Guild Wars 2

I see it mentioned in the traits and in posts but I have not seen how to make them. I feel I’m missing out on some basic elemental ability and could be a big reason the class has so hard to play

Auras should be mentioned in the skills, but the ones I know are Flame aura from focus, frost aura from dagger offhand, shocking aura from dagger mainhand, and I believe magnetic aura? from staff 3 on earth. There are a couple trait created auras as well I think.

Here’s the list of auras on the wiki: aura

Aura’s are skills.

Frost Aura in dagger offhand.
Shocking Aura in dagger mainhand.
Magnetic Aura in staff.
Fire Shield (an aura) in focus.

It’s also possible to proc them off some rune sets.

If you’re going to trait/build around auras, the most efficient way is in D/D, because D/D has two out of the four auras in the skillset.

20 Points in fire for the fire shielf aura on signet activation, Signet of Healing/Earth to proc the fire shield, and at least 10 points into Air for Trait I (auras provide fury and swiftness), and 10 in Earth for 3 seconds of protection with Auras. Then the obligatory 10 in Arcane for attunement swap stuff, and 20 in water for healing. Or swap and do 20 Earth for Armor of Earth/Aura Protection and 10 in Water.

Constant Aura upkeep in combat with the right rotation makes you harder to kill while simultaneously upping your damage output.

Does fire aura only work when mobs hitting you? Doesn’t say so in tooltip.

You have to be really close, but the whole point of the fire aura is that it procs the fury/swiftness from the Air trait line, as well as the protection granted by the Earth trait line.

Couple that with the fact that you have 2 signets to proc the fire aura, as well as the other 2 auras from the D/D skillset, it really makes a difference in combat.

well thats considerably easier than i thought it was.
that is interesting.

What about the combos?

at one point i had a 30 earth build and was using the signets keep their passive… i may have to revisit that.

You don’t need to trait for Fire Shield.

Magnetic Grasp is a leap finisher, so just use it through a fire field and voila! Fire Shield on a 12s cooldown.

Finisher for auras:

Leap for fire aura.
Blast or leap for frost.
In their respective fields naturaly.

On their own, auras don’t give you much of a benefit.

Sure, Shocking Aura stuns things that hit you (it’s basically an interrupt, because it doesn’t last long enough for them to hit you, and be stunned, more than once), and Magnetic Aura reflects projectiles (which is a lot of fun to use on Engineers), but they generally have long cooldowns and short uptime.

What helps is that you can trait them to apply boons, including:

• Protection
• Fury (which helps proc any on-crit traits)
• Swiftness

I should note that any traits you have that apply boons when gaining auras also work for auras acquired via a combo field. This applies for both you AND anyone who gains an aura from you.

For example: say you have that tier 1 earth trait (Elemental Shielding) that gives you Protection any time you acquire an aura. If you an acquire a fire aura by using a leap finisher through a fire field, congratulations — you gain Protection!

Likewise, if you have Elemental Shielding and a friend of yours performs a leap finisher through a fire field you created, THEY get Protection as well, along with the fire aura.

TLDR:
If you have traits that provide boons along with auras, you gain the boons no matter how you get the aura. Likewise, if you have a trait that provides boons along with auras, your friends gain the boons, too, as long as they acquire the auras from you (that is, you provide the appropriate combo field).

Any questions? =)