Guild Wars 2

For ele, you either spec heavily in the first 2 lines or the last 2 lines. That’s where it gets boring – in 3 game modes.

At least, warrior has the best trait tree and so many fun and viable builds while ele builds tend to be extreme, static and it gets boring after 3 years.

The amount of wound-licking in the ele subforum is pretty good, too.

I play this one-shot build for a while. It’s viable in both team Q and solo Q. To make this type of aggressive play work, you need to pay attention to your position and the enemy’s postion. Don’t get hit, don’t get tunnel vision, don’t over commit to a fight, don’t try to “help” healing or rez-ing teammate during the heat of the battle. One-shot and move on. As soon as you can neutralize the enemy zerkers, you’re golden.

Black Powder, tied with Head Shot… -__-"

Da Beetus.1275:

Kodiak.3281:

I think you’d be pretty surprised long as you just actively avoid the “Berserker” groups. In my experience they’re really the only ones who really will call people out or ask them what their spec is or why they are doing X instead of Y…

So, basically you are saying the only groups that will notice an under-performing player are the ones that have skilled players in them. I mean, a player that is capable of running zerker gear and an offensive (direct damage) spec with the awareness to detect another player’s performance is always welcome in my group.

I know I am paraphrasing here, but this seems like exactly the kind of group that I would love to join; one with skilled players.

Send me a word in game. My group would be more than happy to train you.

My normal go-to group can’t even function properly in pugs because neither knows how to push Lupi to the wall << so depressed >>

Dagger Storm can rid of the adds pretty fast.

Placing Unsteady Ground at the channeling position, it will prevent channeling for 3-4 seconds. Alternatively, turn into a Tornado to force a person who is channeling out to deal with you.

ReSpect.7125:

Is this still possible?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ngdn-PjStI8&feature=youtu.be

Man, that was slow for a 5-FGS kill x)

https://youtu.be/vdCWwcZDXrM

This- this is beautiful!

Most pug would range Mossman and fail to cleave the wolves. At some points it would be incredibly painful trying to keep the D/F rotation with projectile defense up or not. On the other hand, it’s much easier to dodge the Flying Dagger while kiting the wolves into our AoE. For the Champ room, noob ele get one shot easily trying to melee recklessly. While it is all nice and cool to play D/F, if they cannot dodge the fire shaman’s throw, aoe, rush and the ettin’s cleave then better stay at safe range to have a clear view of the tells. For Old Tom, it is meaningless to try stacking behind Earth golem if the dps is lacking. The pull is unlockable and the bouncing projectile has long cd. If you have to recharge the batteries multiple time then staff is a solid choice to range the boss. Last encounter would be the Molten Boss duo which pretty much doesn’t need any explanation. My personal favorite use of staff would be at Cliffside even though it doesn’t necessarily make the encounter any easier.

D/x thieves have zero chance to kill a D/D cele. S/D thief needs to be really patient to wear you down. For P/D thief, it’s the matter of kiting and playing defensively around your points. It’s not a good idea trying to catch a P/D in a 1v1.

For necro and ranger, you need to stay on their melee range almost at all time and play aggressively. For Lich Form, immobilize and stay at their back, or blind them, or CC, or use focus if you really want to do a 1v1.

spoj.9672:

Doesnt make sense to me. I go D/F if i want an easier time. I used to exclusively D/F in fractals. Now that we run phalanx more i stay staff for most stuff. But D/F is always the fall back build. Lose a little damage, gain a ton of versatility and survivability.

Well, with pugs, there are some encounters just easier with staff: Urban Battleground, Thaumanova, all the champs and golems at Uncatergorized, Mossman, etc

Nah, you just have to learn how to low man the final boss. I always teef when I duo pug with my friend regardless of which class he brings. Even when he’s a necro, we always have a fair amount of stealth with the usual speed farming route. Usually when we put an LFG like “speedy stealth skip”, half of the pug can follow my lead swiftly, and the other half either brute force through the last room or just die there and wait for the final reward.

Would I solo pug as a thief? Sure, if I feel like to. Would I change my stealth rotation to normal pug way? Nah, the most I do is to change my trait to make sure I have enough stealth to survive myself. If they don’t cooperate and fail, I will come back and stealth them to make the skip over and over. Until they realize it’s better to play it my ways or just give up entirely.

Just step up your game and wow them with your super fluid rotation of D/F. However, sometimes, in Fractals, staff is just better (and easier). So consider swapping if you risk dying to play D/F.

Boon: Active Defense – activated by the players depending on the situations.
Gear: Passive Defense – persist despite any situations.

The only class that is made to sustain hits (and does it very poorly) is the necromancer. Any competent team pvp players can tell you that while the d/d cele is designed to fight on point longer than most other builds, they require a lot of kiting and dodging to not get hit under focus fire. While relatively more sustainable, D/D cele is not a defensive build. If you don’t know how to be aggressive and hit the enemy, you’ll die eventually.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

J Eberle.9312:

Alright. You win. I can’t top that.

But wait, there’s more!
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Condimentalist-Kodiak-Build-Vid/first#content
And yeah, we are dealing with the "author of the "build""on the ele forums at this very moment.

He is the man who assumes everyone is disabled and has dementia so they need all the help they could not to panic and go mental.

Lol, the builds that you call “bunker” are in fact not bunker. The bunker meta perished with the popularity of bursty zerker builds as they can no longer run around and outheal the damage. Cele builds are OP because they are tanky and their damage come from both Power and Condi at the same time. The builds are not supposed to take hits at all. I lost count of how many times bad cele players overestimate their supposed tankiness, not dodge the burst and get killed easily.

Phalanx doesn’t work against the Nightmare tree. I always drop LH so that the warrior can blind the tree.

25% more damage (i.e. full stack of vuln) for your Ice Storm and Meteor Shower is a huge DPS increase. Signet of Fire was significant during the FGS meta because you can build up the Vuln quickly with Rush. After the buff of Glyph of Storm, there is no doubt that Glyph of Storm is a better choice than Signet of Fire.

The only time I would prefer Signet of Fire is playing Fresh Air with insufficient source of crit chance.

I’m really afraid of playing with people who basically see faults in everything. What if I offend them with my non-metabattle.com builds and they rage behind my back and vote kick me. Dang!

If I want to be efficient, I don’t pug. If I pug, I tend to explore different things and getting those passive-aggressive tryhards in pug really turns me off. Chill out, bro!

It wasn’t on stream but SNP defeated Genesis. The latter has experienced and good players yet still couldn’t handle the troll :p

Try Zealot gears. It can be a bit pricey but you can deal damage while providing some Healing. Superior rune of the Monk is the best for healing output, as well as Aquatic Benevolence trait. Your healing comes from passive Healing Ripple and Soothing Mist by swapping in and out of Water Attunement as frequently as possible. You also have two burst Heal from your Water field whenever necessary. Whenever you’re in water attunement, you should use your conjured weapons to deal damage. Here is the build that I come up with: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWnMISLDWABWPAdEGQAwI/ESCLxwBgCwBo0cA-TVCBABat/AEm+YVZgEKBB4BAgqOAVV/ZVleBcBAIDQ+WA-w

The Power rating seems mediocre though. 2k Power is usually my own baseline for WvW.

What are you dying of? Can you give some examples of your difficult encounters?

I think it’s okay. I’m not familiar with WvW roaming setting as food/oil/armor rating/NPC buff are many factors not present in sPvP. If you have a lot of ascended trinkets to swap around, I think it’s good to experiment with them and see which one works best for you.

Best of luck, and have fun!

Trevor Boyer.6524:

But they didn’t win
No team running turrets has ever won
Teams that do not run turret engineers win tournaments

You might want to consider this reality check

Apex Prime almost lost against Shiny New Pug in the semi-final of ESL monthlies last night. They were saved by the fact that a team with two turret engi and two bunker war couldn’t defend against a full 5-man Lord Rush. The first match was an utter humiliation though. This is entirely a troll move from SNP because none of them have played turret engi competitively before yesterday, yet they were still able to give other teams the run for their money. Just to show that how cheesy and easily effective this build is.

At mid tier, there is Seraph of Fortuna (with 1 turret engi) who was consistently placed second in Academy Gaming tourney for several weeks. If the ban for double turret engi had been lifted, they would have made it to first place several times seeing how difficult it was for the other teams to deal with them.

Is it for roaming?

If you want more sustain, I’d suggest take FGS for bailing, Trait V in earth for Protection with Aura and V in water for regen against critical hit. I dislike Mist Form as it seems universally useless from a PVP standpoint. I’d rather have Arcane Shield or Cleansing Fire. Food wise, take Seaweed salad if you want to be aggressive or the endurance regen food with might on dodge if you want more sustain. For sigils, Doom is universally good to cover your other damage condi and counter passive regen. Intelligence is good if you can set it up for Fire Grab – it is suitable for a very aggressive play style. Leeching is good for both sustain and damage, it can deal about 900 per hit. During a long fight against other sustain classes, expect to see around 10 hits. Geomancy is good to push condi damage against builds with little to no condi cleanse. Battle is nice to play safe. You don’t need Hydromancy as you have access to Chill with Frozen Burst and Frost Aura.

D/D Cele is the most sustainable build to counter all builds in 1v1. Unless you can CC them frequently. Their biggest counters are necro and engi.

Detonate propels you backward while Tidal Wave is like a mini Rush that can risk revealing. I was thinking of group stealth for the underwater skip in HotW. But it seems possible in a way.

How about Tornado?

Someone reminds me of the Dredge: blinded by their tunneled ideal and fueled it with indiscriminate animosity.

Ehm, OP played shoutbow with zerker ammy and complained about getting rolled by Cele classes. It says a lot about his perception on skills. Surely, cele is noob friendly but it doesn’t necessarily carry bad players. Meanwhile, wearing zerker doesn’t mean you automatically become that cool hipster. In a 1v1 or 2v2, you miss your burst/dodge/block, then you get outplayed.

P.S. You can roll a turret engi with Sentinel ammy if Cele is too hard to handle.

First, roll the celestial ammy yourself and they will kill you just as fast. Second, I alsowatch the tourney and I dare say zerker thief-mes duo has some success against celestial ammy. Third, celestial shines when the fight is held longer and zerker works best when you can burst opponents fast. As a matter of kill and stomp then wouldn’t it be in the zerker’s favor? Finally, I am sorry to say but it’s a player’s skill issue when it comes to winning or losing a brawl.

It’s a map awareness problem. If you play against or with certain players, you also learn their rotation habit and predict their actions as well. That would call for tactics such as watching beach, escorting home, pushing far for side nodes or backcapping and rotate. The higher the pvp level, the more often you see players going for snowballing and playing three nodes. If your team has competent fighters, prioritize team fight over defending nodes and rotate as soon as your team is able to kill an enemy. Match the numbers elsewhere. If your team has decent bunkers, prioritize rotations: bunkers go to where the big team fight is while one team member can roam around to watch over two other nodes or spawn camp. I rarely see a whole team overcommiting on side nodes. Even if there is a stalemate 5v5 at mid, at some points, one would rotate and backcapping the enemy team’s home to force rotation. Normally the match is in your favor when you win team fights at mid and force it at the enemy’s home point.

I wonder if we can blast stealth under water with Murky Water

Phantaram uses a version of Fresh Air that uses Evasive Arcana (06xx6). You can give it a try. You have an extra blast, a blind, a heal and cleanse when you’re in a pinch. I honestly think it’s more offensive and defensive that the 06044 build. You can also give Rune of the Pack a try. Whenever you get hit, you get Fury/Might/Swiftness. The fury tends to accumulate for quite a bit after team fight. The Swiftness means you don’t really need Signet of Air anymore and can opt out for Arcane Shield, Lightning Flash and something else. It’s a Power rune so it provides the Power bonus your build is sorely lacking.

Another rune I’m playing with is Flame Legion. You have some access to burning so the damage modifier is always there for u.

I use a very compact keyboard so every buttons are relative close to each other and within my reach. I also have small hands and fingers with short nails so I can tap individual keys well. I agree with what everyone already said, remapping your key bind is extremely important to play well.

Most of Fresh Air damage isn’t coming from spamming the channeling #1 while waiting for your #2 and #3 off cool down. The channeling is a stream of small critical hit damage that allows your sigils of Air and Fire to proc. That is your first spike. Your second spike is the automatic Lightning Rod that procs whenever you swap into Air Attunement. Thanks to Fresh Air (CD 5 seconds), whenever you crit, Air Attunement is ready. Your third spike is to land Phoenix on top of your opponent, and if it crits, he is already half dead. As I mentioned over and over, your crit chance is hugely important. Without at least 60% crit chance (80% is my preference), your sigils and Fresh Air won’t proc when you want them, and it becomes much more difficult to set up a burst combo with different skills on top. I’m afraid that Fresh Air will not give any solid damage without zerker ammy. It is a punishing build and has a decent skill floor.

If you want more sustain, go with different utilities or different builds entirely. In this current set up, your auto attack in Air won’t pose any threats. Any zerker classes is still able to one shot you. Power necro, ranger, shatter mesmer, gsword warrior, medi guard and other zerker fresh air ele can kill you without the need to get stealthed like a thief.

If you are afraid of thief, the only thing that helps counter them is position awareness: Know when thief jumps on you, block and get ready to retaliate with your burst combo, interrupt their stealth combo, drop dragon tooth on top of their sword/shadow step port to anticipate their return, etc…

Even in PvE, staff water auto and earth auto are garbage.

Sometimes I get 3 hits, the other times I get kittens but the total damage is more or less the same. It seems some hits get combined and counted as one.

Soldier ammy is bad.

I beg to differ.

Fresh Air is good for conquest, too. It specializes in training and finishing bunkers of the enemy team so the fight won’t drag out too long. With the rise of turret zombies in Q, Fresh Air can contest a point camped by a turret engi and even win that 1v1 fight. They can act as roamers and engage enemies coming for side points, or provide sneaky range attack at mid point if given any high ground advantage

However, playing Fresh Air takes a lot of risks. Firstly, you need to not get hit at all. It takes a lot of map awareness so as not to get focused by more than two enemies at once, and have someone readily peel for you. Secondly, you need to know how to set up your burst so that your target cannot recover from it. Since Fresh Air is not a point holding class, it will be not as easy to build an efficient team synergy around it. In fact, it’s too demanding to become close to meta.

Engi is so hard (if not the hardest) to play well A good engi is a wonder to watch.

You can spawn iDuelists in mid air, too. I happened to do it quite a few time in pve. Unlike iBerserkers, iDuelists can still attack.

Trust your teammate.

If you ain’t terribly good then your teammate is probably as great as yourself or if not better (player). Bring your best game and have fun, I guess

Focus is really good when 1v1 a turret engi. So why not?

Some builds used in middle-high tier PvP:

AK’s Scepter/Focus Fresh Air one-shot build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArdhcM6cWywnBfEBCAW0AQBY0NQcKIDUDrA-TJBFwACOBAI3foaZAAPAAA
Optional Rune: Flame Legion

Phantaram’s Fr Scepter/Focus Fresh Air balanced build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArdhcM6cWywnBf0AOA2oPg4IQAoDW+KsEiCA-TJBFwACOBAl2foaZAAPAAA
Optional Elite: Glyph of Elementals

Zeromis’ Lightning Rod/ Earth Shield staff build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWhMM6cWExnBr0ABAW4AwBIBIeFkBSilqDA-TJBFwACuAAI3foaZAAPAAA

FGS is the one of the few things that every ele can use to kill Trebuchet, Gate and even Lord extremely fast. It can also kill Turrets at some extends.