Guild Wars 2

Here’s my current Flame and Frost dungeon build—inspired by the living story. And this build isn’t just a gimmick—it’s extremely powerful and focused on group contributions.

Keep in mind that I often change weapons, pets, and utility skills for the encounter. Many times, warhorn is better than offhand axe, for example. Sometimes, bows are essential too. I should elaborate more on this later. For now, enjoy!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRAnX8fjEV11RW6Vs2Bi2DOZ+zzUooC9UEL1nxPjE7B-jAyAEEQSAM9BgKAl/KiGbVtIas6aMlLRUtUARsAA-e

When buffed with 25 stacks of bloodlust and 10 stacks of might, which is pretty typical for a well executed dungeon encounter, the stats on this build are pretty impressive.

• It’s very easy to control mobs with frost trap.

• With the sword, you have access to frost armor or flame aura.

• Drakes blast might and frost armor in the traps and bonfire

• Whirl in your frost trap to chill all foes around you. Since chill is typically an underused condition, you’ll find this is a great contribution to helping a party succeed.

• Whirl to reflect (traited, the entire party can stand inside the whirl); this whirl has roughly the same uptime (percentage wise) as Wall of Reflection, as far as I know, and is a 360 degree, spherical reflection

• Offensively whirl to stack vulnerability

• Defensively whirl (when traited with Offhand Training) to keep mobs out of cleave range

• Blast heals in healing spring with drakes

• QZ and sword is pure, unadulterated fun. You will melt stuff because the autoattack will put almost five stacks of might on the pet with QZ. It’s also your stun break so use it wisely.

• Part of the reason I run agility training is for faster call backs to get a pet out of cleave range when I recognize incoming danger.

If you find your drakes going down, switch from flame trap to Signet of Stone for that encounter—you’ll still have to watch the pet and call it back at the right times so only use this in an emergency.

I hope you guys like this. As always: happy hunting!

nice concept and seems like it’d be effective, question though do you think it’d be feasible to go 15 bm and 25 ws to max out skirmishing for the GM trap trait??

You probably could, Doug. Your pet will be more squishy though.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/

Chopps, when making builds, please use this calculator as it is NOT a sPVP calc, but a complete gear calc.

It also offers alot more fine tuning then GW2Skills does.

Prysin.8542:

It also offers alot more fine tuning then GW2Skills does.

Really? Which one, for example? ))

the gear setup for sPVP gear on GW2Skills is slightly lower in total stats and less “mixing” friendly then it is on GW2buildcraft.

GW2Skills works fine, if you are promoting sPVP setups. For WvW or PvE, GW2Buildcraft is more suited.

Didn’t you ever see buttons to select PvE or WvW mode at Gw2Skills?

Hi Chopps, thoughts on moving 10 from Skirmishing to BM? Also, any other weapon sets you like?

Cempa.5619:

Hi Chopps, thoughts on moving 10 from Skirmishing to BM? Also, any other weapon sets you like?

I find agility training too important for a more reliable call back, but if you decide to use warhorn instead (not a bad choice) or shortbow (another good choice!), then you can drop agility training, however, this is most effective at saving pet when you put 15 into NM for fortifying bond and we only have 10 points to work with. So unless you drop Natural Healing and go 15 into NM, it’s not worth it.

In dungeons, Bark Skin is one of the best GMs so you want that, as well as companion’s defense and natural vigor. WS traitline is just so good.

I find that good DPS depends on whether you can keep the drake alive so Bark Skin and points in BM for stronger pets/healing power are likely close to optimal for many encouters.

Prysin.8542:

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/

Chopps, when making builds, please use this calculator as it is NOT a sPVP calc, but a complete gear calc.

It also offers alot more fine tuning then GW2Skills does.

I’ll try that soon. Note that there is indeed a pve toggle on the site I used. If that doesn’t work let me know (it might not). I’m used to writing out builds in ascii format so I’m kind of new with these build websites. Thanks for the tip.

I actually run a variant of this build in sPvP.

It kicks face

Adding to the compilation thread!

Chopps, can you explain why you mix Berserker’s accessories with the Rampager’s/Elementalist armour, instead of going full on Rampager?

In my experience, I’ve found it hits harder. The burns aren’t weak by any means but I am typically counting on AoE might procs from drake with flame trap and bonfire. Might gives condition damage and power but not precision and critical damage. The runes are for more power and a longer chill duration (for chillig bolts with the whirl). One might go berserker armor but then the burns don’t hit very hard. It just seemed to work. Feel free to experiment and modify; I don’t claim this is “optimal” (whatever that means), rather, this seems to be a very strong build in terms of damage as well as team contributions (might stacking and control via chill, as well as drake blasts).

At the end of the day my favorite part is the skill bar. It looks so cool with flame trap, QZ, and frost trap.

Chopps.5047:

At the end of the day my favorite part is the skill bar. It looks so cool with flame trap, QZ, and frost trap.

I knew they weren’t laid out like that as an accident haha. Makes for a fun build for those willing to try something new

Trapper’s Expertise + Trap Potency

Vs.

Honed Axes + Rending Attacks

Looking forward to your feedback, thanks.

I think those are really good ideas. I’m going to try them, replacing frost trap with Signet of the Wild.

I like it because I want access to Moment of Clarity when facing veteran shaman rushing people in the grawl fractal using shortbow. Of course, for that fight, I would probably switch back to frost trap.

In a way, natural healing lets you free up a utility slot from Signet of the Wild but on the other hand, putting 30 into BM limits access to other useful traits.

While I’m on the topic, I’m going to try boar in that fractal too. That should work pretty well, right? Boar and wolf? With moment of clarity and shortbow?

I like the idea of this build alot, I just have a few pointers -

in a group environment, bleeds from your drake may never see the light of day, being 43 dps per bleed, furthermore, without any fury, your drake is probably sitting at around 25% crit I think, so it won’t proc often enough to make it worth it. Even with fury from teammates, it’ll prioritize player characters

You then have two options – augment pet DPS or your own instead, in both cases I suggest you cut 20pts from BM.

option #1: Get Fortifying Bond

with all the boons flying around on you, this will really help your pet .. furthermore, it DOUBLES the base protection granted to it on dodge roll from Companion’s Defense to 4s (not including boon duration from the tree), giving like 50% uptime on 33% dmg reduction. Those stacks of might, fury, swiftness and anything else your party members give you, or any other source also get shared, boons which usually ‘miss’ the pet. The beautiful thing is that if they do hit your pet and you, your pet benefits twice. This is way better than the 200 all stats from the beastmaster line, for both survivability, and offense. Go a little deeper and you and your pet can both get 5% dmg bonus with a boon too, which is ok. As far as which trait to pick, well nature’s protection is pretty good, and will keep you alive.

Option #2 Your damage

At the moment, your burning uptime is overkill, it could be nicer to cut torch for warhorn, and improve your traps instead.

6 x elementalist runes + Trap traits + Pizza + 10pts in MM … (+70% burning/chill duration, doubled for traps)

Flame Trap = 3.4s burning per pulse, 3 times → 10s burning (80% uptime)
Frost Trap = 3.4s chill per pulse, 5 times → 17s chill (70% uptime, plus Winter’s Bite, 100% uptime single target)

This lets you grab warhorn for fury/swiftness, or dagger to cripple and poison foes with pretty much 100% uptime.

>in a group environment, bleeds from your drake may never see the light of day, being 43 dps per bleed, furthermore, without any fury, your drake is probably sitting at around 25% crit I think, so it won’t proc often enough to make it worth it. Even with fury from teammates, it’ll prioritize player characters

I thought I had speed training and commanding voice?

>You then have two options – augment pet DPS or your own instead, in both cases I suggest you cut 20pts from BM.
option #1: Get Fortifying Bond

Yeah, that’s a good one for sure.

>At the moment, your burning uptime is overkill, it could be nicer to cut torch for warhorn, and improve your traps instead.

No, it’s easier to proc the might in bonfire than flame trap due to the uptime. The warhorn could work, sure, but I’d use it where I don’t need reflect, personally.

Nice ideas overall, good work fellas.

I always did like the idea of area might from Drake, but I can never get it to use it consistently. The best success is putting it on passive and commanding it after a fire field is down, however, in a group environment you can’t always guarantee your field will be combo’d with.

I think your link has rending attacks taken as a trait, was talking about that when saying stuff about bleeds.

As a random note, sadly, I just checked and Concentration Training (+50% boons from pets) does not affect Area Might, neither does any player boon duration. Giving 3 stacks of AoE might for 30s would be sweet.

I’ve been thinking about what you said, Ray. You’re onto something. I made a few changes I’m pretty excited about.

Weapons/Skills~

Drop torch for warhorn, right? Still rampager armor with zerk trinkets with flame trap, one drake and one stalker or moa, and swap drake on flame trap drop for might. Quickening zephyr and signet of the wild and spirit elite or RaO depending on situation

Traits~

Something like 5/20/30 (bark skin)/15/0

But wait chopps! There’s no healing power! That’s because you’ll use rune of altruism for your healing power. If it’s still too squishy try adding in “guard”. The great thing about rune of altruism is alll the might and fury you grant on Hs.

What do you think, Ray?

I like the altruism rune set alot. I used it to set up a boon sharing Ranger with 30pts in NM, 4x Altruism runes and 2xWater runes, giving 60% Boon duration. I personally used Heal As One because of its low CD compared to Spring. I don’t go 6 for Altruism because the Fury granted is only 5s base but it’s not bad. I realize you use Spring to keep pet alive though, so another option is to get like 2xMonk/2xMajor Monk/2xWater for 70% boon duration total but no synergy with healing but that’s ok I guess since warhorn will now be dishing out 25.5s of buffs every 28s. Note that you also hit Regeneration duration cap (if there is one?) with +33% duration from NM and this set up, meaning healing spring gives like 100% Regen uptime if you stand in it.

With fortifying bond, warhorn gives 1-2 might and healing gives 6 stacks of might to your pet (4 set rune of altruism) close to all the time.

Sword Auto attack speed is 1.65 attacks/second, meaning you grant about 4 stacks of might from that before stacks start to fall off. If the leaked patch notes are true, with 70% crit, the new Companion’s Might trait will probably give your pet another 9 stacks of might if there is no ICD.

Of course you can use Sigil of Battle/Strength for more might on yourself too.

Add it all up .. 12-25 stacks of might. This is together with a pretty much 100% uptime on Fury. The sad thing is, swapping pets kills all boons, so be aware of that if you choose to use swapping to grant area might, as your pet will be starting blank on boons. But btw I think Area Might will give 6 stacks of might to your pet with Fortifying Bond. Note also that 25 stacks of might and Expertise Training (350 condi dmg) also brings the pets condition damage to like 1200 .. shame most pets don’t apply conditions very rapidly at all even with BM investment.

As far as your trait points go, I’m not sure why you’ve got 5 in MM. I would go 0/15/30/25. Again, if the leaked patch notes are correct, traiting for spirits will only take 1 trait slot. And imo in dungeons, spirits following you around is bad, you want to strategically place them.

As a rule of thumb, I think their radius is about 900 (so about Axe range) but I could be wrong. Its fairly large actually. They won’t be alive all the time but with recent buffs they don’t die in 1 hit as often, in low level fractals and dungeons especially if your group members don’t stand on top of them. I would use 1-2 spirits depending on the fight. Funnily enough we do have ‘Flame’ and Frost spirits so they fit with your inital theme :P