Guild Wars 2

petyr baelish.9675:

When it comes to pve your task as ele is mainly stacking might/fury and spawning fgs/frost bow for your party.

For easy dungeons:

If you are the only ele s/d and s/f:
6/6/2/0/0 II,V,XI/VI,VII,X/VI most pug friendly build because it gives fury and vulnerability, you do your lh chain in air.
5/5/2/2/0 II,V/VI,VII/VI/VI if you know the party can achieve perma fury but lacks vulnerablility, higher personal DPS, LH chain in water
5/4/0/5 II,V/VI,VII/IV/VI you’ll never use this in a pug, highest personal dps, LH chain in water

heal/utility/elite: arcane brilliance/signet of fire, arcane wave, LH/frost bow(arcane shield if you’re using fgs)/fgs
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As a secondary ele staff:
6/2/2/2/2 VI,VII,XI/VI/VI/VI/V
6/4/2/2/0 VI,VII,XI/VI,VII/VI
Both are a matter of preference instead of situational.

heal/utility/elite: arcane brilliance/signet of fire, arcane wave, arcane shield/fgs
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High lvl content (arah and fractals):

d/f
6/6/0/0/2 V,VII,XI/VI,X,XII/II more dodges
6/6/2/0/0 V,VII,XI/VI,X,XII/VI more damage

Heal/utility/elite: arcane brilliance/signet of fire, arcane wave, arcane shield/elemental

Useful: singnet of storms in earth attune and LH when clearing trash, use fgs wherever you can push stuff against a wall, lightning flash and signet of air when skipping. Earth elemental is especially useful in the old tom fight because he can bodyblock the aoe for your party, same applies to sparki in TA aetherblade.
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Optimal gear would be berserker stats in all slots with runes of the scholar, however rune of strength is better than scholar when pugging. If you feel too squishy try using knights gear first and replace it with berserker gear when you have learned how to dodge.
Sigils mainhand: night, undead, accuracy (depends on the dungeon) and offhand: force, energy. Tbh if you just run night+force/energy you’ll be covered for most of the dungeons.
Consumables: steak and asparagus (or slice of candied dragon roll when soloing) + quality charpening stone/dungeon potion of slaying.

I suggest you watch some vids to get an idea of how dungeons are run nowadays. I didn’t write down the skill rotations for the different weapon sets because it’s getting late and i’m lazy but you can easily find those on youtube. The gear you are currently using is fine for casual runs but far from optimal.

If you’re just looking for something to copy paste and get started use the first s/d(s/f) build for easy content and the first d/f build for hard content.

Edit: Fixed an error where i put s/d instead of d/f

As a general question, how do you decide whether to use S/D or S/F? I like S/F better since flamewall lasts longer, and the survival skills are pretty nice in general since I’m pretty bad at dodging.

Wow your character looks amazing Kiteo!! Sylvari certainly can look great with the right gear, I may need to fit in more TA armor pieces after seeing yours.

If I get the toxic spore instead of waiting for the melandru pack that will probably look kitten y anyway, along with aetherpath weapons somehow, I’ll post an updated pick! probably with blue dye, which actually goes well with my purple glow.

Your ideas seem pretty interesting, and I like a few of them. What do you mean by boost WH effectiveneess by 50%?

With unyielding blast, instead of a pierce, I’d like to see a bouncing projectile, which you sort of imply (that would be insanely good) or just a small AoE like the ele fire staff auto. That would help us with PvE considerably. In addition, I think we need more +% damage traits in easy to get positions like adept major traits, because right now theres only axe training and close to death for power builds. If you look at Ele (which I use in PvE mainly) there are so many +% damage traits. Ele has vital striking (or piercing shards which is iffier), stone splinters, bolt to heart and internal fire which are all adept majors, along with the +% damage to burning foes minor GM for fire, which most max DPS ele builds for PvE take, and can take because those traits are a ll easy to get and persisting flames is a great PvE GM trait.

Anyway, I’d like to see some options like that for necro. Move the blood magic GM minor to adept major or minor and make it a 10% damage boost instead of a power boost. Move target the weak to an earlier place in the curses tree so power builds can get it without giving up as many other traits. Maybe a +4% damage trait per active minon in death magic trait (like a mesmers empowering mantras but probably a kittenty idea) Things like that would be a huge boon for PvE, where necros are arguably the worst class. The only thing is that all the extra +% damage traits could possibly overbuff necros for WvW where power builds are actually in a pretty good place in my opinion.

DF All the way for PvE for difficult content, like higher end fractals or content that you’re learning. DD is inferior for dungeons since the extra durst damage matters little, and doesn’t let you stack might really any better than with DF. For the difficult content like that I wear all zerker but use more arcane/water traits. For explorable dungeons though I typically run S/F-hammer or fire staff with full DPS traits.

As for WvW I usually run staff when I’m with my guild, but DD is great for roaming/small groups, and DF works great too, you just wont have ride the lightning to clutch an escape.

Way to apply bayesian game theory to gw2! I give you props OP.

Trentilicious.6523:

Ok so the general consensus is that it’s not godawful, just meh?

I’m running the Staff+Scepter/Focus. More than likely I’m keeping the Staff because it feels really good, but I’m on the fence about whether to use Dagger or Scepter. Not using Warhorn because confusion and no damage isn’t very great for PvE. I could go axe, but it kinda feels boring.

So what’s the smarter Choice
Dagger or Scepter?

Dagger all the way for PvE. Its auttoattack provides your best damage. Scepter is generally used for conditions, which typically have problems working well in PvE. Warhorn is often used alongside dagger becuase locus swarm gives you a but of extra AoE damage when meleeing mobs with dagger. With full DPS gear, fury and full might it actually hits pretty hard. Focus is also useful for the vuln stacking though, so thats your call.

I try not to be a snob at PvE but if an MM necro joins a PUG I’d probably have a raised eyebrow, not to sound rude. Its the same thing if I see bearbow ranger, GS mesmer or P/P thief in dungeons except on the few bosses that require range. Then again I also get annoyed if wells take up the space for my ele firefield rotations as well. If you run full zerker dagger/focus/WH in a dungeon or fractal and time your wells as to not mess with my mightstacking fire field rotation, you are perfectly fine by me.

I feel like MH focus would probably have to be a heavy condition based weapon for all the condi eles out there begging for more cover conditions. I’d say the fire skills would all or mostly provide burning, water would provide poison, air would somehow provide weakness vuln confusion or torment, and earth could stack bleeds like it already kind of does.

Congrats on choosing an ele! You’ll enjoy it a lot and you’ll be able to put it to excellent use in PvE and WvW later on since they offer arguably the best DPS in the game and arguably the best ranged support in WvW.

Anyway as for leveling, I crafted 40 or 50 levels on my ele so I can tell you what I know from doing the early levels. Dagger/X is probably ideal since its got really nice cleave with lightning whip (which is Dagger’s strongest auto) and tons of PBoA to handle multiple mobs (which the scepter isn’t as good at), and focus gives you great surivability tools, while OH dagger gives you great burst damage tools. And ride the lightning for moving faster hahaha. Staff could probably work too if you either feel like kiting everything to death or if you feel comfortable with getting everything to stand in your lava fonts at all times.

As for traits, I’d definetly take water/arcane traits while leveling when you’re first learning the class, since that gives us so many boons and healing to help us survive when we’re on our own. Once you get more comfortable, try to put points into air, since thats where a lot of the damage for dagger builds comes from if you go that route (scepter/staff are more fire based) but having at least 20 in water and arcane for elemental attunement, renewing stamina, and then regen/condi cleanse traits for water OR vital striking for damage will give you enough survival for leveling in my opinion, since evasive arcana and cleansing water aren’t really all that necessary. Putting 10 points in earth is also great for damage to pick up the stone splinter trait, so you get more toughness and damage that way. As for utility skills, either signet of resto or ether renewal works for healing, depending on whether you want a more passive regen style heal or more condi renewal, although later on for pve arcane brilliance is typically better since its a blast finisher.

Anyway this stuff is just my opinion, but I hope it helps!

Wow thanks a lot for your advice!!!

My sylvari has a very subtle dark purple glow to it. I scaled it back a lot since I once madea blue sylvari with a golden glow that made him look like vomit.

Edit: I just checked out the dreamthistle skins. And holy kitten they are perfect for my character. But my pockets don’t run that deep. Well yet anyway.

Anyway yeah the spore does seem like the ideal choice. The only thing that could get me to change my mind though is the melandru backpack skin that hasn’t released yet (and I don’t know when it would release). Its kind of a gamble but I’d bet that the melandru backpack would look quite naturey. And I do need to acquire an ascended zerker backpiece so then I’d have an excuse to craft it (I’m tired of sharing my cavalier backpiece between my ele and necro every time I play as one lol).

Hello necro-peeps I was wondering if you guys could offer fashion related advice for my necro! She’s a sylvari so obviously all my armor is a mix of cultural/TA armor. My big quandary though is what back item skin I should get. The only idea I really had was the toxic spore backpack skin since its so cheap, and it fits thematically whereas the balth or grenth backpacks don’t really.

Additionally I need some advice about weapon skins as well. I feel as though the TA staff skin works but I’m not sure about my Axe/Dagger. I may run the Aetherblade TA paths for their skins if I go with the toxic spore backpack.

Here are some pictures so you guys can give advice! Dye advice is appreciated too.

Phantom.6395:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhItdp3iCvg

Here you are!

According to me this is an easier way, because you do not need to bother yourself the boss.

In the second phase of the boss requires slowing down, which makes it difficult to avoid the pitfalls, and the damage is not so small compared to me from the boss

Yey guys the blood magic traitline wasn’t as useless as we all thought it was!

Roe.3679:

I don’t think there are set numbers like that for necros.

Some advice is going full soldier and adding in zerker stats as you find you don’t need the extra survivability. What I did was the opposite, and went full zerker, took my lumps, and learned how to play that way. It made me a better player after awhile.

Thanks for your response! Also, in your experience, did you find main hand axe or dagger to be more suitable for WvW?

byron.1627:

What do you mean by 6/4/2/2/0 or 6/2/2/2/2? I am just a freelance player and never been into builds and what not but now I am trying to understand them more, if this is what it even pertains too.

6/4/2/2/0 is one example of how players quickly and easily share information about builds. They refer to the allocation of trait points in descending order. For example, 6/4/2/2/0 means 6 in fire, 4 in air, and 2 in water in earth and 0 in Arcane. This build is simply what is estimated to offer the best DPS for Fire Staff builds becuase of arcane lightning and many +% damage traits like bolt to the heart, stone splinters, and vital striking.

For staff pve, you’ll probably want 6/4/2/2/0 or 6/2/2/2/2 taking persisting flames and all the +% damage traits you can. Full berserker is reccomended, with ruby orbs, scholar runes or strength runes depending on what you can afford. You’ll basically want to sit in fire as much as possible and spam lava font and the autoattack, and blast fire fields when you can, which can also activate arcane lightning if you go for that trait. Apparently it offers the best DPS in the game for PvE, but S/D or S/F lightning hammer builds can provide more might/fury support and D/F builds are probably the best for high level fractals due to better defense.

Hello necromancer community! I want to get back into playing necromancer for WvW after maining elementalist more recently (which I will still play, but necro seems like a fun alternative) and I was wondering if people could help me build a power build for use in small to moderate sized groups. I’m not really interested in condition builds at the moment on necro.

For weapons I plan on using staff and then either axe or dagger with any one of the offhands, I’m not really sure which of those weapons is ideal. Axe seems like a good idea for WvW since you can attack enemies from slight range to avoid melee attacks, but dagger seems more powerful and the immob skill could be useful. kitten for offhands, I’d probably swap them out depending on the situation but dagger seems like a nice choice for group play with the weakness and condi transfer.

As for traits, I’ve heard that 6/2/0/0/6 works pretty well with deathly perception to buff DS damage, but I’ve also heard of other power builds that go into blood magic to emphasize well damage and utility more. So if anyone could give me trait advice I’d appreciate it!

As for gear, I’m only in exotics right now with a few ascended trinkets. For armor/weapons I have a mix of zerker/knights and fro trinkets I just have 2 ascended knights pieces, and a cavalier piece, but I currently lack the funds to obtain an ascended back or accessories, unless I let my necro borrow them from my ele. Overall what are good numbers to try and hit for necro power builds for WvW? For example, people say that 1600 toughness and 16K health is idea for eles, so what would be good numbers for necros?

1. Chilled Retreat- Evade backwards by 600 units while leaving an ice field that chills nearby foes.
2. Bursting Axe- Throw your axe to your ground beneath your target releasing a burst of Unholy Energy that inflicts weakness and is also a blast finisher.

The number 4 skill gives necros a much needed evade, even though that conflicts with the developer’s vision for the necro.

Please don’t use spell slinger! Unless you go all the way for persisting flames (which is generally for pve or a high skilled staff pvp build) I wouldn’t trait in fire at all.

If you really want to make use of aura share, then I would advise picking up zehpy’rs boon from 10 points in air so you grant fury and swiftness with sharing auras. Still though I feel like cleansing wave would be more useful since it gives you a lot of group/self condition removal, but thats up to you. Divinity Runes are a bit lackluster now, most people run the over-expensive strength runes but some people work with hoelbrak or pack runes on elementalist.

For WvW, I know a lot of eles try to run tempest defense of lightning rod if they can. They basically sacrifice cleansing wave/evasive arcana for it, but it gives them a nice bit of extra damage, and the shocking aura from tempest defense is useful. And you also get to take Aeromancer/Aquamancer recharge traits for more frequent shocking auras and water fields too.

bump

/15 characters

I’m not sure how well I can help with the support side, since this game is designed to have support primarily through boons rather than healing. But with DPS, ele staff DPS can be some of the best in the game if you know what you’re doing.

I think the build is 6/4/2/2/0 or some permutation of that involving persisting flames and +damage traits (the vuln stacking minor in air can work as well).

You can probably run less zerker for world bosses but for dungeons zerker is ideal. I’m not sure of the rotations myself, but I know that blasting and keeping lava font up all the time to give your party might and fury is important.

Bump. Can someone please give me good feedback?

We need more information if we can actually answer this question. Are you talking about spvp? Or WvW or PvE?

If you mean the “meta” build for D/D ele in spvp, which is x/x/x/6/6 with celestial amulet and strength runes, staff can use a similar set up for disorganized play (solo Q/hotjoin) but I believe a more offensive setup is used for staff in organized groups that have better team support. For S/D the only pvp build that was ever really viable for it is the fresh air build, which is typically 0/6/0/x/x. I ran fresh air S/D for a while when it first came out but I felt kind of dismayed at how unreliable some of its burst was and by how bad the earth/water skills on the scepter were for the most part in my opinion.

Xenon.4537:

Question: If I were to make an ascended armor set with the intent that it be viable in the widest variety of situations, would celestial be worth it, or something else? Let’s say I wanted to do a lot of dungeons, fractals, and a touch of WvW using this armor on my ele, necro, and mesmer. Would a full celestial armor set (with different trinkets depending on build) work in most situations? Or would some other set be better in all of those situations?

For dungeons, just use an exotic set of berserker’s armor/trinkets and if you really care about min/maxing for this game’s pve content, get ascended zerker weapon’s for pve as the damage increase is actually a bit significant. For WvW though pure celestial can work, but I personally think its damage output is too low.

You have too little toughness. 1600 toughness is what I’ve heard is ideal, and can put you at around 2.5-2.6K armor. I’m not sure what the best way to fix this is (I even just made a thread about my own stat problems just now). For trinkets, I’d see if upgrading them to ascended helps if you can stomach doing the fractals. And I’m also not too sure about magi’s weapons to be honest.

Edit:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAoYhcM6cW4wyBf0APAC5fv2JKQ5qJfC-TVCEwARVS1VJ4K9ASVqoVZQu9HAcCAcp+zjHAQAAEAWObGSBonyI-w

I tweaked a few things and these results might be more agreeable. I basically just changed all the trinkets to ascended and gave you cavalier weapons instead of magi’s, but knight’s could work too, as could celestial if you replace one or two of your valkyrie armor with soldier’s or something like that.

So the time has come for me to start planning out a legit elementalist build for WvW gear-wise. I will be playing with staff and D/D primarily depending on what I’m doing, and I’ll adjust traits and trait point allocation accordingly. I need some help making a build but I don’t want to have to devote time and laurels to getting new ascended trinkets, so I’ll tell you which ones I have to help with that aspect. I’ll probably start off with exotics for armor/weaps for now and eventually upgrade to ascended when that becomes financially feasible for me.

Anyway the trinket stats I have:

Amulet: Berserker’s, Knight’s, Celestial, Berserker/Valkyrie (The Conundrum of Maut to clarify)
Rings:1 Zerker, 1 Cavalier, 1 Knight’s, 1 Clerics, and a bunch of conditiony rings
Accessories: Currently for ele I just have one celestial accessory and I have the guild commendations to buy a 2nd whenever, I just need to decide which one.
Backpiece: Cavalier

I also got an Ascended Magi’s armor box that dropped today, do you guys think I could incorporate this into my build in any way?

Now I’m going to link a possible build using those trinkets and gear that I have yet to acquire, and let me know what advice you can offer. I’m aiming for a minimum of 1600 toughness and putting the rest into power/vit/ferocity/healing power.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWhMMaZ20wuBf0ANACxjFFPJwiidbC-TVSYwA6URgoKIAUSxQJYAlC5UropqAJUmwSHAA-w

Would this be okay? It has the toughness I’m aiming for and a good amount of health and healing power, but its power/crit damage seems a bit low, and I’m not sure how to optimize it for greater damage without sacrificing the survivability traits. And as I said before, I am restricted to the trinkets I listed before, but I am capable of buying any one new accessory, but I was leaning towards a knight’s one.

Full Celestial doesn’t give you nearly enough power for Pve in my opinion. You can incorporate some of it in your gear, especially for WvW which you don’t seem interested in. But in order to be competitive DPS wise you need much more power to accomplish that. So I would recommend slotting in more berserker or valkyrie or zealot gear anywhere you can. That way you’ll contribute a lot more in pve.

For a back item I went with an ascended cavalier back for my ele and I probably won’t ever change it. I think PVT would also work as well, as would zerker if you care only about PVT, but I felt like cavalier was a good middle ground between the two and armored scales were relatively cheap when I made it so theres that too.

To the above poster, I believe GWEN is a WvW team comp acronym which makes more sense.

Basically the guardians and warriors are the melee pain train with lots of group support options and boons and healing and whatnot. Elementalists provide additional fire fields, water fields, hard CC aoe like static fields and unsteady ground as well as long ranged and aoe damage, while necros use a combination of wells, marks, torment, fear poison and chill with AoE to render enemies useless.

For pve elementalist is much better in terms of damage and support. I leveled a necromancer to 80 before I got into ele, and I will tell you that the necros overall clunkiness, and lack of mobility and disengagement is frustrating for my playstyle for pvp and wvw anyway. That being said, necros are good in pvp and wvw because despite the lack of cleave that kills them in pve, necros are aoe death machines when fighting other players. Fear dhummfire builds are also among the most difficult to win against 1v1 in pvp. Elementalists in wvw also provide a great deal of aoe damage control and support but through more direct ways instead of debilitating aoe conditions.

Zephyrus.9680:

Mix celestial with any primary power stat gear and you should be good. Zerker if you want more damage or soldiers if you want more bunker. Maybe even zealots could be a consideration.

The way GW2 stats work, defense is optimized with balanced stats which makes celestial an ideal defensive set for ele but offense is not at all ideal. Precision and ferocity both rely on high power to be valuable and celestial lacks this which means your offense is not ideal. If you’re using a lot of celestial, you need everything else to be focused on power in some way if you’re intending to do any reasonable damage.

Knights is not a bad choice if the toughness is specifically something you find lacking but overall power is the most important single stat. I find ele to be more susceptible to burst damage than sustained which means vitality is not significantly worse than toughness. If that’s the case, than mixing some soldiers + zerker pieces should always be better than the knights alternative because it results in higher power with otherwise the same emphasis on survivability.

Again, this is only relevant when considering mixing celestial in your gear, which is a great set that works out fantastic for ele but can lead to a severe lack of power if mixed wrong.

Thanks for the input. Could you provide numbers for power, armor, HP ferocity, and healing power, and crit chance that are good to aim for so I can select which pieces I want to be each type of gear?

Rising Dusk.2408:

Maybe instead of the stupid gambits paying out gold they could pay some valuable commodity like T6 mats. Then the market would actually deflate slightly as more money gets burned in TP transactions and prices drop due to increased supply.

That would be a great change! I always prefer small rewards of valuable stuff like that which build up over time because for someone trying to craft anything that uses them, they are a commodity that will always have a higher value in its use than its exchange in my opinion.

I think I’ll craft 3 celestial armor pieces and the rest will be soldiers/knights/cavalier. I’ll messaround with a build editor if someone can provide me with good numbers to aim for each stat.

Well with the new-old content returning next week, I think we can expect to see some deadeye dunwell farming once more, provided that the original rewards from it haven’t been nerfed or removed. I can’t remember what happened towards the end of the event though, if farming these bosses was nerfed or not, because it was so long ago and I never farmed him because I didn’t play guardian or ranger.

So what do you think the implications of this could be? We have a lack of details about what specifically is coming back, so we don’t know if we’ll be fighting the same bosses or not. And is this festival slated to last for a whole month or just for two weeks?

If you go for blue, the super scepter (from the SAB) is an option. I love the digital effects. I have a full set of King Toad weapons (green SAB tribulation mode 1 skins) on my mesmer.

The Primary.6371:

We could continue with this pathetic display of you trying to flaunt something but in the end, it’s meaningless. The best option for this new ele player is to use a d/d celestial amulet ele with either dolyak or strength runes with sigil of battle and energy sigil. A 0/2/0/6/6 spec should do it for him to start off with. You can also use a staff with this setup too. If you need traits…that can be answered.

Okay The Primary, if you are going to be confrontational and borderline rude about my posts, then I’m going to get defensive.

I personally think the build advice you are giving is great, and I really don’t understand why you were attacking my posts. Originally you thought that I didn’t like might stacking rotations for D/D, which is not what I meant at all. That has to do more with how you play a D/D build than the build itself, I never intended to say anything in my original post about the types of rotations you’d want to use in such a build. All I was saying is that to be successful in a pvp staff build you need to be more intune with using different types of combo fields to gain an advantage. D/D only has fire fields to blast for might, while staff also has water, lightning and frost to take advantage of. Using these different types of fields and other AoE attacks/CC effects in a coordinated way with your team is what staff ele in tpvp is all about. With D/D its much more about the point blank AoE and extra mobility and active defenses and using those things masterfully to win both 1v1 and group fights, while providing team support through boons, passive heals/condition removal, and yes might stacking rotations should an opportunity present itself.

The trait line up I originally suggested for D/D is 0/0/2/6/6 which is barely different from the 0/2/0/6/6 build you suggested. The core traits are the same, and those last 2 points can go in earth or air depending on personal preference. Zephyr’s boon however does provide better sustained crit damage with the fury uptime, but I think that 2 points in earth are worth mentioning as well, because earth’s embrace is a good defensive trait when learning the ele, and stone splinters is an excellent flat damage increase to every D/D skill, so I believe those traits are worth looking into as well, but feel free to respectfully disagree with me on those points. And also OP, to your questions on the utilities, typically at least 2 cantrips are used, such as mist form or lightning flash or armor of earth because they provide active defense and synergize with traits that can be taken in the water traitline.

Anyway, I hope this clarifies what my original posting about the ele was all about and The Primary, I hope that you will be nicer and more polite when pointing out flaws or disagreeing with people in the future, because even if you didn’t mean it, I felt a bit under attack with the way you phrased your responses towards me, which even caused me to panic a little. But I hope we can be better than that if when discussing things in the future.

I’ve never had any problems in spvp with my damage without might stacking with combos. Then again I’m just getting back into the game after a long break so what do I know? You’ve already proved to everyone how little I know when I was just trying to help someone with their decision.

LordByron.8369:

I could say this.
I would rather mix stats, but for armor you can get celestial for free in fractals quite easily since any box will have wupwup in it.

Personally i think its better to go DPS mixing mostly celestial, berserker and soldier but most depends on your server www tactics.

Thanks for your response. I didn’t know that fractals dropped celestial armor, so I’ll have to look into that.

The Primary.6371:

nearlight.3064:

Ele certainly is viable on tournament teams, and more so now than ever because the recent patch reverted some of the old nerfs that make the 0/0/2/6/6 build so great, and also buffed celestial so eles can also actually DPS things while being difficult to kill. Combo fields aren’t as important for D/D as PBAoE is, thats more of a staff thing and it seems that staff is still a horrible choice outside of zerg gameplay in wvw.

As for the other classes, mesmer is only viable for tpvp at really high skill levels with lots of coordination with portal and whatnot. The PU builds are lower skill and easier to learn but less effective for the real deal from what I know. Engineers seem to make good bunkers and S/D trickery theives seem to be really important in pvp right now, but thats beyond what I really know.

So if combo fields aren’t important to you as a D/D. How do you increase your over all power and condition damage with celestial amulet outside of general fire field might stacking?

Read what I said. They’re not AS important as they would be in a staff or S/D build but that doesn’t mean I don’t think they’re important at all, and I find that a battle sigil works fine to keep the might up. And for general D/D taking persisting flames means a lot less survivability, especially from conditions. Staff builds use more than just fire fields, they use blast water fields for healing, and their ice field for frost aura and the static field in zergplay for swiftness.

So basically when I run D/D, if I can blast the ring of fire field once or twice, thats a great thing to do, but I certainly don’t rely or depend on it.

when are these new legendaries supposed to come out?

Hi, I’m in need of gold to transfer servers after coming back to the game and kaineng sucking for an NA player, and I was wondering if an experienced TP manipulator could show the ropes in game. In return all I can offer is my friendship and gratitude.

The title says it all, is full or mostly full celestial armor ideal for the x/x/x/4-6/6 D/D (for small group) and staff (for large group) WvW builds? Or is the old mix of PVT and knights and zerker still the best.

I want to know, because I’m going to start crafting ascended soon, now that I’m finally back playing the game, and I’d like the make the right choice.

I have both of those professions at 80 and I love both of them, but for different ways. They both have relatively high skill caps, especially for the pure shatter Staff/GS builds that are difficult to use (Although PU condition is a fun and effective roaming build for mesmer that is easier to excel with).

As far as ele goes, they fields and AoEs they provide with staffs are crucial to zergs while the D/D builds offer a great blend of damage and survivability and are tough, but not too tough to play, and are great for roaming and have lots of point blank AoEs to excel in group fights. Overall mesmer is better for 1v1 for phantasm builds and PU builds, while the shatter and PU builds are also great for team fights, their main weakness in Tpvp anyway is their inability to safely fight on point. Zergs also love mesmers for strategic things with veil, portal, mass invis, and reflection.

So my overall suggestion to you is to level and use both of them! That will be more work and more endgame gear to acquire, but you will be glad that you have a different class to play when you feel like it.

Ele certainly is viable on tournament teams, and more so now than ever because the recent patch reverted some of the old nerfs that make the 0/0/2/6/6 build so great, and also buffed celestial so eles can also actually DPS things while being difficult to kill. Combo fields aren’t as important for D/D as PBAoE is, thats more of a staff thing and it seems that staff is still a horrible choice outside of zerg gameplay in wvw.

As for the other classes, mesmer is only viable for tpvp at really high skill levels with lots of coordination with portal and whatnot. The PU builds are lower skill and easier to learn but less effective for the real deal from what I know. Engineers seem to make good bunkers and S/D trickery theives seem to be really important in pvp right now, but thats beyond what I really know.

Hello, I have just returned to GW2 after a long break, and I’m looking for a new guild to join because my original one split up and our server Kaineng gradually went downhill.

I’d like to be part of a guild thats active in WvW, PvP, and PvE. I’d prefer a higher population server, but middle population is fine as well, and I will transfer if I believe that your guild is a good fit for me. I main Elementalist and Mesmer, but I also have a level 80 thief and necro that I don’t play as much. So please post here, message me here or whisper me ingame if you’d like to have a skilled and friendly player join your ranks!

Arcane traits a a life saver, literally! Water as well but they’re slightly less important.

^^ How dare you hijack my thread! Leveling as a mesmer was kind of rough, but now that armor repairs are free (they are right?) that should be less awful.

And thanks for the responses, I’ve tried a power PU build and it actually seems pretty solid with more damage than the condition variants but equivalent amounts of survivability. I do miss using staff with it so I may try out the staff GS builds to see if I have any skill with them whatsoever. If not I’ll just stick with PU or go back to D/D ele where I can literally faceroll skills through the attunements and still do well against the average group of enemy players.

Hi, after taking a long break from gw2, I’m returning to the game and I was wondering what sort of mesmer builds are popular right now for tpvp and WvW. I used to play PU condition, which was really cool, but I’d like to try something different, like maybe a more shatter based condition build. Also how good are the staff/GS glassy shatter builds I see top level tournament players use?

Another important question are the new GMs, they’re a tad expensive for me since I don’t have much gold, but are any of those traits truly viable? I’m also playing ele a lot too, and I feel like their D/D build has become a lot better due to recent changes it seems, so is there a new mesmer build for these game formats that rivals this? I’m torn between maining ele and mesmer, and because of how time intensive ascended armor/weapon crafting seems to be, I’ll only be able to pick one class to devote ascended and maybe eventually legendary crafting to.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Hi, after taking a long break from GW2, I’m playing again, and this time I want to main Ele (or mesmer or necro), so I was wondering in lieu of the recent changes what the best sort of build for the different game areas is.

Since I’m looking for a new guild I’ve only really just tried spvp since returning. The Celestial amulet stats seem quite strong now, but is it worth it obtaining ascended celestial armor/weapons?

And as for builds I’m not sure. I tired out the semi classic 0/0/2/6/6 defensive ebuild with strength runes and celestial and it seems incredibly strong in spvp, very hard to kill, while still doing lots of pbAoE DPS. Is this the best build right now or is the S/D fresh air build that was popular when I left still good?

And a final question, are any of the new GM traits viable?

Hi, I used to play GW2 very regularly, but got busy and sucked into pokemon XY during the school year and stopped playing in October of 2013. Now I am back at least for the summer and I have many questions about the current state of the game that will help me ease back into it.

First of all how have the previous balance update(s) affected the classes? Are any of the new GM traits viable? For mesmer and ele they don’t seem too necessary. I have a level 80 ele, mesmer, necro and thief and I’m wondering what are some of the current “meta” builds for tpvp and WvW for each of these classes and which of these classes seem to be the strongest overall right now? I’m leaning towards ele or mesmer after spending a few hours with them.

Next how has the game’s economy changed? Is it realistic to go for a legendary weapon or all ascended armor for one or more characters? Is the best way to make money still champ farming or trading post speculation? I only have about 50 gold left after decking out my character’s with T3/transmuted armor before I left, and now the wardrobe system at lest makes that aspect of the game less expensive.

And finally, I need direction. During my break, my old guild split into many different groups and I don’t feel like I can go with any of them. I am on Kaineng which was falling into obscurity in the months before I left. What server’s are worth transferring and what would be the best way to get into a good but casual guild on one of those servers that is large but united and participates in all areas of the game?

Any advice you can offer on any of these things would be helpful, thanks so much!