Guild Wars 2

I just started an ele, and love the playstyle. However, I notice some eles use water in a very effective manner to heal themselves(while doing decent dps) to really improve their longevity. Any tips on how to do this?

Well there are a few tips I can give…

1. I think a lot of it has to do with healing power. Water didn’t seem ultra effective to me in D/D, but when I got 80, I got Cleric’s gear that gave me a lot of healing power, and now the healing from D/D water seems pretty uber.

2. I think that the 5 point trait in water gives you something called “Soothing Mist” that is like an AoE regen when you are in water attunement. Pair this with the 10 point arcane Elemental Attunement trait that gives you regen when you switch to water, and you have some decent self healing just for attuning to water.

3. The most effective group healing you have is probably your water fields + blast finishers using staff. If you have a decent healing power, you can heal an entire group up to full very quickly by putting down water staff 5, then doing a bunch of blast finishers in it. These can be best accomplished with 30 Arcane trait evasive arcana. If you don’t have that, you can also use eruption, arcane wave, and dragon’s tooth if you have the opportunity.

EDIT: Not dragon’s tooth…staff durr…I dont’ use staff much, but I think it has another blast finisher on it, just can’t remember what it is.

Eruption is the Blast Finisher you’re thinking of, but it’s delayed. So if you wish to use it, you need to remember to cast it first and then cast your Water Field or Static Field (Swiftness) on top of it.

The best way to get lots of Blast Finishers is knowing how to use Evasive Arcana.

As for the thread itself, while +Healing is not bad, the most vital part of any Elementalist build that wants to have a decent amount of sustain comes from 2 things:

1) A minimum of 15 in Water. This gives you an instant heal every time you attune to Water which is extremely powerful. When you couple that with…

2) A decent amount of points in Arcana to keep the attunement recharges low. If you’re attuning to Water every ~10s then you have a stupid amount of self-healing before we even factor in your weapon skills!

Evasive Arcana (30 Arcana) Water dodge roll also plays a pretty big part. It has an internal cooldown of 5-7s, so it should be used every time you attune to Water as well.

All good Elementalist builds incorporate most of this now. Evasive Arcana is obviously not a necessity, but I enjoy playing with it.

I personally play 20Air/20Water/30Arcana with S/D as the largest amount of your damage vs good players will come from Air as you constantly swap attunements.

Great advice from both of you, thanks. Is the toughness increase during channeled spells in earth worth traiting for as a s/d using air as your damage source? Since the 1 skill is channeled

I have been messing around with some success with a
0/25/0/30/15 d/d build.
I am forcing myself to use weapon conjures…

I use the axe conjure and utilize the 20% more damage with spells while attuned to water and target is vulnerable. 25 air gives vulnerability on crits.

Axe has a 900 range autoattack that will hit for for about 1400. plus a built in aura combo. and each boon gives 2% damage. the aura alone is +4% but getting all the boons i normally generate it’s easily 10%.
then a knights/shaman amulet/jewel with fury that runs 60% crit with +40 crit damage.

its a logical combination but questionable being as my skill is low…
bonus damage from boons. passive regen. high damage for an ele.

the timing of the axe tends to fit in well with my ele playstyle.

water made the most sense to use the conjures with to me as it adds damage and defense.

and its better than some other stuff i have tried….
I am still an ele noob at rank 17.