Guild Wars 2

Stone Heart Conjuror!
Aka the ele that thinks its a guardian.

My stone heart build has become my primary wvw build for my ele because it combines good damage output with an immense capacity for soaking up damage on a class that most wvwers target first, wrongly assuming all eles are squishy. In small (10 on 10 or less) fights you can hold the agro of the whole enemy force for the duration of a fight without even coming close to going down and deal 2-5k hits all the while.


Build:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJArdhMMacW4w0Bf0ADAG5rQSYKEKAMuHcDOiA-TFCBABmq+jg7P0wDC4MlgYpEzLlHAcCASRPBpAGVYE-w

Gear:
Full cav armor and half cav half zerk trinkets allows you to keep a 50% crit chance and sit right around 3k armor that cant be critically hit. That armor gives a 34.95% reduction in base damage, in addition to this you have protection up quite often, an extra 33% damage reduction. While you are taking very little direct damage (I tested with against a full zerk warrior, his full 100b channel did around 3.5k) you still have 1900 power, 50ish% crit chance and 206% crit damage allowing you to deal decent damage back to your foe.


Runes/Sigils:
Traveler runes are a must, 25% movement speed lets you not waist a utility skill on staying mobile and boon duration keeps regen, protection, vigor and stability up as long as possible plus you get damage and toughness stats! Sigils sadly are pretty boring, because you have so much cav armor crit chance has to come from something and accuracy and perception are about the only options.


Utility/Weapon skills:
For this build your weapon skills are really just extra utility’s, because you must stay in earth magic at all times and earth magics power based damage output is terribad. So we go with a weapon set that provides the most utility, scepter focus.

Rock Barier should be cast every time its off cool down as its an extra 100 armor

Dust Devil is a nice little blind

Magnetic Wave is a fantastic 3 condi clear that can be used to reflect projectiles (very fun vs a kill shot warrior)

Obi Flesh is 4 seconds of invuln, huge for getting clutch finishers off or for shielding your heal from interrupts

Ether Renewal on a 15 second cool down lets you bunker down if you need to, I have yet to find a power build that can kill you in 15 seconds

Cleansing Fire clears 3 condis on its own and 1 from the regen application, depending on what you are fighting it can be dropped for lightning flash

Armor of earth is also fantastic for covering your heal/getting a stomp off plus it also clears 1 condi!

Conjure Flame Axe is my preference for primary conjure weapon as it provides better mobility than hammer and its a ranged weapon so it just generally easier to keep applying damage. However it is lower damage than hammer, you have to decide if being mobile and hiting for a max of 4k is enough or do you want to work harder to hit the target but be able to hit for 6k.

Conjure Fiery Great sword is a no brainier as your elite, its great from breaking off from a fight, chasing down runners or keeping dps up on classes that can kite you.


Game Play:
STAY IN EARTH MAGIC AT ALL BLOODY COST, trust me swapping out of earth while in a fight, even to get a heal from water will end up loosing you more hp than it gains. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen enemy stone hearts die when they panic and pop out of earth. Use Ether Renewal before you really think you need it, in fact any time you cant be dealing damage use it, with a 15 second cool down it will be up again the next time you need it and maintaining high hp will almost never hurt you. Don’t be afraid to aa with your scepter its not great damage but each channel will do around 1k alpha damage and the bleeds will actually do enough condi damage to make players start popping clears, after all being 30 in earth magic and having runes of the traveler (plus guard stacks) means you have 300-400 condi damage, not much but its enough to make people think your condi.



Over all this is one of my favorite wvw builds right now partly because of the trolly armor levels and partly because no one really knows what to do against you, I have never seen another power based stone heart ele using conjures in wvw and 99% of my opponents haven’t either. This is also one of the few builds I know of that is equally effective rolling in a zerg as it is roaming or havocing, just slot on your lighting hammer and stack with the guardians!

I went ahead and posted this because I have yet to see any one on the official forums post a working stone heart power build and I thought I would fix that! I will see if I can record some video of this in wvw (assuming people start playing wvw in my time zone again)

As a roamer (I hate zerging), this build intrigues me. This is my third time visiting this thread, and at first I thought “ya know, this looks a bit gimmicky.” But I gave the build some serious thought, looked it over, and now I’m gonna go give it a shot. It’s always a brave thing to come to the forums and post a non-meta-ish build, and I’d be shorting us both if I didn’t give it a shot. It looks solid, there is flexibility within the conjures (LH in WvW? Yes please!), and condition removal was certainly taken into consideration. Will probably miss the second Stun Break of Mist Form, but there may be room for that by subbing something out. The loss of Lightning Flash wouldn’t be felt nearly as badly on a build like this. Both the conjures are ranged anyway.

Either way, good posting, and will report the results after a night of some WvW.

The idea behind this build looks pretty solid, specially to fit my personal play style, which is always find outnumbered fights. I’ll definitely give a shot to this build this week and post feedback here once i am done.

You could totally slot on mist form in place of cleansing fire, I just really like having the extra condi clears.

I started running this with LH and it kept bugging me how hard it is to land hits on targets that are kiting me, so I gave the axe a shot (which I had previously written off) and was quite pleasantly surprised with how well it performs, that added mobility lets you be the one ding the kiting!

Both are fine weapons and there are certainly advantages to both (LH damage is a sweet sweet thing) Just saying don’t discount the axe.

This build definitely looks interesting and is likely the most viable stone heart build.

Some comments are: how have you dealt with having to pick up a second conjure when the first one runs out? I feel like that would signal to the enemy when you are vulnerable and unable to react as much (like placing marks or wells or traps on uour spare conjure in duels ) although the focus earth skills offset that. Do people ever steal your flame axe? Because that would be very brutal for your build.. As it is when I run the lightning hammer in pve.

I’d swap out some cavalier for knights gear, soldiers/sentinels gear etc. I feel like more health could help you as could a bit more precision. Lastly I’d try running ice bow in zeros along with the other main conjure. Ice storm damage is a very solid aoe.

When I have time and actually unlock stone heart, I’ll try this build out in spvp with a knights amulet and similar runes and sigils. It looks interesting but it’s probably not at all my playstyle.

Believe it or not I have never had some one aoe bomb my conjure on the ground, I don’t know why its what I would do against this but I ran it all season and never once can I remember that happening.

Allys do tend to want to pick up your LH cause most people know its good dps, I have had more than one person pm me to tell me not to use axe cause its “really bad in wvw” so folks tend to steal it way less. But even if they do you can bunker down really hard with your S/F and just wait for the cool down. Or if the fight is going well and its not looking like you will end up needing to bail just pop FGS and kill use it till the axe is up again.

I have full guard stacks so I don’t really need any more vit off my gear, I could see adding some in for pve or if you lack guard leach. With perception stacks and food I have a 51% crit chance which I feel is enough. I personally do not run this build in pve as I find monsters are way less reliant on crits than players, there I just go full glass.

A knights amulet with runes of the dolyak could be pretty funny in spvp

Its a cool ideal i am just not sure if scepter is the best chose forces seems good though i like staff more but that just me. Have you though about using 3 conjurer weapons over the 2 you use it give you more full time conjurer wepon. That and have you though about losing cantrip set up for more passive water effects such as reg every time you are crit and remove burning and chill on roll (you do lose ways to get reg though so i am not comply sure about this.)

You have conjures up plenty so no I would not trade stability and condi clears for more conjures. Staff skills while attuned to earth are still very poor for alpha damage and staff provides less utility (in earth magic) than S/F. Regen when crit would be pretty pointless considering the whole point of this build is to use stone heart, in which you cannot be critically hit.

i’ve been playing a more in your face zerker stoneheart-conjurer in pvp since the trait was released, i actually posted about the potential of stoneheart conjurers before the patch :D

its great fun isn’t lt?
completely transforms the ele into a heavy armour melee class (in my case with lightning hammer)
running after a hammer warrior is hilarious as he runs away from the little ele XD

edit: @jski scepter/focus is my choice for stoneheart conjurer too, you can keep the 250 toughness from Rock Barrier while you’re using conjured weapons, making you even tougher to take down,
plus the focus gives you a reflect and an invulnerable which you can use in between conjure summons/pickups :)

I don’t know about taking geomancer’s alacrity… stone splinters or rock solid would arguably be better, especially since the latter could be combined with ether renewal for an uninterruptable heal. But I guess that particular trait slot is highly tweakable.

Stone splinters gives a bit of a damage boost, its better used with the LH than the axe. Rock solid would require you to drop out of earth and then come back to it, with a 13 second attunement cool down that is an awefull long time to wait just to shield your heal skill. And you wont have stone heart up so you are taking a great deal more damage while you wait.

I stick with Geomancers to make bunkering down easier if I need to.

If this builds goal is to bunker up have you tried the conjured earth shield?
Not the damage as LH or the mobilty of flame axe, but if you want to be as hard to kill as possible i think no other utility comes even close.

Have you considered taking obsidian focus over geomancer’s? It would give you an extra 300 toughness while using ether renewal or autoattacking on scepter.

To OP:

Been testing your build for 3~4 days and my personal thoughts are:

The high armor(3kish) with 17~20k hp doesn’t stop a thief from kill you when you can’t pressure him. The damage output is low compared to the other builds around. Like you could go D/D and dish out 3 times more damage while still tanky, yes you’d get critted but you’d pressure 3 times more which means they’d have to take a step back to heal/stealth or something.
So i think the build is not viable, specially in 1vX fights.

Anyways, thanks for the build post.

I’m sorry you have had that experience, I personally haven’t had any issues with thief’s 1v1 unless they were condi and just kited the hell out of me.

However I must admit the low damage output can get quite aggravating.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

I’m sorry you have had that experience, I personally haven’t had any issues with thief’s 1v1 unless they were condi and just kited the hell out of me.

However I must admit the low damage output can get quite aggravating.

Yea the sustain damage is kinda low and with few spike damages, which they can regenerate through stealth or kiting. The thief i fought were mainly S/D, the new meta. D/D were just fine, killed them with some pressure fight during 1 min or so. Just saying you can play this build, but other builds are just most effective.

I ran this for a few days, and I had the same issue as Lynnie. While I think there is certainly something great to this build, it will take some tinkering. (I’m not giving up on it, going to be testing some different armor combinations and moving a few trait points around.) I think the advice your initial post mentions to never leave Earth though, is a good way to breed lazy Elementalists. I spent 75% of my time there in combat, but once your conjures run out, I found that still retaining mastery over your weapons (Sc/D is my favorite ele combo as well), is still very much advised. And with Scepter autos being utter garbage, moving attunements is still something that needs to be done with this build. (Earth is still primary, dont get me wrong.)

That stuff being said!

Running this with a small group, I noticed two things.

1) The people we faced usually focused me first. They had a very unpleasant surprise when they realized that dying wasn’t something I wanted to do. Nor did easily. Took a lot of pressure off the others while I was able to tank a considerable amount of damage, while still doling out some damage of my own. Sure, I was almost “bait,” but we all have to fill a roll, right?

2) This build made soloing camps a lot easier. I can appreciate that.

Thanks again for posting this build, and I’ll also be working on refining and fine tuning it to my playstyle. Will post results at a later date!

Nabarue.3290:

I ran this for a few days, and I had the same issue as Lynnie. While I think there is certainly something great to this build, it will take some tinkering. (I’m not giving up on it, going to be testing some different armor combinations and moving a few trait points around.) I think the advice your initial post mentions to never leave Earth though, is a good way to breed lazy Elementalists. I spent 75% of my time there in combat, but once your conjures run out, I found that still retaining mastery over your weapons (Sc/D is my favorite ele combo as well), is still very much advised. And with Scepter autos being utter garbage, moving attunements is still something that needs to be done with this build. (Earth is still primary, dont get me wrong.)

That stuff being said!

Running this with a small group, I noticed two things.

1) The people we faced usually focused me first. They had a very unpleasant surprise when they realized that dying wasn’t something I wanted to do. Nor did easily. Took a lot of pressure off the others while I was able to tank a considerable amount of damage, while still doling out some damage of my own. Sure, I was almost “bait,” but we all have to fill a roll, right?

2) This build made soloing camps a lot easier. I can appreciate that.

Thanks again for posting this build, and I’ll also be working on refining and fine tuning it to my playstyle. Will post results at a later date!

True what you said. I played in a 3 man group using this build and everyone just go for ranger or ele. I was the tanker in the party, taking all damage while thief and warrior kill them, while do a kinda decent damage. For that role in group this build is awesome, even more if use conjure shield, but i was using hammer for CC’s.

The axe conjure would be amazing if the autoattack wasn’t super flaky. I feel like it misses/gets obstructed 50% of the time despite being in range.

Well after reading Lynnies comment I sat back and realized that I really hadn’t done much solo roaming with it since I mostly roll with 5-10 people. So I jump on and roamed for a day or two and….yah I see your point, I would take my zerker dd build for roaming over this.

I agree swapping attunements is a good practice but when you are playing the “bait” as Nabarue said I still think you should stay in earth.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Well after reading Lynnies comment I sat back and realized that I really hadn’t done much solo roaming with it since I mostly roll with 5-10 people. So I jump on and roamed for a day or two and….yah I see your point, I would take my zerker dd build for roaming over this.

I agree swapping attunements is a good practice but when you are playing the “bait” as Nabarue said I still think you should stay in earth.

Yea, the build is good, just not so good to solo.
But i’d really take it to play in organized group to fill guardian role, maybe using some mix of clerics and conjured shield.

That seems op, 6 sec invulnerabilty every 1 min, projectile reflect, dazes, blocks.

Better than guardian thanks to the stupidity of your average wvwer thinking “HUR DUR Ele is squishy I will beat on him”

Lurock, I wanted to show you what I was doing with this build. I stated before that I agreed that there was something to this build, so I did some tinkering. I haven’t taken it solo roaming yet, but I ran this build with a small group of 2-3 over the last few days, and it’s grown on me. I still switch back to D/D from time to time, but I like the option to vary my gameplay.

After some experimentation, I came up with a rather odd, yet effective combination of armor. The rune choice was just the right kind of strange, and the sigils are less focused on crits, and more on just pushing raw damage.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJArdhMMacW4wACf0ADAG5rQSYKEKAMuHUDOiA-TFTBABOt/gWKJwR9HuUCxwBC4KlCYpMBPdALqEEFtEL8AAA4EAEAABYnBA25O35O35OLFArCjA-w

The runes work well. I see a difference when I’m up close (with stone splinters, I get a healthy 17% damage boost while up in their faces), but its still effective when I run Axe or Frost Bow. I hadn’t even considered them up until yesterday, but the combination of toughness and a boost to conjure damage is welcome. I switch my utility skill often. If I’m getting condi’d to death, its Cleansing Fire. While in a group, it’s Mist Form. I love the flexibity more than anything. It feels more dynamic than D/D, as with my conjures, I can choose to approach a fight in even more ways than usual. (Lightning Hammer, gawd it’s just my favorite)

So I recently picked this build back up after some guildies finished leveling their eles. I changed a couple traits and 3 of us were rocking around wvw and….oh kitten !

With 3 of us running flame axe we could maintain at least 15 stacks of might on all of us at all times, and if we really tried for it we could hit 25. The perma stacking might combined with a couple trait changes gave us enough punch to burst people down surprisingly quickly.

Stone splinters and an extra two points in fire magic give you that extra bit of damage.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArdhMMacW4w0Bf0ADAGxrQSIYA4AMuGcDOiA-TFCBABmq+jg7P0wDA4MlgYpEzLlHAcCASRPApAEVYE-w

I never really thought of running multiple of these but the might stacks combined with insane ability to tank make for some pretty silly outnumbered fights. The three of us ground down 7 BG and a tower lord in their tower, the lols were real!