Guild Wars 2

Hi Im new into this game, had struggle in solo pve as elementalist! What type of armor I should wear to be more protective but still do kinda good dps? im now wearing Power / precision / ferosity, running with Dagger / warhorn!

Solo PvE? You can run literally anything on an ele due to high base damage, lol. I run PvE with full cleric shout heal build and staff because I’m too lazy to switch from WvW.

But other than that, just change the armor to soldiers or something and keep the rest zerker. Should give you a bit more survivability.

Have problems in new zone! what about all-stat(celestial) armour it is good on elem if I go D/D ?

Try to play with staff. You have extra dodge on fire 4 and play range. Utility skills to arcane shield, sandstorm, lightning flash. This should give you enought survivability.

I tried to play celestial and knight. It was massive dps decrease and I didn’t feel any better with survivability.

Sotha.1283:

Try to play with staff. You have extra dodge on fire 4 and play range. Utility skills to arcane shield, sandstorm, lightning flash. This should give you enought survivability.

I tried to play celestial and knight. It was massive dps decrease and I didn’t feel any better with survivability.

With staff for some reason I receive even more damage cause lack of mobility !

ye staff is only really good for party work, i prefer sceptre/focus. can keep a bit of range and good burst. dagger is good if you like to be highly mobile.

The probem is that for aoe to work you need to mobs to stand in your aoe – that means you need to use yourself as a lure.

Sotha.1283:

Try to play with staff. You have extra dodge on fire 4 and play range. Utility skills to arcane shield, sandstorm, lightning flash. This should give you enought survivability.

I tried to play celestial and knight. It was massive dps decrease and I didn’t feel any better with survivability.

Run the weapons you want. Staff relies heavily on ground-targeted area effects that more or less require you to forgo the range advantage to deal effective damage. Range is still an advantage, however, particularly if your “solo play” involves a lot of zerg play.

Also, staff has many combo fields but hardly any blasts. Running d/x or s/x you can take up to 5 blasts, allowing you to self-stack 25 might. This is a much bigger advantage in solo play than in groups where others can stack might for you.

As for celestial gear? I’m going to have to disagree with it not improving survivability. I run d/d celestial and it feels practically invincible. I get wrecked trying to solo the tougher HPs such as mushroom queen in Tangled Depths in berserker gear. In my celestial set it’s no problem. But I suppose every player is different, so your mileage may vary.

Its a matter of taste. I run a viper/celestial/rabid mix with a wanderer amultet.
I have 1600 power, a high condi stat at 1700 and 2500 armor with about 15k HP. Maintain OK critrate plus a splash healing and ferocity from cele. I do alot hybrid damage but much more condi. It´s an alround set not optimized for raids.

I switched to Valkyrie armor along with Berserker trinkets and weapons for PvE general purpose stuff. Sometimes I swap to a Soldier’s set if I’m feeling particularly squishy.

SOFYAORLENA.5849:

Hi Im new into this game, had struggle in solo pve as elementalist! What type of armor I should wear to be more protective but still do kinda good dps? im now wearing Power / precision / ferosity, running with Dagger / warhorn!

Generally you want the power/precision/ferocity (Berserker’s, power main stat) everywhere in PvE. You can pretty much wear anything, but the extra defence and survivability aren’t really needed and you’re losing dps to gain them. Only switch to something else if you’re really struggling to survive. And then don’t waste your zerk gear. You’ll eventually learn to play the class properly and move back to it.

AliamRationem.5172:

Also, staff has many combo fields but hardly any blasts. Running d/x or s/x you can take up to 5 blasts, allowing you to self-stack 25 might. This is a much bigger advantage in solo play than in groups where others can stack might for you.

The goal isn’t to stack might on yourself, the goal is to kill stuff quickly. You can take blasts, sure. But then you use them to generate might when you could have been using other skills to deal damage. In the end you end up progressing slower simply because you’re wasting time to ramp up your damage unnecessarily.

Staff fire + arcane and pick traited blast finishes in the toolbar + glyph of storms. The old version was calles jihad staff fire/air/arcane in zerker gear.

I’s not worth taking Arcane over either Air or Tempest lines. And even if you decide to take it, it would make more sense to pick Bountiful Power over Elemental Surge, as ES only affects two blast finishers. In the end, you’re better off with the standard fire/air/tempest builds, either with Bolt to the Heart or Fresh Air.

Agreed bolt to the heart is propably better then going arcane….

Both are better. Though for open world Arcane can be used as a base for fun builds with a lot of attunement switches and be completely viable. I’d take Air and Tempest, and maximize boon generation for BP. Something in the lines of this

It’s a pity Leadership runes are this hard to get, it seems like a fun thing to try.

I grabed a durability rune by doing HOT events. Was fun for a while being a boon machine but recenty removed it to try diffrent more damage oriented one´s.
And i like comanders. Made it for my warrior.

Any mix with 500 healing power in it is good. Condi and condi duration isn’t worth going that route. Cele is very balanced, but not newbie friendly to make. I’d say knights with some magi or something. Leeching/blood sigil for d/f, or accuracy/force for staff. I use assassin stats on weapons often for pve. Anti-condi/vit food is good almost everywhere.

Feanor.2358:

The goal isn’t to stack might on yourself, the goal is to kill stuff quickly. You can take blasts, sure. But then you use them to generate might when you could have been using other skills to deal damage. In the end you end up progressing slower simply because you’re wasting time to ramp up your damage unnecessarily.

Wouldn’t that depend upon how much time you could expect to benefit from the might stacks? You’re only ramping up your damage unnecessarily if the enemy is dead before your rotation ends and there are no other targets, no?

AliamRationem.5172:

Wouldn’t that depend upon how much time you could expect to benefit from the might stacks? You’re only ramping up your damage unnecessarily if the enemy is dead before your rotation ends and there are no other targets, no?

Yes. And this is the case in 95+% of the actual encounters in the open world. The rest of the encounters are usually group events and you get might from other players around you.

Feanor.2358:

AliamRationem.5172:

Wouldn’t that depend upon how much time you could expect to benefit from the might stacks? You’re only ramping up your damage unnecessarily if the enemy is dead before your rotation ends and there are no other targets, no?

Yes. And this is the case in 95+% of the actual encounters in the open world. The rest of the encounters are usually group events and you get might from other players around you.

Makes sense. I’m a bit odd when it comes to what I enjoy in open world. I’m not opposed to running with a group/zerg, but I enjoy being inefficient (I guess you might call it?) and doing things like soloing champions and group events. I guess thats why the might stacking seems to make sense for me. I’m not concerned with downing a single trash enemy a little bit faster so my overall rate of progress increases. I care more about being able to charge right into an army of chak with my daggers or take down the mushroom queen by myself. Not optimal or particularly efficient, but it’s what I like and I’m able to find challenge and feel powerful in open world doing what I like to do.

That’s why I advise using the weapons you enjoy and building around that rather than laser-focusing on efficiency (unless that’s what you enjoy!).

I don’t particularly like to build tanky, but I totally get the fun to make your own build around your own idea. I spent a good amount of time playing a scepter/warhorn build optimized for maxing might and fury back when nobody played scepter. It wasn’t efficient by any means, but it was fun to create and fun to play. Recently I’m looking into offhand dagger again, but man, warhorn is so good…

I recently made an Elementalist, and I’m running full berserker gear with dagger / warhorn, and I found that I was able to mitigate my “squishiness” factor by changing my traits and my 6 – 10 skills.

I run with Air / Earth / Tempest, using the following build and skills:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBIhdyxAU2A23A4fJQHBWaAM3L7m9zOsC6AvAhAZA4DC-ThBBABVq+DW7PK/cUJIAnAgAeAA5pHAA-e

For the most part, I’ve found this gives a pretty good amount of survivability.

- Signet of Restoration along with the Written In Stone trait in the Earth line means you have constant health regen, and can heal without sacrificing it.
– Unstable Conduit in the Tempest line means your overloads give auras; Harmonious Conduit in the Tempest line, along with Elemental Shielding in the Earth line, means every time you gain an aura, you get protection, regeneration, and vigor. (Shocking Aura, the Air #3 dagger skill, and Sand Squall, the Earth #4 warhorn skill, both give auras; as do your shouts, which is why “Feel The Burn!”, the shout with the lowest cooldown, is on there.)
– Glyph of Elementals allows you to summon a pet, which is a great distraction for enemies. Earth pet and water pet also grant boons.
– If your health gets low and your Signet of Restoration is on cooldown, you can swap to Water attunement and use both of your warhorn skills, both of which heal. You can also Overload Water to heal a large amount.
– If you’re still having trouble, you can swap out Signet of Fire for “Flash-Freeze!”, another aura-granting shout, or Arcane Shield, which soaks up attacks.

Situational awareness helps too. I much prefer dagger / warhorn, but it helps to keep a staff in your backpack just in case you’re going to come up on a situation where you don’t want to be in melee. I’ll usually swap out Air for Fire in that situation:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWncMAlNg9NA+XC0RgFBALIAUAKiut2YbtdIIMDKCA-ThBBABA8AAC4CA4oSQs2fU+lnOgKV/BA-e

Pretty much everything about dagger / warhorn also applies to staff; you can use water attunement for very effective healing, earth for auras and area control, air for knockbacks and speed, and fire for damage and evasion.

Remember, gear costs money. Specializations are free.

The problem with this spec is you sacrifice a whole trait line and several utility skills just for the sake of survivability.

It would make sense to run this spec in a condi-oriented build, where you can take advantage of the bleeds and burns applied by the signets’ active skills. In a power build they do very little outside of their passive (which, for Signet of Fire is pretty great, don’t get me wrong).

Additionally, in a power build there isn’t much reason to be in Earth attunement. Warhorn 5 is nice and Dagger 3 is decent for breakbars, but they are both situational, normally you just switch between Air and Fire, which greatly reduces the value of Geomancer’s Training.

By the way, you’ve sacrificed probably the most potent of all utilities available to the ele – Glyph of Storms. It’s much more versatile and useful than flat 180 toughness. It combines solid offensive capabilities (Air, Fire) and outright ridiculous control (Earth, Water). Just Sandstorm by itself is already better survivability than the earth signet.

sandstorm is incredibly amazing against enemies that don’t have a breakbar (and useless against ones that do)
best skill ever

dust storm is also pretty great

but yeah if you want to be tanky, condi is far and away the best. Dire ele does better solo dps than berserker ele with defensive traits

“The problem with this spec is that you sacrifice a whole trait line and several utility spells just for the sake of survivability.”

…As opposed to sacrificing equipment slots for the sake of survivability? If you need raw DPS for an encounter, you can swap out your traits and utility spells far more easily than you can your gear.

Combine Viper with trailblazer and burn them down :-).

Yuyuske.7182:

“The problem with this spec is that you sacrifice a whole trait line and several utility spells just for the sake of survivability.”

…As opposed to sacrificing equipment slots for the sake of survivability? If you need raw DPS for an encounter, you can swap out your traits and utility spells far more easily than you can your gear.

No, as opposed to avoiding damage. Or, like reikken pointed out, to going condi. Changing a traitline every other encounter isn’t something you want to do. Utilities can be problematic as well, as you might need to wait for cooldowns to wear off, which again is going to be tedious in the long run.

You’re regarding gear and traits separately. They aren’t. Both are parts of your build. You can change one while keeping the other, but this is just gimping your build. If you want survivability, get them both to work on it. If you want to keep decent damage as well, get them both to work on it.

There’s no way you can take the most offensive stat set in the game and make a decent survivability build with it. Your survivability will be mediocre, and so will be your damage output.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBIhdSfJ03AW2A40AQHBWEAshYwMoI42ant52gAQB4AA-TxhHQBtRPQtOBAYUJ4iU/BAPAAKs/ACV+BA-e

You can try this. I used this for a bit when I just wanted to mess around. It’s hardly optimized but it was pretty fun.

Gosh, now I want to drop finishing my Condi support set and just remake this one.

EDIT: I had a massive brain lapse when posting this, I read through all the replies first and got caught with them that I forgot that OP does in fact have access to tempest. So I’m just reediting the build to what I actually used.