Guild Wars 2

I’m pretty casual in my knowledge of classes and traits, so even though i play elementalist the most im still not that comfortable with changing builds.

Anyways one of my wvw friends i pve with told me she was using piercing shards instead of vital striking or stone splinters so she could get 20% damage boost. Since I am lazy and just stick to the meta like a scrub i totally looked over this trait. So my question is in dungeons like ac where everything dies super fast is it a good idea to take piercing shards instead of stone splinters or blasting staff if the boss will die in one ice bow or so.

Piercing shards has two requirements:
- vulnerability,
- IN water attunement.

Generally Taking this take over blasting staff is a bad idea. I guess something like AC where in a very high dps team a single ice storm can kill most bosses it has its niche on a staff ele.
But that is a pretty kittenumption about the strength of the rest of your party – one which is rarely going to occur in practice.

Blasting staff gives you: more hits with MS; easier to keep foe in lava font; bigger area to blast; larger water fields when things go wrong etc..

I personally love taking an SF/LH ele using 54050 due to being able to auto on the LH in water attunement, and getting a lot of extra support out of it over say 66200 SF/LH ( which has slightly higher dps afaik).

It’s good for scepter builds such as 04550 or 55220, could even go 66020 with tempest defence and persisting flames if you want some fury. But I wouldn’t use it in staff builds or dagger focus

Ah makes sense, my group is pretty dam shaky :p

I have only heard of it being used in scepter builds, but i kinda hate those cuz either no need to use lh or lh gets left behind ;_;

anyways thanks i guess ill stick with blasting staff and stone splinters

Nyx.7342:

Ah makes sense, my group is pretty dam shaky :p

I have only heard of it being used in scepter builds, but i kinda hate those cuz either no need to use lh or lh gets left behind ;_;

anyways thanks i guess ill stick with blasting staff and stone splinters

I’m guessing you’re running 64202?

Keep an eye on the vuln, cause you may want to run 66002 for weak spot and tempest if you’re getting good stun uptime. Quick glyphs can also be a real helper for storms or elements(elite). Personal dps difference is minimal, but the vuln makes up for it & is party wide.

So many ifs/buts/maybes in build crafting ;-)

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Nyx.7342:

Ah makes sense, my group is pretty dam shaky :p

I have only heard of it being used in scepter builds, but i kinda hate those cuz either no need to use lh or lh gets left behind ;_;

anyways thanks i guess ill stick with blasting staff and stone splinters

I’m guessing you’re running 64202?

Keep an eye on the vuln, cause you may want to run 66002 for weak spot and tempest if you’re getting good stun uptime. Quick glyphs can also be a real helper for storms or elements(elite). Personal dps difference is minimal, but the vuln makes up for it & is party wide.

So many ifs/buts/maybes in build crafting ;-)

Oh wow im so dumb i just realized that going 66002 is like the same thing as piercing shards since freeze duration is long enough to get a total ice storm -_-

although usually i just run 64202 since vuln isnt an issue and i do fractals mainly but i see what you mean…. yeah -_-

6/4/2/2/0 will give you more dps than 6/4/2/0/2 for both staff and icebow. The drawback is that you may not hit 5 targets as much without blasting staff on your Lava Front and Meteor shower.