Guild Wars 2

Cycle 2:
Swap the fire and water order. Use Air, Fire, Earth, then water+ repeat cycle.

The advantages of using this combination are mainly the following

Fire4+Earth+EA earth dodge forward.
This is a fairly easy way to grant yourself 3 stacks of might. Note that the CD on fire4 is 20 seconds, so you will only be able to do this at best every 2 cycles

Fire2+Earth+EA earth dodge onto field
Fire2 has a 6second CD, so this can be done on every cycle. The only downside of this is that in order to stack might, you need to either sacrifice fire2’s damage as a fire field, or be close up to an enemy. Place fire 2 in the location you plan on dodging too

Earth2+Water+Water3 (or Water5)
The advantage of this combination as opposed to water 5, and then earth 2 is that you have the option of using both water fields to do burst healing. Water 3 has a 20second CD, and water5 has a 45second CD. It is therefore optimal to use both when doing blast healing.

Earth1/Earth5+Fire2 (also fire4)
After doing might stacks using this fire field, position your fire fields between you and your enemy + use earth spells.

Earth2 (onto them) + “About face key” +Fire4 into them
Suggestion from Tairs.3802, cast earth2 onto them then burn right past them while stacking might.

Optimizing Rotations
There is more than one type of attunement rotation that you can use for optimal CC/DPS/burst healing,etc.

It should be noted that when combining combo fields + finishers, most of those revolve around earth attunement because of its earth2 blast finisher, and evasive arcana dodge blast finisher.

Note that these rotations are mainly applied to PvE, where you are not pressured into making as many decisions comparatively to PvP and WvWvW. When dealing with actual players attacking you, attunements / skills used are based primarily off decision based factors.

Air attunement can be used anywhere that you want too, but it should not be used right before or after earth. If you plan on swapping which way your rotating the cycle, spam Air1 while waiting for attunement recharges. Air1 hits much more reliable than the other auto attacks, and can hit two-three targets that are fairly far apart.

Air’s swiftness combo is sort of mediocre, so its not really used. Its only used in competitive PvP staff players that open up with area swiftness to allies upon exiting the starting gate.

Cycle 1:
Air, Water, Earth, then Fire + repeat cycle. This is the order in which you should use your attunements, and you can start at any attunement you want to initiate.

The reason why this is the most optimal method of rotation is because of self combos made from your elemental fields + blast finishers. For instance,

Earth2+Fire +Fire2 (onto earth2) grants you 3 stacks of might. This only works if
you go from Fire then Earth

Water 5+ Earth + Earth2 (onto water 5) grants you AoE healing to the team. You can actually take this out further and optimize it with evasive arcana by:
EA water roll+Water5+Earth+Earth2+EA dodge roll. This grants you 3 consecutive burst heals that affects all allies for ~2k per burst heal. Swapping to water attunement also burst heals another ~2k. This can only be done going from Water then earth. Note that water 5 lasts 6 seconds, and earth2 takes 3 seconds to activate, and 1.75 seconds to cast. So you need to cast this right after water5 in order to utilize burst healing. You cannot combine this with a fire field, so pick Earth2 to heal your team or grant yourself 3 stacks of might.

Water3/Water5+Earth1 / Earth5. This grants yourself regeneration, which is another useful combination to utilize.

Water4+Blast finishers
From Waraxx.4286.
first put down water4 infront of you, quickly switch to earth and use earth 2 inside the frost field asap ( if u do it to late you wont get the third proc). then dodge into the frost field, ( if you have the evasive arcane witch most eles have you will have a combofinisher in earth dodge). and once you’ve dodged into the frost field you may proceed to use your arcane blast ( which also is a very popular skill due to the fact its a combo finisher)

(basically its 3 combofinishers in 1 frost field. giving us 3 frost auras)
a few notes; firstly the zephyrs boons proc will “wait” for a while, if u make all combo finishers go off at the same time, then additional fury/swiftness will be added after 3 and 6 sec because that’s how long the auras last. ( the auras will stack on each other and wont activate until the previous frost aura have worn out), try it out and you’ll understand.

secondly, the auras applied this way will count as a “shared aura” thus it will also grant fury and swiftness to allies that is in the blast area ( with the trait). however, if you are in the blast area and you are within 400 units of an ally which is not in the blast area he will not receive the aura. it’s only the blast finisher that can give the aura and its buffs.

More reserved editing

Moarrrr Reserved for editttttting

More Reserved for editing

~!@~!~!~!~!

Reserved for editing

~!@~!~!

Utilities for Staffies (in order of my preferences)

Glyph of storms – 10 seconds AoE spell. This spell works extremely well on earth attunement. You can use it to effectively create a storm that constantly blinds everyone, making your team basically invulnerable in PvE for 10seconds. Has a 60second cooldown. Note that the spell that is casted at the end is based off of the attunement you start casting it with

See wiki for more details
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glyph_of_storms

Conjured frostbow- adds another method of spamming long range damage. Its 4th ability is used the main use of this bow. It provides heavy amount of AoE damage to big targets, as they have larger hit boxes. Those include bosses, buildings, etc. Its 5th ability provides a stun that cannot be broken once hit. 3rd ability provides a quick DPS with chill effects, and the 2nd ability is a mediocre single targeting DPS skill. The 1st ability is pure crap. Frostbow is very useful in many dungeons in fractals, for instance the ice elementals, the fire imp’s shield form, etc. Also a good strategy to utilize is to do an evasive arcana dodge roll in water attunement with this on to grant yourself more healing. You can swap attunements while having frostbow on as well, water and earth are the particularly useful ones.

Lightning Flash or Mistform or Other cantrip

I usually run one or the other, both of these cantrips satisfy the “break stun” in sticky situations, and are both useful in WvWvW and PvE. For WvWvW, lightning flash is good for helping you escape + moving away from backlines. Mistform is also good for WvWvW as well, when it comes to enemies focus firing you / when your low on hp and need to take cover.

Lighting flash synergizes very well with offensive meteor showers. Since it does not stop your channeling time, you can use it to effectively cast your meteor shower as far as you can, then teleport backward. This means you can safely channel meteor shower without getting hit at an approximate range of 1200 (meteor shower range)+900(from lightning flash teleport).

Mist form is especially useful in fractals, as you can cast it after getting “agony” and effectively negate all damage coming in at you. Couple that with heavy burst healing abilities, you don’t actually need any agony resistance until level 20 fractals if you play properly.

Armor of earth is also viable as well, but I find it situationally useful. It is best used in PvE in situations that require you to utilize it, such as those tentacle monsters on frostmaw. You really don’t need to utilize this utility in PvE, but it does have some purpose in WvWvW and PvP.

Cleansing flame isn’t really all that useful for staffies in my opinion. You could use it for extra condition removal

Arcane Wave
This spell is incredibly useful for staffies, as it provides a clutch blast finisher for your combo fields. It is especially useful with water fields, in order to provide more heals to your team. Fire fields + arcane wave is an okay usage, and static field + arcane wave is only useful when travelling around with teammates (i.e. WvWvW)

Conjured earth shield
This item has a situational use, mainly for fractals and high end PvP. For high end PvP, it is used when travelling to a new capture point / counter initiate heavy burst profession openers. In fractals, it is used primarily to agro mobs together with the 4th ability, and the 5th ability for invulnerability. I don’t recall whether or not the invulnerability works after getting agony, or must be used before getting hit
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Magnetic_Shield_

Conjured lightning hammer
This is only used in competitive PvP for point control. It is especially effective using conjured hammer 3 ability + staff air3 + earth staff 5.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lightning_Hammer

Glyph of elemental power
When cast in Water or Earth, it basically gives your spells a chance to snare your foe. It’s got a fairly decent uptime (especially if you pick cripple), and by constantly snaring your opponents, you make them more susceptible to getting hit again (rinse, repeat). As an added bonus, it’ll help you kite.
Also, it can make your Meteor Shower snare those hit by hit…that’s pretty neat.
(ThiBash.5634)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glyph_of_Elemental_Power

Passives

Fire5 is not useful because you shouldn’t get hit while in melee as a staffie

Air5 is kind of useless as movement speeds don’t stack with swiftness

Air15 is amazing for single targeting DPS. Damage is around 2000 and can critical (can’t remember exact numbers). Also you must be in combat to use this while swapping to air, and within 900? range

Earth5 is okay and semiuseful

Water5 is extremely useful. Used in conjunction with Arcana15 to provide you longer amounts of passive regeneration (note this is not considered as “regeneration”, its just a HP/sec buff). At 390 healing power, this skill passively gives 100 HP / sec to yourself and all nearby allies at level 80

Water15 is extremely useful as well. ~2k heal every time you swap to water attunement is awesome

Water25 is also extremely useful. All passive water traits are. 2% more damage per boon really adds up with boon duration gear. It is fairly easy to always have a passive 10% damage boost overall with this trait, using boons such as vigor, regeneration, protection, fury, swiftness, and sometimes stability;

Arcana5 is very useful. 2 seconds of fury per attunement swap. Goes to 3seconds with full boon duration gear.

Arcana15 is used in conjunction with water5 mainly, which is useful

Arcana 25 is an okay trait. Wiki says it has a 7.5% chance to proc
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Arcane_Precision

Arcana V is one of the best traits for an elementalist. 5 seconds of regeneration, swiftness, protection, and might (8seconds with boonduration gear).

Arcana VI gives approximately 10 seconds of vigor (with boon duration gear on) at a 33% chance on critical hits. Used in conjunction with heavy crit chance builds allows you to permanently upkeep this, allowing you to utilize Arcana XI more often and dodge more

Arcana VIII increased AoE effects on staff is always more useful.
edit: i also feel it may be worth noting that blasting staff does not increase the size of the green circle used for targeting ground-targeted skills. this applies to fire2, water 2-5, air5, and earth2. (Akbaroth.2861)

Arcana XI is the best trait for the elementalist. Opens up a lot more viable tactical / combat options and versatility. Has a 10 second CD for each attunement roll, and with 30 arcana, your attunement recharge rate is at 9 seconds. Therefore its synergize each roll with attunement swaps. The water roll is considered to be the most useful, as it provides a 1.6~2.1k heal depending on your heal power and removes one condition. Also can be applied to allies as well, granting another method of removing conditions off allies + healing them (the equivalent spell is D/D spell water#5, with a 40second CD). The earth spell acts as a blast finisher, meaning you can use this in conjunction with water fields to grant effects. Earth dodge roll + water field = ~2k area healing. Earth dodge roll + fire field =3 stacks of might ~30seconds long. Earth dodge roll + static field = more swiftness (not really that useful though here). Fire gives you app. 3 seconds of burning to all nearby targets at the end of the roll, and ~500 damage PbAoE damage (same effect as the superior fire sigil). Air dodge roll gives you an AoE blind, which is useful for staffies. Note that the dodge roll spell’s attunement is based off the end of the roll, not the beginning.

Arcana XII is used primarily in competitive PvP. Use this with arcane blast and arcane wave, and Arcana I

List of of traits + allocation of points reasoning + passives

Fire IV is chosen as one of the traits in the build as staffies have a harder time obtaining mights of stack then D/D elementalists. You should run both lightning flash + cleansing flame if running this trait

Earth III grants armor of earth, which is stability + protection. Elementalists do not have very many methods of obtaining stability without using an elite, so this free cantrip is very useful. Note: I believe its still bugged and triggers at 30% HP instead of 50% HP. Same ability as the real armor of earth utility

Air I is chosen because you can use magnetic aura (30second CD spell, earth spell #3) to grant yourself 8 seconds of fury swiftness (with boon duration gear). This allows you to obtain permanent swiftness and fury at all times while constantly attunement swapping.
edit: you can obtain perma swiftness already, but you can’t upkeep your fury 24/7 without utilizing air1 + magnetic aura. I’m also factoring in the Arcana V trait + 2-3second fury per attunement swap 9second attunement swaps.
Also you can use water4+blast finishers to grant “area frost armor (auras)”

Air VI is chosen because most of the other air abilities revolve around staying in air attunement, which is not something we want. It is a semi decent trait, as most of the earth/fire/air traits are bad anyways

Water III is used in conjunction with cantrips to provide vigor (double endurance regeneration) and regeneration. It stacks very well with Water XI to make all cantrips remove conditions as well. Cantrips are cleaning flame, armor of earth, mist form, and lightning flash.

Water V is used as it provides a 9-12 second method of removing a condition off yourself and your teammates without casting anything. It is a very good standalone trait in water tree.

Water VI is very useful for a staffie as it provides 10% more damage across all spells granted your HP is above 90%. Since most PvE’s AI is rather lacking, you can easy have over 90% HP most of the time anyways. WvWvW is a different story though, your HP will almost never be above 90% in combat.

Water VII is used primarily in tPvP. Chill and burning are considered to be two of the strongest conditions in the game (immobilization is considered the strongest CC condition). Having a dodge roll to remove those 2 conditions can help you stay alive longer and give you more options

Water IX is used in conjunction with Fire IV, and Water III + Water XI to remove conditions. Focus is heavy on cantrips

Water XI is used because you can give yourself more ways to remove conditions. Using

Water III with this trait allows all cantrips to remove one condition, as Water III makes your cantrips give you regeneration. Swapping to Water attunement with Arcana V provides regeneration also, so that’s another method of getting a condition removal. Also blast projectiles + water fields provides an additional method of removing conditions, as you gain regeneration there too.

Water XII is used because you can provide the magnetic aura from the earth tree to your allies, and this can be used in conjunction with Air I to give your allies swiftness+fury too, with a permanent upkeep.
Water VIII (aka Arcane abatement) Not shown in the build maker website. Provides 50% damage reduction on falls, which is extremely useful in WvWvW and PvE. Note that the water fall does not work properly. Earth provides a knockdown on everyone (same as D/D earth4 ability), air provides the equivalent of staff 5, and fire provides the d/d’s fire4 ability.

Build Types
As mentioned above, having 15 points in water and 20 points in arcana are a must have in my opinion for any staff build setup. That leaves 35 points into whatever else you want to put, depending on your play preference. I will list the builds out in terms of what points I put in each field (water magic, arcane power, fire magic, etc), and then list possible alternate traits along with it.

PvE staffie builds and WvWvW

0/10/0/30/30
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQBYAg8wEUKRU4hyjZ2xGA
(I use this build setup the most, same point setup as D/D so no need to retrait^^^)

0/20/0/20/30
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQBYAgowEUEKewiyjZ2xGA

0/25/0/25/20
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQBYAgywEUkMewiiiZ2B
(Utilize heavy amounts of criticals from AoE to cause vulnerability to enemies)

0/20/0/30/20
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQBYAg8wEUKRo4BLKKmZHA

0/15/0/25/30
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQBYAgyAFTkHeo8YmdsB
(Use both the air and water minor traits to deal more damage+single target focus)

10/0/0/30/30
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQBYAg84EXMJUQhyjZ2xGA
(Run 3 cantrips to and use those to heal, grant yourself might, and remove conditions. 20% faster cooldown on cantrips to utilize them more effectively)

30/30/0/10/0
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmObyR2wjDAkCoEeQADJIe8gFSA;T8Ag0ynEOJdS9kyJqcM5IyxmjLHZOjMOQMXA
(This is a pure fire type setup, only recommended for PvE (Hypno.2649))

20/0/0/30/20
http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/elementalist#5|0|2771|48|100|3928|1027|20|1665|1658|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|30|2261|1680|2259|20|2250|1631|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0

Old cantrip build w/ use in conjured weapons. See Kodiaks response page 2 for more details
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-Staff-Ele-1-18-13/page/2 → Control F “Kodiak”

tPvP Builds

0/0/10/30/30
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQBYAg84EVYZUIkyjZ2xGA
(Use the armor of earth cantrip trait in conjunction with cantrip boosting water traits)

0/10/0/30/30
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQBYAg8wEUKRU4hyjZ2xGA
(There are other staff builds for tPvP, most are similar variations)

Build Background
There are several traits worth mentioning before describing what the possible staffie builds are out there.

Water 15(Passive)– This skill is a must have for almost all elementalist builds. It provides a large burst healing for up to 5 allies at a heal amount of

Amount healed = Base Amount (1302 @ 80) + Healing Power
Coupled with 30 points in arcana, this provides a large sustainable burst heal to the team every 9-12 seconds for up to 5 players

Arcana V – This trait is a must have for any elementalist build. It gives you 5 seconds of regeneration, protection, swiftness, or might depending on your attunement. With 30 arcana and full duration boon gear, it gives you 8 seconds!

Arcana VIII – This trait is needed for any staff elementalist, as increasing your total area of effects on your AoE spell is incredibly useful. Note that the cap limit for hitting enemies at any given time is maxed out at 5 enemies, and heal limit caps from water fields are at 5 allies as well. However, this does not stop your allies from doing blast combos on your water field to heal themselves (namely with projectile finishers that grant them regeneration). So you technically can heal more than 5 people indirectly, and this works great for those super large scale events with 30 people in your field. See link for more details

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

Also if you run a 30 arcana build, the traits that you should take are:
Arcana V, Arcana VI,Arcana VIII, and Arcana XI

You have 3 traits to pick from, and any combination of these 3 are viable depending on what you want. Arcana VI is only picked in the instance vs. real players (WvWvW and PvP)

Why use a staff as an elementalist?
I had mentioned some background information on all weapon types as an elementalist / reasons to play an elementalist in general on my other guide.
I will go into more detail as to the reasons why the staff is a very useful weapon as an ele.

Staff elementalists (I’m going call them staffies) can deal a lot of damage at long range, with a maximum range potential of 1200 units on all the auto attacking abilities. Staffies have some of the best ranged crowd controlling (CC) abilities in the game, and very strong support abilities for the team. They also have a large potential for combos as well, as staffies possess several types of fields (fire, air, frost, and water), which leads to great synergy combinations between allies.

Staffies are most commonly found in PvE and WvWvW. There not as commonly found in the competitive PvP arena, due to nerfs in the past rendering them less useful in terms of support and survivability. However, most people don’t even play competitive PvP anyways, so this guide will still be relevant to mostly everyone =P

In WvWvW, staffies are considered to be one of the strongest weapon setups in the game for large scale battles (zerg battles). In these large scale battles, staffies can press deal a lot of damage to zerg armies with meteor showers, heal entire armies with water fields, cut off army escapes with crowd controlling fields, harass at choke points, etc. They can ultimately determine whether a large scale battle is won or lost, and having plenty of staffies on your team generally increases a zerg army’s success.

In PvE, staffies generally sit in the back and spam buttons at random depending on the situation. They generally should not get hit because the enemy’s AI is not really intelligent enough to target them most of the time. They can dish a lot of damage out depending on their setup, while providing great team heals and support /cc at long range.

Table of Contents

reserved for editing

Update Notes

asdfasdfasdfasdf

Hello Forumers,

This will be my second guide for users who want another indepth guide to something that’s not a dagger /dagger elementalist. There’s already a few Scepter /dagger guides out there, but I felt like there is a need for a user guide to one of the more common weapons that a elementalist utilizes.

My original dagger/dagger (D/D) thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-D-D-ele-12-20-12

I don’t expect this guide to be done that early either. I still need to finish making my d/d ele guide sometime :S

Nice builds and indepth analysis

When I run staff, I just use a variant of the 0/10/0/30/30 setup. It really is an optimal trait setup for all weapon types for elementalists. Plus theres no need to waste money to retrait :P

I run something on the lines of this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQBYAg8wEUKRU4hyjZ2xGA

In terms of staff build types to run, there is two ways to go:

A staff setup primarily based off of a mixture of DPS and support
A pure DPS / one attunement setup revolving around mostly fire

Personally I like having versatility, so I run something that utilizes all the attunements.
In my opinion, I think Evasive arcana and Blasting staff traits are must haves for any staff setups. The elemental attunement trait is a must have for any build as well.

Evasive arcana leads to water healing + dodge roll earth combos for burst healing effects, and provides a nice additional water roll as well. Blasting staff for the increased area size effects, as having a larger area effect is always more useful.

That leaves 30 points used in arcana. You could altneratively only take 20 points in arcana and not utilize evasive arcana. The passive trait in arcana 25 is somewhat useless.

I find the water 15 trait extremely useful as well (Healing ripple) as it provides a large heal bonus upon swapping to water attunement. Staff elementalists are providing support to the team, so it only makes sense to have this. Some form of condition removal is a must have, so that should be traited as well. The hp>90% damage trait is extremely useful as it provides an extra 10% damage across everything. Combine this with a 2% damage per boon from the water 25 traits passive, and you will definitely do a lot of damage :P

Other possibly traits:

Air1 – With boon duration gear, it gives you 8 seconds of swiftness and fury, so upkeeping perma swiftness+fury on staff is fairly easy. Plus you can still use water12 for aurashare, and provide magnetic aura+fury+swiftness to allies as well if your going for water 30
Air6 – more damage is always nice

Earth3 – free cantrip, use it with water traits

Fire4 – might from cantrips

@Banzai

:D glad you like the tips.

Also I’ve killed myself many times while I’m in air and get downed. My first instinct it to spam press 4, and accidently press 4 again once I’m rezzed

End result : I get rezzed and shoot myself over an edge using RtL
To avoid: Only press 4 once (unless you get hit and take damage). I’m fairly certain spamming 4 in downed state doesnt improve the rez time

@Mahanaxar
well your probably 80 by now
EA does take some time to get used to though

@mouse/ndranc
+1 for answering

@Jonsnow
Its not necessarily just stats, as Kailoq states. It does depend alot on mitigating damage using dodges correctly and predicting their next move. Also using the environment helps mitigate damage as well.

I think your thinking of the warriors rifle adrenal ability. It does atleast 5k dmg usually, but its animation is extremely noticeable

@Kailoq
I’m one step ahead of you already xD
+1 to answers :P

@Maff
pain inverter is definitely useful (applies 5 second confusion to nearby enemies, 5 second retaliation, and 30second CD).

I didn;t mention racial abilities in the guide, as not everyone is the same race. Having a means to get 5 seconds of retaliation is extremely useful, especially against spam attack builds.

Retaliation does 300ish damage back to your enemy once you get hit (it scales with power as well). Some setups like P/D thieves, have openers that hit 5-8 xs on you. Flamethrowers from engineers hit multiple times as well. Water1 from S/D eles hit 3xs per auto attack.

Retaliation can make a big difference if casted right before those multiple hit attacks. You can easily proc 2-3k dmg from retaliation on one enemy in that 5 second window

@Mahanaxar
+1 ;D.

Thanks for the link too ;p

Kailoq was going more for overall DPS efficiency ;p

@Alfred Nobel
:D Thank you Mr. Nobel

@Art
I use both staff and d/d alot in WvWvW when I go command :P. Staff is just way more efficient in WvWvW zerg battles and controlling the battlefield

When I swap to d/d, its usually for morale effects so I can lead my zerg army to victory !:P Or to roam solo and have fun =]

@Mechanics argument stuff
I ’m almost positive that the 2% damage per boon is calculated at the very end, and just adds to your base damage (power)

@Mahanaxar
:D. Its not the damage that counts all the time but the distraction too

also instagibbing an entire team with tornado is fun as well

@Wolf
o.O I usually die alot to make those videos, lol. I got a lot of good video material but some of the tactics I used in WvWvW are kind of iffy, and I probably won’t upload those until later =P

Hm well I guess an alternative is to list out some of the combos that I do, so you can get more out of it. Sometimes I don’t notice alot of things that I do either, and if I don’t notice them right away I highly doubt people watching will too. Maybe I’ll put in comments while video is rolling.

Theres one video that really stands out in terms of what I screwed up, and what I did right.

On E.7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2_GXr9o-Us
at 4:59 I pressed water 5 but didn’t let it activate b/c I cycled earth too quickly and overrided it with other buttons
5:03. I got my churning earth interupted at 3.1 seconds, and couldn’t see my avatar interupted, lol. Used the skillbar to recognize the interruption, and wasn’t fully aware that my churning earth landed either. Had my cantrip ready incase I was stunned or knocked downed. I reacted in 0.6seconds by pressing my cantrip to break stun
5:04. I quickly used shocking aura to negate some of the damage against me, and dodge roll to further reduce. I quickly deselected target thereafter
5:05. Spammed ride the lightning asap
5:19 I used earthquake there, but it was really hard to see
5:40. At 5:31 I planned on swapping to air and chasing him down, as the other thief weakened him up for me
5:55 somehow had my stomp interupted, still don’t know why
5:59 messed my dodge roll by 0.5 seconds
6:04 to 6:30 Had the most chained flawless executions ever =P.
6:08-6:09 had a nice perfect water3+ animation end cancellation + quick turn around+fire3
6:10 setup fire field for 6:12
6:11 Drakes breath LoS harassment followed by an earthquake once there in my LoS to hit me, combined with earth4+earth5+lighting flash combo counter
6:25 to 6:30 . Somehow managed to get that down perfectly. Ring of fire hit everyone entering in as I juked behind a tree. Drakes breath shot everyone down in a straight line, and firegrab would have hit everyone had it not been blocked by aegis. Followed by a might stacking combo if EA was what it was currently.
6:37 backcasted RtL just for fun =P
6:47 shouldn’t have burned off cantrip
6:53 timed my shocking aura perfectly right b4 I got hit
6:54 intended to RtL away but accidently selected a target
7:06 Reacted a tad slow for my lightning flash escape
7:09 double jumped, should have dodged there instead
7:16-7:24 flawless comboing there. Had enemies eat chill damage at point blank and set up an ambush as ring of fires CD came back
8:17 invisible countering with magnetic grasp
8:33 got lucky and got a long range magnetic grasp
8:42 saw the port coming, and used a blind RtL to auto finish my enemy
8:58 Didn’t see that guy at all and quickly set up a nice combo on him
9:07 dodge+updraft combo as it comes back on CD :P
9:11 screwing around trying to get on the roof top
9:13 fails, end up a ring of fire as all the enemies run in, quick turn around fire3 ambush
9:16 chilled enemies followed by using a cheap LoS abuse onto them with cone of cold so they cant hit me but I can
9:19 thought earthquake would go through wall since it goes through mostly everything, apparently not
9:22 screwing around again, trying to get to the roof for fun. Ends up netting me a perfect RtL on everyone at 9:25
9:25 to 9:28 Drakes breath everyone in a straight line, end cancellation on fire grab.
9:30 to 9:32 juked all those silly npcs and punished them with fire fields
9:33 saw the impending attack, quick juke back to hit as many people as possible with water 3.
9:35 Earth 2 to cripple so I can safely LoS behind a wall and buy time to cast churning earth without taking any damage
9:39 intended to use a delayed shocking aura as first hit came, CD was on
10:10 went to wrong attunement, meant to go water

@TGS
+1 to all those answers:D

@Sprezzatura
Mhenlos works perfectly fine. Your damage shouldn’t be too much lower, but you do get so much more sustainability in healing :P

@Chaosdoom
Yes auto attack can redirect you to the mob atleast for fire1. Lightning 1 does not I think (not really sure). Water 1 has the same aiming mechanics as fire1. Earth 1 does not matter where you face to attack.

Your enemy still needs to be atleast in front of your character in order to auto attack. Basically you get a 180* attack range in front of your character.

@Blackpaw
:P

@Mahanaxar
to each his own =P. Personally I like buying rare weapons b/c I want to pewpew things faster, and cheap green armor since its practically free

@TGSlasher

I was always under the impression you were level 80 :P

I hadn’t thought of the uses of FGS in legacy of foefire with the door and NPCs= P

@BlackPaw

Pure preference tbh, it depends whether you want more total stats w/ crit damage or specific PVT stats. I think karka shell and triforge are superior to other ammys/accessories.

@Banzai
You really don’t need alot of space. Small cramped areas are actually beneficial to fire3, as your fire trail sections are much shorter. There’s around 4 fire trail sections iirc, and each trail can proc several times. On bigger enemies (aka bigger hit boxes), they can take much more damage as there standing on more sections of the fire trail. If you use fire3 in a tight corner/don’t move very far with fire 3, most of the fire sections will actually overlap to where the enemy is, and therefore more damage.

The downside of tight spaces is that you do have less space to move around, and therefore can get hit much easier against melee mobs. You can’t kite as efficiently though either. The other advantage of small spaces is in team group fights : you are not always going to draw all the aggro as your teammates will take some as well. But since your whole team is in a confined space, so is your enemy mob. Therefore you will always hit everyone

Work makes it lots of fun. If your the type of player like me, I’m fairly impatient when it comes to easy PvE mobs and like to charge in /plan out my combos. D/D sort of fits my natural tendency to do w.e I feel like, and thats why its fun.

@void
:D

@Mahanaxar
You make a good point =P. Small confined spaces can backfire if your enemy has heavy AoE

@Chaos doom
Well I run 2 superior rune of water, 2 superior rune of monk, 2 major runes of water in PvE. PvP I just use 2 sup runes of divinity over 2 major runes of water.

Yes the boon duration does add on. Arcana at 30 = 30% boon duration buff. 15% boon duration comes from monk runes, another 15% from superior water, and 10% from major water. So thats a total of 70% boon duration

2. Nope, swap sigils of the same type dont stack. Any sigil that has an internal cooldown is shared with the other weapon your wielding as well. Meaning if you use haste (45second cooldown, 10% chance on critical) with sigil of battle, you may prevent yourself from using sigil of battle for 45seconds if haste procs.

Water 12 is incredibly useful for PvE, WvW, and tPvP. Its not worth sacrificing 10 pts in water for 10pts in fire. Its also possible to get 25 stacks of might while in combat for short periods of time, although this requires you to set up perfect combos or sacrifice some time to build up might.

Your tihnking of lightning flash + churning earth. Lightning flash is a teleport

@Orikx
didn’t realize you had already answered the question, lol +1 = P

@Banzai
I went through the same thing in certain parts of PvE too :P. Sometimes I’ll be fighting an enemy next to a large dropoff zone, and I will refrain myself from using air4 in fear that I accidently deselecting him and shoot myself off the edge and suicide.

I also have a tendecy to go through zones really quickly, and use Ride the lightning frequently to travel faster. At times I’ll be on a cliffside, and realize that the fastest way down is just to hop over to the next area using ride the lightning. Then my estimations go wrong, and I fall off and die :S. Luckily we have that new 50% fall damage trait which is great for PvE, incase I accidently over estimate fall drop offs

Fire3 gives me the same problems at times. I refrain from using it if I think its unsafe, and will get me killed

@Chaosdoom
altruism only applies to the 6th utility ability. I never cast my signet of restoration, so its not beneficial to me. Even if you equipped ether renewal (15 second CD), I still think its inferior.

Not really sure how easy D/D is early on. I ran mostly s/d and staff lvls 1-80.

@Brickforlife

I don’t usually notice the overshooting when I use it, but I’ve noticed when fighting players that they constantly overshoot themselves way past where they should be using magnetic grasp.

I use clerics accessories and knights accessories atm, but PVT works fine too

@Kailoq
:D more +1 lol

@Chaosdoom
You can level from 1-80 using WvWvW, but its not really recommended. Imo, you should be atleast level 30 so you can get your elite skill and enough traits to be semi useful.

If you wanna level up quickly in WvWvW at lower levels, I’d recommend using a staff and following your zerg team around, and party up with other players. You earn lots more exp this way, and money and loot. D/D shines the most at level 80 once you get all your traits in. Plus its always good to learn how to use staff, s/f, and s/d anyways.

Crafting guides to level up are everywhere :P. You can just google search them, its a pretty common thing to look up^_^

@Voltron
Thanks for the long feedback =]. I think we’ll eventually get to the point of having super long guides everywhere, lol

I think it has already, theres a S/D PvP guide =]

@Brick/Mahanaxar
I uploaded a video recently of me just ramboing fractals level 5. Should answer your question :p

@Orikx
Yeah I definitely need to use my focus more for that air4 ability :P

As to the whole staff in dungeons, I think it all depends on how many elementalist you have on your team. I find staff to be extremely useful for its water field + regeneration combos, so it all depends on whether you want to be a tank / initiator / dps (D/D), or support / healing /long range DPS (Staff). I’m sure staff is way more useful in higher level fractals though

@Snizzle
I tried it out and it works great :P

@Brick
If you dodge alot, you need evasive arcana!

@Kailoq
+1 again, :P you answer everything lol

@Notsure/Wolf
I agree with everything wolf says about fiery GS. You limit yourself to alot of viable CC’s heals, etc when wielding that sword. Sure it does alot of damage, but some of those abilities are extremely easy to dodge against an experienced player. PvE is a different story though. Glyph of elementals is just a free summon basically, and does not interfere with your skillbar

As to the usefulness of using the fiery GS to travel around (GS’s 3rd and 4th ability help you move around faster), the only downside is that casting the elite requires you to stand still. If your running away / chasing someone, having to stand still and cast it can be a problem. But conjured lightning hammer does not have this issue, you can cast it and spam its 2nd ability to leap right away.

@Orkix
I’m not an expert at mesmer, so I can’t add anything onto what you’ve said :]

As to the aura sharing and limitations of stacking boons, the reason why your allies get swiftness is due to a combination of the water 12 trait (powerful auras) and zephyr’s boon(air1 trait). You share auras to your allies, and any boon duration effects that you get from the auras applies to your allies as well (including boon duration bonuses from runes and arcana). The limitation of how many people can be affected ay once by powerful auras should be 5, since that is also the current limit of how many people can be healed at the same time in a water field (I could be wrong here). Powerful auras does have some visual bugs associated with it (still a bug I believe), so the best way to check if someone has the aura is to physically look at their statuses (boons, auras, conditions on them, etc).

I have no clue how the game prioritizes targeting with auras when theres lots of people. Attunement swapping should be limited to 5 people as well, due to the healing argument earlier. Doesn’t make much sense to limit the amount of healing someone can get in a water field when you can just swap to water and apply regeneration to more than 5+ people.

Might stacking is a blast finisher+ a fire field. If it was a water field, it would heal past the 5 person limit. So I’m not really sure if might stacking is for everyone, or just 5 people.

@Kailoq

Valkyries is generally considered to be better/more versatile for tPvP from what I’ve been reading too. Clerics is used primarily for bunker hold points in PvP

I used emeralds/knights and its definitely pretty good :P

@Raif
I haven’t WvW’d that much lately :P

Your right, I do prefer defensive stats over offensive. I honestly don’t know what half those items you eat are, lol.

As to stats, I’m not entirely sure. It goes purely by preference, if you find yourself needing more defensive stats, take more healing power + toughness. More offensive stats would be to go knights / valkyrie for the precision /critical damage.

I can’t really formulate a good opinion without physically trying out both types of stats. 16k HP is good enough in my opinion, albeit the toughness is somewhat low to my standards. I prefer at least 15k HP, and 1500 toughness from my experiences. The more crit damage/ crit chance the better if you don’t need the survivability :P

@Kailoq
I found those theorycrafting reddit threads to be really useful =P. Thanks for linking them! (I put links of them in thread too :P)

I like the input provided here, I’m going try it out myself ;P

@Ristomursu
I haven’t tried really anything besides boon duration gear tbh. I originally used doylak and divinities, but the boon duration stats are too good to sacrifice imo.
I could be wrong though =P

@Soyuchi
I think Kailoq answered most of those questions :P
Crit dmg on daggers is unefficient statwise
Knights set is pretty good

@Wolf
He’s probably running a shatter build like this one

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/guide-WvWvW-Shatter-cat

I personally never used it as a mesmer. I know that it requires you to summon several phantoms at once, and is negated by line of sight. Also iirc the mesmer generally teleports to you and stunlocks you with something very similar to pistol whipping from thieves, and blows up his mesmer phantasms onto you like bombs during the stunlocking. Usually you’ll die unless you dodge/break stun the pistol whipping – like skill

@Orikx
Mango pie provides 70hp/sec. I don’t think it scales with healing power. It provides a good amount of hp. I like to think of it in terms of how long it takes the mango pie to give me 1k HP. 1k / 70 is approximately 14 seconds. So having a 1k heal every 14 seconds is not really that bad in my opinion, although its purely preference. You could always go boon duration too :P

As to the shattering argument, I’m fairly certain that the effectiveness of the shatter setup is practically negated once you stunbreak ASAP upon The sword’s 3rd ability. By doing so, you can dodge out of the impending shatter / explosions from the mesmer’s clones, and then his large damaging spells will be on CD.

@Narhim
I could see this build working really well for PvE, where conditions are not really a problem most of the time: P. Having that extra vulnerability from the air 25 trait seems very useful, especially against bosses. The only downside in PvE is no aura sharing

For PvP and Wv3, it would definitely work well in teamplay situations for spiking down enemies as quickly as possible due to air trait 15 and the vulnerability procs as cover conditions for burning/ bleed.

@Swarley
I forgot what breathing apparatus I use, can’t login atm to check :P. I bought it from Orr, where the stats are maximized though. Breathing apparatuses’s bonuses don’t apply on land though.

@Kailoq
:D +1 to all your responses, lol. Couldn’t have answered that any better =P

@Draahl
:P glad you find entertainment reading this

@lagrangeify / Wolf Fivousix

ty lagrangeify =P. Wolf is right, nothing gets stickied unless its a general guide (if its stickied, its like Anet supports d/d elemenetalists more than thieves. Anet does not want to show bias when it does not have to)

@AmagicalFishy
“In your traits, what is the purpose behind having Cleansing Water/Elemental Attunement and Cleansing Wave?”

I think Kailoq answered most of the question, but to give you my response here it is:

You should be removing conditions off allies anytime you give them regeneration ( I haven’t tested this yet). The reason for this is because Zephyr’s boon (applies swiftness fury on auras) in conjunction with powreful auras (applies auras to nearby allies) work together. You can give your ally swiftness by using shock aura, basically. The same should be true with cleansing watergiving your ally regeneration. You should be removing an extra condition because of this (I forgot whether its an extra condition on you, or your ally. Skill descriptions kind of vague).

@Kailoq
Thanks for putting your input and your low level viewpoint. I played s/d and staff when levelling up, so I don’t know too much about low level D/D

@EarthlySaint/Damador
I made a new image to show build
http://imgur.com/wjkYZ

Wierd seems to work everytime I use it. I did name out every trait I used in words though, so you don’t really need the link actually.

0/10/0/30/30 means 10 points in air, 30 points in water, 30 points in arcana

In the build description:
(I.e. Arcana 6 means Trait VI in arcana tree). Water 3 means Trait III in water tree.
Incase you forgot roman numerals
I = 1
II=2
III= 3
IV=4
V=5
VI=6
VII=7
VIII=8
IX=9
X=10
XI=11
XII=12

@CachoDm
I haven’t played too much lately, so I don’t know how much that will benefit you. I do read all my youtube comments and gw2 thread/look at other gw2 threads all the time. You can always pm me in game too for any specific advice =P.
I’m more likely to respond to a question in the post though, cause I don’t log in half the time when I look at forum (aka I don’t see private msges till later lol)

@citationx
I mentioned it in the thread near the top. Use Control+F “Guide to early levelling up”
Yeah I need to make a table of contents, and hyperlinks later :S

@Mahanaxar
I put your suggestion into the thread:]. I think I tinkered around with water 5 too early on levelling up, its really useful!

@Kailoq
Healing power might scale low according to some users (at 10% per stat return is sorta low) but do realize this is an observation coming from other classes, not just the elementalist. The D/D weapon setup has multiple methods of healing, so healing is extremely useful even if the stat returns are mediocre.

Boon duration is not nerfed for PvE/ Wv3. Its nerfed for sPvP (15% duration is 10% duration for sup. rune monk/water)

Rune of earth is kinda useless imo, because you don’t wanna rely on an aura thats only situationally useful and when your almost dead. You want traits / runes that are useful throughout the entire battle.

@Foher
Master tuning crystals
Mango pies

@Whizzy
I like conjured weapons, especially hammer,bow, and shield for sPvP.
Hammer grants you point control in sPvP, cause you can knock enemies outside capturing zone. Bow for trebuchets. Shield for teamplay reasons.

Air15 is good, having a free single target damage spell every 9seconds is useful

rune of centaur is useless, because you do not need the swiftness buff from it. Perma swiftness is easy to achieve already

rune of altriusm is useless too since its might effect only works if you cast your utility 6 ability, and does not work on water2 or water5 spell.

@Hunter
I agree that the easier path to take in terms of stat is just to go PVT Accessories (rings+back) from ascended, and just use clerics armor (power,healing, toughness). Thats an ideal way of going, but then you’d miss out on all+stat gear though. I put an indepth repsonse to NdranC’s question, I think that should answer it for now?
Sorry for the short response, am getting tired and going go to sleep =P

@Alcuin
It works fine, you might have to just copy paste the link instead of clicking on it.

@Kailoq

I’m not a big fan of autocasting my auras, because I intentionally don’t cast it almost everytime its on cooldown. I usually cast it right before I swap into another attunement.
For instance, I like going air > cast random air spells > shock aura+instant burning speed 0.l seconds after. I close the gap and use a shock aura to punish ranged enemies attacking me, and give them no option but to run / dodge/ backpedal away.

Sometimes I might decide to just spam auras for the sake of perma swiftness and fury, but in battle I think twice before blowing it off. I also like using frost aura against P/D thieves right as they unload, so they can get 10+ seconds of chill on them and I can freely kill them using fire2/ mid range spells and preventing any CnD attacks from thieves coming into melee range.

Using boon duration armor, the protection is up to 8 seconds. Cooldown on earth attunement is 9 seconds, so protection is up most of the time anyways. Obviously your not going swap to earth on every 9 seconds CD, but it would be more so something like 10-12seconds, which is basically having protection up 3/4ths of the time anyways. Having an extra 1/4th duration from the original 3/4ths from a trait is not really that great imo (this is just an approximate estimate)

@Minibiskit
:D

@troponin
I use pretty much the same setup for PvE, WvWvW, and sPvP. Doesn’t really matter what you use for early on though, because all your armor is going be random stats anyways. I would just pick out armor that has healing power and toughness (and vitality if you need more). Just make sure your armor is up to date and buy blue/green armor from auction house then sell it to a merchant when your done using it.

@SecondtoNone
Having a mix of power and condition damage definitely does add more versatility (which is what elementalists are all about =P). Thats why I like trading off some power for condition damage, I mentioned in the previous response how against certain classes/builds, condition damage or power/direct damage is preferable.

@TGSlasher
Yeah i forgot to put in the guide about EA fire dodge+fire grab. It adds onto the unconventional opener idea / confusing veteran players, so EA is nice for that :P (also adds lots more versatility and tactic options).

Most of the time I don’t need to dodge anyways. Its good that you can just blow off a dodge just for the purpose of might stacking, and the water heal roll is great for burst healing (swap to water attunement +EA water roll at the same time is like a 4-5k heal)

@NdranC
You have to sacrifice toughness for those all around stats. Toughness adds directly to armor more or less, and armor reduces damage against you (not condition damage)

Damage taken is inversely proportional to the amount of armor you have.
Lets say you have 1 armor, and you take 10 damage.
If you have 4 armor, you’ll take (1/4th) of 10 damage, or 2.5 damage
If you have 10 armor, you’ll take (1/10th) of 10 damage, or 1 damage

^ thats just an oversimplification. You’ll get diminishing returns with armor. So having less toughness for other stats is not that big of a deal imo.

Now for your question:
Ascended PVT rings provides a total of 103+68+68 or 239 total stats
Ascended Solaria / Lunaria = a total of 234 stats, 1% magic find, and 5% critical damage.

Both rings give about the same number of stats, but solaria /lunaria gives you 5% more critical damage. All stats are useful imo. If you want to go for a more tanky type setup, just get PVT rings. If you want more DPS/all around setup, go for the solaria/lunaria for the critical damage bonuses. The difference b/w toughness for the lunaria/solaria and PVT rings is 29 toughness per ring.

Triforge is superior to all other amulets, because the amount of total stats gained outweighs the stats gained from sapphire amulets. I believe sapphire. I think it was about 60 more stats iirc. Same goes with karka shell.

@Phoebe

I would choose any power, vitality, toughness ascended back

@Chris
Evasive arcana is too good to give up =P

@Calae
:D

@Belazor
I updated it on the links

@niedawow
I like outlasting my enemies, but you could always go for a more offensive setup. Toughness should not really be sacrificed, but vitality / healing power can be exchange for power / precision / crit damage. Its all pure preference though.

Healing power is best for long sustained battles, and vitality is good for shorter term battles/heavy burst from strong enemies (like champions / bosses). You would sacrifice one of these stats depending on the situation your generally in, for more DPS stats

@LaoYe
Feel free to translate. Just make sure I get credit (w/ links to this page), and link my youtube page /videos.

@SecondtoNone
Condition damage does a fixed amount of damage, regardless of enemies armor. It can get removed unlike normal regular damage though. I did a study on my old thread, I believe that 100 power adds about 7.5% damage on the base skill, and 100 condition damage adds about 7.5% damage on base skill. They both are equal statwise, but it all depends on the situation

For instance, a warrior generally has high armor and fairly low condition removal across most builds. Condition damage would be ideal, as direct damage is reduced by armor.

A necromancer can use your conditions to their advantage (i.e. they can heal more with conditions on, or transfer it back to you), and their base armor is rather low. Direct damage is better against a necro in most cases.

A guardian has high armor, and condition removal. A mix of both damage types is needed to kill a guardian , with covering conditions on your burning/bleeding.

Thieves have barely any condition removal and medium armor, so either damage works. Plus they stealth, and condition damage is best against stealthers

D/D elementalists have lower armor, but lots of condition removal. Direct damage is best.

Mesmers have low armor and low hp, any damage works particularly AoE types against clones

Rangers/ engineers you can use whatever you want too

@Kailoq
My general opinion on these stats is the following:
You want toughness on every item, but you want to interchange vitality and healing power depending on what you like. For instance, if you only have 14k hp and die from burst from bursty thieves, then you want more vitality. If you run into a mob and die too quickly, you need more vitality. If your fighting a long sustained battle to which your HP constantly drops at a fairly linear rate, you want healing power.
For instance on sPvP, I run clerics amulet + soldiers jewel. I found that using clerics amulet + clerics jewel caused me to overheal way too much at 14k hp, so I dropped the jewel for a soldiers jewel for increased HP to app. 15k hp.
Basically if your not recovering fast enough in the situations you are in, get more healing power. If you overheal or die too fast from burst, get more vitality.

Auras grant protection adds 3 (maybe it was longer with boon duration?) seconds on each aura (could be a different duration for each aura, I forgot), and 33% damage reduction from protection is effectively 50% more armor. I always found the protection added on was situational, because you cannot really control when you need the protection, and when to apply it (i.e. you wouldn’t cast an aura purely for protection when needed)

Not a big fan of alacrity, I like traits that are good for any attunement.

@Raif
Might be a different [GODS], or something I don’t know of. Nope I’m still on Fort Aspenwood :S

@Uwenthil Isilienda

I think i mentioned that somewhere (maybe Idk, but its always a good refresher for everyone)

@Goblin
Good necros take ages to kill, and its usually a battle of attrition for the last man standing. If I’m fighting several enemies with a good necro, I’ll run away and pick off any lone stragglers (and the necro if possible). Necros also use your conditions against you, so they can be a real pain to deal with.
Also be wary of lich form (necro turns into a gigantic towering ghost demon thing). It does alot of direct dmg, but leaves them defenseless for the most part.

@Cirax/mouse
yes it does, i wikied it too

@donttread/Uwenthil Isilienda
yup, if you can handle a bunch of real players just fine, brainless NPCs are no problem :P

Yes your right you do need staffs at certain points. The one part that comes to mind is in ARAH, against lupis. A staff is just much better than d/d there.

@mahanaxar
:D I hope that thread answered your questions

@Phoebe
in a 1v1 situation, its fairly easy to win or stalemate against a thief. In a 2thief v1 situation, it gets incredibly hard to survive if there both good and are burst oriented.

P/D and D/D are the most common types of thief weapons. Just know that D/D can spike u in 2 seconds if your not careful and P/D likes to condition harass you. Dodge and CC’s are your best friends for these situations

I’ll make a more indepth coutner guide for thieves later (I have alvl 67 one, so I do know how to play a thief pretty well :P)

@Kwon/Krulz
yeah ive been always running the same thing, lol

@Donttread/papaganoosh
I copy pasted an old thread comment I made, it should answer your questions
Its in the guide (right after weapon / armor setups)

@Zarel
I would get armor first. You can always just use toughness, heal power, power daggers anyways. (+armor is cheaper in cost at AC anyways)

Yes there called ghastly daggers. They shine at night too!

@TGSlasher
I like all the PvP related comments, and I do agree with you on all of them. Unconventional openers are always best imo, because there so unpredictable.

I just find it strange that you dumped off evasive arcana over 10 fire. The cantrip stack might from the fire10 trait is 20 seconds iirc, and evasive arcana blasts are 30seconds iirc. You get way more using 30 arcana over 10 fire imo.

I added notes for your stuff at the bottom of my guide (before videos) :]
Couldn’t fit everything, so I just linked page 6, lol

Put in lots of updates to build / gear/ videos/ keyboard/ stuff. I’ll put a table of contents in the next guide probably, its getting confusing where I put everything

@kenny/Khenzy/NdranC

NdranC is right, altruism should technically only proc off the 6th slot ability. I actually almost never use my ability, b/c i run Signet of restoration most of the time.

Even if you did decide to use rune of altruism, you would benefit from 10 seconds of 3 stacks of might everytime you use your heal spell. With increased boon duration (30% from arcana, and 30% from armor), your total durationis 16seconds per heal skill used. The lowest heal CD spell you have is ether renewal, so technically you upkeep 3 stacks of might constantly. I don’t think its worth it in my opinion. You are sacrificing 10% boon duration for 3 permanent stacks of might basically, plus you will not always use your heal spell until its needed.

@Ash
Currently earth’s embrace is bugged, and procs at 30% HP instead of 50% hp to my knowledge. Its only good if your running a staff setup, 0/0/10/30/30 is a common staff setup as zephyr’s boon isn’t all that useful for staff users.

I think any ascended items are good. I personally don’t have any yet. The ones that grant you +stats to everything are probably very useful, because you get the most combined stats of any other item possible. All stats are useful for a d/d ele.

@Kaptain O/mouse
Hm I’m not entirely sure if they do share the same internal cooldown. I think the best way to test is to go full precision, and go to heart of the mists and test out how many procs of sigil of fire you get while constantly proccing sigil of battle every 9-10seconds. Also remove the trait elemental attunement from the arcana line. See how many mights of stack you upkeep, it should be about 9 if they dont share an internal cooldown (app. 30seconds of might per sigil of battle swap with boon duration+)

Assuming it is right and they do share ICD, I think 5% dmg would be best (or 5% critical chance). The other alternative is to get a 10% dmg per night weapon as another weapon choice. You can also go for increased burning/bleed duration too, and possibly +stun duration. The bleed / vulnerability proc on critical isn’t bad either if you wanna use cover conditions.
@kronen/flyfunner
I still use 0/10/0/30/30
Sacrificing evasive arcana is not worth it, its just too amazing =P
Also healing does scale poorly, but elementalist benefit the most from healing than any other class (except maybe guardian). I rank healing and toughness to be my highest priority stats, then everything else.

@kotan/bgaborr
yea its winged armor

@Chipsu
i play on FA, though I haven’t played wvwvw in awhile.

4. Act quickly
You need to think things through, but if you can’t develop a strategy, make it a habit to always cast spammable spells / run in circles and confuse your enemies. I noticed a good number of d/d elementalists I’ve fought pause for a second to realize that “fire3” is on cooldown, and they can’t use it right after an updraft/air5. Instead, you should use “fire2” instead and close in on the enemy.

5. Knowing when to flee / understanding the situation
Too many elementalists die because they think they are invincible. You are not invincible, you will die under pressure of good opponents. Don’t get overconfident, you can easily get killed in 2 seconds by a burst thief. Always assume the worst case scenario

6. Learn to look at everything on the screen
This is really important. Its like multitasking. For instance, playing an elementalist effectively is almost like watching T.V., playing a video game, texting, skyping, reading a paper, and eating at the same time. If your good at that, then you should be naturally good at playing an elementalist. If you are not, well you need to work on multitasking =P. Basically everything I attunement swap, I quickly look at my skillbar and see what skills are available to form my next move (Also make sure I’m not dazed/locked out of my skillbar from CCs). At the same time, I’m looking at the screen for enemy movements / positions, and I am occassionaly looking at how many # of conditions are on me, and especially for the immobilization condition. Also I look at my own avatar (am I on fire, slowed down by chill /cripple, immobilized, knockeddown, etc?).Then every few seconds I’ll look at my attunement CDs, and utility CDs too.
It takes a great deal of time to learn how to multitask effectively, and its naturally easier for some people and harder for others.

7. A good internet and a good pc
Because you can’t play that well when you have a 1 second delay and your computer’s FPS is below 30.

Sometimes watching w.e videos I make is a better explanation of writing out how to play in my opinion.
The saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words. A video? Dunno, forgot what the saying was.

I’ll respond to my guide’s comment stuff later, I haven’t really been on that much lately because I’ve been kind of busy :S. I hope this answers your question, I think TGS already hit on most of the technical points (theres also my guide too). I felt like hitting the learning curve points=P.

@TGSlasher
thank you for answering with such an indepth response. You put a lot of things I didn’t mention in my guide =P.

@Cachodm
I’m honored that you made a thread on me, lol. I really don’t know how to answer that question without giving a superlong response. I think the best way to learn is just to experiment yourself randomly and see what works.

I think the most important aspect of playing a d/d elementalist is to build a foundation to improve upon. A good elementalist in my opinion must be able to form strategies quickly, and be quick with the keyboard. All the other essentials are just related to those 2 basic foundations. I think as you keep playing the elementalist, you’ll start to developing a rhythm to the class, and realize through trial and error whats good and whats bad to do (you’ll realize once you start dying too much :]). Just reading my guide isn’t necessarily helpful unless you had some understanding of the class by tinkering around, I sort of made the guide toward somewhat experienced elementalists. The guide does help point you in the right direction though and has lots of information =P.

The best way to become a more effective player is:

1. Always ask yourself if you could have performed something better
-I always watch myself play in my own videos, and sometimes it can be frustrating as I can see myself making mistakes and not notice downed enemies half the time. I use those videos to learn from those past mistakes, and work on playing better in the future.

2. Do I dodge roll randomly, or am I dodge rolling to actually dodge/set up an attack/reposition?
-I notice that lots of people just dodge because there bar is full and they can. Make all your dodges have a reasoning behind them, and a purpose. I also notice that people use an extremely large amount of wasted movement when playing as a d/d elementalist. Every movement step, spell, and timing counts toward becoming as efficient as possible. Don’t waste those resources if you don’t have to. If you can just stand still fighting against NPCs and get the job done just fine, then stand still. If you need to kite melee mobs, do so.

3. Think
An elementalist has more skills than any other classes (not going count engineering kits here). You need to understand that no scenario is going be perfect, and that there is always going be variability in the so called skill “rotation”. I have a general idea of what skills I will use, but some skills are always going be on CD, while other ones are available. You need to understand how to cope with a situation like these, in order to become more efficient. There’s always going be interuptions in your plan, as enemies will CC you, dodge, run in circles, and confuse you so nothing works perfectly as planned.. Re-adjusting yourself to a situation is extremely vital.

Thanks for the reference tgslasher and hunter

@Ghost
I dont think making conditions last longer is all that useful tbh. Its too easy to remove conditions.

Updated the guide

Weapon swapping before combat was kind of OP, especially for an elementalist.

I had practically mastered mostly everything there was to the elementalist, but I wanted a further challenge. Weapon swapping in combat right before initiation brought open tier levels of skill to be achieved, and was not easy to perform.

For instance, my favorite starting combo was the following, during the first 10 seconds before gate opened:
Staff>Earth 2 >Earth 3 (speed buff) with zephyrs boon>Air>Air4>Air5>Equip dagger>Air3>Equip scepter>Fire>Fire3>Dagger>Fire3>Focus>Fire5>Staff>Reverse 180>Fire4>Dagger+dagger>Air>Ride the lightning
Yes it was extremely complicated to do this and required a large amount of skill to do right but the results were awesome=P

Then there was my favorite, the S/D and D/D combo intiation
It required precise timing, execution, and either an immobilzied enemy/ignorant enemy/timed ambush.

Heavy burster
Scepter/DaggerTarget>Fire2>Fire3>Equip Dagger>Fire3>Fire4 (double might stacking)>Fire5
Free cast fire 2 and 3 under scepter/dagger at a line of sight choke point was extremely fun to do too. Also forced enemies to blow off a dodge before the battle started.

There were other combos too
The common swap
Scepter/Dagger>Earth>Earth2>Equip dagger

Big opener
Staff>Earth>Earth2>Earth3>Dagger+Dagger>Earth5>Lightning flash

The ultimate weapon healer
Staff>Water>Any AoE heal spells>Scepter+Dagger>Fire>Freecast fire2 and fire 3 onto water field>Dagger+dagger>Initiate

Then there was the tricky tactic that required perfect execution and timing when weapon swapping:

Dodge roll>Weapon swap before the dodge roll ends

There were lots of other combos, but these were my favorites

Most of these tactics were negated once you screwed up and got shot by an enemy but the fact that these combos existed brought open new levels of skill to achieve to the already complicated elementalist. There were downsides to these forbidden combos, such as getting hit while swapping staff to dual daggers, or getting caught in a weaponset you do not want for the situation. Plus they required insanely skilled players to do properly, while making sure this did not impact their strategy / overall performance with the increased APM.

Yes it was op, but the game itself is very easy to play compartively to other games out there (LoL and Dota2). So these tactics were fun, extremely challenging, and rewarding if done correctly.

Obviously the classes that weren’t elementalist had the short end of the stick… but they could still do something similar on a smaller scale(warriors using several leap type abilities and buffs, etc.)

I’m not really sure how many high tiered, tPvP elementalists were aware of these combos though, and whether this was actually used or not. I used it a lot though

There was also the option of swapping amulets and predicting what kind of fight you got into as well, which took a decent amount of strategy too and had risks also.

The changes were necessary in my opinion. But there needs to be more variability in build setups as a result (at least from an elementalist standpoint).

@Krulz
:D
nope I have not made a guide for other weapons. Staff is fairly straight forward though

@kronen
I’ve been always using the same build, lol

@snizzle
lifesteal is a fixed HP amount. I believe its around 400 hp, and the chance was 30% on a critical. Theres also an internal CD to my knowledge as well, and the healing is not affected by healing power.

I’m fairly sure lifesteal doesn’t actually cause additional damage, it just heals you (I may be wrong here though).

How is lifesteal and regen calculated?
Lifestealing should be a fixed value. I haven’t calculated how regeneration is affected by healing power though. The easiest way to do this is just to run 0 healing power, and look at the tooltip for glyph of elemental harmony. Then add 500 healing power, and read the tooltip again. Take the difference in HP healed by the skill, and then divide by 500. Then divide again by the duration of the glyph of elemental harmony, and thats how much more hp/sec you get per healing power on regeneration.

How is regen been calculated? ^

How is the amount of healing givin by the water signet been calculated ?
Signet of restoration I know is calculated by a base of around 200 healing per spell, and an additional 10% of the amount of healing power you have.

But does it also depends on the maximum lifepool?
Nope, regeneration and total hp are not related

In the end: is the lifesteal variation or yours more effektive ?
I like my sigil of battle and my +10 condition damage per kill. I would only use life steal after getting 25 stacks, but I honestly like sigil of fire (30% chance on critical to do flame burst)

current stats:
http://imgur.com/6Wds5

@roostapro
it only gets stickied if its a generic ele guide

@Nuithari
:D

@Grimm/soulblazer
working as intended still, yeah you need to be in combat

@Edgar
I use staff in zerg vs. zerg battles, because honestly staff is way more useful in large scale battles. I don’t show videos of those cause there boring, and anyone can do it

@Kwak
I use clerics amulet
Runes and sigils are the same

@Wolf
Conjure lightning hammer is necessary for point control (you don’t win tPvP and sPvP merely by killing your enemies, capping and holding a point is important too!). I also found out recently that conjure earth shield is awesome for tPvP. Conjure frostbow works wonders against downed enemies that you don’t have time to finish, and its 5th ability is amazing. Its also used on battle of khylo against the enemys treb.

@kronen
I dont know what MvM is

@TGS
I might change water and monk runes later, but there still okay for now. Yeah I haven’t really gotten around to editing this post, but it has everything for the most part

@plasma
Not sure what you mean by no boon slot runes. Your probably looking at armor pieces like “aidans, ogdens, zheds, etc”. Just look for “clerics” =P

Also I use armor from the AC dungeon

@Snizzle
I like defensive stats over offensive. Precision just adds critical % rate, which is not really needed.

@Ghost
I have no idea if those are the actually stats. Can you link something for me to see

@plasma
D/D elementalists were for the most part not buffed or nerfed. Most of the changes were bugfixes, and some introductions of new bugs (earth3 +fire4 lol).

I don’t really play other classes much at all, but the buffs in mobilities in other classes will directly affect the d/d ele’s mobility and survivability in a negative way. It all depends on whether the meta builds for those classes would actually use those speed buff signets now that its improved. Its too early to say the actual impact of the update affecting the current state of the d/d ele.

Did you guys really make a thread on one of my videos o.O?

Well these are my favorite videos so far in terms of how I play, and fairly represent my current skill level.

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2_GXr9o-Us
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeZODCzAPgw
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEEkv8KmkTs
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s08bmVKG_DU

In video link 2, I had fought 5 level 80s and one non level 80, and had been lagging at the start. I also almost died several times and was CC’d a lot of times, and having the lowest base hp and armor doesn’t really help either. I’m not always fighting under leveled players, and the video linked there was a month old (I’ve gotten a lot better since then)
The main reason I actually almost pulled off a kill there (or a few) in video link 2 was because I always set up ambushes / plan several moves ahead, and had gotten some fairly strong ambushes off. I had never fought a battle there whatsoever before, so this terrain was unfamiliar to me, and all the terrain tactics used there I made up on the spot.

On the December 14th update, D/D elementalist have received an indirect nerf to mobility and sustainability, as all other classes (maybe not engineers) had received buffs. There weren’t any real buffs to d/d elementalists besides the bug fixes, and the desperately needed trait for fall damage and buff to underwater combat abilities.

Some particular buffs that have hurt the current state of d/d elementalist’s mobility are the following buffs:
Signet of the Locust: Passive movement speed has increased from 10% to 25%.
Signet of the Hunt: Increased the passive movement from 10% to 25%.
Power Shoes: Increased move speed to 25%.
Fleet Shadow: Increased move speed from 33% to 50%.

I don’t know exactly how often a ranger, necro, engineer, or thief would use those abilities, but this has decreased the overall effectiveness of the d/d elementalist’s mobility. There’s also been lots of improvements in DPS buffs (well maybe not engineer) to other class’s abilities, so that’s a factor impinging against the sustainability of the d/d elementalist.

As to how strong a D/D elementalist is, I can tell you that I’ve died many times to 2v1s. Most of the time its against 2 spike oriented classes that catch me out in open terrain. I had one video (not uploaded) where one good necro amongst a few bad players was fighting had dealt more damage than the entire team combined, and was proccing my frost aura intentionally on himself so that he could transfer 10+seconds of chill onto me, in addition to removing my boons and apply weakness (so that my dodge rate was cut by a factor of 4), and cripple. A d/d elementalist relies heavily on mobility, and once that gets cut off, then it is fairly to kill one thereafter.

I hope this answers most of your concerns.
Thanks for all the compliments too

Cool thread =D

I haven’t played much competitive PvP, but what is your opinion on elementalist’s current role in high end tPvP? It seems that you went for more of a mix of DPS and defense, and went utility skills specifically for spiking down enemies. Do you think pure bunker elementalist solo cappers/point holders are viable (w/ tornado and conjure hammer to knock off defenders) for high end tPvP? Or do you think more support/spike oriented, and less solo capping is more useful (i.e. staff elementalist, DPS oriented aura share d/d elementalist w/ glyph of elemental?)

Why earths shield anyways? I can see it being potentially useful when you see an impending spike going to hit, but doesn’t shock aura get the job done so much better, or a cantrip in place of earth shield? Plus earths shield only seems useful upon initiation, as you can’t really pick it up in time when your spiked down and need it most.

Raif.9507:

quercus.9261:

last match we were playing FA and a DD ele was getting his friend to announce in zone chat (Yak) which camps he would be hitting. Sure enough he would show up, run a zerg around the map, down a couple of lowbies and generally cause a ruckus.

While he was no doubt a master of his class I can’t think of any other game that lets people get away with this kind of stuff.

That was most likely Dapheonix on Excala. He’s on FA, and he’s generally considered one of the most talented D/D elementalists out there. He’s the guy who has all those videos of him taking on 6-8 people and living for quite a while. He’s the author of the guide in this very forum that quite a lot of people use.

:D that was me, lol. I have so much more fun in wv3 when I tell my enemies where I’m going =P.

Feydra.6318:

A big thumbs up to the FA d/d ele i fought at heroes camp in TCbl for 10-15min, thats the most impresive d/d eleing iwe seen, and though you dident get me down as a support ele, i can say if my friends hadent came so i could rest my fingers youd won lol… !

Miriel

that was me =P. You refused to die at the bottom supply camp for 5minutes, while I rambo kited your NPC squadron>_>.
That whole battle was 35mins (from me jumping into a squad of 30 cappers solo, to running away). I think I killed 5 of you guys before I had to run away and afk for something important to do.

@TGS

That double timed frostbow 5 sounds pretty op =P. Don’t think its viable as it takes a decent amount of timing and coordination to pull off.

Frostbow 5 can hit invisible enemies, because the mechanics are the same as magnetic grasp. Its just a slower projectile.

@rchu
defensive is the way to go

@Yassa/reqX
I prefer not to waste Karma on gear, when gold can be used to buy them instead or farm AC.

@crewthief
dunno

@splody
http://imgur.com/XHbw0

@Jaybarnes
Its for both burning and bleeding damage

@Calli/plasma
I don’t play necromancer, but I’m fairly certain they can transfer alot of the conditions you put onto them back onto you. Direct damage onto them tends to be favored as their base armor is mediocre.

Try and remove the conditions as you see it coming/ use cantrips/ cleansing flame/ etc.

@snizzle
I like defensive stats over offensive tbh

@Krulz
healing power is a very important stat to have as it dictates how long it takes you to recover

@Tei
Thanks for answering the question

@nephel
You can use the same exact build ,and just alter the water30 trait into “powerful auras”. I do fine in PvE settings, dungeons, fractals, etc.

Here’s my most recent video uploaded today

@Dacromir
I’ll look into doing that later maybe =P

@NdranC

There I spelled your name right :P, lol. I haven’t bothered doing the crit damage vs precision math, but its not too difficult. You just need to find the amount of tradeoff in stats you have to sacrifice for critical damage vs precision for items. Set a finite interval for that as critical damage = precision. Then you need to graph it (assuming a constant DPS), with axis interval amounts at whatever you set for critical damage = precision. Then you need to add a 3rd axis showing how much damage you get.

So basically you have 2 axis’s (Critical damage and precision) that affect one output axis (damage). You could do it with a 3d graph(theres probably alot more simpler methods though).

You can also do:
Damage can be simplified as
total damage = base (1+%crit chance(%crit damage)), where % crit chance and % crit damage are x and y variables basically, and Z is the total damage variable. You know there’s a relationship b/w x and y, as items have a trade off b/w item stats. Therefore you can do substitution and have an equation in terms of Z and X. You can then do DZ/DX=0, and find where Z damage is maximum at a given x (crit chance) value, with a corresponding y (crit damage) value.

Yes this probably makes no sense to you, and I am pretty rusty on basic math so this whole thing may be wrong. J

@rchu
Neither. I’d rather have clerics (toughness, healing power, power) anyday over those options.

Here’s an image of my current stats to whoever wanted it. I do not have any ascended items.

http://imgur.com/6Wds5

Don’t forget to check out my two recent videos I uploaded 2 days ago

Sorry I’ve been slow to respond this week. I haven’t been on alot due to lots of wrok

@armageddon

Thats an interesting build setup you got there. Only problem is no arcana

@TGS
I’m a big fan of using frostbows too. Frostbow 5 is a 5 second stun =]

@Kwon
I’ll upload my stats later today when I get on. I’m just running karka shell, and heal+toughness+power accessories. I’m running full PVT AC armor, and AC daggers

@Ndran
I never thought about using that. Those are definitely great stats to have as a D/D elementalist, and having a better distribution of damage types is more useful imo.
Do they come just as jewels, or also accessories?

@Wolf
I actually don’t use celestial or soldiers anymore. I use clerics and berzerkers more often in PvP.

I use mango pies instead of omniberry cream

@Bradies
Mesmers do utilize terrain fairly heavily as well, thanks to all their portaling abilities. I never really thought about using portal and falling off a cliff then porting back up ;S

@mouse
Thats true now you can’t abuse mesmer skills that much anymore

@Lilium
I listed the traits there too. You can always copy paste the link =P

@Blackpaw/Kwak
I’ve been always using Evasive arcana post and pre nerf and then post buff too=P.

@berial
I think boon dura armor is best for PvE and Wv3, but not necessarily PvP

@mattcatt
:D

@rchu
can’t remember what those stats are

@Liliati
Its b/c of the 20% chance from fury

:D had a fun fight at EB against Yaks bend.

I lost most of my battles but thanks for summoning a cauldron to tribute to me (I liked the frog witch hat too :P)

Sincerely,
That one [GODS] elementalist from FA that just won’t die

You don’t even need a mouse pad

You can actually play the game w/o ever having to use a mouse or touch pad (at least with D/D, staff requires you to use a mouse). It’s actually not that hard to effectively play D/D w/o using a mouse or touchpad :P

@Kuthos
:D you summarized practically everything I do.

1. I memorized all my abilities just by playing d/d alot. Yes you do have to know when to swap attunements based on situation, and when not to / conserve an attunement.

2. I agree with you here:P

3. Usually I pan my camera while fighting, although sometimes I don’t pay attention whatsoever to my surroundings (unless a serious challenge comes my way). Lots of pressing “look backwards” though.

4. Yes there is so much a d/d elementalist can do. I rush into a mob only when I know that I will have a high chance of succeeding. There is always going tobe that unknown element when rushing into 5+ people, as those people could be all fully equipped heavy CC burst classes, or just 5 random poorly equipped noobies. It comes down to making quick decisions based off of how much damage you do to each opponent, and who you see as a threat while fighting.

5. I don’t think you need to memorize everyone’s ability. Not everyone plays their class to their full potential, although you should recognize common trends b/w each class.
i.e. generally spekaing
thieves stealth and can get away easily
warriors generally go HB burst you
mesmers like to stand in the back, but if you know what skills they have, its very easy to predict and see the real mesmer (you need to play one to know one)
Necros like to transfer conditions and take ages to kill
Rangers tend to hate close combat, and their pet can knock you down
Engineers are like campers, they want you to fight on their turf. They also like dropping AoE bombs that CC you too, and autorez themselves.
Guardians just take ages to kill, and there DPS is kinda meh across most build types (so you kill them last)

There’s other class trends, but I think the 3 more important points that weren’t mentioned are:
Strategy / Creativity
(coming up with strategies depending on each terrain location can be challenging to some, and you won’t fully master a d/d ele unless you have that initial creativity / intuition to accomodate for every situation. I always make up tactics on the go (its heavily dependant on positioning of enemies and terrain) in all the videos I make, and have some strategies that I know beforehand / used before.)
Positioning
(Knowing where evreyone is relative to you is very important. You can’t properly block projectiles using trees unless you know where your enemies are, and you can’t quickly change targets unless you know where they are. Also look for where projectiles are hitting you from to determine the enemy’s position. Positioning is also important for setting up ambushes)
Timing
(Timing is crucial. In all the videos I make, most of my stunts are pulled off right as the skill’s CD is back online. I usually plan a few seconds in advance of my next tactic based on what the CD cooldown says, and time it just the way I want it too. So I have to constantly look at my CD’s for timing/strategy, and look at the battlefield for positioning/strategy. I used to just spam all my abilities at random when they were back on CD, but I tend to conserve my skills alot more and plan ahead. When you first start playing a D/D elementalist, there’s going to be a natural tendency to blow off all your skills before swapping to the next attunement.)

@Mesmer/elementalist discussion
The problems:
1) DPS is significantly reduced against you.
2) Your HP regenerates rapidly.
3) Your DPS is on par with a glass cannon Mesmer.
4) Your mobility is second only to Thief.
5) Your sustainability is greater than a Necromancer..

1. Well yes, because I run all toughness in all items to make up for my crappy base armor.

2. Yes, I agree here, no class has as much healing burst potential as an elementalist, although maybe a properly specced guardian might.

3. I’ve played mesmer a decent amount of times in sPvP, and against many high tiered ones. I can definitely say that a glass cannon mesmer deals way more single target damage than this build setup here. Mesmers and elementalist should not really be compared, since the playstyle is drastically different. The GC mesmer can kill at a distance, whereas this d/d setup revolves around close combat.

4. That is true. No purpose in denying that

5. I would be inclined to disagree here. Necros in my opinion are one of the strongest classes out there. I’ve had my share in fighting good necros, and they take ages to kill, and there DPS in lich form is something I’m always wary of. I haven’t played a necro all that much, but I know for certain that a good necro can do just as much if not more than a good elementalist, save the mobility part though (there so much slower than elementalists :P)

@Hexxen

I play sPvP every now and then, and I can say for certain that sometimes I have trouble fighting off 2 skilled players, and need to utilize terrain in order to win. Same thing applies WvWvW, I’ve died at times only against 2 well equipped skilled players since they hit me at my most vulernable points / in open terrain (2 burst thieves come to mind>_>).

Yes you need a fast internet connection too:]. Any delay in your internet is going to be fatal, regardless of how good you are.

I forgot to respond to previous questions, so here they are :P
@Erebus
My dps is actually kind of mediocre, it just seems as if I’m doing a lot because most WvW’ers aren’t properly equipped or run full glass cannon. Plus EA nerf really hurt my DPS too :S. Generally I win by outlasting all my enemies (whether it would be one person, or 6) and slowly kill them all off. If you notice in my videos, I’m actually never running away most of the time (its actually kiting) I’m usually still in combat upon running, and I plant rings of fires at chokepoints to soften up my enemies. So in all the times that I’m usually running away, I’m actually kiting :S. Yes my survivability is kind of extremely high, but thats what a tank is =P. Its fairly hard for me to kill someone using a sustainable build setup w/ proper gear setups.

@Chandelier
Ether renewal just means I have to waste time casting it when I could be dealing damage. Plus its interuptable, and if its interupted your screwed (I also don’t run stability either).

I’ve learned to maximize signet to almost is full potential. Maximizing spell output on the go is challenging, and SoR is more rewarding for that :P. Plus SoR is more adaptable to any situation, Ether renewal requires proper cover so you don’t get interupted.

@Enlight
Its a combination of playing well and playing against random Wv3’ers that have crappy gear and a mediocre concept of proper PvP (albeit some players that are really good give me problems). Not everyone plays as crazy as I do :P

@Dolores
I like to say it as high input= high reward

@Lordyrux
Attunement swapping is considered to be a weapon swap ,where sigil of battle has a 9second CD. Used in conjunction with boon duration armor and arcana boon duration passive effects, you can effectively get 9 stacks of might simply by just fighting an enemy. Add fire4+ earth4+earth5 for more stacks of might :P

@omgwtfBBq
actually before EA was nerfed, you could have effectively maintined 15-18 stacks just by EA. (2 dodge blast finishers per 9-11 seconds)

@hexxen / bleeds
Thanks for compliment. Also I don’t actually run any special hardware (mouse / keyboard).
My keyboard is just a standard $20 basic logitech keyboard, that has a high response rate and is very functional / reliable. It has no special functions.
My mouse (I think its like 5years old) from logitech has nothing special either. It has everything every other mouse has, and 2 thumb buttons (up and down buttons). I use those 2 buttons to target nearest/ next enemy

So to sum up: you don’t need fancy hardware. A decent cheap, functional 2 extra button mouse and a standard keyboard gets the job done just fine :P

@kwak

Boon duration armor isn’t as good for PvP as it is for Wv3 (due to nerfs). Divinity’s runes are always a good choice, although I’m looking into other runes for testing for staff

@yassa
Everyone’s doing FoTM at the moment, so AC would still be best =p

@TGS
I like the 15 air/ 25water variation. Has lots more damage spammability :P

I’m not a big fan of blowing off cleansing fire as an offensive skill
I like your tricks though

@armageddon
your link doesn’t work
Not sure why you would need SoF (signet of fire?) when you have burning speed to proc 1 second of burning for fire grab

@Azure
I use an ancient karka shell. I don’t have any ascended items (don’t got time to farm).
I never really see thieves as a threat (regardless of build), unless there sneaking around waiting for an instagib attack while I’m fighting someone else.

@darkchlor
Yes the DPS is kind of meh.
sPvP is much different than Wv3 (I think I’m rank 16 atm), and I don’t always run d/d. I usually use a couple different weapons during a battle, depending on the situation (D/d tends to provide really mediocre support compared to staff in team fights).

Also in sPvP, I focus more on point control instead of just taking out everyone in sight.

@Ndran
I have hardly any condition damage, a d/d elementalist should utilize all damage types, because in certain situations condition damage is more useful than direct damage (i.e. against many opponents, and heavy armored targets).

@Wolf
I haven’t played sPvP in awhile, but I’m trying to learn how to efficiently use staff now and multi weapon swap(its actually alot harder than d/d when you use fast ground targeting)

Fire4+Earth 3 no longer works for fire aura, although you’ll still see the visual effects and there are no boons.

my first post nerf video

Haven’t played for like 5 days straight. Don’t plan on playing much this week or next, lots of rl stuff to do.

Added 4 pages of fighting techniques

@Wolf

I’m not sure how a guardian “rushes” you. I was always under the impression that guardians have lousy burst damage, but hey I might be wrong here.

Immobilization is countered only by condition removal. Swap to water attunement, cast cantrips, cast water 5 to remove it.

As to warrior bull rushers / hundredblade+frenzy spammers, there actually really easy to counter. Just use air3 (shock aura) and it ends this spike instantly, and you can use it while knocked down too. If that doesn’t work, just pop one of your 3 cantrips (think of each cantrip as a lifeline). If none of those work (you should’ve prepared your cantrips better!), well swap to water to heal it off, or pop earth to mitigate damage.

I honestly don’t use armor of earth. I never really needed stability all that much, because I just never give my enemies many openings to attack me. If they fight on my terrain (forestry comes to mind) they will get lucky even pulling off a stun /knockdown/immobilization admist all my hiding behind walls, line of sighting, dodging, and CC’s. Plus most people don’t know when a d/d ele is vulnerable, so they just spam those CC skills without a second thought
Armor of earth is good if you want to hold a point, such as in sPvP. Its also good when your expecting alot of CC’s and stuns too. I personally don’t like armor of earth cause its CD is soo long, and cleansing fire is just way better for WvWvW (lots of enemies = lots of conditions).

@Blackpaw
I named off all my traits in the case the link didn’t work. I named my traits in the page like “water 6” as in the trait in the water tree line with the roman numerals “VI”

I use all weapon types(albeit I’m known for using d/d most of the time).
Generally speaking, I destroy all my fellow d/d elementalists with staff =P. I lure them to a high rise cliff, and shove them off the edge using staff air3. Its usually an instant kill xD. Its pretty fun to do too :]

@Ndran

I recommend going defensive stats, such as toughness, vitality, and healing power.
I don’t really farm, but going defensive is almost always the best way to go. Berserker means u can’t aggro as much though, however. I find that taking on 10+ mobs at once and slowly taking them out is more enjoyable than taking out 1 mob at a faster pace.

@reiska
Yes, glyph of storms under earth attunement constantly blinds all enemies which is useful. I forgot to consider that as a levelling skill, it is fairly useful but has a long CD.

@Wolf
:D

@xiv
I need tog et around doing that lol

@Shiffu
I usually upload the videos that I like the most. Yes, I do die a lot when making these videos. Sometimes its due to fighting a team that seriously knows what there doing (I’ve had some teams just chain CC me to death), or just because I was making mistakes / wasn’t trying hard enough. Also most of the time I go rambo solo into a huge army for fun, so that has a fairly big dent in repair costs. I’ve been taken out by just 2 skilled thieves (they double spammed thieves guild on me though and caught me in open terrain though) before.

There is really a lot of factors determining how well I do against players. It depends on what level they are, how good they are, and what gear they use. It also depends on how well I play (utilizing terrain, jukes, line of sight techniques, timing of skills, etc). I don’t always play like that in my videos, that’s only when I’m seriously trying (I honestly don’t try that hard unless a serious challenge comes my way). Usually when I do get cc’d, I counter it as soon as possible (so you don’t see it last very long). Plus theres all the juking, line of sight, and CC’s that I do that may cause enemy CC’s to miss or fail, so you don’t actually see those connect onto me.

I haven’t logged in for awhile so I don’t know my exact stats at the moment. I usually use mango pies.