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
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.
Template Code
Skill Bar
Weapon Variants
Staff - with staff you can have a more relaxed playstyle that stays in most of the time. This playstyle is explained below, but it does do less damage.
Skill Variants
Let's explain why we recommend these skills, and alternatives you can consider:
Healing
is a great burst heal and provides a boon.
- - potentially the strongest heal if there are 5 enemies in range, plus a blast finisher, but very weak healing if there are no nearby enemies. Also synergizes with the Arcane trait .
- - very situational heal that removes up to 8 conditions throughout its long channelling time.
Utility Skills
and provide great burst damage, especially because their damage is always a critical strike. offers a very useful stun break that also blocks 3 attacks. These three skills also synergize with . Other options can be considered.
- - can be used in Air for great burst damage, or in Earth to continually
blind trash enemies. - - for mobility.
- - very high DPS option for when big skills are on cooldown.
- - if conditions are a problem.
- - this is an excellent skill, with the only downside being that elementals die when you mount up.
Elite Skills
provides a very useful pet with okayish damage. It also has amazing synergy with . Cast it on Fire for damage, on Water for support, healing and 
Knockback, on Air for a 
Stun, or on Earth for a pet that can tank.
- - offers more damage with and .
Specializations
- If you're levelling your character, unlock your specializations in this order: Air -> Arcane -> Water.
Fire
If you want to play the more relaxed alternative playstyle with staff, you must use the Fire traitline. Unlock it as your first specialization, followed by Air, but use the trait instead of Zephyr's Boon, and instead of Fresh Air. You may then use Arcane for more damage. Water can be chosen instead of Arcane but it's only truly useful if you attune to Water at some point, instead of staying permanently attuned to Fire.
- When playing in a group providing you with
Might, use instead.
Equipment
- Ascended gear and stat infusions are not required; you can use exotic gear with the same stats. This set uses similar gear to Build:Tempest_-_Power_DPS, making it a good option for general PVE
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
Berserker
x6
- use a few
Knight trinkets if extra defense is needed - - more active defense
- - budget DPS
- - budget DPS
Consumables
- Food
- Any ascended food is superior to any other food you could use. Steak for power, flatbread for conditions. Budget versions of these foods exist and are acceptable.
- - farming
- , - DPS
- - defense
- Utility
- (and variants) - farming
- , - dps
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:
- Fire
- Earth
- Water
After you attune to an element and cast their useful skills, you should attune back , 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 as they deal great damage and their cooldown is low thanks to , which also increases the strength of your critical strikes, and Arcane skills are always guaranteed to inflict critical damage.
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 coolsdown) every time you activate the elemental's skill.
- CC enemies with: , , and ⇒ .
- You can use in to continuously blinds 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)
Ratings
Comments
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