D/D Elementalist

Hi all, I've gotten a few questions about my build and to be honest, I've fallen in love with it all over again recently so I thought I'd share in case anyone else wants to have a blast with their Elementalist. I began with daphoenix's now somewhat-outdated but classic D/D Ele build, and adapted it based on balance changes since.

Pros:

• permanent swiftness, permanent fury, permanent might, and permanent vigor (unless you're fighting something that you can't crit e.g. a door or object – then no perma-vigor, just semi-perma)
• semi-permanent regeneration and protection: 70-85% uptime @ 9.75sec duration (when fed) with an 11-14sec refresh
• multiple free heals and condition removal
• great survivability overall
• above-average mobility/groundspeed
• phenomenal party support, especially for melee allies – many of your boons will be granted to them also

Cons:

• confusion will absolutely wreck you if you can't somehow cleanse it off, since this is an action-intense playstyle (you do have several cleanses, though)
• boon stealing/conversion/removal will also ruin your day very, very fast
• poor burst damage, especially in WvW or against highly mobile/condition-immune targets
• playstyle requires quick thinking and good timing; definitely not a “faceroll” or button-mashing setup
• melee build, so performs suboptimally at range and therefore not great at e.g. keep/tower defense in WvW
• impossible in SPvP due to nerfed/unavailable runes

The playstyle:

Your goal is to orbit an opponent and weave through attunements, passively generating numerous buffs, heals, condition removal and even a few self-combos. Boon duration is by far your most important stat, although not one to focus on singlemindedly (more on that later). You'll generate a full array of annoying conditions, but most of them won't last too long or do too much damage to be terribly consequential on their own. They are, however, great for battles of attrition against opponents with limited condition removal; once they've run out, your burns and chills will become fatally dangerous.

In PvE, this build will make dungeon running a breeze, especially in a melee-heavy team. You will be able to tank group mob damage and most AoEs that are “supposed” to be avoided, as will your teammates. Even the gimpiest PUGs who stand in fire will be an asset once you've loaded them up with boons, and PvE's stationary targets make executing your optimal combos a breeze.

I did not actually realize what a powerful PvE build this is until I began leveling an alt: I'd do most of a dungeon with my Elementalist and then swap at the end for the hefty chunk of experience, but repeatedly witnessed groups wipe when I left them with a boss at 10-20% health and when previously none of them had dipped under 75% health during the fight. I've also duo'd bossfights or solo'd groups of enemies in dungeons, and can easily solo an undefended supply camp (in one pull) in WvW and some of the easier PvE champion mobs (lolCommissar). Boons are amazing.

The gear:
[attachment=2023]fannymae.jpg[/attachment]
There are only two non-negotiables: your daggers and your runes. Feel free to tinker with the rest as desired.

• Weapons: Two daggers, absolutely. No other weapon(s) serve this build nearly as well, and more importantly dagger has strong spells for every attunement whereas many other weapons have an attunement or two with completely lackluster spells, like focus fire/air. Since you'll be using every attunement, you need to have the best arsenal possible.
• Sigils: I highly recommend one Sigil of Battle because the might it generates will benefit from your increased boon duration, and it will be proccing constantly due to its short 9sec cooldown and the fact that “on-weapon-swap” sigils for Elementalists proc on attunement changes (since we can't weapon swap). The other sigil is a matter of preference; go with whatever you like.
• Armor & Trinkets: Choose whatever stats suit you, although you will want to favor some toughness and some precision. Toughness you need because you'll be in melee range and need to hold your own with the other frontliners, although it's not as difficult as you might think – you'll be dodging a lot and have protection most of the time. Precision you want to a certain degree because a couple of traits are triggered by it. You don't need a ton because you'll have fury's +20% crit chance up constantly, but I'd recommend making sure you have at least 10-20% base. Personally, I run celestial stats because it's the most efficient point-for-point if you can get some use out of every stat, which this build can. Even the increased critical damage is handy, since you'll be critting fairly often with perma-fury. However, celestial results in a bit “too much” precision relative to power from a pure DPS theorycrafting standpoint, so you can either splash some power gear or just enjoy the extra crit for proccing Arcane Precision conditions, which will add some DPS on their own. See attached for my stats in exotic celestial + food (but no boons) for comparison.
• Runes: Two Monk, two Water, two Traveler, no excuses. Together these will provide +45% boon duration, which is HUGE. For perspective, the Superior Rune of Sanctuary was deliberately not given the 15% boon duration 2-piece bonus (subsequently implemented on Traveler) because Arenanet said that anything above 10% would be imbalanced in light of Monk and Water together providing 30%. Runes are by far the best source of boon duration except perhaps food; the next-best equipment source is “Giver's” armor and trinkets “of Winter,” which add a mere 1% per piece.
• Food: Chocolate Omnomberry Cream, for its 20% boon duration buff. As an added bonus, the magic find is better than the standard Omnomberry Bar buff and should always be in effect.

Major traits:
[attachment=2022]elebuild.jpg[/attachment]
See attached picture. A little breakdown on each and why it's taken:

• Air, first tier, Zephyr's Boon: This is how you maintain permanent fury and swiftness. Double dagger gives you two auras that trigger this: Frost Aura and Shocking Aura. Auras have no cast time and can be activated during other spells, actions, and even while dazed, stunned, or otherwise incapacitated. In WvW you may want to save your Aura cooldowns so that you can call on them when you really need the damage reduction or stun, but most of the time I just spam them to keep the boons flowing. Alternately, if you keep yourself perpetually fed and find that you have enough fury & swiftness from other traits, consider swapping this for 10 points in earth and picking up Stone Splinters, which provides a 10% damage bonus when you're close to your target (which you should always be) and the 5-point earth passive Stone Flesh, which grants 120 bonus toughness that will linger for a few seconds even after you leave earth due to arcane's 15-point minor trait. You'll also trade 100 precision for 100 toughness, which is a good swap.
• Water, first tier, Cantrip Mastery: Because you'll be slotting three cantrips, and all cantrips have fairly long base cooldowns, this is a big help.
• Water, second tier, Soothing Distruption: More boons! You probably won't need the vigor here if you're critting enough to proc Renewing Stamina properly, but the regeneration is nice. That having been said, this is one trait slot you could probably swap out for something else if you feel like the regeneration is excessive; you'll be getting frequent regeneration boons from attunement swapping. Cleansing Wave is probably a good alternative, and will double your passive condition removal alongside...
• Water, third tier, Cleansing Water: I picked this up in reaction to the cantrip nerf that stopped all cantrips from acting as stunbreakers, and the intervening time running without this trait was rough. I never looked back after selecting it. This represents a hefty amount of condition removal, considering you apply regeneration to yourself with every cantrip and to yourself & allies every time you attune to water, or roughly once every 11-14 seconds. By comparison, Signet of Water provides a similar passive cleanse – once every 10 seconds – but uses up a valuable skill slot and may not always be active anyway.
• Arcane, first tier, Renewing Stamina: Perma-vigor, so long as you're fighting something you can crit and you're landing attacks. With fury on constantly, you should be critting fairly often. The vigor is handy defensively and synergizes with another arcane trait, Evasive Arcana.
• Arcane, second tier, Elemental Attunement: You grant a boon to everyone around you for simply entering an attunement, which – like activating an Aura – can be done mid-spell, mid-action, or even while incapacitated. Of particular note: entering earth attunement, which you can do every 11 seconds, generates a 9.75sec protection boon (when fed).
• Arcane, third tier, Evasive Arcana: This looks weird and possibly impractical at first, but the water and earth dodges are entirely worth it. Water dodge creates a free AoE heal and condition removal, and earth dodge creates a mini-Churning Earth which produces a blast finisher that you'll combo with a fire field to grant might, and can also be handy for crippling nearby opponents. Note that the procs are dependent on what attunement you're in when your dodge roll finishes; since you can switch attunements in midair, it's possible – and in fact very handy – to begin a dodge in one attunement and end in another for the desired effect. If you really don't want free heals or another blast finisher for might, you can pick up something else but you absolutely need 30 points in Arcane for the attunement recharge reduction.

Minor traits of note:

• 5pt arcane: More fury, so you will never run out of fury. Ever. Is this starting to sound ridiculous yet?
• 25pt arcane: Your fire crits have a chance to proc burning, which is great because your bread-and-butter fire spell (Dragon's Claw) hits three times simultaneously = three chances to crit & burn. Your air crits have a chance to proc weakness, which is very nice against melee opponents.
• 5pt water: The passive heal from Soothing Mist stacks with regeneration boons and will persist for quite a while even after you leave water attunement thanks to the 15pt arcane minor trait and the ten second base duration/refresh; it's like a limited duration mini-regeneration that will be up most of the time, and definitely not to be discounted.
• 25pt water: This was nerfed from 2% damage per boon to 1%, but is still an amazing and essentially “free” trait that provides a steady 5-7% damage bonus since you'll be loaded up with boons constantly.

Basic rotation, beginning with fire attunement:

1. Begin casting Ring of Fire near your opponent, running in a direction away from them (through them is fine).
2. During the Ring of Fire cast time, switch to earth attunement.
3. After Ring of Fire is done, keep moving until you are at the edge or just outside of Ring of Fire, then dodge backward into the ring; this will proc Evasive Arcana, creating a blast finisher within your fire field for AoE might. Note that you need to be in combat for Evasive Arcana to be effective, so you can't use this combo to pre-buff might before a fight.
4. If it's off cooldown, cast Earthquake for another blast finisher and more AoE might; if not, skip to next step.
5. Cast Ring of Earth for a solid chunk of damage, cripple and bleed.
6. OPTIONAL: If it's off cooldown and you're in a good position health & defense-wise, consider loading up Churning Earth; your fire field will expire before its blast finisher can go off, but it does a large chunk of damage, cripples, and bleeds. If your opponent moves out of range (or you begin out of range), simply use Lightning Flash to teleport on top of them just before the cast time ends for maximum effectiveness.
7. Switch to water attunement, either immediately after Ring of Earth or during Churning Earth's cast time. If you did choose to cast Churning Earth, you'll have exhausted your earth spells' cooldowns (i.e. not have any other earth spell to cast after Churning Earth that would make you want to stay in earth) and you want to get the attunement cooldown timer running so you can swap back into it for protection sooner.
8. Water's where you can be the most flexible, depending on how much healing & defense you need, so take a quick peek at your health bar and assess the fight. You potentially have four heals plus regeneration and damage reduction available here. You'll generate an AoE heal, regeneration boon and condition removal just for attuning, plus you have the regular Cleansing Wave, an end-of-dodge mini-Cleansing Wave, and Cone of Cold. If you want to be a bit offensive and are near your opponent, pop Frozen Burst to chill them – it's very quick casting and the chill is potent, although the damage is poor so you should probably skip this for PvE (NOTE: an upcoming patch is slated to make this a blast finisher; if that goes live, it may be possible to cycle quickly through earth and use this for yet another might generator within your fire field – stay tuned!). If you're spamming auras for fury and swiftness, hit Frost Aura if it's off cooldown. Fit in a dodge somewhere for the free mini-Cleansing Wave proc. Finally, regardless of how many actions you choose to take in water, always end with Cone of Cold and switch to air attunement after it begins casting.
9. When you hit air, begin trying to line up a clean shot for Lightning Touch; its weakness is very handy and actually has a small cone, but it's tricky to land on moving targets. If you're spamming auras or there's a melee opponent in your face, pop Shocking Aura. After that, feel free to hang out in air for a bit – Lightning Whip competes with Dragon's Claw for our best autoattack spell, and is much more effective against crit-immune enemies and if you orbit an opponent at its max range, while Dragon's Claw requires you to be closer for all three of its hits to land. Lightning Whip also has a very broad cleave and is much better at hitting nimble opponents or things behind walls; Dragon's Claw is linear and can be obstructed.
10. OPTIONAL: If your opponent is charging something or you just want to disrupt them, Updraft is an amazing spell. While it knocks you back a bit (technically a dodge – it even provides one second of evasion!) it creates an AoE launch and you can always close the gap immediately with Ride the Lightning or a quick switch to fire attunement and Burning Speed, the length of which will put you conveniently right back in your opponent's face as they lay flat on the ground.
11. When you're done in air, either just after Lightning Touch but in any case no longer than a few seconds maximum, switch back to fire attunement.
12. When you hit fire, it's likely Ring of Fire will still have a few seconds left on cooldown, more if you shortcut through air. This is fine; activate Drake's Breath for a nice auto-aiming application of burning, and try to line up a Fire Grab after if it's off cooldown. Otherwise, Ring of Fire should be ready by the time Drake's Breath is finished and you can begin the rotation anew.

At a minimum, this generates every 11-14 seconds: four stacks of AoE might + three for you from Sigil of Battle (plus a fire field for allies to generate more), AoE protection, two AoE heals & two forms of AoE regeneration, AoE condition removal, AoE swiftness, and a whole slew of conditions on your opponent.

With all cooldowns off and maximum ability spamming, add in several more stacks of might, several more heals & condition cleanses, a few disables, and significantly more damage.

General tips:

• Cantrips are amazing and you should use three of the available four. I prefer all but Cleansing Fire, although it's a good contender for swapping in during WvW. Note that you can still swap attunements and proc Evasive Arcana while in Mist Form.
• Use whatever heal skill you prefer, but I like Healing Signet. Its mechanic fits the build's theme of passive triggers, and anything with a cast time is just going to compete with all the other spells which you should be spamming constantly.
• For an elite skill, I recommend Glyph of Elementals. It's got the shortest cooldown, and if your elemental behaves and fights near you it will become quite beefy with all the boons you'll be applying to it. Note that what elemental you get depends on your attunement at the end of the cast time, much like Evasive Arcana and dodge procs, so you can use it as a “transition spell” and begin casting in one attunement but end in the desired elemental's. I'm partial to fire, but earth is a great PvE tank dummy and ice can be somewhat handy. Air elementals are lackluster, since they attack from range and will therefore tend to outrange your boons, plus the swiftness they generate is excessive and the stun is laughably poor. They're also squishier than the other elementals. Fire technically has the least health, but its swoop attack comes with a dodge that compensates while air just gets stomped.
• You want to minimize time spent in water and earth attunements; any extra time waiting on cooldowns should be spent in air or fire. This is because the on-attunement benefits of water and earth – heal, regeneration, condition removal, and protection – are much better and you want to use them as much as possible, which means attuning and then leaving the attunement as quick as reasonably possible so the cooldown can start running. Fire and air's on-attunement effects are nowhere near as potent. Also, water and earth's autoattacks are dreadful DPS; fire and air's are both much better.
• Fire Grab and Churning Earth are our only real burst damage options, and both are easily avoided. Fire Grab can be consistently landed with the following combo, however: Updraft, switch to fire attunement midair, Burning Speed when you hit the ground, and then Fire Grab immediately after. The launch from Updraft will keep your opponent disabled and unable to dodge, while Burning Speed's distance closes the gap between you and the opponent perfectly, and the flame burst at the end triggers a very short burning necessary to make Fire Grab do its bonus damage. For Churning Earth, the best opportunity you'll get is to begin casting and then Lightning Flash adjacent to your target just before the cast ends; if they don't dodge, they'll be hit with a huge damage spike from both spells (a damage boost to Lightning Flash was the compensation for nerfing its former stunbreak capacity). The casting animation is blindingly obvious, however, so consider popping Armor of Earth to prevent interruption by a semi-sentient opponent.
• If you can get an opponent against a wall (try Updraft), Burning Speed into the wall behind them and all of the damage instances from the fire trail will be at their feet, dealing good burst DPS. This is the same basic trick people use in various dungeons with the Fiery Greatsword or a warrior greatsword whirlwind.
• Cone of Cold is a very good damaging spell, and it's backloaded. Although you should be switching to air attunement during its cast time and may be tempted to cut it short for a nice air spell you just noticed off cooldown, don't do it unless there's a good reason. Cone of Cold is your hardest-hitting spammable (i.e. not autoattack but off cooldown every time you enter its attunement) spell. And it heals!
• You have great escapability with Burning Speed, Ride the Lightning, all cantrips, and perma-swiftness. Just be sure if you're running from an opponent and want to use Ride the Lightning that you've cleared out your target queue first! Otherwise you'll beeline directly back into them, a mistake I've made more times than I care to admit. Generally though, the mobility and survivability makes this a fair WvW roaming build although zergsurfing is probably more efficient since you can spew boons everywhere. Fiery Greatsword provides yet another dash, if you want to swap out the elemental since they're of dubious use in most WvW anyway. Opponents shouldn't catch you unless those abilities are on cooldown or you've messed up your timing on a dodge or spell. Try to target critters with Ride the Lightning when you're traveling or escaping, since hitting them will halve the cooldown. Remember also that you can root a pursuer briefly with Magnetic Grasp, or use the followup Magnetic Leap to catch someone when you're the hunter.
• Conjure spells are undesirable most of the time, both because they compete with the more-awesome traited cantrips and because they unnecessarily override great dagger abilities. That said, they're a huge help in certain PvE scenarios and you can generate some decent self-combos with them, e.g. Lightning Hammer's Static Field (one of only two lightning fields in the game, both Elementalist-exclusive) + Lightning Leap + Magnetic Leap for chained dazes, but for the full 4 seconds remember to time the spells properly since daze doesn't stack duration but rather overrides earlier applications. It's still a lot to ask for giving up a cantrip though, and don't forget to keep weaving attunements even though your skills with a conjured weapon won't change.
• An alternate fire+earth combo: Ring of Fire into Magnetic Grasp+Magnetic Leap will proc fire armor on you, which counts as an aura and therefore procs Zephyr's Boon, granting swiftness and fury. I tend to favor the AoE might from earth dodge & Earthquake, since the leap mechanic is pretty clunky and generates virtually no damage. But if someone actually hits you during fire armor you burn them and get might, so it's possibly a good tradeoff against multiple opponents.
• Earthquake has a very short cast time, but it can still be interrupted and it's a significant setback when it happens, since you lose a blast finisher and it's not worth staying in earth attunement until the skill comes back from the mini-cooldown triggered by an interrupt. If you know you're going to follow up with a Churning Earth afterward, activate Armor of Earth to protect your Earthquake cast as well.

That's all I can think of for now! Any questions, find me in-game or ask here :)

Awesome guide! Thanks for making it, will be referring to it when I hit 80!

Great post. Thank you so much Marquis! :cheer:

I take back a bit of what I said in the original post about SPvP.

I got soooooo mind-numbingly bored of playing my warrior that I decided to try it out just for giggles and so far it's actually quite respectable. Changes made:

1. Earth runes instead of Traveler, but still Water & Monk for boon duration despite being nerfed/weaker
2. 10 trait points in air moved to earth and picking trait 5, Elemental Shielding (protection on aura activation)
3. Non-Battle sigil is Sigil of Accuracy for the 5% crit, to compensate for losing precision from air traitline & gear
4. Amulet is Settler but jewel is Barbarian - could probably fudge with another jewel but Barbarian gets you to 15k health which is a huge help in surviving burst DPSers, and the power+precision secondaries fill gaps in the stat loadout (the mere 75 precision is about 4% crit, and the build needs a certain level of crit for Renewing Stamina to proc perma-vigor)

The significantly shorter boon duration isn't as problematic as I was expecting. So far my biggest challenges are with decap engis, who're only problematic because they have so much blasted CC and Armor of Earth's stability is on such a long cooldown. The extra toughness from moving air points to earth helps keep roughly the same level of overall survivability though, plus the added protection duration from Earth runes.

In brief: definitely not "impossible" in SPvP, but viable with some tweaking :cheer: