Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,

ive been playing a great deal of time and been theory crafting my elementalist for a good portion of that time. experimented with alot of weapons and alot of builds ranging from zerker to bunker and many places in between.

while experimenting i took advice from alot of forums and sites and people but the one thing i could never easily find was a thread or site where people would actually post their stats and why they chose to go for that particular value. (example – i chose to get x amount of toughness but stopped there because any more would be a waste.

this would have been important to me because while i like to take advice i also like to experiment with ideas of my own and i like to know where stats give diminishing returns or whether people have found certain stats to be “too much” in pvp/pve/wvw etc…

anyway, here are my thoughts on our vital stats, please by all means disagree with me, i definitely do not think im correct about all this and id love to hear your thoughts, one of the wonderful things about this game is the way it keeps you questioning your spec and trying new things and the fact that pretty much every spec is viable for someone.

what i hope to post below are opinions and thoughts. not facts.

Vitality
base stat – 916
base health – 10805
in terms of health – i find that a minimum would be around 15000 for pvp, any less and you would have to be a master dodger – and even then its a risk.
17000 or more would be recommended for dungeons.
Overworld pve – pretty much any amount is fine.
i have found more than 20000 or more to be a waste and a drain on other stats.

Toughness
base stat – 916
In terms of Armour i have found 2000 to be a good target.
i currently have around 2200.
its worth noting that this number is used as a direct division of the damage done in the formula for damage mitigation. (damage calculated/armour = damage done)
check this link for more info here – Linky
so i find that an extra 100 toughness (from runes for example) is not as worthwhile as rage runes or some others available..

Power
base stat – 916
In terms of damage i tend to shoot for 3000 ish. maybe slightly less if you are going to compensate with crit?
i find you get diminished returns if you go 3200+ – anyone else done any experimenting here?

Crit
this is an interesting one as theres alot of things that can effect this – i tend to shoot for 25% knowing that it will be 45% with fury up alot of the time in a d/d spec.
if i had a spec that didnt have much fury uptime i would probly go for something nearer 50%
The reason i dont go higher on this is due to the fact that you can get crits in alot of other ways – arcane skills, sigil of intelligence, fury, etc…
As for crit damage im of the opinion that it should be as high as possible. i find that it can go up to 100% (even higher with consumables) my personal opinion is that a crit spec is the way to go for Eles but im open to change my mind in the future lol.

Boon duration
Im a big fan of maxing this out with traits on all my classes. not gunna say more at the moment, i just love getting the most out of boons any way i can – i believe thats a fundamental of the game right now.

Heal power and condition damage
For different reasons i believe that these are fruitless stats at this time. not gunna say more right now but i believe there are plenty of posts on why condition damage is pretty botched and why heal power is fundamentally flawed.

*My current spec – *
i currently run a full Sorrows Embrace set for Toughness and Vitality with a full set of Zerker jewelry (exotic)
double dagger – again Zerker
traits of 0,20,0,20,30
Runes of Rage
Sigil of force and sigil of intelligence.

2900 damage
crit chance 35%
crit dmg – 75%
health – 15500
Armour – 2100

i also run staff occasionally in dungeons for slightly higher health/toughness and slightly less crit damage.

im currently working on a full zerker set of Armour to combine with Valkery exotic jewelry as i think ill get better crit damage out of it.

so, whats your thoughts?

fingers crossed this will be helpful to some people as it would have been great for me 3 months ago

Healing Power is far from a fruitless stat for elementalist.. in fairness, they’re one of the few professions that actually gets worthwhile scaling out of it. It might be fruitless in the near future (next patch?) once our healing ability gets nerfed.

in spvp, running with 1100-1200 healing power prepatch used to bring me up to full health from any fight in matter of seconds.

Yeah i guess heal power isnt as bad as my comments implied.

My opinion is simply that its not worth building a spec around it. In a game that claims to have no healers – the stat is in a state that makes it not feasible to heal in the conventional sense. Better to work on damage prevention and mitigation than reparation.

We may get some good heals out of it but with less than 300 heal power i still get good heals from an evasive arc dodge etc… certainly enough to keep me up.

Anyway yeah. Point taken.

I can’t agree with thing it’s worth uping your criticals all the way. For me, if critical is re-counted as more than 7stat points (beside traits) it’s not worth going for it. In other words, critical = only jewel, traits, orbs/runes.

WoodenPotatos helped me to come to a decision regarding crits and crit damage.

this video in particular – Linky

if you dont know who he is, check him out on youtube – makes for some interesting listening

17000 HP for dungeons? I don’t know about that, I do high level fractals with 13850 and 2500 armor perfectly fine as DD. I only go down maybe 3-4 times during a full run and never die, unless something horribly wrong happens.

I find toughness much more valuable for defense than vitality or healing power (pve).

Entragian.2057:

WoodenPotatos helped me to come to a decision regarding crits and crit damage.

this video in particular – Linky

if you dont know who he is, check him out on youtube – makes for some interesting listening

The thing with critical damage is that the amount of ‘stats’ each point costs, depends greatly on what item you pick. An Exquisite Beryl Jewel for example, replaces 15 stat points by 3% critical damage. A staff however, replaces 128 stat points for 9% critical damage. This means that the gem ‘spends’ 5 stat points for each 1% critical damage, whereas the staff ‘spends’ roughly 14 stat points for 1% critical damage.

That for me is the main reason not to go all out on critical damage, but rather carefully pick the items to get critical damage on.

For me personally, the Celestial (or ‘all stats’) items are the way to go. The reason for this is that the Elementalist is in the rather unique position that they can make use of any stat, any time. No matter what build you play, you will always have acces to damage skills, healing skill and conditions. Defense wise, our health and armor are so low that toughness and vitality will never be a lost option. Combined with the fact that the total amount of stats is higher and the inherent dminishing returns, it makes it the top choice in my opinion.

@NdranC

yeah i know some players prefer to have higher toughness and sacrifice some vitality, i personally prefer to have a reasonable amount of both rather than have a very low health pool and take greater risks. i suppose if you knew the content very well then its less of a worry.

@ThiBash

Those are some really great points that i hadn’t considered.
Honestly though my spec doesn’t go all out on critdmg when compared to some builds i have seen. im sat at around 75% whereas as i stated its possible to go over 100. im currently building a new gear set and ill take your advice into account when i put together my jewelry. thanks

The extra heal power is nice for group healing more than self healing tbh, lots of healing bursts and regen makes a difference in my experience anyway :p

Eles are one of the professions where adding healing is viable and in fact desirable. We have a lot of sources of healing that benefit from it.

It’s another method of sustainability much like toughness and can be valued roughly equal to it for us. Regen, soothing mists, water attune heal, evasive arcana water roll, all the various water abilities on weapon sets etc all benefit from healing power.
If you have the choice between adding 800 toughness or 500 toughness and 300 healing, the 500 tough/300 healing will likely keep you in a fight longer. They synergize well with each other.

The value of healing power in spvp is a bit more murky due to some spvp specific nerfs aimed at our healing. In PVE/WvW though, if you’re looking for survivability stats you should definitely have some.

It’s very common for bunker eles to wear a combination of clerics and soldiers gear. The damage is lousy but the survivability is definitely not in question.

Condition damage is generally our least desirable stat and can be the first thing to be discarded. It’s not so much that we don’t use it, but just that we use power a fair bit more.

I guess this heal power discussion is just a matter of play style and taste, ive spent alot of time playing a guardian where its not as desirable and i hardly ever play bunker on my ele so its not my “go to stat” but clearly there are benefits that i didn’t talk about in the original post.

The way the current PvE content in this game is designed eliminates the usefulness of bunker stats. While you’re stacking 500 healing power so you can do 1000 extra heal every 20 secs, you could have done so much more damage and STILL bring healing. Watch strife beat the entire pve content with 3/4 warriors a guardian and a mesmer all of them in full berserker gear (for the most part) while doing it faster, more efficiently and with no deaths.

PvE is about damage prevention by careful dodging and positioning, either you get hit once and die/almost die or you don’t. Specially true for the hard fractals/arah.

As an elementalist I’m still running 0/10/0/30/30, but I have 80% Crit Dmg, 50% Crit Chance (with perma fury on), 1900 power, 2400-2500 armor, around 14-15k HP (wvwvw hp bonus on) while I bring perma swiftness and fury for everybody in my party while at the same time keeping 25 stacks of might on me at all times during boss fights and 16 stacks of might on my teammates if no one else is blasting my fields or mesmer not copying my boons.

Support currently in PvE is so much more than splashing water from time to time while you auto-attack for 600 damage. I still switch to water to heal, i just barely heal slightly less during my “rotation” while still landing 10k churning earths+bleeds, 7k fire grabs, and 2k (per hit) lightning whip auto attack.

Regarding the 17k HP. I used to play daphoenix build in PvE when i started my elementalist, and I though that anything less than that was suicide. Then after doing some math i decided to give it a try and i went down to 15k and then 13k and you would be surprised on how survivable you are. I noticed that while using a bunker build I was being lazy, not really paying attention to the animations and not learning to dodge properly. If you don’t give it a fair chance and try to roll with less health/toughness you won’t really learn how much more effective you can be.

The way the current PvE content in this game is designed eliminates the usefulness of bunker stats. While you’re stacking 500 healing power so you can do 1000 extra heal every 20 secs, you could have done so much more damage and STILL bring healing. Watch strife beat the entire pve content with 3/4 warriors a guardian and a mesmer all of them in full berserker gear (for the most part) while doing it faster, more efficiently and with no deaths.
PvE is about damage prevention by careful dodging and positioning, either you get hit once and die/almost die or you don’t. Specially true for the hard fractals/arah.

This.

i agree that prevention is the way forward – if you are healing then a mistake has already been made. the trick is to learn how to not make the mistake in the first place.

ofc health is innevitably lost as we play, but i find my basic heals are fine to deal with that and i dont have to stack heal power to compensate for the fact that i might mess up from time to time.

as stated above, my stats are fairly similar to yours NdranC. – high crit damage, 15k health, 75% crit. my heal power ONLY comes from my traits, which is only 200. nothing more. and i run ALOT of dungeons with no trouble for the most part.

I play with about 14k hp on my ele; 3k from 30 trait points in water, and the last 1k from a magi-statted staff (will change that to cleric’s eventually…)

Anyways, things to note here on healing power:

1) For eles especially, it’s as much of a defensive stat as toughness and vitality
2) Vitality doesn’t improve the value of healing itself, it just moves the buffer zone before you actually need to heal
3) Toughness, on the other hand, DOES improve the value of healing. If we get a 25% damage reduction from additional toughness, that’s effectively buffing healing we receive by 33%
4) (FotM only, but…) Agony deals damage based on max HP – this means high vitality builds take more damage from Agony in fractals, whilst -also- reducing the efficiency of healing vs. agony
5) Elementalists get a crapton of condition removal, so we don’t really need Vit as protection from condition damage

As such, I actually consider Vit less important than healing power or toughness on eles. We get enough from traiting into water, and healing power simultaneously helps our party survive as well; and for our own purposes, toughness is also more valuable.

On Power/Prec/Crit Damage (considering base power as the point for all damage increases):

I’m no maths expert here, but it seems like going with power as a main stat can get you up to a 200% increase in effective power alone, while having precision as the only main damage stat can’t get much above an 80% effective power increase, and crit damage only exists on gear that has power in some form. Obviously ‘zerkers is best for raw damage, but after that soldier’s seems most efficient, and also comes with two defensive stats (Valkyrie’s would have slightly better damage, but at the cost of an entire defensive stat). Cleric’s doesn’t have power as a main stat, so it can’t really hit the same damage level as soldier’s, but it’s still somewhat viable (as an aside, I’d be all over a gear set that has Power as main, Healing/Toughness as secondary instead of Healing as main, Power/Toughness as secondary).

Knight’s gear is pretty much a trap – full Knight’s gives less damage mitigation than Soldier’s, and less effective power (leaving the only advantage being on-crit effects and crit%, which knight’s doesn’t grant and you’d have to sacrifice dense to get…)

Magi’s (or any gear without power) is more or less worthless unless you want to go full support or full condition, but min-maxing healing power doesn’t have particularly great returns and destroys combat effectiveness. (you can get around 60 extra healing power by picking the Air V trait which converts 5% of precision into healing, and stacking Magi gear… not worth it because of power loss)

Precision by itself is pretty worthless for us. Elementalists don’t get decent on-critical effects via traits (Fire 10 gives a 30% chance of 1 second burning on crit, Air 25 gives a single 5 second stack of Vuln at a 60% chance) Edit: Forgot Arcane 6, which can be useful, but not sure it’s worth stacking precision just for it when doing so generally loses survivability in other areas.

On condition damage:

If elementalists want to spec for conditions, they’re pretty much pigeonholing themselves into earth and fire attunements – any time spent in other attunements is time our bleed/burn stacks disappear and waste the condition damage we’ve statted into.
Unfortunately, that makes condition elementalists pretty subpar because they lose out on two attunements, or an entire stat slot becomes worthless, at any given time.

Ergh. This post kind of went all over the place.

Just been staring at my stats screen for about 40 mins….

what i really want is Power (dominant), toughness, crit damage gear. but it doesnt exist.
Currenlty -
2900 attack
2100 armour
15000 health
35% crit chance
75% crit damage

what i really want is to reduce the crit chance to about 25% and increase the armour accordingly. if i could get the armour to about 2300 by reducing the precision i would be happy.. but i dont see a way to do it with the current gear available.. perhaps ascended gear is the way forward.

Im running soldiers armourset (full) / berzerker on everything else (trinkets x 6 and both daggers) to get the above stats. any recommendations to raise my toughness, and at the expense of what?

NdranC – what is your current gear makeup and your main source of toughness? we have comparable stats it seems, except you seem to have the 300 extra toughness im looking for.. im wondering which other stat you compromised to accomplish this in comparison to my gear…

Ok i just discovered Cavalier’s gear lol

my life is complete

I don’t disagree that running with crit power over healing has its bonuses but the trade off is weak to me on this class. The fact that our big hitting skills have suck an long cool downs and that our healing goes to the group as well makes crit damage a near non factor to me. When I’m on thief it plays a part or ranger to a degree I spec for crit but on ele I consider a few things.

First off I have might I usually get from 19-25 stacks so my DPS over the long run wont lag. The other is that my personal dps does factor in but imho I am never going to burst the way o can on other classes which means often and consistently. Comparing what we can do with 100 blades, Back Stab, what used to be grenade engi, shatter mesmer, or even auto attack axe warrior there really isn’t a comparison. Crit damage for us will never factor the same way but that doesn’t mean its useless its just not as useful and the margins are large. Old mmo rules still apply if you can hit your burst often go crit if you hit slow but big go power. Might covers power and a good chunk of condition damage for that matter and we do apply conditions often enough to note it.

TL:DR You would likely get much more bang for your buck with more power instead.

Healing scales pretty bad across the board however you will see major gaps between someone running lots of healing power vs very little. Honestly its in the margins. We heal so often and so big that running healing power some times feel stupid. The heals heal for a lot as it is. So in sPvP I run with very little to 0. In PvE and dungeons since we work as a group our healing power applies to everyone. Now there is no dedicated healing but between all the ambient healing we do and the buffs we pass out we can help keep a group alive in some tough situations.

TL:DR we heal well and our healing scales well so its not that bad a stat.

As far as crit chance goes. If its for procs like vigor on crit. Even running with ) extra crit chance we actually hit often. So even with my 11% crit chance build i have perma vigor and I don’t have the cantrips trait. Fury as you all said covers the gap.

I don’t blame you running crit I tried and failed with this class and found much more happiness being tankier due to the fact I could see a big enough increase in damage you justify the loss in survivability.

The thing that helped my DPS the most was clipping between fire and earth as quickly as I possibly could to keep stacks up.

Besides all this so many of us have so much gear you can just carry an extra set with crit damage if you like for easy content. Either way imho the might stacks to the party will play the biggest factor in the speed you clear content. As long as you are comfortable with what you run and you are having fun. Its very hard to build ele bad.

high crit damage and low crit chance actualy = low dps and dpm.
I wonder why many of you go 35% chance and 75% damage…
It gives you damage multipler 1.43 while 75% chance and 35% damage gives multipler of 1.63
Check the chance/damage ratio table here:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit

After nerf perm fury is no longer an option and arcane power util/trait is not enought for 35% chance and 75% damage to make any sense. You will just see bigger red numbers from time to time but overall your damage will be not as good as with many smaller red numbers ^^
Going crit damage makes sense after your crit chance is 50% + . There is no magic just simple math.
ps.
I am in a process of creating simillar table as the one on wiki but in 3D where on the Z axis there will be power and you can see the optimal power/crit chance/crit damage ratios

With runes of rage. Sigil of inteligence and all relevent traits you see enough crits to tip the balance. Just making sure you change atunements every 9 seconds (which we do anyway)… im seeing very close to 100% up time on fury again. And as a result – every second hit is a crit. (Plus arcane skills thrown into your rotation)

Granted if i didnt have all those augments it wouldnt be worth it..

Plus that table refers to normal attacks over a long period of time. In most of the content fights are over inside 20 seconds (often much less) and in this time we have many abilities that can ensure crits and ensure fury.

If i were fighting a boss that took 10 mins to kill and i find myself resorting to auto attacks then these numbers may begin to become true, however this is where an elementalists utility becomes useful and we can start controlling the fight in other ways.

@TheGuy

The problem is – If right at this moment i wanted to sink more into power and might stacks – i couldnt do it without traiting fire.

The most power we can get from gear is around 2000 anyway. 500 from trinkets. 324 from armour and around 200 from weapons.

Daggers have a lower base damage than staff so with daggers the most power you can get is 2000 (these numbers are approximate)

The only way to get more would be fire traits (not really an option for most peoples tastes).and having all this i dont have to sacrifice the really high crit dmg numbers and plenty of might so at this time i dont feel like im forced to choose.

Lavadiel.6231:

high crit damage and low crit chance actualy = low dps and dpm.
I wonder why many of you go 35% chance and 75% damage…
It gives you damage multipler 1.43 while 75% chance and 35% damage gives multipler of 1.63
Check the chance/damage ratio table here:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit

After nerf perm fury is no longer an option and arcane power util/trait is not enought for 35% chance and 75% damage to make any sense. You will just see bigger red numbers from time to time but overall your damage will be not as good as with many smaller red numbers ^^
Going crit damage makes sense after your crit chance is 50% + . There is no magic just simple math.
ps.
I am in a process of creating simillar table as the one on wiki but in 3D where on the Z axis there will be power and you can see the optimal power/crit chance/crit damage ratios

I don’t know what nerf to fury you’re talking about because i still have perma fury after the reduction to shock aura. Looking forward to your table.

Lavadiel.6231:

high crit damage and low crit chance actualy = low dps and dpm.
I wonder why many of you go 35% chance and 75% damage…
It gives you damage multipler 1.43 while 75% chance and 35% damage gives multipler of 1.63
Check the chance/damage ratio table here:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit

After nerf perm fury is no longer an option and arcane power util/trait is not enought for 35% chance and 75% damage to make any sense. You will just see bigger red numbers from time to time but overall your damage will be not as good as with many smaller red numbers ^^
Going crit damage makes sense after your crit chance is 50% + . There is no magic just simple math.
ps.
I am in a process of creating simillar table as the one on wiki but in 3D where on the Z axis there will be power and you can see the optimal power/crit chance/crit damage ratios

You don’t need a 3D table and don’t have all the varialbes anyway. If you increase Power by 103% or Crit Damage by 103% (multiplicative), has exactly the same effect on total damage from a crit, with the exception that 1) a crit can hit for more or less damage due to the random number used for weapon strength which we don’t know and 2)the higher power number increases damage on a regular hit and conditions and that weapon strength number we do know, it is the average of the variable range of the weapon and is equal to the weapon damage tooltip number.

You won’t find an item with an increase in crit damage that doesn’t also increse power and don’t need to. They both increase crit damage, and each has just about the same effect.

I believe the table you refer to can be misleading. It is comparing simply the damage relationship between crit damage given for a different combinations of precision and the crit damage stat. That does not take into consideration the effect power, which is part of the crit forumula, also has on Regular hits and Conditions. Regular hits and Conditions are also increased by Power, there I said it again. So, yes, the chart ignores the damage a character is dealing when not criting.

To restate. You say:

I wonder why many of you go 35% chance and 75% damage…
It gives you damage multipler 1.43 while 75% chance and 35% damage gives multipler of 1.63

Well, the player who has 75 percente damage has alot of power and is hitting his regular hits and conditions for alot more and the chart does not recognize that. With that lower precisions his build is also entirely different and likely has a lot more vitality and toughness.

What the chart does show is how precision trumps crit damage to produce total damage. A character with high precision need not be as concerned about crit damage to get the same end results as someone without precision

For anyone still wondering about how their stats will be impacted by the points discussed here, this is a powerful tool -

“http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/”

>Well, the player who has 75 percente damage has alot of power

not always the case
this is my current build:
72% crit dmg and 1700 power
http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/3069/gw004se.jpg

same build/place/mob but after some tricks/combos/food
http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/4343/gw013ei.jpg

the damage is multipled by 2

Entragian.2057:

Daggers have a lower base damage than staff so with daggers the most power you can get is 2000 (these numbers are approximate)

Power != Attack. You have actually 1 more power and 1% more crit dmg with both daggers than with staff.

Entragian.2057:

@TheGuy

The problem is – If right at this moment i wanted to sink more into power and might stacks – i couldnt do it without traiting fire.

The most power we can get from gear is around 2000 anyway. 500 from trinkets. 324 from armour and around 200 from weapons.

Daggers have a lower base damage than staff so with daggers the most power you can get is 2000 (these numbers are approximate)

The only way to get more would be fire traits (not really an option for most peoples tastes).and having all this i dont have to sacrifice the really high crit dmg numbers and plenty of might so at this time i dont feel like im forced to choose.

Think you missed the point of my post but that’s cool. to simplify you are are probably best off not min maxing with this class and better off just figuring out where you personally are comfortable with your dps. The fact is this our big hitting skills are on a long cool down making maximizing dps not nearly as useful as it would be on shatter mesmer, thief, gs warrior etc. Simply put the time between burst is too long.

To break it down a little more the more access to you have to your burst the more likely you are to crit with it. This http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fire_Grab and this http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Churning_earth are terrible skills for a crit build overall. The cast are too long and the cds are way too long.

What drives this fact home even more is that we have no http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bull%27s_Charge http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Basilisk_Venom http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Devourer_Venom and any number of other cc skills that will make churning earth land. Even if you could guarantee the crit you cant guarantee the hit. The gap between skill cast and dps application is too long and there aren’t enough cc skills to make land consistent for burst.

Does this mean maximizing dps is a bad idea? No. However it does mean that realistically maximizing dps for this class through crit over all isn’t really that great. Compared to all the stats we have the crit damage and chance are relatively weak scaling.

I mean even condition damage scales better than crit. In fact if you land the http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burning skills we have plus http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Evasive_Arcana fire consistently you could literally spec for condition duration and condition damage and be justified in scaling and access. Not to forget access to bleeds. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Impale_ alone by itself could justify this (math at the bottom).

No one is going to do this I love power too but the fact is crit maximizing on this class is maximizing big pretty numbers not Damage Per Second. Sorry for the blunt tone but we beat around the bush too much here. Crit damage maximizing is not maximizing dps for ele I am sorry but it isn’t. And because crit damage and precision cost so much stat point wise (http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/12dmi5/tip_stat_optimization_with_crit_damage/) and only applies if you crit (power and condition damage apply if you hit) in this case technically you kitten yourself because you need to hit big skills often to justify the proc chance on crit.

to summarize

You have weak access to big hitting skills, strong access to conditions, and you end up losing a kitten load of stat points chasing after precision and crit damage with nothing to justify carrying it in the first place.

I be a little more blunt if anyone is going to respond read it all I don’t want to play the opinion game. What I stated above are the facts I didn’t design the game but there is no reason perpetuating a stereo type (big crit means more dps) and rather bring this back to reality (Not on Ele).

Edit: Link

Lavadiel.6231:

>Well, the player who has 75 percente damage has alot of power

not always the case
this is my current build:
72% crit dmg and 1700 power
http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/3069/gw004se.jpg

same build/place/mob but after some tricks/combos/food
http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/4343/gw013ei.jpg

the damage is multipled by 2

From the wiki re the formula for Base Direct Damage formula, explaining the variable Weapon Damage in that formula. (the formula for regluar damage does not use this variable, but a different weapon damage description btw):

“Weapon damage: a uniformly distributed random number taken from within the range listed as “Weapon Strength” on the equipped weapon. The weapon damage used for a skill will typically be that of the weapon associated with that skill; utility and elite skills are typically not affected by weapon damage and use a range based on the player’s level. "

In other words, crits depend on a random number generator and can vary. Your two examples are not enough of a sample. The random number had alot to do with the result.

Power is a variable in the Base Direct Damge formula. That Base DIrect Damage number is then used in the Critical Damage formula (along with the Critical Damage percentage stat), so Power is a significant variable. But Power is modified in the Base Direct Damage formula by a Skill Specific Coefficient. We all know Fire Grab hits for huge numbers. One reason would be the crit obviously, but also that Power is enhanced by the Skill Specific Coefficient for Fire Grab in the Base Direct Damage Formula. We don’t know the coefficients for any of the skills but I would bet is a significant one for Fire Grab.

Since your Critical Damage stat in the two examples only went up by 10% but your critical damage given doubled, I could theorize that power played a big part in the underlying Base Direct Damage number and affected that crit. Need more samples to be sure is not just an aberation.

You won’t find crit damage gear without power, the two are interlinked to be sure. And, the whole story is not in the Critical Damage stat. Ty for clearly pointing that out.

>Need more samples to be sure is not just an aberation.

currently I am using beta catalyst drivers that cause GW2 to hung during usage of any capturing mechanism – recording movies is not possible at all and screentshot works 1/20 tries.
This combined with additional requirements that must be meet to double the damage which is self gained 16 mights and <30s after killing previous mob to get 200power and 10% crit damage makes taking those screenshot ulta painfull

The differences between hits indeed exist because of random generator but they usually vary not more than ~ 100 damage. Ofc between the first and second screenshot I did not change any gear or traits.
In general the auto attack in air is doubled. Churning Earth can gain more than 2x bust when switching to water to get additional 20%. On this build with only 1700 base power I already got 12k+ Churning Earth initial + 4500 bleedings so ~16k Churning Earth in total which is quite nice for semi dps oriented build… but still on my thief or warrior I get a lot more dps with a lot lot lot less effort :/

TheGuy.3568:

The fact is this our big hitting skills are on a long cool down making maximizing dps not nearly as useful as it would be on shatter mesmer, thief, gs warrior etc. Simply put the time between burst is too long.

To break it down a little more the more access to you have to your burst the more likely you are to crit with it. This http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fire_Grab and this http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Churning_earth are terrible skills for a crit build overall. The cast are too long and the cds are way too long.

What drives this fact home even more is that we have no http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bull%27s_Charge http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Basilisk_Venom http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Devourer_Venom and any number of other cc skills that will make churning earth land. Even if you could guarantee the crit you cant guarantee the hit. The gap between skill cast and dps application is too long and there aren’t enough cc skills to make land consistent for burst[….]

[…]to summarize

You have weak access to big hitting skills, strong access to conditions, and you end up losing a kitten load of stat points chasing after precision and crit damage with nothing to justify carrying it in the first place.

I be a little more blunt if anyone is going to respond read it all I don’t want to play the opinion game. What I stated above are the facts I didn’t design the game but there is no reason perpetuating a stereo type (big crit means more dps) and rather bring this back to reality (Not on Ele).

Edit: Link

This is because D/D is not a burst weapon set. It is a pressure DPS weapon set with 1 high-damage burst skill (Fire Grab) and 1 high-damage area denial skill (Churning Earth).

Scepter main-hand has far more access to burst skills with shorter cooldowns, and Focus has more access to CC. Unfortunately, the cast times and animation times on those skills make it exceedingly difficult to use.

Staff has a similar problem, with loads of back-loaded burst potential and a fair amount of CC. It’s too bad that any moron can dodge out of the big red circles and negate all your burst.

Even so, there’s something to be said for setting a target up for a well-placed Immobilize, dumping all your slow-build burst moves on them, popping Arcane Power, and swapping to Air to land all the burst at the same time. If they Stun Break out of it then you utilize whatever escape plan you have (Swiftness, Blink, whatever) and try again later.

It’s very much like Thief spiking, only Thieves have stealth which makes everything far easier.

PinCushion.7390:

TheGuy.3568:

The fact is this our big hitting skills are on a long cool down making maximizing dps not nearly as useful as it would be on shatter mesmer, thief, gs warrior etc. Simply put the time between burst is too long.

To break it down a little more the more access to you have to your burst the more likely you are to crit with it. This http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fire_Grab and this http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Churning_earth are terrible skills for a crit build overall. The cast are too long and the cds are way too long.

What drives this fact home even more is that we have no http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bull%27s_Charge http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Basilisk_Venom http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Devourer_Venom and any number of other cc skills that will make churning earth land. Even if you could guarantee the crit you cant guarantee the hit. The gap between skill cast and dps application is too long and there aren’t enough cc skills to make land consistent for burst[….]

[…]to summarize

You have weak access to big hitting skills, strong access to conditions, and you end up losing a kitten load of stat points chasing after precision and crit damage with nothing to justify carrying it in the first place.

I be a little more blunt if anyone is going to respond read it all I don’t want to play the opinion game. What I stated above are the facts I didn’t design the game but there is no reason perpetuating a stereo type (big crit means more dps) and rather bring this back to reality (Not on Ele).

Edit: Link

This is because D/D is not a burst weapon set. It is a pressure DPS weapon set with 1 high-damage burst skill (Fire Grab) and 1 high-damage area denial skill (Churning Earth).

Scepter main-hand has far more access to burst skills with shorter cooldowns, and Focus has more access to CC. Unfortunately, the cast times and animation times on those skills make it exceedingly difficult to use.

Staff has a similar problem, with loads of back-loaded burst potential and a fair amount of CC. It’s too bad that any moron can dodge out of the big red circles and negate all your burst.

Even so, there’s something to be said for setting a target up for a well-placed Immobilize, dumping all your slow-build burst moves on them, popping Arcane Power, and swapping to Air to land all the burst at the same time. If they Stun Break out of it then you utilize whatever escape plan you have (Swiftness, Blink, whatever) and try again later.

It’s very much like Thief spiking, only Thieves have stealth which makes everything far easier.

And to be honest I debated mentioning scepter and at first I had written up a little section like your said spiking with air. The issue became me jumping on my thief with just 50% crit damage and chance and landing 4k back stabs back to back to back into heartseeker. To me I don’t expect every class to do that but that type of burst even without signets its true pressure and burst in the same time. Now this s strictly personal observations of dps but the factual part is that the chain can be executed both frequently and quickly.

That being said air can spike but comparing it to other glass cannon dps its more glass than cannon. the bigger issue is anyone who knows its coming can interrupt the channel at a 3 second cast to get the whole chain complete and no strong cc (see above) there is no way to guarantee you hit it all. Now like i said before big pretty numbers are one thing but Damage Per Second is another. Factually scepter more than any other weapon we have is prime for condition damage. Between earth and fire attunements alone you’ll out dps a spike if you truly went down that path (condition damage/duration). Like a said before in order to make crit damage/precison worth while you have to be able to execute your spike quickly and frequently from the perspective of optimal stats.

PvP is a bit of a different story where you want to down your enemy as quickly as possible compared to your own capability to sustain yourself through their dps burst. Having a one time spike might be very useful especially if your encounters are infrequent (like the off hours in WvW).

To reiterate crit damage and precision are in no way an optimal stats for this class. If your truly wanted to maximize dps the options are very unpopular but the facts are facts. You can do spike dps in PvP you wont be comparable to almost all other classes.

I will concede if you demanded a spike weapon for this class your best available option is scepter air attunement.