor.

I have been staff, but I’d like to swap to D/D so I’m really curious as to what Armor/Runes/Jewelry you’ve settled on for the open world.

@TGSlasher

I dont live in australia :/. I live in america. I’m not sure how lag / latency will factor in if we party up :S

@ Permafrost
I posted my gear on post 1 (its a block of text), and my future gear set too. I use the same thing for PvE and PvP too. The build I’m currently running trait wise is the same as the build calculator. I’ll try and compile everything on the first post

I’m a noob at making videos, but I just recorded some seriously epic battles today. It’s 40 mins of nonstop action with almost every technique imaginable all in one video.

On a unrelated topic: Whats the best method to commentate on your videos after you capture it?

Just wanted to thank you for your great build and all the material you are releasing.

I just recorded some seriously epic battles today. It’s 40 mins of nonstop action with almost every technique imaginable all in one video.

Sounds great. Can’t wait.

daphoenix, obviously Zephyr’s Boon is terrible for S/D. I never suggested that, just saying it makes for a better sustained damage running 20 Air and you can still have 30 Arcana without giving up Arcane Wave as you would for the Signet build.

Also, Final Shielding is better than a low crit chance Vifor regen, even in its buggy state~

Anyway, both are good.

daphoenix.4283:

@TGSlasher

I dont live in australia :/. I live in america. I’m not sure how lag / latency will factor in if we party up :S

@ Permafrost
I posted my gear on post 1 (its a block of text), and my future gear set too. I use the same thing for PvE and PvP too. The build I’m currently running trait wise is the same as the build calculator. I’ll try and compile everything on the first post

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I’m a noob at making videos, but I just recorded some seriously epic battles today. It’s 40 mins of nonstop action with almost every technique imaginable all in one video.

On a unrelated topic: Whats the best method to commentate on your videos after you capture it?

Audacity is a great & freely available audio capture s/ware.
You could record your post commentary & add that as a second sound layer in your editing s/ware easily enough.
That or add text on top of the clip or add Youtube annotations etc.

Hey Daphoenix, I roll on FA with the [NICE] guys. I’m going to be leveling this build. I’ve always wanted to play an elementalist, but their lack of weapon switching was always a bit of a downer, mostly because I wanted to play D/D but everyone I talked to said it sucked for wvw (which is where I spend the vast majority of my play time).

I’m only level 13 but I actually had some success last night playing conservatively with d/d. I’m running with mistform and icebow for some range during the larger battle/skirmishing.

So if you see Manos Hansofayt running around, that’d be me!

Manos.5486:

Hey Daphoenix, I roll on FA with the [NICE] guys. I’m going to be leveling this build. I’ve always wanted to play an elementalist, but their lack of weapon switching was always a bit of a downer, mostly because I wanted to play D/D but everyone I talked to said it sucked for wvw (which is where I spend the vast majority of my play time).

I’m only level 13 but I actually had some success last night playing conservatively with d/d. I’m running with mistform and icebow for some range during the larger battle/skirmishing.

So if you see Manos Hansofayt running around, that’d be me!

The master…has many wives…Torgo wants a wife…

In other news, I find D/D to be awesome in WvW, I think you’ll have a lot of fun with it.

Heya Excala, ran into you in WvW with my friend Exilus (thief, im the necro lol) and we had our fun little 1 on 1’s. Thanks a bunch for all the great build info, building a new ele right now and cant wait. Did as best i could to match the stats/build in sPVP and kitten the build is so kitten, even though its not quite the same haha. Can’t want to get it in to wvw!

@ Aesa all damage boost (% based) on necromancer do NOT boost condition damage. I think it’s the same for elementalist. Only condition damage stat boosts it.

I spent some time and uploaded a quality video detailing what I am thinking / doing in this epic WvWvW video

Hopefully you aspiring d/d elementalists can learn something from this video

Love the new video man. Are you using soldier’s gear with cleric’s jewelry like you planned to? Or are you using the original Carrior/Cleric’s mix? Using Divinity’s now or still Dolyak’s? Looks like fun running around with other d/d Eles in WvW. Lots of knockdowns and the fact that you don’t have to worry about leaving them in the dust like other classes (aside from thief, of course). I can’t play any other class because they’re either too kitten slow, too kitten boring, or both.

Daphoenix whats ur armor at? I was told mine is low at 2300