Guild Wars 2

Wyrden.4713:

ThiBash.5634:

Wyrden.4713:

i mean, does anyone even use scepter 2?

I do in PvE sometimes. It’s a quick fire-and-forget ability, and in PvE stuff doesn’t move as much. I don’t remain in water to spam it, but casting it after a heal or something, while going back to another attunement, it’s okish.

u r better off water auto atking the enemy.. if they make water 2 a blast finisher ye, but as it is its pretty crap atm, long cast time, needs few sec to explode..

i am more of a pvp player and just use it on my friend when i down him when we duel for fun and be like: ooo u got hit by something like this!!!

Shatterstone is a very slight DPS gain over water auto… but more importantly it applies vuln. But yeah, it does suffer from the same problem as Dragon’s Tooth in that anything with half a brain will just walk away.

Wyrden.4713:

hi, didnt want to open up a new thread but, in this build :

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAoNKgAwolECFAGNDEfBEDrA

should i get bolt to heart or 10% more dmg for air, pve build

wich would be the better and more optimal choice overall?

dont judge the build:p

Air Training. Your build is all over the place, though, and it’s hard to see how it will work – especially when you don’t include slot skills.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

LordByron.8369:

I would argue that ele is top DPS only in presence of a wall.
Seems recent dps speed tests showed ele 4th after thief, warrior and guardian.
On single targets.

DD imho is still extremeley bad in WWW as many already said.
Unless you “duel” that puts a set of rules that helps ele (see opponent freedom of disengage)

Staff is possibly the best DPS zerg weapon btw but is risky so most people wants you to be a waterbot….

I’d like to see these DPS tests lol. Lava Font ticking for 10k + Fireball + Meteor Shower is pretty hard to argue with.

Agreed. I’ve done DPS estimates for all classes except Thief and Ranger (and they are coming soon) and Ele still comes out on top in rotational (non-FGS/FB) DPS. FGS-wise, Thief and Ele make the best FGS holders.

maxinion.8396:

Iris Ng.9845:

Staff: Lava font -> Blast, Blast -> Trash dead.
Dagger: Flamewall -> Burning Speed (to the wall) -> Blast, blast, blast -> Trash dead.
Scepter: … hmmm, wait, let me summon my hammer.

Scepter: “Hmm, can I camp AA lazily without my team noticing so I don’t have to wastea cooldown on LH?”

Really, guys and gals. Really? I thought you knew better.

I’ll give you 2 damage numbers. The first is if you are at 0 might and are the only person stacking might, the second is if you start off at 25 might.

• Staff: Eruption – Lava font – Arc Brill – Arc Wave – Fireball x3: 54,000-67,000 dmg over 6.8 seconds (start casting at 1200 range, so it’s more like 5.5 seconds in melee)
• D/F: Burning speed – Earth – Arc Brill – Mag Wave – Arc Wave – Air – LW x3: 52,000-63,000 dmg over 5.25 seconds in melee
• Scepter-Focus: DT – Flamewall – Arc Wave – Phoenix – Earth – Arc Brill – Mag Wave – Water – Comet – Shatterstone – Air – Lightning Strike: 60,000-74,000 dmg over 6.35 seconds (starting at 900 range, it’s more like 5.8 sec in melee)
• Scepter-Dagger: DT – Ring of Fire – Arc Brill – Arc Wave – Phoenix – Fire Grab – Air – Lightning Strike – Ride the Lightning: 73,000 – 87,000 dmg over 5.9 seconds (5.3 sec in melee)

Other assumptions: Ascended zerk with scholar/night/force, SnS, potion, banners, fury (durr). 6-6-2-0-0 builds, no tempest defense shenanigans. NO vuln, EA, spotter, or fire signet. I was mid some other project when I saw these posts and just had to say something :/

Scepter fire 3 removes a condition, and earth focus 5 makes you immune from taking conditions. Besides that, take Ether renewal as your heal instead of Arcane Brilliance if you need it – but I would also think that if you’re taking that many conditions, you’re probably also taking a lot of direct damage and should rethink what attack you facetank vs. which ones you dodge.

I’ve been working on some new rotations and have managed to find slightly higher damage scepter-hammer rotations while working on some projects with Nike. These rotations are pretty easy but they aren’t great for PUGs because your DPS drops significantly after 40 seconds. Still testing and tweaking, but the current numbers are:

Fire staff 6-4-2-2-0: 14475 DPS
S/D+Hammer non-conjurer 5-5-2-2-0: 13990 DPS
S/D+Hammer non-conjurer 6-6-2-0-0: 13805 DPS
S/F+Hammer non-conjurer 5-5-2-2-0: 13585 DPS
S/F+Hammer non-conjurer 6-6-2-0-0: 13375 DPS
Fire staff 6-6-0-0-2: 13335 DPS
S/D+Hammer conjurer 6-6-2-0-0: 12965 DPS
S/F+ Hammer conjurer 6-6-2-0-0: 12725 DPS
D/D 6-6-2-0-0: ~11500-12500ish DPS
D/F 6-6-2-0-0: 11580 DPS

Scepter actually has about 5 seconds of decent burst and for the non-conjurer rotations a 20% modifier on only the LH portion was less of an increase on DPS than a 10% modifier overall.

5-4-0-5-0, which I have in my guide, is still better than 5-5-2-2-0 for FB/FGS damage as long as you don’t need the vuln and is still a very build if your group is prestacking might, has fury covered, and if you want conjurer. If you’re not prestacking might, 5-5-2-2-0 is better than 5-4-0-5-0 according to my current calculations (but they have different rotations).

These numbers assume 25 might and vuln and full uptime on all modifiers. Used Berserker armor, optimal food, scholar’s runes, night/force sigils, potion, no stacks, no EA or Spotter, no infusions. The method that I used for these particular numbers (used as part of the project with Nike) I’m not as happy with but are within 0.5% DPS of my standard methods.

For exotic rarity and below, swap out weapons and armor because it’s usually the cheaper change. What you swap only determines the magnitude of the change – you don’t lose any attribute points if you change out one piece instead of another (which wasn’t always the case). Swapping shoulders, gloves, or boots will have the smallest effect; then helm; then legs; then chest; then weapons will have the largest effect. The wiki has a table of the attribute bonuses granted by equipment of each rarity.

Depending on what you’re fighting, you could also try LOSing them so that you can hit more of them with a single attack, or if you’re fighting melee mobs cast Glyph of Elemental Power in Earth attunement so that your attacks in any attunment will apply cripple, allowing you to kite mobs very easily.

A full set of scholar runes will give you a total of 175 power, 100 ferocity, and a 10% modifier to direct damage when over 90% health.

spoj.9672:

Lol what. Even if they lost that first match they still would of got 30g. I dont understand some people. Is it not possible to allow people who didnt make the original list to replace them? Most tournaments have substitute teams incase of drop outs.

We expanded beyond 8 teams, so the losers of the first round would not get any gold. Also, we asked those who did not initially get seeded into the tournament if they’d like to participate once a couple of teams had to drop, and they had already made other plans.

Big Jay.1479:

Tree.3916:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11OEZo2ixbdBUzr1UmmabFd3NcAgXVkxgr4aST2ubT3c/edit#gid=1866558721

Seeding and selections. Good luck to the teams!

Is there any reason the Round of 16 only has 8 teams listed?

4 teams have dropped, so we are giving 4 teams byes and having a first round of 8 teams, then a second round of 8 teams.

Flamewall adds quite a bit of vuln because it’s multi-tick while Ring of Fire is just one hit. The might-stacking combo of /f is usually a bit more involved, too, so you in general have a lot more hits (and thus opportunities to apply vuln) on your target.

In long fights if you’re at 25 might, 25 vuln, staff is highest DPS, then scepter-hammer stuff, then D/F, assuming no wall/LF shenanigans. A lot of ele pairs have the potential to maintain that 25 might/vuln but scepter hammer eles would need to take conjurer and use some different rotations if the battle is going to be very long (> 40 sec).

I’m working on rotations for two eles in short fights.

http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewthread/13273765-synergy-vs-brute-force

My main conclusions so far when playing with this is that D/F is pretty unimpressive DPS wise and LH really is filler between uber scepter burst, LH isn’t all that amazing even after its buff. Staff is pretty linear DPS.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Just curious, in the d/f section, how many ‘stacks’ of its trail are you assuming hits the target?

One stack for four (untraited) or six (traited) ticks, as if it were used in the open with a boss that’s not running around a lot.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

I’m still a bit confused. Can anyone register and participate or only certain people/guilds?

I’m not the head organizer, but I believe anyone can put together a team and then register it at on the DnT website. After the deadline, we will send out invitations to 8 registered teams to participate.

People who are leveling don’t have access to FA, so they have to use more old fashioned rotations.

You can go scepter/hammer and dagger/x in open world and be pretty dang successful. Thorp and Shtos give some excellent advice. Staff is fine, too, once you have your elite skills and can pick up Glyph of Elementals.

While the build advice is out of date, some stuff I wrote up that includes skill, gear, and rotation recommendations is at: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Best-elementalist-LEVELING-build-guide/3816598 (not my topic name)

I am working on an update to the text guide that includes little things like FB/FGS specific builds, sigil and rune alternatives, and might/vuln math (or links to said math).

Recently I looked at how well certain builds use conjures based on their DPS in a 12ish second FGS rotation. Results are at http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewthread/13086970-who-picks-up-fgs since I can’t do tables in these forums.

Point your camera down all the way (or up, but down usually works better), take a step in any direction (but don’t turn) to lock your camera angle, and cast. It will end up about 200-300 units in front of you (which is inside Ring of Fire if you’re standing in the center) instead of 900.

Depends on how far away from 25 might you are. If you’re already at 20 might and don’t have a warrior with EA, Force and Strength give about the same EP and DPS for the builds that I checked. Below 20, Strength would probably be the better option, and above 20 Force will probably pull ahead. This Might threshold will probably be a little lower if you do have a warrior with EA in the party.

• For Firestaff, you’re averaging on your own 5-6 might with Scholar/Force, 6-8 with Strength/Force, and 10-11 for Strength/Strength.
• For D/F, it’s more like 7-8 with Sch/For, 8-10 for Str/For, and 13-15 with for Str/Str.
• For S/D+LH, it’s 9-11 with Sch/For, 13-15 with Str/For, and 14-16 with Str/Str,
• For S/F+LH it’s 14-16 with Sch/For, 19-21 wtih Str/For and 21-23 with Str/Str.

You may refer to my stickied guide for might stacking combos/rotations for each weapon set. I know it’s a lot to look through, but you can either use the Table of Contents to get to the right weapon set or search the page for “Rotation” and look through all the rotations.

I would recommend going full berserker over a split or even full assassin’s these days – when assassin’s is better than berserker’s, its increase is minimal; but when berserker’s is better than assassin’s, it’s better by a few %. Berserker’s/Knight’s should only be used while learning – then move toward full DPS equipment as you start learning fights.

Why do the Berserker’s parts cost too much? You can easily get Berserker’s armor from doing normal dungeons – CoF, CoE, and Arah specifically. Arah can be pretty challenging, but CoF path 1 is very easy, and CoE 1 and 3 are also popular. Trade those tokens in for exotic (orange) armor – specifically for parts that are expensive to buy on the TP. The dungeon token vendors are on the east side of LA near the crafting stations. When searching on the TP don’t forget to search for Zhed’s set as well as the crafted sets.

For runes, obviously Strength (LH) and Scholar (Staff) are your best choices. Less optimal choices include Runes of the Flame Legion as long as you’re often using the Burning Precision trait, Runes of Hoelbrak, and maybe even Runes of Rage or Runes of Water (though Water is the most defensive). I haven’t run numbers for DPS/EP on those set because I’ve been working on a few projects with guildmates, but it’s on the list of things to look at.

For weapons and sigils, exotic weapons shouldn’t be that expensive but you can also use dungeon tokens to buy them. Obviously work on getting the weapon set you use most often, but having the others ones in your bag can be useful (such as pulling out a staff to stack swiftness before a long run). For sigils, Sigils of Force and Strength should probably be your first two for staff or MH dagger builds, but Force and Battle is a little better for scepter+LH (if you even need the extra might from a sigil – if not Frailty instead of Battle is fine). I know Force is pretty expensive – I guess Strength/Frailty until you can afford a Force? Stacking sigils have been nerfed to the point where they’re no longer efficient to run in dungeons, so I wouldn’t bother with any of them.

Note that there is a Sigil of Night which is an excellent sigil to have when you start diversifying your weapon collection. It’s a higher damage modifier that only works at night – I’m not recommending it as one of your first sigils because it’s a little expensive and it doesn’t work in most fractals. For night time instances, the highest DPS sigil combo (short of stacking) for high direct damage builds is Night/Force.

Meanwhile, you’ll also want to work on getting Tailoring, Artificing, and maybe even Weaponsmithing to crafting level 500 so that you can create Ascended (pink) equipment while doing some world bosses to get Dragonite. The Orrian temples as well as Dragons and Jungle Wurm all give a good amount of Dragonite when successful.

For trinkets, get Mark of the Tethyos Houses as your necklace from the PvE or WvW Laurel Merchants. You’ll want one each of Althea’s Ashes and Magister’s Field Journal, which you get from the guild commendation vendor (you can earn commendations from guild missions once per week). If you don’t get them as drops, get a Ring of Red Death and Crystalline Band as your rings. Since all ascended equipment is account bound and since Berserker’s trinkets are part of the PvE meta for almost all classes, you can move these around if you want to play another character.

I think I just went the standard D/F 6/6/0/0/2 for that pair with my normal PvE armor. Used Arcane Brilliance, Glyph of Storms in Earth, Arcane Wave, Glyph of Elemental Power in Earth, and Glyph of Elementals in Earth (though Fire is probably good too for the added DPS, or Water for the heals). Maybe use some Skale Venom if you have it to hopefully get some weakness on the pair.

Start in Earth, drop GoS on them, activate GoEP, and summon Earth Ele (or swap attunements to get the ele you want), then get some cripple on those two with Lightning Whip. When Chomper’s crippled he’s pretty easy to beat to the meat, so grab a few and then stack might and go to town.

If you’re set on using staff, use Blasting Staff. Stack some swiftness before entering, do the same stuff in earth + use your immob. Then use fire skills to apply cripple while getting meat. Of course I haven’t actually tried this, but hopefully it’s a starting point for a strategy.

Warlord, could you post your DPS calculations and maybe even a video or two of solos using this 0-0-4-6-4 build? That way people reading could get a better idea of how it compares to other builds.

DPS, sure, is highly theoretical but is an easy starting point for discussions. While solo kill speed is less reliable because it is also reliant on player ability, it would enable others to also calculate DPS for your build using their own methods by seeing your general rotation and might/bleed/burn/torment/etc sustain.

For the most part Berserker’s > Assassin’s. Before the May 20 patch, there were a few cases (typically staff builds with scholar’s runes) where Assassin’s > Berserker’s, but even then it’s only by <0.5% in the best case. I haven’t re-run Ele numbers for no-stack situations, but I would imagine it would have further reduced that gap.

Copypasta’ing this for my [DnT] guildmate who created this build guide. I didn’t do any of the work or name the build. The guide’s writer will be monitoring this thread to answer questions.

The Ebola Warrior: Condition Damage in PvE

Preface:

This build is designed for solo dungeon play primarily. It is strictly suboptimal in PvE groups. In absolutely perfect conditions, It makes a bit less than 9,000 dps, which means it makes a bit less than 4,000 DPS fewer than the top Berserker builds. However, in solo play it makes around 7k DPS. The top solo berserker builds make around 7k DPS. Therefore in a solo setting this build competitive, give or take boss mechanics that are anti-condition damage.

Can you use it in groups? Yes, but you shouldn’t. What if you want to anyway? I’ll show you how.

Gear:

Rabid Armor with Runes of the Aristocracy. These runes are similar to Runes of Strength, but for Condition Damage. They provide 175 condition damage and 45% Might duration. Since Might buffs both Condition Damage and direct damage, this is a very powerful runeset for this build. These runes are only obtainable for Caudecus Manor tokens. Ouch!

2x Rabid Sword. Sigil of Strength, Sigil of Bursting. Sigil of Strength with the aforementioned Runes equals 8 stacks of Might over time. Bursting adds a further 6% condition damage.

1x Rabid Longbow with Sigil of Battle and a variable sigil of your choice. We won’t often swap to Longbow, but when we do, Battle will provide 3 long lasting Might stacks. For difficult content like dungeon boss solos I recommend Sigil of Energy in the other slot. If you do not think you need Energy, Geomancy is a very strong choice.

Rabid Trinkets. Rabid gear gives lots of condition damage. It makes you crit a lot. Critting is very good for a build with bleed on crit. It gives lots of toughness which is good for surviving on tough solos.

Traits:

2/6/0/0/6

Strength = Great Fortitude. This will give us additional Vitality. The main reason to take 2 points into this line is the 10% condition duration, which is a big DPS boost and will conveniently bring us to 100% Bleed duration.

Arms: Deep Cuts, Blademaster, Dual Wield Agility. Deep Cuts is a 50% bleed duration trait, and a key to the build. Blademaster is an additional 10% crit chance with a sword. DWA is a 6-8% IAS which will add more adrenaline, more bleeds more dps.

Discipline: Mighty Defenses, Signet Mastery, Burst Mastery. Might Defenses combined with off-hand Sword and Runes of the Aristocracy represents a really powerful adept trait, especially against bosses with ranged attacks, or groups of trash mobs with ranged attacks. Signet Mastery is self-explanatory. Burst Mastery makes Combustive shot better. A key trait is at 5, where you gain a Might on weapon swap for 10 seconds, or 14.5 second with these runes. More Might = better dps.

Utility Skills:

Skills should, as always, be swapped as needed. The default skills are...

Signet of Fury, Banner of Strength, For Great Justice. These either add Might, Condition Damage or crit chance. All of which this build wants. Healing Signet is the best heal, as usual.

Playstyle:

For the most part, you will camp sword/sword. Auto attack as much as possible and use Impale on cool down to maximize Torment. Use Sword block on cool down to build up Might and Bleeds unless needed to hold back for defense. When do you swap to Longbow? When your enemy is about to run out of Burning. Burning is about 20% of your DPS so you want the boss perma burning. When you see the burning running out, swap to Longbow, Fan of Flame, Combustive Shot, Arching Arrow, Pin Down, swap back to Sword. Don’t go back to longbow again until the burn is close to expiration. Alternatively, in difficult fights with an energy sigil you should swap as often as is required to survive. Additionally, when you Strength banner comes off cool down, you want to swap to Longbow and drop the banner into your Combustive Shot fire field for more Might.

Special Thanks:

Guang, Spoj, and Dub who all contributed theorycraft to the build.

Group Play (Not Endorsed):

2/6/0/6/0

Take Inspiring Banners, Empowered Allies and Phalanx Strength. This build will generate quite a bit of Might for the entire party. It will do relatively competitive DPS to the direct damage PS variants, assuming no one else in your group is condition damage. Again this is suboptimal and I do not endorse it, but this is what to run if you wanted to.

Consumables

Koi Cakes: 40% Condition Duration and 70 Condition Damage
Mastery Tuning Crystals: More condition damage.

Cliffside, Aetherblade, sometimes end boss of Grawl, at Jade Maw. Static Field works pretty well if you don’t have a guard that will use Line/Ring of Warding.

obal.3218:

Assuming all buffs including spotter and full zerk, scholar runes, night/force sigils, power infusions, sweet and spicy butternut squash soup, and powerful potions.

5/5/0/4/0 GS+Hammer Rotation with Preception stacks EP = 20283 and DPS = 11606
4/6/2/0/2 GS+Sword/Focus Rotation with Bloodlust stacks EP = 21102 and DPS = 11359
4/5/0/0/5 GS+Sword/Focus Rotation with Preception stacks EP = 19835 and DPS = 11063
3/5/0/4/2 GS+Hammer Rotation with Preception stacks EP = 17095 and DPS = 10675
4/6/2/0/2 Sword/Focus Camping with Bloodlust stacks EP = 21102 and DPS = 8149
3/5/0/6/0 Staff Camping with Preception stacks EP = 17095 and DPS = 7778

hendo.1940:

I wonder a bit, do you take full buffs into account? Because 11k dps seems a bit low to me, in that case.

Obal’s calculator here. I assumed 0% UC uptime, even on builds that could take UC. Of course, if you have even 1/2 UC uptime, then things look more like…

• 6/6/0/0/2 GS+Sc/F, 12 hits from Smite: 12186 DPS (12552 with spotter)
• 4/6/2/0/2 GS+Sw/F: 12151 DPS (12466 with spotter)
• 5/5/2/0/2 GS+Ham: 11627 DPS (12079 with spotter)

Theses figures are based on 30 second rotations that Obal recorded for me and include condition damage. The coefficients for WW on the wiki seemed really off to me so I estimated my own based on tooltips and sampling, so instead of getting about 3.9 for a full WW inside a hitbox I got something more like 3.6. The DPS estimates for guard seem pretty in line with warriors, where I estimated about 12.5k – 13k DPS without bleed damage for DPS builds and 10.9k DPS for an EA build. Ele’s come in around 13- 14.5k DPS without FGS.

If one were to go F – A (Forked Lightning x2ish) – W – Ice Wall – Det – (ideally Water 5 into a wall to return) – Ice Globe – Det, then you’d get the 6 might from the ice wall bug in Boil’s fire field (unless they fixed it, haven’t checked because who does underwater combat). Saying Ice Wall isn’t worth it is like saying Comet isn’t worth it in the D/F rotation.

Also, I think Electrocute has a pretty reasonable cooldown and coefficient. It may be worth mixing in with Forked Lightning more often depending on cleave and total cast time.

But honestly, if they removed the PvP map with underwater combat, what does that say about what they think about underwater combat at the moment?

Lea.6194:

hi DEKeyz, thanks for the update and the quality of your builds
I was playing your previous build (I run ele in dungeon, doing might and fury) : S/D 30/10/10/20/0.
What are the new features/pros of your new build S/D 6/6/2/0/0 ? (seems we loose some damages without water traits ?)
Thanks in advance

6/6/2/0/0 is higher sustained LH DPS and stacks vulnerability. Basically with the ferocity change, our damage modifiers became less effective while Arcane Lightning didn’t become less effective, so now, the 250 ferocity and 100 precision you get when you trait for it is a larger boost to your damage than taking a 10% damage modifier in water or air. Then with the suggested rotation, you can stay in Air most of the time (whereas for water camping you have to swap out sooner to stack might, so you get enough use out of Air Training to make it worth using over Piercing Shards – and you get vuln stacking, which is even more important now that warriors will stack a little less vuln with GS camping.

If you are specifically FGSing things and don’t need the vuln, you can always quickly retrait to 6/4/2/2/0 – but remember you can get a boss to 25 vuln on your own with a Fiery Rush.

Warlord.9074:

To the above poster who said leaving Torment on a target for 5 seconds you realize torment doesn’t tick twice unless the target is moving…If you are stacking the mob isn’t moving thus it stationary only is 1 tick per sec.

I wasn’t assuming a moving target. If the Golem were moving, it would actually take 2*(0.0375 * Condition Damage) + 31.875 per stack per second at level 80

Warlord.9074:

That and besided the 300 Condition damage from traits warriors have no other condition damage.

Warriors have Banner of Strength as well as Might. Banner of Strength grants 170 Condi Dmg in addition to 170 Strength (the top of the wiki page is wrong, but the bottom is correct) and Might grants 35 Strength and 35 Condi Dmg per stack. I assumed 25 might and both banners for my DPS calculations, which people do assume for most DPS calculations, but at the very least they have their banners and 6 might for a decent portion of a battle – 3 from FGJ and 3-5 from their elite.

Tremor and Impale-Rip are both DPS increases in melee. Granted, it’s often wiser to use Tremor for the CC, but a 2x(0.8) coefficient for an investment of 0.8 seconds without DWA is worth nothing.

Impale-Rip takes a bit more finesse to see the value. Let’s assume a 6/5/0/0/3 GS+A/M setup in a fully buffed environment since taking DWA benefits Rip-Impale more than the auto.

• Axe Auto DPS: 10606.7 (1.39 coeff per second)
• Impale-Rip Direct DPS: 9818.2 (1.29 coeff per second)

Now we can’t just Impale-Rip, Impale-Rip. Let’s just look at how much damage that axe auto does over the 1.75 seconds of the I-R animation.

• Axe Auto average Damage: 18561
• I-R Damage: 17181

Yes, I just multiplied by 1.75 so no surprise Axe still wins. But Impale also applies 2 stacks of torment with a base 12 second duration and adds an additional stack for each second until your Rip up to a total of 5 stacks. With 6 points in Strength, that’s a 12*1.3 = 15.6 duration, but since conditions tick once per second it’s really only 15 seconds.

Torment applies 31.875+(.0375*Condition Damage) damage per stack per second. Since we assume full might and banners and 5 in Arms, that means we have 1295 Condition Damage. Surprised? Yeah, you have almost as much Condition Damage than someone wearing full Dire gear (albeit unbuffed). So for the fully buffed 6/5/0/0/3 warrior, Torment does 80 damage per stack per second. Waiting a whole auto attack chain until you Rip means you apply 3 additional stacks for a total of 5 stacks of Torment.

• Axe Auto average damage: 18561 (over 1.75 seconds)
• I-R damage: 17181+ 80*(5*15) = 23181 (from 1.75 seconds of character effort)

And, I-R surpasses average axe auto damage after 18 ticks of torment, which you achieve 5 seconds after your impale – not a very long time at all. Any additional ticks after that is a DPS gain. For different builds, the condition damage and duration will vary a bit, but not to the point that you’re going to have to wait like 10 seconds to see the benefit from I-R. 6/6, for example, has even more condition damage and speeds up I-R more than the axe auto.

DWA isn’t very useful for the axe AA chain because so much of the chain is aftercast.

• Chop without DWA: 0.6 sec
• Chop with DWA: .54 sec
• Double Chop without DWA: 1.1 sec
• Double Chop with DWA 1.07 sec
• Triple Chop without DWA: 1.9 sec
• Triple Chop with DWA: 1.75 sec
• Axe auto total without DWA: 3.6 sec
• Axe auto total with DWA: 3.36 sec

It becomes more useful for a lot of other skills, such as Impale and Rip.

• Impale without DWA: .65 s
• Impale with DWA: .59s
• Rip without DWA: 1.1s
• Rip with DWA: 1s

Granted, my framecounting techniques are not perfect resolution (I record 30 FPS) and the game messes with animations when it lags, but I did multiple reps of all the skills listed and took an average of all times excluding outliers. I also calculated the time of a full auto chain in addition to each of the parts using different samples to be able to double check at least some of my work.

I think that for most skills DWA just affects the cast time of the skill and not the aftercast, which can be a very long time.

So between an Impale, full auto chain, and Rip, you’re already saving .4 seconds – 5.35s without DA, but 4.95 with. Do another auto chain and you’re at 8.95 without, 8.31 with. That’s already enough time for an extra Chop, for the sake of this example. If you’re smart, you’d be using Cyclone Axe, too, which is nicely affected by DWA.

I don’t PvP all that much, so I don’t really understand your build, but I actually DID try to think of an application of Blinding Ashes to PvE. That abruptly stopped when I realized through experimentation that the trait has a 5 second global cooldown – meaning that once you blind something, you can’t blind anything else for 5 seconds.

I have spent a lot of gold on my ele, but not nearly as much as Bluefox. I think every copper was worth it because ele is awesome

AC and the low level dungeons have slight precision scaling issues that work in favor of level 80 characters in full ascended gear. For example, my 6/6/2/0/0 ele with ascended berserker everything, a few precise infusions, strength runes, signet of fire, fury, power food, and a utility consumable that I can’t remember has 92% crit chance in AC story, which was significantly higher than what she has at level 80. I didn’t have a warrior to drop a banner of discipline, but if NoTrigger’s observation holds then I would expect it to put me well over 100% crit chance.

So Zelyhn is correct in saying that precise infusions are probably better than mighty in AC because they’d contribute more than the 5 attribute points contribute at level 80. But you’re going to hit the crit chance cap much faster.

I assumed 20/25/0/0/25 GS without UC, and by base buffs I mean 25 might, 25 vuln, night/force sigils, slaying potion, banners, and whatever equipment Obal had on when he gave me numbers for power, precision, and ferocity. I considered Sweet and Spicy Butternut, Curry Butternut, and Orrian Truffle Steak as food options. The multipliers shouldn’t impact our conclusions from EP calculations. I also assumed that crit chance and crit damage are not floored or rounded for EP calculations, but EP is rounded to the nearest whole number.

No buffs, no stacks, no inf: Truffle Steak, 10402
No buffs, no stacks, 14 pow inf: Truffle Steak, 10696
No buffs, no stacks, 14 prec inf: Truffle Steak, 10607
No buffs, pow stacks, no inf: Truffle Steak, 11451
No buffs, prec stacks, no inf: Sweet and Spicy, 11144

Base buffs, no stacks, no inf: TS, 16271
Base buffs, pow stacks, no inf: Curry, 17447
Base buffs, prec stacks, no inf: SnS, 17452

Base buffs, no stacks, 14 pow inf: TS, 16595
Base buffs, no stacks, 10 pow, 4 prec inf: TS, 16596
Base buffs, no stacks, 14 prec inf: TS, 16594
Base buffs, pow stacks, 14 pow inf: curry, 17779
Base buffs, pow stacks, 14 prec inf: curry, 17796
Base buffs, prec stacks, 14 prec inf: SnS, 17788
Base buffs, prec stacks, 14 pow inf: SnS, 17799

Spotter, no stacks, no inf: SnS, 16974
Spotter, pow stacks, no inf: Curry, 18195
Spotter, pow stacks, 14 pow inf: curry, 18542
Spotter, pow stacks, 9 pow/5 prec inf: curry, 18545
Spotter, pow stacks, 14 prec inf: curry, 18545
Spotter, prec stacks, 14 prec inf: sns, 18506
Spotter, prec stacks, 14 pow inf, sns, 18532

Spotter+EA, no stacks, no inf: Curry, 17700 GS
SP+EA, no stacks, 14 pow inf: Curry, 18047
SP+EA, no stacks, 14 prec inf: SnS, 18046
SP+EA, prec stacks, 14 pow inf: sns, 19305
SP+EA, prec stacks, 14 prec inf: sns, 19294
SP+EA, pow stacks, 14 prec inf: curry, 19302
Sp+EA, pow stacks, 14 pow inf: curry, 19285

EA, no stacks, no inf: Curry, 16972
EA, no stacks, 14 pow inf: Curry, 17304
EA, no stacks, 14 prec inf: Curry, 17312
EA, pow stacks, 14 pow inf: TS, 18442
EA, pow stacks, 14 prec inf: Curry, 18523
EA, prec stacks, 14 prec inf: SnS, 18545
EA, prec stacks, 14 pow inf: SnS, 18542

Comparing these numbers to what I have from last night, what must have happened is when I asked Obal for his power, precision, and ferocity, I assumed he already had stacks, and he didn’t, so when I told him that power was the better choice overall it was over the cases of no buffs, no stacks; base buffs, no stacks; and EA+Spotter, no stacks.

In suboptimal settings power tends to contribute more to your EP than a similar increase in precision. In optimal settings, if you’re stacking bloodlust, precision infusions pull ahead by a small margin – margins that may be hard to realize given weapon RNG.

Videos and text guide updated. There are some numbery things that I’d like to flesh out a little more in the text guide, but if I waited until all my calculations were finished I’d never get this done!

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

The tooltips are right, I tested them after Dub claimed they were wrong. It sounds like he has an issue with the tooltip cast times which we’ve all known have been wrong for years, if you haven’t been accounting for that all this time then lol.

If there is anything that is potentially wrong, it’s the skill coefficients listed on the wiki, because someone listed them incorrectly or whatever. But that’s not an issue if you just use the raw damage number listed on the tooltip itself.

Having tested all the staff and s/d ele skills and a good number of their utilities, I agree with Guang on both points.

Tooltip cast times are completely useless but it a completely accurate term for what it does. It usually just gives you the “cast time” and channel time of the skill rounded to the nearest 1/4 second. It ignores aftercasts, which are non-negligible for every skill other than instants.

For movement skills, the tooltip cast times have very little relation to the actual duration of the skill animation, and the duration of the skill animation for target-based movement skills varies directly with your distance from the target (duh).

Tooltip damage reports are useful though unstandardized. Yes, it uses weapon damage, character power, and a 2600 (or maybe 2597) armor target as its assumptions, and that is constant and I believe is calculated based on the coefficient. However, some skills give you aggregate data for the whole attack, others give you per-hit damage, and it’s up to the player to figure out which case it is. And then there are some skills that just have useless tooltips such as the AoE on Lightning Hammer.

For all the skills that I tested on Ele, if using the same build to test coefficients, the ratio between the tooltip damage of one skill and the tooltip damage of another skill exactly reflected the ratio between the actual damage of those skills using a steady weapon on a PvP indestructible golem.

And there are coefficients on the wiki that are wrong.

Veydar.5017:

Now bottom line: Since I’ve seen your fractal videos countless times I would think that you run max DPS builds with your DnT mates as FotM doesn’t get any more organized than that. In such groups you wouldn’t need the defensive utilities or the constant might uptime since your party can generate its might with a few coordinated blasts.
Which build would you think leads to a higher overall party DPS in organized runs disregarding surviving in PUGs?

First, I don’t think any of the builds presented in the reddit thread are “new” or should be considered “their builds” – I know many elementalists who already run those builds and it would be hard to pinpoint the source of many builds – apart from maybe Guang’s staff ele build, Kitsune’s LH build, and Zel’s 30/30/x/0/x FA build (though I know there was more group development there). Similarly, I wouldn’t think of any of the builds that I list as “mine” – though I would like to think of some of the rotations as my own ideas.

There is no denying that under optimal conditions in which there is a magical might and fury machine keeping everything at 25 stacks for all eternity, Staff is higher sustained DPS, especially in nicely LOS’ed clusters of mobs (which an organized group should be doing).

Problem is, there are a lot of fights in fractals that don’t conclude in 20 seconds, either because a boss has lots of HP or mobs spawn in waves – or if they conclude in 20 seconds, they conclude in 6 or so seconds because trash mobs are bursted down very quickly (getting back to my comment about things dying before I finish channeling Meteor Shower).

So in those very quick, very easy fights, I would contribute more damage and vuln with D/F burst (Flamewall if not used for stacking – Burning Speed- Magnetic Wave – Ring of Earth – LW a few times) than with staff even if I don’t start off with a Meteor Shower. I’ve noticed similar things with Scepter/Dagger – Hammer: in super quick fights, it’s preferable to use Fire Grab at the start and potentially miss a stack of might instead of going through the whole general rotation, especially if we pre-stacked might.

What is even more superior to either of these is Frostbow 4 + 3 or FGS, which neither EP calculations or DPS calculations address – though there is a good correlation between EP and relative damage of those weapons across builds.

In those very long, drawn out fights, you will run out of might. The party composition used in our guides was 1 guardian, 1 warrior, 1 ele, 1 thief, and 1 mes. In battle, a guardian has 1 spammable blast finisher, a warrior between 0 and 1, a thief 0 without swapping weapons, and mesmer 0. And while there are banners around, no one wants to pick them up to blast unless there is a lull in the action. So after those 20 seconds of good might, those extra few blast finishers that a D/F ele has really would help.

An analogy for this would be the EA warrior: even though it was nerfed, after a while we started experimenting with them for record runs despite their lower personal DPS because the combined 750 power added to the group more than made up for it.

So why not just run a LH build? Well, mob spacing makes it more difficult. In normal dungeons, fights tend to be under 20 seconds but more than just 5, and then there’s significant running between these fights, so LH is usually up (or if not, it’s FGS time anyway). In Fractals that’s not always the case – groups are maybe 10 or 15 seconds apart, which is too far to conveniently place a hammer for future use or to have might carry over from battle to battle. On top of that, I’ve noticed that the big numbers from LH tend to attract the attention of bosses much faster than D/F, and allowing the guard to maintain aggro means others (and especially I) don’t have to dodge as much and can continue DPSing.

Veydar.5017:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/23841f/lod_elementalist_build_breakdown_post_feature/

Is your recommendation for D/F based on the added utility/survivability as opposed to the raw DPS outlined in this table? It seems odd that you two would end up recommending such different builds for fractals.

There are multiple reasons why I recommended D/F over staff for high level fractals:

• Defensive utility: Swirling Winds, Obsidian Flesh, and Magnetic Wave are pretty amazing – and these skills can help keep elementalists alive in bad or mediocre PUGs.
• Offensive utility: With a total of 3.5 usable blasts on D/F pre-patch (yes, I consider comet pretty unwieldy) and a sustained 5 vuln, the loss in calculated DPS felt worth it over the 2 usable blasts and 3 sustained vuln of staff.
• Cleave: D/F cleaves in a 180 degree(ish) area up to 300 range away, Fireball cleaves in a 360 degree area of 180 radius while Lava font hits in the same area
• Speed: By the time I cast meteor shower my partymates would have killed half of the mobs. ;_;
• Frost Bow: While it’s something I picked up while making the guides, I think D/F + frost bow (or situationally glyph of storms) gives sufficient AoE damage for dredge and cultists
• Lightning Hammer: Flamewall lasts a lot longer than Lava Font, allowing better might stacking when using LH for blinds.
• Double stacking sigils: I already miss it ;_; It was even better before the fractured update when you could keep stacks between fractals.

Just a note: that table doesn’t show anything about DPS, it only calculates Effective Power (and with a slightly different set of assumptions than I make, so even my post-patch numbers will be different than the ones listed in that table).

Nothing really changed for Ele except some minor sigil and rune stuff. Still refer to the stickied guides.

I’ll check later today if someone else doesn’t beat me to it. I was too busy playing Fashion Wars 2 yesterday to test out some of these minor tweaks.

I’m still running all the numbers for the builds now that Sigil of Strength and Runes of Strength got buffed, but my initial recommendations for builds are…

http://youtu.be/OmMN1UH6ymo

Dagger/Focus

• Main sigils for night are Night/Force in groups that max might, Night/Strength otherwise
• Main sigils for day are Force/Strength or Force/Accuracy
• Runes are still Scholar’s
• For Assassin’s armor, use precision/ferocity food
• For other armor, use power/precision food
• Stack bloodlust

Scepter-Hammer

• Main sigils for night are Night/Force
• Main sigils for day are Force/Accuracy or Force/Battle
• Runes are Strength, but Scholar’s is still competitive
• Use power/ferocity food
• Stack bloodlust unless you have 0 points in air

Staff

• Main sigils for night are Night/Force
• Main sigils for day are Force/Accuracy
• Runes are Scholar’s
• Use precision/ferocity or power/precision food
• Stack bloodlust if you have 6 points in air, perception if you have 2 or fewer points, and whichever at 4 points.

I’ll work on full updates to all the builds over the next week or so.

Nilkemia.8507:

Warning: Text fence. T.l,d.r. version at the end.

After leveling one of every other profession to 80, I’ve started trying Elementalist again.

But it seems a lot of the time, I die or otherwise have trouble dealing with enemies that I’d be defeating easier with most of the other professions.

- Armor is focused on vitality, with some mixed trinkets. Despite this, still feeling squishy. Any more than 2 enemies at a time is troublesome, especially if any are ranged.

- On top of being squishy, I don’t seem to hit really hard either if I’m using anything but fire (and sometimes earth).

- Settled on scepter/dagger for now. Dagger/dagger I’d like more, but not great range wise. Staff has a lot of range, but either doesn’t hit hard or the hard hitting moves are just slow. Haven’t used focus at all. Scepter feels really limited to single target most of the time too, the AoEs it does have are slow most of the time.

- Using Signet of Fire for more crit chance, and Signet of Air to move faster. Third utility varies.

- The conjured weapons. I really wanted to like these, and thought I would, since they seemed like engineer kits (which were fun to use). But the conjured charge limit means you pretty much should never use the 1 skill and stick to the others (which gets annoying when they’re all on cooldown and you can’t just switch between the conjured weapon and your regular weapons at will like the engineer can), and the time limit means I feel like rushing to use all the charges (or grab the extra conjure early). In the end, they make me just want to use kits again. Meh. :/

Too long, didn’t read? : I’d like some advice. How does one play elementalist well and not die a lot, because right now I feel like elementalist sucks.

• Armor: Well I guess I can’t fault you there for wanting more HP. You’re going to be squishy even with Sentinel’s gear, though, so try to focus on not getting hit instead of absorbing blows. You can do this through using blinds, positioning, dodging, and using an elemental to facetank for you.

• Hitting Hard and Weapon Choice: As others have already mentioned, you want to stack might using a fire field and blast finishers, then wreck your opponents. For staff, this uses mainly fire attunement, for scepter, this means using a Lightning Hammer because scepter’s sustained damage is trash, and for mainhand dagger this means attacking in air attunement. More info about weapon skills are in https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-DPS-Elementalist-for-PvE/3436702 and https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Best-elementalist-LEVELING-build-guide/3816598 (not my topic). Dagger is less melee than you may think – most of the skills have a range of 300, which is farther than melee – giving you the ability to attack and kite melee mobs. Ranged mobs you’re better off LoSing behind a tree or something and bursting if they’re aggroed onto you and not your elemental.

• Slot Skills: Signet of Fire is nice, but when leveling via solo PvE exploration, Glyph of Lesser Elementals and Glyph of Elementals are much nicer in that it gives you something else to draw aggro. Just cast in earth attunement. Glyph of Storms can give you an AoE blind to keep you safe, as well. Arcane Brilliance and Arcane Wave give you blast finishers, which give you might when used in a fire field, which then helps you kill stuff faster.

• Conjures: Lightning Hammer is wonderful. Its auto attack chain blinds enemies and it is pretty hard hitting – so in many situations it’s the only thing you should be using when you have a LH. Fiery Greatsword and Frost Bow are situationally useful in open world, and for them use the burst skills (FGS 3, 4, 5; FB 4, 3) and drop and go back to your weapons.

I know the standard slot skills for this build are Arcane Brilliance – Lightning Hammer – Arcane Wave – Signet of Fire – Fiery Greatsword. Instead, maybe try Ether Renewal for a heal if you need condi cleanse, and take Arcane Shield instead of Signet of Fire. If your party isn’t LoSing enemies, you can also take Glyph of Elementals instead of Fiery Greatsword and hope that your earth elemental holds aggro so that you can position yourself out of cleave range. And while I’m loathe to suggest this because I love Arcane Wave, you can take Armor or Earth for protection if your group isn’t already providing it, Mist Form (though you’ll drop your conjure), or Lightning Flash.

Back on the subject of positioning – when you aren’t LoSing things, try to stand at their back, near max melee range for hammer and at that full 300 range when using D/F. You can’t dodge all of a boss’s attacks in prolonged battles, so smart positioning helps. And learning where to stand and what to dodge (and when to dodge it) just comes with practice.

It also sounds like you’re concentrating too much on your rotation. I know it’s super, super boring, but practicing on the golems or vet giants in Cursed Shore is useful. Try to get to a comfort level with your rotation such that you aren’t looking at your cooldowns or hunting for keys to press. Don’t fret if you’re falling behind on “the” rotation because you’re interrupting it with dodges, heals, and repositioning yourself – it’s more to show what you should be striving toward, not what every ele everywhere is expected to pull off in every situation.

Maybe even swap up your keybinds – I use ESDF for movement and the keys near it for my 6-0 skills because my little hands just can’t stretch that far! So if there’s something you’re doing that makes you think, “This key is hard for me to accurately press with everything else going on,” then maybe think of giving that skill a different home.

Another thing that definitely makes it harder for eles to thrive is indeed poor partymates. There really isn’t anything you can do to prevent others from stealing your hammers other than putting them slightly away from the group – and even then that’s far from foolproof. On top of that, a low DPS group means you’ll run out of dodges, and if the other party members aren’t using their skills to help protect the party, then you may very well die with a scepter-hammer setup. So I highly doubt it’s all your fault that you’re not performing as well as you’d like. Maybe use an energy sigil over one of your DPS sigils to give yourself a few more dodges.

The reason why I recommend scepter-hammer over dagger/focus for general dungeoning is because in a solid group, scepter-hammer will bring the most to the table and s/d+hammer is the highest DPS. If pugging or bringing inexperienced players through a dungeon, feel free to swap to dagger-focus – chances are you’ll fight light and water fields to get your fire field down anyway. Once the feature patch hits, it will be easy to swap builds when out of combat, so you’ll be able to adjust after one or two encounters in the dungeon.

Matt.1938:

Could you tell me if this build is still good for leveling? I’ve recently gotten back into GW2 and I’m leveling an elementalist. Most of the time I’m leveling with friends (usually at least 3 of us in a group at a time) and I’m trying to find a good build. I’m not sure if I should be using staff or S/D. I’ve been using S/D for the most part, but I keep a staff on me just in case. If this build is still good to use, which traits./skills do you recommend I take?

Sounds like you’re working on a necro instead… but that’s another discussion >.>

Really, you can play with whatever weapon set you want in open world PvE. I wrote up some stuff at https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Best-elementalist-LEVELING-build-guide/3816598 that was going to be added to my PvE ele guide – but then I decided to hold off on finishing and adding it because of the feature patch. And I wasn’t that thread’s creator.

I was putting together stuff for a leveling guide, but then decided to hold off because of the update next week. I did post up a lot of what I have in another thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Best-elementalist-LEVELING-build-guide/3816598 (and the post below that)

Edit: I wasn’t that thread’s creator and don’t propose that my responses in that thread are anything close to the “best” leveling build guide, but it’s better than nothing… I hope. >.>

Until the April 15 patch, Bloodlust is great, then swap to Force/Battle afterward. After the April 15 patch, Bloodlust will still be alright if you’re going to be in a map for a while, but otherwise Force/Battle, maybe Force/Strength, or possibly even Battle/Strength will be strong options depending on how much berserker gear you’re using.

Dagger/x
If you’re roaming around just uncovering map and doing events as they pop up, chances are you’ll be leaving your LH a lot and engaging only 1-3 enemies at a time. Since MH Scepter’s sustained damage and cleave damage is low, MH Dagger is a much better choice for this kind of map exploration. In general, again you’ll want to lay down your fire fields and blast them using fire and earth weapon skills.

• For D/F, place Fire 4 under the enemy, then use Fire 3 through the enemy and cast Fire 5, swap to earth and use Earth 4, 5, 2 near the enemy, then just after an enemy has finished an attack use Earth 3 twice to jump toward your enemy through your fire field for another Fire Aura. Swap to Air and use any other blasts you have, auto attacking and using Air 3 when your fire Aura has gone away. Use Air 4 and 5 for defense as needed. A couple seconds after Fire attunement is off CD, swap to Fire and auto attack, then when Air is off CD repeat the rotation minus Fire 5. (yeah, this is pretty rough since I’m doing this off the top of my head)
• For D/D, use Fire 3 through the enemy, then use Fire 4 and 5 when facing the enemy. Swap to earth and use Earth 4 and 2, then just after an enemy has finished an attack use Earth 3 twice to jump toward your enemy through your fire field for a Fire Aura. Swap to Air and blast, use Air 4, then auto attack and use Air 3 when your Fire Aura has gone away. A couple seconds after Fire attunement is off CD, swap to Fire and auto attack, then when Air is off CD swap to it, use blasts, and auto. (again, rough since I’m doing this off the top of my head). If you are pulling mobs toward you, lay down a fire field with Fire 4, swap to Earth, and use Earth 5 while they are a few seconds out. It has a very long channel during which you can’t move, but is a good opener.

For slot skills, most of my suggestions for scepter-hammer remain the same here. You may still want to slot LH if you are going to be in an area for a while, but you can swap it out for something else on the list above instead if you’re moving around a lot. You could even experiment with Frost Bow (the 4 skill decimates large enemies as well as large groups of enemies) or Glyph of Storms (cast in earth attunement, it will blind enemies).

Trait-wise, start with Piercing Shards (Earth VI) and Zephyr’s Boon (Air I).

• At 40, grab Air Training (Air X) if you feel comfortable or Piercing Shards (Water VI) if not
• At 50, get Air Training (Air X) or Piecing Shards (Water VI) if you haven’t already or get Internal Fire (Fire VI). They are all damage modifiers.
• At 60, trait 0/30 (III or VI – X – XII) / 10 (VI) / 10 (VI)/ 0
• At 70, either grab Cleansing Wave (Water X) or retrait to 30 (V – VII – XI)/ 30(III or VI – X – XII)/ 0 / 0 / 0 if you feel confident.
• At 80, run a full D/F build. See Zelyhn’s guide or my guide for the build and rotations and general information.

Staff
Staff can be useful for running around since with Air 4, Air 5, and blast finishers you can maintain perma swiftness. If you want to use it for leveling, it works, but its cleave isn’t as good as MH Dagger and you have to be more aware of mob positioning. In general, you’ll want to use glyph of (lesser) elementals in Earth attunement to conjure a facetank before you aggro, have it aggro, place Earth 2 under the enemy, get within 300 range of the enemy while casting Fire 2 under the enemy, then throw fireballs and casting Fire 2 and your blast finishers (Arcane Wave, Arcane Brilliance) in the fire field until the enemy dies. If there is a group of enemies, you can also cast Fire 5 on top of them.

For slot skills, use either Arcane Brilliance or Glyph of Elemental Harmony for your heal. You can pick two utilities from the list in the Scepter section, but your third really should be Glyph of Lesser Elementals, and your elite should primarily be Glyph of Elementals.

For traits, start with Quick Glyphs (Air III) so you can have your summons back faster as well as Blasting Staff (Air V) for better cleave on your fireballs and meteors and a larger Fire 2 field.

• At 40, pick up either Internal Fire (Fire VI) or Stone Splinters (Earth VI). Remember, even though you can use your staff at 1200 range, Stone Splinters will only take effect at less than 600 range. Additionally, you will only give yourself might if you’re within 300 range of the blast. 300 range is out of melee but is still pretty close to an enemy.
• At 50, pick up whatever you didn’t get at 40 or Pyromancer’s Alacrity (Fire VII)
• At 60, retrait to 30 (VI – VII – XI) / 10 (III) / 10 (VI) / 0 / 0
• Work toward a DPS staff build at level 80

Hope this helps. I’m sure I left something out, and a lot of the details on the weapon skills and slot skills that I leave out here can be found in my guide or on the wiki.

If you’re on a highly populated server and can stand zerging, just grab a staff and follow the zerg for lots of easy XP. I’m not sure what gear you should be using, but you’ll want to get Blasting Staff (Arcana V) for maximum tags and Cantrip Mastery (Water III) so that you can start channeling Meteor Shower then use Lightning Flash during the middle if you need to get to a safer location. Another option would be Conjurer (Fire II) so your FGS has more charges. But I rarely WvW so I’m just going off what I remember the last time I spent time in that part of the mists. I guess this also works for champ training in Queensdale.

For PvE, you have a few weapon options and I’d recommend that you experiment with all of them. For all of these options I’d recommend Strong or Honed gear while you can only get dual attribute stuff, and if you need some survivability mix in a little Vigorous or Hearty stuff. Upgrade your gear every 5 or 10 levels as you can afford it, and I think gear at required levels ending in 1 or 6 (so 31, 36, etc) have decent offensive gear for cheap. Since crafted gear have levels that end in 0 or 5 (30, 35), they are also a good level to look at. Accessories are expensive but you may want to look for those as well.

Scepter-Hammer
If you’re going to be doing heart quests in a small area, using Scepter/Dagger or Scepter/Focus with a Lightning Hammer is a great idea. Except for Dredge and Champions, LH blinds mobs, making it super easy to face tank small groups. In general, you want to lay down a fire field, blast it with blasts from fire and earth weapon skills as well as Arcane Wave or Arcane Brilliance (if you’re using them), conjure your LH, and then stand in your fire field and auto attack. It’s boring once you pick up the LH but effective.

You’ll want to pick up Lightning Hammer ASAP. For a heal either use Glyph of Elemental Harmony or Arcane Brilliance. If you cast the glyph while in Air attunement, you also gain swiftness, which will let you run around faster if you don’t use Signet of Air. Arcane Brilliance is a blast finisher (which means when used in a fire field you give yourself Might to help kill stuff faster) and heals for more if you hit enemies with it. Good choices for your last two utilites are Glyph of Lesser Elementals (summons an elemental to do damage and maybe pull aggro), Signet of Fire (more damage), Signet of Air (movement speed), Arcane Wave (blast finisher), Arcane Shield (blocks 3 attacks over 5 seconds), and Mist form (invuln for a few seconds). Your elite can be either Glyph of Elementals (another summon) or Fiery Greatsword (good damage when used properly, but also great for mobility).

Trait wise, you’ll want to get Conjurer (Fire II) ASAP for more charges on your LH, and Piercing Shards (Earth VI) is a good damage modifier to pick up. Spend your remaining trait points in Air if you feel comfortable with what you’re doing or Water if you need more defense.

• Once you unlock Master traits at level 40, again get Fire II and Earth VI, then pick up Vital Striking (Water VI) for another damage modifier. At this point you’ll want to make sure you swap to Water attunement when using LH so that you get the passive regen from Soothing Mists, the minor trait at 5 in Water.
• At 50, either get Cleansing Wave (Water X) for condition removal if you need it or Bolt to the Heart (Air VI) for more damage.
• At 60, unlock your Grandmaster Traits. Trait 30 (II – V – XI)/0/10 (VI) / 10 (VI)/0 or 30 (II – V – XI)/0/0/20 (VI – X)/0
• Work towards 30 (II – V – XI)/ 10 (VI) / 10 (VI)/ 20 (VI – X)/0 at level 80.

to be continued…

One of the main differences between playing guardian and ele in pug fractals is that if you’re a guard and your group is ranging, you can still usually melee safely. If you’re an ele and your group is ranging, you’ll run out of dodges and invulns pretty quickly. So with that in mind, I recommend D/F (melee) or staff (ranged) for fractals. Once you’re used to the mechanics you’ll be able to do just fine in berserker armor, though while learning don’t be afraid to swap in a piece of knight’s armor or two.

I’ve done some fractal video guides with a specific focus on eles, available at http://tinyurl.com/elefracs/ to supplement what’s in my text guide that Esmee already linked.

When fully buffed and in optimal circumstances, I think D/D is a little higher sustained DPS than D/F, but I still don’t recommend it.

How is it higher DPS? Compared to Lightning Whip, Fire Grab is a pretty good damage increase. Ride the Lightning in melee on targets with small hitboxes is also an increase, but Magnetic Wave has the same coefficient and is almost just as spammable. Earthquake is a damage decrease, but not as much as Comet, and it’s a little easier to land. The damage from Ring of Fire is similar to that of Flamewall when the target stands in the Flamewall, but if the target moves out then Ring of Fire is more damage since it all hits at once.

Why don’t I recommend D/D over D/F? D/F has two blast finishers that are useful in combat while D/D only has one. Moreover, D/F is a very survivable weapon set that brings defensive utility without tanking DPS. I run D/F in Arah groups of three or fewer people and in high level fractals because I usually need those extra defensive skills. When I am in a setting where D/D would be fine, I would just go S/D +LH because it’s much better DPS and much better at stacking might.

I may add my notes about D/D in some future update, since the burst can be useful in open world. Also, with FA getting pushed back to level 80, I may put in some D/x rotations for leveling eles since LH can sometimes be inconvenient in open world exploration.

I’m interested in seeing how all of these changes to traits, crit damage – and whatever else they have in store – all play out. But not being able to get Persisting Flames, Fresh Air, or Evasive Arcana until level 80 makes it hard to learn good ele habits and rotations while leveling.

On the other hand, being able to swap traits on the fly sounds great. 30/30/10/0/0 one minute, 0/20/25/25/0 the next? Yes please!