Guild Wars 2

Hey guys before I get going on my short little rant I feel I should mention this could also go under the category of “Game Bugs” or “Suggestions”.

So basically I’m a bit disappointed that the Earth Elementalist’s Scepter disappears on basic attack. A very simple visual effect however it doesn’t agree with logic of the other attunement counterparts basic attacks. I could argue that conjuring stone from the palm of my hand is neat but I personally would rather see my (Future Legendary Scepter)Meteorlogicus given that it takes such a long time to gather and craft the materials just to have it not there half of the time. This applies with all scepter designs.

I main as an Earth Elementalist Scepter/Focus build(Blood Mage) and I’m slightly disappointed. I’m sure there is several out there who can agree with me and maybe a person or two with a considerable counter argument but this is what I believe and just something I wanted to point my opinion on, and a change I know full well ARENANET has the power to achieve.

I agree. I also think the sound effect for stone shards is weird. Would you mind posting your build? I’m very interested because I also run an S/F Earth build. I’d love to see what you and I do differently. I’ve often thought of this build as the only way to produce good single target damage as well as durability.

Sure thing
For traits lines I run
30 on fire for the condition duration taking Lava Tomb for extra damage while downed, Burning Precision for the burning damage since I run on earth 95% of the time and Conjurer for the extra charges on Fiery Greatsword.

30 on earth for the condition damage and toughness taking Signet Mastery, Serrated Stones for longer bleeds and Written in Stone for maintaining the Signet passives.

10 on water for the extra vitality, I take Shard of Ice so I can apply vulnerability when activating my signets.

For armor and weapons everything I run is Carison for the condition damage, and vitality. The extra power never hurts either.
On the armor I have

3 Superior Runes of the Krait for more condition damage and bleed duration.
2 Superior Runes of the Centaur for power and bleed duration
2 Superior Runes of the Afflicted for more condition damage and bleed duration

If it hasn’t clicked in why I have 7 of them it is because I have a rune on my aqua breather.

All my weapons have the Superior Sigil of Agony for (shocking) more bleed duration.

Finally for abilities I have Fiery Greatsword, Signet of Earth, Signet of Water for the amazing passive and Signet of Fire all to keep my enemies at bay and deal some additional burn damage.

To put it in perspective I maintain 20 stacks of bleed on people with each dealing 98 damage per stack which in total is just under 2000 per second not including the occasional on crit burn effect or impact damage of each shard.

I’d just like to chime in as you guys are discussing bleed builds on an Ele; I recently mad my own build and posted it in these forums. The most recent state that I actually run is here: Linky

I’m reaching up to 25 stacks of bleeding with ease, with permanent burning on anything without condition removal, permanent cripple, and almost permanent poison and weakness (the last two are Asura-only; Radiation field is amazing for condi builds) That means around 3.3k damage per second, and 33% healing reduction, 50% move speed reduction and 25% overall dps reduction on my target.

Playing that way never needs to leave earth attunement. there is also an option to run Glyph of Storms instead of Signet of Fire; in that scenario I cast Glyph of Power in fire attunement and then switch to earth, giving the earth-mode Glyph of Storms burning potential, as well as the bleeds and blinds it already stacks (radiation field also gets this bonus). That brings some level of AoE to the build.

A bleed build is also potentially effective on Staff as Eruption has a large amount of long duration bleed stacks; this allows for AoE bleeding but takes longer to reach the bleed cap (it can reach it without Sigil of Earth, however). That might be more appropriate to group play, however; staff’s self defense skills in earth are nowhere near as good kitten F.

Dagger’s kind of a midpoint here – using Sigil of Earth, it can reach the bleed cap in around 18-20 seconds (compared to staff ~20 and S/F ~14) but the AoE is smaller than staff, and the defensive capabilities are less than scepter. However, it’s more accurate than staff in PvP and has a high enough cast rate for Signet of Restoration to be useful – especially considering it’d be possible to run Written in Stone and have the Signet’s active cast effect. I haven’t tested it to see if it’s really usable, though.

Serrated stones isn’t necessary for any weapon except dagger to reach the bleed cap, and even with dagger you’ll get close. Which is good, because the bleed duration from Serrated Stones isn’t reflected in the tooltip and it can be hard to work out if it’s actually reaching a breakpoint in duration.

That’s pretty much exactly how I run only I don’t use glyphs because I feel that my single target damage ramps up pretty slow and I need the burn/CC that running 3 signets provides. I also eat Rare Veggie Pizza for +condition damage and +40% condition duration.

A lot of players will look at a bleed build and point out that it is ineffective in dungeons & against champions where there are other players attacking the target. This is because bleeds hit the cap very fast and it rules out your major damage source. This problem has not been happening to me much because I think a lot of players know about that limitation and therefore don’t run bleed intensive builds in those situations.

However, there is an answer to the bleed limitation for when it does happen. This answer also applies to the question of how can we damage structures. All I do is slot Arcane Power in place of signet of air or signet of water (whichever you are running). This ability allows your next 5 attacks to crit. Come up with a nice burst rotation that allows you to hit 5 high damage skills in a row. This is where having 3 other attunements comes in to play. Pop it and go through your burst rotation when bleeds are capped or when you are facing a structure.

When bleed damage is discussed I hear a lot of players referring to the ability to stack 25 bleeds as the most desirable goal of a bleed build. I have a question here.

Is it better to hit a stack of 25 for a small amount of time (say 4-5 seconds) or to be able to maintain a stack of 20 permanently with a 12 second bleed duration and zero cooldown?

I want to try a condition build, seems interesting. Especially since I’m asura and the extra confusion skill could be awesome. But I don’t think I can stand staying in earth almost exclusively… seems boring

xbaunx.6438:

That’s pretty much exactly how I run only I don’t use glyphs because I feel that my single target damage ramps up pretty slow and I need the burn/CC that running 3 signets provides. I also eat Rare Veggie Pizza for +condition damage and +40% condition duration.

A lot of players will look at a bleed build and point out that it is ineffective in dungeons & against champions where there are other players attacking the target. This is because bleeds hit the cap very fast and it rules out your major damage source. This problem has not been happening to me much because I think a lot of players know about that limitation and therefore don’t run bleed intensive builds in those situations.

However, there is an answer to the bleed limitation for when it does happen. This answer also applies to the question of how can we damage structures. All I do is slot Arcane Power in place of signet of air or signet of water (whichever you are running). This ability allows your next 5 attacks to crit. Come up with a nice burst rotation that allows you to hit 5 high damage skills in a row. This is where having 3 other attunements comes in to play. Pop it and go through your burst rotation when bleeds are capped or when you are facing a structure.

When bleed damage is discussed I hear a lot of players referring to the ability to stack 25 bleeds as the most desirable goal of a bleed build. I have a question here.

Is it better to hit a stack of 25 for a small amount of time (say 4-5 seconds) or to be able to maintain a stack of 20 permanently with a 12 second bleed duration and zero cooldown?

Firstly, Glyph of Elemental Power in my build can provide semi-permanent burning, just pop it in fire attunement, and as a plus effect, it’ll affect enemies caught in AoE just fine.

Secondly, structures can’t be critted.

Thirdly, my build does run Rare Veggie Pizza (well, I actually run Super Veggie Pizza because Rare Veggie Pizza doesn’t hit any break points in duration and 10 more condition damage doesn’t add 1 damage per tick to bleeding and Super Veggie Pizza is cheaper…), and hits 25 bleed stacks constantly (21 permanent stacks from Stone Shards with a 14 second bleed duration, and regularly Sigil of Earth covers the rest of the stack – 30% proc rate on hit, 12 second bleeds, 3 hits every 2 seconds). CC comes from cripple and Glyph of Elementals.

And yes, spiking to 25 bleeds is generally desirable because it rarely if ever prevents the ability to maintain a stable group of bleed stacks regardless, and 5 more stacks would be 20% more damage for that time. But if you can hit 25 permanent stacks… even better.

Secondly, structures can’t be critted.
…
And yes, spiking to 25 bleeds is generally desirable because it rarely if ever prevents the ability to maintain a stable group of bleed stacks regardless, and 5 more stacks would be 20% more damage for that time. But if you can hit 25 permanent stacks… even better.

Structures right, thank you for the correction. Also thanks for the clarification on bleeds.