Guild Wars 2

maybe save some time:

after doing a little hunting, am i right in saying:

(0,10,0,30,30) – Bunker build is still viable, simple and effective with many weapons

staff is still considered hard to play well and pretty much weak in most situations

dagger/dagger is still a pvp thing, but can be useful elsewhere if traited right. (daphoenix build is still being used?)

A new build has appeared centered around the new GM trait in the air line, couldnt find much info on this though..

lightning hammer has been discovered as having high dps… this is new to me..

scepter has begun to be used as an alternative to dagger as a good might stacker and a more viable ranged weapon than staff. (although im not sure what is the better offhand to use here right now..)

condition damage is still crap – is this because of the cap on pve conditions that can be applied? or is this just a pvp thing because conditions can be easily removed? i couldnt find a definitive answer to why CD is bad….. either way, the new GM trait is considered poor due to its weak effectiveness – people generally think it should be buffed…?

Im guessing fire is still too centered around its own strengths and doesnt encourage attunement swapping?

im glad air is now viable

are any of the above facts way off the mark? can anyone correct me on any of this?

thanks

Hi guys,

ive been away from the game for a few months and i could do with some information on any dramatic ele changes that have recently happened..

whats the latest great builds for pvp, group and solo play?

if i remember correctly my solo build was a dagger dagger spec, probly 0,10,0,30,30 or some variant. my group build was similar but with a staff. (original i know right?)

i hear there were some dramatic changes in the last few months, i do intend to go back and read patch notes but to know how these changes have since been theory crafted into builds would be really useful before i go and play around with it and create my own

thanks in advance.

Lord of the rings online.

Hunter is a ranged nuker with traps and stuff but no pets.

Plus its a stunning game.

Thats not the best way to look at it really.. first decided which stats you want to stack and which you prioritize over others.. then acquire the Armour which gives you the numbers you have targeted.

for example. if you want 20000 health and 1800 power but you dont care about toughness or heal power or crit. then stack vitality and power (using PVT and speccing into water)

for general pve i would get a nice mix of toughness and vitality. combined with some kind of crit build (there are many choices) – unless you want a support role. in which case go with more vitality and toughness combined with heal power.

My personal choice is cavaliers trinkets with PVT gear and berzerker weapons. <— all that it balanced with my spec which changes regularly.

there is no optimum Armour to acquire because if you happen to have zerker Armour. you can offset this with PVT trinkets and water/arcana traits. they key is balance, i doubt anyone would recommend wearing a full zerker armourset , full zerker trinkets and a full fire spec… you’d be killed by ambient creatures

i know its a cliche and i used to hate it when people said this – but its all about your playstyle, i prefer a crit spec despite its drawbacks, so i am geared and specced that way. the wonderful thing about the Elementalist is, anything works

if you are seeking easy mode, cookie cutter – go PVT + Bunker (0,10,0,30,30)

I recommend Runes of rage (+20% fury duration and 5% chance to gain 30 seconds of fury on any hit – which seems to proc all the time – and 30 seconds is a lifetime!)

i have a combo of PVT gear with cavaliers trinkets & a Berzerker weapon – this gives me around 70% crit dmg and around 25% crit chance. With perma fury im criting every other hit.

I watch ALOT of woodenpotatoes vids and my build is inspired by his recent arcane build with some alterations. i use both d/d and staff for fractals and dungeons depending on the encounter. the crits are generally better with dagger obviously because of Zephyrs Boon but its still tolerable with the staff.. and the staff only really comes into play when i dont trust my dodging skills on a certain encounter or where its much more beneficial to be at range (such as Jade Maw)

Sigil of Intelligence is also really useful, free crit on atunement swap. which if we are playing correctly will be VERY often. combine this with Runes of rage and arcane skills and you’ll get extremely frequent criticals with a relatively low critical chance. allowing you to throw those points into something else (such as crit damage)

Indeed, im probly a little more forgiving than most people as ive seen the worst of times in every popular and not so popular mmo in the last 15 years. Ive been forced to forgive infinitly worse.

Fact is anet have given us a superbly balanced, feature rich, incredibly fun and beautiful piece of software. And theres no monthly sub. Sometimes i have to stop and think how great that is.

Im lucky to be getting any updates at all. And im lucky to be part of it.

Thanks devs!

(Imo)

I levelled with sceptor/dagger.

Not much of a learning curve. Ok all round dps and surviveability.

I didnt try out dagger/dagger until i turned 80.

D/d, while loads of fun and incredibly powerful is super hard mode when compared to GS guardian. I have both at 80 and its like going from super easy mode to super hard mode so dont beat yourself up. Someone once told me playing a d/d ele is like playing street fighter 4 against a pro – i loved that analogy. Lol.

Go sceptor/dagger or just craft your ay there. Or both.

For me, i never run a spec without 30 in arcana. not always because of Evasive arcana (although this is a game-changing reason as discussed above)

mainly because of the boon duration. for the most part every class in this game is constantly chasing boons: i find myself looking to get maximum uptime out of might, fury, regeneration, protection, swiftness and vigor at different times.. alot of these can be the difference between life and death for either me or my target. saying no to a longer duration by default is just a massive nerf for me.

throwing a few extra points into a single stat or a single trait when compared to a buff to ALL boons is a no brainer as far as im concerned – as all our playstyles, trait lines, weapon sets, armour sets, sigils, runes, skills etc benafit from a longer duration on the boons we are creating and seeking. (i tend to have this perspective on all my level 80 characters)

Blasting staff is remarkable as discussed.
Elemental atunement is remarkable too.

theres alot of amazing stuff in that tree.

and as an aside, as mentioned above, i agree that fire is pretty pointless unless you never intend to move out of fire during gameplay… which is silly.

For anyone still wondering about how their stats will be impacted by the points discussed here, this is a powerful tool -

“http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/”

@TheGuy

The problem is – If right at this moment i wanted to sink more into power and might stacks – i couldnt do it without traiting fire.

The most power we can get from gear is around 2000 anyway. 500 from trinkets. 324 from armour and around 200 from weapons.

Daggers have a lower base damage than staff so with daggers the most power you can get is 2000 (these numbers are approximate)

The only way to get more would be fire traits (not really an option for most peoples tastes).and having all this i dont have to sacrifice the really high crit dmg numbers and plenty of might so at this time i dont feel like im forced to choose.

Plus that table refers to normal attacks over a long period of time. In most of the content fights are over inside 20 seconds (often much less) and in this time we have many abilities that can ensure crits and ensure fury.

If i were fighting a boss that took 10 mins to kill and i find myself resorting to auto attacks then these numbers may begin to become true, however this is where an elementalists utility becomes useful and we can start controlling the fight in other ways.

With runes of rage. Sigil of inteligence and all relevent traits you see enough crits to tip the balance. Just making sure you change atunements every 9 seconds (which we do anyway)… im seeing very close to 100% up time on fury again. And as a result – every second hit is a crit. (Plus arcane skills thrown into your rotation)

Granted if i didnt have all those augments it wouldnt be worth it..

Ok i just discovered Cavalier’s gear lol

my life is complete

Just been staring at my stats screen for about 40 mins….

what i really want is Power (dominant), toughness, crit damage gear. but it doesnt exist.
Currenlty -
2900 attack
2100 armour
15000 health
35% crit chance
75% crit damage

what i really want is to reduce the crit chance to about 25% and increase the armour accordingly. if i could get the armour to about 2300 by reducing the precision i would be happy.. but i dont see a way to do it with the current gear available.. perhaps ascended gear is the way forward.

Im running soldiers armourset (full) / berzerker on everything else (trinkets x 6 and both daggers) to get the above stats. any recommendations to raise my toughness, and at the expense of what?

NdranC – what is your current gear makeup and your main source of toughness? we have comparable stats it seems, except you seem to have the 300 extra toughness im looking for.. im wondering which other stat you compromised to accomplish this in comparison to my gear…

The way the current PvE content in this game is designed eliminates the usefulness of bunker stats. While you’re stacking 500 healing power so you can do 1000 extra heal every 20 secs, you could have done so much more damage and STILL bring healing. Watch strife beat the entire pve content with 3/4 warriors a guardian and a mesmer all of them in full berserker gear (for the most part) while doing it faster, more efficiently and with no deaths.
PvE is about damage prevention by careful dodging and positioning, either you get hit once and die/almost die or you don’t. Specially true for the hard fractals/arah.

This.

i agree that prevention is the way forward – if you are healing then a mistake has already been made. the trick is to learn how to not make the mistake in the first place.

ofc health is innevitably lost as we play, but i find my basic heals are fine to deal with that and i dont have to stack heal power to compensate for the fact that i might mess up from time to time.

as stated above, my stats are fairly similar to yours NdranC. – high crit damage, 15k health, 75% crit. my heal power ONLY comes from my traits, which is only 200. nothing more. and i run ALOT of dungeons with no trouble for the most part.

I guess this heal power discussion is just a matter of play style and taste, ive spent alot of time playing a guardian where its not as desirable and i hardly ever play bunker on my ele so its not my “go to stat” but clearly there are benefits that i didn’t talk about in the original post.

@NdranC

yeah i know some players prefer to have higher toughness and sacrifice some vitality, i personally prefer to have a reasonable amount of both rather than have a very low health pool and take greater risks. i suppose if you knew the content very well then its less of a worry.

@ThiBash

Those are some really great points that i hadn’t considered.
Honestly though my spec doesn’t go all out on critdmg when compared to some builds i have seen. im sat at around 75% whereas as i stated its possible to go over 100. im currently building a new gear set and ill take your advice into account when i put together my jewelry. thanks

WoodenPotatos helped me to come to a decision regarding crits and crit damage.

this video in particular – Linky

if you dont know who he is, check him out on youtube – makes for some interesting listening

Yeah i guess heal power isnt as bad as my comments implied.

My opinion is simply that its not worth building a spec around it. In a game that claims to have no healers – the stat is in a state that makes it not feasible to heal in the conventional sense. Better to work on damage prevention and mitigation than reparation.

We may get some good heals out of it but with less than 300 heal power i still get good heals from an evasive arc dodge etc… certainly enough to keep me up.

Anyway yeah. Point taken.

Hi guys,

ive been playing a great deal of time and been theory crafting my elementalist for a good portion of that time. experimented with alot of weapons and alot of builds ranging from zerker to bunker and many places in between.

while experimenting i took advice from alot of forums and sites and people but the one thing i could never easily find was a thread or site where people would actually post their stats and why they chose to go for that particular value. (example – i chose to get x amount of toughness but stopped there because any more would be a waste.

this would have been important to me because while i like to take advice i also like to experiment with ideas of my own and i like to know where stats give diminishing returns or whether people have found certain stats to be “too much” in pvp/pve/wvw etc…

anyway, here are my thoughts on our vital stats, please by all means disagree with me, i definitely do not think im correct about all this and id love to hear your thoughts, one of the wonderful things about this game is the way it keeps you questioning your spec and trying new things and the fact that pretty much every spec is viable for someone.

what i hope to post below are opinions and thoughts. not facts.

Vitality
base stat – 916
base health – 10805
in terms of health – i find that a minimum would be around 15000 for pvp, any less and you would have to be a master dodger – and even then its a risk.
17000 or more would be recommended for dungeons.
Overworld pve – pretty much any amount is fine.
i have found more than 20000 or more to be a waste and a drain on other stats.

Toughness
base stat – 916
In terms of Armour i have found 2000 to be a good target.
i currently have around 2200.
its worth noting that this number is used as a direct division of the damage done in the formula for damage mitigation. (damage calculated/armour = damage done)
check this link for more info here – Linky
so i find that an extra 100 toughness (from runes for example) is not as worthwhile as rage runes or some others available..

Power
base stat – 916
In terms of damage i tend to shoot for 3000 ish. maybe slightly less if you are going to compensate with crit?
i find you get diminished returns if you go 3200+ – anyone else done any experimenting here?

Crit
this is an interesting one as theres alot of things that can effect this – i tend to shoot for 25% knowing that it will be 45% with fury up alot of the time in a d/d spec.
if i had a spec that didnt have much fury uptime i would probly go for something nearer 50%
The reason i dont go higher on this is due to the fact that you can get crits in alot of other ways – arcane skills, sigil of intelligence, fury, etc…
As for crit damage im of the opinion that it should be as high as possible. i find that it can go up to 100% (even higher with consumables) my personal opinion is that a crit spec is the way to go for Eles but im open to change my mind in the future lol.

Boon duration
Im a big fan of maxing this out with traits on all my classes. not gunna say more at the moment, i just love getting the most out of boons any way i can – i believe thats a fundamental of the game right now.

Heal power and condition damage
For different reasons i believe that these are fruitless stats at this time. not gunna say more right now but i believe there are plenty of posts on why condition damage is pretty botched and why heal power is fundamentally flawed.

*My current spec – *
i currently run a full Sorrows Embrace set for Toughness and Vitality with a full set of Zerker jewelry (exotic)
double dagger – again Zerker
traits of 0,20,0,20,30
Runes of Rage
Sigil of force and sigil of intelligence.

2900 damage
crit chance 35%
crit dmg – 75%
health – 15500
Armour – 2100

i also run staff occasionally in dungeons for slightly higher health/toughness and slightly less crit damage.

im currently working on a full zerker set of Armour to combine with Valkery exotic jewelry as i think ill get better crit damage out of it.

so, whats your thoughts?

fingers crossed this will be helpful to some people as it would have been great for me 3 months ago