Guild Wars 2

Let me begin by describing how I currently see the metagame. Feel free to disagree and post your thoughts. Currently dominant builds are:
- Sizer’s 20066 S/D
- Strength/celestial D/D elementalist 02066/00266
- Strength/cele/soldier/valk axebow and hambow off-bunkers
- 3kit balthazar engi
- Standard condimancer
- Oh so classic 01661 bunker guard
Honorable mentions:
- Power necro(lich)
- Pistol whip
- 44006 shatter

Obviously these are not the only builds that are played, but to me they are extremely abundant. (Worth noting I play around rank 100 mmr EU soloq)

Get to the point already

So why tempest defense? The main reason is the trickery meta. It’s no secret that S/D trickery is a hard matchup for D/D. Tempest defense however COMPLETELY turns this matchup around. S/D relies heavily on a strong opener with a mug + a precast larcenous strike. Every time he opens on you with steal however, he hits the shocking aura that pops from the daze, interrupting him before he even gets the chance to finish the pre-cast ability. His offensive is completely nullified, and chances are you get to punish him quite hard since he can hardly touch you with shocking aura up. When it wears out you still have a 20s cooldown shocking aura up your sleeve, and by the time his steal recharges, so will your tempest defense.

On top of that, this build does substantially more damage than a classic setup. If you ask a thief what his worst enemy is, it’s damage. Be it another thief, a sneaky mesmer or whatever. With 200 percent critical damage and 40 crit chance, you pose a very real threat to the S/D thief. Whereas he was previously in control of the engagement and could disengage at will, this build is quite a bit more scary.

The second real strong-suit of this build is an area where classic D/D often falls short. Up-front damage and kill potential. That’s where the icebow comes in. It might seem like a bit of a gimmick, and it probably is, but hear me out. First off, tempest defense damage boost procs off the #5 skill. For those of you who didn’t know, that ability is a 5 second stun that can not be broken by a regular stun-break. Only blink type abilities can get you out of it. The downside is that it’s a very slow projectile with a lengthy wind-up animation. When used in conjunction with lightning flash however, this skill becomes MUCH harder to avoid. Long story short, if you get hit by this and you don’t have a blink or form of invulnerability, you’re probably dead. The skill 4 with 20 % bonus damage from tempest defense will decimate you.

This skill spawns another bow on the ground. If you can get a teammate to pick it up he can chain the stun together into a 10s stun, or stun someone else and use the same combo. Thieves are especially suited for this, since they can steal to their opponent before the 5 skill hits, and do insane damage with the 4 skill since they’re likely on a zerker’s amulet, however a bunker can also make good use of this purely for the stun.

Opening a match with a refuge into a double icebow from you and your thief can truly snowball a match.

I planned to dissertate on the merits of this build against every other meta spec, but I feel the post would get way too long that way. If you read this far, you could probably see its merits versus hammers, fear chains and classic D/D. I would very much like to point out that shocking aura will interrupt pistol-whip and thus completely and utterly shuts down PW thieves. Same goes for blurred frenzy, although S/P mesmer is not as common anymore. The two most important advantages I feel I have touched on enough. Trickery matchup and insane teamfight potential with sheer damage and stunlock. Test the damage out for yourself (don’t forget to swap while barraging for might and fury).

The biggest downsides are probably:
- rather poor condi management(reliant on ER)
- rather reliant on your team to know what to do with the bow(tell them)

Please do let me know what you think

P.S.: The two points in water can be freely spent on many things. Prime candidates are cantrip mastery, piercing shards (massive overkill on icebow damage), armor of earth when below 50% (good for not dying, which might be a problem with only two cantrips), elemental shielding(extra TD proc) and stone splinters. When deciding on where to spend, don’t underestimate soothing mist area support! Also this build can be ran in an aura sharing variant, 06062 in tPvP mainly.

I enjoyed reading this!

The only thing that comes to my mind at the moment is that this greatly reduces the support ability of the d/d ele, which I find is its value added in teamfights. This is not crucial, but could imply that your build requires a change in the mindset for the ele: from support to kill maker.

I am a bit lower than you in the ranking but I’ll give this a try and let you know how I find it

I used the icebow combo before too. Tempest defense is awesome. I tend to use D/F though. The Focus off-hand gives 1 stun and 1 knock down ranged and targeted. D/D has it aoe but you need to be close and people tend to recognize it.
Next focus earth 5 in combination with the icebow combo means you cant get killed or hit or interrupted while using icebow. You could also save it up for stomping.

And you know those situations where you have 3 opponents downed and don’t feel like stomping every single one of ’m? Just use ice-bow no. 4 to clean ’m up.

Darox.8069:

I enjoyed reading this!

The only thing that comes to my mind at the moment is that this greatly reduces the support ability of the d/d ele, which I find is its value added in teamfights. This is not crucial, but could imply that your build requires a change in the mindset for the ele: from support to kill maker.

I am a bit lower than you in the ranking but I’ll give this a try and let you know how I find it

Very true. Against a heavy condi team the support ability might benefit a team more than the kill potential of this build. If anything though, this build makes for interesting scenarios. It can seriously throw teams and players off completely and snowball games out of control. It remains to be seen if it can do so reliably enough.

I’m very curious to see if you can make it work! Remember it helps a lot to have a stealth opener on the mid point if you can manage to communicate it.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

I used the icebow combo before too. Tempest defense is awesome. I tend to use D/F though. The Focus off-hand gives 1 stun and 1 knock down ranged and targeted. D/D has it aoe but you need to be close and people tend to recognize it.
Next focus earth 5 in combination with the icebow combo means you cant get killed or hit or interrupted while using icebow. You could also save it up for stomping.

And you know those situations where you have 3 opponents downed and don’t feel like stomping every single one of ’m? Just use ice-bow no. 4 to clean ’m up.

Yeah the added downed control is really nice, although the cooldown is rather lengthy. Icebow 2 damage is ok too, for when you really need to hang back to wait for some cooldowns.

About focus: I really have a love/hate relationship with that thing… I’ll definitely give it a go, but I hate to lose the aoe CC of offhand dagger, not to mention the good fire field and ride the lightning. Overall I think you kind of need the offhand dagger to be considered a threat, and focus is more suited for bunker-play. Thanks for your insight though.

‘Careful, you may gain effectiveness against S/D thieves but you lose some against conditions (necros, rangers, engineers, even warriors). Unless you know what you are facing beforehand, I’m not entirely sure the tradeoff is worth it.

I played same thing with staff in WvW.No Icebow though.Also toyed around when they changed tempest defense.I found it very rewarding vs thiefs in OS.
I really like the theory.Gonna give it a try

Khenzy.9348:

‘Careful, you may gain effectiveness against S/D thieves but you lose some against conditions (necros, rangers, engineers, even warriors). Unless you know what you are facing beforehand, I’m not entirely sure the tradeoff is worth it.

It just so happens that lockdown counters engi and necro quite hard. You might lose some effectiveness against them overall, but there’s a good chance you can remove them from the equation before a fight even properly starts with icebow 5.

Condi warrior will probably destroy you though, you’re right about that. Overall the build gains a lot of teamfight potential at the loss of advantage in some of the less common 1v1s such as rangers and condi warrior.

If the enemy team has a lot of condition users you’re probably wise to swap to classic 00266(especially if they don’t have a thief), but that doesnt seem to happen as much as it used to. Power necro and power engi are getting quite big as well.

^I think you can remove almost anyone from the equation is you land that Icebow 5, but wouldn’t that be regadless of build? :P

Khenzy.9348:

^I think you can remove almost anyone from the equation is you land that Icebow 5, but wouldn’t that be regadless of build? :P

Well, mesmer, thief and ele all have blink moves. I’m honestly not sure how many people are aware of how this skill works and know to blink out of it Mesmer has distortion as well, and some eles have mist. Not many engis run elixir s, and even if they do they won’t be able to move.

Warrior can pop endure (worth noting he’ll still take considerable bleeds though). Necro, ranger, guardian and engi are pretty much screwed. (guardian might be able to stun-break and renewed focus).

I’m actually not sure what happens to an ele who lightning flashes out or a mesmer who phase retreats, thief who steals. These are teleports with no stunbreaks so the 5s stun might actually persist wherever they blink to. :o

The tempest defense damage boost makes a big difference if you don’t have much assistance getting the target down while he’s stunned, so the build does actually make quite a bit of difference there. Plus there’s the fact that you have a lot more precision and ferocity from traits

The main problem of FB5 is random dodges and blocks.
But it deals tons of damage with tempest and piersing shards.
High risk – high reward.

I’ve been running a similar build for a long time for wvw soloroam. I’d suggest a few things, that should patch up most of your weak spots.

Drop Evasive arcana and elemental attunement. I know I know, it seems crazy. But if you take the time to play around without them, they really aren’t necessary. Even if you only take ten out of arcane, you can put it into water. Thats gonna get you a bigger heal on water swap, to balance out the loss of the water dodge, as well as give you instantcast condition removal, which goes a long kitten way towards dealing with condition necros.

Personally I go zerk and take another ten out of arcane for stone shards, but thats not really necessary. It plays similarly, only the fights are(have to be) shorter.

Essentially, I’d heavily recommend pulling ten out of arcane and dropping it into water for healing ripple/cleansing wave. If the icebow thing is not working out due to uncooperative teammates/smart opponents, i’d also slap a signet of air into that slot. It’ll deal with the longer controls and make the stun turnaround even harder for your opponent to deal with, given that blind.

Furthermore, against thieves arcane shield is basically a won fight, and way more effective than armor of earth against boonripping mesmers/thieves. If tempest defense is on cd for their burst, such as the common midfight gank scenario, you can shield to break basilisk, and their blocked backstab will proc the shocking aura you just activated. You’re now free to bomb them with aoe. It works on hambow warriors similarly, given that as soon as they pull out hammer they have nothing to rapidly pop it.

Icebow was in the meta a bit until ppl learned to play against it.

I don’t see 30 in air being the next meta just to deal with thief. You lose too much from team fights and personal sustain. That healing power lost, the condi removal, and the 2k health is big. You need sustain to build up might stacks to deal heavy damage. Also you don’t have protection on aura.

A thief can literally get around shocking aura by not using basi venom and using infiltrator’s signet instead of steal. Or they can basi venom you, then steal so you’re cc’ed just as long as the aura. Or they can use shadow step after they steal and shadow return to deal with the two stuns from shocking aura.

You just become too squishy, and lose too much team support for a little bit of damage and an aura.

It’s good to see people thinking outside the box, but tempest defense would be best on a one-shot ele for the purposes being described, in my opinion.

Linnael.1069:

I’ve been running a similar build for a long time for wvw soloroam. I’d suggest a few things, that should patch up most of your weak spots.

Drop Evasive arcana and elemental attunement. I know I know, it seems crazy. But if you take the time to play around without them, they really aren’t necessary. Even if you only take ten out of arcane, you can put it into water. Thats gonna get you a bigger heal on water swap, to balance out the loss of the water dodge, as well as give you instantcast condition removal, which goes a long kitten way towards dealing with condition necros.

Personally I go zerk and take another ten out of arcane for stone shards, but thats not really necessary. It plays similarly, only the fights are(have to be) shorter.

Essentially, I’d heavily recommend pulling ten out of arcane and dropping it into water for healing ripple/cleansing wave. If the icebow thing is not working out due to uncooperative teammates/smart opponents, i’d also slap a signet of air into that slot. It’ll deal with the longer controls and make the stun turnaround even harder for your opponent to deal with, given that blind.

Furthermore, against thieves arcane shield is basically a won fight, and way more effective than armor of earth against boonripping mesmers/thieves. If tempest defense is on cd for their burst, such as the common midfight gank scenario, you can shield to break basilisk, and their blocked backstab will proc the shocking aura you just activated. You’re now free to bomb them with aoe. It works on hambow warriors similarly, given that as soon as they pull out hammer they have nothing to rapidly pop it.

I put quite a bit of thought into whether I’d take healing ripple or evasive arcana and in the end the power of elemental attunement won me over in favor of the arcana line. However I never considered dropping 10 and keeping EA but grabbing healing ripple and cleansing wave. I’ll give it a go, but remember that Evasive arcana is the same heal as healing ripple and also a condi remove. Essentially it won’t change very much I think.

I’ve run arcane shield in PvP quite often, and the cooldown is just too long in my experience. It’s indeed really strong vs thieves but not a guaranteed win since larcenous is unblockable. By the way the backstab thieves are really not the issue in sPvP these days. S/D and S/P trickery thieves are far more abundant and effective. I disagree on it being effective vs mesmers though (albeit still more effective than AoE i’ll give you that).

The zerker’s amulet is also something I considered. It makes a lot of sense to combine this strong opener build with a zerker’s amulet, but you just lose out on sooooo much sustain. Rather than having a comparable build that does certain things better, you get a completely different build that does certain things a LOT better but can’t do a lot of the things classic D/D can at all (e.g.:bunkering home for a while).

Thanks for your insight!

Shockwave.1230:

Icebow was in the meta a bit until ppl learned to play against it.

I don’t see 30 in air being the next meta just to deal with thief. You lose too much from team fights and personal sustain. That healing power lost, the condi removal, and the 2k health is big. You need sustain to build up might stacks to deal heavy damage. Also you don’t have protection on aura.

A thief can literally get around shocking aura by not using basi venom and using infiltrator’s signet instead of steal. Or they can basi venom you, then steal so you’re cc’ed just as long as the aura. Or they can use shadow step after they steal and shadow return to deal with the two stuns from shocking aura.

You just become too squishy, and lose too much team support for a little bit of damage and an aura.

It’s good to see people thinking outside the box, but tempest defense would be best on a one-shot ele for the purposes being described, in my opinion.

Thief builds today entirely revolve around steal though. Maybe they will learn to deal with it in the end (that’s what meta is after all), but remember that they need steal for: fury, vigor, boonrip, damage, healing, daze. Not having any of those will set a thief back severely even if he manages to avoid using steal and basi on you altogether (which i highly doubt).

If you’ve played as a thief against shocking aura, you would know it’s not just something you brush off. You describe a lot of ways for a thief to deal with shocking aura which include using a lot of cooldowns just to keep the break-even (basi and steal? shadowstep and return?). Even if they do that, you’ve won since they had to blow a lot of stuff just to keep the break-even, and you still have a shocking aura up your sleeve.

Note that I added a sigil of leeching to get about half of the sustain healing ripple would provide, while also adding 1k damage every 9s.

If you want to run protection on aura you can. I find it an overrated trait since you don’t need protection as much when your auras are up anyway.

Gokil.2543:

Shockwave.1230:

Icebow was in the meta a bit until ppl learned to play against it.

I don’t see 30 in air being the next meta just to deal with thief. You lose too much from team fights and personal sustain. That healing power lost, the condi removal, and the 2k health is big. You need sustain to build up might stacks to deal heavy damage. Also you don’t have protection on aura.

A thief can literally get around shocking aura by not using basi venom and using infiltrator’s signet instead of steal. Or they can basi venom you, then steal so you’re cc’ed just as long as the aura. Or they can use shadow step after they steal and shadow return to deal with the two stuns from shocking aura.

You just become too squishy, and lose too much team support for a little bit of damage and an aura.

It’s good to see people thinking outside the box, but tempest defense would be best on a one-shot ele for the purposes being described, in my opinion.

Thief builds today entirely revolve around steal though. Maybe they will learn to deal with it in the end (that’s what meta is after all), but remember that they need steal for: fury, vigor, boonrip, damage, healing, daze. Not having any of those will set a thief back severely even if he manages to avoid using steal and basi on you altogether (which i highly doubt).

If you’ve played as a thief against shocking aura, you would know it’s not just something you brush off. You describe a lot of ways for a thief to deal with shocking aura which include using a lot of cooldowns just to keep the break-even (basi and steal? shadowstep and return?). Even if they do that, you’ve won since they had to blow a lot of stuff just to keep the break-even, and you still have a shocking aura up your sleeve.

Note that I added a sigil of leeching to get about half of the sustain healing ripple would provide, while also adding 1k damage every 9s.

If you want to run protection on aura you can. I find it an overrated trait since you don’t need protection as much when your auras are up anyway.

The main point I was trying to make is that is that you’re building specifically towards a thief, not the meta or what’s optimal for the class.

I was just listing ways I’d counter your build while I was thinking about D/P, but meta is current S/D. The build would struggle heavily against an S/D thief that opened with shortbow basi venom. Auras will slow down the damage a bit, but the main value of the current meta ele build is it’s sustain that allows it to build up might stacks to deal heavy damage.

Thieves can adapt to this build via game play alone, and the lack of sustain/team support also makes you weaker in team fights. I don’t think the tradeoff makes sense, given the context I have currently. If I’m missing something though and the build is better than I think for conquest then I’m sure we’ll see it be meta.

Linnael.1069:

Drop Evasive arcana and elemental attunement. I know I know, it seems crazy. But

EA = +1 blast in earth and +20% to might.
Otherwise if there is too much condi in opposite team – water traits is much better.

Tempest defense is a very nice trait and definately something that helps the ele in fights. Now for icebow, this utility is powerful but is as we know it, gimmicky. Against theives it’s useless (especially s/d) with their extensive blinks as well as the mes or any ele with LF. As I main a warrior this can be hurtful but it has a huge tell. Most people should be able to dodge it or like me, even reflect it back and have a field day.

I like your style… still, I feel like you sacrifice against every other matchup besides thief by going 30 air.

SaintSnow.6593:

Tempest defense is a very nice trait and definately something that helps the ele in fights. Now for icebow, this utility is powerful but is as we know it, gimmicky. Against theives it’s useless (especially s/d) with their extensive blinks as well as the mes or any ele with LF. As I main a warrior this can be hurtful but it has a huge tell. Most people should be able to dodge it or like me, even reflect it back and have a field day.

The idea is to either channel icebow 5 from stealth or from a huge range and blinking in at the last second. Ofcourse neither method is completely reliable but it will make the important stuns have at least a solid 70 percent chance of landing.

As for getting it reflected, that’s part of the game You should be able to dodge the returning projectile though if you’re paying attention.

Gokil, do you have any recorded gameplay?

I think the idea is fine, but the problem is that it looks like you are making a build just to counter S/D thieves.
The “fun” thing is that even if S/D thief is a counter to D/D ele, in the Conquest game a D/D Ele will “always” win against the thief. S/D is great at kiting and peeling, but it takes a while to take down some bunker builds and is not a 1v1 spec for conquest.

Not to mention that if the thief realizes that the Ele is running tempest defense, he should just change his approach to the fight, by either picking another target first in a teamfight, open with a ranged Basilisk Venom (instead than Mug) to let the Ele proc Tempest Defense, or just wait for the Ele to be CC-ed by another player and attack him afterwards.
A good thief will realize quickly what specs an enemy is running, and a D/D ele without 6 points in water is REALLY weak to focus fire, especially if he runs Ice Bow.

Honestly I don’t see this spec becoming meta at all. You COULD gain the upper hand against “bad” thieves, and you could even surprise good thieves the first time they face you. But you would lose so much in terms of self-defense that the tradeoff is not worth it, making this one a “situational” spec rather than a “staple”, meta spec. Not to mention that you would be covering a niche role in your team comp, and random players will never understand this: in order for a build to become “meta”, it needs to be either really easy to play or extremely effective at it. Standard D/D Celestial Ele is both effective AND easy to play. Your build is somewhat effective, but absolutely not “easy” to play.

If you want to counter thieves, you’d better go full zerk fresh air S/F (or S/D) with Arcane Shield and pop your burst on the thief when he closes in.

hihey.1075:

I think the idea is fine, but the problem is that it looks like you are making a build just to counter S/D thieves.
The “fun” thing is that even if S/D thief is a counter to D/D ele, in the Conquest game a D/D Ele will “always” win against the thief. S/D is great at kiting and peeling, but it takes a while to take down some bunker builds and is not a 1v1 spec for conquest.

Not to mention that if the thief realizes that the Ele is running tempest defense, he should just change his approach to the fight, by either picking another target first in a teamfight, open with a ranged Basilisk Venom (instead than Mug) to let the Ele proc Tempest Defense, or just wait for the Ele to be CC-ed by another player and attack him afterwards.
A good thief will realize quickly what specs an enemy is running, and a D/D ele without 6 points in water is REALLY weak to focus fire, especially if he runs Ice Bow.

Honestly I don’t see this spec becoming meta at all. You COULD gain the upper hand against “bad” thieves, and you could even surprise good thieves the first time they face you. But you would lose so much in terms of self-defense that the tradeoff is not worth it, making this one a “situational” spec rather than a “staple”, meta spec. Not to mention that you would be covering a niche role in your team comp, and random players will never understand this: in order for a build to become “meta”, it needs to be either really easy to play or extremely effective at it. Standard D/D Celestial Ele is both effective AND easy to play. Your build is somewhat effective, but absolutely not “easy” to play.

If you want to counter thieves, you’d better go full zerk fresh air S/F (or S/D) with Arcane Shield and pop your burst on the thief when he closes in.

I’m not sure what you mean by the first part. S/D is in no way, shape or form a guaranteed win for a standard D/D elementalist. You severely overestimate how tanky an elementalist is if his armor of earth gets stolen right away. S/D definitely has a solid 50-70% chance of winning the duel given no interrupts, and it doesnt take all that long since S/D can quite effectively deny an ele’s heals if he’s paying attention by pressuring while the ele’s in water. Moreover, the kill potential of an ele on a good S/D thief is very low, whereas the thief has a decent chance. Finally, S/D’s specialty is 2v1ing you with whatever teammate he has, since his damage and mobility are so high. Having a S/D thief 2v1 you is catastrophic without exception on the current build since you melt very very fast once they get through your armor of earth. 20066 thief is the strongest 1v1 thief spec vs ele bar none. Maybe P/D power but even that is meh.

I understand your opinion in the rest of your post, and respect it. IMO the sacrifice is not that huge, and the potential payoff when hitting a couple icebows is massive, but your points are very valid.

As for full zerk S/F, I’d play it if it were viable believe me I really enjoy it in 1v1 servers but I feel like it’s not made for conquest.
We should duel again sometime btw. I really enjoyed duelling your thief in the OS! IGN is Elemelentalist.

Gokil.2543:

hihey.1075:

I think the idea is fine, but the problem is that it looks like you are making a build just to counter S/D thieves.
The “fun” thing is that even if S/D thief is a counter to D/D ele, in the Conquest game a D/D Ele will “always” win against the thief. S/D is great at kiting and peeling, but it takes a while to take down some bunker builds and is not a 1v1 spec for conquest.

Not to mention that if the thief realizes that the Ele is running tempest defense, he should just change his approach to the fight, by either picking another target first in a teamfight, open with a ranged Basilisk Venom (instead than Mug) to let the Ele proc Tempest Defense, or just wait for the Ele to be CC-ed by another player and attack him afterwards.
A good thief will realize quickly what specs an enemy is running, and a D/D ele without 6 points in water is REALLY weak to focus fire, especially if he runs Ice Bow.

Honestly I don’t see this spec becoming meta at all. You COULD gain the upper hand against “bad” thieves, and you could even surprise good thieves the first time they face you. But you would lose so much in terms of self-defense that the tradeoff is not worth it, making this one a “situational” spec rather than a “staple”, meta spec. Not to mention that you would be covering a niche role in your team comp, and random players will never understand this: in order for a build to become “meta”, it needs to be either really easy to play or extremely effective at it. Standard D/D Celestial Ele is both effective AND easy to play. Your build is somewhat effective, but absolutely not “easy” to play.

If you want to counter thieves, you’d better go full zerk fresh air S/F (or S/D) with Arcane Shield and pop your burst on the thief when he closes in.

I’m not sure what you mean by the first part. S/D is in no way, shape or form a guaranteed win for a standard D/D elementalist. You severely overestimate how tanky an elementalist is if his armor of earth gets stolen right away. S/D definitely has a solid 50-70% chance of winning the duel given no interrupts, and it doesnt take all that long since S/D can quite effectively deny an ele’s heals if he’s paying attention by pressuring while the ele’s in water. Moreover, the kill potential of an ele on a good S/D thief is very low, whereas the thief has a decent chance. Finally, S/D’s specialty is 2v1ing you with whatever teammate he has, since his damage and mobility are so high. Having a S/D thief 2v1 you is catastrophic without exception on the current build since you melt very very fast once they get through your armor of earth. 20066 thief is the strongest 1v1 thief spec vs ele bar none. Maybe P/D power but even that is meh.

I understand your opinion in the rest of your post, and respect it. IMO the sacrifice is not that huge, and the potential payoff when hitting a couple icebows is massive, but your points are very valid.

As for full zerk S/F, I’d play it if it were viable believe me I really enjoy it in 1v1 servers but I feel like it’s not made for conquest.
We should duel again sometime btw. I really enjoyed duelling your thief in the OS! IGN is Elemelentalist.

You misunderstood the first part. The “win” was with reference to the fact that the Conquest game revolves on capping AND holding points. A standard Celestial D/D ele can HOLD a point pretty easily against a S/D thief (never use Armor of Earth against S/D thief in a 1v1, unless you need it for an additional cleanse).

Even if the thief is really good, the Ele should have no problems holding him off for AT LEAST 30 seconds. And 1v1ing for more than 20s is a complete waste of time for a roamer class. You either kill your opponent fast, or you should better leave it and go elsewhere helping your team.
Also, you’ve said it yourself: in a 2v1 with a S/D thief the standard D/D celestial Ele is screwed. So HOW is your “new” build better at it? To me it only looks SLIGHTLY better at killing S/D thieves and for situational group utility thanks to Ice Bow (which any Ele can use…). In teamfights it’s worse.

I would be glad if you could prove me wrong with some videos against good opponents though, as I consider both D/D Celestial Eles AND S/D 20066 Thieves a cancer to the current metagame.

Dude i don’t know if this thread sparcled all this interest in Frostbow builds but yesterday i played 5 matches 4 of which had eles using this build.It puts down insane pressure and some matches where the ele was cooperating with his teamates (prolly TS) the results were devastating.

Personal WvW experience of “meta”[ For me DD solo roam EBG is 0/4/0/4/6 (20% cd reduc). And 4/2/0/2/6 for zerker staff, with 0/2/0/6/6 bunker staff (this is excellent for kiting btw – even solo). The only 2 rune sets I bother with are traveler and scholar. Been a year with this. In spvp I use different runes all the time to test stuff. I have 7 str runes sitting in the bank, but I don’t want to put it over the other 2 sets. What’s meta for others doesn’t work for me. Celestial trinkets let you survive with less cleanses. I swap to cav trinkets for zele staff to bring the toughness up closer to 1600 so I’m still able to kite without blowing every cd to do it. But that’s WvW. ]

Re: OP – I’ve tested tempest defense once in spvp. It seemed to work, but I couldn’t tell how often. When I switched to fresh air to test that, I felt like I was getting killed a lot faster even with all the air procs. Maybe I will test it some more. The spec you use is something I can get on-board with, although I can’t get into frostbow, but I can see it as a nice range option/ vuln stack for support. My tests were with battle/doom, but leeching seems like a better option, especially with the healing power being over 500, and using the practically required ether renewal. Just knowing that you’re having great success with TD, I’m anxious to go play it some more, so thanks. I was looking for some inspiration today. lol

TBH I’ve never used ibow 5+LF. Does it always hit stealth if channeled before they go invis?

I’d just go fresh air zerk s/f and shove on an IB depending on the map and classes. I see the benefit of the shocking aura, but you could just instantly 100-0 most classes going power / hybridish, or even tanky guards if you get them before they pop any dmg mitigation / wait for protection to end. I also get the whole counter stunlocking thing, but most of s/f is instant so you could still burst or invul when stunned and with those two options still available I wouldn’t go for d/d shocking aura then. In addition, I feel like you’re spreading yourself thin trying to go into a dmg trait line and bunkerish almost as if running an old cele amulet or even full cele in wvw right now. Trying to do both dmg and bunk often doesn’t work, but the meta d/d comes maybe a tiny bit close to that after might stacks are up. I’ve tried exactly what you posted, but prepatch celestial rework and didn’t like it.

Anyways, making something meta is tough, even s/f burst isn’t really meta. GL with your build though.

“The second real strong-suit of this build is an area where classic D/D often falls short. Up-front damage and kill potential. " – OP

Not sure who you are playing with but you need to find a real DnD ele sometime.

Fuzzion.2504:

“The second real strong-suit of this build is an area where classic D/D often falls short. Up-front damage and kill potential. " – OP

Not sure who you are playing with but you need to find a real DnD ele sometime.

99% of all d/d eles i see in spvp hit totally like a wet noodle (nothing against wet noodles)

reason? yes they dont mightstack , they r probably those who r: ooo ele gets strong again, ima faceroll w it now! ’

anyway those who mightstack (so better eles) do hit way harder, therefor not that much of a problem

Fuzzion.2504:

“The second real strong-suit of this build is an area where classic D/D often falls short. Up-front damage and kill potential. " – OP

Not sure who you are playing with but you need to find a real DnD ele sometime.

By upfront damage I mean damage before you get to stack might. With 1450~ power you do ridiculously low damage. Ele needs time to ramp up in fights and that’s one of its weaknesses.

Kill potential is a problem due to most of your skills not being reliable enough

Gokil.2543:

Fuzzion.2504:

“The second real strong-suit of this build is an area where classic D/D often falls short. Up-front damage and kill potential. " – OP

Not sure who you are playing with but you need to find a real DnD ele sometime.

By upfront damage I mean damage before you get to stack might. With 1450~ power you do ridiculously low damage. Ele needs time to ramp up in fights and that’s one of its weaknesses.

Kill potential is a problem due to most of your skills not being reliable enough

another is , thieves stealing ur mightstacks, dat facepalm when a thief kills u w stolen 20+ mightstacks

Went on an 11 winstreak in teamqueue with this build just now. Only one or two guildies with me to make use of the bow, no voice comms. Let me tell you, it works. Tempest defense alleviates a metric ton of thief pressure, icebow is an enormous threat in any fight.

Tweaks to the build: take mist form over armor of earth, take earth’s embrace over cantrip mastery. Mist stomps/resses have an enormous tactical value and are hard to trump in team queue.

Notes on the playstyle: KNOW WHAT 1v1 YOU CAN TAKE. This build loses quite a bit of 1v1 potential in sustained duels, and loses a lot of potential in condi duels. When the enemy team has more than 2 heavy condi users, it’s advisable not to run this build. You are a menace in skirmishes and teamfights, play as such.

Use frost fan on the icebow. A very potent, long duration chill with a low cast time.

Pre-cast icebow in any fight early. Get the casts of #4 and #5 off as quickly as possible as they leave you vulnerable. Put the icebow in an easy to reach spot for yourself or your teammates to pick up.

An enormous advantage this build brings to your team as well is the kill potential on guardians! Keep an eye on stab and you can drop guardians like no other ele spec ever could.