I spent most of my time in WvW playing with my only lvl 80 character, an elementalist. I prefer to use d/d if we are not lacking staff eles in the zerg or we are not in a guild raid.
I’ve been using full knights set in the last few months and I could survive with the melee train. However, i still have to be more careful than all those warriors, necros and guardians. A week ago, I have finished my celestial set, bought full divinity runes for it and it suddenly become harder to survive in huge zergs fights. I can still live if I’m using a staff and standing outside of the melee train but that’s not how I want to play my elementalist.
I don’t really care about dealing much damage. Tagging enemies and having an easier time in the frontlines is what I’m trying to achieve ultimately.
I’ve watched several elemtalist videos on youtube, checked other builds on several websites and decided that the following build is a really good tank. Please correct me if I’ve made any mistakes and point out the weaknesses of my build.
I’m 100% staff though, and always in a zerg. I also use another heal (arcane brilliance) and use lightning flash (uber important imo). Also use tornado for elite.
I do switch between 30 water or 30 arcana though, but the 20 in earth for geomancer’s freedom is what i never switch out. With melandru runes and lemongrass food it’s just too good. Of course i use blasting staff (must for any WvW staff ele) in my arcana trait.
And i also have ascended soldier armor, trinkets and all that stuff.
It’s a good build, and often im the lone survivor. Of course positioning is really important for us, because no matter, if you’re focused by many, you go down.
In the future I’m going to try and build it more so it’s going to be better for support maybe.
As above. You try to make a frontline char from ranged. Your high armor and hp wont help much if you stand in the wrong place. Not much dmg from this either, it looks more like a meat shield tbh :P Well, everyone is free to play how he wants so suit yourself.
I can tell necro or guard have very easy ways to tag ton of enemies and can deal more dmg or better support the team than what you try to achieve.
-Swap some soldiers parts for parts with toughness as main attribute, i like cavaliers a lot myself. Toughness is the king in wvw, where you can rely on healing to come from team, and thus points in vitality are near useless after you have enough to survive the spikes.
-Get rid of that useless dagger trait and use renewing stamina instead, kitten near perma vigor with that one. Also you should regularly have near 2 minutes of swiftness up if the guardians you run with know what they´re doing, and thus the trait does absolutely nothig for you.
-Consider swapping sigil of battle for sigil of energy, it gives the same effect as perma vigor would, so in essence with vigor and sigil of energy you can dodge 4 times in a time where you could dodge twice without em.
-Drop the crappy signet and equip lightning flash, best way to tank damage is not to be in the damage in first place. Despite this one note being a stunbreak anymore, it´s more than enough to get you to safety.
-Realise you can never ever ever take tha same amount of punishment as heavy classes, so stop trying to and start zipping in and out of the train with the mobility skills you have.
I have been playing around with a power build in theory craft. It has a similar health pool but the toughness is a bit lower. As stated tho is is power oriented and might be something to consider as a frontline ele.
Either you are going to clear your conditions or reduce the duration, doing both seems redundant. Since you also get a condi clear from water 5 and water dodge, I’d suggest switching melandru + lemongrass to something else.
Gate of Madness | Leader – Phoenix Ascendant [ASH]
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Either you are going to clear your conditions or reduce the duration, doing both seems redundant. Since you also get a condi clear from water 5 and water dodge, I’d suggest switching melandru + lemongrass to something else.
I use this build. I will sometimes switch Signet of Fire for Lightning Flash or Mist Form depending on the situation.
Perma Protection.
3.5k armor with Rock Barrier up.
Rock Solid (Stability) + Ether Renewal every 15 seconds if needed.
25% passive speed.
2k+ condition damage with average in-combat might stacks.
Burning doesn’t stack well with Condition damage at all. That build will have an increase in damage but no change in survivability by changing Dire (CTV) to Soldier (PTV).
Ahh thanks for that link. I can see what he meant about Burning not scaling well with condition damage.
That said, I am pretty happy with that build being condition based. Power does no damage while channeling Ether Renewal, and Ether Renewal happens to be used pretty often in WvW situations mainly for the cleanse. I can usually keep Burning + 5 stacks of bleed on a target with just light pushing, and spike to 15 + Burning + Poison— this is why I use Lightning Flash in the build depending on the situation, mainly to land a gambit of immobilize→Churning Earth→ Lightning Flash if the immobilize is broken and they try to get out of range.
I think I agree with some of the other eles here who take staff over d/d. Don’t get me wrong. I love d/d, even in large group fights. When the enemy zerg gets large enough, however, there’s a point at which I feel that the effectiveness of staff’s CC outweighs anything I could do on d/d. Throw in superior heals and support, and I’m happy to take the backline.
For Uber tanky (don’t plan on dieing much) WvW zerg build. I go with a combo of Soldier/Knights Armor + Cavalier Trinkets. 0.0.30.30.10 using Diamond skin. High Toughness and as long as HP remain above 90% I’m immune to Conditions. Rune of Melandru with Food switching between more dps or tankiness depending on the situation. Staff as a the weapon of choice. Very very tanky and probably a bit over kill but it is really good at mitigating both condition dmg and direct dmg.
Normal balanced build is running Celestial armor + Scholar Runes with Cavalier/Zerker Trinkets. 0.10.30.20.10 usually swapping food and weapons depending on how feel about the situation.
