Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,

Condition builds for Ele are lacking, mainly because we lack effective ways to re-apply a range of conditions. However, we are fairly decent at applying and maintaining Burning and Bleeding. I’ve been running with this condi/hybrid build for a while in Hotjoin now, and it’s really fun to play. I’d like your thoughts on how to improve it:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmabsR3wjDAhHHggBjHgohIiCPA-ToAgyCuIATBmDMDYSwsgN8YGA

I don’t have any points in Water or Arcana. I know, crazy. But I was tired of going 15+/10+ Water/Arcana in every single build and wanted a challenge. You have to pick your fights carefully because with only 1 stun breaker and limited condition removal, you’ll melt more quickly than usual in team fights. Positioning and counting dodges is vital.

That said, I find that the Elemental Shielding trait (which gives you on-demand protection, which is further boosted by Forge runes), combined with Fire’s Embrace and Signet Mastery, gives you decent survivability versus Power-based builds in the form of near-permanent, on-demand Protection, which is further lengthened by Forge runes. Combined with the Toughness from Earth and Forge Runes, you’re pretty durable.

Versus conditions though, you really need to be careful. I slotted Signet of Water and Burning Fire for two relatively brain-dead ways to mitigate condition spam; with Cleansing Wave (Dagger 5), these constitute the entirety of your condition defense. It’s not much. However, Burning Fire has the additional effect of causing a fairly long-lasting AoE burn, which synergizes with the build. I’m seriously considering replacing Signet Mastery with Diamond Skin (reducing survivability vs Power builds in exchange for temporary condi immunity), and I’d like your input.

Signet of Fire gives a gigantic burn, something like 10k+ damage if allowed to tick its full duration. Therefore it’s vital to cover its burn with bleeds which you can easily do with Sigil of Geomancy and your Earth Skills. Chill from Signet of Water is an additional fairly long (6 second) cover condition that you can use once they’ve used up their condition cleanses. Use Updraft/Earthquake wisely to optimize your condition uptimes (prevent/delay them from cleansing.) Remember Earth 15’s Cripple can be used as a short-duration cover condition. Also remember you have a decent amount of Power too, so don’t be afraid to spam Lightning Whip while your condis tick away.

So guys, thoughts/opinions?

Why wouldn’t you go with a settler’s amulet rather than carrion to boost the healing potential of your signet?

Viking Jorun.5413:

Why wouldn’t you go with a settler’s amulet rather than carrion to boost the healing potential of your signet?

I was thinking of that, but I liked the +Condition Damage from Carrion more. Plus, the thought of only having 10.8k ish health is scary lol. I suppose it would be easier to heal up to full health though…worth a shot.

Glenstorm.4059:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Why wouldn’t you go with a settler’s amulet rather than carrion to boost the healing potential of your signet?

I was thinking of that, but I liked the +Condition Damage from Carrion more. Plus, the thought of only having 10.8k ish health is scary lol. I suppose it would be easier to heal up to full health though…worth a shot.

Believe it or not, the lower your health is, the more effective healing power is in conjunction with high toughness. You can also run Rune of the Undead to match your condition damage with Settler’s that you would normally get out of Carrion.

No idea why youre running 30 in earth with 4 signets without written in stone, and earth IV doesnt seem to do a lot for you either, is + bleed duration really worth being able to keep all 4 signet passives after you use them. I mean if you can survive like that then its great but it seems like youd be beyond squishy.

Also your crit damage is so low i dont see the point in getting zephyrs boon, if you want to you could run a sigil of earth to get more bleeds when you crit to take advantage of that, or put those last 10 points into arcane or water.

But if youve been having success with that then its interesting, il have to try it sometime.

This build is unbelievably squishy, combined with the fact that you lack defensive utilities (cantrips) and more importantly, the fact that condition damage is based on attrition and outlasting your opponent. Glass builds can work given you drop your opponent quickly enough, which you never will with a condi build, especially on ele.

Squishy by virtue of the fact you have neither 15 water, nor 30 arcane, nor vigor(!), nor high protection/regen uptime, nor invulns/blinks/reflects. Nothing basically.

I’m open for condi builds, but this one doesn’t make any sense to me. You will simply never survive any encounter, by effectively being full melee on the squishiest of all professions with none of it’s redeeming qualities in the form of heals and boons.

Gokil.2543:

This build is unbelievably squishy, combined with the fact that you lack defensive utilities (cantrips) and more importantly, the fact that condition damage is based on attrition and outlasting your opponent. Glass builds can work given you drop your opponent quickly enough, which you never will with a condi build, especially on ele.

Squishy by virtue of the fact you have neither 15 water, nor 30 arcane, nor vigor(!), nor high protection/regen uptime, nor invulns/blinks/reflects. Nothing basically.

I’m open for condi builds, but this one doesn’t make any sense to me. You will simply never survive any encounter, by effectively being full melee on the squishiest of all professions with none of it’s redeeming qualities in the form of heals and boons.

Thanks for your comments.

I realize I have next to no defenses (the one exception I do have is decent protection uptime from Elemental Shielding+Fire’s Embrace+Forge runes.) However, I have switched out Signet of Water for Signet of Earth and picked up Rock Solid and Written In Stone…which have provided me with marginally more survivability. While I do still melt embarrassingly quickly in team fights, I’ve found that while roaming and 1v1ing I do okay if I effectively use my CCs to allow my conditions (primarily Burning covered with Bleeds, Poison [from Doom Sigil] and Chill) to tick…but the huge caveat is that I play primarily in 5v5 Hotjoins and would never dream of taking this build into anything resembling serious PvP.

I usually run at LEAST 15 Water, 20 Arcane and a Cantrip or two when I play D/D, and I was bored to death of it. I also tend to see Evasive Arcana as a huge crutch, but that’s beside the point. Plus, with the way the vigor-on-crit traits for Mesmer and Guardian took hits recently, I’ve been trying to play without Renewing Stamina in case it gets hit too (as hard as that is.)

This build wasn’t really meant to be super serious. With the knowledge that Ele condition builds will never hold a candle to say Necro or even Warrior builds, I’m just trying to figure out what a halfway decent condition build for an Ele would look like, and I assumed going full Fire and Earth for maxed out condition damage and duration was the way to go about doing it. The fact that Earth has some decent defensive traits was also something that stood out to me.

But I see your point; there just isn’t enough defensive utility outside of Water/Arcana and Cantrips. I feel like that’s still the perennial problem with this profession

Perhaps there are better alternative condition builds out there with a focus on Arcana?

The most common condi ele setup is 0/0/30/20/20. It’s heavy bunker with a shaman’s amulet.

D/F, S/F or D/D all work about equally well. Both earth grandmasters can be used, although I would argue diamond skin synergizes better with focus offhand since earth 5 can give you a free ticket to above the threshold, whereas signet of restoration synergizes better with dagger mainhand due to higher attack speed in general.

0/20/20/30 works too. It makes better use of the healing power from shaman’s, while the dodge roll of evasive arcana does very good condi damage in earth and particularly fire.

Pity Dagger earth 1 sucks.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Glenstorm.4059:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Why wouldn’t you go with a settler’s amulet rather than carrion to boost the healing potential of your signet?

I was thinking of that, but I liked the +Condition Damage from Carrion more. Plus, the thought of only having 10.8k ish health is scary lol. I suppose it would be easier to heal up to full health though…worth a shot.

Believe it or not, the lower your health is, the more effective healing power is in conjunction with high toughness. You can also run Rune of the Undead to match your condition damage with Settler’s that you would normally get out of Carrion.

Um, no. More health is always better, unless you are trying to stay above 90%.

Axialbloom.8109:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Glenstorm.4059:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Why wouldn’t you go with a settler’s amulet rather than carrion to boost the healing potential of your signet?

I was thinking of that, but I liked the +Condition Damage from Carrion more. Plus, the thought of only having 10.8k ish health is scary lol. I suppose it would be easier to heal up to full health though…worth a shot.

Believe it or not, the lower your health is, the more effective healing power is in conjunction with high toughness. You can also run Rune of the Undead to match your condition damage with Settler’s that you would normally get out of Carrion.

Um, no. More health is always better, unless you are trying to stay above 90%.

Um no. Your health is a buffer, and the lower it is, the more effective healing is at keeping you sustained. If you lack condition removal, the toughness does no good, but an ele should be very good at removing conditions. Please don’t force your opinion on people, because it’s wrong. More health decreases the potency of your healing power.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Axialbloom.8109:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Glenstorm.4059:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Why wouldn’t you go with a settler’s amulet rather than carrion to boost the healing potential of your signet?

I was thinking of that, but I liked the +Condition Damage from Carrion more. Plus, the thought of only having 10.8k ish health is scary lol. I suppose it would be easier to heal up to full health though…worth a shot.

Believe it or not, the lower your health is, the more effective healing power is in conjunction with high toughness. You can also run Rune of the Undead to match your condition damage with Settler’s that you would normally get out of Carrion.

Um, no. More health is always better, unless you are trying to stay above 90%.

Um no. Your health is a buffer, and the lower it is, the more effective healing is at keeping you sustained. If you lack condition removal, the toughness does no good, but an ele should be very good at removing conditions. Please don’t force your opinion on people, because it’s wrong. More health decreases the potency of your healing power.

…what?
Enemies do the same damage independent of your health. Healing heals the same amount regardless of max health. Increasing your maximum health in no way decreases your healing effectiveness, even when trying to heal back to maximum, because you are presumably still being dealt the same amount of damage and thus trying to heal back the same amount (numerical, not percentage. The percentage health you would be taking and healing would both be less, because you would have more overall).

In fact, the only stat outside of more healing power that makes healing more effective is toughness. Increasing your damage reduction increases effective hp gained, because it increases the amount of raw damage (damage before damage reduction) that has to be done to surpass your healing.

The only way you could logically construe having more health as being a detriment to your healing is if you said that having more health comes at a cost to investment in your other stats (because having a minor vitality increase means that you have one less minor toughness/healing power increase due to the nature of how you get stats in this game). This would make sense, however saying that more health makes healing worse does not take into account how damage and healing actually works.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Axialbloom.8109:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Glenstorm.4059:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Why wouldn’t you go with a settler’s amulet rather than carrion to boost the healing potential of your signet?

I was thinking of that, but I liked the +Condition Damage from Carrion more. Plus, the thought of only having 10.8k ish health is scary lol. I suppose it would be easier to heal up to full health though…worth a shot.

Believe it or not, the lower your health is, the more effective healing power is in conjunction with high toughness. You can also run Rune of the Undead to match your condition damage with Settler’s that you would normally get out of Carrion.

Um, no. More health is always better, unless you are trying to stay above 90%.

Um no. Your health is a buffer, and the lower it is, the more effective healing is at keeping you sustained. If you lack condition removal, the toughness does no good, but an ele should be very good at removing conditions. Please don’t force your opinion on people, because it’s wrong. More health decreases the potency of your healing power.

…what?
Enemies do the same damage independent of your health. Healing heals the same amount regardless of max health. Increasing your maximum health in no way decreases your healing effectiveness, even when trying to heal back to maximum, because you are presumably still being dealt the same amount of damage and thus trying to heal back the same amount (numerical, not percentage. The percentage health you would be taking and healing would both be less, because you would have more overall).

In fact, the only stat outside of more healing power that makes healing more effective is toughness. Increasing your damage reduction increases effective hp gained, because it increases the amount of raw damage (damage before damage reduction) that has to be done to surpass your healing.

The only way you could logically construe having more health as being a detriment to your healing is if you said that having more health comes at a cost to investment in your other stats (because having a minor vitality increase means that you have one less minor toughness/healing power increase due to the nature of how you get stats in this game). This would make sense, however saying that more health makes healing worse does not take into account how damage and healing actually works.

My initial statement included that healing scales better with toughness, and the person above me stated that more vitality was always better (obviously a false blanket statement).

Viking Jorun.5413:

Axialbloom.8109:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Glenstorm.4059:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Why wouldn’t you go with a settler’s amulet rather than carrion to boost the healing potential of your signet?

I was thinking of that, but I liked the +Condition Damage from Carrion more. Plus, the thought of only having 10.8k ish health is scary lol. I suppose it would be easier to heal up to full health though…worth a shot.

Believe it or not, the lower your health is, the more effective healing power is in conjunction with high toughness. You can also run Rune of the Undead to match your condition damage with Settler’s that you would normally get out of Carrion.

Um, no. More health is always better, unless you are trying to stay above 90%.

Um no. Your health is a buffer, and the lower it is, the more effective healing is at keeping you sustained. If you lack condition removal, the toughness does no good, but an ele should be very good at removing conditions. Please don’t force your opinion on people, because it’s wrong. More health decreases the potency of your healing power.

I am just going to pretend you are trolling now. No way someone could actually believe this.

Viking Jorun.5413:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Axialbloom.8109:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Glenstorm.4059:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Why wouldn’t you go with a settler’s amulet rather than carrion to boost the healing potential of your signet?

I was thinking of that, but I liked the +Condition Damage from Carrion more. Plus, the thought of only having 10.8k ish health is scary lol. I suppose it would be easier to heal up to full health though…worth a shot.

Believe it or not, the lower your health is, the more effective healing power is in conjunction with high toughness. You can also run Rune of the Undead to match your condition damage with Settler’s that you would normally get out of Carrion.

Um, no. More health is always better, unless you are trying to stay above 90%.

Um no. Your health is a buffer, and the lower it is, the more effective healing is at keeping you sustained. If you lack condition removal, the toughness does no good, but an ele should be very good at removing conditions. Please don’t force your opinion on people, because it’s wrong. More health decreases the potency of your healing power.

…what?
Enemies do the same damage independent of your health. Healing heals the same amount regardless of max health. Increasing your maximum health in no way decreases your healing effectiveness, even when trying to heal back to maximum, because you are presumably still being dealt the same amount of damage and thus trying to heal back the same amount (numerical, not percentage. The percentage health you would be taking and healing would both be less, because you would have more overall).

In fact, the only stat outside of more healing power that makes healing more effective is toughness. Increasing your damage reduction increases effective hp gained, because it increases the amount of raw damage (damage before damage reduction) that has to be done to surpass your healing.

The only way you could logically construe having more health as being a detriment to your healing is if you said that having more health comes at a cost to investment in your other stats (because having a minor vitality increase means that you have one less minor toughness/healing power increase due to the nature of how you get stats in this game). This would make sense, however saying that more health makes healing worse does not take into account how damage and healing actually works.

My initial statement included that healing scales better with toughness, and the person above me stated that more vitality was always better (obviously a false blanket statement).

I see that I took that out of context, then. Sorry.

A. 10,000 HP
lets say an estimated 200HP heal per cast.
=> 2% Heal per cast.
B. 15,000 HP
still 200HP heal per cast.
=> 200/(1500/100) = 200 / 150 = 1.333 % Heal per cast.
Since Healing power is not dependend of vitality it gets more effective the less vitality you have.
Although I would suggest having more vitality is always a good thing

p.s. could someone post a working condition build?

This is the build I"ve based my condi roaming build off of. I have had fairly good luck with it. However, it lacks in zerg and the larger the group fight ends up being is less effective in my opinion.

Assassin.7890:

A. 10,000 HP
lets say an estimated 200HP heal per cast.
=> 2% Heal per cast.
B. 15,000 HP
still 200HP heal per cast.
=> 200/(1500/100) = 200 / 150 = 1.333 % Heal per cast.
Since Healing power is not dependend of vitality it gets more effective the less vitality you have.
Although I would suggest having more vitality is always a good thing

p.s. could someone post a working condition build?

No, no no, that’s the wrong argument!
A. 10000 HP, 200 heal per cast (2%), taking 500 damage per second (5%).
B. 15000 HP, 200 heal per cast (1.33%), taking 500 damage per second (3.33%)
2/1.33=5/3.33
Healing power is then exactly as effective if health is the only variable.

I know that the dmg isnt lower if someone has less hp and therefore healing power is somehow linked with incomming dmg. Only wanted to show what the member earlier mentioned when stating heling power is more effective with low vitality. And he sure has at least one point there: traits or runes which trigger hp-dependent work to your advantage like diomond skin.
Then again incoming dmg is the same… So as I already wrote: I would prefer higher vit and toughness paired with a good amount of healing power to really be an effective tank!

I was stacking condition/power for my daggers for awhile.
I think at the time 100 power was actually giving less return than 100 condition for the paper value of it.

However, you have to consider the fact that dagger/dagger isn’t really a survivability build with power/condition stacked. So unless you plan on attacking swiftly to disengage and reengage later, straight power was always better.

Infact some combos with just power stacking will eliminate a target in under 5 seconds and your on your way again.