Guild Wars 2

Thanks, that is very helpful I will stick with D/F and see how I go then. I’ve been checking the guides on Dulfy and they also have a 0/6/0/4/4 D/F build which I may try while I get to grips with it and until I can get in optimal co-ordinated groups. I’ve always been a fan of bashing things up close (usually with my lightning hammer) but most the people I fractal with main Heavies and spend most their time ranged which is why I assumed if they can’t survive melee, I wouldn’t be able to. I’ve used my own warrior recently in fractals and had forgotten how weak the ranged damage is which is why I’d assumed my staff damage was okay as it was considerably more.

I suppose I’ll spend some time studying different videos, etc to get some pointers off other zerk ele’s though I’m definitely keen to go for pure damage, it’s just finding other people who want to have that element of risk as well…

Thanks for the pointers Miku, I am actually already the kind of player who will swap traits/weapons constantly throughout a run, I do wish they’d hurry up with saved trait setups as it would save a lot of hassle. It would be nice if I could have a consistent setup to master though which I assume is going to be D/F from the sounds of things.

I think the reason I’ve struggled with D/F is that most groups I run in don’t stay majorly close to each other so I’m effectively stacking Might for myself. Also, spending all my time dodging melee attacks when I could be safely DPS’ing from range seems to be a big loss in damage output.

You mention that D/F will be used for 90%+ of Fractal encounters, and also that Ele’s need to have persisting flames on. Does this mean you recommend a 6/6/0/0/2 setup for high levelled fractals? Is that not way too squishy? And I assume to make this build work you need similarly people who are all built for damage?

I’ve just started doing 30+ Fractals and Dungeons like Arah/CoE much more frequently. I’ve always ran ‘Meta’ DPS builds in Zerk which has been fine but it’s getting to the point where I get downed too easily now and I’m not always running with similarly minded DPS people so fights can last quite a while which has a knock-on effect on my survivability.

I’m not looking for a ‘Tank’ build as such, but a better surviving DPS build. My Ascended Armour and all Trinkets are Zerk with Scholar Runes so I don’t really have the option to change these (I suppose I could change trinkets but I’d have to re-buy a lot of AR which I can’t afford right now due to shortage of Relics).

This basically leaves me with changing traits.

I did a 38 Fractal last night and ran Staff with 6/0/0/4/4. I figured the Zerk Gear + Trinkets made up for the lack of Precision traiting and the build generally worked well and we completed Charr > Ice Svanir one > Dredge > Molten in 90 minutes.

I was wondering if there’s anything better I can try though? I’ve seen the 5/4/0/5/0 staff build which also looks do-able.

I’m also assuming that Staff is the way to go in Fractals? I’m an experienced S/F + LH player so have always been open to melee combat on my Ele. I used to use D/F Fresh Air at lower level fractals but I really don’t find the damage to be high enough to justify constantly being on the edge of death, plus a lot of the bosses fought in Fracts tend to favour ranged combat.

Any help would be great

I’ve noticed this a lot lately. I put it down to lag to be honest, I’m really struggling to stack Might at the moment and attunement changes don’t seem as slick as they used to be.

The builds on Metabattle are solid and that linked one will work fine for Roaming. Celestial still seems to be the best balance for us in WvW/PvP so it’s worth going through the effort.

With a name like Guild Wars, I’m disappointed with how limited the options to do things with my Guild are. I’m part of a very active guild with an average of 20+ people representing at most times of the day. Out of those 20, probably 15 of them are physically active and wanting to do content together but some genius decided to put a party limit of 5 for most regular content.

90% of the time I am online with my girlfriend and a friend from work so already we have 3 party members straight away for most content. Then another one of my close friends does most content with us so usually we only ever have 1 spot to recruit which could be quite easily filled by 10-15 different people but a lot of people don’t want to because they already have their own little groups as well.

Why on earth isn’t there higher capacity for dungeons, etc? Perhaps Guild exclusive ones that can be made up of 2 or 3 parties so that nobody has to be separated and run their own individual paths at different times. We do Guild Missions every week which is great doing challenge, puzzle, rush and bounty all together but those events are far too brief and not rewarding enough to justify doing more frequently.

What I want is Dungeons or Fractals that 10-15 of us can do together and the difficultly can scale up depending on numbers. We can’t even go to WvW together as a lot of us are on different servers at the moment. And as for taking on World bosses together? What’s the point? Quite a few of us Teq together and do the Boss Timer train but it makes no difference whether you’re doing it with friends or not as the sheer numbers make up for any element of skill anyway.

What do you think? Do you agree? Is this something Anet have ever discussed doing? I’ve never actually played WoW but I assume Raids are content made for large groups of players together in an instanced dungeon? It baffles me why a game advertised as being for Guilds is so limited in content for them.

Thanks for reading~

Edit: I forgot to mention. The Guild also puts on regular events like weekly Jump Puzzle groups where a lot of people get together every Friday and do 5 JPs (must have a drink each time you fall), we have Guild PvP nights in our own private arena against each other, we used to have hide and seek and costume brawls, etc. It’s not like we’re not trying to find things to do, it’s just not rewarding enough for everybody to join along. I just want to be able to do things with everyone in the Guild without being restricted by numbers. There’s people I barely run with purely because we’re on parallel paths and never get in the same groups due to lack of space.

Thanks for the additional suggestions guys, I will stick with D/D or maybe change it to D/F as that would be nice for Obsidian flesh although I would miss the mobility in Air. I will look into using Hoelbrak runes as well

Fingers crossed the patch will bring some balance as well!

Yes I am using Doom + Battle Sigils. Perhaps I will just have to keep practising against him and hope for the best. I’d look into playing a different class against him but I’d much rather PvP on the class I main.

Do you think a S/F or S/D Fresh Air build could burst him down? The only issue I can see is he sustains good melee pressure which could leave me in a pickle. The only reason I survived so long was because of my burning speed + teleports, etc. I may be a sitting duck using a Scepter… Although Dragons Tooth may be easy to land with him being close to me all the time and a quick combined with phoenix, obsidian flesh, lightning strikes could just do it.

I might give Fresh Air a go I’ve used S/F one heck of a lot in dungeons so it’s very natural to play for me. If it doesn’t work though I’m going to get smashed, literally

I disagree with OP, as a squishy Zerk Ele I really rely on my party. I know straight away depending on what classes we have whether I can use my Zerk armour or whether I need to add in some tank.

Thanks Peow Peow I was trying that as much as possible and it certainly worked against other Hammer Warriors in the guild who aren’t as experienced in PvP.

It may just be a case of L2P against tougher opponents on my behalf.

I’m looking for some advice on how best to take down a Hammer Warrior in a purely 1v1 duel scenario. We have Guild PvP nights in our own private arena and we do some makeshift 1v1 fights. Most classes I could beat using the meta Celestial D/D 0/0/2/6/6 but one of the best PvP’ers in the Guild kept using his Hammer Warrior and completely obliterating me; not immediately but it was still very quick. I was constantly on the back-foot.

Now I don’t think it’s a L2P issue as I’ve fought him previously Ele vs Ele and we were in a 15 minute stalemate before I finally got him down (we were both suffering from some lag so it may have been a bit of a fluke as well). It’s also worth noting that I don’t really PvP a lot so it could have been me adjusting to the mechanics (although I mainly run D/F in dungeons/fractals so the rotations were natural already).

Does any one have any suggestions for the best way to counter a Hammer Warrior then? The build doesn’t need to be for capping points or anything like that, it’s purely going to be fighting head to head. I was thinking something condition based as warrior’s don’t have a huge amount of cleanse. I don’t want it to be too bursty either as he’ll soon adjust to my strategy and learn to evade it; I’m looking for something that I can go head to head with him in a lengthy battle but I want to be the one dictating the play, not constantly trying to evade him.

Any help would be appreciated. It’s only a very casual PvP night but a few of us have got small rivalries building so it’d be nice to shut him up x)

Thanks~

tanztante.6532:

Grimezy.5679:

Yes. There is already an option for this in Options called fast casting.

Please learn to use your eyes before ranting.

now this is completely the opposite from what the OP wanted. he wanted the option to DISABLE ground targeting, so that the effect happens on your target, without having to aim for it.

Well that completely defeats the object of ‘skill’ then. He basically wants it to be like using Fire #1 on the staff all the time? Talk about lazy.

Wow I had no idea the current state of pugs was so bad. Looks like people haven’t been told they don’t need to kill everything?

Galespark.7835:

It will remain the same for evading, it’s that the dps of the #4 skill will be quite a bit lower than before (when used in stacks or on bosses with large hitboxes). Or did I miss something?

Depending how the updates to our elite skills work out, that extra evade on skill #3 might be the only useful thing our elite skills will still give us in PvE.

I assume the lack of damage will make it pretty crummy to use though. Might have to revert back to the days of using Arcane Shield and just hope the mob goes down before I do.

There are plenty of people in my Guild who have done the equivalent or more than OP has. They spend their days now building the Guild community and helping others with things like Dungeon Master, etc. They play for the community and for fun and don’t waste time with goals anymore, they run dungeons they think are enjoyable like CoE, SE and Arah rather than the boring generic ones that are just for gold farming.

I run a full zerk ele and have never once downed on that bridge… I think the last time I saw someone die there was about 6 months ago as well and I’m fairly sure it’s because they ran off the end by accident :s

Try stacking swiftness before you run…? I can’t even tell if this thread is serious or not…

Go in-game, type /age, tell us how long it says you’ve played.

Now tell me the amount of hours played is less than sufficient for a game which doesn’t force you to pay after the initial fee. Also please enlighten us how you expect a game to satisfy your needs forever.

I have 500 hours on a game that I spent £20 on and have optionally bought a few gems since playing. I have got more than my money’s worth.

Find a new MMO, take a break, play a different genre.

Yes. There is already an option for this in Options called fast casting.

Please learn to use your eyes before ranting.

I’m a bit disappointed as I run a lot of dungeons and regularly make use of the FGS ‘exploits’. It’s not necessarily the damage that I utilise but it’s more the evades that come from using the FGS skills. It’s difficult to stay alive as a Zerk ele when stacking and now it’s going to be even tougher.

We’ll see…

Can’t remember what I used to use while levelling but for what I use now…

S/F + Lightning Hammer: My main build for Dungeons. Wouldn’t recommend for open-world content as by the time you’ve stacked Might the trash mob is normally dead and there’s no need for LH.

Staff: Good for open world although very boring. Camp in fire using 1 + 2 and 5 on large hit boxes. Switch to the other attunements just for support skills.

D/F: Burning speed into them, drop firewall, arcane brill, arcane wave, earth 4, 5, water 5, switch to air till dead.

I use D/F for harder content as it has good survivability so for normal PvE you can probably just use D/D as you’ll have some added burst skills like Fire grab.

Key thing to remember is stack might at every opportunity. You should get used to using fire 3 into mobs and then blasting that fire field while you can.

Edit: Just re-read your post in a bit more detail. Your D/D play is all wrong. You need to be starting in fire to open a fire field to stack might. The only thing you should use in Earth is #4 as #5 takes way too long to activate. Your main DPS tool is Air Auto-attack, not fire. You should be circulating the enemy and trying to keep behind it. Once fire comes off recharge and if your arcane brill/arcane wave skills have recharged then swap back to fire, burning speed through it, put firewall down and get blasting that Might again.

I don’t know how the new trait system works as I haven’t levelled a character since but if you aim to have Fresh Air in the Air line or Persisting Flames in the fire line.

JasmineLong.6514:

Grimezy.5679:

maha.7902:

Cut the staff ele for an engi – tadaa, similar dps but you actually have vuln stacking on top of it!

Why not just order a mass-deletion of people’s Ele’s while we’re at it? Clearly they’re good for nothing.

You’re taking these comments too personal IMO. No one said screw eles in fractals, just showing different comps. A ps war and an engi are a great combo for might and vuln since they can keep it up a lot better than other comps. Nothing is wrong with an ele in fractals but we can do without one and still manage. This is a PHIW game after all ;D

That’s fair enough

Just like everyone else can still do without a ps warrior and an engi and still get along fine

maha.7902:

Cut the staff ele for an engi – tadaa, similar dps but you actually have vuln stacking on top of it!

Why not just order a mass-deletion of people’s Ele’s while we’re at it? Clearly they’re good for nothing.

JasmineLong.6514:

Grimezy.5679:

maha.7902:

No, you do not provide more might than a phalanx warrior. Here’s the thing – ele ha uses, but I’ve already mentioned other classes can cover them. It’s like saying a mes is good because they have reflect, CC and condi cleanse. Well yeah, they do, but so do guardians. I find it hard to rank a completely replaceable class as #1.

I’m not familiar with a Phalanx warrior. Could you tell me what exactly they provide?

I just find it hard to believe there’s another class out there that easily maintains 15+ Might and Perma-fury without having to compromise their own DPS at all.

Phalanx strength warrior (05063) can provide might to the team every time they themselves get might. With strength runes and a greatsword it is typical for a PS warrior to output 25 might to the team on basically a permanent basis. The only issue with this that people may call it an issue is that they cannot prestack might all that well since their might stacking ability mostly comes from in battle.

Okay so why not take a Phalanx strength warrior and combine it with a staff ele (which is currently our highest dps set assuming Might can be outsourced) and then have the best of both worlds?

You’d have fantastic damage at bosses due to Meteor shower/Frost bow and standard rotations in fire. You could be blasting Water fields in tricky situations for better survivability, etc etc.

Why not take something like 1 phalanx, 1 dps warr, 1 staff ele, 1 hammer guard, 1 thief?

JasmineLong.6514:

You can say that about any class…so I don’t see the issue. Every class has something to bring to the team, it just depends on comp and play style but I honestly feel that there isn’t a class that is REQUIRED in fractals in order to make it successful.

You say this but then no post has argued about Warriors/Guards being in every composite.

I’m not saying an Ele has to be in a run for it to be successful, in fact I don’t think anybody has hinted that at all… but if there’s one available it certainly doesn’t hurt to take one.

maha.7902:

No, you do not provide more might than a phalanx warrior. Here’s the thing – ele ha uses, but I’ve already mentioned other classes can cover them. It’s like saying a mes is good because they have reflect, CC and condi cleanse. Well yeah, they do, but so do guardians. I find it hard to rank a completely replaceable class as #1.

I’m not familiar with a Phalanx warrior. Could you tell me what exactly they provide?

I just find it hard to believe there’s another class out there that easily maintains 15+ Might and Perma-fury without having to compromise their own DPS at all.

JasmineLong.6514:

I’m pretty sure no one is saying that eles aren’t an asset, at least not from my brief skimming of the thread. It’s just that there are other team comps that do well that do not require an ele. I’ve been in a group with 2 wars, 1 guard/mes/thief and it went smooth. I’ve also been in the same type of group comp with other people where it hasn’t. It all depends on the people and play styles. Eles do bring a lot to the team, however a poor ele most of the time can lead to a not so great run.

You could say that about any class though. I’ve been in parties with really bad warriors but that doesn’t make me think “right, don’t bring a warrior again because they’re all just GS Signet noobs who spam hundred blades”.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve played with pretty poor Ele’s myself and it’s made me cringe at my own class but that can’t be said for all Ele’s and when you do have a decent Ele it doesn’t become a debate anymore. Especially in Fractals… The Uncategorized Fractal comes to mind especially. Being able to block Harpy projectiles to prevent knockbacks and practically solo’ing Old Tom while stood at the Fan with Meteor Shower/Frost Bow/FGS makes it a breeze.

I got halfway through writing a reply and then decided not to bother.

If you can’t see why an Ele is an asset to ANY party, then you’re clearly trying to be stubborn on purpose and there’s no point persuading you otherwise.

Even just using a D/F in fractals we provide way more Might and Fury than any other class as well as a ton of utilities, not to mention very solid DPS. Sounds like you’ve had a classic case of playing with bad Ele’s.

Elementalists are extremely strong for PvE and Dungeons. In Open World play we tend to use a Staff mainly in fire attunement or a Fresh Air D/D build.

In dungeons we ckittene the staff for high individual DPS which is particularly effective against trash mobs. The more popular options tends to be S/F or S/D with Lightning Hammer conjure as our main DPS weapon. This build allows us to stack a lot of Might for the party which will increase everybody’s DPS rather than just your own, we can also provide perma-fury which is an additional 20% critical chance for everybody.

Ele’s excel in everything really, we’re wanted in Dungeons, World Bosses, WvW, even PvP sometimes x)

However don’t get rid of your mesmer too quickly. They can be extremely strong if played right and some of the best players in my Guild main a mesmer and are a huge help to other members because of their portal abilities. They’re also wanted in WvW for their Time Warp ability and again, portals are always helpful. They’re also annoying as heck to play against in PvP so I don’t really see a downside to them.

In fact I’ve been thinking about making my own Mesmer lately, they seem to have better survivability than Ele’s do and I’m the kind of person who normally gets past difficult parts before others so I think portal would be great for that.

World bosses. I get online, do Jormag, behe, karka, teq, maw, etc etc. Probably get close to 100 ore per day which is fine for me.

Sorry I was blunt earlier, I was in work and the phone rang so I just clicked reply

So yea, run that build, I normally have a Frost Bow at hand in certain situations (very helpful in AC dungeon). I also always having Fire Greatsword on ready for dungeon stacking.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-DPS-Elementalist-for-PvE/first

Read that. Use the S/F or S/D + Lightning Hammer builds.

dace.8019:

DesertRose.2031:

You shouldn’t use Staff in dungeons unless you have someone in your party who can make good use of your fire fields, e.g. a LH Ele.

Staff is fine for dungeons, its damage is great on mobs that just sit there and take it, its control is nice against those who don’t, and perma fire field are always welcome.

It’s fine if you’re in a group who can make up the Might stacks without you otherwise the parties DPS will be suffering badly. Perma fire fields are fine but if nobody is blasting them nobody is really going to see the benefit. Who normally has the most blast options? Oh that’s right, a S/F or S/D ele, not a staff ele.

Like I said, it’s fine if you’re in a group who already have an ele stacking might OR if you’re in a group that don’t even know what might is but for people that do know, they will soon miss you if they don’t have their 15+ Might stacks and Perma fury.

An Ele is only as good as their party members. And an Ele requires a lot of practice and a lot of patience. You have to understand a variety of different trait set-ups even if you’re running the same dungeon as you have to be able to determine the ability of your party members.

The optimal set-up is like you said, S/F or S/D with LH, normally traited 6/6/2/0/0 with ArBr, ArWa, LH, FGS and Signet of Fire. The idea is to use Fire 2 on a target, open your Fire 4 as it lands to produce the Might combo and then continue to blast through your combo finishers before summoning LH. At this stage you should easily have 15+ Might and perma-fury and continue to keep gaining more Might from the 3rd LH AA.

This build works absolutely fantastically if you’re in the right party. I only really find this works if I have 2-3 warriors and a guardian as most stuff goes down before they really start to pound you and the guard can help keep you alive that split second longer.

However we all know that isn’t the case 90% of the time. In pug situations or less DPS-orientated parties, I like to use 6/2/2/4/0. I use the same fire trait line (Conjurer, 10% more damage, longer fire fields + fury), the damage orientated traits in Air, Earth and 1st trait in Water, then I take Cleansing wave as my Water 2 slot for some extra condi-removal. I also tend not to use Signet of fire and use the Cleansing flame condi-remover instead for extra survival.

This build means I have a bit more health, more healing utilities through the water line and I barely seem to go down when running this. You may lose that extra precision from losing the signet and trait line but if you have a warrior with banner of disc and also some precision food then it’s not too bad once you get the added precision bonus from using LH and having fury on.

If this build still doesn’t work, I’ve recently started using the stickied D/F guide in the stickied guide (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-DPS-Elementalist-for-PvE/page/3#post3804898)

This is more recommended for your higher levelled fractals rather than your standard dungeon runs like CoF, CM, AC, etc but I suppose it would also be useful for things like CoE, HoTW, Arah, etc. This has slightly lower DPS than a LH build but it still stacks really good Might and because you’re not using a conjure wep you have access to all of the defensive utilities you didn’t have before like Earth 4 which reflects projectiles and removes conditions, Earth 5 which makes you invulnerable for a short period of time, etc etc. You can still use conjure weps like Frost Bow, LH and FGS but the build focuses much more on your damage coming from Air AA.

Be patient with your Ele, they are so rewarding once you get the grasp of it and really it comes with practice. As soon as I go into a dungeon I’m less experienced in then I have to swap all of my traits otherwise I’ll just spend most my time on the ground. If you’re really struggling swap to some Soldiers gear but keep your weapons and trinkets as Zerk and you should still do some good damage

Also don’t be afraid to sit back in Scepter Air if it’s a boss you can’t get up close to or even swap to your staff. A staff will benefit from most of your S/F traits so there’s no downside to equipping it throughout a dungeon for certain encounters.

I’m fairly sure I made an identical post to yours about 6 months ago with the same concerns but you do get through it eventually. I have a tanky warrior I use for some occasions and it is super easy compared to my ele but I’m not bringing as much to the table for my party and I don’t feel as rewarded for it at all.

I’ve not done a lot of PvP but whenever I have I’ve really enjoyed it on my Ele with D/D. Seems to be able to hold it’s own nowadays and I don’t think a lot of people can handle you shooting all over the place with Burning speed, teleport, mist form, etc and then a few lightning whips and a fire grab and they’re down.

I don’t want to hijack the thread but you’ve sort of mentioned it about the celestial amulet… Do actual armour stats not matter anymore in PvP? Is it purely the things you can change it the ‘PvP Build’ pop-up or is someone wearing Zerker armour different to someone wearing soldiers?

It’s not impossible at all, I’ve done it once and completed it once.

A guild was hosting it, asked the other guilds in the server to help out, everybody got on teamspeak until we had 100 people in the channel. When this happened everybody jumped to the map at the same time and that seemed to create our own overflow instance. 100 people on the map, split into 3 groups with 1 comm per group, food and banners are dropped, everybody goes from main TS channel to individual commander channels who take everybody through a dry run to make sure they understand the concept of the fight, dry run complete, back to meet area where we start the pre-events, kill wurm successfully, naff loot.

It took about 2 hours 30 from start to finish (including organisation time) so it’s definitely not something you just ‘jump into’ at the time of spawn. Organisation could have been slightly quicker but I think it was one of the Guild’s first time leading it.

Certainly not impossible, definitely not made to be a walk in the park though. We don’t want all bosses to end up as auto-attack mashers with 100 people on the map. I miss the days when 15-20 of us would try to take down Jormag and it was actually a challenge and felt like an achievement. You could actually play with the settings still on max and see exactly what skills you were doing rather than just a mash-up of animation like it is nowadays.

LordByron.8369:

Staff is top DPS weapon for ele so IT IS useful.
You can also provide fury to the party.

I usually run 64202 or 64022.
I want blasting staff because when fights are usually decided by the first dps spike, it makes the difference when using meteor shower.

But with staff i don t usually get much aggro.

It might be the top individual DPS but I don’t feel it benefits a party like a Might stacking build does. I’m no expert but I think the staff build generates about 9 Might maximum whereas using a S/F or S/D I can generate 15-25 easily.

I’m assuming a LH build with 25 Might also outdamages a Staff build with 9 Might. I don’t have anything to back this up but that’s just my theory.

Like I said, it completely depends on the party while playing an ele. In a pug party, I run S/F or S/D as I can provide all of the might and all of the fury. In an organised group I might not need to provide all of the might so could get away with just using a staff – this is pretty rare for me though.

To be honest it completely depends on the Scenario though. In CoF I swap between S/F and Staff quite a few times. I use S/F for every 1v1 encounter but then parts like killing the Acolytes I use staff, and getting the bombs, and defending Magg, and destroying the end-structure on P2. Normally using Staff, Frost Bow, FGS and LH it goes down in 1 round.

I think that’s why I love my Ele the most… every situation can be handled differently and I don’t believe there’s a ‘best’ weapon set or ‘highest dps’ as it complete depends on the circumstances. I think even if I didn’t have to worry about Might or Fury I’d prefer to play a LH build just because of the play-style anyway.

Ah thanks Acotje, that’s really helpful! Would be a lot cheaper than having to buy a full set of cleric’s as well as I mostly have full Soldier’s already apart from the trinkets.

Do you find yourself sitting in the Melee or ranged dps party at Teq?

Yea I totally feel your pain, I’m perfectly comfortable in dungeons I run regularly like CoF, CM, etc but I tried to run a CoE the other day and kept getting nailed by the little Asuran boss. The run was with Guildies and they kept making fun of me for going down so much but there really was nothing I could do.

What I like to do is run 6/2/2/4/0 and make use of some of the helpful water traits like Cleansing Wave when you swap to water. That’s turned into my regular sort of setup.

If I’m in a fantastic party and I know it’s going to fly through the dungeon I’ll run 6/6/2/0/0 like you do (normally 2-3 warriors, guardian, me and one other).

If you’re genuinely struggling with poor parties then I’d go for the guide Neko posted and use D/F. It might not seem much different from your LH build but the problem with LH is that as soon as you conjure it you’re stuck without any defensive weapon skills and have to rely on utility skills (which are usually taken up by conjures and arcane blasts). By just using D/F and getting most of your damage from lightning whip, there’s tons of skills you ckittene to keep you on your feet and you can still stack pretty decent might although the rotation might take some getting used to.

The other option is to go with Staff and camp at the back but this isn’t really benefiting anybody.

Just remember, an Ele is only as good as his party. I know when I’m in a weak party because I go down one heck of a lot more because the DPS purely isn’t high enough. This is fine for Heavy classes but us cloth people just can’t withstand lengthy battles as easily as they can.

The CoE run I mentioned earlier was with 2 guardians and 2 warriors who I knew full well were quite tanky and definitely not zerk. If they’d been in zerk setups then I’d probably have been ok. For scale, on one of the boss bits where you fire 3 cannons into the middle boss and then have to jump down to dps him, he uses Dragons Teeth to attack you. This pretty much 1-hit me 95% of the time… it barely damaged our Heavies at all… Probably took 15% health off the maximum..

I don’t think people realise how squishy we are until they play an ele, and even then they probably only sit back with a staff to avoid constant death. And also how beneficial we are when stacking might and providing fury.

Hi guys,

Let me just say that I am a Zerk Ele through and through. I have always played up close and personal, I’m always on edge in dungeons because one wrong move can screw me over and I’ve always put the parties interests before mine i.e. sure I can sit back with my staff just so I don’t get downed at all, but I’d rather be in some bosses face stacking Might and providing fury with everyone else while bashing him with a lightning hammer.

I’ve always loved this play style. However….

I’ve started on the road to crafting ascended, etc and I’m finding myself doing a lot more world bosses nowadays for the dragonite ore. I’ve noticed the majority of worthwhile bosses can’t be critically hit which means I always swap to my secondary soldiers set which isn’t really optimised rune-wise and it feels like a bit of a half-bummed attempt considering all my trinkets and weps are still Zerk.

After doing quite a bit of Teq I’ve noticed that when I stand in the ranged party, I struggle to do any decent dps as it seems to be an awkward range for most of the staff skills unless I go forward alone and get battered. If I go in the melee group then I tend to get downed pretty quickly and spend most the time running back from the waypoint.

I was thinking of swapping to a full support build purely for World bosses where I can’t crit as other than my occasional meteor shower I don’t have a massive amount of DPS to provide and I think it would be more beneficial to be dropping down water and fire fields and blasting them for might and healing and letting other people do the hard work.

What do you guys think of think of the linked build I’ve come up with? It’s based around Cleric stats and the Water + Arcane trait lines. I would have gone in the Earth line but felt Arcane gave more benefits for the attunement cooldowns and boon durations with some useful traits.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQFAWnMISLD24AWPAfEGYAwIvEOCJxQBgyxh5wSE-TByHABmo+TNK/q9CAcpSQAeAAopD4i9Hky8HhAQuFA-e

I’m really just looking for feedback on whether this build is viable and whether keeping people alive in the melee party at teq will be more useful than doing the occasional meteor shower with a slow auto-attack at range.

I wouldn’t normally go for a ‘Healing’ build but with the amount of people attacking bosses like Teq I don’t really think my DPS is going to massively missed.

Use a staff and run with a zerg group spamming meteor shower and glyph of storms? I can’t really see how any class is that effective if they come up against a properly equipped and traited level 80. The advantage with the classes you listed are that they either have distractions like clones or minions to distract. Ele’s unfortunately are an easy target

I hate people who discriminate as well but I can see why they do it. Someone can quite easily get 1k AP from just getting to level 80. The thing is, when I hit 80 I genuinely had no idea how to play my class effectively still. I didn’t understand the best runes and sigils, I didn’t understand combo fields (pretty important for an ele), my traits were all bad and my equipment was only Rare’s. I’d never fought dungeon monsters before and was used to the easiness of open-world content. Going into dungeons was quite the culture shock for me and it genuinely opened my eyes a bit on how to play the game.

Now I’m only on just over 3k AP now but I’ve improved immensely since back when I first turned 80. I’m running full exotic zerk with runes of the scholar, I have an Ascended zerk scepter and focus with appropriate sigils, my build is optimised for the current meta, I use the correct slaying potions for that dungeon as well as suitable food and my rotations are pretty much spot on providing perma-fury and 15-25 might from my combo fields as well as some pretty beasty Lightning Hammer damage.

I’m not saying I’m the best player in the world but I’d say I’m likely to be much better than someone with 1k AP even IF they do actually have experience of that dungeon already.

I can only get better the more I play and the more I play the more my AP goes up.

I know you mention you can get AP from dailies but it’s only a very small amount (like 10AP per day?) and I can’t see anybody logging on just to get their daily unless you’re really stuck for time.

I know most achievements are completely unrelated to dungeons but quite honestly, I’ve only got the standard slaying achievements, crafting achievements, a few dungeon ones and story ones and I’m up to like 3.2k. I haven’t purposely gone out of my way to get AP now, I’ve just played the game for longer.

To summarise, no, people shouldn’t discriminate against low AP people. But if you’re just doing dungeons daily to get your gold for a greater goal in the game and want the run to be no longer than 15min, then someone with 5k AP is going to be able to guarantee that a lot more than someone with 1k, purely because they’re more likely to understand the class, dungeon mechanics, potions/food, combos, etc etc.

If you want to advertise for “All welcome” LFG parties, then be prepared for some long runs.

Best thing to do is join a nice active guild and then it won’t matter

I agree, I joined a “LEVEL 80 ZERKER SPEEDRUN” CoF run last night which had myself (ele), my other half (guardian) and 3 random warriors. We both had powerful potions which we got for like 10c each and we were using food suitable to our builds. All 3 warriors had absolutely nothing on.

I didn’t mind too much because we still completed the run stupidly quick with me spamming Might and them spamming hundred blades but it still ticked me off a bit that there’s people out there who are too afraid to join “OMG ZERKZ” runs because they feel they’re too elitist when really most the people in those parties don’t even have the common sense to use a cheap potion. I’m guessing they probably weren’t even runed or sigil’d properly either.

Like a couple of others have said, buy the rest of the materials you need on the TP…

You should easily be able to afford the Bolts of Damask, Deldrimor Ingots, etc. The only issue might be the Vision crystals but to be honest, this game isn’t a pay to win. Paying certainly gives you an advantage but why should you get the best armour in the game just because you can afford to throw loads of money at it when there’s people out there doing at least 3 world bosses a day, 5+ dungeon runs, fractals, etc etc just to be able to afford the items they want?

Ascended crafting is not complicated in the slightest, you’re just a classic case of wanting everything straight away. It’s not hard to go on the wiki, find the ascended crafting table, read it from right to left and think “Ok, I need these core mats (most of which are things like dust which you have thousands of anyway), once I’ve got these core mats I can make blah blah, once they’ve been combined I’ve finished that element and onto the next one”, etc etc.

I’ve only crafted an Ascended Scepter up to now but already after that it makes so much more sense. All you have to do is buy a different recipe and it’s pretty much the same process for every other piece of equipment.

Yes it’s a lot of money but just make sure you’re crafting Bolts of Damask and Deldrimor ingots, etc every day and you’ll soon get there. It’s not meant to be a 1 day thing.

Yup, read the guide.

I run 6/2/2/4/0 on mine. Works for me

I run full exotic zerker with runes of scholar and normally S/D or S/F for dungeons. Stack Might, summon LH and away you go.

We are a bit squishy but once you know the path it’s fine. It’s just about knowing how to dodge and usually have a decent guardian helps. If you’re really struggling you can put Arcane Shield on as well which comes in handy when stacking, etc.

Just came up with this build and wondered if I am going in the right direction? http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJEQNBiYDbkojOPr8wME6QDYEUoT9WYFMFAp/heo5B-TlSBABG/AA2R9Ha2f4KlfPfQASRHAKaGkQJ4CHBAAuAAEC43CA-w

Trying to get a lot of Toughness and Vit but not sure if I’m neglecting DPS too much? My main aim of the character is to be in the thick of the battle immobilising and knocking down enemies while giving allies support, etc. I don’t want to be completely useless damage-wise though.

Hi guys,

I’ve been going through pages and pages of posts and can’t find anything that suits what I’m looking for. Basically I mainly play a Lightning Hammer Zerk Ele which as you can imagine, dies pretty quickly in most occasions. I don’t wanna completely change my Ele’s gear just for WvW so I was thinking about dedicating my ‘noobie’ 80 warrior to WvW only.

At the moment, he only has Rare Zerk gear so I can go in any direction possible. One thing I find appealing though is bashing things about with my hammer and from the quick research I’ve been doing Sword/Horn seems a good secondary weapon set for mobility, etc?

I was wondering if someone could recommend a decent build mainly for zerg’ing which has good survivability but with the ability to pack a punch.

Thanks in advance I need suggestions on Gear, Sigils, Runes, Traits and trait selections so please don’t just post “0/2/0/4/6” and leave it at that x)

Well I’ve played a bit more since my opening post and I’m definitely settling in a bit better. People who are saying ‘you deserve to die if you can’t tell when a zerg is coming’ have clearly forgotten what their first experiences were like. We can’t all come into WvW as pro’s…

Had a great session last night on EB, 3 zergs all in the middle keep thing (stonemist?) all in the middle room having a go at each other. Lots of zerg on zerg action as well where we actually had a good battle rather than one team completely steamrolling the other. Had a few awesome small encounters as well so yea, I’m enjoying it alot now, especially after finding my first ascended ring

Cobra that video is awesome, nice job ^^

For dungeons and fractals I would recommend a Scepter/Dagger or Scepter/Focus build (with a staff for AoE backup if needed).

The stickied guide explains it better than I ever could but basically the idea is to stack Might using combo fields and then conjure Lightning Hammer to do some serious DPS up close. It’s a very tough build to master and at first you will go down a lot but it soon becomes second nature and easy to play.

The general idea is you use Dragons tooth on a guy, then just before it drops use ring of fire (using S/D as an example here), then use pheonix, arcane brill, earth 4, etc etc (basically all your Combo ‘blast’ finishers inside the ring of fire. This stacks a huge amount of Might (even more if you can use Arcane Wave as a utility skill although this isn’t always viable). Then at the end of your combo conjure LH and auto-attack until the thing is dead or your hammer expires.

I’ve tried alot of builds in dungeons and I honestly can’t recommend this one enough (like I said, read the stickied guide for a better explaination than what I gave…).

D/D is a great class for PvP/WvW but the mobility and evasiveness isn’t really need in a dungeon where most of the time you’ll probably be stacking.

Staff is fine but it only really excels past S/D in AoE situations and there’s only a few worthwhile ones where it makes sense to use it (CoF P2 comes to mind while protecting Magg).

Just try out some builds and use what you like. A lot of other classes still don’t understand ele’s so you won’t get kicked if someone see’s you using a staff.

Edit: Oh I also don’t like that I can’t really stack Might very well with a staff. To see all your party member’s on 15+ Might stacks mainly because of your combo’s is a great feeling and really improves the DPS of your whole party which you can only really do with S/D or S/F.