Guild Wars 2

Curious what everyone is running now that EA was fixed. What are some decent D/D, or S/D condition builds in PvE?

All the builds that didn’t use EA are still viable and there are quite a few.

I’d like to know of some available options as well.

Signet/Aura build works well.

Eh D/D and S/D builds still ok. Certainly not as good as before but still does the job….

However, Staff ele is a total write off now. May as well go guardian if you like to support.

My 20/10/0/10/30 S/D build had EA, but didn’t use it for field finishing (or much of anything else, actually). It gets through the landscape fine.

What will work less well now is running through the landscape in Staff on our way to a dynamic event, then fighting when snared. Those fights will be more problematic now, as will the DEs themselves (plenty of times I’ve emergency-healed myself in Water …).

Playing an elementalist in Orr just got a lot less interesting or profitable.

Yeah, there are tons. First, just because they nerfed that trait doesn’t mean it’s useless. And second, I’ve never used the Arcane tree in any of my builds and I’ve been very happy with all of them and done very well. Be creative! Stop doing only the builds that you see other people posting. The game gets so much more fun when you design your own based on your own unique playstyle. It might take a bit of experimentation, but you’ll find one that works well. Trust me.

fixit.7189:

Eh D/D and S/D builds still ok. Certainly not as good as before but still does the job….

However, Staff ele is a total write off now. May as well go guardian if you like to support.

This is it in a nutshell. We (D/D and S/D) lost a bit of dps. If you used the exploit a lot of dps. One thing to note is that many of us will stay 30 arcane due to the fluidity of the game play we are used to. From what I have seen most D/D players are stance dancers and that reduced cool down is a big part of the play style. Also the heal from water EA is still the heal from water EA.

Just rolled a warrior in order to try and discover why they are so popular and loved. I have to say after wiping the floor with mobs pulling 5 at a time and soloing champions, how the kitten are they not determined OP by the vast majority of players and the devs? Is scaling so horrendous that they’re less useful at 80 or does the profession maintain the pace of slaughter throughout the levels? Sad to see the void between my Ele’s performance and the way the Warrior purely excels at seemingly everything.

Comparing d/d ele to gs/lb warrior.

I’m going warrior, I don’t need all the faffing around to do a simple job.

Rafe Mathews.2308:

Just rolled a warrior in order to try and discover why they are so popular and loved. I have to say after wiping the floor with mobs pulling 5 at a time and soloing champions, how the kitten are they not determined OP by the vast majority of players and the devs? Is scaling so horrendous that they’re less useful at 80 or does the profession maintain the pace of slaughter throughout the levels? Sad to see the void between my Ele’s performance and the way the Warrior purely excels at seemingly everything.

Comparing d/d ele to gs/lb warrior.

it’s because warriors don’t do anything useful outside damage. that’s literally all they’re good for. i remember how people whined and kittened about warriors being OP throughout all three BWEs and then up until a month or two after release and without any changes, they suddenly became mediocre/bad.

i can solo champions and groups of monsters on my D/D elementalist. i will agree that warrior is much, much simpler and easier to use/understand then elementalist… and getting the same sort of damage from a warrior is easier, safer and simpler then any spec an elementalist has.

Pinkerton.5643:

Yeah, there are tons. First, just because they nerfed that trait doesn’t mean it’s useless.

Nerfing it would be one thing. Maybe they increase the cooldown or make it global, whatever. They didn’t do something like that. They removed functionality. It isn’t just that EA can’t do what it used to do quite as well, it can’t do what we were using it for at all. It would be like if they made the Aura skills not count as Auras anymore.

nvmvoidrays.2158:

Rafe Mathews.2308:

Just rolled a warrior in order to try and discover why they are so popular and loved. I have to say after wiping the floor with mobs pulling 5 at a time and soloing champions, how the kitten are they not determined OP by the vast majority of players and the devs? Is scaling so horrendous that they’re less useful at 80 or does the profession maintain the pace of slaughter throughout the levels? Sad to see the void between my Ele’s performance and the way the Warrior purely excels at seemingly everything.

Comparing d/d ele to gs/lb warrior.

it’s because warriors don’t do anything useful outside damage. that’s literally all they’re good for. i remember how people whined and kittened about warriors being OP throughout all three BWEs and then up until a month or two after release and without any changes, they suddenly became mediocre/bad.

i can solo champions and groups of monsters on my D/D elementalist. i will agree that warrior is much, much simpler and easier to use/understand then elementalist… and getting the same sort of damage from a warrior is easier, safer and simpler then any spec an elementalist has.

Healing wise, no. Warriors don’t perform as well. CC wise, grab a hammer. Damage, Greatsword. Buffs? They have amazing shouts and flags, shouts being on VERY short CD’s. Plus weapon swapping, not to mention the ability to have a +X Power/Precision/Condition on Kill equipped in a secondary weapon slot in order to nab that little nugget as well. I don’t know why, but it seems like warrior and guardian are the only classes one should consider. I had a friend of mine log on for the trail account. He played ele for a bit, then upon hearing how big a deal warrior is he rolled that. He quit within hours of starting the account due to how huge a gap there was between warriors and other classes.

Actually warrior shouts are very good healing.

With 500 healing power I’m doing 3000 healing every 20 seconds and 1500 every 24 seconds in an area a bit larger than healing rain centered around me with no cast time, usable when cced. Plus this removes conditions on me and gives might and fury on everyone and vulnerability on mobs.

Sure ele has higher healing potential, but it requires people to be in relatively small areas to work. In most PUGs I’d say my warrior is healing more than my primarily staff ele now.

Warriors with shout builds can bring good Fury uptime and some easy stacks of Might with FGJ, some decent AoE healing, up to 4 AoE condition clears on an extremely short cooldown, vulnerability, more Might, perma Fury, and Swiftness coupled with a ranged group ress with Warbanner, in addition to their damage. With a Hammer, you have an AoE stun, a blast finisher, AoE weakness with high uptime (or permanent depending on your condition duration or hammer cd traits), an AoE knockback, a knockdown, and an AoE cripple. If you take a warhorn, you can AoE convert another couple of conditions into buffs, also on a short cooldown, while granting Vigor and Swiftness. In dungeons, if the group is doing fine I just GS spam my way to victory since damage is all you honestly really need, but if I’m in a really bad pug then I’ll equip my hammer and then usually we’re fine.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Pinkerton.5643:

Yeah, there are tons. First, just because they nerfed that trait doesn’t mean it’s useless.

Nerfing it would be one thing. Maybe they increase the cooldown or make it global, whatever. They didn’t do something like that. They removed functionality. It isn’t just that EA can’t do what it used to do quite as well, it can’t do what we were using it for at all. It would be like if they made the Aura skills not count as Auras anymore.

They removed one of its several bits of functionality. So what if you can’t use it for a blast finisher anymore? It does other things! The blast made it op, so they took it away. I mean, so what? For christ’s sake, you still get to throw out a churning earth on a dodge roll…what are you complaining about? It can still be useful in builds, I guarantee it.

Pinkerton.5643:

For christ’s sake, you still get to throw out a churning earth on a dodge roll…what are you complaining about? It can still be useful in builds, I guarantee it.

Not really. Churning earth puts out 8 stacks of Bleed, Evasive Arcana’s dodge in earth does 1 stack.

Pinkerton.5643:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Pinkerton.5643:

Yeah, there are tons. First, just because they nerfed that trait doesn’t mean it’s useless.

Nerfing it would be one thing. Maybe they increase the cooldown or make it global, whatever. They didn’t do something like that. They removed functionality. It isn’t just that EA can’t do what it used to do quite as well, it can’t do what we were using it for at all. It would be like if they made the Aura skills not count as Auras anymore.

They removed one of its several bits of functionality. So what if you can’t use it for a blast finisher anymore? It does other things! The blast made it op, so they took it away. I mean, so what? For christ’s sake, you still get to throw out a churning earth on a dodge roll…what are you complaining about? It can still be useful in builds, I guarantee it.

Not gonna defend all those cries about EA, but as of this moment that trait was nerfed from OP to borderline useless. First of all, it’s not churning earth but shockwave with churning earth animation. Secondly, rolls in fire or earth attunements deal about 100dmg plus some burning or bleeding and cripple. Thirdly, if you wanna actually deal dmg with it or blind foes you have to dodge towards them while most of dodges are outwards.

Anyway, I’m still puzzled why I’ve met 0 necros that were using Mark of Evasion trait. That trait used to function in a similiar manner to EA barring working cooldown but was only an adept trait in blood magic line. Necros got few powerful fields and if you were in dungs you still could trigger others’ fields.

Pinkerton.5643:

They removed one of its several bits of functionality. So what if you can’t use it for a blast finisher anymore? It does other things! The blast made it op, so they took it away. I mean, so what? For christ’s sake, you still get to throw out a churning earth on a dodge roll…what are you complaining about? It can still be useful in builds, I guarantee it.

You’re better off just casting a spell because the EA spells are strictly worse than the spells they’re supposedly modeled after. It isn’t even just that the risk/reward formula for EA was tipped in favor of risk, it’s that using EA activelly hurts your DPS, in addition to costing energy. I’ve used it for extra spells without combo fields on occasion and it’s just never a good use of my time.