Guild Wars 2

frowny clown has a condi build with d/d I would assume s/d and s/f run something similar with it. probably can find his videos under bad elementalist on youtube.

I’m actually watching a s/f perplexity condi ele fight a p/u mesmer right now and it won lol.

The game has been out for over a year My first character was a Ele, then a mesmer, then a thief, then a warrior, then a necro my next will be a guardian.

If you have the funds to levels quickly you can do it in like 1 day if your dedicated to craft up in 1 sitting. I play my ele most of the time warrior is my second favorite class but I havent really logged him in Weeks to really go WvW. I have been hopping on my thief when I want to play something different and my necro when small man roaming.

ThiBash.5634:

Thanks for the (thorough) explanation. I understand how it works now. Maybe I’ll try it out…it’d make immobilize a lot less potent and given that it’s the elementalist’s worst counter, it could be worth it.

Adastra explanation is correct and elementalist can do the same stacking with Geomancers freedom.

This is a video breaking down how negative condition duration works I helped Rennoko with the testing (that is my warrior).

Mbelch.9028:

I hate Ether Renewal, so I’m with you there on doing ANYTHING to avoid it.

You saw how nice my build was without it.

Next time we fight each other, we should do a few hours of practice runs using all of our alts vs each other.

Haha yea we can do that though my mesmer is way out of practice since I have been bored with mesmer for a long time now.

Mbelch.9028:

No more skullcrack wars though, fortunately.

My only thing is that condo removal isn’t very useful half the time, when you’re fighting a power build. Yes — they all use some conics, but ele has enough removal for those naturally.

The real reason I run it is really necros and engineers running conditions because it makes them basically a non-factor also. More so the engineer than the necro. I can keep a warrior perma-chilled for 20+ seconds on my necro even if he is running dogged, food and melandru because the base chill durations are all pretty high and on low cooldowns. Chill of death is getting buffed to activate when the enemy is at 50% life on 10 December which is a pretty big buff for necros with 20 in spite(all condition and power necros). http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chill_of_Death 5 second base, and removes up to 3 boons does 150% more damage for 3 boons.

The warrior though doesn’t have the actual condition removal tools to get rid of it they more tolerate it because it doesn’t stop them and can disengage(better than ele) if the pressure is to hot and healing signet allows them to stay in longer also. Which brings me to signet of restoration which I run not ether renewal and many eles run now.

I look at it like against a heavy condition class the fact that I don’t have to disengage and spend 3.5 seconds clearing condis is time that I am making up dps for the fact that I don’t have as much power or crit damage as others do. I also am able to use cleansing wave from dagger 5 and EA for healing more than condition removal.

I really don’t like Ether Renewal at all because basically what it does is take your enemies heal and subtract 3.5 seconds from their cooldown so if you are pressured enough to use Ether Renewal the Mesmer you are fighting his Ether Feast is 16.5 seconds and not really 20 seconds, the engineers healing burst is 12.5 the thief’s withdraw is 12.5.

I could squeeze more power out of it for sure if I replaced the celestial accessories I just really hate running guild missions. The replacements would probably end up being zerk/valk. I really don’t like dealing with conditions currently as it is right now. A necro can come into a fight and force you to disengage to re-engage. This setup lets me deal with the conditions and do enough damage to.

If you have a warrior and run -60% condition duration you know that it totally wrecks necro’s and imo necro’s are the most dangerous profession on the field in WvW. On the same token if you have a necro you know fighting someone running -60% condition duration really impacts your dps. I have both so I know how good it is so I really wanted to put that on my ele so that I can essentially not have to even worry about conditions at all which is what it does and makes not taking 30 water a problem which I do often.

I occasionally change my incinerator to zerk which gives me a bit more damage over than in knights.

Xillllix.3485:

Dude the ele is intended to have ZERO chance against thieves. It’s the ultimate achievement in class balance in a game, to make one (ele) completely worthless against the superior class (thief).

When you see a thief just cast all your defensive spells and run for your life.

That isn’t what it is it’s thieves counter people not the class. Thieves and mesmers thrive on ignorance to their mechanics. Securing the kill is the hard part with thieves but putting them in enough danger that they disengage is not.

Mesmer is different since it can technically kill you without even touching you itself especially prior to the illusionist celerity trait moved to 25 in illusions. Mesmers though can be completely ignored as a Ele for almost all of their builds because they don’t have good mobility. The only time I feel like I HAVE to fight a mesmer is if they are really glassy and run great sword because iZerker hits like a truck if he gets the jump on you. I feel like S/D ele’s have a better chance fighting it out with a mesmer than D/D because on clone death traits can wreck a d/d ele.

All ele weapon sets have the tools to deal with thieves though staff has the hardest time imo unless you are running a high power high crit damage build.

Nothing against the op but he mentions heartseeker which should be the least of your problems against a thief you just dodge toward the thief not away. As soon as he opens with surprise burst you shocking aura or go earth for protection or frost aura(I like to save this one for kiting purposes). Why I hate ether renewal because thieves probably have the easiest time interrupting it.

Prior to the larcenous strike nerf S/D thieves where elementalists worst nightmare and they didn’t need to heart seeker or backstab. All the other sets are even fights if it is the same skill and both people have a decent understanding how each others classes work.

Specifically to what the OP mentions 9k backstabs sounds like a 25/30/0/X/X thief the last 10 points can go anywhere usually in trickery for thrill of the crime. They are usually pretty all in gimicky style builds that thrived at release running signets of power with assassin signet, and either infiltrator signet(usually this one) or signet of shadows.

A 30 points in deadly arts thief(which most thieves run now) 9k backstabs are not the norm 7-8k though is pretty normal on a target sitting around 2.5k armor(no protection) if you run hidden killer and high crit damage using Wish’s build.

Sanlucifer.1742:

That is true, they said they fixed stone flesh and the air to work with Lingering Elements but they didnt say that they will or fixed Lingering elements i guess, i just wonder why they enjoy trolling eles so much… and god once december 10 comes, good bye d/d eles.

D/D ele isn’t going anywhere it will stay the same you can run the same build then as you can now. They aren’t moving renewing stamina and elemental attunement together. Elemental will move to master renewing will stay at adept.

You could say D/D is getting slight buffs with windborne dagger getting OOC movement speed. Which doesn’t seem like much but if you ever ran without 10 in air it is a pretty nice change imo.

Elementalists are very powerful with poison. I run reaper of grenth occasionally on my ele in WvW and poison really makes other classes much easier to fight. The chill lets me stay on them alot easier too but you can get a idea of how strong poison would be on a Ele even though I am not specced condition damage. Poison is one of the strongest conditions in the game because of the heal debuff.

Adastra has a point with condition spamming on passives though that is what burning precision is but nobody takes it cause burning uptime isn’t really a problem. I am not sure how I feel about it I would like a bit more access to chill possibly as a control ability and not damaging conditions.

Arcane precision could use a buff cause it is pretty meh currently.

I think condition builds will see a lot more popularity for elementalists when they do their rune fixes and it would be something you would have to really do rune wise.

If you look at the 10 december guardian discussion Jon Peters said that they don’t want to open up guardian condition builds by traits or anything and that they would do it more through better runes choices for guardians that want to do that. I have a feeling that is how they look at elementalist also though we do have better conditions than guards.

Mbelch.9028:

The stats look good.

I run a more offensive build.

My stats are always more offensive. I only run just over 1600 toughness and 15.5k health.

I use to run around 16k when I first started playing ele then Skullclamp killshot me for 16k 1 time (I wasn’t paying attention to him in the fight) and I hadn’t taken any damage so I always go 17k or as close to it as I can since then.

Mbelch.9028:

I don’t think the loss will be that much DPS wise, and certainly not 350+ power worth.

I’ll need to see numbers, but my speculation is it’ll be a great set of armor.

I’m sure we’ve arrived at the same conclusions now, (I run knight’s armor) and I’m sure we’ll agree after the patch, too.

I partly take back my opinion on celestial head, legs, and lastly chest are the pieces I would use it on. As I just added a piece to my armor to hit my final stat combination rofl. It isn’t a huge loss on those pieces if you are looking to get a bit more critical damage.

I am a min max person at no expense so here is my final stat combination
This is standard D/D 0/10/0/30/30

Still missing 2 offensive infusions which will be power of course, but this is with minimizing as much wasted precision as I could hitting 29.57 for round up of 30% ingame(prefury).

I am very pleased with these stats and the kicker is this is with -60% condition duration. I could drop the 2 celestial accessories but not sure what I would put there. So I know that would be the obvious next place to tweak but I don’t really like running guild missions.

Mbelch.9028:

I would say there’s little to no reason NOT to go full celestial acended.

I look at it this way. Most people will still be in exotics, and your acended celestial will basically let you have every single stat in acended gear as most people will have minor stat on their exotic gear. That’s in addition to decent crit dmg.

If they keep formulas the same, that’s what I’ll be doing, although I could see points for other gear types, like Cav.

It isn’t so much about the stats but the Defense rating will be higher on asended armor. It is the same with ascended weapons where the weapon strength rating is higher that is the real impact the stat difference is hardly even be noticeable if it was just all about stats. Also there is no way celestial top will get +72 all stats on the coat but you are probably correct on the minor pieces matching exotics minor stats.

Myself will go with my current setup Celestial helm (because the difference from knights is very very small) everything else knights. I think my trinket setup is perfect for me right now. I really hate running guild missions so I’ll leave my 2 accessories as celestial. my rings are cav and ammy is zerk/valk and my backpiece is zerk/valk now thanks to quver of thousand arrows.

I’m not a fan of celestial armor though I know it is a great place to grab it but it doesn’t out dps knights unless you can stay ahead in might stacks by 14+. Knights can have those same might stacks. The critical damage number looks good but the loss in power and precision keeps it behind knights always.

The reason elementalist dodge so much is renewing staming + boon duration via arcana and or runes. EA isn’t why people dodge so much EA is why people dodge not to avoid damage. Renewing stamina is what allows people to dodge offensively or defensively. soothing disruption is icing on top of icing on the cake and can’t keep up with NOT having renewing stamina.

I also wouldn’t call D/D bunker just because you put 30 in water. +200 power via stats is alot of non bunker damage.

This also depends on runes if you wanted to grab boon duration runes for 45% gives you 4.35 secs of protection on aura which I don’t think is worth it over grabbing more focused runes. If your dropping points from arcana completely I think it is better to grab other rune options over boon duration.

I would say your variation 1 is more dps than bunker. Using that template I would run it like.

20/20/10/20/0 W/E for the first trait, cleansing fire, Zephyr’s boon, bolt to the heart, stone splinters, cantrip mastery, and cleansing wave.

Sigil of energy over battle, runes forge(which are the best protection runes imo if your really want protection)? if you must run elemental shielding or 5/6 rune of earth. Other wise divinity or traveler depending on how much you really need the 6th piece from traveler. With stone splinters I would probably go with traveler in most cases.

Don’t see a reason to go 30 in water ever if you aren’t running elemental attunement and soothing disruption.

Grevender.9235:

I (just stealth, poke it to have him waste its best burst, cloack again, go behind…222 loot)

This made me lol 222 loot

If you played a thief extensively before and played a ele then you would know that thieves are pretty easy to beat on most occasions. I think the fight is even with equal skill except in the case of a condition X/X/30/X/30 with perplexity. Those are a pain in the but because they can steal 2 boons every 21 1/2 secs. With interrupts and don’t really have to get in harms way of your aoe to put damage on you all while being pretty tanky. My P/D setup on thief has 17.5k hp and 2.9k armor.

If we are talking typical D/D then there is good burst there just get ready to go to air for shocking aura, earth, for protection, water for frost aura. When you hit about 50% they will heartseeker you probably dodge toward them not away.

D/P doesn’t have the burst of D/D but has really good sustain pressure and can stick on you like glue also with good blind access. The major damage comes from backstab. D/P thieves are like this Backstab, 1 maybe 2 auto attacks dodge roll away black powder, heartseeker, repeat. That is usually how it goes with D/P thieves.

Keep your ring of fire down kite through there if they try to get away let them in most cases. They usually wont disengage until after shadow refuge is blown most thieves save that for last and usually don’t re-engage after they used it(most).

Really best way to see how thieves work is to play one or duel someone that has one but thieves should not be much of a problem once you become familiar with them.

It is 10% of your healing power so just go from there. I don’t even focus on healing power anymore unless I go out to troll. If you have celestial gear then cool you get more but if you don’t spec into the gear unless a bunker is needed.

You just don’t notice any difference to be honest the base is decent as is and then it takes 10% or 10 healing power gives 1 pt more. Not sure how you can have 800 healing power and still do decent damage though.

It still isn’t working correctly it is hard to test if air is working, but the earth isn’t working properly. You must swap 2 times to get the bonus.

To recreate:

• Swap to earth
• Attune to another element bonus disappears
• Attune to your next element and you get the bonus back.

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

Warthog.6870:

RIP BG roamers…

RIP Mag roamers…

lol

ThiBash.5634:

There would be some damage loss, but overall the signet build would still have plenty of offensive traits. The main advantage I see is that you trade in a little bit of damage for a LOT of control and defense.

EDIT: Just read that the aegis has a 30 seconds cooldown and a 5 seconds duration. That makes it pretty much worthless because of its unreliability. It’d have to get its duration increased to 10 seconds or the cooldown to 15 seconds before I’d use it. The way it is now, you’d likely end up wasting it while you’re dodging.

Yup way to conservative with the aegis. I thought for sure it would be a 30 sec aegis with 60 sec cd. Rune of the Monk style.

Also the sigil of momentum is +5 per kill for 125 total. Not a fan of either of these 2 the momentum could have been +10 you still have a trade off from precision or power stacking.

I don’t know if I’ll even throw the resistance rune on my warrior now. 5 secs is so

Confirmed this is not working STILL

ThiBash.5634:

oZii.2864:

The Rune of Resistance grants bonus toughness, a reduction in condition duration, and aegis upon using a signet is also coming tomorrow but it sounds like 5/6 would be good but the 6th is meh for ele’s unless it gives you that clutch aegis when you pop SOR. I’ll need to see the numbers on it though.

Sorry, but I don’t understand. If anything, it would work best on eles because we don’t have to choose between our signet’s passives and active abilities. Having 4 aegis skills ready for use in addition to the many other things they do sounds like a very good deal to me.

Signet of Air has a blind…now, if you add an aegis to that, you can stop 2 hits…that’s alsmost as much as Arcane Shield, but on a much lower cooldown and with much better traits.

I’m definitively gonna try a signet build with this rune after it comes out.

Those are good points I didn’t think about especially the Signet of Air that’s pretty interesting.

S/D burst ele MIGHT make it’s way back in the meta with a different type of build. Have to see what people come up with. That usually takes at minimum a month after balance changes like the one coming. It took warriors like 2 months before they hit the meta in PvP.

I don’t think D/D or D/F or S/F will make it into the meta. The old days of D/D roamers is gone unless they revert RTL or give it some other type of mobility tools.

The Sigil of Momentum grants a stacking toughness buff every time you kill an enemy

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/upcoming-changes-for-the-fractals-of-the-mists/#mistlock

The easy guess is +10 per kill like you get with bloodlust, perception, and life.

Anyone else find this interesting to try? +250 toughness is pretty good.

The Rune of Resistance grants bonus toughness, a reduction in condition duration, and aegis upon using a signet

Is also coming tomorrow but it sounds like 5/6 would be good but the 6th is meh for ele’s unless it gives you that clutch aegis when you pop SOR. I’ll need to see the numbers on it though.

I always love new runes and sigils I wish they hurry up with their rework of the crappy ones.

Melancholia.8123:

This sort of thing is why devs ignore us. This suggestion is starkly broken, and it’s clear that no effort was made to prevent that.

Pretty much this! The first thing you should do when you think about a suggestion is ask about if and how players would abuse it, because they will if they can. Then the next thing is if they can abuse it would it be overpowered.

Depends on your definition of spammy because the skills all do something for a situation. You just learn what you need when you need it. As you get better you will spend more time in Air applying pressure so your skills will be off cd by time you need some of them.

Ring of fire/burning speed/fire grab do alot of damage but take getting use to. Ring of fire and burning speed = access to more damage from might stacking.

Drakes breath is awesome and self explanatory.

You got stunned? Swap to earth put up shocking aura if it was from melee or
You got stunned? Swap to Water for frost aura – 10% damage and chill them for 2s

You got immobilized and big damage is coming? Swap to air updraft for the built in evade

Lightning touch is W/E I mostly just use it against thieves thats about it.

Water auto attack is ok has decent range if you don’t have anything better up.

Cone of cold is awesome.

Those are examples that you will learn as you play though from a WvW/PvP perspective rule of thumb is to never stay in water long.

You get by with spamming at first against bad players it does seem “hard” at first but it slows down as you get use to it. Why I like ele cause it is fast paced doing stuff. There always feels like I have some attack for some situation that I can use.

Big Tower.5423:

I disagree it would be competly fair and help ele get back to the good ol bunker role

You can bunker as a d/d ele it is just that the type of bunker that a D/D ele provides isn’t needed anymore because warrior does it better. It is more mobile which was one of the reason why D/D ele bunkers where good in sPvP. With RTL nerf that doesn’t cut it anymore. Cleansing water is also nerfed in sPvP so your condition removal is nerfed.

A water field for a d/d ele would just be a water field for a D/D ele it wouldn’t make it viable in sPvP because it has a water field. Warriors bunker better and as long as they have superior mobility, can kill, and bunker better than a d/d ele can bunker D/D ele bunkers wont be needed. The only way to fix it would be a RTL change back to how it use to be.

Look at it how ever you want but you always take the best class for the role you want it to fill and the best mobile bunker is the warrior now. Engineers use to be the best condition pressure and nobody took necro’s now necro is the condition pressure king but you CAN slot in a engineer if you need to.

What this would do is make S/D more wanted than D/D since that would be 3 skills that aren’t the 6 slot that can heal allies with a base of over 1.3k. It would also make S/D much more deadly.

That would be awesome let me see how I can abuse your suggestion!

I hit 50% health runes of hoelbrak/melandru – 70%/-75% condition duration(sPvP). Lemongrass poultry soup(WvW) -110% condition duration(-115% with melandru).

This wouldn’t be OP at all.

posthumecaver.6473:

One thing I forgot to ask, I dueled 1vs1 against a Necro in sPVP (there was nobody else other then us in Server), he kicked my kitten , it was not the fotm Terror build.

I didn’t see any Marks, so he was not using Staff, I guess he was opening with Spite Signet because in 1s I was getting like 6-7 condition,, clear with Ether Renewal, wupps, another 5-6 stack of conditions, Cleansing Fire, Water and then another Stacks of conditions….

As you might see I could not do anything other then cleansing whole fight, going to Scepter/Dagger and so didn’t made any difference.

So people with Necro experience any idea what is he running, double Scepter/Dagger or what?

Not staff and the way you describe it would have to be signet of spite and corrupt boon. Maybe well of corruption (like corrupt boon but ground targeted and converts 1 boon every second your in it duration is 5 seconds)

Focus removes up to 3 conditions. Thats about it scepter auto attack has a bleed on the first 2 parts of the auto chaing and the last part is poison. Dagger off hand has enfeebling blood which is bleed and weakness. Scepter 2 is 3 stacks of bleed and cripple. Also 66% chance on crit to apply bleed is the 5 pt minor in curses which he probably had. A enfeebling blood can also be cast automatically when necro goes into deathshroud (15 sec icd)

Hard to say exactly dagger and axe don’t really have condi’s on them at least not the way you describe it.

My guess is corrupt boon and signet of spite if he saw it was a duel with a ele and really wanted to win im sure he probably slotted corrupt boon.

posthumecaver.6473:

I know the flavor of the month META for Ranger is Sprits but there are still enough Ranger around dropping AOE condition field sitting in the middle of it and spamming like machine gun short bow auto attack.

To kill them you have to go into their AOE, I mean we can dodge a lot but not that much.

I could not make 0/20/20/0/30 work, as good as Rock Solid and Etheral Renewal is the people was still able to dump me enough Condis that 15s CD of the Ether was not enough to survive.

So I gone for 0/15/20/15/20, Ether/Rock Solid Synergy is still there but was former user of 0/10/30/30 using soldier with this setup was too much, 1800 Armor is nice but not able to kill anybody, then I switch to the Berserker with the thinking that I got 200 extra armor from Earth may be it can work, well that didn’t end up that good.

Then I switch to Celestial, it might surprise you but it works quite good in sPVP, I am around 1500 Armor again, + %20 crit damage from Celestial (around %45)/ with perma Fury %50 crit.

And one big surprise with Celestial/Earth, I am getting really good Condi damage, Burning ticks like 800, so jumping in, dump my AOE, run away, heal, drop again the AOE, my direct damage is pitiful but actually my burning kills people now.

I guess people don’t bother to cleanse one stack burning but it is 3.5K damage over 4s when I am kiting and extra healing from Celestial really helps also.

For WvW when I would duel people that was something they would always say when I use to run 0/0/20/20/30 with all celestial trinkets was that my condi damage particularly my burning was really putting pressure on them.

Seigfried.5938:

You’ve got to be kittening kidding me! Now I have to choose between renewing stamina and elemental atunement? Elemental atunement is the basis of arcana, it deserves to be where it is. Oh well I guess it’s time to move to another class. I can’t believe changes are still being made to classes more than a year after it has been released.

D/D will not be playable anymore without those 2 traits. Do you guys even put any thought into trait changes and how it will affect pvp?

It is not moving. Renewing stamina is staying Adept and elemental is moving to master. They aren’t going to make that change anymore.

Sifu.6527:

Oh GF memsers don’t run PU in WvW? No wonder they just fall over dead.

PU mesmer’s don’t bring much group support. If you really think a PU mesmer is great for organized group roaming in WvW then more power to you. We will slot in another class before we run a PU mesmer. It is a self sustain build. Why we hardly ever run thieves when we are roaming seriously in voice comms.

All solo roaming builds does not make great group comp.

magical giant.8650:

hello everyone, I’m a bit confused here..

how does this trait work? Is it working with traits like “piercing shards”, “internal fire” and “air training” ?

It only works with the 5 point minors in all of the trait lines. Currently it only works with Water and Fire a fix (finally) is coming on tuesday so that it works with earth and air. Earth is getting buffed on the 10th to 120 toughness at level 80.

Don’t know D/D and S/D already have great heals and water fields base with blast finish is 1320(higher than cleansing wave). It doesn’t scale as good @ 20% but the base is already high. I would prefer better sustained healing like the soothing wave being 5 second base regen or signet of restoration being bumped up a tad since it gets double punished by confusion and poison.

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

Ugh, guard and ele can apply burning by just autoattack.. and necro have to spent 30 points

I don’t know alot about guards but I think they get 1 sec base duration on most of their burns.

Ele’s have a trait to proc a 1 sec burn on crit (30%) no matter the attunement and nobody takes it. Eles have great access to burning true but they don’t have enough cover conditions with good base durations for the long burns to even run their course. Also no S/D ele auto attacks in fire unless they messed up somewhere thats the only auto attack that burns(2 sec base) inherently.

It’s like fighting a Dagger/Dagger condi thief that just death blossoms sure he can put 25 stacks of bleeds with 16 duration but you won’t kill someone with just bleeds if they have a clue on how to play.

Zenith.7301:

Phent.9350:

PU build is good only for WvW roaming, in pvp it is troll build nothing more

Not even for roaming. Roaming classes need to be able to kill quickly before someone else interferes or the zerg arrives. PU mesmers kill slowly.

The spec is just a bunker survival spec. It’s hard for you to die, but you also won’t be killing much if the opponent wants to retreat.

PU mesmer can’t chase at all.

Dueling build fits better I think. We probably all seen it in WvW you know the lone mesmer sitting around ruins like he is afk waiting for people to engage him.

I just ignore them and chuckles when they are chasing you spamming winds of chaos like it’s gonna hit anybody moving.

CMstorm.8679:

Idk y the necro gets +400toughness on channeling skills and the Ele gets only 290. And necro’s have 8k more health than an Ele. Im not necessarily saying that those are “good” traits and that rarely i’ve seen them used, but if they’re there, why not?

Did you just pick that out and run with it? Now lets give it some context k.

Let’s see what necromancers think about the trait shall we.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Dark-Armor-trait/first#post2675303

Applies to a grand total of 3 skills across all of their weapons sets. The trait might as well not exist. The only important one is DS 4 (which is the only one a condition build has). Again though not many people go into death magic anymore.

Sooo

Elementalist have 7 channeled skills on land

Necromancers have 3

If it was +400 toughness for elementalist would they take the trait? Probably not but I can see your case that it should match. They did the same for mantra for Mesmers(which nobody takes that trait either). Honestly elementalist probably have the best +toughness trait when a condition is met which is attune to earth when playing normal and it will actually work after tuesday’s patch and is getting buffed on 10 december.

PS.

If you combine obsidian focus + the new stone flesh on december 10th you get a grand total of 400 armor. If you take lingering elements you get to keep 120 of that after you earth for 9 secs.

Depends popular runes for elementalist are

Divinity
Wurm
Boon duration for 45%-75% (several options to get there)
Melandru
Hoelbrak
ruby orbs
beryl orbs
full traveler

I think that covers it. This is popular across all professions but the boon duration is more a guardian, elementalist, engineer thing.

Best runes depends on what your goal is with your build.

Thanks for the awesome duels Quphio

Razor.6392:

elprimo.4398:

I would love for them to do like someone suggested make all attunes 8-9sec cd and turn that attunement recharge into something else.

Just speculating. Maybe a celestial bonus 2 crit damage and 20 points to all stats every 10 points in arcana. Or condi reduccion like guy said. Or global 0-30% reduction on your skills.

I would love that too but it would make even more people go the arcana route.

That is exactly what would happen. It is what happened with warriors, I was playing warrior before they got buffed and 20 points was the max you went into discipline(class mechanic tree like arcana) and if you where trying to maximize damage you only went 15 pts max into discipline now 20 points is the minimum you go in discipline and 30 is preferred.

Razor.6392:

This is the stupidest piece of kitten I’ve ever seen in my life: Having to choose between Elemental attunement and Renewing stamina.

Thank you arena net for killing my class again.

Renewing stamina is staying adept and elemental attunement is going to master you won’t have to chose they aren’t making that change.

It is doable as a d/d ele.

Ranger is no problem for me.

Necro depends if they are decent it is a tough fight. You have to have some decent damage to chew through death shroud quickly. Not sure what your gear setup is though. A necro with focus can really mess a d/d elementalist up bad. I run it on my necro and I can perma chill warriors and focus removes 3 boons max if traited it is every 15 seconds AND the base duration of the chill is 5 seconds.

Engi’s good ones are the toughest fight. Care package, pistol, confusion, shield interrupt, shield knock back etc. You can win against a condi engi but if they are good I feel that it isn’t a easy fight and in the engi’s favor. They can condi pressure you almost as good as a necro but with more mobility than a ele has.

Seras.5702:

Seems like I need to start at one end of the spectrum or the other and then work my way toward the other until I’m satisfied. Either 100% Zerker and then pepper in Celestial or 100% Celestial and then pepper in Zerker until I’m happy with the seasoning. I was hoping for a cost-effective method where I don’t have to buy more than 6 armor pieces and 5 trinkets.

I think I’m going to start with 100% rare Zerker stuff and start working in some Celestial exotics from there. Once I hit the survivability sweet spot, I can sub the rare Zerker for exotics for more punch.

Which pieces should I sub Zerk -> Celestial 1st? The big ones like chest, head, & amulet or the small ones like boots and gloves?

I wouldn’t go full zerk many people start learning with Soldier’s armor, whatever trinkets you like tbh, boon duration. Then start adjusting from there.

IIRC I started with 3 soldiers pieces on helm, soldiers, boot knights on coat and legs, I think my trinkets where knights/ruby jewels with 1 jewel beryl, daggers where knights.

So if you have the badges you can just get them all with WvW badges, I think soldiers armor you can get for karma from one of the temples but not sure.

Seras.5702:

So…If I were interested in making a set as versatile as possible using Celestial gear, it’s better to use Celestial armor and then slot whatever trinkets I want, than the other way around (Celestial trinkets, other armor)?

I’m approaching 80 and want to know how best to gear up for damage with survivability (corpses deal 0 dps).

Mm not really celestial is all about the stats you value. If you value healing power, condition damage, vitality, toughness as much as the offensive stats then that is when you slot celestial.

Like example you have 2000 power and 30% crit chance and say 300 healing power from 30 in water but YOU want more healing power but don’t want to give up to much damage then you would slot in celestial to get to say 400 if that was your goal.

If you think a little bit of condition damage is important in your build then you would slot celestial in there instead of taking 1 piece of armor and making it carrion or rabid or dire.

That’s really how you should look at celestial stats.

Look at these 2 builds
Celestial
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|8.5j.h2.8.5j.0.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1j.7r.1j.7r.1j.7r.1j.7r.1j.7r.1j.7r|211.0.211.d13.311.d17.211.d1d.311.d19.2v.d13|0.a0.0.u150.u56b|15.1|1n.1u.1v.1s.28|e

Zerker
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|8.1g.h2.8.1g.0.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.7r.1g.7r.1g.7r.1g.7r.1g.7r.1g.7r|2s.0.2s.d13.3s.d17.2s.d1d.3s.d19.2v.d13|0.a0.0.u150.u56b|15.1|1n.1u.1v.1s.28|e

That’s full offensive armor and trinkets vs celestial armor and trinkets. This should give you a idea on how it looks compared to. Both of them will be squishy. So will the healing power from celestial really make up the difference or is the vitality that will keep you alive longer there and the toughness compared to zerker. Is the celestial setups condition damage really going to keep up with zerker(obviously no).

Thats how you should look at celestial imo look at a specific stat on celestial and think of what you would slot in it’s place that is specialized and see if it REALLY will be a difference in damage, survivability.

Builds are really important here. I run D/D standard setup 0/10/0/30/30.

Generally speaking

Easiest to hardest

Thieves (not p/d condi)
Rangers
Mesmer – (not prismatic understanding all invis skills not using a staff)
Engineer
Necro
Guardian – attrition like has been mentioned
Elementalist – Tied with guardian because it isn’t a fast fight unless they are in like full zerk and bad
Warrior – This probably depends on the build the most there are easy fights and hard fights

The #1 most frustrating is 20/20/30 or 10/30/30 prismatic understanding mesmer with a staff and all the invis goodies. That is the most annoying build in the game currently imo. You can ignore them but part of me doesn’t want to but I usually do anyway.

Retsuko.2035:

Jabberwock.9014:

Also, I’ve yet to test precision sets, but based on calculations already made on celestial I have a feeling precision is the most wasted stat on ele, once you have enough to proc renewing stamina reliably.

Not sure how you’ve tested this, but i’d like to disagree on this. One of the great feats of celestial is the insane high crit dmg you get. At a certain amount of critical damage, you actually gain more from precision compared to power when it comes to increasing your damage. More precision is more critical hits. At 50% crit dmg, you do 200% damage compared to a normal hit, so you can imagine, the more crit dmg you get, the more you gain from precision (crit chance).

If you have extremely high critical damage like 100+ or 2700 power(hard to sustain). Almost every theorycrafting topic I have read on the subject usually come to about these same conclusions. The 100+ critical damage part is a bit moot since you can’t get critical damage without getting power on gear. Generally the importance of Power vs Critical chance comes down to your procs that rely on crit like renewing stamina. Which is what I believe jabberwock is trying to say this holds true for most classes.

I also wouldn’t call celestial gears crit dmg advantage insane it gives 3 total over zerk or valk on armor but drops in power compared to those. Weapons are the same.

Anierna.6918:

Seras.5702:

Ok, so would Soldier armor + Celestial trinkets be a good setup if I wanted 1 set to use for PvE dungeons and WvW utilizing multiple builds?

No. PvE is always zerk/assasins. Particularly in dungeons. No exceptions. Doesn’t matter what you think about survivability, what build you “like” to play, any of that; in PvE, DIRECT dmg is king (no condi-builds, things die too fast for condis to matter), and that means zerk.

WvW, use different sets of gear based on how you want to play. The only real req is this: stack enough toughness so a burst thief won’t insta-kill you, and a hammer war won’t kill you after the first stun.

After you reach that toughness threshold, you can go: 1) survivability; 2) condi dmg; 3) direct dmg. I recommend the last one via knights/cavaliers. You will never match a guard/war in survivability, or a necro in condis, so don’t even try. Ele’s got good burst, so take advantage of that.

Im testing this out not exactly the same setup though I am in all knights and 2 cav rings. Zer/valk ammy Ill probably throw on 2 zerk or valk daggers to roll around with just to see. So far initially I kind of like it though 2v1 some necros a couple of secs ago probably werent the best necros but lightning whip for close to 2k sure is fun

Rennoko.5731:

oZii.2864:

I’m coming for you Ren on my Ele I think! I need to either wear a different guild tag or roll another anonymous profession being chased by 5+ mags isn’t fun but sometimes it is though between AON (<3 Convenant) some VR’s, iLL’s, Swag’s, and Rage there are plenty.

I am gonna run zerker tonight so don’t focus me Kthnx.

The way this matchup is going I may as well be bright pink with a sign saying FOCUS THE NECRO. No matter what gear setup I am in, I get trained down, so I may as well go down in a blaze of zerker glory. So much blobbing on TC and SOR this week.

Oh yea it is it is has been embedded in everyone’s head that exact saying “Focus the Necro”. I always try to stay in the back when I am on my necro then that wild thief appears trying to take you out risking his life for the greater good rofl.

Get rid of One with Fire and combine it with Flame barrier at still keep at 5 point adept problem solved. Chance to proc starts at 30% goes up longer your attuned.

I honestly don’t know how One with fire even works looking at the wiki it says it is 20% interval 10s. So is that 20% more after 10 seconds or does it go up over that 10 second interval for an additional 20%. If 20% is the cap on the chance to proc thats low. 40% max? It fits thematically the just the chance and implementation is bad. Pump it up to maybe 2s and you would have a kind of Retal for Ele’s but better than just straight retal since it can’t be stripped.

FrownyClown.8402:

If you are going to invest 30 into air you might want to think about a more dps-oriented playstyle. The traits are better suited for s/d.

What frownyclown said. You CAN run D/D as burst/dps style with 30 in Air but my personal opinion is that it’s better for S/D, S/F, or D/F. For PvE I would look at Zelyhn’s guide that is stickied at the top or Neko’s. Hamartia V’s has a S/D PvE guide also you can find on reddit probably easier than you can find here.