Elementalist - S/F Fresh Air

This is a test build. You may comment and rate it.

Focused on: Strike damage, Mobility and Control

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Difficulty:

Normal

This build was last updated on September 23, 2023.

Overview

A core version of the Fresh Air PvP archetype. Its role is to roam the map and +1 fights, quickly bursting down targets. With enough experience it could also win some duels, but you need to play it perfectly in 1v1s due to its lack of sustain. Scepter/Focus FA is one of the harder elementalist specs to master.

Being a core Ele build, it's available for F2P players as well.

Skill Bar

Scepter/Focus

Utility

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Equipment

Scepter

Focus

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Equipment Variants

Amulets and Runes

• - makes the build a bit more forgiving to play in exchange for lower damage. Take Rune of Spellbreaker.

Usage

General

• Avoid 1v1s whenever possible, keep moving between capture points to outnumber fights and burst targets down.

• The build's all about swapping in and out of Air Attunement every few seconds, made possible by Fresh Air which recharges Air whenever you land a critical strike.

• Swapping to Air triggers Electric Discharge which you should immediately follow up with a Lightning Strike for instant burst damage. Entering this attunement also grants you Ferocity from Fresh Air for a few seconds, which is why most of your heavy hitting skills should land in this small time frame. More on that later.

• Recharging Air: to recharge Air you need to score a critical hit. The fastest way to do it on attunements with slower skills is to start channeling the air autoattack Arc Lightning just before leaving Air Attunement. Swapping attunements doesn't break the channeling and Arc Lightning is almost guaranteed to critically hit at least once.

• This build can self-stack Might by blasting the fire field created by Flamewall. Do not prioritize Might stacking, but do take advantage of the incidental opportunities which arise. Your blast finishers are:

• Dragon's Tooth
• Phoenix
• Comet
• Magnetic Wave

• Conjure Fiery Greatsword's purpose is twofold.
  • Mobility: Fiery Whirl and Fiery Rush are excellent movement skills that can help you disengage from fights if your defensive CDs ran out, or if you want to get to the other capture point as soon as possible.
  • Cleave: Fiery Whirl and Firestorm are excellent AoE skills. Use these whenever you need to cleave a downed enemy or want to take a camp (ball up the NPCs in a corner beforehand).

Notable burst combos

These are some of the most common burst combos used by FA players. The quicker you pull these chains off, the better.

If you're playing the default version of the build and not the Arcane variant then skip the Arcane Blasts, everything else is the same.

From Fire:

1. Optional: Fire Shield ⇒ Transmute Fire for the Might if you haven't used it already to cleanse conditions and think you can afford to sacrifice an otherwise defensive CD for a damage boost.
2. Dragon's Tooth
3. Optional: Autoattack 1-2x to stack Might and Burning for trait synergy. This could maximize your damage but slows down the combo a bit. With this Phoenix and Dragon's Tooh should hit about the same time, this could deal massive damage BUT also makes it easier to negate your entire combo with 1 dodge. If you skip this step and land Phoenix while DT is still up in the air then it could force enemies to commit more defensives or facetank at least one part of your combo.
4. Phoenix - optional: Lightning Flash right at your target before you finish casting Phoenix to cut down on the projectile's travel time.
5. Arcane Blast
6. Air Attunement - swap to this just before Phoenix is about to hit the target. Note: swapping out of fire triggers an explosion from Pyromancer's Puissance, dealing considerable damage. Swapping to Air while in melee range of the target therefore adds more damage to your combo.
7. Lightning Strike

From Earth:

1. Rock Barrier
2. Dust Devil
3. Arcane Blast - projectile must land right before attuning to Air to get the Immobilize.
4. Hurl then swap to Air Attunement during the channeling to make the projectiles land in the right attunement.
5. Lightning Strike

From Water:

1. Shatterstone
2. Water Trident - the trident does more damage to Chilled enemies which is important. Shatterstone should secure that but Freezing Gust or even Arcane Blast could help (when used on Water).
3. Air Attunement just before Shatterstone and Water Trident hit the target.
4. Lightning Strike

Survival

• One with Air makes it easy to kite most specs. Avoid melee range whenever possible! Don't stay in melee unless the target is Blinded, CC'd or you're about to burst them.

• Shatterstone is a source of spammable Chill which you can even place behind your back when running away. Chill is great at building distance.

• Needless to say other CCs can also be used for shaking off pursuers.

• Magnetic Wave and Swirling Winds provide excellent protection against enemies who use projectiles. These however do not work against unblockable projectiles, and some ranged builds - such as this one - are mostly unaffected by projectile reflects and blocks.

• Magnetic Wave is the build's best condition cleanse which can also be used while stunned.

• Obsidian Flesh offers protection against all kinds of pressure.

• Swapping to Fire procs a Fire Aura from Sunspot and gaining an aura removes 1 condition via Smothering Auras. In the 5th slot on Fire you'll find a skill which grants the same aura, but if you already have the aura it flips over to its chain skill Transmute Fire. Smothering Auras removes 2 conditions when you transmute an aura.

• If you need to cleanse a lot of conditions do the following chain:

1. Fire Attunement - cleanses 1 condition as you gain an aura.
2. Transmute Fire - cleanses 2 conditions.
3. Use Focus #5 Fire Shield, removing yet another condition.
4. Transmute again for another 2 cleanses.
5. Phoenix if necessary for another cleanse.

• Blinding Flash is great at avoiding crucial skills by blinding enemies, and it also shuts down Power-based specs in general with the Weakness.

Related Builds

• FA Cata - Catalyst version.

• Freshweaver - a higher damage version of the build that's even harder to play. Bit of a gimmick, it's arguably less viable than core.

• FA Roamer - WvW roaming version of the same build.