Guild Wars 2

Transfer to a different server if you are dealing with queues. That is what I did. Destack the stacked servers, help Anet balance.

Sure it does some damage, but most of your attunements are pretty well useless because your raw damage is almost nothing since you have no crit or crit damage with a carrion build.

Wow why would they have infracted you for that? :|

http://asphyxia.tv/builds/

I have my ele builds there for WvW. I’d recommend dagger/warhorn for roaming, staff for larger group play.

Scepter is not very good these days, needs more aura applying skills to be worth playing in the current meta.

Magical Things.8465:

santenal.1054:

Josh XT.6053:

This build is pretty solid for roaming, it is what one of my guys in my guild uses for roaming. http://asphyxia.tv/wvw-roaming-engineer/

The scrapper traitline is not filled in completely (maybe you forgot).

No it’s left open so you can take adaptive armor or final salvo depending on the situation. What build stays exactly the same all the time?

Kinda a little of both. I like Adaptive Armor, but Final Salvo is probably what I would run the majority of the time.

Updated to run Final Salvo http://asphyxia.tv/wvw-roaming-engineer/

As others have said, this game is really CPU heavy. I personally don’t care for trying to play it on a laptop because laptops tend to get super hot while trying to play this game due to the CPU usage.

I don’t really understand why the game uses the CPU so much more than the GPU but I guess that it is what it is..

Bumping this up. Added another guardian build to my list for being super tanky as well.

http://asphyxia.tv/wvw-front-line-guardian-tank/

babazhook.6805:

There another way you can apply conditions while remaining in stealth that I have been toying with and that the skill pain inverter. It an AOE condition app of three stacks of confusion and it does not reveal. It appears to have no upper limit on targets and a decent range.

Trait BA, steal to target and use pain inverter and you have 8 instant confusion stacks.

Good call on the pain inverter, my thief is asura so I might have to try that out.

Either reroll as Elementalist or have one with you clearing your conditions non stop lol. My group roams in WvW with 2 Revs, 2 Eles and 1 necro generally, with that we have pretty solid damage and good condition clear.

Builds here: http://asphyxia.tv/builds/

This build is pretty solid for roaming, it is what one of my guys in my guild uses for roaming. http://asphyxia.tv/wvw-roaming-engineer/

I don’t think anyone can give you a very good answer because condi ele is not really a thing. You’re best off going with Celestial, generally a condi ele isn’t going to do enough damage to matter.

I don’t know what game mode you’re playing, which matters for questions like this.

http://asphyxia.tv/builds/

I have 3 of my ele builds listed there if you want to check them out and see what you’re missing out on by playing condi.

Aizza.4950:

I’ve been enjoying my Tempest in PvP so much that I am now motivated to craft ascended armor for it and use it for fractals, WvW, And PvE. My question is this: Is it still worth it to craft celestial armor for elementalists?

Sometimes I might want to go backline staff in wvw, sometimes aura mancer with some heals, also in fracs is the little extra heal worth it? Someone recommended to me that I should make zerker armor and then shift my trinket stats around for situations. Such as valk/zerk for backline wvw, soldier/cleric for aura mancer, zerk for fracs and PvE.

Celestial is worth making for sure, Aizza. I can’t speak for PvE but I can tell you that for WvW, it is king for Ele.

My ele builds are here: http://asphyxia.tv/builds/

I run ascended Marauder armor, zerk staff and cele trinkets for larger group play usually, which works great if I am not being focused, but full celestial is great for running over all in WvW because even if you do get focused, you can survive it and still do pretty decent damage. If you plan to roam on Ele, you definitely want to use my roaming build which runs full cele. Since we’re in the same match, you could duel my ele to see what I do to people with full cele and be the judge lol. Or we could also go in to BEEP guild hall and I can show you later tonight.

Edit: I also have 3 full Cele ascended sets, one for each armor weight. Its great to have and once you have it, its done and you don’t have to worry about needing it. I love it for my Guardian and Ele. The medium one was made for my Engineer, but I never really got in to playing it.

After I tested some more, looks like draining sigil is broken. Taking Air sigil is a good alternative.

http://asphyxia.tv/computer-setup/
^ My PC setup.

Runs pretty well for the most part, only time I get any big frame drops are when there is a really big zerg around in WvW. Usually the frame drop doesn’t last long though.

Teon.5168:

FA is a fun server. I have spent some time there from transfers over the last year or so, and they’re a fun bunch of people to run with. The pairings helped that tier a lot. Enjoy your time there!

I think FA is in a really good spot right now – they don’t have too many or too few people. The queues are minimal and the fights are pretty good. FA/BP are two servers that definitely benefit from eachother well from the link.

Wolfey.3407:

Josh XT.6053:

Wolfey.3407:

Just an idea,
What if they fixed up DBL and made it a little more bearable. Gliding in the open area spaces, no gliding near towers or keeps. Just polished it up and made it enjoyable.

Create another map

Make Red Server = DBL for their Border Lands
Make Blue Server = New Map for their Border Lands
Make Green Server = Alpine for their Borderlands

EB stays EB

Best of all case scenario. Your literally have a pick and chose situation. If you like Alpine and you’re red one week, go play on Alpine and help your server in points.

Problem with your idea is that there are a lot of players like myself and my guild who literally only play on Alpine. We didn’t really care for EBG pre-HOT but only played there because it was significantly better than DBL when DBL was around. Whatever map is Alpine would be queued all the time, which would irritate me if my guild and I are stuck waiting in queue to play the only map I care for.

It’s a valid point; however, couldn’t you flip the argument around?
Guild X is only playing in EB because Alpine is too small or too boring looking for them? on FA/BP atm, there is a queue for EB so Guild X has to wait atm.

You could flip the argument around, but it would be silly to do so. The population numbers of DBL vs ABL don’t lie. EBG was queued worse when DBL was around. On blackgate, a significantly higher population server – all alpine maps had higher queue than EBG every day since Alpine returned.

Wolfey.3407:

Just an idea,
What if they fixed up DBL and made it a little more bearable. Gliding in the open area spaces, no gliding near towers or keeps. Just polished it up and made it enjoyable.

Create another map

Make Red Server = DBL for their Border Lands
Make Blue Server = New Map for their Border Lands
Make Green Server = Alpine for their Borderlands

EB stays EB

Best of all case scenario. Your literally have a pick and chose situation. If you like Alpine and you’re red one week, go play on Alpine and help your server in points.

Problem with your idea is that there are a lot of players like myself and my guild who literally only play on Alpine. We didn’t really care for EBG pre-HOT but only played there because it was significantly better than DBL when DBL was around. Whatever map is Alpine would be queued all the time, which would irritate me if my guild and I are stuck waiting in queue to play the only map I care for.

Josh XT.6053:

Dawdler.8521:

Desert is designed as a border. We cant have kittening 4 of them. It’s not gonna be another EB unless they do what many of us want them to do – remake the kitten map from scratch because nothing else can fix it’s core problems. But that aint gonna happen and you know it. So no point even suggesting that.

I don’t think it would need a full redesign. Make red get “citadel” and green and blue get the other 2. Red is almost always the weakest server, that will help them have a slight advantage in that map.

forum broke cuz new page

Dawdler.8521:

Desert is designed as a border. We cant have kittening 4 of them. It’s not gonna be another EB unless they do what many of us want them to do – remake the kitten map from scratch because nothing else can fix it’s core problems. But that aint gonna happen and you know it. So no point even suggesting that.

I don’t think it would need a full redesign. Make red get “citadel” and green and blue get the other 2. Red is almost always the weakest server, that will help them have a slight advantage in that map.

I’ve killed plenty on this build – but they have to get confident and try to fight me for it to happen lol. If they even attempt to fight me, they lose and I get an easy bag.

The whole point of it is to be a permanent stealth troll condi build. If someone runs from me, sure – might not be able to take them down, but if they don’t – easy bag lol.

If it was based on my elite skill choice – just make a suggestion on an alternative for the elite. I don’t think the venoms work on traps or caltrops since they don’t technically do any raw damage (I could be wrong?) I mostly just took dagger storm to help me out a little bit if I do get caught by a stealth trap or something like that.

Josh XT.6053:

I can offer my experience with two different server pairings as well.

Prior to Alpine return and server linking, my guild had transferred off Maguuma to Blackgate for more fights, every tier except tier 1 was just so stale. Fights were great there – it was a lot of fun. Once server linking happened, we continued to have fun until people realized they could play on Blackgate for the low low price of 500 gems by transferring to ET. The server became so stacked that you spent more time in queues than playing the game, so we had to transfer back to our original server of Borlis Pass.

Borlis Pass/Fort Aspenwood has been a lot of fun for roaming and larger group play. I think that is a server link that worked out well to help get better coverage without having to worry about every map being super queued every day. I’m pretty happy with that one, but I have to say that linking the T1 servers really did more harm than good. I suppose if they were trying to get people to transfer off of stacked servers, they succeeded a little bit, but the server is just so insanely stacked its unreal. I wouldn’t be surprised if ET could be a T2 server on its own right now lol.

Forum broke, quoting my last post.

I can offer my experience with two different server pairings as well.

Prior to Alpine return and server linking, my guild had transferred off Maguuma to Blackgate for more fights, every tier except tier 1 was just so stale. Fights were great there – it was a lot of fun. Once server linking happened, we continued to have fun until people realized they could play on Blackgate for the low low price of 500 gems by transferring to ET. The server became so stacked that you spent more time in queues than playing the game, so we had to transfer back to our original server of Borlis Pass.

Borlis Pass/Fort Aspenwood has been a lot of fun for roaming and larger group play. I think that is a server link that worked out well to help get better coverage without having to worry about every map being super queued every day. I’m pretty happy with that one, but I have to say that linking the T1 servers really did more harm than good. I suppose if they were trying to get people to transfer off of stacked servers, they succeeded a little bit, but the server is just so insanely stacked its unreal. I wouldn’t be surprised if ET could be a T2 server on its own right now lol.

For the NA servers, they’re North American servers and most of North America adheres to daylight savings time, so why wouldn’t the North American servers that are based in states that also adhere to DST??

Not really useful when you have 21 level 80 characters like me.. I wish there was something I could trade them for that was useful, because spirit shards aren’t useful to me. Let me trade them for proof of heroics or something like that, at least I could get siege from that. I’d be fine for a 1 for 1 trade with the proof of heroics.

crisisavatar.9247:

This is not a proper clarification. If this was a court of law

It isn’t, and you have no rights here lol.

I’m going to state the obvious here.

You can’t earn money at work while you’re sleeping (I suppose it depends on your job, but I know I can’t at mine, you’d get fired), so why should you be able to walk away from your computer and earn money without being banned (fired in real life stuff)???

Use your head.

I have a few Guardian builds on my web site. http://asphyxia.tv/builds

There is a really tank one that does not damage, a celestial one that does decent damage and has pretty good support and a roaming one there.

I’d love a shout cd trait. Sadly it would need to go in to the tempest line and there really isn’t room for it there.

Just do 3 alpine, 1 ebg and 1 DBL lol.

Raolin Soulherder.3195:

yes let’s have a peek-a-boo meta…hrs of chasing ppl in circles around LOS objects. sounds like fun.~

condi/aids builds would become even more popular since your dmg continues to tic even when target is no longer in site.

This is exactly the problem.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

For a P/P build — yes because nobody expected a P/P to go in stealth.

Yeah but the point of the build is to be in permanent stealth while just dropping conditions on people while in stealth. To never be seen, so pistol main hand is really pointless since I wouldn’t be seen out of stealth anyway.

Vieux P.1238:

ahh Josh XT.6053, are you still peeved cuz you got served spoonfull of uncredibility by everyone on this thread..? Do you feel like a big boy now that you can spell the word whole on your own? Good boy!

Not sure what you’re on about. Also, “uncredibility” isn’t a word and “spoonfull” is actually two words.

Sadly I don’t have as much time to play this game as I’d like, so I haven’t had time to go log my mesmer and shatter someone in my guild hall to see how the damage is today. When I’m in game, I’m playing my elementalist in WvW.

gebrechen.5643:

To make roaming great again, you need to get rid of the current stealth mechanics and tone the damage down to pvp standards.
We all know that won’t happen, so it would be wise to improve wvw and let roaming die.

Stealth mechanic should have been removed from the game long ago in my opinion – most cheesy garbage this game has to offer. But whatever – different argument for a different time lol.

Damage of some things need toned down for sure, Revenants damage is just off the wall for how much survivability they have. Now thief damage is in line with their survivability, if I get ahold of a thief, they’ll get roasted in a matter of seconds. Except they can ususally just dodge 600 meters away and then shortbow 5 forever, then stealth and run away with their tail tucked.

LionChain.7694:

Josh, I’m going to guess that you hate the concept of LOSing because you and your friends are usually the ones outnumbering other people. Because if you were someone who fought outnumbered fights where you are the one outnumbered by 2 to 1 or more, having stuff to LOS around is pretty important and pretty awesome, especially if you’re not on a class with lots of stealth/teleports/blocks/invulns/reflects, so I genuinely don’t understand why you or anyone who frequently gets outnumbered in fights would hate it.

Last week against Yaks Bend we were fighting 6 of us vs 15+ of them in towers and winning. Choke points are more important than LOS where you can just hide behind a tree and bounce out to press 1 lol. Putting them in a position where they have no where to run is what wins our fights a lot of times because they’re all bunched up taking all of our aoe damage.

Now in DBL, the towers were much larger, couldnt just run in to lords room and bomb and win – they could spread out or LOS behind a wall which ended up making them too spread out for us to do much more. So LOS in cases like that hurt way more than they help.

My group plays very aggressively if you haven’t already gathered that.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

That build is not even optimized.

Lower Steal CD (Sleight of Hand) is better than applying Confusion since Poison on Steal (DA: Serpent’s Touch) deals more damage thus picking Bewildering Ambush is a bad choice.

Pressure Striking is unnecessary, instead take Bountiful to deny them of any boon.

Using trapper rune makes Hidden Thief unnecessary. You’re better off using Leeching Venom and Venomous Aura and swap Tripwire with Spider Venom for more poison stacks.

Drop D/P for P/P since the stealth from D/P is not necessary when running with Trapper Rune.

Bodyshot can add another 5% Condition damage.

P/P Unload can stack might really fast that makes those Poison ticks hurt. Only use Unload to stack might — don’t spam it since it’s useless due to low Power.

Only drop the trap for stealth when necessary or to keep distance.

If you play it right, you can actually kill someone instead of just being an annoying troll.

Fixed Build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAqaVlsMhmnYbTwoJQ/EHyEFPH6hdQvnTRA43ixINA-TlyBABNqE0ONEYcIAA4EAIq6Plv/ABHJglfAAdp8jQ9BBAQASml5MDM0hO0hO0h2Mn5QH6MnZpAWUsF-w

Would the life steal causing actual damage instead of condition damage reveal you? I haven’t tried but that looks pretty solid aside from that.

And are trapper runes really worth while if you’re only running 1 trap?

Vieux P.1238:

back to the HOLE point.. despite mesmers still efficient under the hands of a skill player, the HOLE nerfs thing…., is just stupid. Can’t wait till we get the next best mmo. Or it’s back to WoW.

“Hole”, everyone. Not “whole” …. Your credibility just keeps fading away.

You can’t call anything else stupid while using the wrong word entirely. Have fun in WoW.

Inb4 another infraction for telling the truth.

Chris Barrett.3280:

Reminder: WvW deliberately doesn’t obey Daylight Savings Time changes.

Reset times in NA are currently 7pm/10pm PDT/EDT.

On November 6th, when US time zones (those that obey DST) resume their “Standard” times, it will look like 6pm/9pm PST/EST.

Or, more tersely, it is always 2am UTC year-round.

Extra note: I had to review this post about three times to get it all right. For being simple offsets, it’s amazingly easy to mess up timezone math.

As a developer myself, I don’t think it is too much to ask to write 3 lines of code to make reset times adhere to DST. 9PM EST year round would be significantly better.

LionChain.7694:

Teon.5168:

Yea, I understand what you’re trying to talk about, based on your other post on this same subject in these forums. But that OP of yours sounds more like larger mapped pvp to me.

Plus, adding more structures and such would just cause massive QQs from people complaining about LOS, obstructions, etc…..Anet already removed some obstructions and barriers in dbl due to playerbase complaints. And you want to add more back in?

It might fit your mode of playing wvw, but it would cause more problems with the majority of wvwers.

And fwiw, I really enjoy running in small havoc squads. Some more added obstructions, vegetation, etc., wouldn’t bother me at all. But that doesn’t mean most of the wvw playerbase would enjoy it.

The complaint was that the barriers in the DBL’s made it hard for roamers/havoc parties to move around, not that it interfered with their ability to fight. That’s why they were removed, not because people hate having stuff to LOS around. And if I’m not mistaken, the obstructions that were removed from the DBL’s were obstructions related to the complaint of map mobility, not on the quality of fights/ability to LOS.

Disagree. I hate having LOS stuff around me and I mainly roam and lead a small havoc group almost nightly. My whole guild hated DBL because there were no fights, took too long to find anyone and we were constantly running in to idiotic PvE LOS blocking walls.

Like someone else said above, if you get someone to commit to trying to fight you – you’ll generally end up killing them because they won’t know what to do about it. If they decide to run from you, you’re not going to do anything to them.

Mark.1679:

You asked for a vid.
This is how play. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3ALexKViaQ

Surviving pretty kitten good with my build. (I know it isnt my perspective since I dont record. But Its safe to assume that im always on tag.)

I start playing at 2:30 Since i have a life and cant play every raid

That isn’t really helpful if it isn’t from your perspective lol.

I didn’t find any of it to be really “hard”, but there was plenty that was annoying. I am also more of a “solo” player if I am doing PvE, I can’t have my WvW friends knowing that I am doing PvE so I must do it alone.

Kidding aside, soloing a lot of those hero points was either a major pain or just impossible. I did require help from map chat or from friends to complete a decent amount of the hero points from HoT areas, but I suppose it encourages group play and meeting people, which is what MMOs are traditionally about anyway.

#Beastgate #Magswag – These have been two of my favorite servers to be on for the fights. (And I don’t go blobbing around with the commanders, I roam..)

Elementalist

• Normalized the Conjurer trait’s aura duration by decreasing it from 5 seconds to 4 seconds.
• “Feel the Burn!”: The cooldown of this skill has been increased from 20 seconds to 25 seconds.
• “Flash-Freeze!”: The cooldown of this skill has been increased from 25 seconds to 30 seconds.

“Feel the Burn!” and “Flash-Freeze!” cooldowns nerfed.

I use both for roaming, not sure how bad it will hurt for the cooldown to be increased by 5 seconds. Means I have to wait 5 seconds longer for the extra regeneration, vigor, protection and condition clear from traits.

Skynet.7201:

THIS needs to be fixed before any further work on scoring. Seriously.

Inb4 they say “This is a quality of life thing, you guys decided on scoring so #GetRekt” like they did about those obnoxious popup messages that tell you when something was captured or claimed that we have no option to turn off.

Mark.1679:

“1 stack of stability for that 2 seconds is enough to get me through a line or a guardian LB5 and has saved me more times than not”

Yea but.. thats so innefficient. You kitten up your rotation and give people stab that might not even need it…

Earth is only a part of my rotation when I need magnetic aura or stability for front line. If I attune to earth, I’ll always use 4 for magnetic aura, 5 for the big aoe blinding, 2 then earth overload. It ONLY becomes a part of my rotation when I need it.

Mark.1679:

The extra invuln is needed because we are zerg busting. ever fought a 40 man HEAL group with 15 man? Those guys also know what to do and if you are bombing with your melee group you will not survive the bomb for 1 sec without the invuln.

We play on Aurora Glade.

The extra invuln is a crutch, I play without the extra invuln and have no issues surviving. I don’t know what life is like on EU servers, but on NA, the bombs are hard and the condis are everywhere.

Mark.1679:

Like I said previously. My build gives lots of burst/support. Why do you need CC when there are 4 gaurds allready pulling and warriors with hammer stuns. What this build brings is the insane amount of burst and the support of aura’s/heals. (Wash the pain away is insanely strong if coordinated correctly.)

I do think your build can work in a less organized group. If you cant rely on anyone for stab/cleanses or heals. And as long as you are not jumping into a 20 man backline from the opposing zerg.

You can’t have too many boons or too much CC on the field. Your build lacks the group support that makes front line ele viable to begin with. My group can tell the difference between if I am playing front line and if I am not because of how much extra regeneration, protection and vigor that I provide to them. One extra person playing a build with real support makes a world of difference.

Also, your build isn’t doing a whole lot more damage than mine to begin with. You lose out of all of the support to have an extra 10%~ or so damage.

Mark.1679:

“Your armor choice will not allow you to survive in the front line, your lack of stability will get you killed”

Im really curious why you would think that 1 stack of stab for 2 sec is the almighty thing that will help you… (and simultaniously say that harmonious conduit is bad)

1 stack of stability for that 2 seconds is enough to get me through a line or a guardian LB5 and has saved me more times than not. Harmonious Conduit IS bad compared to granting regeneration and vigor every time you apply an aura.

Mark.1679:

Im not going to argue with you about this or that. But apparently I can trust my driver and my gaurdians for the active defenses. (aside from obsidian flesh and mist form)

If you can trust your driver, then why do you need the extra invuln from focus? I trust my driver and I don’t need a second invuln. Oh wait, I actually AM the driver in a lot of cases when I am playing this. Guess I forgot to mention that to you too.

Mark.1679:

To anwser your qeustion about our group.
We play with 2 melee partys, 1 ranged and 1 focus party. Containing of 4 Gaurds/1 DF ele/1 Druid/2 Warriors. our ranged is 2 necros and 1 staff ele. Our focus is 2/3 thiefs and a mesmer.

So you’re playing with 20+ people generally, do you have any game play videos or stream? What server do you play on? I am playing on Blackgate on my main account and Fort Aspenwood (Borlis Pass) on my alt account. On Blackgate I lead a group of 5-8 people generally. On FA/BP I switch between playing front line and back line ele for a group of 15-20 people and some times lead that group as well.

Mark.1679:

We try to rely on each other for stability/heals. I have played this build for a long period now. Sure it is squishy and generally very hard to play. It also requires a lot of coordination to execute, but thats how we like to run.
Grabbing a build and play a mindless zero issue build is what every windowlicker can do.

But what exactly is the point in playing it??? You provide little to nothing to the front line because of the way you built your ele, you’re really not even doing a great deal of damage. Also because you opted to take Focus over warhorn, you just lost 2 CCs – one from air 4 and one from water 4. So you’re even more useless in the front line lol. The way you’re playing ele, you’d be a lot more useful to your group by just playing a selfish stance warrior. At least then you would have CC from hammer and more damage than your ele build.

http://asphyxia.tv/wvw-roaming-engineer/

That is the Scrapper build that a friend of mine roams with, it seems to be pretty strong.

Straegen.2938:

Josh XT.6053:

I would rather have the extra 250 power than energy and hydro. Draining also has no internal cooldown, so its an extra 1140 damage + 1023 heal every time it procs, if I interrupt 5 people, thats an extra 5700 damage on the field and 5115 heal to myself. That happens very frequently when I use air 3, air 4, air over load or water 4.

Based on our testing in WvW, Sigil of Draining is not working at all. It doesn’t put anything in the combat log of the attacker or the defender. It also stopped healing the attacker on interrupt. Hard to verify if it is damaging but best we can tell it is effectively doing nothing at the moment.

We tested it on 2 handed weapons and on single handed weapons in both hands. Just could not get it to proc no matter how many interrupts we tried.

Yeah I’ve heard that, I haven’t done any recent testing to see if its just a bug with the log or if it is actually just not working right now. I imagine it’ll get fixed soon if it isn’t working, I just don’t want to drop the sigil and have to go do more PvE to get another one lol.

Mark.1679:

I dont think you will ever survive in a zerg busting guild with this build though. (frontline ele that is).
The traits/gear/utilities are all over the place.

I have used this pretty heavily doing front line in groups of 15-20 people with very little issue.

Mark.1679:

I think full celestial is not the way to go in a zerg. Since the support/burst ele doesnt need any condi damage. its relies more on direct damage. Try to use zerker trinkets/weapons and cele gear. For that extra umppff.
Now with the extra power from your gear you can remove bloodlust en draining and replace it with Energy and hydro. (energy is a life saver and freaking OP, Hydro is a 2k opening burst. Ill explain the rotation below)

You would never survive in the front line with that armor combination and you’re underestimating the burning that this build pumps out as well. I would rather have the extra 250 power than energy and hydro. Draining also has no internal cooldown, so its an extra 1140 damage + 1023 heal every time it procs, if I interrupt 5 people, thats an extra 5700 damage on the field and 5115 heal to myself. That happens very frequently when I use air 3, air 4, air over load or water 4.

Mark.1679:

I myself prefer focus much more then warhorn simply because it provides way more utility, is way faster and overal has way better skills then the Warhorn.

Focus has literally no group support, it is a very selfish weapon and you lose out on heals as well.

Mark.1679:

Since you have a focus equipped now we can look at the traits.
You should never ever trait Rock solid. Please let the gaurdians in your group give you stab. the 1 stab for 2,5 sec isnt doing kitten. 33% reduction on the 2 best skills in the game (earth #4 and #5) however is amazing.

Guardians don’t put out perm stability, every front line player should have their own stability to save them from getting caught.

Mark.1679:

Powerfull aura is pretty good in this setup since you dont need to cleanse a lot of condis. So I would switch cleansing water. The gaurdians in your group cleanse enough with their skills anyway. If you stick tight to your guild driver you wont have any problems with condis ever. (you even got Earth #4 for a panic button to cleanse 3 condis on a 16! sec CD)

I don’t know when the last time you played front line was, but being condi bombed is a big problem in the front line. Aura share is a waste of a trait since they nurfed the durations of the auras as well. You’re much better off with cleansing waters because that is also more condi clear in the field as well.

Mark.1679:

The tempest line is pretty straight forward. I myself go for Harmonius conduit just for the extra damage. But I can see why people would want to go for the extra boons.

So you’re telling me you’d take 10% damage for a few seconds over permanent regeneration and vigor from Invigorating Torrents??? That means also when you give an aura from a utility that shares by default with allies, they miss out on regen, vigor and a condition clear lol…

Mark.1679:

The ulities are decent but I would switch aftershock for blink. Blink is a skill you can use both offensively and defensively. Aftershock is clunky and has a huge CD for the little effect it has. (Swirling winds on the bomb will give enough projectile hate anyway. And if you overload earth you give your party reflection as well. That and atleast 1 gaurd in your group has a wall anyway. Or a druid with staff.)

What groups do you play with?? lol.. Aftershock is a blast finisher as well as providing an aoe magnetic aura, which in my build also clears a condition from yourself and allies effected and grants regeneration and vigor to them. The way you want to build is too offensive and would never survive long enough in a front line.

Mark.1679:

You might even want to change flash freeze for either arcane wave or feel the burn. just because it will make your burst a lot harder since they are instant cast. But I think all 3 of them work fine. (flash freeze gives your party a little more damage reduction)

Give up 10% damage reduction and slowing down allies for a burn or extra crit??? I’m sorry but I am really questioning your ability to build right now.

Mark.1679:

Now we have ended up with this build.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFEQJAodn0XCVOgtMAeOAcYilNAjYFkCqAu71A7hd4BEAKgA-T1xHABsv/ATKBD4BAAwJAwL9A9o8LR1fCAgAcz2MAeuzduzduz5m38m38m3sUAMpMC-w

So you opted for almost no defensive and plan to play front line. This build might be OKAY for roaming, but in a larger group situation, this build would fail you more often than not. You also have protection on aura trait, but only have 2 auras that you will share aside from overloads.

Mark.1679:

This all said, D/F ele can even double blast smoke in the beginning of the fight. You want to start in water for this. use water 3 and 5 and switch to fire when you smoked.

D/W has water 3 and earth 4 for blasts as well. I also have aftershock. Auras are also the bread and butter of my build, you giving them up is for the utilities you took is baddddd.

Honestly, no offense – but your build is really bad and I’ve been down that road before. I have been theory crafting and actually playing front line ele for almost a year now and my build has probably changed 500 times, this build that I listed for you all here is the end result of a lot of testing for a lot of time while actually playing WvW.

Focus is easier to play with than warhorn, sure – but it isn’t better, any baddie can run in with earth 5 on to just be invuln for awhile to survive. It is not even close to as good as warhorn for the utility and support. Your armor choice will not allow you to survive in the front line, your lack of stability will get you killed, you don’t have enough healing to survive or assist your front line members. You’re barely supporting your team, you’d be better off playing a stance warrior if you think that your build is actually doing anything in the front line. Your whole set up is selfish and would be much better used for roaming than front line, and even for roaming, it isn’t going to be able to beat my ele in a fight because it won’t be able to survive the damage I put out or damage me enough.

What ever group you’re playing with is carrying you and you’re bringing literally nothing but an extra body to the group if you’re playing the build you posted. Front line is about synergy, if you aren’t sharing boons and supporting your fellow front line members, you might as well just be a stance warrior – at least the warrior will do more damage and live longer than what your build is going to.