Guild Wars 2

Arobain.8274:

another elitist thats judging the elite spec before seeing the live stream, how unoriginal of you, GG

Its pretty obvious that the tempest spec could have been better.

The design in general is pretty flawed, Ele is forced to stay for a good 20-25 seconds in one attunement while having horrible cooldowns on every single spell he has.

Not to mention that ele’s didn’t get new 1-2-3’s but they still use the old weapons, which don’t really fit with the tempest playstyle.

Reason for that is that the old weapons are based on the traditional playstyle of blowing cooldowns and switching attunement, but instead they combine that with the tempest who has to stay in one atunnement for a long time, kind of contradicting playstyles in one.

I feel like they had to make an additional weapon with the warhorn that would have provided low cooldown 1-2-3 spells, to compensate for being stuck in one attuenemnt for 30 seconds and synergize with the playstyle, but well, guess not.

After watching the video i feel like Tempest forces you to stay too much in one attunement while the base of our elementalist, skills 1-2-3 are still the same old ones you need to rotate quickly through.

I don’t know how this will play out, but it feels like you are going to be just running around with cooldowns blown waiting for your overcharge and doing nothing really useful.

Also the cooldowns on warhorn are pretty nasty, a good 25-30 seconds on each spell, which translates into a lot of waiting and downtime aswell.

Doesn’t feel like this Tempest spec is very well sychronized, i think they had to give us a new 1-2-3 with low cooldown to compensate for being forced to stay in the same attunement for too long, to be able to do something atleast.

So much for the sword we were expecting.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Lawful.5314:

It might have been moved to the tempest line but i doubt, it was likely removed entirely.

Alas the trait was moved to Guardians so I doubt we’ll get it back with Tempest.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Perfect_Inscriptions

That sucks, i really liked the signet builds with that trait.

Now there is no reason to use signet builds anymore, again.

Well, the more i read about the changes, the more i think this is a step into the right direction.

I would love to see burning be a viable source of damage, instead of just an annoying lingering condition, as it was in the past.

However if its too strong, then surely they will have to done it down a bit, but i would love to see more builds focused around burning and not direct damage.
And as someone said, since elementalist only has burning condi and other classes have 3-4 damage conditions, i would like to see that burning do a considerable enough amount of damage by itself to compete against those classes aswell.

Glenstorm.4059:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

While probably a bit too good, the burning changes are the single thing that made condi eles playable now. I really hope that when they nerf it (which they will/must) that they think of us (and Guardians) too: we only really can stack burning, no other damaging condition so we SHOULD comparable damage with burning alone when specced for condis compared to classes like engi and necro that can bomb you with 4 different damage condis.

Also all those ~10k burning ticks you see in videos are only available in pve with food and sinister gear… both not available in pvp which has lower stats anyway overall.

Agreed. Before this patch, condi eles were a joke/novelty. Now they’re actually viable, and it’s only because of how good burning is. A knee-jerk over-nerf would kill this newly viable play style. Not good for diversity.

Pure condi ele weren’t great however hybrids that focused on covering conditions like bleed/burning/torment while having the proper power builds, were actually really strong, i used to run one of those and it did much better than d/d cele, however not as much survivability, still enough.

So, i haven’t been playing GW2 for a few months now and i noticed they changed how Conditions work, and isntead of burning stacking in duration and lasting longer, letting you rotate through all 4 of your attunements and still be able to keep the target burning until you get back to fire.

Now they just run out faster but stack in intensity, how does this look for you guys?

Are the changes for the better or worse? Is burning useless or even better now despite not lasting?

I think D/D got nerfed quite a bit, i’ve played GW today after not playing a while and i got destroyed in 1v1 by a Staff ele , while running the old D/D cele meta.

Firegrab always was more of a timed skill to learn to use, people will get used to the changes eventually.

It might have been moved to the tempest line but i doubt, it was likely removed entirely.

Makes me sad aswell because Fire Aura Signet build was my favorite build as of recently, or atleast when i was last playing (Few months ago).

The build was great for both WvW and PvP and i thought would be the new meta, eventually when more people discover its awesomeness, but alas i guess it won’t.

Kodiak.3281:

CETheLucid.3964:

Lawful.5314:

Well, personally i think this whole specialization thing is bull, because what is the point of specializing, when you can swap specializations at any time out of combat, like weapons?

It should have been more permament, like, if you pick a specialization, then to change it, you would have to do a long and annoying quest plus pay a lot of mats and gold in the process to reset it.
Kills the whole meaning of “Specialization”.

o_O

No, thank you.

If how they’re going to do it is the exact opposite of what you suggest, where I can swap it freely, I’ll be quite pleased with that myself.

If you watch the vid I linked with the dev talking about it you can swap freely as much as you want so long as you’re out of combat.

I know, still stands to reason what i said.

Would like something more permament to define your choice, than being able to just swap out of combat and become a druid or a shaman, every next fight.

Atleast a system like in Rift would have been keen, where you would have to go to the trainer NPC and pay a bit of gold to reset your current specialization.

I mean, specializations themselves make no sense then, not sure why go through the trouble of adding them, if its the same as just changing your weapon.

Logic, there was no need for specializations when you need to get out of combat to change weapons, and specialization, when you could have just directly equipped the new weapon spec.

rotten.9753:

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/December-10th-Elementalist-changes/page/7#post3150470

I think I’ve been here too long

10% is still 10%.
4 times 10% isn’t 40%.
Math is simple.

Pretty sure its 10%, and pretty sure its 40%.

The game doesn’t multiply 10%x10%x10%, it just adds them up to 30% then multiplies your damage rating from there.

Supreme.3164:

One thing I certain, sword and d/d ele will cover different roles.
A sword ele may prove to be a mele debuffer kick kitten ….at the very least we can start saving all those amazing sword skins we’ve seen so far ^^

Well, i want to use Twilight on my Elementalist :<

Pls anet ._.

Supreme.3164:

You may be right…but a wrong attitude won’t help eles out of the d/d meta.
In the beginning people were laughing at you for running d/d on ele over s/f…and look now, as I’ve stated in my post above, a sword ele will bring something completely different to the table and to compare it to d/d in terms of number is simply wrong

For all we know sword ele will give the profession , a way to strip boons, gain resistance and maybe slow or taunt.

I don’t do D/D Cele meta anyways, so i wouldn’t really care anyways, lol
I mean, if the sword spec is good, people are going to run that, as easy as that, nothing else to say really, have to wait and see.

But i mean, sure would be great to see some Wu-Tang sword techniques given to the elemtanlist and have different elemental swords, a sword covered with fire in the fire attunement, ice in the ice one, ect.

And as things are and people posting so many skills in each attunement swap, sword might be actually a 2hander, as in, you won’t be able to equip focus or dagger in the other hand? As in, we’re just going to be going around with just one one-handed sword.

sorrychief.2563:

shorter range autos = more damage more soft cc more gap closers more survivability?

Can’t really say for now, if we go by previous elementalist balance, i wouldn’t expect too much.

Diva.1476:

At the end it comes down to preferences for certain traits, yes! However, using scholar runes is not as good as pack tbh, I do Solo Qs and I know how much pack could give to my team mates for overall better dps.

You should name the thread, “Pack Mentality: The Elementalist’s Hunt Begins!”

lel

Well, personally i think this whole specialization thing is bull, because what is the point of specializing, when you can swap specializations at any time out of combat, like weapons?

It should have been more permament, like, if you pick a specialization, then to change it, you would have to do a long and annoying quest plus pay a lot of mats and gold in the process to reset it.
Kills the whole meaning of “Specialization”.

If theres one thing thats bugging me, its that in sPvP with Celestial we have 29.66%, its not 30% anymore so it keeps bugging me . uuuggghhh

But yeah, i would see how that 15% loss of crit is annoying, we used to have close to 60% in PvE while being underleveled, now we are barely over 40% , which limits the amount of crits quite drastically.

Then again, like i said previously, i’m not too worried about lower level performance because elementalist is always great to have in any group, and i never liked doing solo dungeons and you shouldn’t be allowed to do that with any class or gear.

Purple Miku.7032:

Guys, the damage nerf is in areas where you are downscaled.

This change should have arguably done a year ago when ferocity was first implemented because then there wouldn’t have really been the need to further nerf anything else, such as might/warrior weapon skills etc.

The nerf is across the board and affects everyone regardless of what class played and you will notice a drastic decrease in efficacy in places such as AC, CM, etc. Your crit chance is utter trash compared to what it used to be and your power is capped much lower to narrow the gap between a person actually at that level and a person being downscaled.

This is why it might actually be optimal to use assassin armor in some of the areas that you are downscaled in where it’s easy to achieve the maximum power without having power primary on your gear attributes.

However in level 80 areas berserker will still remain supreme.

And yes, Arenanet carelessly excluded this fairly significant change from the patch notes.

You are actually right, i lost around 15% crit rate and maybe a bit of power, doesn’t seem like my HP took a hit, survivability seems the same.

Well generally, i still almost one-shot stuff in the lower content, compared to how hard it was to kill stuff when i was of that level, while leveling, still a breeze in all, nothing to really worry about.

Are we getting multiple specialization choices tho and will they be permaent and unable to undo?

Thaddeus.4891:

I guess Purple Miku talk about the scaling change that nerf for about 10-15% our damage in low level dungeon. I don’t think it will change build since it’s the scaling that changed, but who know.

I don’t think i would ever care about damage in PvE, especially not in lower level content.

Elementalist will always be useful in PvE, no matter how much damage he deals.

EDIT: Besides there is nothing of that sort mentioned in the March 16 patch, and even if that happens, doesn’t that mean that everyone will be affected by that change?

Purple Miku.7032:

Either staff or d/f.

There is a chance the best stats/trait point allocations may change due to the huge damage nerf today, so be mindful of that.

Prior to today’s update the best trait point allocations for staff were:

66002, 64202, 64220, and in rare circumstances 66200 when you won’t be using meteor shower and the boss dies fast enough for tempest defense to be worthwhile. 64004 for when you need renewing stamina + blasting staff.

For d/f the trait point allocations are 66002 or 66200 depending on whether or not you need renewing stamina.

What huge damage nerf? All they changed this patch was things related to stability, nothing else was changed, wat?

MaXi.3642:

Dennis.3068:

Devildoc.6721:

The specialization is what enables people to use the new weapon.

Source???

https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/en#section-specializations

“With profession specializations, you’ll unlock access to a weapon previously unavailable to your profession”

no specialization = no new weapon

If the sword weapon is melee, i sure hope the Specialization will bring extra innate survivability to the class, aka increase its HP Pool, its Toughness, Armor rating, ect.

Playing Engi i assume is like playing Heimerdinger, i can see why you became lazy ;<

Anyways.

Your traits are random, feels like you combined PvE with PvP traits, while mixing in sets.
Rarely anyone runs 6 fire in PvP, and 6 Air is usually for fresh air zerker builds.

1. The Fire VIII trait is rarely used because most builds run 4~6 water, which is where the condition removal comes from, ether renewal is generally a bad healing spell because it takes too long to channel and the healing is mediocre. But because it takes over 3 seconds to cast, you’ll probably take around the same damage back that you tried healing up, since you can’t do anything else while its in motion.

2. Yes the fury stacks from consecutive blasts, but it isn’t used in PvP, because you have enough fury generation from Zephyr’s boon and Arcane 1.

3. Fire 6 is redundant actually.

4. Air XIII is never used aswell, people will dodge your CC, or stun break it, thus limiting the amount of damage you can deal with that passive, Fresh air is much, much more valuable, in that trait line.

5. No, those are our only stun break options and most elementalist runs atleast one of them, celestial DD builds run both all the time – our survivability is limited so use of defensive cantrips is never a bad idea.

6. Personal preference mostly, some like FGS for increased mobility and ability to just get out of a zerk fast, others like the extra damage the elemental summons can bring to the table.

For D/D builds rotations could be slightly different, what i personally used to use was:
(L)2-3-4-5>(F)3>2>4>(E)D>33>(W)3>2 > Repeat

Personal preference, you can mix whatever you wish, but the basic fury and might generation combo is Fire Field, then Earth dodge roll + 4, then Water 3.
Every now and then you can instead do the Fire Field , then Earth dodge roll > Earth 4, then Earth 3 for extra fury.
If you keep alternating between magnetic pull and might stacking, you should be able to have unlimited fury, theoretically, in reality tho, your magnetic pull won’t come off as often.

As for armors and runes, rune of strength is probably one of the more frequently used ones, but people use all sorts of runes and armor combinations in WvW, look around different threads and builds – you’ll find people running soldier, zerker, celestial, ect , or a mix of either of those.
So It all comes down to preference and experience.

EDIT: I would suggest just going into sPvP and trying out different builds for Elementalist for a few hours to get a feel for it, try out Zerker builds with fresh air, try out Celestial builds, try out soldier builds, ect.

Used to be, not anymore, guess they are just lazy to edit manually.

FrownyClown.8402:

0 30 0 20 20 .

Umm, you probably haven’t been playing recently.

FrownyClown.8402:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAoYhcMacW0wsBd0APAC5hv2JKQ5qJfC-TViBABA8AA04EAMz+DYp8QU1fKTJYN6A4SJ2JaBIFg5CtA-w

This would probably be a bit better for celestial as far as stats go. the main reason people go celestial in wvw is the extra crit damage while being able to also have healing power/vitality/toughness.

In general, your builds have too much vitality and not enough toughness. You can take off probably 2.5k vitality and still be okay since you can get those from guard stacks.

You should try taking 2 out of air and putting it into earth for elemental shielding. You will lack on the swiftness unless you get pack runes if you do this.

Lastly, the condition damage is kind of a waste in wvw you are right, however the healing power on an ele is never a waste. 400 healing power is a good base for wvw.

Don’t look at traits, i’m just comparing gear, and i usually run 2 air in any build, for the fury generation.

@Kodiak and its mostly solo roaming, i don’t do objectives very often.

So, basically i kept looking at Celestial, and the couple of less useful stats kept bugging me, specifically healing power and condi damage.

Oh by the way, this is purely for WvW.

So i’ve been messing around with the build builder and went for a balance between soldier/zerker then compared that to clean celestial.

So in the end, the stats are about the same, amount wise, but you lose out on some healing power and condi damage, while getting an abundant amount of extra power for it.

Celestial, not really worth it in WvW?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAoYhcMacW0wsBd0APAC5hv2JKQ5qJfC-TliBABA8AA04EAMz+DYp8gNdATqiTZKBtSJGlqHciWASBonQL-w (Mixed soldier/berserk)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAoYhcMacW0wsBd0APAC5hv2JKQ5qJfC-TViBABA8AA04EAMz+DYp8gNdAiq+TZKBtSJ2JaBIFgeCtA-w (Celestial armors)

Your thoughts?

Fuzzion.2504:

Builds come in a variety. You can get close to 3k power with might and stacks, 22+k HP, 3k armour with 60% crit 200%crit damage and waste most enemies.

My advice is not to follow the meta. The meta works for pvp but for wvw you can easily do better.

Mix it up, dont be afraid to die and make sure your mouse comes with atleast 5 buttons

But not all the of the above at once, you get those numbers by pushing to the extreme 2-3 particular stats.

You can’t have that HP and armor if you want to have high crit and ferocity.
You can’t have high crit and ferocity if you want to have that high HP and Armor.

Well, you get the point, you have to sacrifice everything in a few particular stats, to get the others high enough.
With 22k HP 2600 Armor, 2000 power, you will have like 5% crit and 150% ferocity.

And vice versa, with 70% crit and 210% ferocity, you’ll end up having like 13k hp and 1700 armor.

Or you can mix everything and have a balanced medium.
Like 33% crit, 180% ferocity, 18k hp and 2300 power, with 2300 armor.

Some people run Zerker for WvW, others run celestial, others have a mix of either, or soldier gear.

To each his own choice, some like being a bit more durable, while others rely entirely on their damage and awareness.

Nebiros.4801:

I agree with Lawful reading through this to be bad on an ele you have to be bad. Easily the best class in this game by far and if you are having problems with it lol it is 100% your fault. This class is bar none the most dominant in wvw BY A LONG WAYS. When I read anything negative about this class I honestly start laughing. IF you have even a remote clue what you are doing 3v1 is truely nothing. Go d/d close your eyes pick some skills and go slaughter in wvw. The fact this class has not been nerfed into the ground is only because the skill level. So, good players make this class look like you are exploiting they make it look so effortless killing people.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying that 1v3 is easy.
Even 1v2 is hard if the two people you are fighting aren’t newbies.
1v1 against a equally skilled player, is a 50/50 aswell.

Don’t overglorify the class.

Honestly, elementalists are like one of the less played classes in GW2, and i have met very few good elementalists, most of them are just like 2013, free kills.

Ditch your gear, buy lv80 rare (gold) quality berserker armors and weapons from the auction house, they are cheap and it’ll improve your stats by quite a lot.

Personally i ran staff on my Elementalist while leveling in PvE up to 80 and even from there, i still prefer staff, for the awesome aoe clear, besides that fire on staff has constant high dps anyways.

What i’ve ran is, anything that works, and because of that, i’ll say that you are facing a l2p problem.
Traits in PvE? Anything is fine.
Utilities in PvE? Whatever you feel comfortable with.

You are already running arcane and water for survivability, but problem is that you just need to learn to avoid getting damage on yourself , kite, use all your CC the staff provides, run around in circles, summon your elite elemntal to take the heat off you, stay behind NPC’s and your group members.

Well, you get the idea.

TomoHawkx.8139:

aspirine.6852:

This looks like a terrible roaming build. You almost go down on one player, imagine a camp vet jumping in. Or in some cases even a deer can kill you
Very brave to be roaming with this build imo.

Roaming isn’t all “Build Wars 2” as people seem to think it is. If you play right its fairly easy to stay alive, manage your cooldowns and be aware of your surroundings.
And of course a full zerker thief is gonna hit a full zerker ele hard. Focus offers a lot of utility and FGS gives you mobility, while scepter does good damage.
There are way squisher builds out there that you can roam with (66002 S/D or S/F) and still be viable.

I’ve changed my entire perspective of the Elementalist class in a few months of playing it.

And what i can actually say is that, even if you make a random build, but you are an experienced Elementalist, things will work out, you can throw random traits that don’t match completely, and still do really well in WvW.

So yeah, this isn’t “Build Wars 2” , just learn to play your elementalist and know the basic rotations on the weapons you like using.

MadRabbit.3179:

Don’t make it.
I made a set and it is my only regret.

All for a marginal stat increase and some minor bonuses that will amount to nothing when you venture into a non-80 zone and get downleveled.

This is pretty much the main reason why i don’t make ascended gear, i would rather have two-three sets of exotic 80ties for WvW and PvE that i can swap at will, than heavily invest into one set.

Ascended gear is really not that great stat wise, the increase is marginal and you won’t be feeling it, but the effort to make those, is substantially harder and costly, compared to just making a 20g exotic set of your wishes.

TomoHawkx.8139:

Lawful.5314:

Did i mention the music is great? I laughed quite a bit and it fits the Asura perfectly.
I can imagine little Asura’s singing that in the background in suits and with tall stage mic’s on sticks xD

EDIT: Btw one suggestion: ditch Arcane Blast for Earth Signet, will make landing your fire combo that much easier with the immobilize, and the bleed will replace the little burst Arcane Blast provides.

Yeah I try to make the music upbeat and happy in most of the videos because it suits the playstyle and character well :P

I’ve actually considered using Earth Signet, the passive and active are very strong and it would certainly help land some of the various combos, I’ll definitely give it a shot.

If there is only one downfall for using signet of earth, its that it has around 1s casting time, thus you can’t just throw it in whenever you feel like arcane blast, but what you can do, is start casting it then swap atunements and use instant spells while its casting, like swap to air, then Air 2 for example.
But the with that said, the signet brings just so much to the table, its a great chasing tool, and preparational tool for your fire 2-3-4 combo aswell, even for water 2-4-5, you name it.
And unlike the more important signets, like air or fire, when you pop it without written in stone, you don’t lose that much of anything since it only gives a bit of toughness, so you never have to think twice about using it.

Its not a perma chill, but around 21 seconds out of 25, unless your glyph procs as it should, which doesn’t happen all the time and if you overstay in water, you miss out both on damage and cooldowns on other attunements.

Tho it lacks critical, this looks pretty appealing to try out, seems to have huge survivability.

Did i mention the music is great? I laughed quite a bit and it fits the Asura perfectly.
I can imagine little Asura’s singing that in the background in suits and with tall stage mic’s on sticks xD

EDIT: Btw one suggestion: ditch Arcane Blast for Earth Signet, will make landing your fire combo that much easier with the immobilize, and the bleed will replace the little burst Arcane Blast provides.

KaporHabakuk.6219:

You seem strugling in 1v1,not that much dps,but still squishie,no movement abils.I mean as solo roamer,i always equip myself to be ready to fight outmanned “not always win” and to counter anything i can meet and ready to run,when red tide comes for me.

Its a l2p problem, at first when i started playing elementalist over a month ago, i couldn’t understand how people even ran zerker gear, everyone would literally two-shot me, with time you get better and more experienced and the fights that you would have lost in the past, you can survive.

But sure, there will be times when you cant even react as zerker and you get downed instantly. Aka example with that thief in the video.

Also what you need to keep in mind is that in WvW, not everyone has the same gear as in sPvP, some people will be super easy to kill.

And not that much dps? You must have missed the parts in the video where he would melt a person in under 2 seconds when his combo was executed properly.

I don’t have much experience with staffs in sPvP, but here are my two cents, from what i’ve personally experienced.

1. Ether renewal is very situational, long channel time, the healing isn’t that great – most of the time, when you are trying to heal in the middle of combat, you will just get poked for the same amount it is healing you, or even more, ending up with no healing at all.
For staff i’d probably use Harmony, or Brilliance, depending if you want to stack some might for your team.
2. You are running zerker but focusing on survivability cantrips, see the contradiction?
Staff is not a damage dealing weapon, sure you will get some huge damage in every now and then, but its inconsistent because it depends whenether your opponent is smart enough to stand in your aoe circles long enough or not.
I would suggest running Celestial and changing your build up to 6/6 water/arcane and earth in general if you want to run staff effeciently.
3. For zerker staff? ice bow.
4. Yes, limited use on staff, aka just a move around spell or escape out of focus card.
5. Cyclone…i’ve used it twice and i’ve never seen anyone use it, so yeah , i dont think so.

Alright, now that i’ve answered your questions here is what you really need to know.

Staff, dont use it if you are a beginner.
Yeah, sucks to hear but its true, staff is hard to use, and it will take you a while before you actually make a difference with staff in real sPvP.
You need a good knack for it, have to predict what the enemy will do to put your lava font on the right spot, or all your other aoe’s, with Meteor its another story since the area is so huge, but with your other spells, you will be missing them a lot.

Zerker staff is very squishy, and it doesn’t do as much damage as you think it does, Scepter is way more potent if you want to just play a burst class.
With staff, you’d want to run 6water6arcana and stay with another person ALL the time until you get better and focus on supporting them and your team, because your ability to 1v1 or hold a point is very, and i mean very limited and skill based. I would probably assume that with staff, you are losing most of your 1v1 fights, if not all of them.
Yeah it takes time to get better at it, let alone be capable to win against someone in 1v1 with staff.

Generally, what i would suggest for starting elementalists, is to run D/D celestial meta build at first, because its the easiest build to run and it is very forgiving to mistakes, with its high sustain.
You goofed up and took too much damage? Go into water and heal up to full hp, try again.

Anyways yeah, because staff was fun and easy-peasy in PvE, doesn’t mean it’ll be like that in PvP, but you should have realized that by now. In fact, staff is the most difficult weapon to use in PvP.

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

Looking at the skill description when you have Blasting staff it says both have radius of 180.

While 180 radius seems big for Lava Font I had no idea (not even visual) that Fireball had the same area of impact.

Is the skill description true?

Probably true, i mean fireball has a explosion with the 180 radius when it hits the target, damanging everyone around that target, and might be very well true that the explosion is the size of the lava font.

Bitty.1409:

it’s one of the most underused weapons in the game.

No kidding, some people PM me after sPvP and ask me what weapon i killed them with.

Combos are very important part of the Elementalist class, so yeah, you have to learn them sooner or later.

The might you are getting is probably from eruption/arcane blast+ lava font.

To combine combos, you have to use a “Blast Finisher” on a “Combo Field”.

So look up every skill description on the weapons you are using, then see if you can combo something with something, keep in mind that Combo Fields don’t last forever, so you need to manage to squeeze all your stuff into those timers.

Eruption is the only Combo Finisher Blast type available to the staff weapon, as far as i remember.
And only Fire Fields are able to produce Might stacks, other fields will produce different effects.

In total there are 3 types of finishers that you can execute on Fields, to get special combos and those are: Blast Finishers , Projectile Finishers and Leap finishers.

Blast finishers on fire, produce might stacks.

With a staff, eruption + lava font, will produce 3 might stacks, IF you are standing near the lava font when it erupts.

Then out of our arcan spells, Arcan Blast has a blast finisher aswell, which you can pop ontop of eruption, so that makes it 6 stacks.

Then the thing that you missed, is probably that Dodge rolls don’t do anything, unless you have the Evasive Arcana trait, which requires 6 in Arcane.
With that trait, when you dodge roll, you get a different effect depending what attunement you are in.

When you are in earth, you would get a blast finisher on the place your dodge ended, thats why the dodge roll to blast fields is mentioned in some builds.

So what you would have to do is, Burning Retreat >Eruption > Dodge Foward > Arcane Wave > Arcane Brilliance.

Arcane brilliance is also a heal, that has a blast finisher, which you can pop might with too, but you can replace that with Elemental healing, which if used in fire, also gives might anyways.

So that’s it for staff might stacking, i mean you can poke and prod and get better results if you time your might stacking with staff, but i wouldn’t bother too much with it until 80.

Diva.1476:

aww looks like you didn’t read my 1st post clearly. I’m super bored of all such d/d celestial meta builds and all. Also, if you notice in my signature, you will see my own Scepter/ Focus condi signet build. I wanted to try some zerk builds now for a change. For now, I’m gonna stick to S/F fresh air build only and hoping to get some more variations in upcoming expansions. Thanks for your comment, though

Well, as for Zeker builds, i ran this http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArYhcMKb25wuBfEBEACpkBDkY0MxXKVB-TJBFwACOBA02foaZAAPAAA
for a while, it was a blast.

But it had no condi clear, so it was mostly a get in and not get out kinda build, but it would put down tons of hurt before kneeling over.

Good stuff, but lol that guardian was so bad.
And it was funny how that thief almost every time at start would one-shot you.

Diva.1476:

Lawful.5314:

Personally i don’t think that Scepter Air is really good, its actually probably the worst attunement, so i steer away from using Air on scepter/focus at all, unless everything else is on CD or i need to pop some projectiles, or knock someone down, but the damage it provides is well..bad.
But i mean, whatever you feel like is great for you.

Fair enough! But what would you suggest going then for a good DPS ele build now a days? Staff ele is too slow to go offensively, D/D zerk is not easy nor wise to play lol. In context of zerk/ direct damage builds, we are hardly left with any options, right?

There are actually lots of builds nowadays that you can try.

Theres the popular D/D Celestial build, with 6 water 6 arcane
Might stacking is a must in this build because the raw power isn’t that high, but overall strong build with high sustain.
Probably easiest build to play aswell, because it is very forgiving.

Then theres Celestial Signet builds aswell, with 6 in earth, 4 in fire and the rest whereever you feel like.
You can run D/F , S/F, D/D in those builds aswell, anything is fine as long as you feel comfortable with it.

My personal favorite is S/F Signet build, very solid build, less healing than the meta D/D Cele build, but you take less damage overall.

Anyways, Zerker builds are not very viable in sPvP, or PvP in general for Elementalist because we are way too squishy, and the slightest mistake, will cost you your life, sometimes even if you don’t make mistakes, you will still die to some random burst from a hunter you didn’t notice in time.
Almost all the decent builds run Celestial amulet, so go with that, then run in which direction is more comfortable for you.

Personally i don’t think that Scepter Air is really good, its actually probably the worst attunement, so i steer away from using Air on scepter/focus at all, unless everything else is on CD or i need to pop some projectiles, or knock someone down, but the damage it provides is well..bad.
But i mean, whatever you feel like is great for you.

Turbulence, that must be it, right?

MightyMicah.7451:

Man…do you know of any free recording software? Maybe I can put together one video before I leave. This guide would have meant so much more if I had a video to back it up with.

Mmm i used to record with BandiCam, i’m not sure its still free, but you should look it up.

MightyMicah.7451:

I have the same experience with over 1k hours spent on Ele. I was hoping to be shown the courtesy of at least a few minutes testing what I’ve put a year’s time and effort into fine tuning. However, if others wish to scrap the build before trying it, that’s fine with me. Their loss.

I just thought I’d share this for anyone willing to think outside the box.

Well if you go as far as saying that, i’ll check your build out, as soon as i get a bit of PvP time.

Focus offhand destroys rangers, otherwise you will have to outplay them with D/D or other builds.

Hmm, don’t know , would have to try this build to see what it actually represents, since you didn’t provide a sPvP video to back it up, but as far as i can see, that you run Focus in your off-hand, really limits the opening burst you can leash out on people, because you would have to open with Buning speed, which is never a great idea. unless you can time a good gale out of air first.

A lot of your build, seems like very situational, i might be wrong but, here let me point out why i think so:

1. Your fury generation is very limited, you skipped Arcane 1, which is a large chunk of fury generation in builds that require high amount of attunement hopping , like the dagger weapon.
You only have 2 fury generation bubbles (3 with magnetic pull combo) which generate only 5 seconds of fury each, and have high cooldown, so in total you would probably get 15 seconds of in a 40 second cd rotation, more or less.
You can’t maintain fury at all times, like the more popular builds.

2. The damage bonus generation of your build is very unstable, you seem to mention 60% somewhere ,but i just can’t seem see where you get those numbers from.
You run 6 earth, which gives you 10% as long as you dont dodge, then 10% from water while being above 90% threshold, and 10% from being closer than 600 range.
So basically, only 10% out of these damage increasers, is stable, because after your initial burst which provides you 20-30% (depending if they didn’t start damageing you before you jumped in and you are over 90% hp).
After you jump in, you will want to dodge, unless you just want to get deleted by focus, so you lose the 10% from earth, and your HP is probably already under 90% , because you said that the problem of your build is healing, so you can’t maintain high health, and you end up with only 10% damage.
We won’t even talk about your 20% extra damage from air when the target is low hp because you won’t even remotely closely get a target to 30% with your initial burst.

So yeah, i don’t know where that 60% comes from, unless its very, VERY sitational that you run into battle against a target with 20% hp while you are fresh out of base.

3. Lack of vigor, you run 5 earth for the extra damage, but you have no vigor generation, you can see yourself where is the flaw in that combination, unless you don’t plan on dodging, ever.

4. Condi clear? Where is it? You have literally no condi clear, and being an elementalist that will wreck you almost every PvP , just earth 4 every 25 seconds is not enough for condi clear.

5. Your overall stats, are very low, 1400 power? With a 20-30% increase which is very situational? Yeah i dont know.

6. Might, your might generation is horrible with this build, celestial builds work, because they compensate with might stacking but you don’t have that there.
You go F4, then W3 and E4, which gives you 6 stacks and thats it, that is your whole might generation combo on a cooldown of 25 seconds, with no might boon duration increasers, so yeah, you can’t get might with this build.

There are probably more flaws i can point in this build, but you should get it by now where i’m coming from.

But i mean, by all means try and get up a un-cropped sPvP video in full lenght, where you show us the ups and downs of your build.