Guild Wars 2

I recently fought a freshair ele in WvW 1vs1 twice.
I suppose she is a freshair ele as she kept a distance and was using a long range lightning zappy chain thing that went bzzzt bzzzt bzzzt

I found her yak walking, you know defending a shepherding a yak to the keep and engaged her.

First time I won. But it was a very close fight. I was down to 25% HP and she was still around 75%. But I caught her in a fear chain and burst her down.

I was quite surprised she pushed me so close to death. I had fought freshair eles before her but rarely, maybe total only 3 times in 1 year of roaming. And they never gave me much problems even though I had no idea what they really did.

I’m a condi/power necro hybrid btw.

So as I was curious, I let her rez and fought her again to have more experience and see what made them so dangerous.

The second time we fought, I got crushed completely. I barely brought her HP to 75% while she ate through my entire deathshroud and HP. In just a couple of seconds she did some lightning zappy thing that took out 50% of my HP.

So my Question is, what makes a freshair ele tick? what is their main damage dealer? what should I be looking out for to dodge?

I was just dodging randomly with no idea what I should be dodging lol.

Its difficult to explain but you will need high armour, spec armour, signet of spite, at least one other source of blind (2 more if you can) and a second fear or stun.

First the attack is too fast to wait for a cue to dodge but you can make educated guesses on when to evade. For instance i sometimes run towards em to bait the burst and then evade. I could name the attacks but it wont mean anything to you, you should watch the you tube video and pay attention to the fire and air number 2 and 3 skills
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V283dTUEXk

To beat this ele you have to force out the arcane shield and the skill that makes them invulnerable (mist form?) before you take too much damage, to do that you have to prevent them from attacking while you attack, so fears, dazes, knockdowns and blinds. Once you see the blocks just go into DS and wait, kite and dodge when necessary, don’t waste your dodges while in DS unless you are confident you are dodging the burst.

Hopefully you have gotten the ele to below 50% hp while you are well above 50% and not completely out of DS , if youve managd this then you have pretty much won. activate signet of spite because the ele will switch to water to heal but the poison will throw a monkey wrench into that. The weakness and blind are the other main reasons for the signet, having this on the ele while you have protection with high armour works like a charm but you have to make sure you land this signet, if you miss, then you have to land a stun or blind.

Once you land the signet, burst again out of DS, if not dead yet, and the blind has been removed, use DS and then chain everything you have up and finish with life blasts.

To summarize, burst after using a blind, stun or evade, don’t stack them together. If the ele is blocking or invulnerable go into DS.

Two things i should mention, this strategy works best with high armour because it is much much harder to fight 2 one shot chains while being blocked if you are anything close to glass.

The second thing is not all fresh air eles play the same, some are much faster than others, you may be forced to use signet of spite early for the weakness and blind mostly and then pop spec armour. I got my kitten kicked by one of them a few times before i learned this way of beating them.

Side note: pretty much all the good fresh air eles blind before using the burst. so be careful not to use fear or stun when blinded

wow thanks for the tips. watching that video is just jawdrop. instant cast nukes? meaning we don’t even got an animation to watch out for to dodge! The only clue is when we see him go air attunement but look at the speed of his casts! it will take a lucky dodge to evade his nukes.

S/F ele vs. Necro is usually a race. If you live through his big cooldowns and don’t get hit by some combo, you win because he’ll be left with almost no defenses other than pressure.

Know his focus skills. Once earth cds are gone and you manage to be alive, it’s gg.

Btw, Axe tramples S/F eles.

Don’t blow any long cooldowns at the start of the fight. just keep dpsing. Once you see he has blown obsidian skin and watch for him to leave water then nuke the living kitten out of him with everything you’ve got.

That’s the basic premise of fighting a s/f ele.