55 replies to this topic

[Fenice_86]

So... after more or less 150hrs playing my ele i decided to post here my build, looking to help others and gather useful hints to make it even better if possible!

Hope you guys will like my work, i'll try to make it as clear as possible, forgive me if something is "bad written"; english is not my native language

Weapons & Equip:

Dagger / Dagger (Berserker) ---> General PvE Roaming + Easy Dungeons
Staff (Berserker) ---> Hard Dungeons + Situations where staying Ranged is a must
Full Knight Armor ---> Power, Precision, Toughtness
Berserker Trinkets ---> Power, Precision, Critical Damage

Traits:

10 Fire
10 Air
00 Earth
20 Water
30 Arcana

I will not mention Minor Traits assuming everyone knows them, Major Traits to pick are:

Fire:
Spell Slinger ---> Cantrips grant you 3 stacks of Might (15s)
Air:
Zephyr's Boon ---> Auras grant you Fury and Swiftness (5s or 10s with Shocking Aura) (when playing with Daggers)
Quick Glyphs ---> -20% CD of Glyphs (when playing with a Staff)
Water:
Shooting Disruption ---> Cantrips grant Vigor and Rigen (9s)
Cantrip Mastery ---> Cantrip's CD -20%
Arcana:
Elemental Attunement ---> Gain a Boon on Attunement (Might / Regen / Swiftness / Protection)
Blasting Staff ---> Staff AoE are larger (when playing with a Staff)
Renewing Stamina ---> 33% to gain Vigor on Crits (when playing with Daggers)
Evasive Arcana ---> Create an attunement based spell on dodge which is also a Blast Finisher (10s CD each attunement)

Skills:

Healing:
Glyph of Elemental Armony
Utilities:
Cleansing Fire
Lightning Flash (can be changed with Arcane Wave or Glyph of Storms; Mist Form while Underwater)
Armor of Earth
Elite:
Glyph of Elementals (and Whirlpool while Underwater)

Runes & Sigils:

Runes: (all Superior quality)
2*Monk + 2*Water + 2*Fire
Achieving +50 Healing Power, +25 Power, +30% Boons Duration, +50% Might Duration

Sigils: (all Superior quality)
Sigil of Battle + Sigil of Precision ( Dagger / Dagger)
Sigil of Energy (Staff)

Usage & Skill Rotations:

I'll try now to explaine how i use this build as best as i can...
As you can see from Traits and Skillbar this build relies a lot on Cantrip's sinergies, you can get a bounch of boons before and while in combat from them in almost everything from DPS to Tankiness.
I usually run around in Air Attunement for passive speed boost and because it's my opener skill rotation startup which i'm going to describe you:

Air ---> Ride the Lightning + Shocking Aura (istant cast) + Updraft than switch to...
Fire ---> Burning Speed + Armor of Earth (istant cast) + Ring of Fire + Dodge Roll back than...
Earth ---> Lighting Flash (istant cast) + Earthquake + Cleansing Fire (istant cast) + Churning Earth than...
Earth ---> Ring of Earth + Autoattack a few times, than switch back to...
Air ---> Lighting Touch + Autoattack if anything still alive + Shocking Aura when ready.

In the space of 6-7 secs with this heavy rotation you gain:
Swiftness: 16s
Vigor: 45s
Rigen: 45s
Fury: 22s
Might: 22 stack for 36s (if you add a 2nd dodge roll 25 stack // 12 are AoE)
Protection: 20s
Stability: 13s
Clean any condition you had on
Inflicting:
Burning: 4-5s
Bleeding: 12-14 stack for 12s
Cripple: 6s
Weakness: 5s
2 Knockdown Lock
Massive AoE Dmg

With this rotation my Lightning Whip autoattack hit for almost 4k Dmg on crits (up to 3 targets) while doing 1.6k-1.8k on average normal hit. (Crit chance is around 50%++)
Ofc you also can make use of less skills to save your best rotation (the one above) for more dangerous encounters... basically the startup (Air + Fire) stays while you can skip the rest at your will

When wielding a Staff (which mean you are in a not_friendly meele situation in hard dungeon's fights) you can make use of Fields + Blasting Staff and simply dodge roll inside to help your team boosting their dmg, healing them, making AoE CC.
My standard staff rotation doesnt involve in such heavy boost as D/D has...
Instead it focuses to stop enemies and deal a good initial dmg, Utilities and Combo Fields are used only when necessary as i try to keep always avaiable as much as possible.
Rotation:
Air ---> Windborne Speed + Static Field (between team and enemies) + Gust on nearest enemy, than...
Earth ---> Unsteady Ground + Eruption + Shockwave on nearest enemy, than...
Fire ---> Flame Burst + Lava Font + Meteor Shower

That's it more or less... stay in fire autoattack, switch water to spam heals and AoE Chill if needed... switch back to Air or Earth for more CC than go back to Fire to make good use of Elemental Attunement trait.

Hope you'll like my work,
If you need further infos dont esitate to ask me!

Have a nice day!
Fenice

Edited by Fenice_86, 15 November 2012 - 12:40 PM.

[Murmer]

What needs to happen is both of us running a dungeon together. Hopefully you're not in EU servers though. It doesn't work cross-region... yet.

This build is beautiful! It's close to what I run, except I use eagle runes for that extra precision punch.

[Firebrazer]

Looks good. Might try a variation of it on my ele. I have one question, though... how do you pull off two times Lightning Flash in "6-7 secs"? Last time I checked, that wasn't exactly possibleˆˆ

Anyway, I guess I'll do some testing, and decide on whether I want my second armor set to be Knight's or not.

[Murmer]

Firebrazer, on 02 November 2012 - 01:17 PM, said:

Looks good. Might try a variation of it on my ele. I have one question, though... how do you pull off two times Lightning Flash in "6-7 secs"? Last time I checked, that wasn't exactly possibleˆˆ

Anyway, I guess I'll do some testing, and decide on whether I want my second armor set to be Knight's or not.

I think he meant armor of earth actually. Typos might make the world go around.

Edited by Murmer, 02 November 2012 - 01:41 PM.

[Firebrazer]

Whelp, he pulled off Armor of Earth in cycle two, when he was in fire attunement, so I don't think that's what he meant either ˆˆ Maybe it was RTL instead of Lightning Flash for the first one. Would make sense.

[animaillusionaria]

Would this work without the boon duration runes?

[Murmer]

animaillusionaria, on 02 November 2012 - 01:58 PM, said:

Would this work without the boon duration runes?

Intuitively yes. If only because I run something quite similar to this and I can still stack 25 might, though the duration runes would probably help you keep them for a lot longer.

[Fenice_86]

@Firebrazer: my mistake i edit right now, i meant to open with Ride the Lightning not Lightning Flash, sry

@animaillusionaria: sure you can change runes... i've choose those because of the boon duration increase (take in account another +30% boon duration from 30 Arcana, you get a total of +60% all boons, +80% Might)

I'm in an EU server, Whiteside Ridge!

Edited by Fenice_86, 02 November 2012 - 03:18 PM.

[Murmer]

Fenice_86, on 02 November 2012 - 03:15 PM, said:

@Firebrazer: my mistake i edit right now, i meant to open with Ride the Lightning not Lightning Flash, sry

@animaillusionaria: sure you can change runes... i've choose those because of the boon duration increase (take in account another +30% boon duration from 30 Arcana, you get a total of +60% all boons, +80% Might)

I'm in an EU server, Whiteside Ridge!

Makes me sometimes wish I was on an EU server. Good gracious.

[KasNova]

I like the build, but have you tried a similar build but with the 10 points in fire swapped to 30 points in water?

You wouldn't be able to stack might as much, but the extra 2% for each boons seems like it would work very well with the number of different boons you're adding. It would also let you save the cantrips for when you really need them rather than popping them purely for stacking might. Would it not be enough to make up for the missing mights? Plus you could get Cleansing Water to make removing conditions even easier and allow you to swap out cleansing flame for Mist Form or some other utility. You could also pop in Powerful Aura while in groups.

I'm not saying my idea is better. I'm looking trying to decide between your build and my alternative and hoping for someone with experience to give feedback.

Thanks

[KasNova]

Oh yeah... also have you tried adding magnetic grasp after you dodge roll back into your ring of fire and switch to earth? That should proc a fire aura since it's a leap finisher through your ring of fire and trigger even more fury and swiftness.

[BZeeB]

I run a similar 'staff only' build.  The 10 pts in fire for might when you have evasive arcana (for staff uses) isnt worth it... I can hit 25 stacks of might easy with a group of enemies, a superior sigil of stamina, renewing stamina, and evasive arcana.  I swap out frost bow with Armor of Earth if its a dungeon.  I focus on a split between knights and beryl for jewels, and a mix of beserker / Knight / & Valkyrie (still only have a couple of exotics, w/ solider crests).

http://en.gw2skills....HmADLCFVYRRxM7A

My Staff combos is typically something like: Lava font -> Dodge forward -> Arcane Wave -> 4 -> swap to earth -> 2 -> Roll forward roll backwards -> etc.  My lava fonts / fireballs crits currently are in the 1.5-2k range with ~40+ chance to crit & ~60 Crit Dmg.  Since I attunement dance a lot its higher w/ fury proccing.  My toughness currently is +280 over my base and I have a bit over 14,000HP.  Once I get some better Items I'm shooting for +300-400 toughness and 16000 HP.

I feel like my build is very jack of all trades, its a lot of fun for me. Maybe I'll do up a post like this in the future to really spell it out.

Edited by BZeeB, 02 November 2012 - 04:24 PM.

[Fenice_86]

Would be great BZeeB!

@Kasnova: when u startup Shockin Aura + Attunement switch already give u 19 secs of Fury, more than enough for ANY fight imho
and magnetic grasp has a slow animation, too slow for the ring of fire duration

[kissmyelemental]

Fenice_86, on 02 November 2012 - 11:46 AM, said:

snip
Fenice

I really like this build. I was tinkering around with a d/d build that didn't have an obscenely low amount of vitality while also maintaining a good pre-buff crit rate. I like that you used the sigil of precision which is what I will be going with and going 20 into water for extra survivability. Although my gear setup is a bit different. Full berserker exotics with valkyrie trinkets. I will probably go with berserker daggers.

[kekuso]

Great guide, I use almost the same build, except not fully geared yet and I have 10/10 earth/water instead of 0/20 (I absolutely need that armor of earth for protection/stability at 50% hp!)  For your combo, I'm assuming that's for PvE? For pvp/WvW I'd suggest saving your lightning flash for when your opponent tries to run away or burst you while channeling E5 (you still get the 3x might).  I'm also a little iffy about Cleansing Fire when you already have a ton of cond. removal, personally I'd rather have mist form for those OH SHT situations, but again, that's mostly from a WvW/spvp perspective.

Also, would you mind posting your stats?  I just want to get an idea of how much hp/prec/toughness/etc. my ele will have when fully geared.  Thanks!

[Fenice_86]

atm i'm still not fully geared, i have rare weapons and masterwork trinkets... i'll post a SS anyway if u need it

ofc yes that rotation is for pve (since this is the pve forum )

[kekuso]

Ah that's right, my bad haha.  I'm pretty much in the same boat except I finally got exotic daggers

Anyone else running a build similar to this care to post their fully geared (exotics) ele stats? Hoping to break 18khp and 1200 toughness...

[Haishao]

Why Sigil of energy on the staff and battle on the dagger?
The effect work on weapon swap during combat, which we cannot do

Unless changing attunement actually work like swapping weapons; In which case would make these sigils way better on ele than I would have hoped on other professions


Also sigil of precision doesn't exist.
Maybe you meant Perception?

Edited by Haishao, 03 November 2012 - 01:55 AM.

[Murmer]

Haishao, on 03 November 2012 - 01:46 AM, said:

Why Sigil of energy on the staff and battle on the dagger?
The effect work on weapon swap during combat, which we cannot do

Unless changing attunement actually work like swapping weapons; In which case would make these sigils way better on ele than I would have hoped on other professions


Also sigil of precision doesn't exist.
Maybe you meant Perception?

Yes, attunement switching does trigger it.

[Brazen_NL]

Haishao, on 03 November 2012 - 01:46 AM, said:

Also sigil of precision doesn't exist.
Maybe you meant Perception?

He probably meant Sigil of ... Accuracy.

[Fenice_86]

I meant the Sigil with 5% critical chance, forgot the exact name

and yes, attunement swap on ele = weapon swap

i use energy on staff because i dodge roll way more often than with daggers for massive aoe heals, with daggers there are so many tricks to KD, fall back, stun, etc that i dont dodge as much as i do on staff so i prefer focus on stacking even more might

[Haishao]

That's really cool. I used to avoid these sigil on ele.

I'm using your build right now. I'm still only 67 and have wrong armor stats for now but it's pretty fun so far.

Edited by Haishao, 04 November 2012 - 10:10 PM.

[Fenice_86]

Glad to hear that Haishao

[Vherax]

Hello Fenice,

You may or may not know me, but I'm the OP of this forum's (Vigil Academy/Elementalist) biggest topic:

http://www.guildwars...ists-get-fixed/

It has been on the main list for over a month, hitting 35k views and being marked as HOT. As a BWE elementalist player, I was very disappointed with all the nerfs. Hundreds of players shared my opinion - eles dealt low damage and died pretty fast - being the worst profession at this moment.

However - in this topic, you proved that this is no longer the case, and showed us an awesome way to play elementalist - completely utilizing our class mechanics. Thank you.

I also have two questions:
1. Is your IGN Fenice? I'd really like to see you ingame.
2. I'm considering rolling ele again. What build would you recommend me for leveling purposes? (your build seems to be trait-dependant, so i need something else before i hit 60.)

Anyways, awesome job Fenice

[Vherax]

Sry for double posting

Edited by Vherax, 05 November 2012 - 11:37 AM.

[Fenice_86]

Hey Vherax,
first of all thanks for the appreciation

To answer both ur questions:

1) I'll pm you when i'm home, i'm at work now
2) I started to use a "minded" build only after lvl 40 tbh, before that lvl any build will do the job;
from 40 to 70+ i went Auramentalist (spec'd Earth not Water) cause of the high survivability (Scepter/Dagger);
here is a link to the build: http://en.gw2skills....gw4BIiQiowDlCzA

Feel free to PM me for further infos about the Aura build!

[LawlAmgad]

You use Windbourne speed? Might want to switch it out for something else, it's been bugged for quite a few months and doesn't work with either daggers on main hand, off-hand or dual wielding.

[Fenice_86]

Well Arcane retribution actually gives only 3 crit hits instead of 5 (and the bonus linger for 5secs so if it proc and you are not hitting enemies it's wasted in a matter of seconds), final shielding triggers at 10% hp (another useless trait) and the rest... well it just doesnt suite to the build since i'm not using any arcane skill at all

[LawlAmgad]

Fenice_86, on 05 November 2012 - 02:37 PM, said:

Well Arcane retribution actually gives only 3 crit hits instead of 5 (and the bonus linger for 5secs so if it proc and you are not hitting enemies it's wasted in a matter of seconds), final shielding triggers at 10% hp (another useless trait) and the rest... well it just doesnt suite to the build since i'm not using any arcane skill at all

Final shielding activates at 25% unless the tooltip is wrong, it can still be a life saver. I personally would go with Renewing Stamina, it gives you vigor on critical hits, you already have vigor for cantrips, but with this you can upkeep your vigor whilst your cantrips are on CD. And with daggers I find myself dodging a lot more than with a staff, it's a decent replacement for Windbourne until Windbourne gets fixed.

[Fenice_86]

LawlAmgad, on 05 November 2012 - 03:10 PM, said:

Final shielding activates at 25% unless the tooltip is wrong, it can still be a life saver. I personally would go with Renewing Stamina, it gives you vigor on critical hits, you already have vigor for cantrips, but with this you can upkeep your vigor whilst your cantrips are on CD. And with daggers I find myself dodging a lot more than with a staff, it's a decent replacement for Windbourne until Windbourne gets fixed.

The tooltip is wrong Test it
I was thinking about renewing stamina too...
maybe the only "half-useful" trait, even if i have vigor 100% up in every fight anyway