Water Magic?

Hello everyone,

I've got a pretty good handle on fire, air, and earth magic, but a good water build continues to elude me. I always find myself running out of energy, not doing very much damage, and throwing slow hexes at things that weren't moving very fast to start with. I know people play water eles; I see water haloes all the time. Would you water magic adepts out there kindly take a moment and put up your favorite water magic builds and/or describe your playstyle? I am almost exclusively a PvE player, but the one time I tried to use water magic in a PvP setting, I had all the same trouble I had in PvE. Clearly, I'm missing something, because Rains of Terror are a whole lot more trouble than Ruby Djinns ever thought of being. Thanks in advance for your suggestions and advice.

I think most of the water halos you see are of Ele runners.

I've played it a few times...Maelstrom+deep freeze is a good combo, but if you want to do AoE damage, may as well just go fire...Dual attunes, Mael+Deep, and that one spell that does a ridiculous amt of damage to unenchanted foes are what I normally take. Maybe take shatterstone and GoLE...I hope in the new expansion, the water line gets buffed a little.

Rains of Terrors seem to have higher attributes then 16, water magic is move of a PvP thing used to hinder enemy movement. The most important thing with water magic is that you don't spam aoe hexes as they will suck up your energy like a energy sucking hoover. Oh and glyph of lesser energy is always nice with deep freeze.

It feels like Water could stand a buff for dmg in pve, but as we can all see in Observer mode it's the Water Ele's that are preferred, just for the snares. [skill]Water Trident[/skill] is the Elite of choice and the only Elite I saw those Ele's use, with only one other opting for [skill]Icy Shackles[/skill]. Snares are just very powerful tools in pvp and by themselves will keep the enemy monks busy as hell spamming their anti-hexes. If you couple that with more dmg dealing spells then it's easy to see how the line can get overpowered. Even now, I think [skill]Ice Spear[/skill] is the most powerful spammable Ele skill even though it's half range, and [skill]Vapor Blade[/skill] is the most powerful spike. But in pve where you'll most often find more than 8 enemies in aggro, Water loses it's allure because short of [skill]Deep Freeze[/skill] at 25 energy you can't snare all the baddies, and if you couple that with the only other good dmg skills in Water you're likely to have a real energy problem short of dual attuning and bringing along GoLE to boot.

Even so, in my all Ele Tombs groups I bring along a snaring Water Trident Ele to catch the breakaways. I use Water myself most anywhere in the Fire Islands just to,..well just to use Water somewhere >.< . It has it's uses, and it's fun to switch elements instead of using the same build all the time.

try [skill]glyph of energy[/skill] with some of your spells... [skill]Maelstrom[/skill] or [skill]Deep Freeze[/skill] and GoLE... you dont really even need water attunement... you spam some nice spells... try ice spikes --> freezing gust... freezing gust is a great skill in general... so is blurred vision

what build are you using now?
(note some of my skills are shifted towards pve only play... dont flame me )

Water is primarily snares and debuffs, neither of which is all that useful to be specced to 16 in for PvE.

There's some nice utility in there, if you happen to have some spare slots.

[skill]deep freeze[/skill] is an awesome snare. There's no reason to use it with something worthless like maelstrom either, a deep freeze + savannah heat + searing heat combo will pretty much kill anything.

[skill]blurred vision[/skill] Is nice if you're looking to add a little anti-melee power into a build. Think of it like ward v. melee, but you don't have to rely on your team being intelligent.

[skill]rust[/skill] Is actually really nice in the right situation. If anything uses healing signet, or any other signet, this is about the best shutdown you can ask for. (6 seconds of -40 AL is something to behold, I always used to bring this on my mesmer in RA).

In short, feel free to splash some water in your build in PvE (sorry for the pun), but be very wary of speccing primarily water.

As for PvP, it's more of a 6v6 or 8v8 style of play than for RA, that might be your problem. Water trident and Icy Shackles rock all kinds of faces in an arena where mobility counts for everything

[skill]Water Trident[/skill][skill]Blurred Vision[/skill][skill]Frozen Burst[/skill][skill]Freezing Gust[/skill][skill]Glyph of Lesser Energy[/skill][skill]Glyph of Sacrifice[/skill][skill]Water attunement[/skill][skill]Resurrection Chant[/skill]

or

[skill]Icy Shackles[/skill][skill]Blurred Vision[/skill][skill]Deep Freeze[/skill][skill]Freezing Gust[/skill][skill]Glyph of Lesser Energy[/skill][skill]Glyph of Sacrifice[/skill][skill]Water attunement[/skill][skill]Resurrection Chant[/skill]

These are the 2 bars I've run in the past, though primarily PvP could see SOME use in PvE however I find that water in PvE just doesn't cut it compared to the other elements and their DPS (since PvE doesn't really need you to brings such as snares)

The only water magic skill that would be worthwhile in PvE is [skill]Maelstrom[/skill] or [skill]Deep Freeze[/skill] (as stated to assist your nukes) and these don't require you to spec anything into water magic anyway.

are people still using shaterstone + vapor blade? also i think malestrom is the most powerful skill in the game. other than that its really not that useful for pve, great for gvgs.

Well it's not super optimized but a direct damage build would be this.

Vapor blade
Shatter stone
Free slot
blurred vision
arcane echo
water attunement
Aura of restoration (or free )
Free ( or rez sig )

This of course works best against foes with no enchantments on them.
have the attunement up, then cast arcane echo, fallowed by shatter stone, and then another shatter stone ( witch triggers the damage from the first one ) and then vapor blade. because of the 7 and 8 second recharge and high damage from then both you can pretty much spam them if you bring along another damage spell.

Be warned it's do able, but honestly you can get better DPS by other methods.
it's also feasible damage wise against low armor targets in PvP, but flawed build wise.

I use water as my primary attribute in PvE, and i can tell you that i have no trouble doing damage.

My build: My attributes
Ice Spear Water Magic:15
Mind freeze Energy storage:12
Vapor Blade
frozen burst
Ice spikes
Water attunement
Healing breeze
Rebirth

I love it when there are 3-4 warriors beating on the monk, you snare them and he runs to freedom!(and heals you!)
Most enemies have some kind of defense against fire damage, but few are resisiant to water.
If you really want to see what water can do, homnestly, try it as your primary build for a week. If you still dont like it, maybe you are better of with a different element. Snares are good, and the damage of water ain't to shabby neither.

Best of luck with your build
-Illithen

I use water as Second PvE. My build is quite simple:

Water Magic: 12 (+Sup+Aura)
Energy Storage: 12(+Minor)

Glyph of Elemental Power
Shatterstone
Vapor Blade
Ice Spear
Gaze of Contempt
Armor of Mist
Water Attunement
Res Sig

I just love fighting against e/d, who find out they're not so strong when they're not enchanted

I use water as Second PvE/AB. My build is quite simple:

Water Magic: 12 (+Sup+Aura)
Energy Storage: 12(+Minor)

Glyph of Elemental Power
Shatterstone
Vapor Blade
Ice Spear
Gaze of Contempt
Armor of Mist
Water Attunement
Res Sig

I just love fighting against e/d, who find out they're not so strong when they're not enchanted