Guild Wars 2

Just trying to theoricraft a build for a elementalist to stand in the frontline.

The basic ideas are:
– Use conjure to deal more aoe dmg and blast finishers while standing in one attunement.
– Stand in Earth att for crit immunity during charges. Cycle other attunes for buffs and heals when regrouping

the options:
The Aura buffs version
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJAoYlMMoAi9NwtB8rRwAgFMAsAG/D2BHRRZgStBA-T1BFABCcCAye/hsUC6kyv00Dki6PA8AAIFwADjA-w
– Use signets to get fire auras for buffs when in the fights (might, protection, fury, swift) and to CC foes
– vigor on crit for extra dodges
– aura on heal
– d/d for might stacks, heals and mobility when out of conjures

The LR version
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQFAWlMMoAidOwxB8rNwAgFKAM+HsDOiizAngiIA-T1BCABAcBAKTJ4wPAAtU+5z+D1pDoG1fIFwADjA-w
– use the low CD on LH static field and staff CC to proc more LR for dmg and weakness.

Any other ideas?
Still need to test this in organized zergs and GvG…

First of all, I would REALLY recommend you to use a staff in a WvW zerg. The on-demand waterfields and the hard-CC skills are half of the reason you would want to bring an ele in the first place.

In my opinion you should really ask yourself why you want to stand in the frontline in the first place. The staff weapon skills have 1200 range – that allows for a good distance to your enemy. The heavy classes are usually much better suited for the frontline task, so I would advise against trying to do something a warrior or guardian is designed to do better.

Regarding the builds:

1. Signets are a big “no” – just “no” in a WvW zerg. They are single target and the passive stats are not that great either. Forget about fire aura and its procs. Fire aura is not really good and the procs are not really worth taking the signets and the traits required for it.

2. You do not have ANY teamplay in your build – although this is one of the biggest strengths of an ele. You do not have healing ripple, cleansing wave/water, elemental attunement, soothing mist, evasive arcana or anything like that.

3. You do not have any stability skills (at least not that I am aware of). You really want to play frontline without stability ?!? Let me put it like this: Two seconds after the fight you will be in the backline – whether you want it or not….

4. Lightning hammer is not a zerg weapon. Just use it in the zerg and you will see how rarely it connects. I tried this once and you really have to stand on your enemies feet in order for it to hit its target. There are better utilities in my opinion.

5. Camping in earth attunement will waste 80% of what an ele can do or what an ele is good at. That said, critical hits are not your major concern anyway. You will rarely see high damage criticals because most ppl run rather tanky builds and whittle down their enemies with sustained pressure rather than full berzerker damage spikes.

6. On a minor note: The procs of the Rune of radiance have rather high internal cooldowns. This is not shown in the tooltip, but the wiki lists the cooldowns correctly.

Hi ILobo welcome to the front line!

Columbo is basically right. Staff ele is necessary for the most of the zerg fights. However once the group has 2-3 of them you can add a nice additional edge with this “classic auramancer” build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJAoYlcMowhVOwvB8rNwDgQ+3rWiCUuaynA-TFSAABgcCA4R9HAMBx1+Dpp8DG9AxqE8iHAARAMjB-w

As you can see it’s a traditional D/D bunker with aura traits and boon duration runes. Double or triple cantrip for survivability (and for stability… you NEED stability!)

Sigils are for sustain. These sigils are not affected by armour as far as I know so they give you nice out-of-water heals. The heavy-class amount of armour also helps a lot.

Pros:

-Jack-of-all-trades
-nice survivability
-properly used stun and chill auras (along with reaper of grenth) can catch enemies their pants down
-high might, fury and swiftness uptime and scales extremely well with buffs
-high healing power (not like it scales well but still…)
-not a very often played spec so nobody is expecting you
-FUN

Cons:

-Jack-of-all-trades
-crap condi remove outside of water attunement (always run with 1-2 guards/warriors in your party!)
-still not enough stability (give cookies to your guardians….)
-high Might uptime but you are not a might-producing factory
-out-of-combat movement speed is bound to your “secret weapon” (you can swap traits obviously…)
-zero ranged option

Run nomads and have fun in large scale zerg fights

build for staff but have atleast scepter dagger at the ready for when your going into a team fight in a location too cramped for staff. I personally have 2 daggers a scepter a focus and a staff on standby to ensure im the most flexible player in my zerg as an ele should be. Also why would I want to be frontline on a ele? i get 6k+ crits with meteor and up to 4k with lighting glyph of storms. Front line on a guard or warrior? sure hell frontline on a ranger sure, frontline on an engineer sure why not. frontline on a necro hellz yah. front line on a mesmer…. your pushing it bro. front line on an ele? yah no you would have to be absolute bunker build and a bunker d/d still does less than half the damage of staff i think your playing the wrong class bro

As rangerdeity already said, you are wasting a lot of AoE damage potential by not going for an offensive staff build.

Back to the original question. This is my recommendation for a frontline DD build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAoYhcMKcW5wxBd0AhABxtmhBFljLXB-TFyHAB2pEUIlHJq+TPKxG4BAoy+DAcCA+SPApAYSZE-w

Stability: You have 2 x stability from armor of earth (utility + earths embrace trait) and 1 x group stability from rock solid trait.

Invulnerablity: Mist form.

Teamplay: healing ripple, soothing mist, elemental attunement, rock solid, evasive arcana procs (especially water), rune of the pack procs (and others that I might have overlooked)

Food: I think there is no real alternative to lemongrass with -40% condi duration. So take it.

Sigils: I think sigil of energy is a must have. More dodging and more evasive arcana procs. Sigil of battle is very good on an ele as well.

The rune of the pack procs (together with the +30% boon duration from the arcana line and the procs from renewing stamina and elemental attunement) should guarantee perma fury and swiftness (because we do not run zephyrs boon in this build).

Variants:

- Soothing disruption can be switched with cleansing wave for on demand group condition remove

- Hoelbrak/Melandru runes if your enemies have too much condition pressure.

Rangerdeity:

I think a full bunker staff ele does a bit less damage than a full bunker D/D. Staff is superior if we are talking about CC-heal. If my commander asks for more staff ele I swap of course.

I’m in a very lucky position since our core team has 3 staff eles already so they usually let me play my DD auramancer frontline support. Four ele in a 15 large group is overkill for sure

So please consider: not everybody is forced to play staff or scepter and not everybody wants to play as they should.

Columbo: nice build but I don’t like the Rock Solid trait… too much investment for less than 3 sec stability. Would you consider Stone Splinters, Geomancer’s Freedom or -heck- even Strength of Stone (lots of celestial there…)?

Aggrostemma.1703:

Columbo: nice build but I don’t like the Rock Solid trait… too much investment for less than 3 sec stability. Would you consider Stone Splinters, Geomancer’s Freedom or -heck- even Strength of Stone (lots of celestial there…)?

Keep in mind that rock solid provides group stability (which is quite rare). In a perfect world (where you can swap attuments on cooldown and you and your allies stick together) this can provide up to 25% stability uptime on your entire party. This trait is actually quite strong.

Stone splinters is definitely a solid option, but I think geomancers freedom would be better here – because with lemongrass food and melandru/hoelbrak runes you have so much condition duration reduced that immobilize or cripple will no longer even get applied (unless your enemy runs +condition duration).

I think strength of stone does not pull its weight because you can be quite sure that your enemies will run condition duration reduced food/runes/traits (see above) so you condition damage goes to waste. Elementalist has limited access to conditions anyway.

Another option: If you don’t want to run rock solid then you could also remove the 2 points in earth and pick cleansing water (like everyone else does).

Aggrostemma.1703:

Rangerdeity:

I think a full bunker staff ele does a bit less damage than a full bunker D/D. Staff is superior if we are talking about CC-heal. If my commander asks for more staff ele I swap of course.

I’m in a very lucky position since our core team has 3 staff eles already so they usually let me play my DD auramancer frontline support. Four ele in a 15 large group is overkill for sure

So please consider: not everybody is forced to play staff or scepter and not everybody wants to play as they should.

Columbo: nice build but I don’t like the Rock Solid trait… too much investment for less than 3 sec stability. Would you consider Stone Splinters, Geomancer’s Freedom or -heck- even Strength of Stone (lots of celestial there…)?

the idea with staff is you can build full zerker and be just fine and you will deal MUCH more damage because you have larger aoe to hit more people plus you will have the better offensive stats