Guild Wars 2

Yes, and also this is not constant: you have to consider the number on average, not just as high as it can get:
- from the combos: 3 * 3 * 20 / 30 = 6
- from the sigil: 3 * 15 / 20 = 4
So on average you sun with 10 stacks of might with no bonus duration (with peaks at 15).

I am quite ok with comet. It is hard and you have to plan for it, but it delivers enough for me.

Yes I also considered to take 10 in arcana. The benefits from it as as follow:
- take reduction in arcane spells’ cd (arcane wave to 24s) so you can use this as a replacement for either comet or magnetic wave, while the fury proc on swapping and the boon duration fills the fury uptime gaps for you (but not for your group)
- access to vigor
- access to elemental attunement, but I don’t find it very desirable for this build

The downside is the wasted resource: fire attunement cd is shorter than burning speed’s cd and boon duration may not be necessary. Also 10% loss in damage.

I ask my friend warrior, he sais he does 18-20k hits on a boss!!! How can it be so? I have a full berzerk gear and LW does 3500 – 4500 max on a crit!

Yes warriors hit hard, but it is often the last hit at the end of a lengthy chain.
Don’t do the mistake of feeing belittled by the big numbers they make occasionally, in fact we can do just as much: we hit for less, but much more frequently.

Do you also get a bug with burning speed when the fire field doesn’t go all the way to the blast location? I think this is due to speed boosts

Edit: if burning speed was working with a target (leap towards it, 600 range max) then all problems would be solved: we could swap to fire in melee to hit sunspot and land burning speed with the trail right on target.

yes sometimes the fire tail has different length

Persisting Flames: The duration increase for fire fields is now consistent.

Persisting flames now adds a flat 2 seconds to the duration of our fire fields. This means that the trail of burning speed will last for 6 seconds instead of 5. This is very interesting.

If you are not familiar with the rotation of D/F 30/30/10/0/0 then I would advise you to look it up in this thread before reading on, it is not too far back.

The idea is that if the trail last 6 seconds then we have a bit of extra time to blast it. In fact we have enough time to swap to air, cast three lightning whip attacks, then swap to earth/water to blast the trail. This is a nice dps increase because of:

• One extra tick of burning speed’s trail (minor boost to burn and direct damage)
• Better swapping pattern to proc sigil of battle (one additional swap at a convenient time for the rotation)
• One more proc of electric discharge
• Bypassing the 2s attunement swap cooldown by using fresh air more. Without this additional swap to air we would have to spend 2 full seconds in fire before swapping to water/earth. Now we can swap to air during the cast of burning speed (provided you crit to proc FA as you swap to fire).

The disadvantage of this is that you put more time between the creation of the fire field and the blast, which is an increased risk to miss the blast finisher of comet due to the target moving out.

This is my first impression on the effect of the patch on the D/F gameplay

It’s a good guide and I can agree with most of it. The comment I disagree with is your statement that Arcana adds no damage. Because it increases the duration of your boons, by making might stacks last longer, it adds power and condition damage and essentially increases your damage (could easily reach +30 power/condition damage per 10 points). It’s not as strong as Fire or Air of course, but it also increases other boons.

In a way, it’s the celestial gear of the trait trees.

Shadowfax.7562:

I ask my friend warrior, he sais he does 18-20k hits on a boss!!! How can it be so? I have a full berzerk gear and LW does 3500 – 4500 max on a crit!

Maybe it’s a critical 100 blades. It could hit for that much, but it’ll take roughly 4 seconds, so you gotta divide the damage by 4, which makes it closer to 5k.

I need to update this guide thoroughly

I will explain my position on arcana more in depth when I update this.

What’s about Lava Axe now? We can easily stack 25 might with it. And also make firefield blast each 5 seconds.

Did you count dps with Lava Axe? Also it gives us more power in passive.

The flame axe is quite interesting now, especially since the conjuring animation time has been drastically reduced.
I am estimating the animation time of lava axe’s auto attack to 1 second.
Each auto attack gives you one stack of might for 8 seconds (base value), so the lava axe in itself gives you 8 stacks of might on average.
You can boost this by taking pyromancer’s puissance (fire grandmaster trait, 30 points), which will give you 1 stack of might for 10 seconds (base value) per cast (with some odd delay, to be confirmed, but irrelevant) so this means 10 additional stacks of might on average. The total is 18; and if you have 10 points in arcana it will reach 20. This is a very high self-sustained level of might just from auto attacks. With a few combos you can very easily get to 25 if you stay in the effective range of combos: within 360 units of the blast. However, I have some issues with all this.

The axe rotation deals high damage for a ranged weapon. The high might stacking may even be enough to compensate the gap with melee weapons with few might stacks. Therefore it can be a good option when an encounter does not allow you to be in melee any more. However the axe’s projectiles will hardly connect at range if the target is moving, and I do not know many encounters where ranging is required.

A very obvious problem is that for this high might stacking to happen you need pyromancer’s puissance. This is a trait we do not take by default since we are not casting a significant amount of fire spell (and since lingering elements is not working). We usually take persisting flames instead, for the purpose of fury stacking. So unless you actually planned to use lava axe in a fight and switched your traits you wouldn’t be able to might stack that well at range.

Might stacking is nice, but when it is only for your character it is not that strong. The idea is that if you cap might for yourself then all the might your group mates could give you is wasted. If you are producing too much might then you are not using your resources efficiently. In fact I would take persisting flames over pyromancer’s puissance any time of the day, because perma fury for the group is much stronger than 10 might stacks for yourself. Also the extended fire field duration allows you to have a fire field ready every time the lava axe’s blast will be off cooldown if you manage your spells correctly. But then benefiting from this requires you to be within 360 range of the blasts you do. That is only 60 range further than Lightning whip.

In conclusion the most efficient way of using the flame axe would be as a semi-ranged weapon with persisting flames. I do not know in which scenario this would be particularly desirable yet. This is just my first opinion on this utility. I need to experiment more with it before I can give you a well founded opinion on this topic

Edit: Bear in mind that the the axe’s blast finisher has a cooldown of 5 seconds and an animation time of a little over 1 second (estimation), therefore its effective cooldown is 6 seconds not 5.

Since I am going to rewrite most of my guide I would like to know if there are any question that you would like me to elaborate or aspects of the class you would like me to expend on. It is easier for my guide to be more complete if I base my ideas on discussions I have had. Please let me know!

Also I am going to be much more specific in what I talk about: I will talk almost exclusively about the weapon set up I use most, this is D/F, with a hint of staff/scepter.

Are you going to change your build drastically? The reason why I use it (well, something very similar to it) is because I’m just much more effective with 15+ points in water than without, and it feels much better to deal slightly less damage for much higher survival (I can’t damage if I’m downed).

Also, I would be very interested to know what you think of some of the latest changes. Do you agree that Frost Bow’s Ice Storm is now a good skill for general use?

I am going to keep using the builds I am using at the moment:
x/30/x/20/10 (x being 10 points, either in earth or in fire)
30/30/x/0/x (x being 10 points, either in earth or in arcana)

Yes, the conjures have received very good buffs and some of their conjuring animation times have been reduced significantly. A lot of the skills they provide are interesting now. I would advise everybody to experiment with them!

10 in arcana, I’m telling you.

Yes my lord, I shall execute your will.

Execute his head.

You Euro boys are so violent sometimes.

And blah blah blah, blah blah blah, 30/30/0/10/0 w/e + LH for those days when I want to use all the weapon sets Though I do love having perma vigor from 10 in Arcana.

(Tagging this thread finally!)

I’m peaceful like a lamb but those two wants my head.

Whethospu wants your head, what I want is your powers

Edit: I have done a large part of the rewriting of the thread, but there is so much I want to say! It’s hard to keep track

I liked the list format for your optimal rotations over the paragraph format that you have in your guide now. Then again, I like seeing the rotation times and damage coefficients. I also like that you provide links to the wiki for skills and traits. The guide seems very wordy for recommending only two builds, but it’s very well written and does a good job about describing the mindset an ele should have.

Have you thought about adding a section on healing/utility/elite skill choices? How about specifying D/F in the title, since that’s what you are focusing on? Even though other guides cover it, maybe a quick note on gear, as well? And I think you can sneak in some more numbers.

Nice! Please keep giving me feedback, I highly appreciate this.

I like to explain my though processes to great lengths
Yes there will be more numbers, many more. I like to have a good structure before adding the details. I am going to use the discussions I have had in this thread to make the OP complete.

Id love TL:DR version. Im far too lazy to read it all.

Shadowfax.7562:

I ask my friend warrior, he sais he does 18-20k hits on a boss!!! How can it be so? I have a full berzerk gear and LW does 3500 – 4500 max on a crit!

20k… with a skill that hits 9 times.
2.2k per hit

(also 20k 100b is more like half of what he should do)

Guys… I know this shouldn’t be the proper place to post this; however, you seem to be very knowledable in regards to elementalist…

I’m a new lvl 80 ele focused more on PVE, dungeons and rare WvW zerg encounters… I invested in celestial ascended trinkets and celestial armors and would like to keep them.

What build, weapons, runes and sigils would you recommend (using the gear mentioned above) that would have the highest direct damage, a decent survivability and support.

Jalabi.3186:

Guys… I know this shouldn’t be the proper place to post this; however, you seem to be very knowledable in regards to elementalist…

I’m a new lvl 80 ele focused more on PVE, dungeons and rare WvW zerg encounters… I invested in celestial ascended trinkets and celestial armors and would like to keep them.

What build, weapons, runes and sigils would you recommend (using the gear mentioned above) that would have the highest direct damage, a decent survivability and support.

Well, what weapons or conjures do you enjoy the most right now? There are a few different ways you can go, and while I would encourage you to eventually try all the weapons (staff more in WvW than PvE), we could certainly suggest a few things to get you started using whatever you enjoy the most right now.

DEKeyzToChaos.7381:

Jalabi.3186:

Guys… I know this shouldn’t be the proper place to post this; however, you seem to be very knowledable in regards to elementalist…

I’m a new lvl 80 ele focused more on PVE, dungeons and rare WvW zerg encounters… I invested in celestial ascended trinkets and celestial armors and would like to keep them.

What build, weapons, runes and sigils would you recommend (using the gear mentioned above) that would have the highest direct damage, a decent survivability and support.

Well, what weapons or conjures do you enjoy the most right now? There are a few different ways you can go, and while I would encourage you to eventually try all the weapons (staff more in WvW than PvE), we could certainly suggest a few things to get you started using whatever you enjoy the most right now.

In regards to weapons I enjoy the Staff and D/D… I haven’t tried the conjured weapons; however, i think i just first master normal Ele weapons before conjuring…

I really hope I didnt do a huge mistake investing in that celestial gear (armors and asc trinkets) and are still useful.

Thank you once again!!

@ spoj
Yes I would like to make a tl-dr, but on what? I am not advising just one build. I will add quick and easy info about the build I currently run, but then again I tend to change it frequently

@ Jalabi
Celestial gear is ok, it is a very decent way to get started with this game.
I would advise you to use D/F for PvE, it is by far my favourite weapon set.
As for the builds you should start with something like this:
0/30/0/20/20 (fresh air, air training, vital striking, cleansing wave, elemental attunement, renewing stamina)
Once you get comfortable with this try to get rid of 10 points in arcana and put them in water and try aura sharing (with zephyr’s boon in air).
This is a good way to get started with a D/F elem.
In the future you may want progressively switch to berzerker gear.
Don’t hesitate to ask for advice along the way

@ DEKeys
Thanks to your awesome data-mining I can make a proper rotation calculator now I am very grateful for your contributions!
I will finish to update this thread soon, and I will be as specific as detailed as possible.

Thank you for this thread! I normally play close combat Ranger and Mesmer, and my Ele has languished in the no-man’s land of lvl 60. I just never could find anything that I loved, and then I tried the daggers and was blown away. I just made 80, and this thread has given me so many tips on how to make my character work. Super job!

I do love my D/D but I will give the focus a try…

Zelyhn.8069:

@ spoj
Yes I would like to make a tl-dr, but on what? I am not advising just one build. I will add quick and easy info about the build I currently run, but then again I tend to change it frequently

@ Jalabi
Celestial gear is ok, it is a very decent way to get started with this game.
I would advise you to use D/F for PvE, it is by far my favourite weapon set.
As for the builds you should start with something like this:
0/30/0/20/20 (fresh air, air training, vital striking, cleansing wave, elemental attunement, renewing stamina)
Once you get comfortable with this try to get rid of 10 points in arcana and put them in water and try aura sharing (with zephyr’s boon in air).
This is a good way to get started with a D/F elem.
In the future you may want progressively switch to berzerker gear.
Don’t hesitate to ask for advice along the way

@ DEKeys
Thanks to your awesome data-mining I can make a proper rotation calculator now I am very grateful for your contributions!
I will finish to update this thread soon, and I will be as specific as detailed as possible.

Where is the appreciation of my work?

haviz.1340:

Where is the appreciation of my work?

You told me to take vigor on crit because I was failing to dodge the shaman’s arrows in volcano fractal. Now I still fail to dodge the arrows but I don’t have excuses anymore. Much appreciated

On the topic of sigil of battle.

Many elementalists take this sigil because its synergy with 30 points in arcana is very strong. The sigil has 9 internal cooldown and it gives 3 stacks of might for 20s on proc. With 30 points in arcana the cooldown of attunements is 10s. This means that a full arcana elem can stack might up to 6 on average (before boon duration) just by swapping on cooldown. This is a very strong buff to damage: 6 * 35 = 210 power.

When you run my current build (30/30/0/0/10), and aim to achieve the optimal rotation, the swapping pattern is quite different from that of a full arcana elem. In fact we will swap 8 times in 30 seconds, but the spread of the swaps is such that you can only stack might to 4 on average (before boon duration). This is a buff of 140 power. This is good, it results in an increase to our damage of 5-3% (depending on buffs). But can we find something better?

The optimal rotation yields a high number of hits per second (2.2 on average). Let’s take a look at an interesting sigil: frailty. My calculations tell me that with such sigil we can inflict more than 3 stacks of vulnerability on average on targets.

This means 3% more damage for the group. I find this to be much more valuable than 3-5% self increased damage. Therefore sigil of frailty is an interesting choice to replace sigil of battle with my current build.

Zelyhn.8069:

This means 3% more damage for the group. I find this to be much more valuable than 3-5% self increased damage. Therefore sigil of frailty is an interesting choice to replace sigil of battle with my current build.

unles your party (or even a single engi) is keeping the target at 25 vun already. I always assumed in arranged pve parties the first rule is to have 25 mights on all allies and 25 vun on the target while avoiding buffs/condis redundancy(which will cause serious dps loss).

Just a link to a build website or few sentences describing what gear, utilities and traits are needed along with a paragraph describing rotation and key points in brief. Thats the kind of thing I prefer to read, gives me the core info so I can get started on trying the build without having to sift through lots of info to find what im looking for. Basically a brief summary of the main build.

If I find i need more detailed info thats when I start reading the big walls of text. Im sure a few others have been put off from reading the guide because of this. Its obviously helpful to have a full detailed guide but not everyone needs that and for those people who dont its a bit much to read through.

spoj.9672:

Just a link to a build website or few sentences describing what gear, utilities and traits are needed along with a paragraph describing rotation and key points in brief. Thats the kind of thing I prefer to read, gives me the core info so I can get started on trying the build without having to sift through lots of info to find what im looking for. Basically a brief summary of the main build.

If I find i need more detailed info thats when I start reading the big walls of text. Im sure a few others have been put off from reading the guide because of this. Its obviously helpful to have a full detailed guide but not everyone needs that and for those people who dont its a bit much to read through.

I think my favorite is when they compare classes/weapon selections and list none of the setups :P

Player Character.9467:

I think my favorite is when they compare classes/weapon selections and list none of the setups :P

What do you mean?

A tldr bite sized guide/build is what made everyone run 0/10/0/30/30 and lead to nerfs and bad stereotypes about the class. Your guide is well written, please dont dumb it down for the mouthbreathers.

Zelyhn.8069:

Player Character.9467:

I think my favorite is when they compare classes/weapon selections and list none of the setups :P

What do you mean?

When you or guang are like
guardian – XXXXX dps
warrior – XXXXX dps
mesmer – XXxXX dps
engi – XXXXX dps
ele – XXXXX dps

and attach 0 calculations, builds, etc

Player Character.9467:

Zelyhn.8069:

Player Character.9467:

I think my favorite is when they compare classes/weapon selections and list none of the setups :P

What do you mean?

When you or guang are like
guardian – XXXXX dps
warrior – XXXXX dps
mesmer – XXxXX dps
engi – XXXXX dps
ele – XXXXX dps

and attach 0 calculations, builds, etc

Hm you know, as for me I think I have published a calculator and all my builds
As for guang, well …

Zelyhn.8069:

As for guang, well ...

6u4n6m47h

Anicetus.1253:

Zelyhn.8069:

As for guang, well …

6u4n6m47h

is… is it bad that i can read that?

Haha I thought dub was just being strange. Now I am enlightened!

Anicetus.1253:

6u4n6m47h

Ohhh I get it now!

Haha it took you a long time guys!

I am in a trip by the way, but next week I will be able to work on finishing the re-writing of my guide, do some more data-mining and progress on my rotation calculator. On this topic I have a question and I would like the opinion of the community. It is easily doable for me to make a rotation calculator if I use the (unrealistic) assumption that no attunement swap may occur mid-cast. This would tend to result in slightly pessimistic figures. However it would make this tool bery simple to use: you will just have to input the succession of skills included in your rotation. Is this assumption acceptable for a first version of my totation calculator? Please let me know.
Also I am wondering about the level of freedom I should give to the users:for example if they input skills with mechanical errors (such as cooldown not valid or wrong attunement etc) should I give a warning message?
Let me know what you think

Question: with all the stacking up people do in dungeons, wouldn’t Glyph of Lesser Elementals and Glyph of Elementals be a staple choice? Because not only do Fire Elementals add extra dps, they also buff everyone around them with might stacks (on average about 5 per fire elemental?)…aren’t they a good choice for a damage build?

ThiBash.5634:

Question: with all the stacking up people do in dungeons, wouldn’t Glyph of Lesser Elementals and Glyph of Elementals be a staple choice? Because not only do Fire Elementals add extra dps, they also buff everyone around them with might stacks (on average about 5 per fire elemental?)…aren’t they a good choice for a damage build?

In organized groups, FGS is usually a better option, especially if you are stacking in a corner or against a wall.

There’s no way to make an elemental stack with you, so if it draws aggro it could mess up your pull. On top of that, the might stacks that it grants are relatively short, so if you have warriors, rangers, eles, and other classes granting might, the elemental’s short might stacks may cause problems. Maybe in a PUG the glyph of eles may be a better option when the group may be struggling to hit 25 might. Now if the fire elemental could put down fire fields, it would be an awesome option, but for now I’d just use ember powders.

I am experimenting with how the changes expected for the 10th of December will affect us. I seems the buffs to the fire trait line will be quite noticeable for us. I will develop on this when we have more information

There’s no need to develop, just use my build.

Zelyhn.8069:

Haha it took you a long time guys!

I am in a trip by the way, but next week I will be able to work on finishing the re-writing of my guide, do some more data-mining and progress on my rotation calculator. On this topic I have a question and I would like the opinion of the community. It is easily doable for me to make a rotation calculator if I use the (unrealistic) assumption that no attunement swap may occur mid-cast. This would tend to result in slightly pessimistic figures. However it would make this tool bery simple to use: you will just have to input the succession of skills included in your rotation. Is this assumption acceptable for a first version of my totation calculator? Please let me know.
Also I am wondering about the level of freedom I should give to the users:for example if they input skills with mechanical errors (such as cooldown not valid or wrong attunement etc) should I give a warning message?
Let me know what you think

I think the attunement swap assumption is probably fine. That’s an instant cast and doesn’t interrupt your current attack. I would see it being a problem for some of the channeled skills that you intentionally want to interrupt because you have a higher DPS option available.

Cooldown not valid error would be awesome, but wrong attunement (or wrong weapon) should be something a mildly attentive ele should be able to figure out on his or her own. Another thing that may be useful is an “out of charges” error when you get around to including conjures.

@ haviz: Which build is that?

DEKeyzToChaos.7381:

@ haviz: Which build is that?

A bit worse than my druid build but still delivers.