Fire Elementalist Equipment help.

OK, so i am aware there are 100's of threads on this topic, unfortuanately, i don't understand any of the abbrv. so they are gobbledegook to me. While i don't have much resourses atm, i would like to know what i should be aiming for. So, what weapons, armour, focus etc should i be looking out for, why, and where? Many many thanks guys.

Any armor, as long as it is max will serve you fine.

For insignias go with Blessed or Survivors or Radiants, depending on preference. Blessed will give you more armor. Survivor more health. Radiant more energy. If you are doing Normal Mode, it doesn't matter all too much. In Hard Mode, Survivor and Blessed are more useful as they up your survivability.

Consider also getting a Rune of Superior Fire Magic, which adds a hefty boost to your fire spells. Other runes you should get is Rune of Minor Energy Storage, and vitae/attunement runes. All of these can be bought at a Rune Trader.

Generally with fire, assuming you go a standard build, a 40/40 casting set is the best you have, as it allows you to cast and recharge your spells faster than any other itemset. An example of this is Droknar's Fire Scepter and Droknar's Fire Focus, which you can obtain for probably around 10k if you look for it in Spamadan.

EDIT: Sorry, totally forgot about Vigor Runes. These are critical. Buy whichever you can afford, with Major Vigor being the best deal, usually.

In general, an Elementalist (and indeed most casters) should have:
1. A 40/40 set in their chosen attribute: This is a Wand and Focus combination, each with a 20% Half Cast Time and a 20% Half Recharge mod for the item's attribute.
2. A shield set. This would be a shield with a fortitude (+30 hp) mod and usually a spear (or other one handed martial weapon) with a fortitude mod. You swap to this when under heavy attack.

Other options an Ele might want to consider are:
3. An enchanting set. This is any weapon set that has a 20% Enchantment duration mod; e.g. a Spear with that mod, or perhaps ideally a staff with the 2 20% HCT mods and the 20% Enchantment Wrapping (called a 40/20/20 staff? A staff has an innate 20% HSR to all spells). This is used when casting your Attunements (hardly necessary).
4. A high energy set. Another Wand and Focus combo that utilises the "+15 energy, -1 energy regen' mods on both weapons for a total of +42 energy. Again, certainly not necessary and its use is limited.


For armour, either run Survivor's (+hp) or Blessed (+10 armour when enchanted) Insignia; you're almost always under an attunement and prot when you need it. After that, get the highest Vigor rune you can (Superior is expensive but is +50hp, Major is much cheaper and +41hp and the Minor is pretty cheap and +30hp). Then pick either a Major or Superior rune of your chosen attribute and stick that on your headpiece. Finish off with an Energy Storage rune somewhere on your armour and fill up the rest with Vitae runes (+10hp).


People will debate a lot on Superior vs Major vs Minor attribute runes.
When H/Hing, you'll be fine if your health is above 500 (henchmen are stuck at 480 and so are preferable targets for the AI). Full Survivor's gives +40hp, meaning it and three Vitae runes will more than negate the -75hp from the Superior rune and you still have the Vigor rune on top.
If you run full Blessed insignia, you'll only have the two Vitae runes and the Vigor rune. If you can afford the Superior Vigor rune then running a single Survivor insignia on the headpieces (I recommend this regardless) will just fully negate the health losses.
If you cannot afford the Superior Vigor then either hold off on a Superior attribute (stick with Major) or stick with Survivor's.

I do recommend however that you buy two full armour sets - one with Survivor's and one with Blessed. You wear the Blessed most of the time and if Death Penalty ever starts to stack up, you swap to the Survivor set. If you can only buy one set, stick with the Survivor's for the time being.

As a general rule, do not get Radiant. There's only one Ele build that can make use of Radiant and even then, it's not that necessary (it's limited to Ether Renewal builds that utilise Protective Bond). You already have Energy Storage and weapon set energy boosts, there's no need for extra energy when health and armour are available.
The same applies to Runes of Attunement.

Im really missing the must have vigor rune here, and if you go with a sup ele rune, i suggest using a sup vigor as make up hp.

I would suggest (being a long time Ele myself), that instead of focusing on just fire, That you focus on the whole Ele package. There are many times when Fire alone wont cut it. Versatility is one of the Benefits of the Ele and you should take advantage of that. Sometimes Water or Earth magic is better suited for whatever your going up against. It's fine to still have fire as your primary goal but don't neglect the others as well. Since your on a Budget I would use the following gear so your not swapping out "perfect" setups every time you need to change spell focus.

I would do the following:

Head Gear = Energy Storage + Rune of Minor Energy storage + Radiant Insignia
Chest = Rune of Superior Fire (if you want fire to still be your main) + Survivor Insignia (+15 on the chest)
Arms = Rune of Minor Earth + Radiant Insignia
Legs = Rune of Minor Water + Survivor Insignia (+10 on legs)
Feet = Rune Of Major Vigor (recommended) Or Minor Air Magic + Radiant Insignia

Once you complete one Campaign you can pick up a very nice Staff for free at the end Like Staff of the Forgotten or whatever.

When you do come into a pile of Money you can think about making 4 Specialized Armors to swap out for each element which will eventually serve you better in the end.

Finally don't neglect Energy Storage. Having a Big Pot of Energy to reach deep into will go along way. It also allows you to not worry so much about some of the better skills, which cause exhaustion, since your pool is big enough to handle it.

Ok, now granted I've only been playing since October, but my toon is an elementalist and it's honestly the only profession I'd feel even remotely qualified to comment on.

And the first thing that comes to mind when reading this is just plain bafflement.

I can't understand the logic of wasting space on chest, glove, leg & boot pieces with runes for all of the elements. Especially in conjunction with a Superior attribute rune knocking out 75hp and necessitating some creative rune/insignia usage to make up for it.

While I will often carry a spell from a second elemental line for one reason or another... inflicting cracked armor, snaring, burning, whatever... I'm also never without the ability to add points into that attribute to get the skill up to where I need for that particular build.

The layout proposed makes ZERO sense to me. It's wasting space on the armor for more useful bonuses - like to health or armor or even to energy (though if an elementalist is dependent on an extra couple of points from a Radiant or Attunement, I'm thinking there are bigger issues at play).

The cheap AND logical armoring of an elementalist is to have 4 head pieces and one chest, glove, leg & boots. Fire head piece with a Superior Fire, earth with a Superior Earth, air with a Superior Air, water with a Superior Water. Then you only need to swap out ONE piece to accommodate your build. Toss a Minor Energy on the gloves or boots and you've always got an extra pip in energy.

If and when you've got the money to buy additional pieces, get a second glove or boot and put something else on it besides the Minor Energy, and then get an energy headpiece with a Superior Energy added to it. But really - how often is a newer elementalist going to need to truck around with that? I only just used my Energy headpiece for the first time a couple of weeks ago when I decided to turn myself into an SoS rit to try farming... my elements were unnecessary for that build, but the extra energy helped. Otherwise, I've never once used (or needed) that headpiece... and it's extremely rare that I find myself having to hang back and let my energy recharge... with +12 on my focus and 13 pips in Energy... I'm walking around with a max energy of 81... and if I'm needing to spread my points around for a special build, I can snag 1 pip out of Energy and not even notice the loss.

Now that I've got the money to spend on it, I could get extra gloves, each with a Minor *Element* on it... that way if I am carrying skills from more than one element, I can swap out my gloves. So if I'm carrying a fire build with a single water snare, I'm wearing my Superior Fire headpiece (+3+1 in fire) and tossing on my Minor Water gloves (+1 in water)... and I'm STILL not blowing tons of money on multiple complete sets of armor and full runes/insignia for them all. That would be a total waste of my limited gold resources.

The armor setup I've been using almost since I first learned about runes/insignia goes like this...

Headpiece - one for each attribute (Fire +1, Earth +1, Air +1, Water +1, or Energy +1) with the appropriate Superior *Attribute* (+3/-75hp) Rune & Blessed Insignia (+10AL)

Chest - Blessed Insignia (+10AL) and Superior Vigor Rune (+50hp)

Gloves - Survivor Insignia (+5hp) and Minor Energy Rune (+1)

Legs - Survivor Insignia (+10hp) and Vitae Rune (+10hp)

Boots - Survivor Insignia (+5hp) and Vitae Rune (+10hp)

That more than makes up for the -75hp hit I take by using a Superior *Element*, and I'm getting the extra armor (while enchanted - and I'm always enchanted unless it's stripped, and then you can bet I'm getting that enchantment back on fast) on the two spots I'm getting hit most often - my head and my chest. The couple of extra points in max energy I'd get carrying a Radiant or Attunement or two just isn't worth it compared to the boost to my health and armor.

I have no interest in storing multiple sets of armor that I don't really need... by only swapping out my headpieces, I save myself space AND money. And since the only time I seem to die is when everyone else in my party is dying too - usually from over-aggro'ing - it works for me. Your mileage may vary, but I am strongly against the idea that an elementalist should be wasting space on runes for elements they aren't currently using... and I'm just as against the idea that an elementalist needs multiple full sets of armor to be effective.

There is a middle ground, and it centers around the headpieces.

Don't worry about any of this, just adventure naked.

Unless you're up in the Shiverpeaks areas. Brrrrrrrr..



:-)

Well said.

I have a number of armor sets, but just for the looks. All but one of them are set up roughly as you describe, though I prefer Survivor on all pieces. (The one exception is a Geomancer set used for certain farming builds.)

You can also use a semi-generic weapon set based on a caster spear and an assortment of focuses (one for each element) that you can switch when you switch headgear. This will be sufficient for most PvE, and you can worry later about getting 40/40 sets, staves, and whatever other sets strike your fancy for each element. Switching sets while in combat is not something you normally need to worry about in PvE.

Actually, the legs are 2/8 chance, the head is only 1/8.


For armor I'd advise to either go full blessed or full survivor (I'd go for blessed). The whole "I'll put blessed on the pieces I'm getting hit half of the time" is not very logical IMO, you'll never know which hit will have the benefit of the additional armor.

Personally I have 2 head pieces of each element, one with a minor rune and one with a superior rune of the corresponding element.

The rest of my armor has a superior vigor and two vitae runes.

That leaves one armor piece, the piece with a minor energy storage rune. I have another of this armor piece with a vitae rune for when I go with an energy storage head piece.

THANK YOU for pointing that out! I kept finding conflicting information on that when I was setting up my armor and so I basically went with the thought, "if I were to be shot IRL, would I rather it be my head or my legs that were protected?" LOL Can you tell me where to look to find how that's calculated? I obviously missed something.


I think your reasoning is sound... I went with the combo because a lot of what I read said an elementalist health should be 500... but there was no way for me to do that (or get close) without adding in the Survivors, and even at that, my health is 495. Since my sets are either 40/40 or High Energy, I'm not getting any health bonus off my weapons unless I shift to spear/shield mid-battle for the extra help. But that's also one of the things I'm still learning about/learning to do... and I'm not there yet. LOL

I've also only just begun really doing more in HM (in Proph & EotN so far). What I've used so far has been sufficient for NM but I know there are changes I'm having to make to deal with HM and I'm still learning what those are. I figure the OP is in the same boat I was - not a lot of money to spend, still new, still only doing NM stuff - and those were the relevant issues when I did my armor.

Sometimes going into HM feels like starting over from scratch. LOL

Here is a link to the wiki page for Damage Calculation. About half way down the page are the Hit Location figures. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Damage_calculation

Lol, or you can just click on Hit Location in the page's index.

I wouldn't worry too much about using radiant, as that's what you have the energy storage attribute line for combined with energy management (elemental attunement) skills. Blessed is fine until you start running into mesmers and necromancers in hard mode that will strip the enchantment as soon as you cast it, leaving your armour without the boost. If you can, go for elemental resistance (pyromancer, geomancer etc) sets, and wear the one appropriate for the enemies that you'll find in wherever you're adventuring. For similar reasons, stalwarts works well if you'll encounter physical-heavy enemies.

That is a catastrophe. Where to begin?

You won't be running 4 elements at the same time. Ever. I have yet to see a single build with 4 elements that doesn't suck. (Master of Magic only pumps attributes to 12 by the way.)

Staff of the Forgotten is another catastrophe since it is a +20 energy staff with +30HP. The only staves you want for a fire ele are 36/20 , which is 2 halves cast time mods (Adept staff head + aptitude not attitude) and 20% halves skill recharge (innate to staves). Otherwise you just roll in 20/20 wand and focus.

Energy storage is the 3rd catastrophe. You don't pump it unless you have points left over or are using skills specifically needing it. For example, Glowing Gaze would warrant maybe 10 ranks in energy storage, 12 if you feel any more inclined.

Having played ele longer (and more) than almost anyone here in the this thread (since WPE 2004 beta) I have to say that what I quoted above is utterly wrong.

You want Blessed Insignias. If you're running Ether Renewal then you have
that + a whole bar of enchants. If not, you have attunements. If you run 2 elements use prismatic.

Runes:
Head: +1 Fire Headgear with superior Fire magic , +1 Air Headgear with Superior air, +1 earth headgear with superior earth, +1 Water Headgear with minor water for PvP
Chest: Vigor you can afford (a minor is given in Nightfall by the way)
Hands: minor Energy storage or Vitae
Legs: Vitae
Feet: Vitae

Armor is locational, not additive. Chest --> Legs --> Head/Feet --> hands is the highest to lowest hit chance. Hands is technically the same chance as hands and feet but not when you are moving around (since arrows hit head/feet usually).

That puts you at 480+30+20-75=455 or 466 if you run Major Vigor. Staying in a shield set with +30HP mod puts you at 496 which is more than henches' 480. If you are afraid, just run Major fire the loss of ~20 damage at most isn't that bad, even in PvP people run Major Fire. You'll have to do 12/10/8 split rather than 11/10/10 or 11/11/8 for 15 Fire but it's not a big deal.

The key thing is if you aren't casting, stay in spear/sword + shield set. No point in letting the monsters see 70 armor rather than 75 or 83.

Survivor is crap unless you have so much armor that any more reduces like 1-5 damage (aka. Save Yourselves! on 2-3 physicals in your team). I proved it myself by running around with Survivor's and Superior Vigor + full vitae except for headgear with +1 attribute (energy storage rune or earth/air). Got shattered? Put up Aura of Restoration. It's on 12 cooldown.

You don't want a larger energy pool. If you want/need more energy you can just swap to a high energy set with +15 energy, -1 energy regeneration. You can get 72 energy on a Necro, monk, ritualist or mesmer when you have two such mods one on focus and one on wand. That's the same as 10 ranks in energy storage.

The caveat here is energy storage must be pumped to 9 or so for Glyph of Lesser energy to reduce 15 energy cost. Also if you use Aura of restoration then you need it to be 8 energy storage. If you're running Ether Renewal then you want to pump energy storage because you are running 12 in Energy storage and 12 in protection prayers.

The best skills don't cause exhaustion (and if they do, not that much). Searing Flames - Glowing Gaze, Blinding Surge, Deep Freeze, Invoke Lightning, Mind Blast - Rodgort's Invocation, Ether Renewal, Lightning Orb.

Also, 20/20 wand and focus is easy to come by. The wands aren't available at collector's but focii are.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_...lector_weapons
For wands, go to http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Telamon or http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Gertrud
The alternative is to get http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Droknar%27s_Scepter or http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hajkor%27s_Flame .

By the way you weren't looking hard enough:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/b...t10314574.html

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/a...t10419956.html

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guide...n_elementalist <-- outdated

http://www.guildwiki.org/Effective_elementalist_guide <-- outdated

Under what to avoid: "Considering Energy Storage a form of energy management. Elementalists need energy management skills just as much as other caster classes."

For PvE, Normal Mode, this guy's not far off. If the OP is just doing PvE in NM, all this stuff about "shield sets" and "caster sets" is just overkill. It's an approach to the game that comes from PvP, but it's really not necessary. At best, all that stuff results in you completing a quest/mission in 9.8 minutes instead of 10.

For a PvE Elementalist, pick an element or elements you like and run with it (them). Put Survivor Insignias on your head, hands, and feet, and Radiants on chest and legs. A Major Rune of the appropriate attribute (on the appropriate headpiece), a Minor Energy Storage (or a Major if you can't afford the Minor), a mix of Vitae and/or Attunement, and the best Vigor you can afford.
Get a staff with the appropriate attribute and give it the mods you think will help - I'd recommend an Insightful Head, a Fortitude wrapping, and a HST Inscription. (Or Adept Head, and +5e^50 Inscription)

Provided that your gear and build don't absolutely suck, and you have some well equipped Heroes (or even just Henchmen) you should do fine in PvE Normal Mode. By the time you finish a campaign and can do Hard Mode, you'll have a good idea of what improvements you could make. Even then, there's no need to get anal about things until some of the very "top" endgame content.

IMO, and having played and ele for around 5 years (not with the intensity of some, but enough to become relatively competent I hope), though equipment/stats will help, as long as you realise that you are squishy and learn to target/kite appropriately, you should do fine!

Personally, unless I'm 330/Earth farming I wear the same armour with mixed Radiant/blessed/vitae/attunement all the time and simply swap headpieces depending on what I'm doing. As I PvE most of the time, 90% of the game I'll be wearing a superior earth or fire headpiece. The exception would be a superior ES when setup as a SoS spammer.

As for equipment, I can understand sets/swapping in PvP. In PvE, I get by fine with +20% ench with recharge/cast % staffs.

I don't claim that this is an absolute recipe for success, but it's worked for me through Legendary Vanquisher and Guardian

Thanks Darcy... I kept searching for "chance to hit." I don't know why that phrase stuck in my head as being the best way to find the information - especially since it obviously wasn't. LOL

I swear I have a mental blind spot whenever it comes to finding information about damage calculations. I never seem to find them on my own until some kind soul comes along and says, "right here, under your nose... it would have bit you if you were any closer." *laughing*

When I first read the OP's post, shortly after it was made, I sat down to write a response and unfortunately had to go take care of something else offline before I could finish. Then when I came back to it later, I saw the post about mixing elements and dove right in to responding to that.

I wish I'd stuck to writing my original response. I'm going to toss it in here now because it's become even more relevant.

The first thing the OP needs to know is this:

Everyone who has ever played an elementalist for any length of time has their own ideas about how to best play an elementalist. And as you can see from the responses, those ideas are rarely (if ever) the same. We're all convinced we know the best way to do it, and if a thread is left to go long enough, we'll get into some passionate and even heated debates about who is right and who is wrong. Spend any time reading the profession-specific forums and you'll see that pattern repeated, time and again, no matter the profession... it's not just us eles doing it. LOL

Ultimately - it's going to be a matter of personal tastes. Hard as it may be for you to believe right now, R3BORN, in a very short time you too will have your own passionate opinions about what is the best armor/weapon set up, what the best skills are, how best to assign your attribute points, etc. And if you stick around Guru long enough, you'll be here posting those passionate opinions in response to some other guy/gal asking for help... and arguing with the rest of us about what's best. *chuckling*

I can tell you what worked for me until I'm blue in the face... I can drag you out into the explorable areas and show you how effective "my" way is... I can make a video demonstrating how uber awesome I am (if I ever actually become uber awesome LOL)... I can sit here and argue game mechanics and damage calculations and whatever else (if I understood the math LOL) - but ultimately, that doesn't mean ANY of what works for me is truly going to work for you... and here's why:

Individual player style changes everything. If a player happens to be the type to go rushing in unprepared to a roomful of bosses... nothing "I" do in "my" builds is going to help them survive any better. Leroy is going to die if he plays "my" way, and I couldn't even begin to come up with a way to help him play. *laughing*

In my own case, there's a lot of people who very successfully incorporate the Assassin's Promise skill into their gameplay as an elementalist. Me? I can't do it. There's something about the methodology of using that effectively that is just beyond my ability while in a battle. It's an amazing skill, and the builds people have made with it are awesome and obviously very successful for thousands of players... but they just don't work for me, for my gaming style, for how my brain works. So I have to find other ways to succeed in the game, ways that fit me.

You will as well. We all do.

If you read an interesting suggestion, try it out! See how it works for you. Try it a few times... it rarely works 100% right the first time you try it, so give it a chance, give yourself a chance. One of the things I love about GW is that "failure" isn't permanent. If you mess something up the first or second (or tenth) time, it's ok... you can always go back and try again. You don't have to worry that your chance has passed.

Just have fun. Play the game, and worry about "playing it right" only once you have a personal idea of what defines "right." At the end of the day, you're the only one you have to answer to... so just have fun with it!

This is ridiculously bad advice.
If you're on a budget, pick an element that's not Water Magic. Buy the headpiece for that element and stick the Superior/Major Rune on that headpiece.
Use that build to do stuff and buy a second headpiece with a different attribute.
Repeat.

Yea thanks everyone for tearing me to shreds I get the point we can move on now...Jesus

My point is that Pve is super easy anyway and I was simply illustrating if the Op didn't want to buy new Armour pieces he could run all the different ele runes and it wouldn't hurt anything.

I Run this because I like to swap builds up a lot and almost always H/H and I don't have Issues. I even Vanq in that setup without problems so obviously blowing it up to be "catastrophic" is humorous at best. Lighten up. The games really not that hard. It's one thing to look at something and cry foul, but try using it and then tell me how horrible it is or how much I'm gonna fail in it. I suppose I can't stand in the middle of a mob and tank in that armor but you shouldn't be doing that as an ele anyway

The armor set up simple allowed for easy switching of builds without swapping Armor.

As far as the guy freaking about energy storage, again, you can never have too much energy so seriously calm down. It's not the end of the world if you don't run the supreme setup according to Hoyle. As the other guy said you can probably run naked and it wouldn't matter a whole lot.

Finally this thread should probably be posted in the ele forum anyway.

While not the answer i asked for, it was ultimately the one i needed. Thank you grizzly. Currently trying to get Hajkor's flame from him (not going well lol), and getting Droknar's focus.

LOL Drok's focus was my first piece of what ultimately became my 40/40 fire set! I managed to cobble together the wand from an inscribable one that dropped, a wand wrap of memory I salvaged off something else and an Aptitude Not Attitude inscription that was on something else. I am slowly (VERY slowly) piecing together other 40/40 sets for my other elements, just through pieces I'm salvaging off of other drops. It's slow going. I have all of my wand wraps, all of my wands, two of my foci, two of my cores, and several non-max-but-close inscriptions. As I said... slooooowwwww going! LOL

I have a good friend I trust (meaning I KNOW she wouldn't "run off" with my money/crafting items) who has offered to buy the wands/foci I need from the crafters in Factions, but I promised myself that I would "earn" my sets, either by cobbling them together from drops and such or by reaching the crafters in Factions myself. At this point, it's looking like I'm going to reach the crafters first... the cobbling hasn't gone that well. *chuckling* I'm sure it seems silly to some to not just take advantage of my friend's willingness to help me, but it's almost like it became a matter of pride for me... part of my personal sense of accomplishment within the game.

Of course, you know what's going to happen? I'm going to be doing the mission that will lead me to the outpost with the crafters... and suddenly all of my drops will be perfect foci, perfect mods, perfect inscriptions. And the Universe will laugh heartily at me. *grinning*

Reaching Gertrud and Telamon should really be done before you start trying to work on perfect gear.
Completing the campaigns in NM isn't such an arduous task that you need the best gear.