Guild Wars 2

While I know that ele’s can successfully support in pvp and wvw, it seems they’re pretty terrible at dueling. It disheartens me a little, as I love playing ele more than any other class but roaming and dueling are probably my favourite activities.

I wish more classes were like mesmer, having a higher skill cap. Not that they don’t have braindead builds I suppose, but it seems like a lot of pro players can do crazy things with mesmers, while other pros that use other classes don’t seem to do anything much differently from your average player. They just seem to have a better grasp of the game in general I suppose.

Is this generally right? Is this just kind of where eles have settled in, being support bots? I know that important, but it would be nice to see more builds do well. Easier said than done, I know, but I guess I’m looking for a bit of hope.

I was hopeful for build diversity for ele like you are. I just don’t see anet doing anything to fix that ever. Anet has decided that meta builds > build diversity. Just give up and multi-class like the rest of us.

For Dueling/roaming in wvw I’ve found my setup to be very effective, and had lots of positive feedback on its results in others hands to, maybe it’s something you would enjoy, https://youtu.be/fzlYwdbO-f4 forgive me for the shameless self promotion, but there is a link to the build in the description if you don’t want to watch the video

I duel pretty well on ele. only really good mesmers tend to be able to win, and bunkers can stalemate until it’s no longer a duel

Only mesmer and warrior tend to be a loss if they play at equal level. All other must outplay me.

Elementalists are in a bit of a weird spot when it comes to dueling. It’s not that they are bad by any means, it is just that it is a very delicate class to build around. You can’t have too much power or you’ll get blown up by thieves and you can’t be too bunkery or you hardly scratch anything. Of course this can be said for all classes but I feel this applies to the elementalist even more so.

Gear wise, other than full zerk/marauder s/f ele, d/d and d/f usually want to maintain 500-1000 regeneration with semi-perma protection while having 200% Crit damage and at least 2100 power and 40% Crit chance, this is generally the sweet spot for a dueling ele. To achieve this, I recommend trying out Noble’s build, using marauder gear with crusader’s trinkets or taking a look at the wet dagger Tempest article on Metabattle.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Tempest_-_WET_Dagger_Tempest_Roamer

I’ve fought Seven once on my mesmer and without dedicating specifically to counter his build he can generally cleave out clones pretty easy so he has a better matchup vs mesmer and probably thief due to AoE damage. I believe we were both core as I don’t think you should really duel elite spec vs core as it’s not exactly fair.

The thing is these builds don’t scale great when you are outnumbered and ele without some kind of immunity like mistform is very easy to focus from a few people and kill. To be a good dueler though you need to have a very good grasp of other classes so you know what to avoid and what you have that counters them.

There’s also the unfortunate aspect that some fights you will not be able to win as it’s stacked against you more than your skill will allow you to offset. For ele corruptions and heavy condition classes will win 9/10 against you, you might also have a bit of trouble vs guardian as they can have prolonged periods of safety to attack you with while having both ranged and melee damage so kiting them out can be difficult.

Warriors are usually melee so you can safely kite out endure pain and then the fight becomes more on par for DD ele.