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 August 26, 2023 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 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

Sword/Warhorn

Staff

Utility

Weapon Variants

• Hammer - decent alternative with Weaponmaster.
• Dual Daggers - decent free-to-play option

Skill Variants

Heals

• Arcane Brilliance - blast finisher

Utilities

• Glyph of Lesser Elementals - spawn a small elemental army that dies when you mount up, good for fighting strong bosses.
• Cleansing Fire - additional condition cleanse
• Lightning Flash - 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

Variant Equipment

Relics

There are many good relics for general play in open world and others that may be specific to this build. Swap based on preference.

• Relic of the Cavalier - dps/defense; massive damage & defense boost, especially when paired with Skyscale's Fire Field.
• Relic of Speed - utility; go fast
• Relic of the Adventurer - defense; higher evasion

Defense

• Invest in a Jade Core for additional HP and access to Jade Protocols.
• Full Dragon - luxury set: trades damage for a massive boost to HP; pair with Signet of Fire.
• Knight's Trinkets - extra defense
• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Energy - increased evasion

Budget

• Rune of Superior Rune of Infiltration - budget replacement for Rune of Superior Rune of the Scholar
• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Air - budget replacement for Sigil of Superior Sigil of Impact

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 Air Attunement. While all attunements have useful skills, this build finds great value out of coming in and out of Air Attunement thanks to Electric Discharge and Fresh Air. You can swap from Air Attunement to any attunement and use the skills you need, then reset the cooldown on Air Attunement with any critical hit and immediately attune back to Air to trigger these traits.

Fire

In Fire Attunement you find the following useful skills:

• Drake's Breath
• Burning Speed
• Ring of Fire (elementalist)
• Fire Grab

Fire Attunement 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 Air Attunement. Note that Drake's Breath has a channelling time, you can use this skill the last and attune back to Air Attunement while casting it without interrupting it.

Water

In Water Attunement you find the following useful skills:

• Frozen Burst
• Frost Aura which is both an offensive and defensive ability with Frost Aura and Zephyr's Boon.

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

Air

In Air Attunement you find the following useful skills:

• Lightning Whip
• Convergence
• Shocking Aura which is both an offensive and defensive ability with Shocking Aura and Zephyr's Boon.
• Ride the Lightning great both for damage and mobility.

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

Earth

In Earth Attunement you find the following useful skills:

• Ring of Earth
• Earthen Rush
• Earthquake
• Churning Earth

Earth Attunement combines good damage and crowd control.

The main idea of this build is to start fights in Air Attunement, Ride the Lightning is good for this, and use Shocking Aura 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 Air Attunement, which triggers Electric Discharge and Fresh Air, cast all the useful Air skills, then attune to the next element in the priority list and repeat. Cast your Arcane skills Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave after atuning to air as their damage is always a critical strike and they grant increased critical strike damage thanks to Elemental Surge, so they have great synergy with Fresh Air.

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 Fire Attunement and spamming Lava Font. The trait Persisting Flames 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 Water Attunement with Geyser and condition cleanse with Healing Rain. In Air Attunement, Lightning Surge does great damage but the cooldown is too high, and you have some CC from Gust and Static Field. In Earth Attunement you have decent damage from Eruption and Shock Wave, and CC with Unsteady Ground.

Defense

• The best defense is always to dodge or sidestep attacks.
• Both Burning Speed and Earthen Rush are dodges, you evade while casting them.
• Ring of Earth blocks projectiles for a very short duration.
• Arcane Shield can be used to mitigate pressure.
• Glyph of Elementals, used in Earth Attunement, creates a tanky elemental that can help relieve pressure. Casting your elite skill also activates a free version of Arcane Shield thanks to Final Shielding. The flip over skill, such as Stomp (Glyph of Elementals) 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: Earthquake, Updraft, and Shocking Aura ⇒ Transmute Lightning.
• You can use Glyph of Storms in Earth Attunement to continuously Blind enemies for 10 seconds when used.

Sustain

• Cleansing Wave is a good source of healing and condition cleanse.
• You can run Ether Renewal or Cleansing Fire if conditions are a problem.
• Glyph of Elementals, used in Water Attunement, creates an elemental with strong healing and condition cleanse on a short cooldown.
• You will periodically enter Water Attunement which will maintain a high uptime of Soothing Mist.

Crowd Control

• Shocking Aura ⇒ Transmute Lightning
• Updraft
• Earthquake
• Crashing Waves (from Ice Elemental)
• Shocking Bolt (from Air Elemental)