Guild Wars 2

So I play a 0/0/2/6/6 staff build with Celestial/Beserkers gear mix in WvW, Silverwastes and dungeons/fractals with non-expert players.

The thing about staff it is basically designed for dealing damage to large groups and supporting your team with an abundance of combo fields, healing abilities and CC.

As such, you get it broken down into one of two builds…

- Some variation of X/X/X/6/6 for a team support role with celestials.
- Some variation of 6/6/X/X/X for dealing massive amounts of damage by camping fire with beserkers.

The reason the dmg dealing version of staff doesn’t get used in sPvP is, because 5v5 is too small of a scale to capitalize on your AoE and most of your abilities are easy to dodge out of or even walk out of. You also have to camp fire to really do heavy damage with staff and if you get pressured, you will have to swap out.

sPvP isn’t like PvE where you can just can camp fire, dodge properly and deal heavy aoe dmg to mobs too stupid to dodge out. It’s also not like a WvW zerg where you have a target rich environment to hit stuff with your AoEs and plenty of teammates around you with blast finishers to capitalize on your all your combo fields.

So when staff does get used in sPvP, it’s typically the X/X/X/6/6 variation and serves one main purpose: controlling points via bombarding the point with all your AoEs to keep enemies off them and staying alive via your powerful sustain abilities until your teammates can arrive to support you. The nature of fighting over a small point and thus, being constrained to a small area, actually makes your AoEs effective.

Now with all that said, you can do all that with X/X/X/6/6 D/D and still actually brawl in 1v1, which is why it ends up being the most popular sPvP choice.

Also, the slot skill selections in the editor are just my general setup.

I tend to alter them based on need and rotate between….

Arcane Wave,
Ice Bow,
Mist Form,
Cleansing Fire,
Lightning Flash,
Earth Armor
and sometimes Glyph of Storms if I am in a WBT train.

Glyph of Elementals is just the standard go to for different situations. Fire elemental for more dps, earth elemental when I need a really stupid bunker.

Fiery Great Sword gives great mobility and Tornado has some tactical value in certain scenarios.

If you are serious about supporting your team while still maintaining some good dps, then you want to go staff.

I run a staff support build all the time in both PvE and WvW, because it’s great in silverwastes, it makes pugs more forgiving while still being a dps contributor if you are running with pros and its pretty much your job as an elementalist in WvW

Here is my personal build. It’s a variation of the staff backline meta build from meta battle WvW.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWnMISLDW9AGOAdEGIEII/0cNKocd5KA-TBSGABA8AAAZ/hHV/RKlgDp0LKlBkpDwgLAAA-e

So some general notes about how to play this…

- Superior Sigil of Might on your staff, because you are going to camp fire for dps, making it a better choice than Superior Sigil of Battle.

- Superior Sigil of Energy, because if you are dodging, it means you are pressured and if you are pressured, you are mostly likely going to swap to water or earth, thus triggering the energy refill.

- Superior Runes of Might, because Might is the key to your dps.

- Arcane VIII with attunement swapping is important.

- I take Water VI Vital Striking instead of cantrip mastery, because I only use one cantrip and most of the time, you are going to be dpsing in the background at full health.

- All your conditional removal comes from Water XI and Arcane XI and you have a lot of it. You lose a condition when you trigger regen and you have a lot of regen. That means conditional removal on using earth armor, conditional removal when earth armor pops from Earth III, conditional removal on your entire team when you swap into water, additional conditional removal from the regen in Healing Rain in addition to the conditions it already removes, and a aoe conditional remove at the end of your dodge in water attutnement.

- Arcane Brilliance, Arcane Wave, and Earth 2 give you 3 blast finishers to use with all your staff combo fields. You also have one at the end of your dodge roll in earth attunement thats a bit harder to coordinate.

The general rotation for this is Earth 2 > Swap to attunement with combo field you want > Combo Field on Earth 2 > Stand in Combo Field > Arcane Brilliance > Arcane Wave

Now, applying this to various combo fields creates some powerful buffs for your team

Fire 2 Combo Field = 9 stacks of might from 3 area mights
Water 3 and Water 5 Combo Fields = a hell of a lot of area healing
Lightning 5 = 3 Area Swiftness combos + the swiftness boost from attunement swap + Air 4 = Permanent swiftness for you and your entire team.

Water 4 also gives area frost armor, but that’s not as useful as the others.

I can decimate decent sized groups in Silverwastes while tanking them with this build.

Swap into Earth as you run into group of mobs for protection.
Lay down Earth 2 in middle of group.
Swap into Fire.
Lay down Fire 2 on Earth 2.
Arcane Wave.
Arcane Brilliance to heal any dmg I have taken at this point.
Now I have my full stacks of might, so lay down Fire 5.
Drop Ice Bow and bomb area with 4.

If anything is still alive, I can switch to water to heal up, dodge out for another heal, swap to air for swiftness and finish off survivors at ranged.

No, you won’t achieve the same raw dps with this build as a glass cannon staff, but this build has so much more to offer your team, both in PvE and WvW and is a lot more fun for me to play than a glass fire camper. You can hold your own solo in PvE content.

The one big con is it’s not very awesome in 1v1 PvP.

To be honest, I don’t find any of our elites to be useless.

The elementals with the added ability aren’t bad. Fire can crank out some dps and Earth with the aoe cripple and protection is a good bunker.

Fiery greatsword can dish out some dmg, not as good as Frostbow, but the mobility it provides is superior to everyone except maybe warriors.

Tornado, up until the stability nerf, had a lot of tactical value, even in some PvE situations.

It’s only got a handful of tactical usages and they mostly come from serving as an impenetrable wall of knockbacks.

Stuff like when a keep gets breached and making a suicide tornado jump down to block the entrance in order to briefly stall the zerg or moving to a zerg’s flank to try and push them in a certain direction or even in Twilight Arbor to bulldoze your way thru the trampling mobs during skips.

All of that stuff comes from having solid stability and blind spam.

I don’t know. I gotta play around with it. Maybe if the knockback still triggers when you are in a down state, it might be decent. Kind of looking like glyph of elems and fire sword are our only options now.

The Good:

Versatile. You can pretty much do it all and all of it fairly.

The play style also is pretty intense and there is a lot of synergy between the skills. There is a large number of combinations you can apply to create different outcomes.

The Bad:

Versatile. This is probably the biggest con you will face is that the game mechanics, particularly in PVE, simply negates the need for most of what you can bring to a group.

Outside of PvP and WvW, you can watch the majority of your attunements and skills get flushed down the toilet in favor of camping fire and icebow.

The Build

This entirely depends on what you want to spend your time doing.

Don’t make it.

I made a set and it is my only regret.

Invest the money and time into getting a legendary. You can swap the stats at will making it a worthwhile investment.

Until Anet applies the same feature to ascended armor and weapons, it’s just not worth it to create it.

I don’t understand why they haven’t. They have given us the ability to switch traits at will and play different builds, but this doesn’t amount to anything outside of sPvP, because our gear choices lock us into a particular set of stats which is optimized for a certain style of play.

You’ll spend all that time and cash into crafting one particular set of gear and unless you intend to play WvW or PvE exclusively, whatever you choose will end up being deficient in one or the other.

Or you build according to the current meta for whatever area of the game you want to focus on and in HoT, it ends up being worthless when they make some tweak to game mechanics.

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.

The only reason it is necessary if you are going to do very high level fractals. Even then, if you get ascended accessories, which you will naturally get by playing the game, they give enough AR to do up to level 20 fractals.

With all that said, if you still want to craft it, what I did is craft celestial armor and I have a collection of berserker and knights trinkets I swap out based on whether I feel I need more dps and toughness.

But, probably, the best approach is to craft zerker armor and then have a collection of accessories you can rotate in for whether you are playing PvE or WvW.

While it’s debatable, I would recommend daggers if you plan on fighting mostly alone or in small groups or staff if you want to fight in zergs. Both have different playstyles you have to learn, but their respective strengths lie in each of those areas.

I don’t think it needs to be nerfed at all. It’s not like everyone on sPvP team plays a D/D elementalist. Everyone at the world tournament had one on their team, but they were all a mix of dunker and dps builds from different classes.

It’s just the nature of the conquest maps. It’s all about maintaining control over a point which is what D/D bunkers excel at. They have great mobility which is crucial for moving around between the 3 points and they can brawl pretty well which is important since you will be left defending your point for some amount of time before your support can arrive.

This is why they get chosen over staff bunkers, because staff doesn’t have quite the same mobility and they don’t work as well 1v1, since staff has a strong imbalance of fields to combo finishers and their aoe attacks are easier to dodge. Now, take a different PvP scenario like a WvW zerg where there is a large number of people grouped together and little 1v1 fighting and nearly everyone rolls staff, either using a dps build or a bunker build using the same trait setup as d/d.

I imagine with the addition of stronghold maps, a whole different set of builds will become the new meta based on the need for people to fill different roles in order to win.

I would wager a substantial amount of money it is going to be sword.

Each set of weapon set has different combinations of skills that have to be used to get the most out of those particular weapons.

I would figure out what kind of elementalist you want to be, which typically falls into two categories: dps or bunker. (which is more for pvp).

If you want to bunker, you are looking at either staff or dagger/dagger. Dagger tends to be more for brawling and staff tends to be more for supporting a team or WvW zerg.

If you want to dps, you are looking more at staff or scepter/focus.

Metabattle has builds for each.

I don’t know what to tell you about full zerker. I run the same staff build I run in WvW whenever I do a dungeon which is 0/0/2/6/6 with celestial armor, zerker weapons and a mix of zerker and knights jewelry.

If you don’t have any cantrips or vigor or energy sigil, I would imagine you are going to get downed a lot. I would keep your distance, use swiftness to move out of AoE fields whenever you can and save your dodges for when you really need them.

As might stacking in staff, it’s not as viable as with other weapon sets. General rotation is to start in earth, cast earth 2 on top of yourself, swap to fire 1, cast fire 2 on top of earth 2 and then cast Arcane Brilliance or Arcane Wave if you have them slotted. Earth 2 will explode before fire field expires for 3 stacks and you get 3 more from wave or brilliance.

Use this same rotation, but with lightning 5 instead of fire 2 to give yourself perma swiftness and also with water 3 or water 5 instead of fire 2 for aoe healing which will improve your surviviability.

You can also do this with water 4 instead of fire 2 for aoe frost aura, but that isnt as useful in PvE as it is in WvW.

@Dahir

I don’t feel very enlightened.

Traditional Terrormancer build

From weapons alone, you have 2 stacks of bleed off Mark of Blood, 2 from Enfeebling Blood and 2 from Grasping Dead.

That’s 6 stacks from non-autoattack weapon skills.

Now, if you take Sigil of Geomancy in your weapon, that’s 9.

Moving on to slot skills, you get 2 more stacks from Sigil of Spite, so we are at 11.

In Death Shroud, they get 3 more from Dark Path so that’s 14.

If you use corrupt boon, you potentially get X more stacks from boon to condition conversion.

This doesn’t factor in the bleeds from scepter auto attack, the bleeds on critical hit from traits and even more bleeds on critical hit if they go with weapon Sigil of Earth.

So all this amounts to, more bleed stacking potential than your build.

They also natively get access to Torment and Poision stacks and potentially burn from Corrupt Boon.

As far as condition removal, their healing skill removes all conditions on a 25 second cd, the ability to transfer 3 conditions back to you with staff’s Putrid Mark and if they take Well of Power, they can potentially convert 5 conditions into boons.

And they can tank you with Death Shroud.

Looks like a version of the D/F Signet Condition build that has been modified to be worse. You have little condition cleanse and waste traits to reduce recharge time on single slot skills and one attunement.

All you have to damage is burn, bleeds and wasting a sigil to get poison, so I don’t see how you can NOT you cannot camp Earth and spam auto attack if you want to get more than 5-6 stacks of bleed. Even with that, you won’t get the same stacks of bleeds that a necro can manage.

A standard terrormancer build can stack like twice the conditions as you can with way better condition removal since you run healing sigil over ether renewal. I’m not sure how they are not wiping the floor with you.

skeptic.2409:

I took the cele staff build out for plenty of runs u die to fast even good kiting a good thief will ruin ur kiting no problem

It’s not really a 1v1, roaming or tPvP build. It’s a zerg build, because you need other people to use blast finishers on your own combo fields. The weapon lacks the blast finishers needed to make use of all the combo fields the staff has and really bring out the true power of the weapon and you are forced to utilize slot skills like Arcane Brilliance and/or Arcane Wave if you want to blast yourself.

But in a zerg, it shines. Staff elems are the foundation for any zerg backline and with proper coordination of fields/finishers in TeamSpeak, they provide powerful support.

I love it and play it all the time, but if I roam in WvW by myself with a small group, I play celestial D/D.

Kodiak.3281:

Person buys game today. Gets told to play Berserker in Berserker gear.

Taking bets on how they’re going to hate how often times they get downed and then either quit game or roll another class

The “berserker” advice is a very narrow perspective of the game and it’s really only applicable to dungeons and the original World Bosses at release. It’s also universal to any class, because the PvE content is so easy that you simply don’t have to take advantage of 90% of the game mechanics to survive. It’s just all about facerolling your keyboard to do as much dmg as possible and dodging at the right times.

It’s not the case at all in WvW or PvP, because the competition requires utilizing all the game mechanics and it’s not just about doing damage. Most of the metabuilds use other gear sets besides berserkers. The top rated meta builds for elems are celestial mixes.

It’s one of the reasons I think if you buy this game and just do PvE content, you are going to walk away with the wrong perspective and think the game is boring. You have to do WvW and PvP to get a real idea of just how fun and awesome the combat in this game really is.

Anet seems to be trying to change that though with the introduction of high level fractals, Tequatl and Silver Wastes. I run the same builds I run in WvW to support groups in Silverwastes, because the PvE in that zone is significantly harder and much more intense than any of the other World Bosses.

Based on the interviews they have given for the new expansion, their focus seems to be on adding more challenging PvE content (I read in one interview they have been working for awhile now on revamping their AI system), so hopefully with that, the days of “zerker or gtfo” will start to fade off.

What are you going to do with the gear? If you get downleveled, the bonuses over exotic are really minor or non-existent.

Honestly, I wish I had skipped making my ascended armor and invested the time and money into getting a legendary. And then once I had that, just worked on ascended armor, because I had nothing better to do.

The only reason it is necessary is to run higher level fractals.

Personally, I went with celestial armor as I find it to be more useful, but I PvP a lot. My trinkets are ascended berserkers, because I find getting new trinkets to be a lot easier than recrafting a new set of armor. After I get my legendary, I will probably make ascended berserker weapons.

As far as getting the materials, world boss trains will give you plenty of dragon ore and running dungeons and fractals will give you plenty of the rest. Both are a great way to make cash and gather materials. Running in the EotM’s zerg will generate plenty of all three types of ascended materials, but the loot isn’t quite as good as world boss trains.

I recommend starting with armor. You make an investment into leveling one crafting skill in order to get 6 ascended items where as weapons requires you to level artificer and/or weaponsmith, depending on what your main build is.

I did legs and chest last, because they require the most investment.

They are a necessity in WvW zergs, but the problem is PvE doesnt have a real need for them.

I would wager we can’t cripple in Earth, because we already have a aoe movement speed reducer in Water. Applying it to Eruption on pulse with a delayed blast finisher would allow you to trap enemies inside to be hit with the blast finisher for AoE weakness or blind when combined with a dark or poison combo field. It would be pretty friggin awesome, but not sure how balanced that would be.

I don’t know of any class that has both a projectile blocker built into a wall, because in a chokepoint in WvW, you would now not only be able to use it to cut off the melee train from the backline or trap them in AoE, but also negate the backlines projectile damage at the same time. From a tactics perspective, that’s pretty powerful.

And an instant AoE daze with no warning or way to avoid? Wow.

What are your feelings about a blast finisher in air which is clearly in need of an upgrade.

I guess I am in the minority when I don’t think air needs an upgrade, but staff really depends on what perspective you look at it: PvE or PvP. From a PvE perspective, most of earth and air are useless, because 1) the bleeds in Earth dont amount to much in a champion zerg and 2) all the CC in lightning is largely useless and all it is good for really is stacking swiftness.

In PvE, most people just seem to end up camping fire and switching to water for healing if needed or using conjure weapons.

But now as far as PvP, you have an AoE stun with a lightning field for swiftness stacking, an AoE blind, a single target knock back which is great for stopping stomps or pushing people off cliffs in EoTM, aoe switftness, and the auto attack is great for tagging when stuff isnt clustered enough for fireballs.

I also don’t really think staff needs another blast finisher, because if you are willing to trade out a slot skill, you already have 2 at your disposal and more combo fields than any other class.

Staff really shines as a support role in WvW zergs where you have a number of other classes applying finishers to your fields. It’s arguably the king of support in that role for that reason. We have other weapon sets that excel in other roles and scenarios.

With Lava Font on a 6 second CD and Ice Spike on a 4 second CD and the unbuffed boon duration of Might stacks from Area Might sitting at 20 seconds, you would be able to stack some serious might, even with the attunement swap delay between water and fire slowing you down.

Not to mention the buff to our AoE healing potential from having a readily available blast finisher in the same attunment as geyser and healing rain. You would be able to lay down healing rain, blast for AoE healing, lay down geyser after healing rain expires and blast again. Then, hey, kitten it, camp water a few more seconds, lay down frozen ground and blast again to give everyone frost aura.

And it’s not a weak skill. 5 stacks of vulnerability on 5 targets with a 10 second duration from a skill on a 4 second CD makes a difference in a WvW zerg. You can easily blast the melee train for 5 stacks, lay down your combo fields and blast again for another 5 before swapping attunments.

Well, to start with, on MetaBattle, we are the only one besides Warrior that has a Meta Build in every category of PvE, WvW and PvP. Guardians are a close second. I dont think they have a Meta for dungeons; only a Great.

I find them to be the most engaging and enjoyable class due to the volume of skills that we have access to. I get bored with all other classes besides my Engineer, but Engineer kits lack the synergy our attunements have.

It’s not only the volume of our skills that make it engaging, but the large number of combo fields and finishers we have attached to them that allow a greater variety of combinations to create different effects.

As far as reasons not to play one, a lot of our power and particularly survivability is dependent on traits which makes leveling one difficult in comparison to classes like GS warrior or MM necro. Also how effective you are as an elementalist is tied to how well you understand the class and how skilled you are using your abilities together. It’s not like other classes with one trick wonder builds with simple rotations that can be used to powerful effect.

But that it and of itself can be a boon, based on your perspective, since we are far from a one trick wonder and can fill a varierty of roles.

I rotate between a 0/2/0/6/6 D/D build and 0/0/2/6/6 staff build for WvW. I don’t play D/D except when I roam, because I find you are paying your zerg a disservice to not play staff backline. You have roughly the same potential for sharing protection and healing among 5 players via attunement shifting and ability use in both builds, but staff has far more combo fields than D/D does.

If you are communicating and timing blast finishers properly on teamspeak, you have far more potential to spread might, healing, swiftness and frost aura among more players than you do with D/D. Not to mention the variety of other effects from projectiles and pulls.

With arcane wave as a slot skill in staff, you can easily maintain perma swiftness on yourself and others.

Moving beyond the raw power of all your combo fields, staff has essential CC skills for managing an enemy zerg like Unsteady Ground, Static Field and Frozen Ground which can be literal game changers if you lure an enemy zerg into a bottleneck. Staff water has better condition removal, particularly if you trait into removing conditions on regen, making Healing Rain a powerful cleanse. Your AoE is overall better, particularly in terms of blast radius. Magnetic Aura is also awesome.

In the end, staff is just built for use in zergs which it’s why it’s the current zerg meta build and D/D is not.

I use a standard bunker build with either S/D or D/D for general world roaming, but it takes a lot of traits to really start shining with your auras, cantrips and healing ability. But once you get up there, you pretty much never die, you can take on large groups of mobs easily and lots of mobility to keep moving.

I like D/D a lot, beacause a lot of aoe ability for tagging, good mix of blast finishers and auras, instant healing ability and lot of mobility. S/D can be a bit more forgiving, particularly low level, because you can engage from a distance. You also get 4 blast finishers to use with a fire field for might stacking, but less auras which is more important before you trait out your auras.

First two trait points would go into arcane power to get vigor on critical hit; really important for playing D/D.

Next four trait points would be into water to get cantrip recharge reduction and vigor and regen on cantrip usage.

Next two would probably be into arcane power for the boons on attunement swap.

Then 2 into lighting for fury and swiftness on aura.

Then final four into water for condition removal on regen and arcane power for elemental effect on dodging.

Slot skills for me are earth armor, lightning flash and mist form and I swap out earth armor sometimes for ice bow to use when I need ranged in an event. I don’t like cleansing fire, because once you get traited, you have plenty of conditional removal. Cantrips will remove 1 condition from regen, swapping into water will remove 1 and water 5 will remove another.

Healing skills are ether renewal or signet. Personal preference is signet.

Elite is elemental glyph.

Beyond that, it’s really about learning how to play D/D. Stuff like getting your timing down to use all your blast finishers before your fire field expires, how to pull yourself thru a fire field with Earth 3 for the third aura, rotating your auras to keep fury up with your might stacks which is where a lot of your dps comes from, repositioning yourself with lighting flash when using Earth 5, etc, etc

It’s viable. Just not needed in PvE. Maybe in PvP with staff it might be useful, but PvE world boss zerg is so easy its a joke and in dungeons, it’s not needed unless your PUG sucks and is unable to take care of themselves with their own healing abilities.

It’s helpful; don’t get me wrong. I run a D/D build in PvE with balanced stats from celestial that focuses on might stacking dps, survivability, boon support, healing and condition removal and with me, a guardian and 3 other dps centric builds, we kick kitten , but I couldn’t imagine making my build and gear solely focused on healing.

The lack of diversity is more because the structure of traits is in conflict with the class mechanics.

The point of elemental is constant attunement swapping to take advantage of all the benefits of each unique attunement. However, the traits can now be divided into two categories with the exception of Arcane: traits that boost a single attunement line or traits that boost our utility skills.

Since pigeon holing ourselves into one attunement kills the flexibility of our class, no one wants to build for a single attunement unless its a DPS zerker build attempting to max out their dps by building for fire or lightning. And while some people like that, I find it to be boring.

As a result, most builds I see tend to build around utility skills, because utility skills dont require being in a specific attunement to be used. Building around cantrips is the most popular choice, because signet and arcane skills simply pale in comparison to the benefits of cantrips.

Also, Water and Arcane are popular, because Arcane benefits all the attunements and the healing and condition removal traits from Water don’t require you to remain in water for a sustained period of time to reap the benefits.

I think the trait setup is poor overall now. The fun of an elementalist is constantly switching attunments and using all the abilities. I couldn’t imagine making a build that went deep into either fire, lightning or earth and as a consequence, making a single attunement my primary.

And yeah, I know it’s the same deal with other classes. The majority of their traits boost one particular weapon, but it’s a bit different when you have two weapons to swap between vs four attunments. Given you can max out two trait lines, it’s rather easily to create a build that boosts both your main hand weapons. It’s impossible to do that with four attunements unless you split your points between all four trait lines.

Only reason I use it is to get Fire Aura by pulling myself thru Ring of Fire. That’s a pretty strong benefit as is.

I would get rid of Bolt to the Heart and take 2 more in Water instead of 2 in Air.

Then take Water XI and instead of Water X take Water IX. The end result will be your cantrips will grant regen and vigor AND cure a condition. Since you took Arcane VIII, attuning to water will grant regen to your party which will also cure a condition because of Water XI. You get the benefits of Water X without taking Water X.

I personally take 2 points in Earth and 4 points of Arcane, so I can get Earth VI instead of evasive arcana. 10% dmg bonus within 600 feet is more valuable to me than the dodge effects.

Since the cantrips grant vigor, I also take Arcane VI instead of Arcane II. I have plenty of vigor with my cantrips, so the movement speed is more valuable to me.

It looks interesting on paper, but I doubt I will be giving up cantrips for signets.

You lose all the surivability and mobility of cantrips for some kind of helpful passive effects and weak active effects of signets. Plus, you lose the only skill that gives us stability.

As opposed to the traditional water/arcane spec, you lose all the condition removal, healing, regen and vigor from cantrips for a focus on blind, an extra aura for more fury uptime and constant passive bonuses. I’ve never had much of a problem with the fury uptime in the cantrip build from Arcane Fury and Air I with the three auras available in D/D.

You got more power and precision than the standard cantrip build, but you had to trade out Sigils of Strength and Bloodlust for Sigils for sigils that make up for you loss of conditional removal which means a loss of might. Combined with no boon duration either from runes or traiting in Arcane, I would wager the dmg output is about the same between the two builds, given you have a flat dmg increase and no might and bread and butter cantrips has plenty of might stacking and less flat dmg.

Build also has no healing and support for allies like a cantrip build traited in Water and Arcane.

I’m not sure if this variation of the classic D/D bunker build has been posted, but thought I would share it.

This is my current build with the gear setup I am working towards. I use it in PvE and plan on using it in WvW.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAoYhMM6cW5wwBdEBPAC5fx2NqjoAFXmE-TRSGABAcCByTJ4jq/MkSskUaQ0+DJ8gAiSZAd6JCAgAMxSMIxJmJOxJOxJOxuuEn4En4ELCgdCA-e

Gear setup is mostly celestials with a few Berserker and Cavalier pieces to balance out the weaker stats.

Sigils are Bloodlust and Strength for Might Stacking.

Runes are Runes of Water for the Boon Duration and increased healing ability. With these and 6 points in Water Magic, I can fill my health bar from near death using either Ether Renewal or attuning to Water and using 2 and 5. I have considered Runes of Strength, but since I have Bountiful Power, I consider Boon Duration to be more valuable than Might Duration.

It’s a Cantrip focused build with Mist Form/Lightning Flash/Armor of Earth to provide increased survivability. Elite skill is either Conjure Elemental or Fiery Greatsword.

The focal point of the build is Water XI which removes a condition upon granting regeneration.

With that in my mind, I took Water IX which grants regen and vigor upon using a cantrip. This means using any of my cantrips will remove a single condition. I took Water III to speed up the cantrip recharge.

Arcane VIII causes attuning to water to grant regen to myself and my allies which with Water IX, also removes a condition. As a result, I get the same benefits of taking Water X without actually taking it.

Arcane VI maxes out my movement speed since it’s a dagger based build.

Earth VI provides a constant 10% dmg bonus increase since I am always fighting within 600 yards.

Air I adds Fury and Swiftness to the three auras availble with D/D

Since I have taken a min of 1 point in Earth, Air and Water to get the attunement bonus for each, Lingering Elements works really well with this setup, since I am constantly swapping attunements.

Arcane Fury with Air I Auras and constant attunement swapping also keeps fury up constantly.

With the strong healing and the condition removal from all my cantrips, Ether Renewal, swapping to water attunement and Water 5, I am very hard to kill.

With Might stacking from sigils and combos, 10% bonus, Bountiful Power bonus and the constant Fury, I haven’t heard any complaints about my dmg output.

How do you get the recipes, short of buying them on AH? Wiki’s say they are from Bazaar event only.

Actually, that is the direction I am going as I work towards my ascended gear. A full set of celestial and I would like to drop pistols for rifle for a direct damage option. But right now, given it’s not practical given how hard it is to acquire quartz crystals and my leatherworking skill isn’t there yet, a focus on condition damage opens up the most play styles.

But, yeah, I don’t deny that its a HGH condition build. I said it at the start. The point of the guide was more with a little trade off, you don’t have to be just a “grenade” build or a “FT” build. In fractals, I’ve used an elixer/med kit setup for stacking encounters, a bomb build focused on kiting for encounters with large groups in open areas or that require constant movement like that inquest end encounter with the rotating lasers, or a FT build for groups of clustered mobs in tight spaces.

That kind of switching on and off makes it fun for me and I don’t feel like I am boxed into being a one trick pony.

Flamethrower – DPS

Traits – Alchemy X, Explosives VI, Explosives X, Firearms I, Firearms VIII
Slot Skills – Elixir H, Flamethrower, Elixir U, Elixir B

This combination is all about build stacks of might, stacking boons and doing damage. Flamethrower juggernaut will build up stacks of might on it’s own, you get another 5 from Elixir H and 4 from Elixir U and Elixir B along with fury, quickness, haste and other boons. You have Elixir H for your heal and Alchemy X handles condition removal. Once you built up your might stacks, boons and exhaust your flamethrower cooldowns, you can swap over to pistols to land some more bleeds, confusion, blind, and poison before swapping back over to set more stuff on fire.

Flamethrower – Less DPS, More Survival

Traits – Alchemy IX, Explosives VI, Explosives X, Firearms I, Firearms VIII
Slot Skills – Med Kit, Flamethrower, Elixir C, Elixir S

A variation of the flamethrower combination with more survivalibility and less damage output. It mostly focuses on rotating between med kit and flamethrower. Swapping to med kit will give you might stacks from Explosives X and the potion gives you fury and swiftness to help make up for loss of Elixir B. Since we have lost condition removal due to taking backpack regeneration, Elixir C has been added for condition removal. Elixir S replaces Elixir B as an “Oh kitten” button.

Elixir Gun – Support

Traits – Alchemy X, Explosives VI, Explosives X, Firearms I, Firearms III
Slot Skills – Med Kit, Elixir Gun, Elixir S, Elixir B

This combination is all about team support. You are going to be running around, laying down bandages, potions, tossing elixirs to buff your team and cure conditions, lay down light fields with elixir gun, remove conditions with the spray attack, cripple enemies and grant swiftness and apply large stacks of bleeds to single enemies.

Combinations

Pistols – Kiting

Traits: -Alchemy IX, Explosives VI, Explosives X, Firearms VI, Firearms III
Slot Skills – Medkit, Elixir C, Elixir B, Elixir S

This is geared towards kiting single with pistols while you kill them with conditions. Your sigil combined with the bleed on critical minor trait will stack a large number of bleeds with explosive shot. You also have poison and fire at your disposal. You have blind and confusion when they get close. You have an AoE immobilize. Elixir B with fury and swiftness, fury and swiftness from med kit potion and swiftness on critical with Firearms III ensure permanent swiftness, not to mention a constant stream of critical hits for more bleed stacks. Swapping to med kit while your pistol is on cool down grants you more might and allows you to regenerate while you drop bandages on the move. Elixir S is your “Oh kitten” button with the added bonus of AoE stealth for reviving downed players. Since we took Backpack Regeneration instead of condition removal on elixir use, we have Elixir C as our method to wipe conditions in addition to the cure from med kit.

Pistols – DPS

Traits – Alchemy X, Explosions VI, Explosions X, Firearms VI, Firearms VII
Slot Skills – Elixir H, Elixir U, Elixir B, Elixir S

Similar to the first pistols build above, but we are trading our mobility for more damage. We’ve swapped out swiftness on critical hit for piercing pistol shots, allowing explosion shots to go threw groups of mobs, stacking large numbers of bleeds on tight clusters. Medkit is replaced with Elixir H, removing the need to swap out of our pistols and stop DPS in order to heal. In addition, HGH plus Explosions X allow Elixir H to grant 5 stacks of might. Since all our elixirs now remove conditions, we are able to swap Elixir C for U, allowing us quickness and haste in addition to a random combo field that can be dropped. Elixir S still remains as our “Oh kitten” button and Elixir B does give swiftness, but this combination is geared towards hanging out in the back and unloading damage.

Bombs – Kiting

Traits – Alchemy IX, Explosion II, Explosion X, Firearms III, Firearms V
Slot Skills – Medkit, Bomb Kit, Elixir C, Elixir S

This is what I typically use for solo AOE kiting.The principle is laying down bombs, swapping to med kit to grant might and lay down bandages, then back to bombs which are now off cool down. Since you are swapping between two kits constantly, you always regenerate health with Alchemy IX. Explosion II and Firearms V plus sigils allow for heavy stacking of bleeds and vulnerability besides your normal bomb conditions. Firearms III and potion from medkit allow for perma swiftness. Elixir C is our main condition removal since we once again opted out of Alchemy X for Alchemy IX. Elixir S is our “Oh kitten” button.

Grenades (Bombs, too!) – DPS and Water Combat

Traits – Alchemy X, Explosions II, Explosions VII, Firearms III, Firearms V
Slot Skills – Elixir H, Grenade Kit (or Bomb Kit), Elixir B, Elixir S

This is a bit of a more balanced bomb/grenade combination and almost always the one I use when fighting in the underwater fractal (Grenades underwater rock). First, we have swapped out Explosions X for Explosions VII, so we can churn out more grenades. With this, we lose the might stacks from med kit, so that has been replaced with Elixir H, since we still get 2 might stacks from it on use and don’t have to swap out of grenades to use. Alchemy IX has been swapped out for Alchemy X, trading our kit regenerate for elixir condition cures. This allows us to swap out Elixir C for Elixir B for more might stacks, fury and boons. Elixir B and swiftness on critical from Firearms III still give plenty of swiftness so if you run into an encounter that requires constant mobility, this combination is still viable for swapping out grenades for bombs for on the move AOE damage. You just can’t recover as much health as quickly as you can with the med kit combination. This is really great for grenades, but harder on bombs, since you have to get so close and the heal from elixir h is significantly less than what you can achieve with med kit plus backpack regenerate.

The main reason I play an engineer is versatility. We have the largest combination of abilities at our disposal of all the classes, all without having to craft a wide variety of weapons to swap in and out before and after battles. So with this in mind, I set out to design my own build with the goal of flexibility in mind. I wanted to define a selection of traits that would allow me to customize my trait abilities and slot skills to fulfill a variety of different roles and play styles while still achieving cohesion. When I say cohesion, I mean all the trait abilities and slot skills work together to benefit the play style in some form with no “filler” traits that don’t serve a purpose.

The end result is a 20/20/0/30/0 build. It is essentially a HGH elixir build with 20 points in firearms and 20 points in explosives to give me a pool of trait abilities that can be mixed and matched to improve pistols, bombs, grenades, flamethrower or elixir gun. It’s primary focus is on elixirs and kits; turrets and other abilities don’t get used. Since it is jack of all trade builds, it can’t compare with builds optimized for a single kit. This is the cost of versatility, but I have still found it to be incredibly effective and allows me to change my play style constantly on the fly, either from necessity or because I am bored.

This explanation of the build is going to be a bit different than most. First, I’ll start off with core principles that don’t change, then define the pool of trait abilities that I will use in different combinations, then give a quick breakdown of gear and finally, start listing all my favorite combinations.

Core Principles

• This is a HGH build at heart. Alchemy XI will be constant. It won’t be listed in the trait abilities list in each combo because it is assumed to be there as your Master Alchemy Trait.

• The general makeup of slot abilities is one kit/two elixirs or three elixirs. As such, Alchemy II(Reduces recharge on Elixirs) is also constant. It won’t be listed either, because I am assuming you have it as your Adept Alchemy trait.

• It uses dual pistols.

• It is a condition damage build. It is also based heavily on traits that proc conditions on critical hits.

• Supply Crate is the elite skill. It remains constant.

Pool of Trait Abilities

Explosives

• II – Explosives causes bleeding on critical hits
• VI – Cripple foes below 50% health
• VII – Reduce recharge on bombs and grenades
• X – Healing skills give might

Firearms

• I – Reduces recharge on flamethrower and elixir gun
• III – Swiftness on critical hits
• V – Vulnerability on critical hits
• VI – Reduces recharge on pistols
• VII – Pistol shots pierce
• VIII – Flamethrower grants toughness and generates might

Alchemy

• X: Throwing or consuming elixirs removes boons
• IX: Regenerate health when using a kit

Minor Trait Abilities

• Create a bomb when you dodge.
• Release mines when below 25% health.
• Cause bleeding on critical hits.
• Critical hit chance is increased against foes that are below health threshold.
• Drink Elixir B when below 75%
• Incoming conditions become boons.
• Deal 1% more damage per boon.

Gear

In the build editor links, I’ve included a list of my current gear setup. It’s a mix of Carrion and Rabid with Runes of the Noble for the condition damage and might bonuses. Since I am precision heavy, I go for Sigil of Strength for might stacks on critical and Sigil of Earth to add even more bleed stacks. Food is pizza for the condition duration and condition damage bonus. Maintenance oil is used to boot my power and precision from the toughness and vitality on my Rabid and Carrion.

After 2 cups of coffee, several solid stragety brainstorm sessions and a dozen different attempts to kill a cutpurse with a rifle in story mode, I have no choice but to admit defeat on my warrior