Guild Wars 2

I feel like the title says it all, but basically my question is:

“Is it more helpful to a GvG composition to have all elementalists running full Zerk(armor/weapon/accessories) with more damage oriented traits like the traitline 6/6/0/0/2(Pyromancer’s w/ lightning rod and blasting staff) to maximize their damage output, or is it better to have one or two running PVT armor with zerk weapons and accessories with the trait line 0/0/2/6/6 (meta battle staff traits) for the condi clears on regen?”

It has been my personal opinion that the elementalist is best played as an offensive caster as opposed to a healer since it can only heal on attunement swap to water, evasive arcana water roll and with the water3 and 5 on staff. Despite this, the elementalist has so much CC/zoning and aoe spam. If elementalists can survive without the points into the water trait line, I thought they would be better off throwing the points into more offensive areas.

Am I right?
If not, please elaborate.

I suggest 0/6/0/2/2 , zerker staff and amulet, armor mix of celes, valk and some toughness/vit gear of your choice- accessories= cav+knight+captain ( precision major and toughness minor).

Food = potent oil and steak and asparagus food

You should now have around 2k+ power, 50+ crit chance and 195+ crit dmg , 1500+ toughness and 15k+ HP . No sigils added, use this as base and increase/decrease stats as you see it fit [ I use same gear switching from d/d roamer to staff backline offensive]

Being able to get some hit it’s great…and wait for the update when blasting staff becomes baseline and attunement CD drops to 10s by default, then play 6/6/0/6/0 and bring absolute death in WvW

As always, the first and foremost thought in a GvG scenario is playing what your team expects you to be running. If your commander expects you to be throwing Healing Rain with two condi cleanses (Cleansing Water) then not having that is going to throw them off.

That said, full offense is certainly fun but is usually short lived. More Overt attacks can largely be avoided/mitigated with triple cantrip (Flash, Mist and Armor) and conditions managed with Ether Renewal but you can’t really avoid Retaliation. Retaliation is incredibly punishing with very little Toughness/Vitality to last through it. The better you do the more you will be punished for it and I’ve seen my life go from full to half on good bursts of damage almost entirely from Retaliation. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to pull off, and I’ve seen a few groups run a few Eles like this, but again it comes down to organization and planning for it.

Personally I don’t see the point. Prior to joining my guild I ran mostly this build. It has plenty of offense rolled into a strong defense. With Applied Strength/Fortitude and Bloodlust Stacks I’ve got tons of Power and Vitality. I never go down and have plenty of survivability to adjust to bad positioning or a focus spike.

Really it’s all about being able to adjust to the scenario as it presents itself. Sometimes Venomshare is very common and I’ll switch out for more Condi Cleanse. Other times it’s not and there’s a lot more people singling people out and blowing them up and I’ll go more survivability. Other nights it’s just a bunch of baddies and you can steam roll them and full Zerker is the call. Adaptability is always the key to success in competitive environment.

Thankyou for the advice and feedback.