Guild Wars 2

Hello! First time posting in the Elementalist sub-forum, finally decided that this was going to be my main class after toying around with many of them. So many buttons, so little time.

Anyway, I’m getting off topic, I’ve been theorycrafting this build for a while and wanted some input on the missing pieces to figure out what would be a good fit.

Here’s what I’ve put together so far: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFQQJArNGoAMaFcDqjycMAUAq7YSAA-TBBrAAgegQ9ny8zo8DA-e

The general goal of the build is to camp water and lay down DPS with Ice Shard with constant Shatterstones in order to keep vuln stacks at a constant 15+, with Soothing Power there to help keep me topped off to maintain the +10% damage above 10% hp. It also seeks to take advantage of the myriad damage amps available to an elementalist in water attunement, (+20% to vulnerable foes, +10% when above 90% hp, +10-25% from vulnerability stacks, and +20% when foe is below 50% hp), the problem I’m running into is figuring out what sigils, runes and slot skills to run with this build. I like Glyph of Elemental Harmony over Ether Renewal because it’s a quick heal that lets me get back to stacking vulnerability and attacking, with regen pulses and soothing mist to keep me going. As for the others, I really don’t know what would be most effective with this type of build.

I appreciate any input you guys have!

Mate are you telling you really want to camp in water and spam shatterstone? You will not do any damage

lucadiro.4519:

Mate are you telling you really want to camp in water and spam shatterstone? You will not do any damage

I did say that. The reason I’ve considered it is because while Water Scepter does little base damage, adding those multipliers up makes a significant difference. With 25 stacks of vuln up, and if the boss hits 50% health, I deal just shy of twice the amount of normal damage. (1.1 × 1.2 × 1.25 x 1.2 = 75% bonus damage) So shatterstone’s damage, with these multipliers, goes from about 550 to 1000 per cast. Ice Shards as well go from 350ish total to around 750 total.

So if we want to get into numbers, ice shards becomes 750 damage per second before crit, and shatterstone gets to around 500 since it takes 2 seconds for it to go off. That’s not entirely too bad when you consider that it’s in water attunement.

Compare it to a fire camping staff build that drops fireballs and lava fonts on cooldown, without taking into account vulnerability but including Bolt to the Heart, Burning Rage and Pyromancer’s Training for +45% damage, and we have 1180 damage per fireball (Equating to 740 dps) and lava font hits for 1040 each tick for around 1780 total dps with just those two skills. Since the shatterstone damage comes from just the two skills I thought I’d find it a fine comparison. (This is also before crit.)

So the build in total without slot skills, a final arcane trait or proper runes, gives us around 1250 dps with a high amount of utility for the team (+25% damage for everyone in the party, constant heals from soothing mist) compared to a staff fire build that nets about 1750 dps with the only utility being fire fields or whatever you equip in the utility skill slots.

Not a terrible trade off, I think.

Before I say anything, I want to applaud you looking for new build ideas. Regardless of how well it worked out, trying to find something besides the cookie cutter meta builds is always a respectable goal. Unfortunately in this particular case your build will not work as well as you were hoping. Your math on scepter/water versus staff/fire was off by quite a bit.

First of all, if you are looking at the ability numbers from in-game then the bonuses from Aquamancer’s/Pyromancer’s Training are already accounted for. Secondly, 25 stacks of vulnerability is extremely easy to keep applied in a group setting, so there is no point in taking either that extra 25% modifier or the 20% from Bolt to the Heart into account (if it affects both scepter and staff equally, then it is irrelevant for comparison purposes).

Here are the proper base numbers, taken from the Hero window (thus gear is not taken into account, only passive modifiers from traits) and some quick math:

Scepter (in Water attunement):
- Ice Shards: 363 damage, 0.75s cast time, no CD. Yields 484 DPCT and 484 DPS.
- Shatterstone: 554 damage, 0.5s cast time, 2s CD. Yields 1108 DPCT and 221 DPS.
- Water Trident: 316 damage, 0.5s cast time, 13.5s CD. Yields 632 DPCT and 22.6 DPS.
- Comet: 505 damage, 0.75s cast time, 16.75s CD. Yields 673.3 DPS and 28.9 DPS.
- 20% Damage modifier from Piercing Shards
- DPS: 908.4

Staff (in Fire attunement)
- Fireball: 571 damage, 1s cast time, no CD. Yields 571 DPCT and 571 DPS.
- Lava Font: 2148 damage, 0.2s “invisible” cast time, 4s CD. Yields 10740 DPCT and 511.4 DPS.
- Flame Burst (with 2x Burning condi): 1901 damage, 0.5s cast time, 6.75 CD. Yields 3802 DPCT and 262.2 DPS.
- Meteor Shower (assuming 1/3 of meteors hit): 6914.2 damage, 3.75s cast time, 20s CD. Yields 1843.8 DPCT and 291.1 DPS
- DPS: 1635.8
Extra side note in that all of staff’s attacks are AoE, whereas only 3/4 of scepter’s attacks are AoE (and they are smaller AoE’s than staff).

Camping fire staff yields almost double the DPS of water scepter. Also staff brings significantly more utility than scepter. Swapping to water provides very high healing and one of the most powerful condition clears in the game. Earth provides reflect, immob, and cripple. Air provides swiftness, knockback, and stun. Scepter has some utility as well, but not nearly enough to make up for the horrendous lack of DPS.

You are of course free to play however you want, but if you are considering bringing this build into dungeons/fractals/etc. then be warned that you will be a significant hindrance to your team. You will be doing subpar DPS without nearly enough support to make up for the difference.

Prism.5649:

Before I say anything, I want to applaud you looking for new build ideas. Regardless of how well it worked out, trying to find something besides the cookie cutter meta builds is always a respectable goal. Unfortunately in this particular case your build will not work as well as you were hoping. Your math on scepter/water versus staff/fire was off by quite a bit.

First of all, if you are looking at the ability numbers from in-game then the bonuses from Aquamancer’s/Pyromancer’s Training are already accounted for. Secondly, 25 stacks of vulnerability is extremely easy to keep applied in a group setting, so there is no point in taking either that extra 25% modifier or the 20% from Bolt to the Heart into account (if it affects both scepter and staff equally, then it is irrelevant for comparison purposes).

Here are the proper base numbers, taken from the Hero window (thus gear is not taken into account, only passive modifiers from traits) and some quick math:

Scepter (in Water attunement):
- Ice Shards: 363 damage, 0.75s cast time, no CD. Yields 484 DPCT and 484 DPS.
- Shatterstone: 554 damage, 0.5s cast time, 2s CD. Yields 1108 DPCT and 221 DPS.
- Water Trident: 316 damage, 0.5s cast time, 13.5s CD. Yields 632 DPCT and 22.6 DPS.
- Comet: 505 damage, 0.75s cast time, 16.75s CD. Yields 673.3 DPS and 28.9 DPS.
- 20% Damage modifier from Piercing Shards
- DPS: 908.4

Staff (in Fire attunement)
- Fireball: 571 damage, 1s cast time, no CD. Yields 571 DPCT and 571 DPS.
- Lava Font: 2148 damage, 0.2s “invisible” cast time, 4s CD. Yields 10740 DPCT and 511.4 DPS.
- Flame Burst (with 2x Burning condi): 1901 damage, 0.5s cast time, 6.75 CD. Yields 3802 DPCT and 262.2 DPS.
- Meteor Shower (assuming 1/3 of meteors hit): 6914.2 damage, 3.75s cast time, 20s CD. Yields 1843.8 DPCT and 291.1 DPS
- DPS: 1635.8
Extra side note in that all of staff’s attacks are AoE, whereas only 3/4 of scepter’s attacks are AoE (and they are smaller AoE’s than staff).

Camping fire staff yields almost double the DPS of water scepter. Also staff brings significantly more utility than scepter. Swapping to water provides very high healing and one of the most powerful condition clears in the game. Earth provides reflect, immob, and cripple. Air provides swiftness, knockback, and stun. Scepter has some utility as well, but not nearly enough to make up for the horrendous lack of DPS.

You are of course free to play however you want, but if you are considering bringing this build into dungeons/fractals/etc. then be warned that you will be a significant hindrance to your team. You will be doing subpar DPS without nearly enough support to make up for the difference.

I greatly appreciate your insight,

I may not be good at making builds, but I just get so sick to death of the cookie cutter set ups. Maybe I need some more thought on what I want to accomplish, I think this attempt was a bit too focused on staying in water.

I’ll see what I can come up with next.