Problems with 330 Ele Build

You might not have enough monsters attacking you. There are areas of all three campaigns where I've tried farming with a similar build only to fall flat on my face because not enough opponents are attacking me. [Sliver Armor] requires a lot of monsters attacking you to be effective, so more agro is a good thing.

As alluded to before, you want to put your trust in Sliver Armor and augment its damage however you can. Glyph of Renewal is probably the best option, assuming you have your elite slot open; Glyph of Swiftness helps if you don't. Ebon Battle Standard of Honor is an excellent boost, even at low levels of Ebon Vanguard rank. Other options are Intensity and Glyph of Elemental Power.

Incidentally, a good portion of the Earth Magic damage skills are affected by armor, which makes them undesirable in Hard Mode. Stick with Crystal Wave and Teinai's Crystals, for the most part. Radiation Field is good, assuming your targets can be Diseased. Also, Obsidian Flame can be useful against bosses.

The 330 Ele build is fairly good against bosses, mostly due to Sliver Armor; it's not as good as Shadow Form-based builds, but I'd say it's more or less equivalent to anything on the next tier. You have to stay away from creatures with attack-based interrupts, and use Obsidian Flesh around most Mesmers and Necros.

As far as farming in Nightfall in Hard Mode, I know you can do the First City of Fahranur. Djinns are doable, and so are most of the insects. In general, you should be able to do almost anything a 55 or Terra Tank build can.

Yeah, number of mobs around is important. You might consider adding glyph of swiftness to the build to help recharge Sliver. Also those AoE spells might be causing melee mobs to break off their attack on you. If you insist on using them all, remember not to quickly chain all three off.

[Echo] and [Arcane Echo] are 2 other skills you can use to have sliver up almost permanently. But really mobs are the best thing to be more effective.

try using air of superiority in place of any kind of echo. If you have enough mobs it should get you a recharge or two.

Thank you, everyone. Great suggestions! Aggroing enough enemies was definitely what I was missing. I didn't realize how important that was to keep up my dmg output with Sliver Armor. Without changing any skills, I'm now having good luck with insects in hard mode as long as I fight enough at once.

For now I'm using Glyph of Swiftness, until I can get Glyph of Renewal. I've had Obsidian Flesh in my skill bar, but I'll definitely switch that out for Glyph of Renewal when I'm not around hexes, etc.

For areas where I need Obsidian Flesh, I'm interested in using Echo to copy Sliver Armor, but if I changed my secondary to mesmer, what skill could replace Protective Spirit? The build seems to hinge on that skill. Is there an alternative I don't know about?

I'd been using Aftershock to augment dmg from Sliver Armor. What do you think of this as an alternative to Teinai's Crystals/Crystal Wave or Obsidian flame? It recharges faster than one and doesn't cause exhaustion like the other...

It appears it would be a problem to try to farm Kournans (such as the Acolytes) with a 330 ele since I think some of them have attack interrupts...any suggestions for another farming build I should look into, one that could tackle them? If an ele can't farm Kournans, what profession do you like to use for that?

Once again, thanks for the input and the willingness to help!

Quote: