Guild Wars 2

I found some vid by Kodiak.3281 :

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmebux2wjDAkCmEeQADJMeohHkA-ToAgyCuIKS9l7LTRyvsfNMYCC

http://youtu.be/4eNyM-OdKVc

What do you guys think? WvW?

I tried to gear for WvW and PvE:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmebux2wjDAkCmEeQADJMeohHkA-jUyA4sASgAJDApwioxWEnGbVMIaGMVKRUtHpIa1CBMZNA-w

PS Kodiak.3281 would be great if you can share some insight on how this build handles in duels and skirmishes?

I also came up witha condimentalist build. It’s based around a different idea…

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmIbmxzgjDIhCCw4RGoBdY5xNED1AA-ToAAzCpIaS1krJTTymsNN6YuA

Has any been playing it in WvW or PvE with Staff or S/D?

Condimentalist! Use Ketchup Attack!

(Sorry, someone had to say it. Personally I prefer the sandwichmancer.)

Okay sorry for the broken links in the other areas.

First off I primarily play PvE and WvW. I like playing builds that fly in the face of what others consider “mandatory” and pulling them off. In this build there is 0 Arcane which many people would say is impossible.

SPvP:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmebux2wjDAkCmEeQADJMeohHkA-ToAgyCuIKS9l7LTRyvsfNMYCC

WvW/PvE:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmebtR3wjDAkCmEeQADJMeohHkA-j0CB4MBkABkMAIFqIaslgRrgJsVRBRNBTjiIq2hAzjgIqWIgFrBA-w

Basis of the Build
The main idea behind the build is that our class was skipped over/forgotten during the old condition balance updates back in beta. See back in the day all those condition based classes like Necros and Engies used to have really long duration conditions like us but over time they were nerfed down to 1-4s durations because when stacked with condition duration the damage output was pretty insane. The main reason we might have been overlooked/skipped is we really don’t have the same AOE condition application those classes do but that doesn’t take away from how powerful the durations are with us fully capable of reaching perma burn and 25 stacks of bleed with little effort.

But don’t conditions just get removed?
Yes they do but you have to consider even the most stalwart condition removal is never enough to keep up. As you can see in my PvP video above, that’s a defensive Shout Warrior with condition removal on Shouts. Even then you can see once he blows his initial round of shouts he’s simply unable to keep up with the amount of burn and bleed I can reapply. This is true of any class in the game even our own class. Once we’ve blown our few sources of condition removal there are gaps where we are vulnerable.

The key to any condition based build is having sustained condition application and Duration. Again referencing that video once you reach the gap you see my bleed stacks rise up to 14 in the gap in the Warrior’s cool downs. That’s a lot of bleed to be stacked up on someone. A short duration bleed of 1-2 stacks you might be willing to “eat” because the over all damage will be relatively minor. However you can’t just “eat” a huge duration bleed that’s going to deal 13000 damage and prevent regen or leaving combat. You have to remove it.

Why Signets?
Signets are amazing because the fill the gap created by Staff or Scepter/Dagger ground based abilities. Most of our crowd control is in the Earth or Water lines. This means we have to blow our other attunements to CC then switch to Fire/Air to do damage. With Signets you gain Chill and Immobilize on demand. Again in the PvP video you can see a part where I catch a Ranger who wants to jump away from my Dragon’s Tooth combo and instead is stuck there in Immobilize and has to eat it leading to her death.

I’m still not convinced on Conditions!
I don’t like one trick ponies and that’s why we went in Carrion Gear instead of Rabid gear. The huge amount of Power we gain from Carrion gear plus might stacks we get from Puissance all adds up to give us really solid raw damage. Certainly my Dragon’s Tooth combo isn’t going to hit as hard as someone who’s stacking Damage/Crit/Crit Dmg but it’s not exactly going to just tickle them either and the conditions it applies (lots of burn) will hit pretty darned hard.

Continued…

0 Arcane, you’re insane!
Actually most of the cool downs on S/D are at around 30 second mark. This really isn’t a fast attunement switching build like 0/30/0/20/20. We certainly do switch attunements but most of the time you will be rotating between Fire/Earth with Water for defense purposes (you should see the chill stack Frost Aura builds with this much Condi duration) and Air mostly to escape as well (Ride the Lightning forevaaaa!) or because Earth/Fire is on cool down for a few seconds (again raw damage isn’t totally terrible). The base 16s attunement timers keep you from switching too early and switching into a cool down when it’s powerful /D utility isn’t up.

Really the 0 Arcane hurts the build mostly when using a staff because it’s just Ripe for staff play with this much power/condi and staff. I had considered using a 20/0/30/0/20 build just for that but thought better of it in the end because I found the times I’m defending on walls relatively low compared to the amount of time I’m roaming in a zerg where S/D is great.

Duels and Skirmishes
I’ll be honest: I don’t really play SPvP much at all. The only reason I even made that vid was to show someone that 30 points in Fire wasn’t a death sentence like they were proclaiming.

By far the toughest battles I had in SPvP are against heavy control opponents such as Hammer Warriors. This is because we basically have only 1 form of escape (Signet of Air) and if you blow it on the wrong escape that means you can end up in a bad spot. I thought Condi necros were going to be bad as well but once the few I fought blew their heals they fell over pretty quickly because how high I could stack my bleeds/burn and my condition removal was better than theirs. The difficult part about SPvP I find is that you can’t tell if that’s how you’d perform or if your opponent was just bad (same for duels, etc).

Skirmish (WvW) was one of the main reasons I made this and I love skirmishing/roaming with this build. Even in large battles I like to find the 1-2 guys who go off to the side of the main clash and engage them instead and just overwhelm them with bleeds rather than dive through the enemy force. The number of thieves I’ve killed is staggering. They go to stealth but still have a “bojillion bleeds” on them and they fall out of stealth pretty quickly as a corpse on the ground. The condition bleed ticks also give away which mesmer is the real mesmer very easily. By far the longest/hardest fights I have are with D/D eles and Shout Guardians because of the aforementioned condition removal they get (but they usually get overwhelmed as well).

titanlectro.5029:

Condimentalist! Use Ketchup Attack!

(Sorry, someone had to say it. Personally I prefer the sandwichmancer.)

Supposed to be Conditimentalist :/

I was going to make a post somewhere down the line when I had more time dedicated to building videos to it.

Kodiak.3281:

Okay sorry for the broken links in the other areas.

First off I primarily play PvE and WvW. I like playing builds that fly in the face of what others consider “mandatory” and pulling them off. In this build there is 0 Arcane which many people would say is impossible.

SPvP:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmebux2wjDAkCmEeQADJMeohHkA-ToAgyCuIKS9l7LTRyvsfNMYCC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eNyM-OdKVc

No offence, but that’s some of the worst gameplay I’ve ever seen, both from you and your opponents, even in hotjoin.

You almost never dodge (even if you did, you have no vigor) or put stone barrier up. Your enemies seem to be braindead because even if they outnumber you they don’t actively attack you. At around 8 minutes you fight against a necro and a thief, and they just seem to watch and stand there as you cast churning earth (without arcane shield or flash, and with a lowly 1400 toughness) and then get hit by it. The warrior at the start of the video even ACTIVELY RUNS INTO YOUR CHURNING EARTH RANGE.

Against non-braindead opponents you won’t last longer than a few seconds because you don’t have protection, or regeneration, or stability for ether renewal, or any source of defense or heals besides water 3 and 5 and you only have 1400 toughness.

Your build has 30 (lost) points in fire, yet you spend most of your time in earth. You try to make a condition build that’s earth based (for bleeding) yet you don’t use the fire trait that gives you burning on crit (no matter how bad the trait is it’s still our only chance to give us 2 damage conditions in 1 attunement). You have 20% reduced cooldown on fire skills yet you’re almost never in fire and when you are you don’t stay long enough for the cooldown reduction to matter, and if you switch out it doesn’t matter either because your attunement cooldown is atrociously long.

You use Pyromancer’s Puissance for might stacking, yet you never have more than 7-8 stacks of might, and most of the time you have either 0 because you haven’t been in fire for so long or around 3-4. The average amoung a normal build with sigil of battle has is 5-6 which makes a gorram weapon enchant MUCH better than your chosen grandmaster trait in your build.

I’m sorry to break it to you but your build isn’t anywhere near viable. Just like every other ele condition build, alas.

Edit: SCNR the attachment :P

awe be nice Aerher! lol.

Aether McLoud.1975:

No offence, but that’s some of the worst gameplay I’ve ever seen, both from you and your opponents, even in hotjoin.

You realize that this creates an impossible scenario where it’s impossible to prove anything right? Any video made as proof can be dismissed out of hand by implying anyone and everyone in the videos are “terrible” and therefore they’re invalid. I could take on arguably the best player in the world and win and all you have to do is say they played poorly and therefore what I present is invalid.

This is the problem you and others around here have. You’re too concerned with the theoretical. “Such and such will happen.” “If you played against so and so this would have happened.” “Without this you would be screwed in that scenario.” While all these theories are wonderful they don’t reflect actual game play experiences but rather only things that can happen in game play.

Talking about how a fight will go and how you will counter/react to things is entirely different from actual fighting. People panic. People don’t react as fast as they think they could. People don’t encounter what they thought they would. At the end of the day all that matters is whether or not something is effective. I’ve proven it can be and is effective.

Also I don’t recall ever stating that this build is the build to end all builds and that there’s no other possible viable alternatives. I leave that nonsense to you guys. I’ve stated it’s a build I play and have fun and succeed with. Others who are looking for something different than the standard cookie cutter builds out there might enjoy it as well. I realize this goes against your ethos that there must be one alpha build better than anything else with no viable alternatives but that doesn’t make this go away.

Zelyhn.8069:

Your WvW video (where is PvE?):

I haven’t made a PvE video yet at all because as I mentioned I hadn’t really planned to fully make a post for the build yet. The WvW video was posted primarily in response to another person on these forums who said I couldn’t possibly survive on a 30/0/30/10/0 build in a large zerg (Hence the name: Conditimentalist – Survivability) and there I am running into Stonemist and still able to keep kicking

Rest of your post is nonsense but thanks for the comments from the peanut gallery!

Kodiak.3281:

Aether McLoud.1975:

No offence, but that’s some of the worst gameplay I’ve ever seen, both from you and your opponents, even in hotjoin.

You realize that this creates an impossible scenario where it’s impossible to prove anything right? Any video made as proof can be dismissed out of hand by implying anyone and everyone in the videos are “terrible” and therefore they’re invalid. I could take on arguably the best player in the world and win and all you have to do is say they played poorly and therefore what I present is invalid.

Not it doesn’t, not at all. There are lots of videos out there of good players playing good (the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club!). No matter what you think, there is actually a way to objectively measure performance in pvp. Things like how often you get hit, how well you manage your cooldowns, how well you dodge heavy-hitting attacks, etc. Neither you nor your enemies did any of these things.

Also your argument has no merit because as I said the community as a whole is actually really good when judging play skill from videos (i.e. compare Teldo or Phantaram or Zoose videos to yours).

Kodiak.3281:

This is the problem you and others around here have. You’re too concerned with the theoretical. “Such and such will happen.” “If you played against so and so this would have happened.” “Without this you would be screwed in that scenario.” While all these theories are wonderful they don’t reflect actual game play experiences but rather only things that can happen in game play.

It’s funny how again, when you’re out of arguments and are up against a metaphorical wall, you try to attack your opponents again instead of their arguments. Also you fall back to strawman argumentation (You’d probably make a really good politician).

AAAAAAAnd on top of that, you actually try to argue that we all here are just theoretical pvpers and you are the once with so much gameplay experience that you are able to issue judgements on gameplay, when you yourself told us 2 post ago that you almost never pvp. And you spent 2 posts theoretically explaining your build.

Now THAT is irony.

Kodiak.3281:

Talking about how a fight will go and how you will counter/react to things is entirely different from actual fighting. People panic. People don’t react as fast as they think they could. People don’t encounter what they thought they would. At the end of the day all that matters is whether or not something is effective. I’ve proven it can be and is effective.

That sounds very… theoretical… to me. PVPers don’t panic. Why? Because they PVP all day. Sure they might be out of their domain in FOTM dungeon (I’ve never been there and I don’t care about it at all and I’d probably die within the first minute there) but they sure don’t panic in PVP. Just like race drivers don’t panic when driving 300 kph.
The only people that might panic in pvp are people like you (and probably your hotjoin opponents), pve’ers.

And no, you haven’t proven anything, not in the least that your build is anything close to viable. Go to a tournament against actual pvpers and see yourself on the ground 10 seconds after you engage and then try to come here again with your silly proof.

Kodiak.3281:

Also I don’t recall ever stating that this build is the build to end all builds and that there’s no other possible viable alternatives. I leave that nonsense to you guys.

You stated it’s viable which it isn’t. You stated it’s good, which it isn’t. You stated you won against pvpers, which you didn’t. Every competent pvper will tell you that eles don’t have any viable condition build.

Condition Damage Ele’s are actually quite fun to play this is the version I play for sPvP
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmebux2wjDAkCmEeQADJMeohHkA-ToAgyCuIKS9l7LTRyvsfNMYCC

Getting Crit in the mix for Burning Precision is my latest test I like it so far it proc’s alot thanks to Fury.

The amount of hits u can take is pretty crazy with 2000+ Toughness and your dodges. While stackin dem bleeds/burn/poison DoT’s them away pretty fast.

Haven’t tried in WvW though since I don’t feel like getting the gear lol still trustworthy 0/10/0/30/30 there.

Kodiak.3281 thanks for replying to the post and never mind the haters…You went out and did something EVERYONE said can not be done, is it perfect? No idea but it works and I bet many players like myself are glad you took those first steps towards a condiele.

I stated levelling an ele because of your video and have no idea how it will play out but since its my last level 80 I hope it works out!

PS Signet of Fire does crazyyyyyy dmg, thoughts?

Aether McLoud.1975:

Not it doesn’t, not at all. There are lots of videos out there of good players playing good (the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club!). No matter what you think, there is actually a way to objectively measure performance in pvp. Things like how often you get hit, how well you manage your cooldowns, how well you dodge heavy-hitting attacks, etc. Neither you nor your enemies did any of these things.

Also your argument has no merit because as I said the community as a whole is actually really good when judging play skill from videos (i.e. compare Teldo or Phantaram or Zoose videos to yours).

I stand by my point. When the only way you can prove something is through videos and people dismiss the content of your videos it creates an impossible situation. I realize that’s inconvenient to point that out, but that’s just a fact.

Aether McLoud.1975:

It’s funny how again, when you’re out of arguments and are up against a metaphorical wall, you try to attack your opponents again instead of their arguments. Also you fall back to strawman argumentation (You’d probably make a really good politician).

AAAAAAAnd on top of that, you actually try to argue that we all here are just theoretical pvpers and you are the once with so much gameplay experience that you are able to issue judgements on gameplay, when you yourself told us 2 post ago that you almost never pvp. And you spent 2 posts theoretically explaining your build.

Now THAT is irony.

Strawman is another argument that’s impossible to counter. It’s extremely dismissive of anything I say because I’m “just saying it as a distraction.” What’s next, “U mad bro?” Being dismissive of my points doesn’t refute them.

I also never said you’re theoretical pvpers but instead that you’re bringing up theoretical scenarios that happen in pvp but you imply they happen every time. I’ve actually been PvPing since Ultima Online back in 1997 and I know that talking about the “What ifs…” in a PvP situation is largely pointless because they don’t happen every time. Part of the thrill of PvP is never knowing what you will encounter or how the people will react. As an off topic this is why I dislike Arena/Battleground style PvP, because it’s even less organic than solo roaming around in WvW where any one of a thousand scenarios could occur.

Aether McLoud.1975:

And no, you haven’t proven anything, not in the least that your build is anything close to viable. Go to a tournament against actual pvpers and see yourself on the ground 10 seconds after you engage and then try to come here again with your silly proof.

Now the only way for my build to not be terrible is if I’m playing tournament against “actual pvpers” (yet another escape route as any video proof of it could be dismissed as them not being “actual pvpers”)?

At some point you’re going to realize I’m not here to impress or convince you. Quite frankly I’m struggling to even think of a reason to respond to your trolling.

Aether McLoud.1975:

You stated it’s viable which it isn’t. You stated it’s good, which it isn’t. You stated you won against pvpers, which you didn’t. Every competent pvper will tell you that eles don’t have any viable condition build.

Your obsession with poking holes or saying I’m wrong despite all the evidence to the contrary is cute and all but it doesn’t make what I’ve shown, stated, or prove on a day in an day out basis any less true. I’m flattered you would take the time out of your day to come post your thoughts and opinions on me or my build they are not needed or wanted. While I’m sure that won’t really stop you trying to drag everyone else down into the miserable time you’re having with the Elementalist (based on your post history) you really haven’t proven a thing but instead just did a lot of talking.

Conditions on an ele….. lol.

Cempa.5619:

Kodiak.3281 thanks for replying to the post and never mind the haters…You went out and did something EVERYONE said can not be done, is it perfect? No idea but it works and I bet many players like myself are glad you took those first steps towards a condiele.

I stated leveling an ele because of your video and have no idea how it will play out but since its my last level 80 I hope it works out!

PS Signet of Fire does crazyyyyyy dmg, thoughts?

There’s been guys like them on these forums since the start where if you don’t fall into the cookie cutter build/templates/ideology they attack/dismiss you relentlessly. I’ve gotten into one or two (understatement) discussions on the merits of alternative play styles in the past and it’s gained me few friends.

At some point people will realize/recognize that multiple builds and multiple ways of playing any class in this game are perfectly viable. Personally I don’t play just this build, it’s a variation I enjoy from time to time because it’s different yet still effective.

So there’s two Signets we miss:

Signet of Fire is fantastic. It’s so much burn it’s crazy. When I first rolled out I had Signet of Fire/Water/Air in fact. Against people with zero/low condition removal it was just mean because you could apply Burn even in Earth attunement. However what I found was that the additional CC from Earth/Water was extremely strong at being able to land our ground based AOE which lead to more reliable damage and kills.

In addition, I’m a firm believer that without significant (even just 40%) Crit Damage then Crit is pretty worthless. That makes the passive not too good. This was one of my earlier mistakes trying to mix in Rampager/Rabid gear (which with Fury on Area Might blasts wouldn’t sound bad from 30 in Fire) but just didn’t have the Crit damage to see the results. It spreads you just way too thin trying to cover Power, Crit, Crit dmg and Condition damage while also having decent Vitality/Toughness so I instead replaced Crit with Condi Duration instead.

For PvE I still swap out to Signet of Fire because having access to Burn while doing Earth is pretty great without having to swap to Fire prematurely.

Signet of Restoration was another early mistake I made mostly because I found when fighting in a large Zerg I’d get bogged down with so many Conditions and no way to get rid of them reliably. Ether Renewal really helped out with that instead and when getting bogged down and I’ve already swapped to Water I can just flip on Ether Renewal and keep on going without getting stuck constantly.

covenn.7165:

Conditions on an ele….. lol.

You should try it.

It costs nothing in PvP to give it a shot. Why not give it a kitten try and see if it’s as bad as you think it is? Worst case scenario is you don’t like it or won’t take it serious enough to give it a real go and go back to playing something else instead.

Kodiak.3281:

covenn.7165:

Conditions on an ele….. lol.

You should try it.

It costs nothing in PvP to give it a shot. Why not give it a kitten try and see if it’s as bad as you think it is? Worst case scenario is you don’t like it or won’t take it serious enough to give it a real go and go back to playing something else instead.

I have. That is why I am laughing. I am a student of the game and it just viable against many classes providing they are driven by a competent player.

If it works for you though, that should be all that matters.

going to try this build. as said before there is no loss to you from testing this out in a few hotjoin matches.

The build seems interesting. The only thing that really bothers me about signets (water or earth) is that they are single target. I might tamper with this a little bit, maybe substitute lighting flash to make that curbing earth to right into the middle of people.

QQing.3089:

The build seems interesting. The only thing that really bothers me about signets (water or earth) is that they are single target. I might tamper with this a little bit, maybe substitute lighting flash to make that curbing earth to right into the middle of people.

Yea I completely admit this is a much more single target focused build. I found Churning Earth very easy to land in SPvP because people are forced to defend/take a point so it forces them into a tighter/enclosed space. In WvW it’s a lot more difficult to land simply because nothing is forcing anyone into a particular area and when you’re Zerg Diving you don’t stop.

Like I say, give it a shot as is and tweak as needed for you and your play style. We all play things a little differently. You may get much better results when you play it with Lightning Flash instead and if I had to pick one utility to give up it’d be Signet of Water.

Kodiak.3281:

Okay sorry for the broken links in the other areas.

First off I primarily play PvE and WvW. I like playing builds that fly in the face of what others consider “mandatory” and pulling them off. In this build there is 0 Arcane which many people would say is impossible.

I congratulate you for this sort of thinking Kodiak. That’s how great pvpers are born. Those that blinded believes investing in the arcane tree is a must for all type of builds are just followers that get easily influenced by what other players say. Personally, I consider investing so much points in the arcane tree to be helpful only if you are going for a bunker/healer type of ele but when it comes to burst or even condition builds more than 5 or 10 points is not helpful and honestly is a waste. You keep playing with the builds that work for you and don’t care what other less skillful players like Aether has to say about it.

Yeah, one condition every 10s in a wvw environment isn’t really worth it. I just wish signet of fire, or more of the signets for that matter, were 5 targets instead of 1. It would be very viable. Doesn’t mean I won’t waste me gold anyway ^^

Kodiak.3281 why sceptre over dagger in the main hand?

QQing.3089:

Yeah, one condition every 10s in a wvw environment isn’t really worth it. I just wish signet of fire, or more of the signets for that matter, were 5 targets instead of 1. It would be very viable. Doesn’t mean I won’t waste me gold anyway ^^

I’ve caught a lot of people with that nearly 6s immobilize by using RTL to catch up to them and then stop them with Chill (they remove) then Immobilize (oh noes) and then they get run over. It’s admittedly fairly situational, but since I already have perma Burn in Fire attunement I found it was useful enough to use most of the situations I ran into.

Cempa.5619:

Kodiak.3281 why sceptre over dagger in the main hand?

I’m a ranged guy at heart and prefer S/D over D/D is mostly what it comes down to.

The critique of Scepter (and Staff) back in the day is that the damage it deals in some of it’s attunements (Fire/Water) is ground based and therefore unreliable against moving targets. For example Dragon’s Tooth → Ring of Fire → Phoenix → Fire Grab is a great combo but if they’re moving it’s really tough to land. This is where our control conditions from our Signets come from by giving us the ability to land these combos more reliably. This doesn’t mean you will land them every time, only that they become more reliable to land against a stationary target.

Furthermore Scepter Earth also offers us some great abilities. For one the base attack stacks bleeds much quicker than Impale does on the Dagger. For two Rock Barrier is +250 Toughness when used which is pretty great all around. Ring of Earth is pretty competitive admittedly (quick recast bleed and cripple) but again I’m more of a fan of the ranged element (even tho Stone Shards is a projectile you do run into the risk of reflect/negation as a result).

However you could always try D/D with this build. There’s a lot of conditions to be had from D/ as well such as the same Burn, Chill, Vulnerability, Weakness, Cripple as well from various other attunements. Don’t see why it wouldn’t work but you’d have to give it a shot.

…or any fight against another player. Simply put:

1. See the animation
2. Count in your head
3. Dodge

Even if they flash to you last second, you just dodged the churn.

Hey everybody.
We had to delete several postings in here, as the conversation got unhealthy. We strongly recommend to keep the conversation healthy and constructive, otherwise we will have to lock this thread.

I am not questioning moderation but maybe if you reconsidered your definition of “rude” then this discussion could actually go forward. Forward as in getting to a full stop from the first post since in all objectivity my belief (and this is my opinion, which is shared by a large number) is that this build is not efficient and that the videos posted by the author clearly illustrate that fact. I hope I have been respectful enough in this post. No offence intended. Respect all. Peace and love.

Moderator.9604:

Hey everybody.
We had to delete several postings in here, as the conversation got unhealthy. We strongly recommend to keep the conversation healthy and constructive, otherwise we will have to lock this thread.

I thank you for your continued efforts at keeping these forums a healthy and constructive place!

@Kodiak

I like your build, but I think you could tweak it a bit so it gels a bit more. Some of the traits don’t seem to work with one another.

I’d probably swap your traits around to:

Fire:
Puissance become Fire’s Embrace.

I know what you’re going for. You’re wanting your Fire skills to serve as a make-shift Burst, and the might stacks increase your burning damage a bit. It doesn’t seem to do enough to warrant how much you’re losing in defense, though. Which leads me to…

Alacrity becomes Elemental Shielding

Now, I know this makes it take a bit longer for your Churning Earth to refresh, but from the video I saw you almost never used Churning more than once a fight. I’m gonna say that you probably don’t need the 20% CD reduction. Honestly, you probably don’t need either CD reduction but it’s not a big deal. However, taking Shielding means that every time you use a signet you now get Fire Shield (which gives you Might stacks if you get hit so it kinda fills in for Puissance) and you get Protection. This makes your build a bit tankier against burst without costing you that much in damage output.

All in all, I think it’s a pretty cool build no matter what you do with it. I’d want to build a little more mobility into it, since the big strength of long duration conditions is that you can load someone up with Bleeds/Burns and then kite them around while they die or waste cooldowns. More mobility would require a lot of changes, though. So all I think it needs is a touch more defense against getting burst, and Elemental Shielding does that quite well.

Just my 2 cents, and thanks for posting.

Zelyhn.8069:

my belief is that this build is not efficient and that the videos posted by the author clearly illustrate that fact.

Perhaps not, but I think that the most important question is being overlooked in this race to out theorycraft one another: Is it fun to play? One can lose repeatedly at the game in any aspect and still have fun, and if the build it fun to play, then it’s a good build. If it is also efficient or successful, those are added bonuses, but if it isn’t fun, why bother doing it?

Drakkon.4782:

Zelyhn.8069:

my belief is that this build is not efficient and that the videos posted by the author clearly illustrate that fact.

Perhaps not, but I think that the most important question is being overlooked in this race to out theorycraft one another: Is it fun to play? One can lose repeatedly at the game in any aspect and still have fun, and if the build it fun to play, then it’s a good build. If it is also efficient or successful, those are added bonuses, but if it isn’t fun, why bother doing it?

Fun is a subjective matter. Build efficiency however, is objective. A lot of people on these forums are trying to help the elementalist community progress, they are putting a lot of effort into that, so it is only normal that poor builds are criticized and judged accordingly.

I ran a condi-ele spec in october-november in tournaments. Back then the meta wasn’t filled with condi cleave like it is now. It was really hard to keep pressure on most classes back then and I imagine it is 10 times harder in the current meta. Ele’s have no way to mask condi’s like a engi and necro’s can. As well, water and air don’t apply condi’s (besides frost aura). Also, most of your condi is single target, unless you think your going to land a churning earth without lf on mediocre to decent players. Why would you have a condi ele when you could bring a engi, necro, ranger or hell, even a longbow warrior?

PinCushion.7390:

@Kodiak

I like your build, but I think you could tweak it a bit so it gels a bit more. Some of the traits don’t seem to work with one another.

I’d probably swap your traits around to:

Fire:
Puissance become Fire’s Embrace.

I know what you’re going for. You’re wanting your Fire skills to serve as a make-shift Burst, and the might stacks increase your burning damage a bit. It doesn’t seem to do enough to warrant how much you’re losing in defense, though. Which leads me to…

Alacrity becomes Elemental Shielding

Now, I know this makes it take a bit longer for your Churning Earth to refresh, but from the video I saw you almost never used Churning more than once a fight. I’m gonna say that you probably don’t need the 20% CD reduction. Honestly, you probably don’t need either CD reduction but it’s not a big deal. However, taking Shielding means that every time you use a signet you now get Fire Shield (which gives you Might stacks if you get hit so it kinda fills in for Puissance) and you get Protection. This makes your build a bit tankier against burst without costing you that much in damage output.

All in all, I think it’s a pretty cool build no matter what you do with it. I’d want to build a little more mobility into it, since the big strength of long duration conditions is that you can load someone up with Bleeds/Burns and then kite them around while they die or waste cooldowns. More mobility would require a lot of changes, though. So all I think it needs is a touch more defense against getting burst, and Elemental Shielding does that quite well.

Just my 2 cents, and thanks for posting.

You are 80% right how I use Fire. Contrary to this one video I actually sit in Fire most of the time because of that mini-burst. My “ideal” scenario is I land my miniburst combo in Fire and with the might stacks built up I switch into Earth which is now charged up with some Might stacks for additional damage on Bleeds plus the additional defenses with Rock Barrier.

Alacrity (in both lines) are certainly negotiable. The big reason I had 20% in Earth was actually for Earthquake because (especially in WvW) it’s an amazing tool to stop runners (RTL -> Earth -> Signet Chill -> Earthquake and watch the Zerg run over the people). The additional protection could help out if you’re having problems surviving and as you mentioned build additional Might stacks. I’d still be loathe to give up Puissance as typically it’s pretty easy to build 3-5 stacks of Might from it while doing your standard burst combo (which builds even more). If roaming with a group I will sometimes switch Puissance out for Persisting Flames because the amount of Fury you can build for a group is pretty crazy.

All in all good insights.

I have been asked to be a bit more constructive and less mean in order to express my views of this build and gameplay. I understand that while I believe it is obvious that this build/gameplay is not a good example to follow, I should take some time to explain to the community why it is so.

Everything that follows is my opinion and should only be considered as such. Although many people will share it. I am expressing this opinion because I want to help the elementalist community to progress and so I must ward them off the not-so-good ideas that can be found on this thread.
First I will analyse the gameplay showed on the videos.
Note that I am analysing the gameplay, not the player. I am sure Kodiak is a very likable person, but I have some critic to make regarding his gameplay.
Some mistakes that I can spot:
-using scepter and not maintaining a permanent rock barrier
-Not using the air attunement apart from for RTL (Updraft could save his teammates, blind could provide some support, Lightning strike is a good damaging spell worthy os using since the player has invested in power)
-Using heals while out of combat: redundant since you regenerate automatically
-Attacking structures with spell that deal damage primarily with conditions (Flamestrike)
-Not using the fourth spell of the fiery greatsword while meleeing structures (it stacks the ticks on the target, therefore making it the most damaging spell in the game)
-Stacking conditions on targets that have already the maximum stacks possible, therefore providing no damage
-Running into enemies aoe (getting knocked down and stunned a lot from them)
-attacking mostly downed players: this is contributing very little to the group
I would like to point out to anyone watching this video that apparently the damage output of this build is quite suboptimal: as you can see for yourself the player is only able to throw out a few hundred damage per second, which is commonly considered as inefficient. Also the player is not making a good use of his signet utilities while he could spam them without loosing their passive effects due to his traits. Finally I would like to point out that the player is level one in PvP and therefore he may lack the required experience to properly understand what works and what does not.

As for the traits, this is an attempt to make use of conditions as an Elementalist. One of the major flaws I can find in it is that you either damage your targets with burn or with bleed, almost never with both. Therefore the fire traits are useless when you are in earth and the earth traits are useless when you are in fire, or in any other attunement. Notice that the OP has linked his gear set up for you to consider. He advocates using a sigil that chills on weapon swap and a sigil to increas chill duration. Keep in mind that with such build you will not be able to swap attunements that often and that you only have one source of chill. I would kindly advise to anyone interested in dealing damage with conditions to look at any other build approved by the renowned theorycrafters of this community for guidance and ignore this one.
With all due respect and no offence intended.

Edit: I forgot to say that this build provides very little group-wise, not only because its damage is low but also because the utilities are self oriented (or that the player is not using them – like signet of air). Also notice that apparently the player is not using dust devil. In effect, since the player seem to be unable to land most of his skills, he would do more damage if he auto-attacked in water or air.

Due to the continued personal attacks and ranting, this topic is being locked as it leaves no room for a healthy, constructive discussion.