Guild Wars 2

Now at least prior to HoT, zerker staff ele dps was part of the dungeon meta, consistently among the highest DPS in the game, as dungeon bosses and world bosses could be fairly stationary and take a lot of damage from ground targeted aoes and with enough practice, even as the squishiest class in the squishiest gear in the entire game, you could survive and in fact spend most of the fight over 90% health to get the most benefit out of scholar runes and the water trait

However the raid changes this up, and I only have limited experience with it but the first three trash pulls and first boss had pulsing aoe damage around them from a distance that you couldn’t just stand outside of and still do damage (so you were constantly eating damage, negating the value of scholar runes and the aquamancer trait if you didn’t switch over to tempest), and because you’re ranged and have lightning flash, your raid expects you to be among the 5 people who absorb the distributed magic damage, which even with 4+ people in the circle hits an ele for near half their base health (which if you’re going zerk, that’s also pretty much your total health) which can’t really be mitigated as well. If things went bad and a seeker was in the circle or the circle managed to be in the wrong floor panel, it was wholly unsurvivable. If things were going well, I would still get very low and have to hope the druid was right there with his heals. Even with those druid heals I found myself needing to switch to water frequently to keep myself alive, which lowered my dps, as well as the boss frequently moving around, which lowered dps as well.

I mean, I know it’s POSSIBLE to be a dps ele/tempest in the raid, but I have to wonder if it is worth struggling to stay alive and lowering dps (gearing for more health/toughness would also hit dps so that’s not really of any particular value), instead of say, going on my zerker geared Herald who can keep party fury and might up just as much as I could with my fire fields (in fact better as staff ele doesn’t have as many blast finishers to work with to consistently keep 12 stacks of might up), has just as good of breakbar (again, probably better) utility, is naturally more survivable just from having higher armor and higher base health pool, is just as good of DPS at least on 1 target, and the only thing I really sacrifice is aoe, which so far in the raid, has not come up as something we need.

Is the raid past the first boss more aoe intensive where an ele/tempest would be more worthwhile? Or should I just go burnzerker or zerker herald and not have to deal with the struggle to survive

Tempest seems pretty bad for the Vale Guardian encounter, but really strong for the Gorseval encounter. What this means is that to fully utilize Ele, it’s best to keep it as an alt for certain encounters where there are big enemies that don’t move much, and then swap to another class for encounters where the enemies have smaller hitboxes and move around more.

Furthermore, if you find if you are struggling to stay alive on Ele, it’s probably best to just not play it, honestly.

Neko.9021:

Tempest seems pretty bad for the Vale Guardian encounter, but really strong for the Gorseval encounter. What this means is that to fully utilize Ele, it’s best to keep it as an alt for certain encounters where there are big enemies that don’t move much, and then swap to another class for encounters where the enemies have smaller hitboxes and move around more.

Furthermore, if you find if you are struggling to stay alive on Ele, it’s probably best to just not play it, honestly.

Let’s be clear by struggle I don’t mean “always dying” I mean constantly having to switch away from fire and use heals, which lowers your damage.

I could survive, I just couldn’t maximize my damage while doing it.

Devildoc.6721:

Neko.9021:

Tempest seems pretty bad for the Vale Guardian encounter, but really strong for the Gorseval encounter. What this means is that to fully utilize Ele, it’s best to keep it as an alt for certain encounters where there are big enemies that don’t move much, and then swap to another class for encounters where the enemies have smaller hitboxes and move around more.

Furthermore, if you find if you are struggling to stay alive on Ele, it’s probably best to just not play it, honestly.

Let’s be clear by struggle I don’t mean “always dying” I mean constantly having to switch away from fire and use heals, which lowers your damage.

I could survive, I just couldn’t maximize my damage while doing it.

If you’re spending time healing yourself by constantly swapping away into Water, then honestly it’s still probably not worth it. That’s a huge damage loss. Presumably your healer and your ability to play at range should prevent you from having to do that. But if that’s not the case, then Ele isn’t worth playing.

Yeah, that’s pretty much how I felt. I felt like if I was on my revenant I could manage myself better without sacrificing dps.

Devildoc.6721:

Yeah, that’s pretty much how I felt. I felt like if I was on my revenant I could manage myself better without sacrificing dps.

Well, any dps classes fall short when compare to Herald, which not only has top 2 dps, but also have strong constant mobile boons, and key skills to live through lots of burst damage.

Engi only got the spot because condition damage is strongly needed too.
Warrior only get picken because of banner, and having more than 1 warrior is a dps lost.
Thief is in even worse situation than Tempest.

So it’s not really Tempest’s problem, but rather Herald’s.