Guild Wars 2

I chose to pursue meteorlogicus as my legendary simply for the way it looks, despite the fact scepter is a weaker weapon for most professions that use it. My main is an ele and I’ve been playing around with arc lightning (auto-attack skill).

Many posts I see, as well as comments on the wiki, describe this skill as “awful.” I understand the huge numbers I’m seeing on the screen are cumulative and not the total damage per channel, but looking at the combat log I still see comparable damage, if not better, than any other scepter skill regardless of attunement.

I crit like crazy and a typical channel as indicated on the combat log, which I take to be accurate, are multiple ticks ranging anywhere from 400 to as high 1500 over a three second period. How is that awful?

Is this in PvE or PvP?

PvE. I rarely PvP and realize any channeled skill carries considerable risk in PvP.

In PvE, opening with scepter/focus fire, blasting flamewall, then switching to arc lightning seems to make multiple mobs simply disappear. It’s also more entertaining than simply camping fire in staff.

It’s single-target, or at least can’t reliably hit multiple targets. Scepter Air has great burst, sure - Fresh Air Scepter specs are unbeatable for putting damage on one target in a short period - but in PvE most of the time you’ll want AoE to take down multiple mobs at once. Air sucks at that.

Then it is indeed pretty low. First, note that the complete channel time for Arc Lightning is not 3 seconds, but 3.6, and it has a 0.35s aftercast, so the complete animation time is 3.95s. From your statement I understand that the first ticks of AL deal 400 damage while the end ticks reach 1500, this would mean that a complete animation of the skill deals about 2400 Damage per second. As a comparison, if you were using Lightning Whip instead you would deal around 3800 DPS with the same gear.

But you are right when you say that AL is by no mean worse than the other sceptre skills. Apart for might stacking, this weapon is simply weak overall in a PvE context (and PvP too really).

cheese.4739:

It’s single-target, or at least can’t reliably hit multiple targets. Scepter Air has great burst, sure – Fresh Air Scepter specs are unbeatable for putting damage on one target in a short period – but in PvE most of the time you’ll want AoE to take down multiple mobs at once. Air sucks at that.

Is that to say arc lightning has a good niche use during the burn phase of Teq or fingers if conjured weapons are on cooldown?

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

skills. Apart for might stacking, this weapon is simply weak overall in a PvE context (and PvP too really).

Is camping fire in staff truly the highest dps an ele can do or are some builds with dagger main hand in lightning in any way comparable?

Dexlmentia.7391:

Is that to say arc lightning has a good niche use during the burn phase of Teq or fingers if conjured weapons are on cooldown?

No, no it is not. You can’t hit multiple points with Arc Lightning, particularly not while in the might-stacking banner-buffed blob, so it’s a serious dps loss compared to anything AoE.

Dexlmentia.7391:

Is camping fire in staff truly the highest dps an ele can do or are some builds with dagger main hand in lightning in any way comparable?

With someone blasting those fire fields, Staff is incredible dps, constantly ticking damage from both Lava Font and Fireball over an area. I don’t think there’s any other weaponset that has compararable dps when staying in one attunement, unless using conjures.

Dexlmentia.7391:

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

skills. Apart for might stacking, this weapon is simply weak overall in a PvE context (and PvP too really).

Is camping fire in staff truly the highest dps an ele can do or are some builds with dagger main hand in lightning in any way comparable?

If we are talking only in terms of DPS then staff is indeed the top weapon, and D/F builds deal noticeably less damage. Keep in mind that I am purely talking about DPS in an optimal situation where rotations are unhindered and no other output than damage is required. It is important to mention this because it is in such situation and only in such situation that staff stands out. However, the D/F rotation is not as easy to perform as that of staff, therefore staff may prevail even in sub-optimal situations due to its ease of execution.

If we take into consideration the other important combat factors, such as might-stacking and defense broadly speaking, then D/F quickly becomes more competitive.

I leveled up with staff and I rushed through most of the content using that weapon. At that time most players were following daphoenix’s bunker-D/D advice, so Sabull and I theorycrafted the optimal staff rotations that have since then placed this weapon at the top of the food chain. But I quickly quit using it, because I was not satisfied with simply “getting the job done” anymore and I wanted to use a larger array of output in order to push my performance. Soon it became obvious to me that D/F was king because we could stack the fire patches of burning speed’s trail, which yielded a DPS definitely comparable to that of staff (note, you can still do that on large bosses like Lupicus ). But that trick has been taken away from us by Anet, so now D/F is the best build of everything including support, defense, control, versatility, adaptability, and fun, but not DPS.

Something tells me that D/F will keep gaining popularity, especially as the expansion content becomes available, so for those who still have doubts about that godly build maybe now is the time to change your mind and start training!

I appreciate all the thoughtful responses.

In a different vein, without making a new thread, is superior sigil of bloodlust effectively dead? I understand end on down was always problematic in PvP, but is force + another damage modifier now the meta so to speak, particularly for staff?

I rarely see bloodlust mentioned anymore in recent PvE ele guides.

Bloodlust was king because you didn’t even need to waste a sigil slot on it - meta dungeon builds had a second weapon with the sigil to build up stacks, then swapped it out when at 25 stacks to get the benefit of another (force or night or whatever) without losing the stacks. ANet (finally) fixed the exploit, so now folks need to actually consider whether Bloodlust or other stacking sigils are more effective when designing builds rather than assume everyone will use them regardless.

Not having done any calculation on this myself, I can’t say which situations it’s better or worse in, though.

Bloodlust is still major in zerg vs. zerg (WvW) as you replenish the stacks extremely quick (tag 5 kills) and most of the zerg ele uses hybrid builds (more defensive gears, support traits) and in need of Power supplement. It is also good in open world if you camp a specific map for hours for event farming (e.g. Silverwaste).

However, from a min-maxing stand point, it’s not as good as damage modifier sigils.

It is too easy to be downed in Silverwastes for Bloodlust to compete.

Bloodlust will give you ‘bout 10%. Even with max might, it’ll be more than force for sure. btw, fire 3 can hit 3-4 times for massive damage so I wouldn’t waste it on might stacks. (unless you’re hitting and stacking at the same time). I don’t pve much but there’s a video somewhere I believe of the optimal s/f lightning hammer rotation.

scepter ele all the way and I just finished my meteorlogicus 2 days ago. I enjoy the playstyle, pump out much more dmg than i do with mainhand dagger, and it’s meta for most pug dungeon groups (unless you have warriors that know what they’re doing). I always enter a dungeon in s/f and then swap to staff depending on team makeup. Scepter is the most complicated weapon to play for ele if played right, and no, I can’t remember the last time I ever touched arc lightning on purpose, there shouldn’t be any reason to use it, too many other options. If you want to just spam 1, then swap to mainhand dagger, or pull out a conjured wep, hammer or greatsword.

the beautiful thing about this game, is we’re over 2 years in, and people are still arguing, “what’s best.” Whatever you do the best with, is best. Watch youtube, there are plenty of people out there ruining other people with every combination of weapon possible in the game. WvW roaming with s/d is a blast with insane spike dmg, d/f is surprisingly tanky for longer fights, and I don’t think there’s a wep in the game with more utility for Zerg’s than ele staff. In pve, who cares, it’s your kitten game, do what you want. In dungeons, yeah, you gotta be a little more conscious of what ele brings to the table, might, fury and aura’s (but no one worries about those anymore, RIP auramancer).

So I guess what I’m saying is, yes, arc lightning is a pretty terrible “filler” skill, but the the wep has 12 different skills to use, don’t let people tell you to throw it away b/c of 1 skill, learn to wield the weapon correctly…

This isn’t a rotation game like, say SWTOR, which has an unquestioned highest parsing rotation for every class. Staff and s/f are meta dungeon sets, depending on the rest of your team. Other than that, when it comes to PvE (and most dungeon runs), do whatever you kitten-well please. I think it’s important to know how to play the meta dps builds, so you can join those kitten meta zerker pug groups when you want to, but other than that, who cares.