Guild Wars 2

Hi guys, I’m sharing my new production. It’s about small scale/different situation fights with a new S/D balanced build I’m working on.
I’m going to explain my choices, and I’d like different opinions too (please watch the video first).

Build discussion:

1) why balanced?
S/D works great with high damage/glass builds. The problem is, when u roam in small numbers and fight outnumbered, fights are long and u need to survive for long time, u need to not be an easy target for enemies, good roamers should always be hard to kill

2) Fresh Air
For me, this trait is what makes scepter viable (for WvW), that’s my point of view on why it is:
At the current state of the class, the elementalist needs to swap attunements constantly to be effective, for cooldowns and the utility they give u, sticking on an element for too long is never good.
Talking about damage and D/D, every attunement is a part of his damage rotation, u get every good thing that swapping gives u
Talking about Scepter and damaging spells, there is no synergy between attunements:
Air – good single target dps, good burst on swap
Fire – very situational aoe bomb, zero dps if u miss it
Earth – earth 2 is nice, earth autoattack stacks bleeding (do I really need it?), low dps
Water – zero dps, water 2 is slow and stucky
Fresh Air fixes all of that: u can swap an attunement, get what u need from it, and swap to air to get fast damage, continuosly.

3) Glyphs and air traits III – VIII
That’s where my decision for it came from:
Ok, new build, I have nice damage, I need to choose heal and utility spells…
Lighting Flash and Mist Form are a must for my style, I don’t care how much they nerf them (LF can still be used while stunned)
Third utility, I want something solid, something really helpful, arcane damage spells are not what I aim for, they are good for 1v1 or kind of “fair” fights, don’t help me when outnumbered, Arcane Shield and Armor Of Earth are nice but loong cooldown.
Another issue: SWIFTNESS. I need swiftness to be always up for roaming and for the mobility it gives, S/D has hybrid range (fire combo works best on close range, earth 4 and 5 requires short range and so on), so I need to go in and out fast and I need swiftness always up (I don’t have a big team stacking it for me).

About healing spells:
Signet of restoration is nice, but doesn’t help me when I get bursted
Ether renewal is my D/D choice, but it’s too risky

Solution: Glyphs
Glyph of arcane power is really strong: great uptime, strong conditions (weakness my favourite), stunbreaker and a boon, big deal.
Glyph of Elemental Harmony: solid heal with 20 seconds cd and double boon
With glyphs I can stack 1+ minutes of swiftness, 20-30 seconds of regeneration, some protection and good conditions.

4) FGS elite
Nothing much to explain here, it gives me mobility + aoe damage when my fire combo is on cd

5) Sigil of Generosity vs. Sigil of Battle
This is a hard choice, most elementalists love their sigil of battle. But conditions are a big issue and generosity (op itself) is helping me very much, sending conditions back to my enemies. I feel like I have enough damage but that’s something I’m still testing

6) Precision stacks vs Power stacks
I can’t say what’s better, maybe someone can suggest me

That’s all comes to my mind, if u have any question this is the right place.
I hope that I gave good suggestions for any wvw roamer looking for a S/D build, or just some starting idea to other kind of play.
Thank you!

if the ICD on Fresh Air gets fixed tomorrow, are we still running this monster? :P

yes for sure: fresh air procs (5 seconds cd starts) – u swap air, cast ur istant spells and some auto attack, maybe 1-2 seconds – swap another attunement to cast something, atleast more 2 seconds. Ur Fresh Air will be ready again very very soon. Swapping air works best when u have ur lighting strike ready (and u know what? 5 seconds cd!!), it’s useless to chain swap air

Actually I’ve been chain swapping air mostly (just using about 1-2 skills on each attunement) and the burst is fun as kitten. With the 5 sec CD implemented…meh, I’m not sure anymore. We shall see tomorrow.

I’m trying a similar roaming buid, but sadly I can’t see your video in Germany.

U need to use a proxy (can I say that?)

I know, but the quality with a proxy is like … :P Hard to identify anything.

too bad, I don’t know if there is anything I can do about it

Nice vid can see you put some time into the editing. subbed

nice one xun <3

Hey I love your past videos and was wondering if you could make this (or all your videos) available for mobile platforms? I think you’ll get more views as well

I wouldn’t call it a burst build for 2 reasons:

1- The squishiest thief is taking you too long to down. With a burst build without you being glass cannon, you should be able to down them in one sec.

2: Your damage is average even when they crit. A real burst non glass cannon build shines in group play because you can down 2 or 3 really quick before you need to heal.

Aside of that, your gameplay was superb! Great use of different combo rotations and what I always admire whenever I see eles doing is the great use of their fgs elite within combat. I found out this awesome burst dmg combo with fgs when I made this thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Combo-rotations-s-d-burst-eles/first#post2305835. I have implemented in my playstyle and it works so well. It is so funny when you execute it while one or more are immobilizeddd or trapped within a guardian bubble. Maybe you can try it too.

I consider precision stacking to be best if your crit rate is below 50% (without fury buff or food buff) while you have a 85%+ of critical dmg. Otherwise I would always recommend bldoodlust.

I don’t know if it should be called burst or not. I know with a glass gear u can do much more burst, but I feel doing around 3.5k – 4k on air switch can be called burst, maybe “bursty” :P. Btw, thank you mate and keep up with your work

I like the video a lot. I switch out Inscription for Bolt to the Heart and just run signet of air instead of GoEP. I think the celestial trinkets are an interesting choice.

nice video xun. enjoyable as usual.

looks like fresh air fix didn’t hit my build. 5 seconds-cd is perfect, lightning strike is needed to be up when air is swapped

Good video. Just curious why you chose the + to all stats stuff. I play pretty much exclusively wvwvw and solo, not with a guild at all and generally follow the zerg although I go take camps and whatnot solo sometimes so my playstyle is not even close to small group ganking but I have noticed that with all my survivability I have no chance against a thief 1v1 because they can take half my nearly 20k health pool in one hit (and also stealth/unstealth/stealth/unstealth a million times).

This is my build, I have only ever played staff since release (although I did take a 6 mos break from the game). What do you think?

I was also kind of surprised that your bleeds tick only between 10-20 damage less than mine and I have 3x as much condition damage.

EDIT: I have found that the 25% swiftness persists even while in combat (still a slow down combat debuff but not nearly as bad as without it) so that might be of potential help to keeping your speed up; I have found it invaluable and I’m often either the last man standing or one of the ones that escapes from the zerg I’m in getting crushed.

1) celestials
from a math point of view, celestials are very effective. Elementalist takes advantage from it because every stat scales with any build. So, as long as u balance ur stats as u desire, most celestials u use moste effective u are. But having all celestials brings ur power very low that’s why I will never go full celestials

2) your build
I think you are missing one important thing: healing power. One good thing of the ele is his sustain, with his healing tools (water spells, water switch, evasive and so on). U are not a tank, you need some sustain to survive battle and support ur team. About thieves, as staff and with no healing it’s not a surprise that they kill you, my build is a S/D build with many melee range tools to deal with a thief (+ GoEP conditions).
U should consider getting some healing power in your build, celestials could help.

3) bleeding
dunno about it, maybe bleed scaling is not that high

4)signet of air
It looks like a wasted utility to me, but if u cant keep swiftness always up, u need it. I still didn’t find a way to have permanent swiftness up without glyphs as S/D or staff

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.1|b.1c.h2.8.1c.h4|0.0.0.0.0.0|1c.7h.1c.7h.1c.7h.1c.7h.1c.7h.1c.71j|3u.d17.3u.d17.3t.d17.31k.d17.3t.d17.3u.d17|0.u39c.0.k56.k58|2e.1|1m.20.26.25.28|e

my build is very similar to yours, but I often zerg so I use blasting staff and sigils of fire and earth. Aslo I use a scepter and dagger both with bloodlust to quickly build full stack, then change them out to an S/D with accuracy and force. I am pretty lazy so I rarely change my slot skills from sigils to cantrips when going from zerging to roaming. The air XII trait in my build is where I have fresh air. Great video, you are very good at using all the skills at the right time. The sigil of generosity is actually super good now that necro’s have chains so I may eventually change to it.

ty mate, I’m gonna make a staff build for small roaming, I promised to give it a try ^^

Nice video and play!
I have a question about the balance of critical chance and the other attributes (critical damage, vitality, power, etc.). The time to buy my ascended equipments arrived and I dont know how much crit chance is necessary for this build work. I thought 50% with 1948 power, would be appropriate?
I can sacrifice some health to increase crit chance to 57% and some power (replacing the celestials accessories by berserkers+valkyrye). Someone can help me?

I think 40-45% is fine, if u have high critical damage use precision stacks

My new build is 0/30/10/20/20. D/D, mostly a mix of Power + Precision + Crit % and Power + Vita + Crit % gear…
Got tired of the Scepter in less than a week lol….

flyingfox.6150:

My new build is 0/30/10/20/20. D/D, mostly a mix of Power + Precision + Crit % and Power + Vita + Crit % gear…
Got tired of the Scepter in less than a week lol….

You got more than 70 trait points there.

Wish I could have 80 trait points too. I wonder if they’ll ever raise the level cap and give us more traits to work with.

Xunleashed.5271:

I think 40-45% is fine, if u have high critical damage use precision stacks

Thanks!

Sorry, my apologies, that’s why I prefer to use IntoTheMist hhahaha.

it’s 0/30/10/20/10

Since I use fresh air (with dagger nonetheless), I don’t rely too much on Attunement swapping anyway. With Fresh Air, it ‘shortcuts the fighting’ like my grand-teacher in Wing Chun likes to say haha.

Well that makes more sense. I’m actually using a 0/30/10/20/10 build myself. With a mixture of knight’s, soldier’s, and cavalier gear, and a zerker scepter I managed to get a little under 3k armor, 40% crit chance before food/fury, and 93% crit damage. stats will probably be better once I get ascended versions of the gear. Most people melt pretty easily seeing as the majority of people in wvw are clueless noobs who can’t dodge and are all pure glass.

As an Elementalist, I am never stuck in a situation where I can’t back out of a bad situation. I don’t make builds to win every single fight, that’s just not my way of doing things. I like this build with my dagger/dagger set up and my gear is a mix of Berserkers and Valkyrie with some Knights thrown in.

Going scepter is obviously better in WvW but kitten , I love my stylish Dagger main-hand skills too much. My staff is a back up weapon when I need to stand back and nuke. My scepter stays in the bank for now.