Guild Wars 2

i’ve been thinking about how to make use of the new “crit immune” earth attunement,
earth skills deal rather low damage, and condi eles simply don’t do aswell as other condi classes, but then it hit me, CONJURES!

lightning hammer, FGS and frostbow (5/4 combo) all hit like a truck,
the only problem is that eles up until now have been getting crit to death in seconds,
but with this new trait will eles be able to more reliably go toe to toe with melee classes?

the build i had planned is something like this (with the empty slot in earth being left for the crit immune trait)
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k3d;2BJVW0C5Z0kY0;9;49TT;01;054A52;5Sk0;3sV2DsV2D5BE

10% bonus damage within 600 of target (thats always with a lightning hammer)
20% bonus damage vs stunned foes (frostbow 5/4 combo)
10% bonus damage when endurance is full (might not be up all the time, but it helps)
20% bonus damage vs targets below 33%hp

and all of that is on a crit immune character!
with the right runes and amulet you could probably get a decent amount of hp
(though i’ll be trying full zerker first)

i anticipate this to be a hellishly fun build for hotjoin,
though we’ll have to wait and see how it performs in tournaments

what does everyone think about the new traits?
are there any builds you are looking forward to trying?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

You seriously think you will land frostbow 5 on any living being? And what do you do after a frostbow 4 and your opponent is alive? Pelt them with frostbow arrows for 400 damage? Tickle them with earth attunement autoattacks?

Zenith.7301:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

You seriously think you will land frostbow 5 on any living being? And what do you do after a frostbow 4 and your opponent is alive? Pelt them with frostbow arrows for 400 damage? Tickle them with earth attunement autoattacks?

It’s not hard to land…

Zenith.7301:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

You seriously think you will land frostbow 5 on any living being? And what do you do after a frostbow 4 and your opponent is alive? Pelt them with frostbow arrows for 400 damage? Tickle them with earth attunement autoattacks?

how about switch to lightning hammer and repeatedly crit them for 3-5ks?
besides, if you do hit them with frostbow 5 they’re pretty much dead anyway :P
works wonders on decap engis and hambow wars!
one shotting a hambow war yesterday was the highlight of my night

Zenith.7301:

You seriously think you will land frostbow 5 on any living being?

You would be surprised how many actually get hit by frostbow 5 in hotjoin.

Its an idea that’s been floating around the ele forums for a bit now. It will probably function ok, but I expect you to fold quite easily while using a summoned weapon, unless you swap out to use some of your other abilities. And once you swap, you lose your summons (the whole basis of your build). The cast time is longer than a simple weapon/attunement swap, as is bending over to pick up the 2nd summons.

That said, it could be interesting, certainly fun for a change of pace. I would recommend changing your fire trait – you won’t need the additional charges most likely. (Well, I would build it somewhat differently to be honest, but building around summons and Earth XIII is interesting).

TLDR: The new trait still won’t give you enough survival to rock summoned weapons the entire time.

Also – why is this in spvp forum and not the ele forum?

Sampo.9678:

Zenith.7301:

You seriously think you will land frostbow 5 on any living being?

You would be surprised how many actually get hit by frostbow 5 in hotjoin.

It’s not just hot join…

Whit.2385:

Also – why is this in spvp forum and not the ele forum?

Answer: This could affect the sPvP meta.

@ OP: I could definitely see something like this becoming a strong option. There’s definitely some value in something like this for team fights. I’m just glad that the FGS teleport is getting nerfed.

Whit.2385:

Also – why is this in spvp forum and not the ele forum?

ah i was thinking more about pvp hotjoin fun, i’ve recently been playing with a water conjure build (for the 20% more damage vs vulnerability) in hotjoin and its been great,
but VERY squishy.
so the idea of taking on warriors and thieves with crit immunity really got me excited

besides, the pvp forum could use some chilled post patch theories and build idea sharing,
i figure its a nice break from the usual rage and cursing

Dahkeus.8243:

Whit.2385:

Also – why is this in spvp forum and not the ele forum?

Answer: This could affect the sPvP meta.

I respect your hopefulness, but I strongly disagree. This will be a fun option, but not change anything in any significant way. As it stands, conjures are fun, but I just cannot see them being viable, as crits are not the only reason eles melt. Maybe I will be proved wrong, which is ok too.

Liewec.2896:

Whit.2385:

Also – why is this in spvp forum and not the ele forum?

ah i was thinking more about pvp hotjoin fun, i’ve recently been playing with a water conjure build (for the 20% more damage vs vulnerability) in hotjoin and its been great,
but VERY squishy.
so the idea of taking on warriors and thieves with crit immunity really got me excited

besides, the pvp forum could use some chilled post patch theories and build idea sharing,
i figure its a nice break from the usual rage and cursing

Fair enough – I just don’t consider hotjoin much of anything – less than even the mini-game that teamqueue is. Sorry, just my opinion. In there, conjures are already viable, knock yourself out, they can be a lot of fun.

Whit.2385:

crits are not the only reason eles melt.

thats very true, but lets not forget, to get the crit immune trait we’re going deep in the earth tree, you’ll have 2300 armour in zerker gear,
this is more damage reduction than a zerker war/guard with their heavy armour

throw in some toughness/vit runes (plus being crit immune) and you could see ele survivability that has been alien to us until now.

also we have ether renewal to fully clear conditions every 15 seconds.
or if conditions get to tough drop your conjure weapon and cast magnetic wave, another 3 cures.

hitting 50% health gives you protection and stability
scepter 2 offers an extra 250 toughness for 30 seconds (that persists with a conjure)
focus 5 also gives you a 4 second invulnerable

i really do have high hopes for decent survival rates

agreed OP I am also nerdgasming over the potential. I probably will not try to use 4 at a time, that’s a bit ‘little kid’ but definitely 2

You will have the toughness, I will grant you that. I will also remain open and test it once “soon” comes.

That said, here are the problems I see with it:

- Conditions, as you rightfully mentioned. Yes, Earth focus is powerful – but anytime you drop your conjure, you lose much of your viability. (Granted, a swap to fire followed by a typical rotation will still hit hard, but you will have to time out 12seconds before getting back into earth again. Might work out ok.)

Regardless, it’s not just clearing a stack of condis once you collect enough to hurt – its that a single immobilize will wreck you – you have a handful of choices:
1) Sit and tank the follow-up (which could be quite bad)
2) Drop conjure, do a condi clear, and pickup/recast new conjure.
3) Ether Feast and hope you are not interrupted (to be fair, same problem anytime you use EF, and a decent ele will recognize how to use it effectively with LOS and/or luck)
4) Slot Cleansing Fire. This along with EF might be enough (and then focus for further anti-condi if pressured). Would buy you a nice clear while using a conjure though.

Stuns, KBs, and KDs will also hurt, but, perhaps less so than they do as is due to the crit + toughness. Still, I am not sold on simply the ‘no crit’ saving us.

I have ran a hybrid build in WvW based on 30/10/30/0/0 already, and it was initially conceived being built around Earth Shield. It still just felt a bit too clunky to be useful, and still very squishy. Conjures seem neat on paper, but in practice they just work out to be fairly awkward. Maybe I am just too used to jumping around the attunements for the right spells though.

While we are discussing ideas, I am more excited about Blinding Ashes, that could provide a bit more survival to a full glass build potentially. Earth XIII may be interesting though.

Zenith.7301:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

You seriously think you will land frostbow 5 on any living being? And what do you do after a frostbow 4 and your opponent is alive? Pelt them with frostbow arrows for 400 damage? Tickle them with earth attunement autoattacks?

You can blink while charging it. You can get it off after a gale… It’s actually pretty easy, relative to the requirements of landing anything as an ele.

@OP that struck me as a possible way of using the trait too. From looking at your trait setup the first think I would change is to add Zephyr’s Boon to the master tier trait in air, as it’ll be a useful source of fury (fire 5+Lighting hammer leap finisher + tempest defense).

The clear weakness here would be no condition removal however. This is why 0/10/30/30/0 might see more action, as cleansing water is going to be vital for dealing with condi pressure.

The best use for heart of stone is in a burst ele setup (it might work in a bunker, but I’m scepticle).
Anyways, the dps spec ends up being a bursty, anti-burst setup.
You use heart of stone as cover from an enemies spike (even if you are CC’d), and with the ‘protection on swap to earth’… you can shrug off some of the hardest spikes enemies will throw at you, before you kitten the kitten out of them.

Yeup….
Anyways, he’s making a more long term zerker-ele… necro’s will kitten on you.
You won’t be able to touch a ranger.
You have to pray to land ice 5 against a thief or lose….
Any conjure short of ice-bow WILL always be a wasted slot.

garethh.3518:

Any conjure short of ice-bow WILL always be a wasted slot.

i love lightning hammer for hotjoin fun, it hits hard, 3-5k with auto attack hits.
and nopes, not a missclick, i was getting all the precision i could,
with lightning hammer it ends up being around 75% crit chance.
but thats just my playstyle preference, alot of people will prefer defensive cooldowns

I’d like to see how can you just autoattack people with at best 15k hp as they autoattack you back for similar amounts. Because thief sword auto easily hits for 2.5-3k autoattacks, and they can lock you down with pistolwhip.

There’s a rather large hole in the theory: Critical hits, while substantial, aren’t the only source of damage you’d face. Elementalists still have a a relatively low innate armor rating. Also, consider that if you try to maintain a single attunement, you’re essentially reducing your available skills by 75%. This means you forgo secondary healing capabilities of water attunement, you forgo any boons you would be constantly receiving from cycling through your attunements, etc… That’s not how an ele is intended to be played. And frankly, it’s not effective.

I still feel the trait is very useful. To be able to F3 to avoid crits when targeted is incredibly advantageous, and will probably make Eles a bit more annoying to encounter. (Especially for the perma crit burst warriors with their new and improved sigils of intelligence.)

Your build is creative, but it’s a little too gimmicky to actually be a viable solution for an Elementalist. There are too many holes in it.

Zenith.7301:

I’d like to see how can you just autoattack people with at best 15k hp as they autoattack you back for similar amounts. Because thief sword auto easily hits for 2.5-3k autoattacks, and they can lock you down with pistolwhip.

I think the OP stated this idea was for hotjoin only… in which case any build flies.

But valid point – LH autos basically will bring you up to par with some other classes autos. That’s the other downside to conjures… They’re really only good for their utility, and that’s about it – so aoe/deep freeze on frost bow, KB/KD/Stun on Lightning Hammer, blast finisher/fire fields on Lava Axe, and blocks/invuln on Earth Shield. FGS is decent, but then.. it’s an elite. So the question is – what do you do when you’ve used them for their utility? Autoattack…? It’s a respectable AA on LH, but everything else is crap (minus FGS).

I’ve tried using LH in pvp some, and at the end of it all, I just felt like a very weak hammer warrior… I don’t think that the trait will change that. HS + natural toughness + cleansing ire + stances is far far greater than being immune to crits.

I think the issue with conjures, regardless of build, is that they will always fall into the same problem. If they are used as a core to the build, then they remove a significant advantage eles have – options. If they are used simply for their utilities and then discarded, then it does not make sense creating a build based solely on conjures.

You seriously think you will land frostbow 5 on any living being?

its much easy than you think. just wait when your foe use 2-dodge and land it, 7/10 you get it. also tp while casting helps a lot.

OneManArmy.9732:

You seriously think you will land frostbow 5 on any living being?

its much easy than you think. just wait when your foe use 2-dodge and land it, 7/10 you get it. also tp while casting helps a lot.

also use frostbow 3 which applies multiple stacks of chill, it makes it alot easier to land your one hit combo