Guild Wars 2

Hi folks. I was bored and decided to mess around with build calculator and managed to find a build that utilizes Lightning Hammer for a lovely 100% critical chance and still maintain decent Power.

The build is here

What do you guys reckon would be more DPS? the above build, or standard full zerk with 2.4k~ Power (no BL stacks) and 60-70%~ crit chance?

thanks,

EDIT: Should have mentioned sooner, this would be primarily for PvP/WvW.

Tl;DR: For Teamsituations a 100% critical chance (without any team-buffs) is a serious loss the second the party applies Fury (20% crit chance) Banner of Discipline (170 Precision ~12% crit chance) and/or Spotter (150 Precision ~10% crit chance) For Solo-play I’d use Persisting Flames to give yourself 20% extra critical chance to allow for more Power/Precision in your gear.

The long version
In any Teamsituation it’d be a horrible dps-loss. You miss out on quite a bit of Power for a critical chance you don’t need (any half-decent group has Banner of Discipline (~12% crit chance, for thieves atleast, not 100% sure for Elementalist) and perma-fury (20%, which as an Elementalist is easily kept up 100%) and considering going over 100% has no use, it’d have a lot of wasted Precision that could have been Power. In rare team-situations there could be Spotter aswell, but Warriors (with Banner of Discipline) are a lot more common than Rangers with Spotter in groups (since they also have the ability to add Banner of Strenght, Empower Allies and are overall more common than meta-rangers, in my experience.)

For Soloplay I’m guessing you’d be better off with a 6/x/x/x/x build, giving yourself permanent Fury (20% critical chance) allow you to take atleast Berserker Trinkets/Weapons and still get close to the desired 100% critical chance, like a 6 (II-V-XI) / 6 (VI-X-XII) / 2 (VI) / 0 / 0 set-up (high single target damage through attunement dancing in LH) which with Berserker Weapons, Trinkets, Sharpening Stone along with Assassin Armor and Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash soup still reach the desired 100% critical chance.

Lastly, Rampagers trinkets are a big waste, you apply burning but that’s about it, not worth losing the Ferocity for (especially in a set-up build around 100% crit chance) if you insist on Precision main-stat, go exotic Assassins, how-ever, I’d once again recommend giving yourself 100% fury uptime (it’s not that difficult) and use Berserker Trinkets.

For Maths:
I’m not a math-guru myself, however DEKeys from DnT is. Surely if you ask her for the math calculations, she’d be more than happy to share them. Though her math is generally based on team-situations. In her stickied guide in these forums, she bolded the best armor options per build and for as far as I’m aware she did a lot of testing and calculations.

Tl;DR on DEKeys guide Berserker everything for Scepter + LH for builds with atleast 5 in air, Assassin armor with Berserker Trinkets/Weapons for anything with less than 5 in air. Assuming Ascended Armor, for Exotic, it’s berserker > anything.

Why would you go to such extreme (talking about the full assasin gears)? Even in a worst pug group possible where you have no spotter/discipline banner, you should aim for a decent self-supply of fury (+20% crit chance?). Lightning hammer once equipped also gives 180 extra precision!

You should go with DEKeyz’s guide. She’s already painstakingly calculated all the numbers.

Edit: Another good guide is from Haviz and Zelyhn where they also consider the solo aspect in great details (http://dulfy.net/2014/07/11/gw2-elementalist-pve-class-guide-by-haviz-and-zelyhn/)

Sorry I should have mentioned. This would be primarily for WvW/PvP!