Guild Wars 2

Greetings,

I’m talking about spvp here. I’ve been trying some builds lately, and it’s impossible to do well in spvp without stacking of toughness. I’ve come to the conclusion that other classes have some sort of other defensive mechanism to let them passively reduce or negate damage if they want to spec a high power/crit build.
Thief has stealth in case his burst failed, warrior has his defense through armour, guardian as well and with good healing, mesmer has his clones to confuse people and stealth, necromancer has high hp and extra hp bar. Don’t know much about other professions.

The first spec I tried was having a high power/crit build. Toughness: 2100, 20k hp, around 50% crit and 2k power. Vs dummies the damage is high and satisfying.
Whenever I try to pvp with this build, I just get wrecked in a couple of seconds or less before I can start doing my damage.

Then I tried a condition bleed build, with a lot of points in earth. With a combo of churning earth, earthquake and ring of earth, I could almost kill all dummies with those 3 attacks.

But when I tried it in spvp, I again got completely wrecked. I could go mistform, but it was just extending my life a bit longer. I could however run away with rtl, but I never got a kill because I die faster than I can kill.
We already have lowest base hp, lowest base armour, but we don’t have a passive damage negation/reduction mechanic like other classes.

I wanted to try other builds because I’m starting to get bored by always having to play the same build with a lot of points in earth/water/arcane and with toughness/vit gear.
Sure you can last longer then, and you’re hard to kill if you want to escape (with rtl, slows, knockdowns), and you can get a kill if you play smart and swap attunements constantly, but it’s like we are forced to spec like this.

We have to spec into toughness/vit/healing to get the same basic defenses of other classes, but then it’s over for us. They can choose to have damage on top of it, or more defense..

I’m not the best writer, but I hope my message gets through..

Use your trait points to get traits you want/are good, not to get attribute boni; use items for that.
Even with 0 points in Earth you can still get more than 900 Condition Damage without turning yourself into a glass cannon.

Well you CAN. You just gotta make sure if someone notices you and wants your body, you run, and keep running until they’re gone, then go back to trying to blow something up, and repeat.

@ Op, i completly understand what you are going through…and it simpily doesnt work.
You will get blown up, or have to run away….either way your a liability and less help to the team.
Dead dps doesnt do any dps, as well as someone running away from a fight doesnt do any dps.

And as soon as someone see’s your a dps ele…your kitten is going to be on the Def. as a glass cannon.

Sorry to say, but if you want to play a pure dps, role a thief until they get nerfed.

@DesertRose…isnt that part of the problem? He would want points into Earth, it gives +con damage and +tough. Both of which he would need, along with the +bleed traits.

I think he is saying more along the lines of the water tree, and possible arcane(ele attunment)

The problem lies mostly in the fact that to anyone who sees an ele in spvp the first thought that crosses their mind is OMGOSH FREE KILL-and they will be right most of the time do to the fact that we have the lowest hp and armor in the game-so it doesnt matter how much toughness or health you have -you still have less than lets say warrior has with no clothes on and no one in their right mind will attack a warrior right next to your squishy kitten because almost anyone can kill us in seconds.
You will always,and i mean ALWAYS be the first guy they go for.
Burst build are only viable in a group where you can kill stuff fast without much opposition (although you will still be targeted and killed first) and condi builds are about out-living your opponent which is very hard for an ele since as we already know
we have the constitution of a 4-year girl.
Sorry if i haven’t said anything constructive,but there isn’t much to say-the ele is seriously limping behind the other profs in pvp.

I can only speak from the perspective of Spvp, but I’ve played every profession for a good amount of time. Ele is hands down the most fun profession and, traited correctly, you should have an even shot at 1 v 1 against anyone.

I too find it the most fun, and when traited correctly you can indeed win vs anyone 1vs1 even if it takes a long time. It’s tough escaping from an elementalist.
But that was not the point I was trying to make, I just want other builds to be viable as well.

Oh wow – message is too long, so I have to doublepost, lol. Sorry for the essay.

Try this:

10 Fire: 10% damage while attuned to Fire trait
10 Air: Zephyrs Boon (fury and swiftness when you get an aura)
30 Water: Cantrips give regen and vigor, Cantrips cd reduced 20%, Remove a condition when granting regen.
20 Arcane: Boon when attuning to an element, Crits grant vigor (33%)

Dual daggers with Sigil of battle in one (3 stacks of might on attunement swap, 9s internal cooldown), Sigil of Minor Accuracy on the other (+12% crit chance at max stacks). Full Berserker Amulet.

Runes of Strength in armour (+20% Might duration, 3% chance to gain might when attacked, +5% damage while under the effects of might, 165 total Power).

Armour of Earth, Lightning Flash and Mistform in utilities, and Glyph of elemental for elite. Ether Renewal for healskill.

If you want to damage test, pick a location that will allow you to updraft knockback the heavy golem into the middle of the pack (so he’ll be beside the medium armour one, basically.

Combo as follows:
RtL, Updraft, Fire Attunement (3stacks might from sigil), Burning speed, drakes breath (1 tick), Fire grab, Ring of Fire, Earth attunement, Earthquake (3stacks might), Churning Earth (3stacks might) while churning earth is casting swap into Water, Frost Aura (Fury and Swiftness), Lightning Flash (Regen and Vigor) on top of the light Golem, Churning Earth goes off.

You’ll kill the medium and heavy golems, and the light golem will be on about 50% HP with bleeds ticking. Sometimes that’s enough to kill it if you get a good crit on Churning Earth.

Now obviously that’s an ideal setup, and won’t always go completely as planned in real pvp. I normally pop armour of earth midway through the CE cast in pvp so that I a) don’t get interrupted and b) have regen and vigor, as well as protection, and maybe even a splitsecond left on stability to give me 6-8% more damage guaranteed (since sometimes you don’t need to lightning flash if people are still on top of you).

Similarly, you won’t always have all the attunements off cd when you need them. Sometimes you end up having to Magnetic Grasp, Ring of Earth, Earthquake, Churning Earth begins (Swap into Water or Air for an aura)(Swap into Fire for 10% more damage), Churning Earth ends. Sometimes you’ll only get an updraft/burning speed/drakes breath/fire grab combo off, etc etc. Whatever, I’ll assume you can figure out the optimum use of situational combo’s yourself.

Not dying.
You have 3 stun breaks. If you have a couple of them off cooldown you’re somewhat safe from any variety of thief that isn’t the ‘Mug into instant C&D into Backstab’. The ‘Mug into instant C&D into Backstab’ variety of thieves will, if they’re in any way good, probably kill you 9 times out of 10. You just don’t have the HP to eat 5k/9k/5k hits. Most anything else can be dealt with to various extents assuming you have the cooldowns up when you need them.

Ether renewal is your heavy condition removal. In a 1v1 with a Ranger or Necro? Lol. 4 seconds of condition immunity and mainting the status quo as far as your health pool goes (you’ll probably not have a net gain as far as HP goes, but you won’t lose many either). Best to try and LoS people when you’re healing anyway. Short cd means it’s basically spammable condition remove, and heals for more over 1min than any of the other heal skills. Sure, you lose the ability to deal damage during it, but it’s a sustained pressure damage type of build. You force them to burn cd’s as they come up to not die, and eventually they don’t have a cd when they need it, and down they go.

Mistform.
Is your ‘ohkitten’ button. If you’re getting completely boned, mistform, heal, and put some people between you and the people trying to shove sharp pointy things in your throat. There’s a small period after a burst where there’s not much you can do anyway, so there’s no point eating damage when you could be kiting someone and waiting for cd’s to come back up.
I also Mistform to flag warriors/rangers/engies/guardians/necro’s if it’s up. Can’t be knocked back, feared, or CC’d. Guaranteed kill as long as they don’t have another guardian helping them res. Doesn’t work so well against thieves and mesmers (flag the mes with the skull over his head after his first teleport, after the theif does his first teleport just Dragons Claw him down from point blank range if it’s feasible to do so – that thing hits downed players for about 2.5-3k crits).

Dodge.
Dodge dodge dodge dodge.
You have essentially got permanent vigor. Twice as many dodges as most people. Use them.

Water skills.
Frost Aura combined with Frozen burst on a melee that’s up your backside pretty heavily hampers them. Combined with your swiftness uptime, you have the capability to be twice as fast in that situation. Use it to get out of LoS or clear some distance so that you’re not eating axes to the face. Cone of Cold and Cleansing Wave are decent heal skills. You can clear 3 conditions simply by swapping into Water and popping Frost Armor and Cleansing Wave together. use your heals to top up, rather than waiting until you’re at 25% and going ‘oh… better heal’.

There’s a finesse to the build, and it’s still somewhat glassy (it’s not super duper dps gogogogogo build, since you need sustainability), but you’re not a tank. If you play it well, you’re balancing that razors edge of doing enough damage that your opponents can’t simply ignore you, while being slippery enough that it’s hard for them to get some serious blows in.

If you wanted to sacrifice some dps you could throw in a Soldiers Amulet or something, but I don’t think it’s necessary, and I don’t think the damage trade-off is worth it so that you can die slightly slower to the stuff that will probably still kill you anyway.

Enjoy your 7-9k Churning Earth crits, and remember the immortal words of Bruce Lee.

“Be Like Water.”

Pyrial.2917:

I can only speak from the perspective of Spvp, but I’ve played every profession for a good amount of time. Ele is hands down the most fun profession and, traited correctly, you should have an even shot at 1 v 1 against anyone.

Good thing all pvp is a bunch of 1v1’s…o wait

personally I’ve never felt I gained much from stacking toughness on my Ele. The copious healing/cleansing is 2nd to none though, and there are a lot of ways to get Protection proccing which feels far more substantial alongside a good amount of HP. I have no problems speccing into both and still doing solid dmg.

As for dealing with Thiefs, two words: Shocking Aura

Weapon X.5163:

Pyrial.2917:

I can only speak from the perspective of Spvp, but I’ve played every profession for a good amount of time. Ele is hands down the most fun profession and, traited correctly, you should have an even shot at 1 v 1 against anyone.

Good thing all pvp is a bunch of 1v1’s…o wait

They’re good in group play as well…better? boggle

Mistform stomps/rezzes
1 knockdown and 1 knockback to interrupt stomps
You can go tornado elite and move people off a node
Cleanse conditions and help with minor heals/regen

hackks.3687:

personally I’ve never felt I gained much from stacking toughness on my Ele. The copious healing/cleansing is 2nd to none though, and there are a lot of ways to get Protection proccing which feels far more substantial alongside a good amount of HP. I have no problems speccing into both and still doing solid dmg.

As for dealing with Thiefs, two words: Shocking Aura

I had a backstab thief kill me through Shocking Aura last night, must have had stability, not that I could see it on his invisible kitten Normally don’t have to much trouble with backstab thieves but this guy was silly, had to change out to Knights just to live. Gonna have to swap out cleansing fire for mist form for sPvP again and swap back in tPvP.

There were so many people playing thieves and mesmers last night. Our team had 1 war, me (ele) 1 engi 4 mesmers and 1 thief. Theirs had 1 engi 1 ele and 5 thieves.

Can’t tell I left that game lol, straight into another with almost the same amount of thieves :s. Finally got into a game without a silly number of one class and got stuck in a battle with a guardian for a bout 3 mins before his ranger friend rocked up. Downed the ranger pretty easily then got zerged by their team before I could stomp him. Them zerg matches lol.

Shocking aura doesn’t stop any dmg,it just stuns after the damage is dealt,so its kinda useless against BS thiefs or any other kind of thief for that matter.