Guild Wars 2

I use it sometimes. its fun

zerker or cleric ele…

1 you can’t aim it
2 you can’t time it
3 you need to cast it instead of insta-command
4 Its not worthy of being called elite.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Hey guys, trying to return to the game however i’m at a bit of an impasse, i can’t settle on a build or class.

I’m leaning towards the Elementalist because of the high damage capability, however I’m not fully certain if this class is able to provide what i’m after 100%.

I want to be able to offer support (Which i can do via might stacking build), which is great, however i also want to solo flip camps in WvW, and do some roaming (Which weapon is used is not important, so long as it’s viable and fun).

Is there a build which allows the Ele to perform the level of gameplay i’m after, or am i better off with another class?

Yeah that’s what I do with my elementalist.
if you already know about the mightstacking build then just go for it. I prefer D/F but D/D and Staff are also viable. S/F or S/D is only really good with fresh-air in my experience :/

sirjosh.9561:

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Chef is the most fun crafting discipline
Jeweler is nice too but Chef is definately the most fun. Not as profitable but very fun none-the-less.

Only thing is I always keep the buffs for ‘better times’, and the cycle repeats.

I just put ’m in the guildbank if I got the time.

D/F elementalist can beat those supposed viable lb rangers in 4-5 seconds.
Just go full zerker 25 might stacking with spellslinger runes of strength sigil of battle etc.
Use the supperior defensive skills of the focus in tandem with your dodges for damage mitigation and let your signets passive heal you up from unmitigated dmg. Keep decent stunbreakers and condi removals off CD as much as possible because you wouldn’t want to be stun-locked.
D/F also gives AoE anti projectile plus a couple non-projectile CC’s. The additional invulnerability is also usefull in safely stomping.

Plus I’m still more than able at clearing camps solo.

oscuro.9720:

Is there one? I am fairly new to ele and have a gear setup of all celestial trinkets, Knights armor and zerker dangers, but if I switched the daggers with a rampaged’s staff and moved some traits around would it be viable?
I am asking you guys because i only have 5 hours on my ele and I’m guessing you all have tried this at one point in your time on ele.

I have a pretty large weapon collection… maybe 40 or so unique exotics and 2700 hours of gameplay on my elementalist.
I really like the pyromancer’s puisance but its not ideal for roaming unless you are really used to running around as a glass cannon.
As you are celestial/knights I’d say go for the standard build slightly tweeked though. 20066 or if you don’t need the additional condi removal. 40046
Runes of Strength are the best. Cantrips and spellslinger trait in fire are also quite nice.

Smiggles.6823:

I just returned after a 1 year break and have a 36 ele. I prefer playing healer type roles in other mmos. Know that doesn’t really exist but is now viable if unpopular?

Please give me advice for a healer build at 80 and entry gear.

Also does it take long to get full sets? I’ve never had an 80 and wouldn’t mind a bezerker set for dpsing. I prefer staff play or d/d.

I’m happy to be linked to other posts. When i tried searching before i struggled to find relevant results.

Go with Staff. Staff also has alot of crowd control adding it to your healing would be quite benefitial to your party. Add to that a zerker gear for faster runs you’ll still want to use staff.
Frostbow is good for dps but its auto-attack also heals.
Just get a full set of clerics with rune of the grove or rune of the flock. You will then need 6 in arcana and 6 in water the other 2 in earth probably but if you want to use aura share I think your allies and you would prefer swiftness and fury so 2 in air is also a viable option. You’ll want to bring arcane blast too. The Staff ele has a lack of blast finishers so having an arcane blast will allow you to do AoE healing or give frost aura. Magnetic aura is situational but can be really useful sometimes.

Chef is the most fun crafting discipline
Jeweler is nice too but Chef is definately the most fun. Not as profitable but very fun none-the-less.

Xillllix.3485:

Piratoz.8627:

The Fiery Greatword elite needs to be reworked to give less mobility. However, its damaging abilities should be vastly improved and it should feel powerful. Of course I am no expert at balance however a concept for a reworked FGS would be this:

(Skill 1) Flame Wave: Similar to how it is now in functionality and about 10% more damage, however now its projectiles each have a 20% chance of being a projectile finisher. Its cast timer should be reduced to 2 sec for 4 fireballs instead of 2.75.

(Skill 2) Lava Tomb: Range 600. Cooldown 6 seconds. Duration 4 seconds. 0.5 second cast time. Ground Targeted AOE. Stab your sword into the ground and summon 3 lava pools that also count as fire fields. Radius would be similar to the traited(Blasting Staff) staff lava font.

It would look similar to the ember NPC attack with 3 lava fonts spaced closely together in a triangle shape. Each lava font does about half the damage of a staff lava font. Since these fonts overlap, keeping an enemy in the center sweet spot will deal the damage of all 3 lava fonts and keeping an enemy in the other overlaps would deal 2x damage. This would also be affected by the trait persisting flames.

(Skill 3) Fiery Whirl: The same but with an 10 second cooldown instead of a 5 second cooldown.

(Skill 4) Fiery Eruption: 600 range. 20 second cooldown. 2 sec knockup. 0.75 second cast time. 0.25 sec delay between when a red circle would appear beneath the enemy and the eruption. Ground Targeted AOE.

Stab your sword into the ground, dealing moderate damage, and knock up/launch enemies caught in the AOE radius. The AOE size would be similar to the traited(blasting staff) staff lava font. Applies 6 sec of burning.

(Skill 5) Firestorm: The damage should be significantly increased(2x?) and each pulse should apply burning. The cooldown should also be reduced to match the duration of the ability.

Example picture for skill 2:

FGS should do as much damage as Lich form and be the same duration.

It’s injust to have a class elite of a class like the necro (having medium armor and 2 health pool) do 3-4 times the damage of the other class like the ele.

It’s the reason why barely anyone find GW2 has good class balance. Personally I find the class balance is terrible when it comes to dps, armors and survival risk factor.

Necromancer has light armor not medium armor. The 2nd healthpool auto degenerates. Necromancers also don’t have as much access to passive healing and outside of their healing skill they have very few ways to actually heal.
Lich form is easy to counter if you know how to do it. Boon-rip+cc for example or simple counter-projectile skills or just using the surrounding terrain in your advantage.
Necromancers generally also lack mobility which Elementalist has alot of too.
The only thing that Necros have an abundance of is fear but don’t let that affect you into thinking they have medium armor and double healthpool ok

I main elementalist and love pvp.
Then I made a lvl 80 of every other profession whilst playing pvp exclusively for 3 months and thought that necro was the most OP of them all. But that was over half a year ago. Just wondering what changed since then… I’ll have to pick ’m up again see what happened.

For general PVE just up damage as much as possible. 66002 for example.
If you want the gameplay to be easy you can also use the signet for the healing and get the frost bow asap because its no. 4 is really good even at low lvls and you may be able to be useful in dungeons early on. (AC for example) but only if you want to power lvl.
I tend to lvl up by just doing pvp (6 additional lvl 80s in 2-3 months) but with the latest changes you need the pve to unlock all of the traits and skills for pve content…. Good luck with that :p

Skeletor.9360:

Is it possible to have an elementalist not take any shortbow damage for say 2 minutes of constant fire?

Said it was doing damage but the damage bar did not move….

Is this possible?

if your dps is so low that the passive healing from regen/soothing mist and the signet then I can see it being possible. If its a shortbow ranger and the ele has the earth grandmaster trait against condis I can see it happening too. Then if he or she has a focus he or she can reflect and or block projectiles more often too giving them time to heal up even more if the need arises. Combined with some dodging a bunker ele should be able to survive even if its a 3v1

As many have said before me use the focus. I don’t die with Focus as long as I keep my focus which I don’t always do since I often get distracte. oooh shiny

Norn or Human.
Merely because of their elites.
The elites of the elementalist are just plain bad. Balthazars hounds are better than the glyph elite, the Grenths aura works well in D/D or D/F as you want to stay close.
Some of the Norn transforms give stealth or mobility or something which is nice (haven’t tried it out much but have seen videos of it.)

But if you want to go for looks I’d go with Sylvari. I like the Sylvari customization options.

Or make Iron Man:

PierPiero.9142:

i am not so sure if d/d is the best weapon set for roaming in wvw … i prefer usually s/f for having more range ….

Agreed if you can pull of the fresh air build then S/F or S/D is the way to go. Being able to burst down almost anything within seconds is a great deal for roaming.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

An elite skill that copies one of our skills? Brilliant of course.

So basically what you are saying is that any normal skill would be far better than the “elites” we currently have, and I agree!

Exactly.
Maybe not the firegrab but for a fresh air burst build adding in an arcane echo’s lightning would make it quite alot of fun

Imagine being able to use an extra blast finisher without needing to plan your atunement swapping as much.

02660 signet+stance warrior with axe-shield and axe-warhorn, runes of the grove, sigil of renewal and sigil of water.
Is what I use. Its decent but its bunkering ability has a hard cap. Once you get into the rotation of dodging, blocking and stunning with shield + weakening for the time inbetween you should be able to bunker on a point for a looooong time.

strength runes, cleric trinkets, zerker armor, sigil of battle, sigil of your choice 6/0/0/2/6 with any weapon combo (except scepter).
I run it always and everywhere with trait changes depending on the weapon I am holding.
In WvW its often staff or D/D but as a D/F full on zerker blinding ashes build with the new snowball sigil I can survive plus do crazy damage. But it always feels like walking on a tightrope while holding expensive chinese vases in both hands.

Isredel.4302:

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Here is my suggestion for a new elementalist elite:

Arcane Echo from guildwars 1.

For those who don’t know what it is look it up if y’r lazy then read my following inaccurate description:

Arcane Echo makes a copy of the next spell you use so that you can use it again.

It fits with our other arcane spells and we don’t have an elite arcane spell yet so…. Why not?

This. This, yes. This. Right here. Yes. Make it happen.

Yes.

I can imagine it now.

Name: Echo Signet

Passive: Reduces Attunement Switch Cooldown by X number of seconds (Stacks with Arcane Trait).

Active: Copy the last (non-auto) weapon ability that you used.

CD: 90 seconds

When you activate it, the skill icon switches to the last spell that you used. So if you used Meteor Shower, your elite skill would be replaced by Meteor Shower which is then, “held” in your elite skill slot until used. While holding an ability, you lose the passive effect of the signet, and then using the echo’d spell or switching weapons starts the Cooldown timer.

Elementalists don’t have an elite skill with a relatively short cooldown. This would fill that void.

reduced fire recharge + lava font + pyromancers puisance + arcane echo (lava font) should allow you to cast a ton of lava fonts all over the place basically changing everywhere you walk into a volcano

I just want to spam lava font all over the place as the Arcane echo would last for over a minute. Or cast two meteor showers. Or two times Ride the Lightning.

There are so many useful applications for the skill.
Or two times obsidian flesh.

over all we have good skills but bad elites. Only downside to our skills are the high cooldowns and an arcane echo would fit well plus make the gameplay less predictable and more interesting.

in GW1 Arcane Echo was the sole reason why I went with E/Me in pvp. Was really fun as an earth-air spike elementalist. took people down from range in 8 seconds which isn’t as fast as I can do it in GW2

I’ve been pretty succesfull with blinding ashes. I especially like to combine it with the new sigil that throws blinding snowballs when swapping weapons.
As a D/F elementalist you already have pretty high survivability add in the blindness condi and you can beat people without getting hit… ever.

story:
I had a 60026 zerker D/F build with arcane skills (no evasive arcana) in pvp for as much blindness as I could muster. I fought this one warrior 8 times and all his skills always missed. He didn’t hit me even once. But because he was never alone after a minute or so I would die.

Its good for 1v1’s near imba but because pvp is rarely about 1v1’s it is balanced, quirky, fun and worth a try.

Arcane Echo is a gw1 skill
It copies another skill for 1 minute.

Who wants this skill as an elite?
Want to know if I am the only one who thinks its a good idea or not.

Here is my suggestion for a new elementalist elite:

Arcane Echo from guildwars 1.

For those who don’t know what it is look it up if y’r lazy then read my following inaccurate description:

Arcane Echo makes a copy of the next spell you use so that you can use it again.

It fits with our other arcane spells and we don’t have an elite arcane spell yet so…. Why not?

verskore.4312:

personally I find D/F waaay better than D/D (played both for quite some time). my traits are 2/0/0/6/6 with the spell slinger trait. focus is just so good for survival and with the very good might stacking you can still do tons of damage. You’ll also laugh at the power rangers cus they can’t do anything against you (love focus earth skill 4) and thieves will just fall like flies to you. But this is just my opinion

… power rangers took down one of those in wvw in 6 seconds. Then took the camp solo. D/D is pretty hard to take camps solo

Rainyman.6487:

I want to know it.

yup, dragon rank D/F main elementalist.
Took some getting used to but there are many viable builds for it.
from least viable to viable:
condi
bunker
zerker
celestial

Condi can work but is hard to pull off and compared to other condi builds it just lacks something but not sure what.

bunker… have been reported as hacker because 4 people weren’t able to take me down after 6 minutes long battle. Didn’t happen just once but time and time again. I do like to keep the build to myself though.

zerker… is a fun trollbuild that I run, there are a couple normal builds as well but for me it works best with the spellslinger mightstacking build.

celestial… if you know the viable D/D builds then just apply those to D/F. Works just fine.

rabidsmiles.5926:

Sorry…I know this topic has probably been talked to death but there are valid points to both rune sets. Here’s the deal, I have a full set of both runes (the forge spat out the strength runes for me over time) so it’s not like this a cost issue.

My Ele is purely PvE. I run dungeons and fractals with the very occasional WvW if my guild runs a havoc run. I have no interest whatsoever in PvP. The ascended armor I am in the middle of crafting is Berserker’s for that reason.

Seems this forum is divided on which set is better, some say Strength and some say Scholar. I am using the scholar runes now and that 6th bonus is sort of a pain to have to keep up, but it’s manageable. Would I miss that ferocity bonus from the scholar if I switched over to Strength? I’m leaning more towards the Strength, as the 6th bonus doesn’t require me to be at almost full health. I find I am always with might so it’s not hard to keep it up. But I have to admit, that gold price of the 6 strength runes is really tempting!

Should I just suck it up and stick the strength runes on there or should I sell them, as they aren’t really all they are made out to be?

strength, it is not the 6th bonus but the increase in might duration that I use it for. Using it I achieve near permanent 25 stacks of might.
Comparing that to a dmg boost while above 90% hp I’d say go for the runes of strength.

cheshirefox.7026:

ah, thanks everyone for helpful feedback
i don’t think i would like that build at all..
but this is what i chiseled out, i can swap those stats simply by changing 1 or 2 pieces.. dropped tough to build up everything else, the ‘mix’ is actually the one i’m most comfortable with

you just need some good mightstacking… sigil of battle + spellslinger should help with that. Sure ya can blast in firefields but those are quite situational.
Add might up to 25 and keep it there continuously that way your condi and dps will increase by leaps and bounds.

I sorta went amock with builds in pvp and I sorta beat people in 1v2’s and 1v3’s continuously…
So I can somewhat agree with the elementalist being broken though it requires alot of control and knowledge of your class. Knowing all the CD’s by heart helps alot.

I usually run with D/F but switch it up with D/D and Staff too. Just can’t get my head around scepter.

Staff works for skirmishes in pvp. Have had a warrior who said I was noob and that he was pro whom I beat 4/5. The 5th time I was running zerker staff build while shooting treb and he attacked me from behind then declared he was pro and blocked me after having ranted for over 10 minutes.

Staff works fine though. Lots of crowd control which when used right and placed right can give you quite a bit of control over the battlefield. Your bane however is and will always be thieves. But not the crappy thieves that only play it because its an op class but the ones who actually know the class and play it right.

Never played cleric/knights staff. Staff already has little dmg compared to the other weapon combos let alone with a cleric-knights build. Is my guess. There’s quite a bit of condition in the staff though. which is why I tend to run celestial while holding a staff.

As previously mentioned you need the extra vitality for staff users. You have less mobility and less dmg mitigation with staff. You just have more control and you need the vitality to use it or attleast be able to learn how to use it.

D/F, its firefield lasts longer but its harder to blast in it because its smaller. You also have the flame aura.

fire→45 earth dodge into firefield→4 water 3 and 5 when target is in the firefield which you can set up with earth 3. Then you can switch to air for the air auto.

D/F bunker ele seems to work more often than not. Once you’re used to the weapon set you simply swap out the amulet for celestial or zerker if you want to be a hybrid/damage dealer.

could anyone go through the build list and remove all the outdated ones? Or are they all still viable despite all of the patching Anet has done?

ODB.6891:

Carighan.6758:

Riverbane.7215:

Mesmer is literally the only class that doesn’t have a speed boost outside of a specific weapon skill/runes.

Guardians. :P

retreat, save yourselves, and staff

GS-3, Sw 2, judge’s intervention, judge’s retribution.
aka 3 teleports and a jump.

Hi all, I’m a multi-class kinda guy and I mainly do pvp.
I’ve mastered all professions and Mesmer is the last one I gotta master.
I prefer fighting between 300-600 range.

Made a mesmer 2 days ago, is now at lvl 80 and tried out a celestial Staff/GS build. It works alright but I’m positive that there are some other AMAZING builds out there.

My Question and reason for this topic.
What build do you run and why? + what is your preferred play-style?
Is there a mesmer mentor on youtube?

Does anyone have an interrupt build? <- want to try one.

ele and engi are very good as first lvl 80’s since they’re the most apm/tactic heavy. lots of possible combos for both professions, its very active gameplay.

Ele is basically the jack of all traits but you’ll have to continually adjust based on the situation ahead of time. Like bringing frost bow to dungeons and world bosses or bringing glyph of elemental power to be used in air when y’r running a zerker build. Or just plain cantrips to survive or do might stacking with. Or when you go staff in wvw to bring pyromancers puisance and blasting staff combined with probably arcane wave as an extra blast finisher and evasive arcana in earth for the extra blast finisher.

For engi all builds are interesting except for maybe the bomb and the nade builds.

I’d go with the standard 02066 celestial staff build, same traits as with the standard D/D build only you take blasting staff and you’ll definately need sigil of energy since you won’t be having the renewing vigor trait.

is it possible to make black widow? are you in EU? I’ve got iron man, I know the hulk, loki and captain america, am trying to gather the avengers…

Maleficent Make Maleficent!!!

what is this dual axe build that I hear about?

25 might on pet? with axe auto? Did not know that.

pvp or pve? wvw? What will you be doing with your staff build? Why pick staff? What do you need to be able to survive? What is your preferred play style? Do you dodge alot?

I can watch it with firefox from the Netherlands.
like the music, I’m also a decent elementalist, teaching my warrior buddy how to play elementalist at the moment.

I pvp alot (1000 hours these past 5 months) and mostly on elementalist (1500 hours on ele).

Ussualy use D/F, since I dislike the scepter and the off-hand dagger has nice mobility but the focus has soo many perks. Staff is just too slow for my tastes but I do like running zerker staff troll build.

I’m keeping almost all of my builds to myself, have previously experienced that others don’t always get the same results since their play-style is different. Just like yours is to mine. You do alot of jump dodging, optimizing in the use of evasive arcana while I tend to not bring evasive arcana at all :p.

axe got better too ya know… plus signets now work for not just your pet but you as well. I remember one of those signets giving a 50% dmg boost and another a 30% dmg boost… bash-maul combo is strong, have had it hit for 13k dmg before the patch

Also ranger is super popular in pvp nowadays. Seeing about a 100% increase of rangers in matches. Sometimes even half of the players in a match play ranger.

don’t know about you guys but I now use the axe in pvp and its actually working quite well for me. I run celestial and also bring the shortbow. have yet to be beaten in 1v1’s in tpvp and spvp but here’s the Q:

Have any of you tried the axe and liked it since the latest patch?

I prefer the river drake actually…. no stacks still gives a 5k opening strike, it survives quite well and its f2 is a long range bouncing burst that can take down the heavy golem to medium health. It works well on people that try to rez

I rate it 3/10 for pvp that is.

OreoWolf.9564:

Why not take all invulns away from ele? How about we take their armor too? While we are at it, let’s remove scepter and focus from the game so d/d celestial is the only viable spec we got in pvp. Thoughts?

might as well also take away the elites since we’re not using them anyways.

D/F is viable, lightning rod is kinda clunky. Its a small slight boost to dps but that’s about it. Also D/D’s cc will work better since its aoe while the cc of the focus is very much single target oriented.

D/F zerker or valkyrie, cc/invuln/projectile blocking. I think its harder not to beat them than it is to die to them.

trying out the valkyrie with sigil of intelligence, liking it quite alot.

arcane echo would be a good one, (after using it your next spell will replace arcane echo for 30 seconds)