Guild Wars 2

Something you may not have realized is that the arcane trait evasive arcana although it only procs the aoe once every 10 seconds it will actually activate 3x might per each roll with no cooldown so I generally roll twice in succession to instantly gain 6 stacks, no doubt though it’s most likely a bug. You can use evasive arcana to activate a blast finisher in any combo field and it will activate the corresponding effect as often as you can roll through it.

This is just the base spells required not including the filler abilities on other trees like Ride the Lightning and what not that I would usually use.

1: Burning Speed
2: roll back for evasive arcana also (3x might)
3: hope for crits for renewing stamina procs two quick hits should do
4: Ring of Fire
5: 2x rolls in the rings also add Arcane Wave ( 9x might )
6: switch to earth for either Earthquake or Churning Earth you don’t have time for both unless you have the XI fire trait ( 3x might )

in total 15 might just for the opening combo and not including the added might from fire trait XII if you use it, if you use your extra stamina to focus dodging on might stacking you can easily keep 25 stacks rolling the only issue there after is staying in combat in order to allow evasive arcana to keep procing.

Zenyatoo.4059:

Whenever you want to heal an area throw down a geyser or mist whatever it’s called (staff water 5) and then roll into it. Cleansing wave will activate and combo with yourself to cleanse teammates of conditions in the area as well as heal them for ~2k

Get the arcane trait that gives allies boons when you change attunements.
Spam all your attunements all fight long to give teammates might, swiftness, regen and protection as much as you can

congrats, you are now a support ele.

qft do this plus add an arcane wave if needed and anyone close enough to be healed should be almost topped up tbh it’s overpowered healing yet the strange thing is I’ve never seen any other class use a blast combo to activate there own aoe healing fields in the same way.

Other then the above stated combos think about stacking might with both dodge rolls, arcane wave, and blast finishers a decent group assisting you with the blasting should be able to keep might stacked at 25 almost constantly for most boss fights.

For PvE at the moment at level 80 I roll with this setup http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#Mcszz9cMxmTMMxmTMx9MaxmkbVVcq

30 fire / 30 arcane / 10 water, the water traits you can move around I have them just for dungeon debuff clearing and regen.

I’m mainly focused on might stacking as it lets me pull many more mobs then usual and burn them down quicker, with this build I can get up to around 14 stack of might just on a pull and build up to a constant 25 ish stacks that allows me to do 3k burning speed’s and 5k+ fire grabs along with the other spells that do just as much damage.

Not sure how that compares to other professions but I feel as if I can take on pretty much any group of mobs except for non slow moving champions.

As for PvP I really can’t comment on it I spend all of about a day playing spvp and I did enjoy it with duel daggers and I killed pretty much everything except for guardian 1v1 but that was very early ranking pug matches so chances are everyone else just sucked worse then me since I rarely play pvp in any mmo.

Oovie.9206:

I rebound them to Z, X, C, V.

qft did exactly the same thing, the Fkeys are way too far away for quick reaction based switching I also set Q and E to utility slots 7 and 8 with mouse4 set to 6 and wheel click set to heal5.

I only have a RAT3 mouse with two side buttons but on of those buttons is slightly far back so I can’t flick it on the fly without moving my hand back so I only use the forward key which gives me only 4 mouse buttons to play with but with that said the only ability I don’t have quick access to is the elite and for the most part they have long cooldowns.

As for only switching because of cooldowns once you get used to the timing you can effectively keep an internal clock as to when spells come off cooldown so you know roughly when is a good time to start switching over instead of switching all the time just because the larger spells in that atonement are on cooldown.

[quote=98211;Zeemag.1024:I haven’t tried any dungeons yet because people say there aren’t tanks in this game and if the mobs are moving my damage may suck and I don’t want to bring down the group. Now after reading this thread I’m thinking elmentalist fill more of the support or control role instead. I may re-gear for that and try it out, but in the mean time I’m leveling a ranger, which I hope will be better at the pure dps role.[/quote]

You don’t need to respec to play support I do it fine in the first 3 dungeons ( all I’ve done so far ) in full power / crit, fire / arcane build basically I’m built for glass cannon d/d in PvE open world but I also enjoy the staff combo field utility in dungeons so far I have not needed to trait / gear into a support build.

tbh if everyone in your group was to help out with all of their abilities then no class would have to go fully support.

snaplemouton.1294:

Water without water traits doesn’t help your team. It slows the fight as you will be dealing no damage. The heal without +healing is barely noticeable.

While true that the water healing spells heal for very little on their own they are not actually supposed to be used like that. When I do support in dungeons I use blast finishers to do aoe insta heals using regen fields and not only my own fields, you would be amazed at the amount of healing an arcane traited dodge roll + arcane wave output, graphically its enough to bog my gtx 680 :P

On top of that might stacking the group, slowing, crowd control, and defensive combos make sure your group stays alive an kicking, it’s more then enough to offset any potential dps loss by not doing any of those things.

The staff is a combo field weapon and by switching atonements you can do a lot of good with just your own spells, try for example: Earth 2 skill Eruption + Fire 2 skill Lava Font, this casts aoe might +3 on all friendly’s in the area.

There are many more useful combos with just one elementalist and a staff and mastering them in any given situation can make you a very powerful addition to any group.

I honestly don’t see the squishy factor everyone is talking about in PvE and I do some crazy things such as, charging into a large pack with fire 3 >fire4 > arcane wave > earth 4 earth 5 > earth 2 > dodge roll for earth 5. With that combo you end up with around 12 ish stacks of might and every mob in range wanting to kill you yet after the dodge roll I just kite a bit with air and water atonements then repeat.

If I can live long enough to basically stand still in fire for up to 3-4 seconds all the while dishing out mega damage then we are not as squishy as you think.

Loosifah.4739:

Your arcane shield is your best friend. Plus if you use ring of fire + arcane wave you cast area might.

Try ring of fire + arcane wave + switch earth for earthquake and then churning earth right after it, you must let churning earth finish even though ring of fire is gone by then it will still add stacks and you will have 9 stacks of might. If your still alive after churning earth ( taking into account that you will have agro from everything in the area ) then all you got to do is keep moving and switching atonements as cooldowns come off to finish off any remaining mobs.

Mobility, knock down / back, slows, and damage are the key to surviving with d/d’s.

I’ve had no issues so far with a full glass cannon build all power and crit duel daggers and all of my gear is mostly scrub green / blue drops with + find magic gems socketed and no matching sigils, basically a no effort build, oh on top of that I’ve not reached the 2 gold mark yet so I don’t even have full traits unlocked yet..

I stopped doing story quests at around level 15 and restarted them when I reached around 65, at the moment I am level 80 with my story on 72 so as for the comment on not being higher level then the quest I don’t think it factors in much.

A tip of sorts for harder missions that I have learned to exploit, if you know that the mobs are going to put the hurt on your then do your best to get at least one mob to low health then switch targets and try not to kill it, if then you do end up getting knocked down just kill it and get back up.

I have roughly the same thing with Bloodlust and Luck sigils I haven’t actually checked that bloodlust is stacking the correct amount but as far as having two sigils of the same stacking variant only the sigil in the main hand will apply stacks the one in off hand seams to be disabled.

It may not be intended to have two stacking buffs but if it isn’t then the sigils should have a ‘note does not stack with other sigils of same mechanic’ or something to that effect.

I have two sigils one in each dagger the first being minor sigil of bloodlust which is 5 power and stacks once per kill 25 times, the second is major sigil of luck that stacks 0.4 magic find once per kill 25 times.

The issue is only the dagger in the main hand is the one that actually gains stacks.

I’m not 100% sure this is a bug and I could understand two versions of the same sigil not stacking but it seams kind of broken that two different sigils that only share the stacking mechanic don’t work with each other.

If it’s not a bug then there should be a heads up warning in game to inform players that only one of this type of sigil can be active at any one time.