Guild Wars 2

Just make Retaliation trigger on condi ticks. Many vocal people seem to prefer a gun to the head over any forced solution…

FWIW:

When pve leveling my ele (solo) I would frequently browse the renown heart vendors for gear. Regularly mobs fighting players nearby would spontaneously aggro on me until dead, even though I was never in a party and mob spawned after I started talking to the vendor.

This has never happened even once to my guard or mesmer. I suspect the aggro mechanic in this game is not “honest”.

If you mean wvw staff support, I think healing power is a waste. The vast majority of healing comes from blast finishers and does not factor the healing power of whoever dropped the water field. Healing power will definitely help your own survival though.

If you want to specialize as support 0/0/10/30/30 is stronger due to condition removal. 30 in water seems to the current standard support build and will probably be that way until conditions are brought under control.

Again: this wvw advice only.

As something to think about, heres a slightly modified armor/weap/runes set for your build with a bit more bite but similar survivability. Chest/weap can be swapped for incremental survivability or offense improvements, the rune is just one possibility.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.3|6.1p.h17|0.0.0.0.0.0|1n.79.1c.79.1n.79.1n.79.1n.79.1n.79|411.0.211.0.311.0.211.0.311.0.1i.0|0.0.a3.u13b.u58b|40.7|1l.1u.1v.1t.0|e

Eventually you will want to experiment with moving points from water to air when not playing support. Try out some of the other utilities, particularly arcane wave as a blast finisher.

Full set of exotics are ~5g + 950 badges so it shouldn’t take too long to get an extra set. Re-traiting is a negligible amount (4s?). Keep in mind that because of your starting goal you wont excel at anything.

From staff point of view that looks ok with the warning that you will probably need ~9 stacks of might to be happy with the damage. This shouldn’t be too difficult with a group though.

From dagger pov it will be quite a bit trickier and less forgiving. Go with the earth signet if too squishy. Will also need a bit of might.

Any reason you only went with 4 runes of melandru? The last two effects are actually quite good in wvw.

Personally I would just pick one weapon then go hard with it for a week or two until you have the resources for a second set of gear.

Well, staff isn’t useless but probably the worst solo weapon. Its strength is crowd control and fields, weakness is damage and defense. You will be able to kill three mobs as fast as one, except the word fast is misleading. It’s actually kind of a chore using staff for PvE and this from someone who uses staff exclusively in www. The cast time on everything is just really slow.

Example: during temple farming in Orr with staff I have trouble tagging mobs before they die if there is more than one spin-to-win guy in the group. No trouble whatsoever with dagger or scepter.

If you spec/gear for www kind of toughness you don’t have to kite everything, but you probably wont stick with that setup thu 80. Unless you are the blind-naked-mage type…

edit:grammar

you people are freaks (please post vids!)

siroj.5679:

Heyhey.

So i just hit lvl 80 finnaly, mainly a WvW player.

- But i got a problem, My traits are not that good, no idea whats good atm?

Few random notes:
- 20 Water 20 Arcana good starting point
- 30 Water only good for support builds
- Fire is weak unless you go all in
-10 Earth for Earths Embrace is strong defensively

There are a few decent builds floating around this board, so look around.

- Best weapon set for WvW. used to play with staff but got 1shoted by evrything that moved. (see a lot of topics about ele’s being bad )

Note that the uplevel scaling in this game is terrible, so just being 80 (and geared as 80) will help alot.

- staff strong for zerging
- sceptre and/or daggers for roaming/havoc

- is it smart to spend my 300k karma on gear or what is the best way to spend it?

Get exotics asap. Karma isn’t particularly valuable anymore so if it makes your life easier spend it, but throw rares away the instant you get enough badges for exotics. If you already have rares but low toughness its probably worthwhile to pick up a few PVT karma pieces at least.

Ninja-edit: is there a way to spec a bit defensive, since i take alot of dmg>

You will never be able to take huge amounts of damage, because eles do wear light armor. Learning where to be/not to be and when is important. Learning to use your buffs at the right time is important, specifically protection for defense.

Gear and spec for toughness and vitality if you are too squishy: PVT/Knights, Earth and Water traits. Signet of Earth is also a nice boost to toughness.

Try out a build site like http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/ to see what different gear combinations do for your stats. If you’re short on resources it will be better to see how things turn out before spending anything.

I’ve been using full Celestial trinkets for about two months and I would never go back. Occasionally I swap one out when doing something special purpose, but prefer using runes for specialized stats and effects. I stayed away from divinity runes because there are no trinkets with the same kinds of effects as the other runes so you lose a lot of experimentation possibilities by using them.

Personally I would limit celestial stat use by your least important stat. For example: if condition damage then when it reaches ~300 (or whatever) use specialized stats on the rest of your gear. This is essentially when the stat efficiency of celestials starts going to waste. For each playstyle there is a good enough point for toughness/vitality too so crossing that threshold is also wasted. I guess that also means there may be a viable “celestial playstyle” that nobody has had a chance to find yet…

Slashco.3927:

[…]

I’m curious, would you mind sharing what setup you are running now for WvW? Especially if it’s staff, since that’s why I made this guy (played a roaming thief for a long time but since I’m on SOS server, it’s mainly zergs now vs. small man roaming.

My setup tends to change regularly, but with a staff it’s usually some variation of

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEUQFAWhImKboR4wjEAEFm8yoQICFVARRxM7A-jEyAorgQiCS2DKBSkxWJLiGrqmIqW9g5BwECQ3YA-w

The third utility changes frequently between Lightning Flash, Armor of Earth and Signet of Earth. I want to love Armor of Earth more but I find long cooldown skills annoying in WvW.

Food changes depending on opponents (how many enemy necros on the map, are you in a strong group, etc).

This particular build is for CC/damage so needs to be played aggressively. My preference is about one dodgeroll beside the frontline. Best positioning is beside enemy zergs path for as long as you can get away with it, and Lightning Flash is great for getting there.

I guess I should mention this is on blackgate, so against the better guilds you can’t get away with much and have to coordinate with teammates more Haven’t found any formulas that always work against smart opponents so its best to be a little adaptable (see frequently changing utility slot).

edit: now that I think about it, if you only have exotics it might be a good idea to start with a highly survivable build like yours and evolve it along with your playstyle. Thats how I got to this build and I had a good time along the way.

You seem to be going down the same path I tried a few months ago. Quick notes:

- tanky enough for frontlinish stuff
- good for destroying seige
- damage is good but predictable, wont make opponents panic
- I found EA to be mediocre without some kind of endurance boost. If you find yourself only making good use of the heal it may not be worth it.
- you have enough passive defense that you shouldn’t need two defensive utilities except in extreme situations. I loathe mist form because it encourages a clumsy playstyle when used for escape.
- the 2sec stability trait sounds good, but unless you change your attunement rotation to swap to earth at just the right time (usually initial engagement) its useless.
- about stunbreakers: for zerging stability may be preferable. With that much toughness you can usually eat an unexpected stun without much trouble, unless being focused or in the kill zone (don’t be there or have stability).

Food for thought: being too tanky on elementalist is bad because it encourages slow wits and flat feet. Personal opinion.

Slashco.3927:

Thanks for the additional feedback. In regards to GoEP, do you find that the chill or cripple would be more effective than weakness? I’ve been debating this point as cripple is ideal for selfishly keeping people in ground targeted AOEs longer (e.g. lava font), but weakness would really help keep your team’s front line in better shape to hopefully prevent enemy pushes (thereby allowing you to continue your staff blasting from 1200 units away without having to fall back). Also, using GoEP on cooldown in air would provide swiftness, which isn’t a bad thing since I’m not using signet of air.

Cripple and chill from GoEP seem to work better when countering a steamroller zerg:

- since it only hits some of them it spreads the zerg out a bit
- when chill/cripple wears off the player remains out of position but weakness retains no benefit

Weakness is probably better when fighting in a lord room where there is less running around though.

For the elite, what would you recommend then? I ask because as I described above, I can’t see any use for FGS since I want to be using my staff skills on rotation since they do more damage than FGS at longer range (range is key for me). Tornado – no use other than trying to run into a keep, which is what lightning flash and mist form already do for me. Asura racials are blah, so only thing I see is the elemental glyph.

Can anyone confirm that elite’s elementals don’t allow enemies to rally? I know you said elementals are useless, but the air one is 1200 range so he’d be sticking back with me nuking (not great damage but it’s something). Granting swiftness to allies with me as an occasional short stun on enemies seems ok (at least compared to other elites). Am I missing something?

In my experience it tends to get a target then run straight into AOE and fall over. Might be useful if you stay on the back lines and keep getting jumped though. It seems to me all ele elites are highly situational.

Lastly, any comments on the trait point distribution? Sounds like 20 air is good for glyph-centric build, and we know at least 20 arcane needed for blasting staff, so that leaves the question about how much water.

Personally I would never go less than 15 water for the heal and I don’t find myself lacking dps, so current favorite build is 0/20/10/20/20 with knights + celestial trinkets. That’s not actually optimized for dps but for playing your role while under fire.

I hope you aren’t thinking about fighting zerg as a glass cannon, those battles tend to be messy and you will have to eat some damage. Also, everybody knows squishies try to stay at max range and the better players go for them first

After using glyphs for a few weeks in wvw I agree with most of the above. About inscription though:

- elementals are basically useless in large battles so you probably wont use them
- GoEP will likely be used before you need any of inscriptions defensive effects
- Storm glyph redundant with staff unless you have highly specialized role

so inscription basically enhances glyph heal, but it is decent doing just that.

If you use 20% reduced cooldown trait and inscription every 20 seconds heal you can maintain one of:

- earth: 11 sec of protection (inc protection from one earth attune)
- water: 20 sec of regen + regen from water attune
- fire: 4 might for 20 sec + 1 for fire attune
- air: 20 sec of swiftness + swiftness from attune

This with no boon duration just for hitting your heal skill. Get in the habit of using heal in earth when you are at 2/3 health and water when less than half and it might be worth it.

Actually with GoEP being instant now and water/earth the most useful effects when zerging, inscription is actually good. If you are in a long battle with many distractions the simplicity of maintaining these boons is great. Just convinced myself