Guild Wars 2

(Edited to add Arcane Blast into build and change to One With Air.)

I agree with many of the problems that Elementalists have.

However, until those are solved, I’d like to offer up a WvW build with which I’ve had a lot of success. Having played Elementalist since beta, and having experimented with all available weapon combinations and several build types (from glass cannon to ultra survivability), I’ve found this to be the best for supporting and (gasp!) dominating in WvW:

Bersker Downer|

I’ve also attached a screen shot of the build close to its strongest (25 Sigil stacks, food buff, might stacks) in terms of stats with an Exotic Weapon with one Exotic headpiece and Rare armor. With Power at 2300, Precision at 2000, Critical Chance at 57% and Attack at 3,400, you will do significant damage.

The Run Down

Twitter Summary

Extra damage to enemies <25% hp and downed. AoE on downed prevents revives. Combo field support. Pwr/Prc 2000+ gives 50%+ crit chance, 3k-4k crits.

Explanation and Tactics

Your primary role in this build is to focus down enemy players with 50% or less HP. Your traits in Fire and Air provide extra damage to burning foes, to foes with less than 25% HP, and to foes who are stunned or downed.

When you see a low HP player, down them with Flame Burst (#3) and Fireball (#1). After they are down, cast Lava Font (#2) on them to keep them from reviving and burning anyone who tries to revive them. Continue casting Fireball until they are killed, adding another Flame Burst and Lava Font if enemies try to revive the downed player.

Your choice of utility skills is largely optional, although given how squishy your build is, you should keep Mist Form for emergencies. (I run Signet of Earth for immobilize on enemies attempting to flee AoE fields and Signet of Fire for even more precision.) These should be rare since your goal is to always be at range. You do so much damage to downed players that you should never need to finish a foe at melee range.

Edited to Add: Lunesta rightly points out you need to take Arcane Blast for a utility skill. This is exactly right. As a long-ranged “snipe,” use this on low HP or downed players to hasten their death. Sorry for the oversight!

When enemies are at full health, focus on placing combo fields, immobilizing/crippling with Earth, chilling with Water and keeping up Fire AoE on players dumb enough to stay in one place. You can also hold zergs in place for a couple of seconds by using your Meteor Shower (which recharges faster given your traits) to make certain areas dangerous to run through.

If played right, you will pick off downed players (and anyone foolish enough to revive them) and otherwise help turn any pitched 20 vs. 20 in your team’s favor.

However, you will most obviously die in any minor skirmish. This build requires you to flee from individual combat against Warriors and Thieves. If in Fire, use Burning Retreat (#4) and switch to Earth. Use Earth’s Magnetic Field (#3) when running back to your zerg to reflect back any powerful shots, while also placing Unsteady Ground (#4) at your feet to cripple anyone following you. (My favorite is reflecting back nets! This makes me laugh every time it happens.) If you’re still being followed, switch to Air and use Static Field (#5) and Windborne Speed (#4).

Gear Choice

-Berserker Armor. You want +power, +precision, +critical damage in all slots. This includes trinkets.

-Berserker Exotic Staff. This is most important for damage. Upgrade this first over armor if you’re short on cash/materials.

-Superior Sigil of Perception. I took this simply because it was cheaper than a Superior Sigil of Bloodlust. Either works for this build, although arguably Bloodlust is better.

-Buffs. You want food buffs that increase any of your relevant stats. I run Cookies when I’m being cheap. Peach Tarts are nice since they are also inexpensive to make.

Gotta have arcane blast if you’re talking about bursting down low health players and blasting staff is way too important to overlook IMO in WvW.

The 20% extra damage to low-hp players skill is interesting, though, but it will be hard to give up running fast in air.

I like to go arcane power with valkyrie mixed-in for more survivability and predictable crits.

Lunesta,

Hm, yes, that is a serious oversight on my part. I’ve used Arcane Blast regularly in sPvP and WvW before. How could I forget? Great point. I’ll see if I can’t update the original post to reflect your suggestion.

Blasting Staff is hard to give up, but I think I’d only be willing to give up points in Fire to achieve that, and I still like the might bonuses from Pyromancer’s Puissance. But maybe PP is negligible. I’ll have to reconsider.

Hey this is close to what i started out my build as, but as a purely WvW based kill ALL the things build, i found a huuuuuge increase in in the amount of bags amassing at my feet doing this.
Being the elementalist is my main, ive had plenty of time to experiment with this build and make alot of changes seeing a HUGE improvement

i like to call it my more MOBA style build since its a tower defense geared build (but less specifically it just means your not roaming to a heavy extent, [[and when you are, it takes 1 trait swap and a utility swap and your good to go.]])
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fEQQFAWlIGCNGbw5GPyAQ4hAEwgQRFWUUczOA;ToAg0CnowxgjAHLOOck4Mi4YB
(if you arent familiar with this builder, the 3 icons are in the middle of the box for Weapon, Traits/stats, and equipment)

The focus of this build is Power/Precision, and crit dmg. When your average Meteor Crits are 5k+, itll be hard to hide the smile
Full PWR,PRE,C-DMG gear(Berserker) + Ruby gems on upgrades. nomonomonomonomonom.

First, the skills.
*The Glyph of Elemental Power really makes this build. It adds so much utility (and by that i mean i generally just sit in fire while im defending so spamming burn c:) but seriously, the permacripple, spam weakness/fumble, and AoE chill….. and it has about a 20% proc rate, so ex: with traits and GoEP youll have about a 50% chance on crit to proc burn. which is about 385 dmg/tick.
*The sigil of fire adds like 4% crit. its something. its not like OMFGOP but its there, if you want you can swap it for Arcane Power for some burst, or Mist form. up to you.
*Purely using the ele skils, i find arcane blast falls short in WvW in this build. I chose to get the Glyph of Storms(for those wondering, the best is probably cast in earth attunement, but not worth the dmg loss from switching out of first for 12s.)

Traits
*Fire:
The “Gain might when casting a fire skills” simply falls short due to the duration of the buff. Opting for Burning on Crit, along with the crit sigil and a total of 12% crit with a maxed Superior sigil of perception really makes a big difference. keeping me above 70% without any buffs or anything.

*Air:
As for air tree, the movement speed is great and the 20% to foes under 25% is crazy. For defending and standstills ill swap to the glyph CD just to be able to spam my GoEP and Heal.
Most of the time, it is the stacking movement speed trait when running, Glyph CD when fighting. not much to say there

*Arcana:
This is just an amazing tree for staff.
30% AoE size. rediculously perfect trait. if you play staff. you HAVE to get this. there is NO better trait in our entire list.
As for the 10 major, it is really a situational tossup, in skirmishes, you want the vigor on crit or possibly the arcance shield at 25%, for defending you want either arcane power at 75% imo. Attacking you want the attunement swap bonuses or the vigor.
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As for roaming/skirmishing, this is where the build turns
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fEQQFAWhImQbzxygjDAhHCQADCFXYRRRO7A;ToAg0CnowxgjAHLOOck4Mi4YB

Lightning flash for some GTFO ability. and movement speed traits + vigor to also GTFO. since you may be focused in small fights.
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thats pretty much it. go try it out on some golems in PvP just to get a feel for the dmg, it WILL be higher in PvE.
Thats just my take
As for the playstyle decisions i pretty much agree, your skirmish tactics are pretty firm and you understand what your class can do.
good guide try out my build changes and see what you can do if youd like
~Dino ^^

Hey Dino,

Great ideas. I’ll have to test your builds and compare. Given what you’re written, I already suspect yours is better. I’ll let you know what I think sometime later when I can play for a bit. Always interested in improvements, so I appreciate the feedback.

I can’t seem to follow your links. Apparently there is some bug linking to builds, so maybe route them through TinyURL or something similar?

(Edited to add: looks like copying and pasting the URL is a good work around.)

Copy and Paste OP tell me if you like it
Also the Curry…something.. idk i dont buy it gives alot of PRE and 10% Crit DMG O………o i just bought my exotic berserkers so i cant try it out but do that too

dinorawrr.4685:

Copy and Paste OP tell me if you like it
Also the Curry…something.. idk i dont buy it gives alot of PRE and 10% Crit DMG O………o i just bought my exotic berserkers so i cant try it out but do that too

I do like it. I’ll have to do some more extensive testing to see how it compares. Thanks for linking your builds!