Guild Wars 2

I see a lot of people dont agree right now with the stats on wells reaper/necrofor wvw blobbing and me being a new necro player i think im not in the perfect position to judge it myself.

Some say that full zerker is the way to go, the other popular one is midline/frontline power wells reaper with zerker/cavalier/soldiers combination.

Which do you guys prefer ?

Thuggernaut.1250:

emkelly.2371:

Have you not been watching the forums? We have posted MANY Effective builds in the last week alone. But sure I’ll spell it out for you.

In bothe Berserker and Vanilla Warrior there are at least three builds wich which are Effective. Power, Condi, Hybrid. So that’s 6 right there. Then with each of those types there are at least two different builds setups that work effectively. That’s 12. Dont believe me?

Vanailla power options
Killshot
Greatsword, Axe/sheild

Vanilla Condi Options
CC, Condi with mace/sheild, hammer and stances
Or CC Condi with Physicals

Vanilla hybrid options
First, just take the condi options and change the amulet. or!
GS, Mace/sheild
GS Axe/sheild, with physicals

Pretty much as long as you have Defense and Discipline you can pretty much make anything work effectively.

You lost the last scrap of credibility when you claimed a vanilla Killshot build or any hammer build is effective in PvP. Plus, I didn’t face a single build this season that used mainhand axe.

In addition to proving my point that Defense and Discipline are mandatory traitlines.

Dont wanna burst your bubble (especially since i disagree with the guy you are replying too) but I, alongside not 1 or 2 warriors have used great axe berserker to get ourselves to diamond. Great axe is perfectly viable, not as good once you actually get to diamond but still playable.

Choppy.4183:

Again, I’ve never done it, but wouldn’t a pew pew ranger be valuable in the mid-line of a zerg? In fact, wouldn’t a sub-squad of them be amazing for picking off an enemy’s driver and back line?

No, right now wvw blob meta is melee trains, even eles are forced into playing melee weapons right now, nobody wants staff ele in a semi competitive wvw squad.

Melee trains would destroys rangers in few seconds.

Onlysaneman.9612:

I’m biased, because I’ve far more PvP time clocked on my warrior than on my ranger, but for roaming at least warrior seems more dangerous and harder to take down. When on my warrior there isn’t a single individual class I’m afraid to engage, while my ranger has more mixed luck- funnily enough, warriors being probably the hardest thing to fight on him. That said, Ranger is no slouch either.

Can’t speak for blob fighting, because I tend to avoid it for the most part.

Just to add to your comment

rangers are pretty much unwanted class in wvw blobbing right now, warriors however are always welcome.

in terms of big fights exactly what the Asura said, right now i’ve been using GS/Ham build with berserker traitline and Soldiers gear + Zerker weapons and accessories, with Banner as the elite (ALWAYS USE BANNER IN BLOBS) in wvw blobs and its worked wonders, great damage output while still having pretty much 11 seconds of invincibility (Endure Pain trait, Endure pain as utility and Defiance stance as heal) and to add to that its super fun, you feel like a complete beast wrecking havoc in the frontline of blobs.

nearlight.3064:

My friend plays dd tempest with water/arcana and cantrips and torrents. I think you could take shouts instead to, and I think earth would work well too (I use earth for my warhorn builds)

Celestial amulet for sure, probably focus on mightstakcing so battle/energy, durability or leadership or strength runes. I’d say either cantrips or shouts could work but I’d take cleansing water instead of aurashare.

Right now trying water/arcana with 2 cantrips (stability and lightning flash), and 2 shouts so im kinda torn between aura share and cleansing water. Cele, with strength runes and leeching/energy sigils. I will maybe ditch shout utility and get another cantrip and run cleansing water.

Can anyone help me come up with the build?

I think water trait line is a must, need help with the 3rd traitline choice, also runes, sigils, amulet, utilities ?

coe or maguuma wastes

If you wanna run scepter full zerk is really the best choice, look up s/f fresh air build on metabattle for traits

Heard a lot of good stuff about roaming in piken square so i will be heading there soon, thanks !

bump .

Currently im playing on SFR but im starting to regret my initial choice as im most interested in roaming and its pretty much non existent here so im thinking about transfering now, what servers would you suggest for wvw roaming ?

Kodiak.3281:

A lot of PvP is understanding what is actually going on and why things are happening the way that they are. Even in unranked, I catch a lot of people who are extremely stationary at all times and stand in powerful AOE’s that they should never be hit with.

A lot of Ele’s survivability is understanding your cool downs and when to use them and when to simply walk away. I usually rock a S/D Fresh Air build (06044) and the main reason I stay /D over /F is the colossal number of defenses I have with /D that I like.

With these Water heavy builds, going into Water attunement is a huge defensive cooldown. You heal, you cleanse conditions, you gain regen, you gain a side regen and in the case of /D you also get some huge defensive cool downs with Frost Aura and another heal/cleanse. Most players you face know this and they try to push you down low enough fast (with burst) to force you to blow that cool down. Typically I don’t like to go into Water unless I know I got Frost Aura to help transition out of Water when they start wanting to burst me down.

There’s a lot of other cool downs as well, from Earthquake to Updraft to passives like Evasive Arcana. Knowing when to use these and when not to use these is ultimately what gets you killed.

Doesn’t mean you’re not going to face hard teams from time to time, good teams are going to prod/poke you and see what kinda Ele you are. If you are very survivable and use everything right I find most teams will do their best to ignore you cause they know you know what’s up. However if you don’t and you just fall over dead then a lot of teams will continue to focus you in any kind of engagement. All about learning how to survive and then figuring out how to do DPS afterwords.

I’m “maining” S/F fresh air ele but every now and then i would use d/d in spvp and i can completely relate to OP, it felt really weak in terms of damage, not the best bunker either, just felt very “meh” in general, now i knew that the class/spec wasnt bad but me being a fresh level 80 player (hit that 2 weeks ago) i couldnt figure out why s/f fresh air was working so much better for me than d/d. Now after reading this post i can totally say that in my case this guy is completely right, im one of the people who are stationary and try to do the same rotation like a robot every time they get into combat as d/d ele but after reading this post i tried adjusting and guess what … it worked. Now dont get me wrong in terms of damage its still not great but it isnt weak either and the havoc you create with d/d is just amazing.

I’ll wait for you to get online if thats ok .

Sounds good to me, im not interested in WvW right now other than roaming alone or with a few player group every once in a while but i do that very rarely, everything else you mentioned sounds very good to me as this is exactly what i was looking for so i would like to join you guys.

I added you in game and now waiting for you to come online, would like to join.

Mainly pvp player, hit level 80 recently and i wanna find a guild that does guild missions to get those ascended accessories, if the guild is pvp oriented that would be a big plus in my book, not looking for anything too hardcore though.

Prevas.9305

Blast finishers in fire field.

Also any reason you speed up all the pvp footage ? It was pretty useless since you cant really see or understand much when its speed up, obnoxious music was another minus. Other than that solid combo tips, thanks for that.

If you plan to make another video in the future my 2 suggestions:

Stay away from obnoxious music, you cant make all people happy but you can make the majority happy at least, choose something easy on the ears that sounds good in the background

Dont speed up pvp footage, no reason to do that.

You really should have made a longer version where your notes are like 3x longer, its pretty annoying to pause the video every other second.

What lawful said, i consider myself quite a decent mmo player in general and very fast learner in games but i had 3x more deaths on my ele than i had on my guard by the time i hit 60 on both classes and guardian was my first character ever so yeah. As for damage its nothing great imo, it can be really good if you can aoe bunch of mobs and stay alive at the same time but i found ele to be very lacking in single target dps, though saying “very lacking” is prolly to harsh, maybe lacking is enough. Another issue i found with ele is that the most important traits for some weapon builds are unlocked only at level 80 and those traits change the gameplay style of the class completely which bothered me quite a lot while i was leveling since i always had this thought in the back of my head that i will basically have to relearn how to play once i get those level 80 traits. All in all once you hit 80 its a blast imo.

Also to clarify i wouldnt say it was hard leveling ele, not at all to be honest, its not facerolling on your keyboard with a guardian but its not “hard”, at least i dont consider it hard.

Hit level 80 not too long ago and i have few questions regarding WvW

1.Where is the dueling area in WvW ? From reading forums and watching streams i know people duel in wvw in some areas but i dont know in which areas they do that exactly.

2.When roaming alone or with few people are there any places in particular i wanna look around to find small fights or its all pretty random ?

3.For small scale roaming, are there any major differences between EB and server name battleground maps ? In which im more likely to find the small fights im looking for ?

You can still one shot people with s/f or s/d fresh air, its very much viable for both roaming and spvp (well at least not until “very high ranks” in spvp), though s/f seems like more viable option than s/d as mentioned already.

Here are some recent videos from this s/d guy

Also look up guys like phantaram or team riot (jester) on twitch, they stream s/f, s/d quite often, you will be amazed how they destroy people with it.

Silverwastes is the new place to farm

Saying that s/f has decent burst is huge understatement, you can 1shot pretty much all light/medium classes if you land your burst combo

Assuming one cant get celestial gear but still wants to roam with d/d, what mix of items would you suggest for d/d roaming ?

Screenshots: http://imgur.com/c8naPaY,TgvBPBp
By going through character creation options i think its either blackstone or charcoal but im not sure as the lighting is different in character creation screen than it is in game, any skin color experts can help me out here ?

Thank you very much

The one that the sylvari is wearing ? http://i.imgur.com/dENAvtl.jpg

lucadiro.4519:

Sigil of air is a must, the second can be fire, energy or battle. runes pack or traveler.
For the stats of armor, weapon and trinkets i’m all berserker but thats mean have 13k hp and 1800 armor, then u are so squiscy. Maybe take some piece of different stats for have 16k hp and 2k armor.
50% critical chance its good enought with this build because u will be in perma fury.
You cant stay in zerg and small fight scale are your way! This build is alla about dont be in the center of the fight and spike enemies from range

Thanks a lot man.

BarnabeJonez.6023:

It honestly depends on the finisher and the field
The bottom field (the one that was cast first) is what determines finisher effect.

Comet, Phoenix and dragon’s tooth have to land in the field.
Churning earth, Arcane brilliance, frozen burst and Earthquake have to begin inside the field and finish their channel (you can lightning flash out of the field and keep the finisher efffect)
Magnetic wave is instant and therefore need to be performed inside the field.
Eruption has to finish its animation inside a field.

Arcane brilliance currently has a weird bug(?) where the blast finisher is executed on your target if you have one, or you if you don’t. This can make using it difficult sometimes.

Hope this answers your questions.

Edit: Added arcane brilliance.

Thanks a lot

im talking about armor pieces, which you dont use in spvp so i dont know which pieces to get for wvw.

bump .

It was sandstone, thanks a lot.

Hey guys, kinda new player here (level 74 ele), im playing s/f ele and one thing that i cant really fully understand or rather i have some doubts about it is blast finishers (this also applies to s/d but i dont have this problem with d/d)

So dragons tooth (fire2) is a blast finisher and when using focus fire 4 is fire wall and is fire combo field (with dagger offhand its ring of fire but same applies) how exactly do you trigger the blast finisher (to get might stacks) with dragons tooth (or any other targetable skill for that matter), i thought you just needed to land the blast finisher in your combo field and thats it but of course when leveling i found out that you need to cast the blast finisher from your field to trigger it, right ? If im right on that then ill give you an example, lets say my opponent is knocked down to the ground so i run up to him cast flame wall and then dragons tooth, do i get the might as soon as i cast it or after the cast is finished (when tooth actually drops down), also do i get might if i move away from my fire field after i cast tooth but before the tooth drops to ground?

What happens if my opponent dodges/just moves away from my tooth, do i still get might stack ?

As for phoenix, im pretty sure on this skill but just in case i wanna ask, basically it does 3 instances of damage, one when traveling (if it hits someone on the way), one on the explosion where you targeted it to go and one on the way back ? Is that right ?

No it doesnt really matter, just minor differences and the set that you can get on 80, i think for a light armor class whisper set is by far the best one but its all personal preference and taste.

I’m interested in gear cause i have no idea which pieces to take since metabattle only mention this build for spvp and i wanna do some WvW roaming too.

I was initially planning to play d/d (level 75 right now) but while leveling i did some spvp and tried out both s/f fresh air and d/d and found s/f way more fun and its just suits my playstyle way better than d/d, now i wanna try roaming with it too once i hit 80 and i’ve seen people do that on streams and youtube but i honestly have no idea which pieces of gear to take so any help on that regard would be great.

Edit:Also are runes,sigils and amulet from spvp build good for WvW roaming too or should i switch it up ? If i should switch it up can you give any suggestions to what exactly i could change it ?

Here is a screenshot: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/e/eb/MaleSylvariCulturalArmorTier1.jpg

Looks really awesome but i cant figure out which skin tone this is.

Thanks a lot everyone, especially you Bitty. I’ve never been the one to stay away from challenges so thats not an issue, cant wait to start learning S/F fresh air ele, thanks again !

How viable are these builds for roaming or/and sPvP ? Im still leveling my ele and im kinda new to the game but by watching streams, youtube videos and reading i found the idea of S/F and S/D ele really fun, it fits my playstyle exactly (well from other mmos), high risk high reward, insane burst but lacks defensive abilities/mobility but either way i really like the idea of playing either of these two builds especially in wvw as a roamer once i hit 80. With all that said i wanna ask again are they any viable ? I know that S/D got nerfed or something not too long ago and its not a good fit for current meta (at least thats what meta battle says) however S/F fresh air is still listed there as viable however for sPVP. What about roaming ? Are any of these two any good for it or you should only play it if you really enjoy the playstyle of these builds and shouldnt expect good results from playing it ?

Kinda new to gw2 myself (2 characters lvl 50 one of them being ele) leveled ele with d/d from the start and had no problems, i die every now and then but i definitely have no problems with it, however i constantly swap between attunements to stack might and just to use the whole skill set sometimes too, i didnt go with “go with staff and sit in one attunement and spam 2 skills” path because i wanna learn at least some basic rotations and such of d/d for pvp while leveling, get used to the skills and all that and also its way more fun, i tried playing s/d, s/f and staff but they were all so boring compared to d/d while leveling, with sigil of air + all the mobility skills d/d provides its extremely fun to just run around the world, exploring map etc.

Im kinda new to the game (level 50ish on 2 characters) but im really interested in roaming, from what i’ve seen on streams seems really fun however i saw few people saying that HoT WvW changes will completely kill roaming, can some of the more experienced WvW players tell me how true is that ? (from HoT changes that we know will happen)

I dont think there is an easiest ele build at least imo, however if you are any decent in general you shouldnt have too many problems picking up on ele at the start (like leveling etc) , my first character was guardian and i quit him once i hit lvl 50 and switched to ele, ele is obviously more difficult but its not to the point where you have to be pro player to play the class ( i mean for leveling since im still leveling it, its top3 class in terms of difficulty to in pvp from what i’ve read though). D/D to me seems most straight forward for leveling and such, you stack might and you destroy everything with air1, its also tons of fun to play it and explore the world with it since with sigil of air+ air4/5 + fire 3 (also fiery greatsword) you are insanely mobile not to mention combat skills are really fun to use too. Just dont be afraid to switch around and try out other weapon builds, i like s/d a lot too but its not as straight forward as d/d to me so i use it more rarely than d/d, didnt like s/f or staff at all but again its all personal preference.

Thanks both of you .

So for leveling D/F is the way to go ?

Thanks !

Exactly jebro , not sure why people are getting upset and worked up over this , i myself being a new gw2 player and obviously new elementalist player was looking for typical “cookie cutter” build and your thread was the first one that i found and im really glad that you created this thread so players like myself dont need to go over 1000 threads and look through 1000 builds till they find what they are looking for.

Thanks for the build .

Im open for any weapon choices and i need two builds one for leveling the other one for sPVP , including skills traits and all that .

Yeah i created one with the face you are mentioning vergil , played around with the sliders for a bit and it looks quite similar .