Guild Wars 2

Maybe I need a better frontline, maybe I need to L2P, perhaps both! I felt squishy AF as a backline Ele, able to pump out the deeps, but if a single hammer warrior, or thief, or mesmer finds a gap to hit to make it to the backline, I’m toast. I was running full berserker before around 15k hp w/ 5 guard stacks and roughly 1750-1800 armor .

With this build, you’re looking at around 21k hp with guard stacks, and over 2k toughness, all while maintaining over 210% crit damage through ferocity, a 63% crit chance if you include fury, which is up over 50% of the time in a raid environment, plus access to an easy 25 stacks of might.

The traits are pretty standard I feel like, some may be sub-optimal but it’s what I like to run. Is Valk ran often in higher end GvG/WvW raiding guilds? I’m still fairly new to the profession and was just messing around in the build editor and couldn’t believe the +5k hp and ~200 toughness addition while maintaining solid offensive stats. I can’t stand getting cleaved twice and being downed, good bye bloodlust stacks, good bye world. I know I can L2P and get better at dodging/escaping, but what do you all think, as a more forgiving build that can still pump out some amazing damage.

Is sacrificing Armor of Earth for ~9% crit worth it? Stability is nice, would ~54% crit after fury and 34% flat crit with no fury be enough to still pump out damage?

The Build

Balls Deep – For Reference

The balls deep has 13% more damage on crit, 5% more crit, but 6.5k less effective health, easily burst down. Armor of Earth also provides 6s of stab and protection on demand every minute. I think the tradeoff is reasonable, considering 6.5k more hp at all times while still containing a lot of escapes, makes you much more slippery, keep your stacks, and make them work harder to get downs. What do you think!

A lot of it depends on what tier you are in (determines what kinda fights you see and what tactics are used) as well as a guild build if you are in a guild. Guild builds are important because often times commanders will rely on you running a particular build. If you’re just part of the regular ol’ blob your build should work fine.

Personally I don’t like to give up triple cantrip as even Armor of Earth is very useful in my tier (tier 1) because large groups really know how to use CC very effectively.

As for surviving people, a lot of it is situational awareness (where are you at, where is the commander at, where is the enemy at, what’s your surroundings, and where is everyone going). For example in Tier 1 I know certain groups are just going to be rushing the back line and will play far more conservatively (I stand even further back) against those groups than another group we’ll end up rolling over. Learning rotations and knowing active abilities to use and when is also key as abilities like Burning Retreat and Magnetic Aura can be clutch. Yet even then sometimes, no matter how prepared, you just gonna go down. A few weeks ago I had 4 Thieves shadow step in stealth and then basically instagib me. These things happen and it’s best not to over-react.

As you get the hang of things, you’ll find yourself swapping in more offensive gear as you can handle it. Pretty much the sum of things with the Elementalist. Slot as much offensive gear as you are comfortable at. If you want an easier time, stack more defense. You feel too comfortable, swap in some offense.

I still like taking earth over water there soo much crit dmg in the game and having a hard counter to it makes you live forever even when there a gank on you. I also like fury on auras it combos nicly with 2 auras on cast times one from swamping to fire the other earth arua that you can drop to 20 sec cd by going into earth and you get one more aura from air line.

Thanks for the responses guys, and thanks for the analysis Kodiak. I do play in a guild group, in T5 and the fights areally surprisingly plentiful, having transferred from Yak’s Bend where there’s nothing! I’ll relay this build to my commander and see what he thinks, will probably swap in some more offense, but interesting nonetheless.

Added a balls deep build for reference, the gains vs losses are interesting. Minor DPS loss for a ton of survivability.

Oh yes. I also did run the ferocity on auras. Its nice but it did´t seem to have much impact for me.
I personaly like valkyr in power builds. I try to keep my crit at 50% so not to much valk.
Usualy i tend to do the armor in valk and trinkets in captain. The staff then is whatever feels comftable. Rune also depending on the build. Pack is one classic. My setup is zerk staff, valk armor, captain trinkets. Hoelbrak rune + leek soup, strength food but running arcane not water. With water i would run strengh/precision food and strength rune.
Backpack and earrings i usualy get soldiers with karma from temple.

My personal backline blaster:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWnMICtMg9MAmMA8RgBCALKABgFgMJ7AlgaNkGGDA-T1hFwADuAAAeAAJV+dRHAK1fWt/QVlgBAQAYn78o78o7sMAMjB-w

The full automatic easy to obtain fire camping signet version.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWhcMoth9NwsB8RMQAYRBIAsAmdwLIIITyOQJA-TVCBwAVuAAHVitV5xCTcAeAAp0BMRJYv9H0p+TAAEA25OPaIDAzYA-w

The signet version realy works well for new(less time) players. Its PvE and WvW usable. Not max damage but very good/easy to handle.