Guild Wars 2

D/D ele is dead. It has been since HoT.

The build only works when you can spam enough sustain and apply enough pressure to keep your opponent’s damage from overcoming your sustain.

Since HoT, everything does more damage than d/d ele can mitigate with just healing + protection. Everything has too much stability, making your hard cc’s useless. Everything has too much sustain so that your damage, even when might stacking just can’t keep up. There are too many projectiles that can do too much damage and lock you down too often to gradually whittle down your opponent.

Off-hand dagger is dead – its just not good enough. Even in a damage build, your defense is too pathetic (basically just RtL away every 40s…hahaha). If you want to use OH dagger, play pve.

Honestly, don’t even worry about PvP. This game’s pvp just isn’t very good. The PvE has had some very interesting development, but PvP is just stagnant and spammy.

Pretty much everything Blackbeard said. It’s simply broken. Nuff said.

Most D/D eles switched to S/F FA, another class, or just quit until D/D gets buffed.

About PvP not being worth it, I can sort of agree, BUT it’s all about fun. I have a condi Ele build that works if used in the right hands. Although the meta atm calls for bunker auramancer, you can still do some damage with other builds.

Every class has a counter. There is NO class that is the ultimate, God-like class. Running trap Dragonhunter? No problem, Druids and bunker eles will destroy you. Warrior? Dragonhunter will destroy you. Mesmer? Dragonhunter.

Though Engi might be in a tough spot, I’ve seen a lot of diversity in many good Engis, which shows a lot of build theorycrafters have tinkered around with Engis.

Necro has a plethora of builds available, which is good.

Mesmer seems to be viable in many builds, from the endless shatter to power shatter to condi chronophantasma etc.

Warrior has the potential for a wide variety of builds if sufficiently invested enough time into.

Revenant is just outright powerful with its Power Shiro, but rip condis. I don’t think there are too many builds with Rev mainly because the restorative and condi-cleansing potential is too low.

Thieves work great with Staves, D/P, and have some nice builds.

Ele has a really small amount of Meta builds. In fact, Bunker auramancer and S/F fresh air are the only viable two up on MetaBattle. Then again, I do have a decent burn build that works even better with the new Glyph of Elemental Power. Can’t wait to tweak it a bit to see its maximum potential.

D/D ele technically isn’t "bad" per se it is just the insane power creep with the elite specializations that have caused an upward spiral leaving D/D out of the mix.

The main problem I find with D/D eles is that against most melee classes they can’t out DPS them. You have to string together good combinations in order to deal damage however that isn’t always possible, moreso with the HoT patch. The saving grace of D/D eles used to be that they can sustain to depth in order to mitigate some of that. But now classes like Druids, Scrappers, DH, Herald and even Warriors have got sustain equal if not more then an ele and definitely more DPS.

I’ve tried D/F ele and honestly it makes your DPS even more pathetic although you do become a heck of a bit more survivable. Right now outside of S/F they are more of a support build with some damage built in.

I would say vanilla ele is better for 1v1s because tempest honestly is to bring support and AoE DPS. Nothing in that kit really helps for 1v1s over say running water/earth/arcane or air/water/arcane.

D/D was considered OP when these traits made it brain dead easy to stack might, something current HoT specs do easily. This was when Battle Sigil gave 3 stacks of might. Before that it actually took skill to stack enough might doing a damage rotation.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burning_Fire/history (nerfed from 5s to 8s, gave warriors trouble)
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blinding_Ashes/history (removed 3 stacks of might on Cantrips)

D/D cds are to long compared to what they go up against along with celestial amulet not being a thing anymore those 2 things imo are what really kills it.

If you want to play D/D ele in sPvP, you will first have to master Chronomancer so that you can time travel to when it was viable.

You can play it in unranked and stomp people. But its unviable in ranked against anyone with moderate skill. D/D is dead in any competitive sense unfortunately. Offhand dagger will need some major damage buffs and cd reductions to be viable in this meta. Its one of those “just for fun” builds that you dont use for anything serious, much like power gs necro.

Talents aren’t really setup for D/D to do enough damage and sustain unfortunately.

S/D might be fun to play with (in season 5) because offhand dagger works better with that. You can have your blinds, strong autos, mobility, a knockback that is easier to land than the one from focus. I wouldn’t really try it if your team has no group healing though. So many classes are hard to burst outside of other eles lol. So many other classes have stealth and you could get bursted out of nowhere. I’m thinking either F/A/Ar, or A/Ar/T specs. Both as fresh air. I really hope that scepter feels strong so I can actually enjoy it in ranked.

katniss.6735:

Talents aren’t really setup for D/D to do enough damage and sustain unfortunately.

S/D might be fun to play with (in season 5) because offhand dagger works better with that. You can have your blinds, strong autos, mobility, a knockback that is easier to land than the one from focus. I wouldn’t really try it if your team has no group healing though. So many classes are hard to burst outside of other eles lol. So many other classes have stealth and you could get bursted out of nowhere. I’m thinking either F/A/Ar, or A/Ar/T specs. Both as fresh air. I really hope that scepter feels strong so I can actually enjoy it in ranked.

You are getting a little too excited over the buffs to scepter. It won’t feel like much more damage at all, but might help in 1v1’s with classes like warrior/druid that could just passively out-heal you.

S/D won’t work b/c you lack the defensive skills necessary to survive ANY focus pressure, and don’t really have the frequency of burst to overcome all the hard mitigation and passive life-savers, not to mention making you less susceptible to enemy burst. RtL, which is why you played S/D once upon a time isn’t even worth taking as the 30s CD traited (used for mobility) is worthless vs. having actual defense. Finally, focus is SO GOOD for a team with all the druids and DH, and not bad vs. staff necro, staff mes, and even thieves, while obsidian flesh is the best skill on a burst character.

The only reason I brought up S/D was because this is a D/D thread. I haven’t put a dagger in offhand since near the beginning of HoT when I tried to ride the lightning across a gap, but the change they made to that skill where you go downward instead of straight killed me. lol