Guild Wars 2

Hi, I’m curious as to what builds and gear people are using in WvWvW in a reasonable offensive direction.

I assume when running in a warband against other warbands that the staff is a requirement. Is there any reason to use any other weapon combo?

I know you cant really be glass cannon – you will die; so I have some moderate defence – 15k health and 1300 toughness. Is this an ok amount to aim for?

Currently I use a fire / earth condition damage build, with some into arcane for the increased aoe you can get at 20 and for bonuses from attunement swapping.

My gear has a good bit of + condition damage. Its an ok build but I dont get the ‘woah’ impression from it, does a build focussing more on precision and crit damage work better?

I’m fully exotic geared but I seem to do hits mostly around 500 – 1.5k, sure theres lots of them and sometimes higher than 1.5k but still.

In large open field fights (while using Staff) your damage is honestly going to be neglible. Your value add will primarily come from 1) AOE CCing (static field, frozen ground, shockwave, earth 4, signet of earth, etc) and 2) AOE healing. Spec for combos/boons.

In small open field fights (i.e. those 1v1 – 3v3 you’ll find yourself in now and then), I’d swap to S/D or D/D.

In keep fighting, meteor and earth 2 becomes a lot more interesting since there are still many many terribads who will literally just stand there like drones attacking a gate while you pound your offensive AOEs on them. Throw in static field/frozen ground after you get off meteor and you’ll get a good amount of free badges.

My personal favorite WvWvW build is a Glyph build with Evasive Arcana. 0/20/10/10/30. You can quickly stack might into the high teens and start AOEing while keep fighting and have plenty of combo fields to enhance your CC. 30 arcane also synergizes well with S/D or D/D.

Recommend Zerker gear since our damage is terribad to begin with.

Just my 2 cents after a couple weeks of heavy WvWvW.

Edit – to your question re: condi damage, I would avoid with a Staff build. Can’t really stack effieciently enough as other classes because of a) the CDs on earth 2 and fire 3 and b) the CDs between attunement swapping

I run Staff Aoe glass canon build in WvWvW. The damage output is insane and I think Elementalist is the strongest class in WvW.
I have 60% crit chance and 98% crit damage with superior sigil of earth (60% to inflict bleeding on crit)
I have fire-30 air-20 arcana-20.
With 10% more dmg when attuned to fire. lower CD on fire spells. Increased duration of fire fields.
Larger aoe fields with staff. On Air I get get fury and switfness when you get aura.
This build is not good for small skirmishes but it is great for large fights.
I can keep my lava font constantly up and It crit for 2-3k meteor crit for 4-5k and fireball(autoattack) also crit for 2-3k. All of this is AoE this is 9-11k damage per second. My whole combo kill almost everyone if they stand still in the AoE.
Combo is F:2>5>3>1>2 E:3>2 W:2 A:4>5 then back to fire. when you change attunments you get fury 20% crit chance which make my total crit chance 80%. With the magnetic aura I get fury for 6 sec and changing the attunments add to its duration so all my combo is with 80% crit chance with added bleeding from the sigil and earth 2 and weaknesss from water almost everything die.
Note: This is only my DPS, add the dps from an ally and it is insta dead.
Take in mind that this is glass canon I have 0 thoughness and zero vitality so 11k HP only. As soon as you are targeted you die so use your 1200 range to your advantage.