Elementalist - Core Power

The community gave this build a rating, making it second-tier: Good

Focused on: Strike damage

Designed for: Open World, Open World General and Open World Core

Difficulty:

Normal

This build was last updated on September 02, 2023 and is up to date for the June 27, 2023 game patch.

Overview

Elementalists are master spellcasters that attune to the four elements of fire, water, air, and earth. Widely regarded as one of the most complex classes of Guild Wars 2, they can specialize into several different builds with their elite specialziations. As a core elementalist, however, you'll be most useful playing a power build, and this build focuses on that.

This build, as all elementalist builds, requires a lot of button pressing to be truly effective. A more relaxed playstyle is also offered as an alternative, but it does do less damage.

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Skill Bar

Dagger/Dagger

Staff

Utility

Weapon Variants

• Scepter - ranged alternative to Mainhand Dagger
• Hammer - decent alternative with Weaponmaster.
• Sword/ Warhorn - powerful weapon set if you have access to Weaponmaster Training

Skill Variants

Heals

• - blast finisher

Utilities

• - spawn a small elemental army that dies when you mount up, good for fighting strong bosses.
• - additional condition cleanse
• - for mobility.

Equipment

Ascended gear and stat infusions are not required; you can use exotic gear with the same stats.

Standard Equipment

Head
Berserker

Shoulders
Berserker

Chest
Berserker

Hands
Berserker

Legs
Berserker

Feet
Berserker

Backpiece
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Amulet
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Dagger
Berserker

Dagger
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Staff
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Relic

• and are interchangeable.
• Other relics include , , , and .
• For defense, equip the highest tier Jade Core you can afford. Use defensive food, traits, or skills if required. If necessary, use Knight trinkets.

Consumables

Budget consumables are acceptable for use in open world.

DPS

• Prioritize Steak Ascended food.
• /
• /

Farming

• Prioritize Steak Ascended food.
• /
• (and variants)

Usage

Dagger/Dagger

When playing the suggested dagger/dagger variant, you will be constantly switching attunements, though always coming back to . While all attunements have useful skills, this build finds great value out of coming in and out of thanks to and . You can swap from to any attunement and use the skills you need, then reset the cooldown on with any critical hit and immediately attune back to Air to trigger these traits.

Fire

In you find the following useful skills:

has very high priority, attune to it whenever if comes off cooldown, use all the skills that aren't in cooldown, the attune back to . Note that has a channelling time, you can use this skill the last and attune back to while casting it without interrupting it.

Water

In you find the following useful skills:

• which is both an offensive and defensive ability with Frost Aura and .

is mainly defensive and you will spend very little time in it.

Air

In you find the following useful skills:

• which is both an offensive and defensive ability with Shocking Aura and .
• great both for damage and mobility.

is your main attunement. You will quickly return to it after casting the useful skills in other attunements thanks to . It also has the strongest auto attack with .

Earth

In you find the following useful skills:

combines good damage and crowd control.

The main idea of this build is to start fights in , is good for this, and use for boons. You then attune to the other elements in this priority, and use their useful skills:

1. Fire
2. Earth
3. Water

After you attune to an element and cast their useful skills, you should attune back to , which triggers and , cast all the useful Air skills, then attune to the next element in the priority list and repeat. Cast your Arcane skills and after atuning to air as their damage is always a critical strike and they grant increased critical strike damage thanks to , so they have great synergy with .

Staff

Staff enables an alternative more simple and relaxed playstyle. While it does offer ranged damage, staff deals lower damage than daggers. The playstyle revolves around and spamming . The trait is key to the build so make sure you are using it. Generally speaking, there's no much incentive to attune to the other elements. You find some healing in with and condition cleanse with . In , does great damage but the cooldown is too high, and you have some CC from and . In you have decent damage from and , and CC with .

Defense

• The best defense is always to dodge or sidestep attacks.
• Both and are dodges, you evade while casting them.
• blocks projectiles for a very short duration.
• can be used to mitigate pressure.
• , used in , creates a tanky elemental that can help relieve pressure. Casting your elite skill also activates a free version of thanks to . The flip over skill, such as can also trigger this shield. This free shield has a cooldown of 16 seconds, and elemental skills have a cooldown of 18. This means that you will get the shield when first casting the elemental and (once the shield recharges) every time you activate the elemental's skill.
• CC enemies with: , , and ⇒ .
• You can use in to continuously Blind enemies for 10 seconds when used.

Sustain

• is a good source of healing and condition cleanse.
• You can run or if conditions are a problem.
• , used in , creates an elemental with strong healing and condition cleanse on a short cooldown.
• You will periodically enter which will maintain a high uptime of .

Crowd Control

• ⇒
• (from Ice Elemental)
• (from Air Elemental)