Guild Wars 2

Is this going to happen any time?
I mean there is a meta out there and we are the only class left out.

Hi,

this is my, absolutely stupid, condition build.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmSboR2gjDIjHagH0hCFVAFUUMD7AA-jgxAINAyDQOsIasVzioxqkJiqV3YSBAxaA-e

(I do not have all of the ascendend items, yet)

its that stupid:

main goal: get as much rediculous amounts of condition damage as possible without relying on might stacks

- pretty squishy in terms of hp
- condi removal non existent withou ether renewal which i swap for GoER
- high toughness as a catalyst for even more condi damage
- …leads to precision which can not be utelized effeciently

gameplay: (or something similar)

hit them with earth 2, signet of fire, swap to fire to add flame burst, go to lightning to cast static field (or water for ice field) back to earth, cast gearth 2 on top of yourself + glyph of storms… by that time monsters should be on top of you. you stay in earth now to repeateldy cast earth 2 until all is dead or close to swap back to fire for renewing flame blast and getting sigil of geomancy.

result: due to GoS and some protection you pretty much facetank mobs while they die of your conditions ticking at around 3.000 damage per second on most of the 5 targets.

fun build in solo pve and it does also work in dungeon groups – but well there are a lot of better setups for this (probably everything else)

main problems:
- like all ele builds i feel pressured to go into arcane – with staff anyways
- inscription only giving one might stack in fire is subpar (should be at least 2)
- i have to sacrefice everything to get acceptable damage numbers
- no access to poison, confusion, torment (or at least not in a way worth considering)
- Diamond skin alone is like a dangleing carrot that actually does very little if you do not focus on high toughness – there are way better traits in earth. it needs some more punch.
- condi damage for fire is too low. imo if a class invests heavily in condition damage the damage should scale upwards by at least 25% (in addition to traits)
- give some real stat combination for condition builds!
- the build is super funin solo content and very strong yet in group play or pvp, wvw its a glass cannon that relies on DoT . … as I said stupid

I can solo quite champions due to the amzing cc abilities of the ele. in normal solo pve i can avoid being hit at all most of the times if i would care for.

a minor pro: since you can get all the exotic gear from karma its fairly cheap

i also got liadri to 20% with this build but since getting hit in that encouter ist not an option anyways this should be no surpise. (with this build you can charge up swiftness to an infite amount if you care for it)

Zumy.6318:

Is this going to happen any time?
I mean there is a meta out there and we are the only class left out.

First of all, guardians are even more left out of this meta than we are as they only get burning. Meanwhile necros and engineers are the kings of conditons, other classes can only use viable condition WvW (not PvE) specs that really heavily on stealth and lack the ability to create as much condition pressure as a necro or engi (I’m talking about thieves and mesmers). Meanwhile Ranger is ok at conditions with a sortbow, and warriors can kinda do it, but the stunlock builds are more of a guarantee it seems. So don’t worry that ele isnt a condition god, just be happy we have the ability to DPS and inflict extra conditions at the same time, so I’d suggest speccing more into a sustainable or bursty power build.

It’s not that we don’t have a build it’s that people are still trying to build around the same principals as a Engie/Necro the “king” of conditions. As one of the very few people around here who doesn’t immediately outright say, “No conditionele is bad and you should feed bad for even thinking about it!!!11” this is by far the most biggest problem I see.

Case in point:

this is my, absolutely stupid, condition build.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmSboR2gjDIjHagH0hCFVAFUUMD7AA-jgxAINAyDQOsIasVzioxqkJiqV3YSBAxaA-e

Necros, Engineers, Mesmers and Warriors build around Rabid gear (as Conditions) because not only do they have a huge pool of Hit Points to start out with so they can afford to give on Vitality but mostly because they have traits (major or minor) where every time they Crit they have a chance to apply a condition (or in the case of Mesmers, their clones). This means even if their Crit Damage or Damage is low it didn’t matter because the real benefit is that potential Condition.

Elementalists do not have anything like that. At all. This makes any kind of Precision/Crit utterly wasted in the build. This puts you into a tight spot for gearing out a Conditimentalist because while you may want Rabid’s Toughness you won’t have the same high base HP of a Necro/Engie and you will end up wasting stats into Precision or you have to forgo most Toughness in favor for Carrion gear which is hardly ideal either. This puts skills like Diamond Skin in an even worse spot because there’s no way to get the Power/Toughness/Condi stats we want without getting other stats we don’t want.

If you want to pull off a Conditimentalist with any measure of success you have to approach it entirely differently and most simply fail to grasp this.

I really would love to find a way to play apothecary-ish condi-ish elementalist.

What makes me sad and think about alting every day (I still dont do it) is not that I feel underpowed. It is that i dont see any more viable build for me on d/d than the one that i already have after testing almost everything. This one is it! I love my ele and its d/d traiting and gearsetupt. But I feel like everybody can change clothes and do something completely different and all I can do is change to staff or scepter.

I really do love my ele. I really connect to my mainchars. I id so in WAR and I do in GW2. When I play another toon I really feel like betraying both, characterprogression and and skillprogression on my ele- The reason I wasted over 2000g in gearing up other lvl 80s in the last 2 months which I never played is not that I feel underpowered. Ele is fine!
I just dont see any diversity on it. At all.

And this is what made me start at least 10 necros, rangers, engies and mesmers and why I have bankslots full of T3 sets on white gear to accountbind them back and probably never will use them again. I think about playing necro every single day, even before the buff, just because I want to be able to do something different than d/d and not feel useless in a small 5 men team. s/d and staff just dont bring it up for me.

Zumy.6318:

I really would love to find a way to play apothecary-ish condi-ish elementalist.

Where there’s a will there’s a way. Kodiak found it and so can you if you really want it.

0 points in arcane will never be an option for me. If I like something about ele, it is the constant attunementswapping and never having to literally spam autoattack like on a mesmer every 5 seconds.

I personally find conditions on an elementalist lackluster and prefer the direct damage approach. I think we are limited in our applications of damaging conditions and cover them and to use the class mechanic while trying condition builds leads to slowing down the damage.

HOWEVER to say that it is impossible is wrong as we have conditions on many of our skills. Where there is a will there is a way.

Will it be as good as a condition engi/necro? Maybe not, but if YOU have fun with it and do well enough with it? Who cares.

Kodiak.3281:

Case in point:

this is my, absolutely stupid, condition build.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmSboR2gjDIjHagH0hCFVAFUUMD7AA-jgxAINAyDQOsIasVzioxqkJiqV3YSBAxaA-e

no need to bring me down… (well maybe there is since the question was for the meta game) since you seem to be the one defending out of the box builds (i stated that mine is pretty one sided and more or less just for fun)

I also use this quite often:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmKbmR2gjDIhCCw4hG4BdY5RMsD1AA-jACB4MAkIA5QFRjtEMIFhRrKKsKZER1qbYSBAxaA-e

better base stat and it utelizes the crit chance as well as arcane surge which gives you the nifty trick of a immobilizing lavafont and can build 10 might stacks with ease. with this i had quite some lulz in wvw.

Zumy.6318:

What makes me sad and think about alting every day (I still dont do it) is not that I feel underpowed. It is that i dont see any more viable build for me on d/d than the one that i already have after testing almost everything. This one is it! I love my ele and its d/d traiting and gearsetupt. But I feel like everybody can change clothes and do something completely different and all I can do is change to staff or scepter.

I play WvW and PvE and I run a variety of builds:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmabvR3wjDAkCmEeQADJMeAiHkA-jkCB4MBkWAgEBMFqIaslgBpKKa1XhVzATjiIq2joIa1CBsYNA-w

This is my Condi build. It really plays up the huge condition durations while maintaining respectable amounts of Toughness and HP. It also makes use of the raw base Power to do decent direct damage as well. Also it answers the people who run -Condition Duration by matching their amounts with equal Condition Duration even for movement impairing effects. If I’m going to run Conditions, this is the best build I’ve found for it. There’s very little waste going on and there’s a reason for every decision. In PvE I might swap in Persisting Flames so I can provide perma Fury for the group and swap in Signet of Fire instead of Water.

You mentioned needing Arcane, in this build you really don’t. Most of the time will be spent in Fire or Earth and if you swap to other attunements it’s usually to use cool downs far longer than the 16 base timer. It’d be nice if the cool downs were shorter, for sure, but it’s not unmanageable.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImmbxR4wjDIEFmgLIeYBUAHWUMD7AA-j0xAYrgQiCS2rIasVtioxqrxUnER1eeioapAiYMA-w

This is my “normal” build and it’s pretty much the one I use most of the time. It’s your standard Elementalist aiming for the 2000 Power, 40% crit, 75% crit power, 1600 Toughness, 16000 HP marks and hits most of them. Really isn’t much to talk about here that hasn’t been done literally a thousand times in every other build topic. The main reason I use it most of the time more than any other reason is simply because of Stability on Armor of Earth which is clutch when doing Zerg v Zerg WvW on the T1 servers where zergs run through each other.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImKbxR4QlDAkHvcCLjChUeMzO2A-jkyAotgQfAyiFRjtuF2qbQKvRT1gpUJiq98ER1uEMhAkNGA-w

This is the support build I ended up settling on. It really juices up my AOE heals for passive healing like Regen (which I boost with huge 80% duration) that take advantage the most of the high Healing Power while giving a ton of Survivability through extreme Toughness and still decent HP.

That’s three different play styles that are entirely different and honestly it’s that versatility that keeps me playing my Elementalist in most cases. None of it even takes into account that as you do introduce other weapons into each build their play styles also completely change.

Raif.9507:

I personally find conditions on an elementalist lackluster and prefer the direct damage approach. I think we are limited in our applications of damaging conditions and cover them and to use the class mechanic while trying condition builds leads to slowing down the damage.

Conditions in general are lackluster over direct damage simply because Conditions have every game mode working against them. This is not a class issue. No class in the game can really cover spammed conditions like bleed, poison or burn. Not only are these on many spammed “1” slot abilities they’re heavily spread amongst every class so if anyone is around they can easily uncover your condition without even trying.

Condition covering is typically done via Bleeds and other spammable conditions to cover more valuable conditions such as Immobilize or Confusion. Landing a solid Immobilize or Chill in WvW is often times a death sentence and is easily covered by a quick Bleed or Burn.

The main advantage of other condition based classes is the reliable amounts of AOE conditions they have with the Necro being the actual king in this department. Epidemic is absurd. Where as we’re reliant on a few staff AOEs for condition application a Necro has a wide variety of skills to shell out large amounts of AOE conditions. Even the Engineer has great AOE condition application through either piercing Pistol shots or even better through Grenades (which can proc a bleed on explosion, a bleed on crit as well as whatever base condition they have).

Asmodal.6489:

no need to bring me down… (well maybe there is since the question was for the meta game) since you seem to be the one defending out of the box builds (i stated that mine is pretty one sided and more or less just for fun)

I didn’t mean nothing by it. I’m totally with the “if it’s fun then you’re doing it right” philosophy. Unfortunately the rhetoric around here is “maximum efficency!!!!!!11” which truthfully never pans out on a jack-of-all-trades class because there’ll always be some other class who does the role you’re looking to perform at that time better. That said there are ways we can optimize here and there while maintaining the same fun idea and it’s very common for people building Condition based builds to build with rabid gear even if the Crit does nothing for them (which then only makes the performance seem even weaker).

Zumy.6318:

I really would love to find a way to play apothecary-ish condi-ish elementalist.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImebxR4wjDIEFvwJMeoBeQHWUMD7AA-jUCBIOA0CAZQFRjtEMIVRRr+KsaGYqVER1eFFRrWKAIWDA-w

Could always give something like this a try. Can’t say how it’d work because I haven’t tried it but it’d be something to build and give it a go. Sounds like you don’t have a lot to lose if you did try it.

I appreciate your input very much Kodiak and will look into all of them.

The one problem is that i dont pve if very necessary and in WvW only solo or max 5-8men. Thats why I barely see changing build without affectig efficiency.

Kodiak.3281:

Necros, Engineers, Mesmers and Warriors build around Rabid gear (as Conditions) because not only do they have a huge pool of Hit Points to start out with so they can afford to give on Vitality but mostly because they have traits (major or minor) where every time they Crit they have a chance to apply a condition (or in the case of Mesmers, their clones). This means even if their Crit Damage or Damage is low it didn’t matter because the real benefit is that potential Condition.

Elementalists do not have anything like that. At all. This makes any kind of Precision/Crit utterly wasted in the build.

What’s really frustrating is that there are two elementalist traits that try to fill this role, but can’t quite succeed: burning precision (1s burn for 30% of crits) isn’t quite enough alone since burning hits an effectiveness cap (and the elementalist is pretty good at applying it already, really) and arcane precision has an atrocious proc rate. (I’d estimate it somewhere around 10%. The wiki puts it at 7.5%. Either way: atrocious.)

Zumy.6318:

I appreciate your input very much Kodiak and will look into all of them.

The one problem is that i dont pve if very necessary and in WvW only solo or max 5-8men. Thats why I barely see changing build without affectig efficiency.

Most classes though have the “best” spec at intended roles however. For example Shattercat Mesmer is fantastic for smaller group play but in Zerg v Zerg the clones die instantly and it just doesn’t work. On the Ele this is really no different and certain builds shine more than others due to game mechanics in that scenario.

I definitely think there’s some room for improvement in the Ele, mostly by untying the Attunement cool downs to entirely to Arcane, to open up other builds but unfortunately I don’t run the show over there and most of these forums are just places for people to vent frustrations so they fool themselves into their ideas actually being heard

You can make the stats (sort of) work on a condition ele, i.e. to where you would expect a condition build to be able to deal damage and still survive. But even then, our abilities just don’t allow us to get enough condition pressure.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k34;0J0R0-Y0C57N-Z0;9;49-TEE4;328A2;04;0TZ;1s0-jwmAjwmA1Vt

Burning Precision needs a buff to burn duration and Diamond Skin is just not very good for a grandmaster trait. That’d help from a traits perspective, but we still need our actual weapon abilities looked at as to improve our condition pressure.

I just can’t picture ever being afraid of engaging a condi ele. It’s not a powerful build.

Facing a mesmer, a skilled thief or an engi in wvw? It can be quite tricky. But to say “lol today I lost to a condition ele, that build is just too much”… haha, not in a million years.

I fail to see how it even works. My ether renewal cleanses all your conditions, my anti projectile prevents you from reapplying them, and I can lightning flash out of any immobilize combo if all my other condi removals are down.

Razor.6392:

I just can’t picture ever being afraid of engaging a condi ele. It’s not a powerful build.

Facing a mesmer, a skilled thief or an engi in wvw? It can be quite tricky. But to say “lol today I lost to a condition ele, that build is just too much”… haha, not in a million years.

I fail to see how it even works. My ether renewal cleanses all your conditions, my anti projectile prevents you from reapplying them, and I can lightning flash out of any immobilize combo if all my other condi removals are down.

Today I lost to a Focus ele. First loss to an ele in a long time

Kodiak.3281:

It’s not that we don’t have a build it’s that people are still trying to build around the same principals as a Engie/Necro the “king” of conditions. As one of the very few people around here who doesn’t immediately outright say, “No conditionele is bad and you should feed bad for even thinking about it!!!11” this is by far the most biggest problem I see.

Case in point:

this is my, absolutely stupid, condition build.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmSboR2gjDIjHagH0hCFVAFUUMD7AA-jgxAINAyDQOsIasVzioxqkJiqV3YSBAxaA-e

Necros, Engineers, Mesmers and Warriors build around Rabid gear (as Conditions) because not only do they have a huge pool of Hit Points to start out with so they can afford to give on Vitality but mostly because they have traits (major or minor) where every time they Crit they have a chance to apply a condition (or in the case of Mesmers, their clones). This means even if their Crit Damage or Damage is low it didn’t matter because the real benefit is that potential Condition.

Elementalists do not have anything like that. At all. This makes any kind of Precision/Crit utterly wasted in the build. This puts you into a tight spot for gearing out a Conditimentalist because while you may want Rabid’s Toughness you won’t have the same high base HP of a Necro/Engie and you will end up wasting stats into Precision or you have to forgo most Toughness in favor for Carrion gear which is hardly ideal either. This puts skills like Diamond Skin in an even worse spot because there’s no way to get the Power/Toughness/Condi stats we want without getting other stats we don’t want.

If you want to pull off a Conditimentalist with any measure of success you have to approach it entirely differently and most simply fail to grasp this.

The issue really is that there’s nothing that gives the ele attributes for survivability and condition damage like what is available for necros and engis. The ele’s naturally low HP is a big issue. I think Anet should take at the elementalist overall. Lowest health, lowest armor, lots of effort for mediocre results combat results. A lot has been identified in this forum alone. I wonder if players are moving away from using the ele, I now main a thief due its interesting resource management, which I find comparable to managing attunement recharges. For condition builds I may look to the necro at some point, death shroud seems interesting to actually use.

Shockwave.1230:

The issue really is that there’s nothing that gives the ele attributes for survivability and condition damage like what is available for necros and engis. The ele’s naturally low HP is a big issue. I think Anet should take at the elementalist overall. Lowest health, lowest armor, lots of effort for mediocre results combat results. A lot has been identified in this forum alone. I wonder if players are moving away from using the ele, I now main a thief due its interesting resource management, which I find comparable to managing attunement recharges. For condition builds I may look to the necro at some point, death shroud seems interesting to actually use.

Yeap which is why I pointed out it’s pretty hard for us to get the stat combinations we need to really pull it off. That said, I honestly doubt Anet will do anything. They have a pretty bad reputation from the first game even for leaving terrible mechanics in place and revisiting them long past when they needed to be looked at. It was years before they addressed the gross imbalance of Elementalists in “Hard Mode” due to the increased armor and our inability to do damage in that mode. Fast ward to GW2 and look how many months it took them to even address the trait issues in the game. Sure, we got Fresh Air…but we also got Diamond Skin.

Honestly I use my Necro in WvW like I use my Ele: as a tool for control on a large scale. Staff gives you an AOE Chill, AOE Poison, and AOE Fear. Utilities give you a number of useful abilities from Wells to things like Spectral Wall (fear if you touch it) which are all pretty amazing in Zerg v Zerg. Works well.

As I mentioned above I already know the “optimal” specs for the Ele. Everyone knows them and likely plays or played them at some point. However when you’ve been doing the “optimal” route day in and day out it gets pretty stale and I start looking to alternative play styles to keep the game play fresh on the character I’ve dedicated a lot of time and resources to. Conditimentalist is that for me. It’s fun to play and make work.

I’ve been playing an Earth condition elementalist since day 1, and is still my main to this day. It’s what I wanted to play, what I enjoy playing and what gets me through the majority of fights with ease. Having said that, it’s my PvE build only :-)

Kodiak, I know you’ve been an avid supported of condition builds in these forums, and I respect that. I’ve read many of your posts about your condition build.

To that point however, I sigh in dismay at the amount of comparable damage I do to the berzerker direct-damage crowd. Sure I’ve stacked toughness and condition damage up to the ears, so I generally survive really well, and seeing those spouts of ~180+ bleed damage texts float around the screen is awesome.. but it just isn’t the damage I hoped for. A low-power high-condition spec should be able to punch out comparable damage, given the huge negatives of condition removal and condition stack limit.

But!

As you say, playing the same spec day in and day out gets boring. So I’ve just decided to mix it up a little :-)
I wanted to stay mid-range if possible, so S/D or S/F are best for this.

My Earth spec was always about bleeds, and stacking as many as possible with extended condition damage & duration included. To change that up, I started to compromise towards Burning. The significant difference I found is once you reach break point you can burn forever, and condition duration is no longer a requirement since you aren’t focused on stacks. You need to spam burns just to cover condition removes, but once it’s going it keeps going! Thus you will likely be forever in fire (a little boring, but functional).

So after break-burn-point, my new build started pumping up power and stacking might. The benefit is, Might improves both direct damage and condition damage. It uses Superior Runes of the Elementalist for +Power and +Cond dmg, and 20% longer burn to reach break-point. Accessories were selected by two minor-stats outweighing one major-stat given we don’t have +Power and +CD major/minors, while the Precision still gives us a good chance to proc 30% burn on crit.

The end result of my build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQJArYhEmSboR1gjEAhHCwQCjChIUUBFlC4A-jwyAYrggzAJIBhyAmCLiGbVtIas6GMFMRUt5eIy2bUHCGA-e

The small amount in earth/arcane is for self preservation, given we really focus damage and not survivability. These can be swapped for water and group support as needed. Note: I’ve not added food sources. I prefer to build something that doesn’t have temporary attributes if possible.

I’ve just started playing with this, and it sure does damage.. I’ll need to play some more to see how it goes overall though. Doesn’t hurt to share or try something new either way! :-)

biofrog.1568:

Kodiak, I know you’ve been an avid supported of condition builds in these forums, and I respect that. I’ve read many of your posts about your condition build.

To that point however, I sigh in dismay at the amount of comparable damage I do to the berzerker direct-damage crowd. Sure I’ve stacked toughness and condition damage up to the ears, so I generally survive really well, and seeing those spouts of ~180+ bleed damage texts float around the screen is awesome.. but it just isn’t the damage I hoped for. A low-power high-condition spec should be able to punch out comparable damage, given the huge negatives of condition removal and condition stack limit.

It’s not so much I’m an avid supporter of Condition builds as much as I seem to be one of the very few willing to offer thought out advice for a Condition build other than “They’re bad and you should feel bad for thinking about playing one!!!!!11”

Conditions have literally everything working against them in most game modes. I know this as a person who’s played (and geared at 80) a Condi Necromancer, Condi Engineer and Condi Mesmer. Maximum condition stacks destroys Condition viability in most PvE encounters. The absurd number of ways to counter them in WvW can make them seem pretty unreliable as well.

Raw damage on the other hand has very little working against it because, unlike GW1 where everything had a counter, there’s really no widespread direct damage countering via large amounts of healing or mitigation abilities (such as block, max % of HP lost, reversal of fortune, etc). While some of the mechanics do exist, they aren’t wide spread enough or common enough (unlike condition countering options) to every really be noticed.

This is not to say Conditimentalist doesn’t have any class specific issues working against it only that there are certainly game design factors working heavily against as well. This is why, when asked, if I had to pick a build (as I have been) I always recommend people build a “standard” set of gear (2000 power, 40% crit, 75% crit dmg, 1600 toughness, 16000 HP) before trying different builds like this one.

Personally I’ve been toying with a 20/0/30/0/20 build lately and it’s pretty fun. Dropping a Frozen Ground with that much Condition Duration is always hilarious to watch whole groups in choke points just slow down to a grinding halt.

TGSlasher.1458:

Razor.6392:

I just can’t picture ever being afraid of engaging a condi ele. It’s not a powerful build.

Facing a mesmer, a skilled thief or an engi in wvw? It can be quite tricky. But to say “lol today I lost to a condition ele, that build is just too much”… haha, not in a million years.

I fail to see how it even works. My ether renewal cleanses all your conditions, my anti projectile prevents you from reapplying them, and I can lightning flash out of any immobilize combo if all my other condi removals are down.

Today I lost to a Focus ele. First loss to an ele in a long time

Focus isn’t bad doe

Actually it seems to me that conditions have one thing working in their favor: it takes less resources to do equivalent damage with conditions compared to direct damage.
Unless they introduce a mechanic similar to that of fresh air for earth, I can hardly see how focusing mainly on conditions can be a good thing in PvE. However I believe that conditions are actually nice if you do not focus too much on them (spend few resources on them): for example the bunker ele is doing a large part of its damage with conditions, and even with the direct damage build I am using in PvE I find that including conditions applying skills (such as drake’s breath and ring of earth) in my fresh air rotation is a good damage boost.

Condition damage is all relative to duration.

If there’s no one else applying a Condition in PvE, Conditions are pretty fantastic. You can maintain the full Duration of your Conditions (very few creatures remove conditions) and deal your full damage potential.

This is pretty unrealistic however as many classes can apply conditions whether they want to or not. Case in point: Greatsword Warriors (very common) who passively apply bleed with Crits with a minor trait of “Precise Strikes” which invariably end up taking up precious Bleed slots from a more powerful source of Bleeds. Since you can’t apply your conditions they effectively have a zero duration and are therefore worthless.

In WvW or PvP the matter of duration is only exasperated.

The primary issue involved is the amount of condition removal. As Razor pointed out, a skill like Ether Renewal will simply remove any number of conditions no matter how deep they’re stacked or “covered.” Every class in the game short of Mesmers and Thieves have sources of condition removal (and most of it is AOE only furthering the problem in group scenarios). Condition removal represents resetting the duration to 0 (since it’s removed) effectively removing damage potential of the condition.

The most kitten ing however is the reduced Condition Duration builds that are very common in WvW style setups. As condition’s damage is based around duration a -60% duration is effectively a -60% damage output from that condition.

By not focusing on Conditions one could certainly forgive the low damage but also the low duration effectively makes them a non-factor. You essentially will have no power, no crit, no crit damage but on top of it your conditions will not last very long to the point they will ultimately end up doing less damage than our auto attack’s base damage. This is why I’m extremely skeptical of a condi-bunker ele: it’s just a bunker with zero damage output because it refused to pick any route to go.

I’m purely PvE (I don’t have no dog in the WvW Fight) And I’ve been recently playing around with Condition Damage builds, and I managed to make one that I thought was increadibly Stupid Good. But I don’t play ele that much outside of staff support, so I wanted to get people’s opinions on it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEUQJArdhMmYbtR0wjDIhHHACUAjHggG0hlCzAA-jAyAINAsWCpFAUFwcYR0YrmFRjVdjpjJiqFCYxaA-e

Basically, 100% bleed duration nets me 12 second bleeds on scepter autoattack. Since I get an auto-attack every 2 seconds, and they apply 3 bleed stacks per auto, that’s perma 18 stacks of bleed on any target I choose. With the sigil cooldown, and the extra burning duration I have, I can keep burn duration 100% uptime as well just by using sigil of fire. We can also throw some chill and/or cripple in there, which is pretty useful support.

With the rabid gear, I have 50% crit chance without fury. Sigil of earth gives me a 60% chance to apply a bleed (5s bleed, 10s with my condi duration) per crit. I end up with around 1 bleed proc every 3 attacks. My auto-attack hits 3 times Meaning I’m going to have 23-24 stacks of bleed up on a single mob. All the time. Just by auto-attacking. Which, considering the 25 bleed cap, is not shabby at all.

Runes of undeath and Diamond skin gives eles stupid high condition damage too, especially comboing well with scpeter 2, which gives toughness, which nets us even more condition damage.

I could switch out the heal for condition cleansing, and/or swap out the offhand focus for dagger (Giving me AoE potential with churning earth) But auto-attacking is only moderately less damaging than churning earth, and the invincibility/projectile reflect from Focus is good for the added survive-ability (since that’s kind of a ele problem in general.) Third utility slot could also be swapped out for survive-ability as well, mist form is my first thought for that.

Traits….. I don’t really know what to do with the points in fire. 30% condition duration is just too good to pass up, as that’s equivalent to more than 600 extra condition damage. But the build doesn’t really get anything out of the traits offered there.

I’d appreciate some thoughts and/or feedback.

TGSlasher.1458:

Razor.6392:

I just can’t picture ever being afraid of engaging a condi ele. It’s not a powerful build.

Facing a mesmer, a skilled thief or an engi in wvw? It can be quite tricky. But to say “lol today I lost to a condition ele, that build is just too much”… haha, not in a million years.

I fail to see how it even works. My ether renewal cleanses all your conditions, my anti projectile prevents you from reapplying them, and I can lightning flash out of any immobilize combo if all my other condi removals are down.

Today I lost to a Focus ele. First loss to an ele in a long time

If i remember correctly you play a bursty s/d ele right? or I might be confusing you with someone else. If my memory is correct I don’t see how you could have possibly lose to a s/f or d/f ele on 1v1 unless he got you as soon as you were done from a 2v1 or from a challenging 1v1 battle? . Can you give the detail of how the encounter occurred?. Honestly, I would like to come close or even lose to a d/f or s/f ele too someday.

Focus is strong in the right hands

codingCaptor.9428:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEUQJArdhMmYbtR0wjDIhHHACUAjHggG0hlCzAA-jAyAINAsWCpFAUFwcYR0YrmFRjVdjpjJiqFCYxaA-e

For a PvE build this will work fairly well. That said, many of the other posts here can point to some problems with condition builds in general.

Conditions are Capped: With this build you should be able to hit or nearly hit the bleed cap as well as having continuous burning up-time. In any situation in the open world, dungeons, or fractals, other players are likely to contribute bleeds and burns and consequentially lower your damage output. The more contributions, the less damage you deal.

Condition Damage is Less than Direct Damage: While this is not true in ALL cases, it is largely accurate in most situations. There was someone in this thread who said they maxed out their bleeds at 180ish, if this accurate and I can still do math, then maxed bleed stack damage will hover around 4500 dps. When elementalists can hit for 10-12k or higher reliably with specific lightning hammer builds, this amount of dps is sadly put into scale.

Conditions can be Cleansed: This is less common in PvE by a long stretch, but the removal of a high duration conditions is a significant loss of dps for someone focused on using those conditions for their primary source of damage. Conditions may also be reduced in duration or effectiveness or be negated entirely depending on the enemy your fighting. (For example, most destroyers can’t be lit on fire, bosses reduce the effectiveness of blind and weakness generally, and some bosses have a significant reductions to condition durations.)

There are more points that could be brought up here, like fewer sources of damage amplification, but the above are what I see currently as the most problematic. Please don’t let this stop you from running your build, as it will do good single target dps when the correct situation is provided for. (If you do guild dungeon runs, try and coordinate with the other members to limit the amount of bleeds and burns they apply, etc.)

As far as trait specific suggestions, I’m not sure how much arcane is going to help with your build, as switching away from earth will be a significant dps loss for your build. You may instead put the points into water to pick up Cleansing Wave to help yourself cleanse conditions when needed as well as providing a little bit more health to work with. Keep in mind for condition cleansing that both Phoenix and Magnetic Wave cleanse conditions.

For other traits within the fire and earth lines, you seem a little muddled in what you want to do with signets. If you still want to max your condition damage through Diamond Skin, you may want to drop Fire’s Embrace and replace it with Burning Precision seeing as your have a 47% critical chance from full rabid gear. You may also consider moving away from some of the signets apart from Signet of Fire if this is the case. (Ether Renewal for mass condition cleansing, etc.)

As an additional note for other people in this thread to talk about: What would you think of conditions if excess conditions over the cap applied a portion of their total damage immediately?

Razor.6392:

TGSlasher.1458:

Razor.6392:

I just can’t picture ever being afraid of engaging a condi ele. It’s not a powerful build.

Facing a mesmer, a skilled thief or an engi in wvw? It can be quite tricky. But to say “lol today I lost to a condition ele, that build is just too much”… haha, not in a million years.

I fail to see how it even works. My ether renewal cleanses all your conditions, my anti projectile prevents you from reapplying them, and I can lightning flash out of any immobilize combo if all my other condi removals are down.

Today I lost to a Focus ele. First loss to an ele in a long time

Focus isn’t bad doe

Dagger Focus, even more embarrassing lol.
I have been using S/F for a long time now. The Dagger skills, you think they are buggy under normal situations, try adding 300-500ms to that and see how many work :/

dukevonart.2691:

As an additional note for other people in this thread to talk about: What would you think of conditions if excess conditions over the cap applied a portion of their total damage immediately?

Thanks for the advice, that’s…. very constructive and encouraging.

As for your question, I think that would help. It makes additional bleeds not completely useless, while at the same time keeping them in balance because they don’t end up doing that much damage.

But I’m not sure if that’s the right answer to the problem. As far as I understand it, the bleed cap is a technical limitation, kind of like how Culling was. If there are too many stacks in existance on things then the servers explode trying to apply them all (because each stack of bleed has its own condition damage/duration, so it has to apply the damage from them individually, etc. etc.)

The IDEAL solution, the one we should hope for, is not the kind of hacks they did with culling (Differing caps for friendlies and enemies, etc.) But the final solution (Removal of culling in WvW, and now in PvP too) Which is to remove the condition caps altogether.

Alternatively, shifting the caps around a bit might ease the load on servers a bit. For example, a cap of 15 on regular mobs, 25 on veterans, and then 50 on champs/legendaries. Or something similar. Basically shift where our processor ticks are happening for calculating our conditions away from the trash mobs where the condition limit isn’t likely to be hit (and if it was, the mob will be dead soon anyway) And allowing more conditions to be applied to the monsters who will live through them anyway.

LightningBlaze.4913:

TGSlasher.1458:

Razor.6392:

I just can’t picture ever being afraid of engaging a condi ele. It’s not a powerful build.

Facing a mesmer, a skilled thief or an engi in wvw? It can be quite tricky. But to say “lol today I lost to a condition ele, that build is just too much”… haha, not in a million years.

I fail to see how it even works. My ether renewal cleanses all your conditions, my anti projectile prevents you from reapplying them, and I can lightning flash out of any immobilize combo if all my other condi removals are down.

Today I lost to a Focus ele. First loss to an ele in a long time

If i remember correctly you play a bursty s/d ele right? or I might be confusing you with someone else. If my memory is correct I don’t see how you could have possibly lose to a s/f or d/f ele on 1v1 unless he got you as soon as you were done from a 2v1 or from a challenging 1v1 battle? . Can you give the detail of how the encounter occurred?. Honestly, I would like to come close or even lose to a d/f or s/f ele too someday.

He was a D/F ele with a build I’ve never seen before. We were duelling. He got 2 shot by a warrior that could 3 shot me lol. Then I duelled him and eventually lost.

I run S/F, a build that no one else uses, and usually gets laughed at lol. S/D’s are easy, D/D’s are usually easy (esp the ones from Australia, puts us on an even field, the ones with <50 ms just destroy you while you press attunement swap 4 times … dam lag).

S/D Burst can hardly get through my defences. It’s Lightning strikies hit for not much damage, so when they think the fight is in their favour and they try to Air burst kill me it only tickles. My build is built around fighting non stealthing opponents, and is much better against highly telegraphed opponents. I use 2 instant blinds and the other S/ blind, abuse protection and projectile destroy / reflect. I also use Dragons Tooth to put the foe on the initial defensive and was previously using poison to troll their heals (and cover imob). Still haven’t work out how to take down Spirit Rangers yet, by the time I drop their sun spirit I’m usually running away or in a bad place (then hello here comes sun spirit 2, wish the ele elementals started cd when summond). The beast master rangers weren’t too bad (infinite fight usually)

BTW I live in Australia, playing ele is hard work (sometimes you can’t change attunement without pressing the button 4-7 times and that’s because your dead and just don’t know it yet. You can be downed from a cliff when your corpse is a long way down. You can be stunned mid dodge animation (which takes the endurance btw), I going to one day screen cap the basilisk venom that hits me mid dodge, leaving my character in the animation. Oh an if that wasn’t bad enough, ever double dodge? that’s when you use 100% endurance for 1 dodge and leave 2 caltops when playing thief ).

@codingCaptor
This is an impressive condition build!
If I have calculated things right, you should actually be able to max out bleed stacks (stone shards have a cast time of 1.9 so it is a bit more than you thought), but I would like your empirical confirmation on this. Note that in practice you would actually not see the theoretical average of 25.6 bleed stacks that your build is supposed to put out, and the empirical average should be lower (due to probability distributions and caps).
For my calculations I assumed you maintain on average 23 bleed stacks (you loose a bit of time casting signet of fire).
I found that your average dps from conditions would be as follow:
3246.5 dps from bleeds
818.3 dps from burn
condition total: 4065 dps
add the direct damage from your attacks (signet of fire ignored for simplicity, irrelevant) on a 2400 armored target.
141 dps
grand total:
4206 dps
with max corruption:
5858 dps
Which is bloody high.

As for the fire traits, the first thing you should do is take the chance to apply burn on crits. This is because you will then be able to cast signet of fire less often, so you will save time to cast bleeds. It is a minor improvement, but it makes sense and I am going to explain why.
If you swap out of earth you are useless for 12.5s, which is a huge dps loss.
My advice to you would be to consider the following move:
Take those 20 last points in fire and put them in arcana, take the trait to apply burn on crits in the fire trait line (burning precision).
This will reduce your direct damage by an insignificant amount, and your condition duration will be 180% instead of 200% (stack bleed to 21)
Burning precision will enable you to still maintain perma burn (14.4s of burn from signet, plus 3.6s of burn every 16s from burning precision while spamming your auto-attack), but your bleed damage will be reduced.
You will then deal 3932 dps (5561 with max corruption stacks)
So your new damage is 93.5% (94.9% with corruption) of your previous damage, which is still bloody high.
Now you have the possibility to swap out of earth at much less cost.
In arcane you can take defensive and supportive traits.
It seems to me that this would be a good compromise: a bit less damage for augmented survivability and group utility. This gain is explained by the fact that this move makes you get rid of the unused fire traits. This way your build becomes more efficient: your output is increased.
(edit: there is also the additional advantage that you will not cover all bleed stacks, so people in your group will not “eat” your stacks)

Note that your build is also perfectly viable for staff (eruption base stacks bleeds to 10), so you would deal most of this bloody high damage in aoe, not just single target.

End build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEUQJArdhEmYbtx0wjDIhCCw4BIoBdY5xMkD2AA-jAyAINAsWCpFAUFwcYR0YrmFRjVdjpjJiqFCYxaA-e

Condition duration food is imba

codingCaptor.9428:

As for your question, I think that would help. It makes additional bleeds not completely useless, while at the same time keeping them in balance because they don’t end up doing that much damage.

But I’m not sure if that’s the right answer to the problem. As far as I understand it, the bleed cap is a technical limitation, kind of like how Culling was. If there are too many stacks in existance on things then the servers explode trying to apply them all (because each stack of bleed has its own condition damage/duration, so it has to apply the damage from them individually, etc. etc.)

The IDEAL solution, the one we should hope for, is not the kind of hacks they did with culling (Differing caps for friendlies and enemies, etc.) But the final solution (Removal of culling in WvW, and now in PvP too) Which is to remove the condition caps altogether.

Alternatively, shifting the caps around a bit might ease the load on servers a bit. For example, a cap of 15 on regular mobs, 25 on veterans, and then 50 on champs/legendaries. Or something similar. Basically shift where our processor ticks are happening for calculating our conditions away from the trash mobs where the condition limit isn’t likely to be hit (and if it was, the mob will be dead soon anyway) And allowing more conditions to be applied to the monsters who will live through them anyway.

We have read and heard the same things then, as processing power and resources was the major reason given to why conditions have caps. As far as increasing the caps for different difficulties of mobs, I’m not convinced that any amount would be enough realistically for legendary and champion mobs. If one build can realistically reach 25 stacks of bleed by itself, when taking into account larger numbers of players, it is fairly likely that the cap will be hit despite an increase.

Keep in mind that all conditions seem to have caps, not just bleeding, though they may be hidden. (Weakness is capped at 5 applications, taken from these patch notes)

codingCaptor.9428:

Traits….. I don’t really know what to do with the points in fire. 30% condition duration is just too good to pass up, as that’s equivalent to more than 600 extra condition damage. But the build doesn’t really get anything out of the traits offered there.

I’d appreciate some thoughts and/or feedback.

you dont seem to be a lot aof attunement swapping in this build anyway so i suggest changing arcane V for VI. gets you some surviveability if needed or drop the 10 in arcane all together spending them in water for more hp and maybe shard of ice which will grant you or your group 11 secs of 3% increased damage which is overall probably more helpfull then having 5% only on yourself add water sigent and its a solid 6% which the rest of the group an top off. it would also give some room for adjustement twards cleansing wave.

not all really necessary because with shatterstone youd be a vurnability machine anyways.

the only benefit in air would be that you can have swiftness up all the time.

also in fire… well since you use the signet bruning precision does very little for you. it might be thebetter choice anyway for when you fight multiples and sigent is still on cooldown when the first target is dead already.

dagger offhand would be a group oriented choice because of two additional blast finisher which would work really well because you start out in fire for the field hit the 2 blast finisher and swap to earth for two more where you will stay anyways … at least for the next 20 seconds to 40 secs.

also you might consider having sigil of geomancy as a swap waepon (which you probably have anyways…) 14 secs of 3 stacks of bleed is a pretty big boost – you need a lot of condi damage to compete with thakittens actually better then sigil of corruption IF you hit them – ofc gets even better when you swap in geomenacy as soon as you have the 25 stacks.

sigil of battle is not worth it compared to geomancy in any case.

other then that i think your build reached its potential

also there is a better ascended trinket for your cause… which will give more vitality less precision and resultin a little more condi damage so you reach 2000+

TGSlasher.1458:

Razor.6392:

TGSlasher.1458:

Razor.6392:

I just can’t picture ever being afraid of engaging a condi ele. It’s not a powerful build.

Facing a mesmer, a skilled thief or an engi in wvw? It can be quite tricky. But to say “lol today I lost to a condition ele, that build is just too much”… haha, not in a million years.

I fail to see how it even works. My ether renewal cleanses all your conditions, my anti projectile prevents you from reapplying them, and I can lightning flash out of any immobilize combo if all my other condi removals are down.

Today I lost to a Focus ele. First loss to an ele in a long time

Focus isn’t bad doe

Dagger Focus, even more embarrassing lol.
I have been using S/F for a long time now. The Dagger skills, you think they are buggy under normal situations, try adding 300-500ms to that and see how many work :/

Why is it embarrassing? I use d/f, would like a duel sometime.

The only ele I flat out admit that I can’t beat is lightningblaze. I can’t frankly remember any other ele vs ele duel in spvp or wvw. (surely it happened… but so not often that I already forgot)

Razor.6392:

TGSlasher.1458:

Razor.6392:

TGSlasher.1458:

Razor.6392:

I just can’t picture ever being afraid of engaging a condi ele. It’s not a powerful build.

Facing a mesmer, a skilled thief or an engi in wvw? It can be quite tricky. But to say “lol today I lost to a condition ele, that build is just too much”… haha, not in a million years.

I fail to see how it even works. My ether renewal cleanses all your conditions, my anti projectile prevents you from reapplying them, and I can lightning flash out of any immobilize combo if all my other condi removals are down.

Today I lost to a Focus ele. First loss to an ele in a long time

Focus isn’t bad doe

Dagger Focus, even more embarrassing lol.
I have been using S/F for a long time now. The Dagger skills, you think they are buggy under normal situations, try adding 300-500ms to that and see how many work :/

Why is it embarrassing? I use d/f, would like a duel sometime.

The only ele I flat out admit that I can’t beat is lightningblaze. I can’t frankly remember any other ele vs ele duel in spvp or wvw. (surely it happened… but so not often that I already forgot)

Sure, Sophea of Elements ingame, if you ever see me online send a whisper (2 jobs :/). I’m, Australian as well and only play sPvP / tPvP (soloq)

Always welcome fights that can help me learn an enemy setup.

WTB Damage on chill trait or ability to poison (maybe on burning)