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Playing and gearing elementalist?


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My elementalist fully unlocked his elite specs a few days ago. I have to say that the profession is very interesting and engaging. Out of the two elite specs weaver seems more fun to me, because it has more depth and complexity. You can play a weaver for weeks and still know you only just touched the surface unlike many other professions which feel repetitive.

Now, despite all that, the profession seems to be a bit lacking in open world. It is as if someone had a great idea, but wasn't sure how to implement it. Cannot help but compare it to my dragonhunter which only needs to equip the greatsword, put the symbol +trap down then spin 2 win while stuff dies. No effort. At the same time it can shield and heal, has invulnerabilities, blocks and God knows what else.

For all the twirling, twisting, ninja spins and element switching that my little asura does, a weaver - even in full berserker with staff, cannot do as much burst on such short cooldowns so fast. Not to mention how squishy you are. Currently running with sword and dagger because of this. I switched from full berserker to soldier stat earrings while the shoulder, sword and gloves unlocked with the elite specs are celestial.

Now to the point:

What is the best gear type for open world weaver? Can celestial be the answer since it suits the hybrid nature of the profession? If I invest in ascended accessories with that stat, can I use them for something else? PvE, WvW, anything at all?

Do you use berserker in fractals/raids and if so - how do you survive? Eles are squishy as hell, seems hard to stay alive even at range.

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If you want to play open world, I would go full zerk.The best way to max your dmg is to select "Elements of Rage" as your third mayor trait in the weaver line. It gives a dmg boost every time you fully attune to an element, so you have to constantly attune to different elements to proc them. I use a lazy way, basically Air-Fire-Fire-Earth-Fire-Fire-Air-Fire... and so on. A lot of the fractal/raid rotations for this don't work for open world, as they mostly require alacrity and quickness to work, so don't worry to much about them. Only use your heavy hitters ( Meteor Storm/ Icebow 4) when you get this buff, or already have it active.This way you can easily melt down groups of enemy's with no problem.Also don't worry about going down, select the trait that you cast a firefield when you go down and in most cases the enemy will die in it, or it will rez you if you have the mastery.But yeah, to stay alive as an ele you need to learn which hits you can take, and when to dodge, your 11k hp don't really give a big room for errors.

I would suggest: Get zerk armor and weapons. Choose some trinkets with vita/toughness until you feel comfortable and then swap them out for zerk.

The build I use for most content: https://qtfy.eu/guildwars/elementalist/staff-weaver-build-guide/ (standard air variant)

Edit (forgot to answer to the last parts):How to stay alive in fractals? If you run with a party stay always in melee range! You need every buff your team gives you and you will not get heals (if you happen to have a druid in your party) if you camp outside. But you will have to learn the mechanics of the bosses. This will make things a lot easier. Also wither fiery retreat you have a nice third dodge, glyph of storms can help with trash mobs as it blinds enemy's and Icebow 5 is a pretty hard cc.

WvW: I can't help you with this. I don't play ele in WvW. I did play him a while ago with a full celestial build. But this was nerfed pretty bad and I haven't played it since, so no clue if it is viable again.

Disclaimer: You can play what you want. This is merely a suggestion.

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@EpicName.4523 said:What is the best gear type for open world weaver? Can celestial be the answer since it suits the hybrid nature of the profession? If I invest in ascended accessories with that stat, can I use them for something else? PvE, WvW, anything at all?

Do you use berserker in fractals/raids and if so - how do you survive? Eles are squishy as hell, seems hard to stay alive even at range.

I actually think that tempest is a lot better spec when it comes to open world and general solo pve gameplay. It may sacrifice some damage modifiers that weaver brings, but air overload is your only reliable vulnerability source. It works great with staff since you have great melee pressure with air/fire OL, and strong ranged damage when you have to kite. It's also somewhat similar to DH since you can precast your burst: air overload into lava font, meteor and storm glyph (can add conjured hammer/bow) which do huge aoe damage, but on somewhat higher cd. Tempest also comes with improved (40%) protection and slight sustain with auras which makes it a lot easier to stay in melee range. Playing with weaver made me realize how underrated 1 stack of stability on overload is.

When it comes to gearing, berserker is pretty strong option in pve, especially on staff, but viper/grieving could be strong choices for condi builds. Celestial is just not worth it in pve on any class, but it definitely works for wvw when roaming. For more offensive wvw builds (staff and scepter), having some marauder pieces (mixed with berserker) is recommended since it gives more stats in general and helps you survive enemy bursts/retaliation longer, which is a lot better than some small percentage damage loss compared to berserker.

The key of survival is utilizing your evades (both dodge and on skills), control skills, blinds, water attunement heals (also blasting fields) or simply kiting with a ranged weapon. In group content you usually rely on supports keeping you alive, but that doesnt mean that you shouldnt pay attention to your damage mitigation tools previously mentioned.

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@EpicName.4523 said:My elementalist fully unlocked his elite specs a few days ago. I have to say that the profession is very interesting and engaging. Out of the two elite specs weaver seems more fun to me, because it has more depth and complexity. You can play a weaver for weeks and still know you only just touched the surface unlike many other professions which feel repetitive.

Now, despite all that, the profession seems to be a bit lacking in open world. It is as if someone had a great idea, but wasn't sure how to implement it. Cannot help but compare it to my dragonhunter which only needs to equip the greatsword, put the symbol +trap down then spin 2 win while stuff dies. No effort. At the same time it can shield and heal, has invulnerabilities, blocks and God knows what else.

For all the twirling, twisting, ninja spins and element switching that my little asura does, a weaver - even in full berserker with staff, cannot do as much burst on such short cooldowns so fast. Not to mention how squishy you are. Currently running with sword and dagger because of this. I switched from full berserker to soldier stat earrings while the shoulder, sword and gloves unlocked with the elite specs are celestial.

Now to the point:

What is the best gear type for open world weaver? Can celestial be the answer since it suits the hybrid nature of the profession? If I invest in ascended accessories with that stat, can I use them for something else? PvE, WvW, anything at all?

Do you use berserker in fractals/raids and if so - how do you survive? Eles are squishy as hell, seems hard to stay alive even at range.

Elementalist only gets one weapon and staff is a full on offensive weapon, therefore it has no defensive capabilities but it puts out the biggest DPS in the game and for that reason it is useless in solo play. Staff is only used for it's DPS in WvW backline and in raids/fractals where it can be supported with healing, aegis, protection, e.t.c.

If were talking about open world and PvP, S/D weaver is definitely the way to go now. S/D weaver has good sustain and lots of evasion and invulnerability, easy access to stability e.t.c.

Celestial is a good stat for survival in open world, you'll be able to take on champs and group bosses solo in the open world easy peasy. Celefrag is using celestial stats while roaming on S/D in WvW, and magi amulet in sPvP, it's very survivable and still puts out great damage provided you can do good combo's, you can stack 25 might fast while putting 20+ stacks of bleeding on your opponents. Outside of playing staff and optimising build for DPS, weaver is a sub class that has a lot of sustain and many ways of healing itself, so healing power works extremely well with it.

However I think berserker stats on S/D weaver could work fine for most open world stuff because of the sustain that sword brings, you could even keep a couple of magi trinkets if you needed more sustain but didn't want to carry a whole other gear set.

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I use berserker armor + celestial trinkets. I first did this because cele trinkets are easy to get with laurels while armor has to be crafted from charged quartz, but after playing with half/half set for a while I discovered it worked really, spectacularly well. The combo of healing+defense+offense of celestial perfectly offsets the weakness of the Berserker armor. Full cele is good if you want to focus more heavily on defense, but you'll lose a lot of dps. Marauder gear is also a good choice.

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@"Itz Jay.8941" said:Elementalist only gets one weapon and staff is a full on offensive weapon, therefore it has no defensive capabilitiesI beg your pardon?!Staff defensive are: Fire 4, Water 3, Water 4, Water 5, Air 2, Air 3, Air 4, Air 5, Earth 3, Earth 4, Earth 5. That's 11 out of the base 20 staff skills, more than 50%. It doesn't need a "6 seconds invulnerability" or "heal self 100%" for a skill to be classified as defensive.

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Staff ele has plenty defence. Kittens, I run full berserker staff tempest in open world. I always found that dagger places the already squishy ele too close to the target. You can run staff weaver,tempest and core in the open world with zero issues. Dps was never useless. What you kill fast, cannot kill you back!!

Edited for derp.

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