Guild Wars 2

Oh, another question I had, though not specific to ele. How do the + and – stun durations work from sigil of paralyzation, melandru runes, and the -stun duration food? Does it round down or up to the nearest second when doing reductions? I know there was a change to the way sigil of paralyzation worked so it did not always round up, but does this apply to reductions as well? I ask because most stuns last only a second or two, so it may be more worthwhile for me to use the damage reduction when stunned food rather than stun reduction if the stun reduction is having minimal effects due to rounding.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Thanks for the recommendation on a build editor that is more accurate.

As you said, I mostly use earth auto attack which proc’s the obsidian focus trait. Ether renewal also counts as channeling. I don’t think extra buffs like obsidian focus or rock barrier contribute to the converted condi damage.

I haven’t used ice bow or lava axe for this build, not sure how they would work out. Ice bow 4 would definitely do some damage, but I’m not sure if the rest of the weapon is worth it. Do you know if the healing effect from ice bow auto is a large enough area to make it worth while? With staff water auto, I had the trouble of not being the in the splash radius of the heal.

I like the defensive nature of focus. Swirling winds is invaluable for group fights and obsidian flesh is good for ressing a buddy in a pinch. That said, I really wish there were something comparable to cleansing wave or RTL on focus. Since mobility is more of an issue for solo fights, I might try s/d for solo roaming and stick to s/f for small group. Time to light up the ole incinerator and get to testing :3

Switching to dagger offhand means I could use a different sigil, as restoration is not worth it for solo roaming. There was some talk about weapon swap sigils having independent cooldowns at some point, is that still in the works? If so, then sigil of geomancy might be a good option for the dagger.

Thanks for your suggestions ^^

Hello all, I am a long time solo and small group roamer. Currently I am running a s/f condi ele. This build has been pretty successful for roaming, but I’d like to see if the ele community has any suggestions for changes and improvements.

My current build

Pros:
- Very high armor
- Reasonable amount of condi clears / condi reduction
- Offstat condi damage is made up for from condi dmg from toughness trait/food
- High healing, both self healing and group

Cons:
- Despite having 4k armor with momentum stacks, I still have trouble with hard hitting physical damage specs that know what they are doing, particularly d/p thieves and dagger necros
- I recently switched from 20 in fire to 20 in arcana, which decreased most of my burns by a second. I don’t have as much pressure with the arcana, though I have more survivability
- One stunbreak I don’t usually use as a stunbreak
- Low max health (will be less of a problem when I get guard stacks from my other ele ^.^)
- If I don’t have FGS up, I can’t run away from zergs
- In order to control both people in a 1v2, I need to sacrifice a significant amount of damage from glyph of ele power to use it for chill or cripple

Any suggestions would be welcome. Thank you in advance ^_^

2.6k toughness. Armor anywhere from 3.4k to 4k+ depending on buffs, attunement, and channeling.

Both are viable, but power has far more options. I play S/F bunker condi atm, and it is very strong so long as you know your skills.

A better question though is what are you planning on using this for? If for PvE, then there’s no real reason to go condi as glassy power builds can obliterate almost anything in PvE. If for WvW/tPvP, then a more balanced power build or condi build would be a good place to start.

Hello, I play s/d zerk ele for small group / solo roaming in wvw.

It is really glassy, but I can pretty much demolish anything that I get the jump on. My main burst comes from arcane blast, earthquake, lightning flash, fire attune, phoenix, ring of fire. On most non-bunker players, this will down or close to down them. For more bunker types and those that stunbreak/invuln your burst, you can continue to put pressure on with other skills, or retreat with RTL. With zerk ele, you are really glassy, so a lot of your survivability comes from blocking and blinding the enemy’s burst and killing them first. It takes some getting used to, but after you learn your limitations it’s quite enjoyable.

My build, if you are interested:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQJArYhEmIbnx5gjEABFBQwoQHiHWAhElC4A-jECBYfBkWGgsAMzsIastBFRjVXDT5iIq2auIa1SBY1YA-w

GuildWarsPlayer.5608:

What weapon do you use for wvw ? scepter dagger ?

Yes. I play scepter/dagger zerk ele.

reikken.4961:

20k? weak. I break 300k without even trying

get good, ya nub!

Inexperienced ele killed by experienced players? Class must be broken and underpowered.

For giggles:
You’re doing it wrong and ele is basically one of the best professions.

KazNaka.4718:

My question is: Why should only warrior has “the big hits”? Why is there a certain favoritism towards the warrior to land the big melee hits? Any other classes out there takes just as much risk being melee, regardless of their different defense mechanisms. Why are they not on par with the warrior’s DPS output??

20k churning earths and fire grabs not good enough for you? :/

Samhayn.2385:

is this for pve or WvW? Just wondering. If wvw how are you not being 1 shot by some class and two shot by the rest?

WvW solo and small group roaming. I do occasionally get one or two shot (dat 1500 range CnD steal backstab…), but most of the time I rely on blinding, blocking, and dodging an opponent’s burst while putting enough pressure on them that they cannot unload on me. Pretty much anyone who is going to one or two shot me is going to die in one earthquake phoenix anyway. If a fight is too much, then I have enough mobility as an ele to get out of the fight and heal back up. Some builds are really tough to fight. I usually lose to dps guardians because of all their blocks, and about 50-50 with 3333333 s/d thieves because of their evades. Oh, and perplex engis ’cause they are fair and balanced.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Well many things. Why would you ever pick tempest over fresh air for an offensive build? At the very least, its an extra two lightning bolts every five seconds.
The damage boost in tempest is a 20% boost on one attack every 45 seconds, provided you hit both earthquake and Phoenix, and that your opponent has no stunbreaker or stability. The defensive boost requires you to be cc’d and then hit again, which with an elementalist’s life pool is like inviting them to saw open your head.
Most ele builds need arcana because we need to dodge to simply survive and all of our dodge traits are in there, as well as Elemental attunement which has a good number of survival and mobility boons. We also need condition removal because we simply cannot afford to leave any condition on for any amount of time, and Evasive arcana both helps with that and gives an extra blast finisher for your might stacking pleasure.

Pretty much what sums it up is that there are a number of things we are somewhat forced to take just to survive, because of how little health or defensive options we have, and the fact that we don’t really have spectacular damage to compensate. Many builds in other classes can reach close to that reward with vastly lower amounts of risk.

I think fresh air is better for d/d, where the autoattack is actually useful. I would rather not be stuck in air attunement all the time, even if it means extra lightning strikes and air attunes. But that is just my personal preference.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but tempest shield stuns enemies as they use the cc move on you. This helps me deal with cc, because I have no stability. That and it is down to a 25s cd as of the last patch.
My combos rely on earthquake and updraft, so the added 20% damage is really nice on top of an already reasonable defensive trait.
As for condition removal, I have phoenix and cleansing wave from s/d, as well as ether renewal. It’s not the best condi removal, but it’s good enough for me.
I don’t mind being squishy as I can one combo most people and those that I can’t usually don’t have enough pressure to kill me or are furiously spamming all their cds to heal and get away. That’s not to say I don’t die by any means, but in 1v1s and small group, it is very good.

Taldren.7523:

Do all the math you like, I just performed it in the real world (as real as a virtual MMO world can be) and under ideal conditions it hit a real target it hit for 6k.

I did enjoy all the extra hoops to jump through you threw in there.

So nows its:
1. Target is below 33% health.
2. You are within 600 units.
3. The target is knocked down … so they didn’t have stability or a stun break.
4. You don’t have weakness on you.
5. You have full stacks of bloodlust.
6. You have full borderland bloodlust.
7. The target is full zerker with zero points in any toughness line.

Why not add that they have 25 stacks of vulnerability and you have full guard killer bonus too?

I’m not saying I hit that much on every target. I’m saying it’s possible to. I don’t think it’s a fault to use synergizing combos and traits. But if you’d rather run up to someone and press just about any attack because it doesn’t matter, by all means, play a warrior.

Taldren.7523:

4. With that build, 2600 Power, and using quake->Phoenix … it hits for 6k … not 12k. Then again you are just plain dead as you have what … 14k hitpoints and no toughness?

1060 * (2420 + (35*6)+200+30) * 1.7 / 1980 * (1+.1+.2+.2+.1+.1) * (1.5+1.2+.1)

1060 high end ascended scepter atk * (2420 base power+ 35*6 stacks of might+200 dragon breath buns+30 minor borderlands bloodlust) * 1.7 phoenix coefficient / 1980 zerk ranger base armor * (1+ .1 internal fire + .2 tempest defense + .2 bolt to the heart + .1 stone splinters+ .1 sigil of impact) * (1.5 base crit damage+1.2 zerker crit damage +.1 arcane lightning) = 12390 dmg

I have 10.8k base health, 1960 armor and am proud of it.

Taldren.7523:

Kyskythyn.6471:

Ah, so it does. It would be 10+20+20+10 for 60% more. So 448% instead of 484%.

What’s wrong with no arcana and tempest defense? This is an offensive build.

13 second attunement cooldowns + attunement swap cooldown + no fresh air … you must auto attack a whole lot.

Why would I autoattack?

Taldren.7523:

Kyskythyn.6471:

Taldren.7523:

So now we have the ever so popular 20/30/10/0/10 build?

So, if the target is burning, below 33% health, I am in Air, and am practically in melee range … I get to do better than average damage with the least amount of survivability in the game. But if none of those are valid I still get to keep the lowest amount of survivability in the game for just average damage.

I don’t see how that risk/reward works out compared to how its applied to other classes is all.

Hi, I run 20/30/10/0/10.
Between Internal Fire, Bolt to the Heart, Tempest Defense, and Stone Splinters I get +73% damage just from traits on my phoenix in an earthquake-phoenix combo. Damage is in the second post which you laughed off as a downed uplevel.

Also, 600 range is not “practically in melee range,” at least for S/D. It’s +10% to nearly all my skills.

1. That doesn’t add up to 73%.
2. So now its everything i said before -and- they need to be knocked down/stunned. Another hoop to jump through that is negatable by stability/stun breaks. Nice.
3. S/D build with no Arcana and using Tempest Defense … huh?!?

Ah, so it does. It would be 10+20+20+10 for 60% more. So 448% instead of 484%.

What’s wrong with no arcana and tempest defense? This is an offensive build.

Taldren.7523:

So now we have the ever so popular 20/30/10/0/10 build?

So, if the target is burning, below 33% health, I am in Air, and am practically in melee range … I get to do better than average damage with the least amount of survivability in the game. But if none of those are valid I still get to keep the lowest amount of survivability in the game for just average damage.

I don’t see how that risk/reward works out compared to how its applied to other classes is all.

Hi, I run 20/30/10/0/10.
Between Internal Fire, Bolt to the Heart, Tempest Defense, and Stone Splinters I get +60% damage just from traits on my phoenix in an earthquake-phoenix combo, with another +10% crit damage from Arcane lightning. Combined with fury on attunement from Arcane Fury and 120% crit damage from zerker means I have about 78% chance to crit for 448% of base damage. Damage is in the second post which you laughed off as a downed uplevel.

Also, 600 range is not “practically in melee range,” at least for S/D. It’s +10% to nearly all my skills.

Edit: fixed the numbers

paleeshi.1924:

Kyskythyn.6471:

I play zerk S/D (20/30/10/0/10) for small group/solo roaming in WvW. It is a lot of fun and utterly destroys most people. You just need to be aware of your squishiness and play accordingly. Sadly, no videos, as my computer is a brick :/

I could imagine trying something like that in pve. what traits are you using in fire? I’m guessing Pyromancer’s Alacrity and Internal Fire?

Lava Tomb (lol) and Internal Fire. I switch out lava tomb for spell slinger in some cases, such as duoing with a thief.

I play zerk S/D (20/30/10/0/10) for small group/solo roaming in WvW. It is a lot of fun and utterly destroys most people. You just need to be aware of your squishiness and play accordingly. Sadly, no videos, as my computer is a brick :/

spoj.9672:

Good eles should be able to survive and disengage most of the time. Good necros have no chance when focused. No escape or real defense or even vigor. DS is not an extra health bar and it is more of a weakness than a strength because you can only use it to stall for a few seconds and you cant heal back while in DS. The high base hp is the only redeeming quality of necro survivability but it really isnt enough.

The thing i like about ele is that even though im very squishy, i always have multiple ways to get out of the fight and heal up. Whether its extra dodges through vigor, blocks, projectile blocks, invulns or just high mobility to escape. Ele and lack of defense really does make me laugh.

Agreed, for the most part. Necro’s survivability is shrugging off that initial burst. Once you’re in a fight, you’re committed with few options for getting out.

I found the damage!

STRanger.5120:

Did you noticed that Necro on the other side has the capability of roughly 3x the Elementalists health? Probably not, right?

I’m glad you read my sig. Necros have a lot more passive defense (hp, ds, protection), whereas eles have more active defense (blind, evade, block, blink). Learning your cds and timing your skills will increase your ele’s survivability tenfold.

CD is best fairweather server.

You want lack of blocks and evades, try playing a necro. Ele has plenty.
I play full zerk with mostly offensive traits and I have:
Instant cast blind, 10s cd
Piercing blind,15s cd
5s Vigor on my main damage ability, 20s cd
1s Evade and cc, 40s cd
3 blocks and damage, 75s cd
3 blocks and damage at 25%, also 75s cd
900 blink and damage, 40s cd

Ruby orbs for wvw, scholar for strictly pve I would say.

Mochann.5298:

Eles have such a sucky health pool, but you know what? Just suck it up!

This. Plenty of players play ele successfully without complaint. Just because the class doesn’t fit your ideals doesn’t mean the class is weak or broken.

A lot of ele’s survivability comes from defensive abilities rather than soaking up damage. Blinks, blocks, blinds, cc, and dodges with proper timing can exponentially increase your survivability. This means you can’t faceroll your keyboard and win, but rather allow an ele who knows their abilities to avoid a great deal of damage. I don’t play bunker personally, but I know some ele’s who can go toe to toe with bunker guardians as far as tankiness.

My, my, people still get loud and proud about how much their server PvDoors. Your karma training techniques are impressing no one. Maybe you should work on getting better as a player rather than how quickly you can run back to your zerg.

Burnfall.9573:

10k, that’s it?

Burst ele is dangerous and underrated. It just takes a little more tactics than facerolling your keyboard in full bunker.

Sidenote: mmm chicken…

Fresh air gives more sustain, but less burst than tempest defense.
S/D in general is an amazing burst weapon, but the autoattacks leave something to be desired. Water is the highest dps auto I believe, but it’s hardly worth it to waste your water swap just for that. I play full zerk or close to full, so I float in and out of the fight, bursting targets then backing out to heal and get cd’s.

LightningBlaze.4913:

Dueling against a good skillful player on whatever profession is not easy for ele. It takes a lot of effort on reading your opponent movements, countering them and outputing enough dps and defensive skills for you to win.

Essentially this. A healing signet hammer warrior can focus landing all his offensive skills and tailing his opponent, occasionally using endure pain or berserker’s stance when they’re under pressure. Due to the passive yet strong nature of healing signet and cleansing ire, they do not need to worry much about healing or condi cleansing. As an ele, especially a burst ele, your survivability relies on countering your opponent’s burst. Blind/dodge/block their high damage/cc skills, kite and burst when you can otherwise.

Zerk ele is hardly a one trick pony. I run a similar build, albeit s/d instead of d/d. s/d means you need to float in and out of the fight a little more than d/d, but it’s not kill one person, then run away.

I don’t see any reason to take this trait, as it adds little to my build. I guess if you’re just zerging and pressing staff 1 it might be good, but honestly I think there are better traits. What’s a good example of how this trait is essential to a wvw ele? I still need convincing.

elikal.7356:

It’s just not possible to play and mostly stand there.

Well there’s your problem. Ele is not a stand still, press 1 repeatedly and win kind of class.

Mikhail.4961:

More serious though, I was wondering if anyone actually uses Lava Tomb? Ele’s are pure paper when downed and once you’ve used Mistform, you’re toast. I suppose for early levels of PvE it’s not utter useless, but I don’t see it at end-level.

I use it when solo/small group roaming (I run full zerk usually). Most of the times I die are from burst warriors/thieves catching me with arcane shield on cd. Most of these people go for the stomp right away and lava tomb ticking 4-5k on them demolishes their health. Also, if you wait a few seconds and then mist, you drop another lava font when you come out of mist. This, combined with a ridiculous amount of damage on downed 3 means I can often kill other glassy people from downed and rally.

aspirine.6852:

You play full glass s/d ele? Respect, I would like to see you play do you have any vids?

I unfortunately don’t have any vids cause my computer is a brick, but maybe soon. ^^

You can really build it how you want to. If you want to be a full bunker/support, you can do that. If you want to go full glass damage, you can do that too. As far as relation to guardians, ele’s have less healing and area boons, but better combo fields (water, fire, and static).

I disagree with lightningblaze, as ele’s can be a integral part of small groups. A popular combination is a staff ele, and a hammer guardian (for the #2 skill’s 4or5s cd blast finisher). With a coordinated group, the ele’s fields can provide vital healing, speed stacking, and might stacking. Contrarily, my current role in our small man group is a spike damage dealer, who relies on other members for distraction and support.

Solo roaming is a little trickier, as a lot of ele’s defense relies on active use of skills and counters rather than soaking up hits. Whereas a bunker warrior can take a few hits and shrug it off, ele’s rely more on plentiful healing skills and other defensive skills.

Taldren.7523:

Upleveled ‘recruit’ player that was already dead and considered to have 0 armor.

Would you like to try again with the smoke and mirrors?

Evidently nothing anyone says will change your mind. Enjoy playing a class you feel is broken and underpowered.

Taldren.7523:

Wow, I can hit a bunny for 405,000 too … but neither of those are players where you can’t set up some elaborate bs to make a video/screenshot for.

/calledyouout

Oh, you wanted a player?

Taldren.7523:

With that approach I would just call you a liar and move on.

Elementalists can’t do 20k+ damage in one hit, but I have seen Warriors do 16k in a single killshot. Elementalists can reasonably have under 16k hitpoints.

You, sir, are incorrect.

Taldren.7523:

You say:

Ele can compete with most other classes/builds out there (at least for WvW)

then proceed to say:

…other classes have more room for error and are perhaps easier to play

In summary … they can compete, but are at a disadvantage from the start.

Well yeah, they aren’t a one shot and won’t go down without a fight … but you are saying the same thing we are in the end. We are tired of putting in all this effort to only come out behind or just barely beat out those that aren’t even trying as hard.

You can’t even make your argument solid as you ended with:

A good ele should beat a bad warrior any day.

Ok…would you rather I take this approach:

I’ve one shot more warriors than I can count. All you baddies need to l2p your class, because you’re obviously doing it wrong.

pOmf.5216:

Kyskythyn.6471:

pOmf.5216:

Most duels are done without stacks, where the only inbalance might be bloodlust, which is at most 60 stats.

so you’re saying power of the mists aka more vitality, endurance regen, and healing power, doesn’t help at all and the only imbalance is from guard stacks?

They do affect fights, but unless the matchup is a complete blowout, the difference between the buffs is rather negligible.

Ele can compete with most other classes/builds out there (at least for WvW), although other classes have more room for error and are perhaps easier to play. That said, ele’s have a lot of active defensive mechanics that a knowledgeable player can put to good use. A good ele should beat a bad warrior any day.

pOmf.5216:

Most duels are done without stacks, where the only inbalance might be bloodlust, which is at most 60 stats.

Ryld.1340:

storiessave.3807:

Elementalist mobility is bad? Wat. Elementalists are one of the most mobile professions.

No they’re not.

They’re beaten by Ranger, Warrior, Guardian, Thief, and possibly Mesmer.

Next time a guardian or mesmer chases you down as you RTL and blink away, let me know.

Zerker is fine so long as you know your limits and don’t mind occasionally getting murdered by some unavoidable burst. I play zerker s/d in our small man roaming group, floating in and out of the fight to pick off important targets. Ele has a lot of defensive mechanics built into the class which can greatly mitigate the weaknesses of low armor and health.

Phi Is Sly.1857:

they had armor, they all just run derker berker.

But…but…zerker is so fun

IoJ capping a point? Not on my watch.

Math time!

Mango pie:
85 * 30s = 2550

Omnom ghost:
Say you attack once a second
325 health per chance * 66% chance per atk * 1 atk per sec * 30 secs = 6435
Granted with aoe and other effects, you’ll probably attack more than once per second anyway.

mjharrison.3209:

Regardless of how boring they may or may not be, I think the main issue with Ele traits is how horribly balanced they are. >50% of them are total rubbish.

There’s also still the issue of requiring 20+ arcane and 15+ water in every (WVW) spec worth a kitten .

To be fair, most classes have a small number of good traits that make up their viable builds.

Water and arcane are certainly nice, especially for bunker builds, but I wouldn’t say they are necessary. I run 10 in water and 0 in arcane and I like to think I do ok in wvw.

STRanger.5120:

blink vs lightning flash – quite an obvious example

Think of lightning flash as an instant, aoe damage gap closer rather than an escape skill.

I think the root of the problem here is that 95% of ele’s spec 0/0/0/30/30 bunker and then wonder why they don’t have damage.

Ratenen.3650:

+1
So very true and put a lot more eloquently than I could.

I love ether renewal, but you need to be cautious about using it against opponents with a lot of interrupts as it can ruin almost all of the healing.