Guild Wars 2

Hello,
I recently reached lvl 80 and I’m using a straightforward 30/30/10/0/0 critical Damage Build with some Might stacking. I’m wondering if i should switch to a condition Build. Is this viable in Dungeons and solo pve as well? And would you rather go power/precision/condition damage , precision/toughness/condition damage or power/vitality condition Damage (the different Set Bonuses).
Thanks for your input.

Conditions suck when it’s more than 2 people fighting anything.
Play power/crit builds if you want to contribute meaningful damage in group environments.

You can do a condition/power build. That’s what I go for and it kicks butt. in ALL venues. Solo or small groups of people, the conditions stack up and do crazy damage. In larger groups, I can make use of my power and still do lots of damage.
Keep in mind, damage isn’t everything in this game. You can be contributing meaningfully to anything without doing much damage…and I don’t mean JUST by healing.
Also, you should probably not just pick one type of gear. Mix and match depending on what you need in your build. For example, I use 2 rampager, 2 knight, 1 cleric, and 1 carrion.

If we’re talking about world dynamic events at like Orr level, conditions and supporting simply blow, because you’ll get bronze or nothing as contribution on bigger bosses when there’s 30-50 people mashing the boss. Only 1 bleed stack is gonna be up, from the guy with most +cond and burning will forever and always be at max duration. So if you don’t have power/crit to damage the boss or you run around healing/reviving, you won’t be seeing gold participation and suffer less loot.

Sucks but that’s how the game is atm.

No…you’re kinda wrong. I’ve done those boss fights almost entirely in earth attunement before stacking bleeds (mostly ‘cause I get lazy sometimes) in my build with the 30-50 plus dudes fighting. I always get gold participation. You only really ever get lower participation rewards if you show up right near the end of the fight. Also, remember that the boss isn’t the ONLY thing that you can attack in those events and it’s certainly not the only thing that needs to be attacked in those events.

What about explo mode dungeons? The bleeding cap bothers me a little because the damage can be really low if the group composition is bad. Also I wanted to switch builds for more survivability, how big of a difference is there?

Well Pinkerton, yesterday I did one of the Cathedral bosses in Orr, Statue of whatever in Malchors. I was in power/crit chance gear myself, I was there at the boss from the very start till the very end, dpsing it all the time and I got silver. Would been bronze in cond gear.

Cond builds are simply going to blow when there’s vast majority of power/crit builds in the encounter present.

I don’t know what you’re doing wrong. I’ve never gotten lower than a gold unless I showed up like 20 seconds from boss down.
And yes, dungeon groups are interesting. You can always change your traits for dungeons. Or you can just make sure you’ve got a good composition.
But honestly, a condition build for Ele IS your most survivable build hands down, or so I’ve found. Mostly because focusing on earth also piles up your toughness and earth has lots of defensive abilities.

Condition builds blow in mass events, the only way to go is is pure power / pre and get roflstomped in two hits by any mob at level 80 OR go pure defensive and deal slap damage.

Maybe your server is lesser population or something. I’m on Desolation which I believe is the highest pop in EU? Not sure, but when we’re talking about a zerg on a boss, it’s zerg on a boss. There’s so many people.

Another boss I did, the high priest whatever in the first Orr zone at the end. I was in the even chain for 3 events prior and then the boss full time, but since I was in my support build, I figured I’ll be a teammmate and support. So instead of just dpsing the boss, I put down heal fields and detonated them using my blast finishers to top people up, I ressed people who went down (and a hell of a lot did since there was so many people boss 1 hit anyone who didn’t dodge the aoe attacks), I was in for the whole fight, again.

Result was bronze. Sorry, being a teamplayer in this game currently is always taking one for the team. Same in sPvP. You’ll get less glory if you don’t skirmish and zerg. Zerging gives most rewards, from all the kills you participate to taking points in a zerg, while it’s no faster than 1 person taking the point. The people who likely win you the game, aka defenders, point holders, back cappers and supports, get less rewards.

I’m with Pinkerton on this one. Power/precision may be the way to go with other classes but on ele it’s definitely condition damage. If you use staff, all of the main damage dealers are aoe condition based (flameburst,eruption) Not to mention scepter’s auto attacks are also condition based. Going earth also gives good toughness/ survive ability skills. The idea is to know what your going into. I use staff for all purpose/ groups of mobs and scepter/focus for 1v1 and boss battles. It’s INCREDIBLY easy to stack burning and bleeding on enemies with the scepter in a 1v1 for pretty good dps. You can keep up huge bleed stacks easy and with a carrion build it’s no problem to use all of your attacks for good dps. The idea being to stack conditions and use power attacks second. I understand people complaining about ele being under powered in spvp(no interrupt when down) but the elementalist handles pve pretty well in my experience and only suffers a little in dungeons due to low health. Your playing a different class here and have to take advantage of what you got so stop trying to play it like a warrior or a thief.

There’s the problem of trying to use Explorer MF gear to farm mats, which is the majority of what people do at level 80 in Orr. The gear is all power/precision/MF%, it’s not conductive towards a Condi heavy build.

That also brings the problem of why is it that there is only one meaningful way of playing an Elementalist at level 80?

I have tried many of the builds listed above, but currently run 30 air / 30 arcane / 10 water.

Removing conditions from changing to water and then again by rolling/dodging in water has saved my tail and my group many times in dungeons.

The extra precision basically means you are forgoing condition damage for the ‘big hit’. I like big hits. I typically run scepter/dagger.

I wouldn’t mind hearing some thoughts on this, but once I get enough materials or money, I intend to find out if the ‘big hits’ are big enough to counter the added damage due to conditions.

Ember.4326:

Well Pinkerton, yesterday I did one of the Cathedral bosses in Orr, Statue of whatever in Malchors. I was in power/crit chance gear myself, I was there at the boss from the very start till the very end, dpsing it all the time and I got silver. Would been bronze in cond gear.

Cond builds are simply going to blow when there’s vast majority of power/crit builds in the encounter present.

Not sure what your doing wrong. This is coming from a Thief that uses a heavy conditions, 40%+ crit, and power through out. I’ve almost alway got gold, even when I show up late for an event (just not really late). If the ONLY thing the event has as an objective is to kill 1 guy then you should get gold, but if its Cull the Risen forces and some Champion Giant Mob happens to be smack dab in the middle of it…… you better be killing everything at some point.

Not sure what your doing wrong. This is coming from a Thief that uses a heavy conditions, 40%+ crit, and power through out. I’ve almost alway got gold, even when I show up late for an event (just not really late). If the ONLY thing the event has as an objective is to kill 1 guy then you should get gold, but if its Cull the Risen forces and some Champion Giant Mob happens to be smack dab in the middle of it…… you better be killing everything at some point.

What is happening is most of the people there are running power/crit (explorer MF set) and are professions with better sustained dps with that set. With condi build it would just get worse for me. I was deepsing the boss 100% of the encounter and I don’t get gold, geegee.

Theres no way to tell for sure unless they come out with some kind of damg meter, which i doubt they will.

Best bet stats wise is Power / Precision / Crit damg build 30 fire 30 air 10 arcane, or 30 fire 20 20 variations. works for both staff and scepter/dagger.

Maybe 30 Earth 30 fire 10 air?

I know for a fact that the Elementalist condition builds are pretty much crap for spvp right now. By the time you get enough stacks to matter your already dead or they have removed them. In large fights bleeds and burning only stack to 25. Go with the big hitting crit builds for pve and wvw keep defense. Avoid spvp unless you just like being at a constant disadvantage vs every class in this game.

my post from another thread actually benefits this thread too

I started with a staff build when i started my Ele, but after dyiing countless times, I switched to scepter/dagger, and I really enjoyed it, but right around 35 I started noticed that anytime I teamed up with other people who were heavy on condition damage I was lacking any real feeling of contributing. I have since then switched to Staff, and while I love it and enjoy the pure precision/crit/power style; I cant help but wonder about the other skills.
I know my water skills are lack luster, I use them for healing, pure and simple, I rarely use my earth skills either… In fact most of the time I am using JUST fire, but I switch out to the other 3 for situations where I need it.. typically if I am in a group (even or whatever) where a lot of adds come out where I dont want to aggro everything, but still want to contribute evenly, i switch out to air and chain lightning, then switch to water for healing support…
I cant say for sure if this is the “proper” way of doing it, but it works for me

I dont know whether this is the way its supposed to be, I do know that I am a little flustered by the amount of condition damage accessories right now (I am 58). I am just now starting to get to the better gems that have 3 stats on them (usually found in platinum nodes)

So I guess my concern is: By design from the devs should we be doing condition builds or power builds… and even more so, should we be keeping two sets of gear, one for condition, and one for pure power/pre/crit

opinions?

oh, and the build I am building towards is http://www.gw2builds.org/create/bwe_1/elementalist#0.0-3.4.12.19.3-30.0.20.10.10-7.2.12.1.11.4.4

I would be interested to see what Henries builds look like though

My build currently is 30 fire 20 air 20 arcane, with blasted staff and ele attunement, Power / precision / + Crit damg gear, mostly attunement swapping for buffs the larger aoe staff attack really helps and I can manage to kite up to 8 mobs (melee, never bother trying to get more) I think it’s a very generic ele build prob easiest to play for dungeons since you can pretty much just spam large aoe at a decent range with decent group buffs and some utility.

Here’s what I posted in a different topic about how I play this build

I am a 80 Elementalist, hope this helps.

Glass Cannon Kite build

30 fire 20 air 20 arcane, you’ll have to learn to attunement swapping,

30 fire: 10 point trait(Internal Fire), 20 point(Pyromancer’s Alacrity(15%) CDR), 30 point(either, Pyromancer’s Puissance or Persisting Flames depends both decent, Persisting Flames are prob better for Aoe?)

20 Air: 10 point(Quick Glyphs), 20 point(Boil to the Heart(more for dungeon boss fights))

20 Arcane: 10 point(Elemental Attunement this can be swapped if you take arcane skills, (shield, blast, wave) 20% arcane skill CDR is useful in that case), 20 point (Blasting Staff)

Skills I take, Glyph of Elemental Power, Glyph of lesser elemental, Mist form or (arcane shield) I like Mist form better personally. and elite is Glyph of Elementals.
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So you can actually run around with Air attunement pull a bunch of melee mobs (this doesn’t work very well with ranged but doable)

Switch to water and use skill 4(Frozen Ground) aim it in front of the mob, it’s instant so you don’t have to time the cast. you can also use skill 2 real quick if you like.

Switch to fire drop your skill 5 meteor and 3 (aoe dot) and 2(lava) make sure you aim the ground aoes properly, not on the mobs since they are moving towards you, aim it ahead of their path.

Switch to Earth for skill 5 first, it roots mobs. it’s a line skill, so same concept as Earth Shaker’s fissure in dota. Then put skill 4(slow) in front of the mob, again skill 2 if you have time.

Switch to air for speed bonus from elemental attunement and Skill 4 if you want, then back to water to put skill 4(Frozen Ground) down again and heal your self if needed.

What you want to do is run in a circle and pivot the group of mobs in the Aoe range of your meteor, using slow root and swiftness.

if you do get hit you can mist form and heal. Against rangd mobs you can always pop earth skill 3 (ranged reflect) only 5 secs tho. and pop your Ele glyphs.

Always make sure you utilize your slows, with Glyph of Elemental powers you can chill mobs with any water skills, and use Frozen ground and Unsteady Ground and Shockwave on cool down to keep a good distance.
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Great thread! current low 70s and I was power/crit build till my guildie told im too squishy when we dungeon. However when I switch to power/toughness, I survived longer but I don’t feek like I contributed much.

I run a condition build 30 Fire/30 Earth/10 Arcane and have never gotten less than gold unless I showed up right at the event was about to end. I have full exotic Carrion set for armor and berserker jewels. I run scepter/dagger mostly, use staff in explorable. If you plan to do condition build you need to build for it, won’t work using a mf set.

Yet a magic find set is pretty darn important if you want to increase your odds of getting rares so you can actually salvage mats or make a profit, all of which you need to eventually get your legendary gear.

Condi builds work, I believe it offers more survivability, but it’s not practical given the current situation that we’re in.

I personally don’t find MF to be that important, I crafted my full exotic set of armor within three days of hitting 80. I finished off my jewels with in a week after that, currently I’m almost done crafting a berserker set of armor for some builds that I want to try. Only mf source I ever used was mf food, and I had a luck weapon. I also never traded gems for gold.

My finding is the opposite for MF gear, it helps a lot for me. The sheer amount of fine material drops and rares that ectos can be salvaged from contributes to the daunting task of getting legendary gear.

Although I’m curious as to how you’ve been farming your powerful bloods with no MF gear to help get you funds and no clear mobs to kill it from except very rare, abysmal drop rate, drops from the trolls in Frostgorge.

I buy them from the tp, farm yellows sell the ectos. I mean I usually get three ectos pretty often when I salvage so really faster to farm gold then to farm items.

Obie.3268:

My finding is the opposite for MF gear, it helps a lot for me. The sheer amount of fine material drops and rares that ectos can be salvaged from contributes to the daunting task of getting legendary gear.

Although I’m curious as to how you’ve been farming your powerful bloods with no MF gear to help get you funds and no clear mobs to kill it from except very rare, abysmal drop rate, drops from the trolls in Frostgorge.

I was obtaining them rather frequently from the spirit’s near Doric’s Waypoint in Malchor’s…I’m pretty sure that’s where it was. idk I was only passing through but in the short time there I picked up 4.

Time for me to visit that place then! Thank you, Tradewind.

Yeah I’m not 100% sure on the area, all I recall was they were big yellowy/orange shiny kittens.

I ended up switching back to scepter/dagger, I missed the utility, and I missed the constant switching.

the build I went to is http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#MzsMz9colvaMoTvaMxxa9MoVbzRac

very nice, regardless of its merits, it FEELS right to me, and really thats about all that matters to me