Guild Wars 2

ryokoalways.3450:

Hopefully this is a good place to ask.

What is the accepted requirement for vit/tough?

I have several stat combinations that return

18.5k, 2646
18.5k, 2543
18k, 2605
17k, 2651
17k, 2558

I’m pretty much trading survivability for crit dmg and crit chance (mostly crit dmg, I am maintaining 35 or 40% crit chance), and wanted to see where I should stop giving up vit and armor. I am maintaining minimum 2200 power with T2 sharpening stone and steak-asp.

Thank you.

Are we talking standard 20 water 30 arcana D/D?

I think right now consensus for more dps focused would be 16k hp minimum and armor 2.5-2.7k. 2.5 is fine if you are running boon duration setups because of the extra 2 seconds on protection over just 30% boon duration.

Your 2200 power I am guessing a power based rune. I use to run 17k HP and have played at 19k-20k . I think 16-17k is good for WvW. If we are talking staff nuker then I roll around 14.5k-15k.

2.7k armor is possible with some cav/knights thrown in and ascended amor will give you +47 to the armor rating.

My final stats would end up at

2071 power
32% crit chance pre fury
74 crit dmg
16665
2708 armor full ascended armor.

I think that armor rating might be a bit to high so it would leave some room to throw a zerker/valk backpiece.

So it would be 2089 power, 2652 armor, 1684 vit, and 33% chance to crit prefury.

Lucentfir.7430:

This is just a thread to get some tip, or insight of how to deal with certain classes. Post up what class/build gives that gives you difficult time, and see if someone answers/gives you tips to improve your play against it. Remember to post Spvp, or WvW so people know what mode of play you’re talking about.

WvW- Necromancer/ Dhummfire Terror build.

I’ve been having a difficult time with these guys lately in wvw roaming, and the dueling arena. Their damage feels insane even with stability(fear prevention). They seem durable to with with death shroud, and life force generation(spectrals, Soul marks), and if i try to play a bi defensively, i get loaded with conditions. So any tips on how to deal with this? I’ve ran healway, and a zerker meditation build(I know zerkers isn’t very ideal vs this sort of build.)

I am new to Guardian (about 2 weeks) I do main Elementalist so the boat is kind of the same against Necromancer. I also have a necro and run a variation of the Dhuumfire build 30/20/20/0/0. Burst is the best hope to kill a Dhuumfire necro 1v1 you can’t attrition them down certainly not with a healway build. When I am out roaming on my Necro, DPS Med Guardians gave me more trouble then any other type of Guardian just like S/D Fresh Air high crit damage eles would be more of a threat then typical D/D eles. The key is to burst through Deathshroud ASAP.

They aren’t really tanky I have 2.8k armor on my necro but I also have 20 points in the toughness line the typical Dhuumfire build sits around 2.5k armor in exotics and 2.6k in ascended. HP with Dire should be around 24k-25k and full Rabid would be base at 18.5k.

The best time to burst cleanse if you happen to get hit by a fear opening is after they go into Deathshroud and start channeling Tainted Shackles which is what causes torment try to dodge the immobilze burst at the end or hold your cleanses until then.

Best weapon to combat a dhuumfire necro as Guardian would probably be Scepter. Match range for range and pay attention to the conditions you get on you and wipe accordingly.

If they have large marks then your blocks won’t work. Guardians and Warriors are the main reason I run 20 in Death magic on my Necro for unblockable marks. The above advice is also true that mobility isn’t really all that good and 1vX is also difficult unless they are brainless and run through all your marks.

What blackbeard says is true. Ele has pretty decent sustain actually in my time playing guardian these last 2 weeks I appreciate ele’s sustain/dps ratio much more now. It is much better then Guardian it just isn’t warrior.

Pressure I have found is the best medicine for some of the most annoying builds to fight out there your PU mesmers, your necros etcs. You can find the balance where you aren’t full glass and not full bunker.

Leaning your build to more bunker just lets you 1vX bad players or stalemate other bunkers.

Snorcha.7586:

Without this lightning flash + random immob bug!

At least 3-4 times every play time I get this bug. I cast lightning flash, then get immob for no apparent reason.

Anyone know how to get out of this invisible immob lol???

It’s not just Ele it happens for alot of the classes. Not even sure what causes it tbh.

Gokil.2543:

Good work.

Unfortunately daphoenix’s celestial analysis is quite outdated, now that we have celestial armor and weapons.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1tawyu/psa_the_order_to_add_ascended_celestial_gear_for/

This is a good resource for choosing what pieces to make celestial first. Daphoenix’s post is still relevant information on why to pick celestial, but not what pieces.

Thanks Gokil will add to OP

This is WvW/tPvP focused!! Resources for PvE look at the stickies at the top of this subforum

Seems we have had a slight influx of D/D ele players or just new ele’s in general. Probably from the christmas influx.

Here are good resources for pretty much everything you need to know for D/D Ele setups. With resources to the person that pretty much made the build popular

Phoenix’s indepth analysis on gear including the much asked about Celestial Stat Combo. This is still all relevant today.

http://daphoenix555.wordpress.com/category/home/

Phoenix’s youtube page where you can view some of his early videos in full carrion in the early life of the game. Then how his starts to move the build toward more power/direct damage based.

http://www.youtube.com/user/daphoenix555

Some analysis on stat optimization

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2FGuildwars2%2Fcomments%2F12dmi5%2Ftip_stat_optimization_with_crit_damage%2F

Updated Celestial Stat information

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2FGuildwars2%2Fcomments%2F1tawyu%2Fpsa_the_order_to_add_ascended_celestial_gear_for%2F

Thanks Gokil

The thread that started it all
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-D-D-ele-7-15-13/first

This thread may still be the most popular build thread on the entire forums.

If anyone has any other links I may have forgotten please post this should help the new D/D/New ele users come up with gear and stat choices.

I would also take a look at

http://www.youtube.com/user/IntigoGW2

He is a very good D/D Ele he doesn’t post on the forums much but is usually on reddit. He hasn’t posted any new video’s in a while he is getting a new PC since his laptop died and will post some more.

http://www.youtube.com/user/XunleashedGW2

Who has a thread going now and great editing.

http://www.youtube.com/user/SeraneGW2

Mostly posts GvG videos for his guild but has some roaming videos I don’t think his build has changed much but he doesn’t give it out though. Of the Ele’s I have personally dueled I consider him the best I have seen so far.

LordByron.8369:

Why D/D swiftness is capped at 30 or something like that while other profession can stack minutes of swiftness?

Notice that this was a stealth nerf that started many Patches ago….to the point that today any swiftness won t stack past 30 seconds or less.

What i can t get is how on D/D even healing skills, traits etc won t let you pass those 30 sec while with staff you can get more than 1 min with the same skills…..

Huh? I’ve gotten over 30 seconds of swiftness before. You talking about generated yourself?

lorddarkflare.9186:

One thing I have always wondered about these builds: where is the damage?

Is the concern over survivability such that the points for those modifiers cannot be spared.

The best modifier is 10 earth for D/D. You can grab it but with condi’s it is hard to drop the cleanses. You can run a blow up build but that only works against not very good people. So you build to assume that most fights will last more than 20 seconds. The longer the fight the stronger you get.

I wouldn’t run 30 water 30 arcana with s/d 30 air all day with s/d

Gokil.2543:

Assuming you’re talking about D/D ele here:

It’s all about the auras versus a thief. I can’t stress this enough, both shocking aura and frost aura are your most important assets against them. In order of difficulty:

P/D condi
D/P
D/D
S/D
all other thief weapon sets

From my experience in the obsidian sanctum duelling arena, I’ve been told that elementalists are one of the hardest matchups for thieves generally, which is also what I’ve been experiencing as I hardly ever lose against them. Only P/D condi with dazing steal that can interrupt your ether renewal through stability can reliably beat you. Second hardest is a very methodic and tanky D/P thief.

TL;DR: Elementalist wins most of the time

Hmm looks like you haven’t come across the full zerker P/D thief same traits as condi but full zerk ranges wittle you down then bursts with another set usually S/D. Still a doable fight but I find P/D power w/ S/D offset the hardest thieves to fight currently.

With a honorable mention to annoying S/D evade spam 30 acro thieves put right into same boat as PU mesmers and P/D thieves.

Still give credit to you for posting video of something different.

Perma protection for Ele is only achieved with Elemental Shielding it’s the only way you can have perma protection reliably. 0/10/10/20/30

Maybe instead of the melandru+resistance setup just go full hoelbrak to get some much needed power. I’ve ran this trait setup on staff in GvG’s it is awesome I just run boon duration on my clerics armor with celestial trinkets.

I would recommend full 6 melandru since it forces the condition to round down. 10 bleed should tick only 7 times instead of 7.5.

Looks solid!

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

It’s funny, but that ability should be relatively hit or miss. Either your at or above 90% health, or your already dead so it doesn’t matter. So I fail to see the problem with it being a 90% threshold (I am assuming that is the problem the OP has with it?). Plus the trait is in about the worst trait line that we have, so why even bother?

I disagree with earth being a bad trait line. It is actually a very good trait line. Rock Solid, stone splinter’s are popular traits along with earth’s embrace elemental shielding. The rest of the traits aren’t to great imo. 30 earth written in stone is decent but our signets aren’t except restoration imo but that has more to do with the signets then the traits.

Earth can let you pick up much more damage then you get in water with serrated stone and stone splinters both are easy to take advantage off.

Water has traits that need work also but the stable traits are even with earth I feel. Water has the advantage of vitality tree.

emilejuggernaut.1864:

The damage is not as good as a stun breaker or a general lower cooldown especially if you are playing defensive. As ranged ofc.

Put more damage gear on lightning flash can do a good amount of damage. 2k is not uncommon in normal dps builds 4k is definitely doable. The loss of stun breaker isn’t all that big of a deal because you can still use it while stunned.

Mesmer’s hardly ever take blink trait in most builds because the alternatives are much better unless you are building to run away. Also mesmer mobility isn’t as good as elementalist mobility they can invis and misdirect people which is different.

If a Mesmer lets say in the uber popular 20/20/30/0/0 PU build blows through all of it’s utility cooldowns of stealth it doesn’t really have much after that to get away or even options to trait to get away via weapon skills. A ele will always have wind borne speed on staff, burning retreat on staff, always have rtl on offhand dagger, has a movement signet, the one that would be the least mobile would be Focus off hand with no trait points.

People here might make the case that those thing “suck” but on paper with no trait points a Ele can have much better mobility then a Mesmer and traits just make it better. It isn’t warrior or thief mobility but in this comparison a Mesmer doesn’t even have Ele mobility. Mesmer has just a focus a random proc on a signet and 4 secs randomly on chaos storm and the illusion movement speed trait that no one ever takes.

Ele will spoil you with swiftness up time Mesmer’s have to go buy traveler runes or runes of speed or centaur and pop heals all day just get anywhere semi fast.

tattoohead.3217:

Heh I was in a mood when flaming the while power vs crit/crit dmg thing sorry, I is true that pow is important. That’s why zerker > assassin but the overall point of the post is for bunker/survival builds right? So healing power is a factor for sure.

Yea it definitely is after my past 2 weeks playing guardian I have much better appreciation for Elementalist healing ability. Altruistic Healing is selfish through and through. Selfless Daring is a great heal similar to our Evasive but has no icd so you can abuse it with energy sigils. I haven’t played staff guard yet but comparing guardians 0/5/30/30/5 AH or Med Variations and 0/0/10/30/30 Healway builds our 20 water 30 Arcana puts out much better damage than those and to get great damage out of 0/5/30/30/5 you almost have to go full zerk so far from my experience and have to have the right weapons for the job or your screwed whereas our D/D builds are much better all around.

I thought Guard would be similar to Ele but it really isn’t they are so different. I feel like it is either you go full out dps or full support the middle ground is there but it is much much harder to secure a kill with guardian.

Sorry for the side rant.

I am jelly of strength in numbers trait and guards have some good passive condition removal options there burst removal I don’t think is as good as ele for self sustain but party removal is awesome.

Viking Jorun.5413:

I know Xunleashed is good, but does anyone know what happened to Excala, as far as D/D streamers go?

I talked to him about a month ago he has been traveling lately no time to really play much.

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

I am sorry but you are blatantly wrong.

Average damage = Base damage * (( 1 – Critical Chance) + Base Damage * (Critical Chance * (Critical Damage + 1.5))

That is the formula that determines how much damage that you do with a Critical Hit. You need to notice that your Critical Chance and Critical Damage are all jumbled in together with a bunch of other figures that ALL get multiplied by your BASE DAMAGE.

And how is your Base Damage determined? by another formula that is as follows:

Damage done = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

You will notice that Power and Weapon Strength (the two factors that determine your Attack Power) are present in this formula.

What this means is that the higher your Power and Weapon Strength, the higher your damage when you perform a Critical Hit will actually be, because it is actually your ((Attack Power * Skill-Specific Coefficient) / (Target Armor)) that everything in the Critical Damage Formula gets multiplied by.

All Good Info’s here!! To add

The condition damage on celestial is kind of a non factor.

Many advocates of full celestial point to the condition damage but when it is pointed out that you have low power the counter is well I have might stacks it doesn’t work that way because power and condition damage don’t scale the same.

Luckily ele has burns which are a good condition with high base but as soon as you start lightning whipping someone and they don’t have any damaging condition on them wouldn’t it be better to put those points somewhere else? Burning for Ele should be looked at as our poison which allows us to help reduce someone’s passive healing over time.

If people want to put some celestial on that is fine you just can not neglect power as it double dips into your critical strikes and your white damage whereas critical damage only effects your crits and nothing else.

ThiBash.5634:

Fuzzion.2504:

Boon duration gear only if u are going the classic dnd route. Otherwise, the conversation is a waste of time.

I see. So boosting your party heals or extending your might durations isn’t useful?

It is but to really find how useful the extended might durations are or the extra time regen is up has to be figured out. Which is really hard to do. The safe bet would be to stack as much as you can and just call it a day.

What has to be determined:

• With no boon duration you get 3x 20 secs of might if you max out at 75% duration you get 3x 35 seconds of might.

• The extra 15 seconds of might would give you a big dps increase for 15 seconds IF you can stack again which is where you would get to the 25 stack cap which we know is achievable with S/D and D/D with the right setups.

• If you put those points to raw stats would the battle already be decided? In most cases no you can stack 25 stacks of might in most fights if you aren’t extremely outnumbered. The might stacks require time so it is all very situation dependent for PvP/WvW.

• The fortunate part is that for /D setups that is all churning earth is really good for a might stacker. Earthquake on the other hand is a bit more valuable imo so you can either use it to knockdown someone, stack might or both if they happen to be in your fire field, or more advance is you start in the fire field earthquake and lf to target you still get the might.

For heals boons that stat duration can only stack a max of 9 times with Retal capped at 5 and stability capped at 3. So if Regen is being handed out like crazy you might be giving out all that much extra healing from regen.

This is actually good design I think in small scale battles it is much harder to hit the 9 stack cap on regen but in larger battles it is definitely easy but the 9 stack cap ensures that those that are dedicated to healing hand that healing out more.

Side Note

Didn’t churning earth give 6 stacks of might in a fire field? 3 at start 3 at finish now it just gives 3 at finish.

Mightymealworm.8409:

WvW and PvP builds aren’t that different really. Meta guardian builds for both are support bunker x/x/30/30/10 or x/x/10/30/30 with some small variation between and in traits for flavor. Shouts and consecrations make up your skills and stay with a group to support and survive. Roaming meditation guards work similar in both forums as well, but offensive guards simply aren’t truely competitive in either. DPS guards are mostly for pve and dungeons, or in hot join for fun.

What this says is correct

just grab all clerics and boon duration setup like 4 altruism 2 water 30 water 30 arcana usually people put the 10 in air. For staff bunker I would go 30 water 30 earth and 10 arcana. Healing scales good on most of ele’s healing skills but healing still isn’t a great stat in the game overall. I have a full clerics armor set I run with all celestial trinkets and boon duration if I want to go support but still have some dps. I sit around 800-900 healing power in that setup. 75% boon duration.

Wintel.4873:

LightningBlaze.4913:

Only time and experience will teach you how to play the elementalist. Also keep in mind if you don’t have previous experience playing as a mage profession type on previous mmos, elementalist will be even harder for you to master in a more competitive environment like wvw and spvp.

I rolled an Ele thinking I would feel right at home with a supposedly “mage” class but it turned out to be something else entirely. Elementalist is nothing like Mage/Sorcerer professions in any other MMO.

Take WoW Mage for example….that class revolves around long-range nukes, lots of kiting abilities, CC, damage absorption (shields) to compensate for low health and complete lack of healing. Through-and-through a pure damage class.

Meanwhile Ele plays like a mage with zero kiting/CC potential, no absorption, just high damage through area-placed abilities and everything separated by eternally-long cooldowns that don’t make any sense.
You are given lots of group support abilities, healing and rely on boons. ArenaNet themselves have said that Ele is a jack-of-all-trades class, and by that definition it’s nothing like a Mage/Sorcerer, it’s just “support”.

Engineer or Mesmer is what I would recommend for fans of the Mage class.

Yea rely on boons is 20 points in Arcana minimum. Long range nukes is staff 20 in fire minimum and 15 air minimum for deeps. Staff is alot of fun alot of CC and alot of damage put the daggers down try other weapons try not going 30 in arcana. Scepter is also alot of fun. The only boon you need to worry about with staff is Fury and Might maybe Swiftness for kiting which staff does extremely well.

I admittedly run class D/D style Ele and I love it but if you have tried staff or other weapons extensively and moved trait points around out of your comfort zone there is no way you could say you can’t kite in staff and that it relies on boons. In pvp/wvw staff is very powerful it always was it just needed a few buffs which it received but the damage was always there.

Oslaf Beinir.5842:

well….to answer the thread’s topic…what i think is it needs to be moved to Arcane trait line…

Bountiful power= does not belong to a vit/healing trait line. It belongs to a boon duration trait line to have a meaningful synergy with the bonus it provides. but for some reason that is not the case for the Elementalist even though similar traits to Bountiful Power other classes have are indeed placed in a boon duration trait line. Here, lets list the similar traits and which traitline they belong to and compare…

Guardian
Power of the Virtuous, Traitline-Virtues: Boon Duration+Virtue’s Recharge

Engineer
Energy Conversion Matrix, Traitline-Alchemy: Boon Duration+Vitality

Warrior
Empowered, Traitline-Tactics: Boon Duration+Vitality

Ranger
Bountiful Hunter, Traitline-Nature Magic: Boon Duration+Vitality

Well I suppose we could now conclude that this trait is misplaced…Pretty sure this is nothing new to the community but no one is complaining enough for it to be moved down to Arcane line especially with its crappy minor grandmaster.

Yea you definitely raise a good point that it should be in the boon duration line. It would definitely be better there then our current 25 point arcana trait. The question is what would replace it in 25 water? Not Powerful Auras.

Columbo.5924:

gw2buildcraft is a bit overconfident when calculating its values. For example if you take a thief and pick the “7% more chance to crit from behind or side” trait, it will ignore that there is a condition attached to that trait and simply add those 7% to your regular crit chance. You should be careful when taking those values for granted – it always makes a best case calculation.

Back to topic: I am fully in the boon duration boat. Take the protection boon for instance. Keeping that boon up reduces the damage taken by 33%. Given the diminishing returns of toughness/armor this can easily be the equivalent of 2000 or more toughness. The same could be said about fury as well. If i remember correctly you need 21 points in precision to increase your critical chance by 1%. So having the fury boon is like 420 extra precision. Or take the might boon: with 16 stacks (which is a more or less realistic value even if you opponent pushes you) thats 560 power and condition damage. And there is swiftness, regeneration or vigor on top of that.

Keeping all those boons up is in my opinion the best choice for your rune slots and is also one of the reasons I never run without 30 arcana (aside from the fact that it contains the key traits for a boon duration build – without it there would be no boons in the first place…).

With 10 air you can have perma fury with just 30% if you are being pressured this can drop off for a short time but not long. Protection difference with 30% boon duration vs 75% duration is 2.25 sec that is very little downtime unless we are talking about with Elemental Shielding then you can keep it up 100% with just 60% boon duration.

So those 2.25 seconds of protection in a 0/10/0/30/30 D/D build instead of:

60 to all stats 12 crit damage
or
30 to all stats 6 crit damage, 15% boon duration and 25 movement Speed
or
120 Power 84 precision and 12 crit damage
or
165 of one stat and 50 of another and whatever 6 piece bonus comes with it.

reikken.4961:

ew @ 25 earth
enduring damage is only useful if you never dodge

Anyway, what is effective power?
edit: nvm. I see now. I haven’t used this site before. Let’s see what the effective power of my prospective build would be…
13k apparently. not too shabby! (8 might, 85% fury, 48.3% damage [4.4 bolt to the heart, 10 stone splinters, 7 burning rage, 7.5 air training, 1/7 * 2/1.15 *2/3 = 12.3 fresh air+electric discharge {1 bolt per 7 seconds compared to 2/3 uptime on lightning whip dps}])
and with a whopping 16313 effective hp. so tanky, oh man

But after trying to calculate how much damage I get out of bolt to the heart, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to swap it out for zephyr’s focus. since your opponent spends much less time below 33% than between 33 and 67, or above 67%, and on top of that the damage has a high chance of being overkill and not making a difference. But on the other hand, damage to a low health opponent is much more critical, since they’ll be trying to heal or whatever, and more damage can help you kill them before that happens.

edit: actually it looks like some of these damage traits are added in automatically? hmm
OK, 10k is the actual effective power

Yea most of the damage modifiers are added in automatically. Bountiful power you have to put in automatically.

Bitcloud mentioned in his newest video that Bolt to the Heart applies to Necromancer Deathshroud which makes it more attractive but I haven’t tested it myself.

It is hard to gauge the value of Bolt to the Heart I feel like most people are dead at that mark. Reverse thinking would be would I take Earths Embrace or any other health threshold traits if they triggered at 33% health I would not. The alternatives beside bolt to the heart I like Air training for lightning whip spam or Arcane lightning if I run a Arcane spell.

Boon duration with soldiers armor is good, grab some precision with eagle, ruby orbs are great in soldier armor, divinity if cost isn’t a issue, traveler.

If I was 20 air in full soldiers, I would probably go divinity, orbs, eagle in that order.

Hmm stats are decent actually for a Hybrid condi/power build. Not my flavor but I could see it working. I would drop a bit of vit from soldier accessories and throw some zerk in the trinkets to help with crit chance a get a little bit of crit damage in there for true hybrid. Drop HP to about 17k remember you have 120 free toughness when you swap in/out of earth and you have lingering elements. Looks like a solid hybrid build though that would just be my personal changes to it but looks good out of the box as a hybrid.

We can look at the numbers here of 3 builds to see what the Effective Power difference looks like. Fury and Might has to be added manually also.

Effective Power – 4860.9
20 stacks of Might and 100% fury up time has to be added also. 10 air would have perma fury. A generous 6% damage boost from bountiful power has to be added manually.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|8.5n.h2.8.5c.0.d13.0.d14|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|5j.71m.5j.71m.5j.71g.5n.71g.5n.71h.5n.71h.0.0.0.0.0.0|3t.d17.2v.d14.3v.d17.2v.0.311.d19.2v.d13|0.a0.0.u150.u56b|2e.1|1n.1u.1v.1s.28|e

Effective Power – 4836.41
20 stacks of might 40% fury uptime via Arcane fury w/ Stone Splinters and Serrated stone which it calculates automatically as applied

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|8.5n.h2.8.5c.0.d13.0.d14|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|5j.71m.5j.71m.5j.71g.5n.71g.5n.71h.5n.71h.0.0.0.0.0.0|3t.d17.2v.d14.3v.d17.2v.0.311.d19.2v.d13|0.0.k64.k10.u56b|2e.1|1n.1u.1v.1s.28|e

Effective Power – 5322.05
If we move 5 more points on the last build to 25 Earth. 20 Stacks of Might 40% Fury Uptime taking all the damage modifier traits.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|8.5n.h2.8.5c.0.d13.0.d14|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|5j.71m.5j.71m.5j.71g.5n.71g.5n.71h.5n.71h.0.0.0.0.0.0|3t.d17.2v.d14.3v.d17.2v.0.311.d19.2v.d13|0.0.p64.f1.u56b|2e.1|1n.1u.1v.1s.28|e

Enduring Damage modifier is a bit harder to pull off though.

ThunderCat.8395:

Yeah I’ve run full boon duration in the past. The reason I switched to the 4 divinity 2 traveler build is because I always felt like with the runes of water and runes of monk you are wasting 2 rune slots that only give you 25 healing each.

I feel like even with 45% boon duration you should still be able to maintain perma-fury if you are using zephyr’s boon and attunement dancing correctly.

As far as might goes, I agree that maintaining at least 10 stacks is important to keep your damage up, but in a 1v1 situation it can be hard to focus on triple blasting fire 4 when you are also trying to apply constant pressure to your opponent and dodge his nastier attacks. Not to mention that mesmers are necros are going to be removing all that hard earned might and your damage will tank hard if you are completely depending on it for damage.

HOPE Ele are you Black Haired Ele Female that is in the Sanctum often? I think you have a incinerator not sure about the incinerator part. Usually a D/D Ele from Hope that duels there often.

Xunleashed.5271:

U should also consider that going from 60% to 75% boon duration is at a very very low price, only 2 runes, what can u do that is better then 15% boon duration with 2 runes?
Considerering that u already have on 2 monks/waters and 2 travelers, what can u do? 2 divinities? 2 melandru? Easy match for 15% more boon duration

Very very true

I will add though that if I had 10 points in Earth I would definitely consider taking Elemental shielding if I had 75% boon duration because that is Perma Protection without question and I think protection and stability are probably the strongest boons in the game. I would put prot over stab personally.

I just recently finished leveling my Guardian to 80 and I consider Guard and Ele to be similar on boon reliance but that was until I actually started playing it. The boons help the Guardian heal in a AH build but right now I am not very tempted to run boon duration on Guardian and I am playing more dps/hybrid. Probably Guardian Version of 0/10/0/30/30 D/D Ele which is 0/5/30/30/5.

It is easier on Guardian because of 1 trait and the base armor. The trait is strength in numbers which I am jelly of as a Ele main. We have Stone Flesh but you can’t keep it up like Soothing Mist since it doesn’t refresh like soothing mist. Which you can keep up almost 100%.

Just playing the Guardian for just a few days at 80 so far. Ele’s give me a hard time rofl which is kinda funny triple meds is probably better for solo though.

I like both classes and Guard will probably end up being my second fav after Ele taking Warriors spot since it is not as straight forward as Warrior.

Since it is easer to see everything in front of you at one time this should help 20 water 30 arcana users.
Note:
Fire Field Might – 3 stacks 20 seconds.
Sigil of Battle – 3 stacks 20 seconds
Elemental attunement – Might 1 stack 15 seconds

30% Boon Duration Setup

Might – 19.5 s

• Fire Field/Sigil of battle = 26 s

Swiftness – 6.5 s

• Updraft – 13 s

Protection – 6.5 s

• Elemental Shielding – 3.9 s

Regen – 6.5

• Soothing Wave – 3.9 s
• Soothing Disruption – 7.8 s

Vigor -

• Soothing Disruption – 7.8 s
• Renewing Stamina – 6.5 s

Fury -

• Zephyr’s Boon – 6.5 s
• Arcane Fury – 2.6 s

75% Boon duration

Might – 26.25 s

• Fire Field/Sigil of battle = 35 s

Swiftness – 8.75 s

• Updraft – 17.5 s

Protection – 8.75 s

• Elemental Shielding – 5.25 s

Regen – 8.75

• Soothing Wave – 5.25 s
• Soothing Disruption – 10.5 s

Vigor -

• Soothing Disruption – 10.5 s
• Renewing Stamina – 8.75 s

Fury -

• Zephyr’s Boon – 8.75 s
• Arcane Fury – 3.5 s

My personal opinion is no more than 60%. I would at this point only go 45%. I posted this in another thread but in my brief time running around with runes of hoelbrak in WvW I noticed I was able to keep stacks at 20 pretty easily as if I had 75% boon duration.

So the other 30% if you go all out really gets good use on your updraft swiftness, but elemental attunement swaps are barely effected except for the might.

I have used 75% back to 30% I think 45% if you want extra boon duration for backloaded DPS like full boon duration setups.

60% if you really value the other boons.

75% boon duration if you are fighting people that let you keep 25 stacks of might and watch you stack it.

For DPS it is frontloaded vs backloaded damage in regards to Might and a extra 15% will give you solid effective might stacks. If you really like the other boons you can go 60% but 45% boon duration and 60% boon duration would have about the same amount of might stacks. If the main reason you went boon duration is DPS and the most important boon to you is Might 45% is a good spot.

cobalt.1846:

ThunderCat.8395:

my roaming/dueling build:

Based on:
Average damage = Base damage * ( 1 + Critical Chance * ( Critical Damage + 0.5) )

My Average Damage: 2121 * ( 1 + 0.35 * ( 0.64 + 0.5) ) = 2967.279
OP’s Average Damage: 1638 * ( 1 + 0.30 * ( 0.88 + 0.5) ) = 2316.132
Xunleashed’s Average Damage: 1915 * ( 1 + 0.30 * ( 0.80 + 0.5) ) = 2661.85

The only problem with your comparison is that your not taking might/fury into consideration.. with my build the average damage comes out to 3402.5468 but if you add just 10 stacks of might (very easy for me to maintain) my damage bumps up to 3931.3618 and if i run in a group with 1 warrior then 25 stacks is easy to maintain and bumps my damage up to 4724.5843. All my numbers are based on what are on the gw2skills site so i know they are not completely accurate. Also, if I feel i need more armor i swap in a couple of ascended soldier rings and that would bring my average down to 2961.38, 10 stack average thou would be 3421.63.

no stacks average 2252*(1+0.39*(0.81+0.5)) = 3402.5468
10 stacks average 2602*(1+0.39*(0.81+0.5)) = 3931.3618

To warm up my stacks i usually use the Arcane Power to get things started. People don’t expect to get hit that hard right off the bat and it usually throws people off. By time the 5 crits are done i have my might stacks. So best possible stats is subjective to how you use your traits, armor and skills. I consider my build to be semi glass cannon.

I actually think ThunderCats build is pretty solid. If you look at his rune choices I would say he did factor in might/fury otherwise he would have went 6 Divinity Runes instead of 3 traveler 3 divinity. Why would 15% boon duration matter? 45% boon duration can give you a much easier time to maintain effective might stacks of 20+.

That comparison is basically around standard D/D ele setups with 0/10/0/30/30. Thundercats build vs xunleashed build is that thundercat will be able to survive longer then xunleansed since he has higher armor and vitality. Armor and vitality are important for unavoidable/dodgeable damage.

The problem again with boon duration setup is will anyone let you sit there and stack 25 stacks of might in a fight? Especially more then one person. 10 might stacks is easy with just 30 arcana and happens regularly its hard to hold on to 20 stacks with just 30 arcana. The important thing is after the first 15 seconds of a fight where do you average on might stacks. 45% in Thundercats build should be good for 20 stacks where as 75% boon duration is good for 25 stacks.

In my brief time running around with runes of hoelbrak with d/d ele was when I learned 20% might duration bonus let me hit 20 stacks and hold them long enough in a fight. 20 stacks with just 30 arcana is much harder to hold on to as you are rotating.

If I had to pick I like Thundercats build between those 3 simply because his upfront damage is much better and doesn’t suffer that much of a loss if his might is stripped.

If it is a power PU mesmer then it is possible to win I would say it is the most intense fight I usually have because of all the stealthing I have attack as soon as they appear. If it is conditions and they don’t overkill and are patient almost impossible. Most people that run condition anything overload and are aggressive like they are running power when they can load up kite and then load up again condi’s are passive play by design.

I can’t see how you can kill a PU with staff unless your glass I do better against pu mesmers if I am staff with fresh air procs, abusing range and killing clones safely at distance with air auto procs since it bounces targets.

LightningBlaze.4913:

Eviscera.9703:

This build is from Xunleashed (a very good elementalist) I don’t think you can get better stats than this: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhEmmbyR4gjDAkHuADLiCPUekzM2A-jEEBYgAYjgkIAUBg5ogJqERrlhht6KalXBRbDT5CQ7CSFTp2aOrmzBygOxyAoPGA-w

He would be in a much better spot if he give up those celestial.

Agree really it is splitting hairs when it comes to D/D ele standard build.

The 2 extremes are full zerk or full clerics everything else is in the middle honestly. If you look at most d/d ele builds they always end up around 18k-19k power. 40%-50% chance to crit. 2.5-2.7k armor and 15.5k-17k hp.

That is pretty much where every d/d x/x//x/20/30 build ends up about the dps difference between them isn’t very large.

Viking Jorun.5413:

oZii.2864:

Svarty.8019:

I’ve been pointed at this build, but I am concerned about a lack of Vitality. Could someone please explain why Vitality is not an issue when there is such high spike damage in WvW?

I am new to Guardian just dinged 80 2 days ago but Elementalist is my main and frequent the forums alot there. They both have the same base vitality but Guardian has higher armor. The main issue for spike damage is a Thief running a signets of power build full zerk. No other class should spike you fast enough where you feel you couldn’t react. Other classes can build as glassy as a Signet’s of power thief but they can’t repeat that burst nearly as often as a thief. The other class that would maybe force you to add more vit would be a 30/20/x/x/x Terrormancer and that is a maybe.

I would never roll around with 15.5k HP on my Ele in WvW but I so far don’t feel I need more then that guardian.

Thing is, that thief is also running 10k health, medium armor, no defenses except stealth, and if you hit him with a Dragon’s Tooth/Whirling Wrath on a DPS guardian/ele you’ll wind up with a dead thief shortly thereafter.

Yup I agree still I think it is the most forgiving full zerk class in the game for pvp.

Svarty.8019:

I’ve been pointed at this build, but I am concerned about a lack of Vitality. Could someone please explain why Vitality is not an issue when there is such high spike damage in WvW?

I am new to Guardian just dinged 80 2 days ago but Elementalist is my main and frequent the forums alot there. They both have the same base vitality but Guardian has higher armor. The main issue for spike damage is a Thief running a signets of power build full zerk. No other class should spike you fast enough where you feel you couldn’t react. Other classes can build as glassy as a Signet’s of power thief but they can’t repeat that burst nearly as often as a thief. The other class that would maybe force you to add more vit would be a 30/20/x/x/x Terrormancer and that is a maybe.

I would never roll around with 15.5k HP on my Ele in WvW but I so far don’t feel I need more then that guardian.

Awesome thanks DeKeyz. Appreciate the videos also.

Eviscera.9703:

oZii.2864:

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|8.5n.h2.8.5c.0.d13.0.d14|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1j.71j.1n.71j.1j.71j.1n.71j.1j.71j.1n.71j|2t.d1d.2v.d14.3v.d17.211.d1d.311.d19.2v.d13|0.a0.0.u150.u56b|2e.1|1n.1u.1v.1s.28|e

Not exactly what I am running now but close. The 2 celestial accessories are going bye bye on sunday.

Are you using that for D/D roaming?

It is pretty close to what I run now. The off hand dagger changes the celestial accessories will change. I have a cav and a zerk backpiece so I run whatever there. The food changes also.

The sweet and spicy butternut is top of the line but it’s damage difference is very small vs truffle steak and in some cases truffle is better. For ele the sweet and spicy is usually better because it has fury and might access but it is very very small difference.

HIt youtube up and search for Nike DnT. It is a PvE focused channel but you can get the information on dps foods he has a video just on the dps foods. Keep in mind this is gear dependent based on a warrior build. It is still a very small difference between the 2 no matter what you run when you consider the price.

I didn’t say anything about elite skill the extra complexity is why I play Ele personally.

I see the thought behind your idea and that is why I said it sounds boring. It is simple instead of there being 20 different skills your asking for 20 of the same skills their effects only change depending on attunement. That is why I said it sounds boring and it is simple. So all the skills have the same skill coefficient the only thing that changes for each skill is what it does based on your attunement but in function and probably in animation they would all be similar.

It’s simple and easy and straight forward. It’s a Warrior.

Sounds boring.

A set type of skill that only changes by attunement means you have 4 skills that just do different effects instead of skills that are different with different effects like we have now.

This would really make it boring playing Ele because this is really simple and makes the Ele play like every other class just with different effects. It would require less thought to play ele which is not why I personally play Ele and get bored of my other classes easily.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|8.5n.h2.8.5c.0.d13.0.d14|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1j.71j.1n.71j.1j.71j.1n.71j.1j.71j.1n.71j|2t.d1d.2v.d14.3v.d17.211.d1d.311.d19.2v.d13|0.a0.0.u150.u56b|2e.1|1n.1u.1v.1s.28|e

Not exactly what I am running now but close. The 2 celestial accessories are going bye bye on sunday.

Amaya.1483:

HI@
PLS buff Ele. Its just horrible annoying getting flamed like “dude, your cripling your Team because you Chose Ele in Tpvp”… and ist kinda true. The Risk/Reward is rediculous on Ele compared to ALL other classes who just can faceroll you to death without being even a little skilled…..

Can we get a build or something? If it was D/D cantrip then that was the problem.

Noxrawr.6125:

I play mesmer and i once again got instantly killed by an ele. He zapped at me and killed me with 2 sequential hits. I am not exaggerating here, 2 hits is all it took and they both occurred within a 0.5 sec time span. So what part of instagibbing, or in other words, a damage output that equals 23 k in 0.5 sec => 46 k/sec is not viable in pvp?

Because damage does not equal viability otherwise everyone would run zerker ammy and you can pick classes blind folded and go in.

You where killed quickly and you state once again. If you really feel glass ele is a big concern in PvP then you can look up on youtube how to blow people up quickly but that doesn’t make ele viable running full glass. You aren’t familiar with how the damage is done to you so your looking for answers I assume. Which is the ele probably has 1 maximum utility dedicated to survival if you avoid the opening you can probably kill or pressure the ele well.

Viability in PvP is about roles if we are talking about s/tPvP. You can run glass ele with 12k hp no armor and kill people quickly yes and then probably die. You could just take a thief that might not kill as instantly but can do it more frequently with much less of the risk. So you take the thief.

Eviscera.9703:

oZii.2864:

Eviscera.9703:

So i played around in the build editor because i wanted to find the best possible stats for my D/D Ele.
It has 30% crit chance (50% with perma fury)
88% Crit Damage will give my ele very good burst damage
17k Hp
2616 Armor will give my ele decent survivability
645 healing power & 295 condition damage is just a bonus from the celestial gear

So will anyone challange me? Link a build with the best possible stats!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmkbwx5gjDAkHuYCLiCPUekzM2A-jkCBYjBMRtIaslhht6KIlXRTVDQZDTFbR1WzCyG0KrSBExwI-w

Power> the other offensive stats.

If we cut some of that critical damage down pumped up power more you would do more damage. People fall in love with with critical damage over power.

Ask yourself this on the importance of power:

If you take 10/0/30/30 in full zerk armor vs full celestial armor which one does more damage? You probably already know the answer even with celestial armor giving more overall critical damage zerker. It isn’t even close in a zerk vs celestial comparison.

So your best overall stat build has very low power at 1638 that is even with a +100 power food buff. I would move some of that critical damage to power as in drop some of the celestial armor. You would do better with a few knights pieces increasing power and precision and toughness while dropping some critical damage.

I gave it another shot: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmkbwx5gjDAkHuYCLiCPUekzM2A-j0DBYfIYjBkEJhUBAJfBK7EMRVZtMMiVXJr8KoKkY6XRWFTI1aWo2gWRTKgIGDA-w

Can you also link your build?

Now that is cooking the right meal. On my phone I can post something later. It won’t have boon duration though. 2530 armor is about the best you can get with boon duration setup unless you go all cav or knights heavy on trinkets or armor.

Eviscera.9703:

So i played around in the build editor because i wanted to find the best possible stats for my D/D Ele.
It has 30% crit chance (50% with perma fury)
88% Crit Damage will give my ele very good burst damage
17k Hp
2616 Armor will give my ele decent survivability
645 healing power & 295 condition damage is just a bonus from the celestial gear

So will anyone challange me? Link a build with the best possible stats!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmkbwx5gjDAkHuYCLiCPUekzM2A-jkCBYjBMRtIaslhht6KIlXRTVDQZDTFbR1WzCyG0KrSBExwI-w

Power> the other offensive stats.

If we cut some of that critical damage down pumped up power more you would do more damage. People fall in love with with critical damage over power.

Ask yourself this on the importance of power:

If you take 10/0/30/30 in full zerk armor vs full celestial armor which one does more damage? You probably already know the answer even with celestial armor giving more overall critical damage zerker. It isn’t even close in a zerk vs celestial comparison.

So your best overall stat build has very low power at 1638 that is even with a +100 power food buff. I would move some of that critical damage to power as in drop some of the celestial armor. You would do better with a few knights pieces increasing power and precision and toughness while dropping some critical damage.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1tawyu/psa_the_order_to_add_ascended_celestial_gear_for/

Rabiez.9178:

I build a 1vX build with a nice balance between survival and DPS but leaning towards DPS thoughts on the celestial is it really worth it?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhEmmbyR4gjDAEFwYiQxDWUekzM2A-jUDBYfBkEBkKAI1UQMRVZtMMsVXRr8KIqaJVlETFTQ2aWIygWrWKgIGGB-w

How much celestial you put on your gear is only how much YOU value those stats.

It isn’t a yes or no it is completely player dependent and what YOU want. If you come to a specific point in putting the build together and say “Hmm I want to add more damage” Then the answer is a simple add a zerk piece that is how you should think about celestial and if you want to use it.

If I have in my build 2700 armor but only 15k hp but I want 17k hp I have to figure out how to make that happen and what I am willing to sacrifice to get 17k hp.

How you have your build celestial isn’t that good on the trinkets. If you took your build and swapped those 2 celestial trinkets for 2 celestial weapons and put the zerker on the trinkets the stats probably look a bit better. Imagine trade offs of one piece for another.

Say I have a knights coat and a knights ring but want celestial stats at this point of the build process. I am better trading the knights coat for celestial then trading the knights ring for celestial. That is how it is for pretty much any piece of gear really.

As far as will your build work 1vX only depends on how bad the people are fighting are.

Lets say you consider yourself a really good elementalist and roaming around you come across a Elementalist fighting 2 people you hop in and kill him. Did that happen because the build could only support a fight against 2 people and not 3 or because you are a good player and know how elementalist work.

I never roam around see a Ele and think I can’t win this fight on my own I need backup.

1vX builds usually only work because the enemies aren’t very good. Or the 1vX build is a direct counter to what the other people happen to be running. 30/20/0/0/20 Necro Terrormancer could be a 1v6 build IF I blow up one target and epidemic with 5 people standing near by and they don’t have condition clear.

Really just ask yourself do you find you need help killing another elementalist. Also there isn’t much difference in any D/D build as long as you have 20 water and 30 Arcana. Moving 10 trait points doesn’t do anything substantial to how it plays. Even moving 20 doesn’t. It just changes probably what heal you take, what utilities you might run.

If you want to 1vX vs anybody no matter how good they are then you can run full clerics, soldiers, or sentinels you won’t kill them they won’t kill you.

I don’t know if you are new to Ele or not I hope my post doesn’t come off to harsh. Just giving my honest opinion.

Mbelch.9028:

Oh no I understand completely your goal.

I’m just saying what do you lose.. You lose obviously a cleanse with evasive arcana, but you lose a heal in it as well. 2k, and if all your condis are getting cleansed anyways, that 2k can be pretty valuable.

Also, it’s never invalid to suggest how a build’s performance would be affected.

If I wanted the highest potential for conditions to be negated, I’d honestly pick 0/0/30/30/10 with ether renewal and a high healing power.

The beginning of my post states the parameters of 30 water and 30 arcana. It isn’t even about 20/0/0/30/20 that was just thrown in at the end for fyi.

Conditions negated and removed are 2 different things.

It would be very hard to put numbers on how much diamond skin negated because that has alot to do with how much power, precision, crit dmage an condition damage your opponent has which is out of your control.