Guild Wars 2

ThatOneArtistGamer.2914:

I mean, I know NN isn’t looking for a build- he’s arguing the point that his fire mage is effective. But the thing is when people dungeon they don’t consider straight up DPS and nothing else as effective on a mage, they want a jack of all trades and a supporter- at least in my experience they do.

Now, what I would suggest is that the OP get some buddies or a nice guild so the issue will be irrelevant. I play with chums all the time that use sub-par builds, and I’m completely cool with that. It’s all about having fun and playing together that makes the game interesting. Of course, I would probably advise this through a voice service like Teamspeak or Skype or something, since typing while fighting with a mage can get hairy if you aren’t quick at the fingers.

As for what has higher damage? For me, and with my build, I can contribute much more with attunement swapping than simply staying in fire. I’m not just in the class for the damage, I’m in it for the spells.

Contribute Much more in damage terms?Because thats all I’m interested in.
If so, how exacly?

For those who think sticking to fire for higher DPS is the way to go, send me a message if you see me online sometime we’ll goto sPvP and I’ll show you how fast i can melt you with attunement swapping. I’m not going to argue, i’d rather prove it lol. MSG me ingame or on forums if you want. I’ll be on later tonight.

NightyNight.1823:

Contribute Much more in damage terms?Because thats all I’m interested in.
If so, how exacly?

Well it sounds like you have a lot more that your interested in…

I mean, if you think your build is good, then why should it matter if you get ire from other players? Get some buddies and play with them so you can use your fire mage how you want to play- problem solved/thread closed. If you really want to make people believe you instead then you should probably be more courteous and prove yourself instead of shutting people down that disagree. I mean, I know you may not see yourself as doing this, but you being a little mean.

As for your focus on damage, well- that’s really a difference of opinion and perspective. I go by the mantra that dead players deal no DPS, so if I can keep them alive I’m doing doing damage in a way. It’s kind of fun because when I play support I feel like everyone else is a minion of mine- just a cute thought there.

I just think you’re missing out on some great mage potential here. You’re not seeing the benefits of support play and you’re upset that people don’t agree. That’s just how it is.

I really don’t mind pure fire mages, really. I just think they’re missing out. That’s all this thread seems to be, some type of justification or reassurance for a fire build.

^^ Well written ThatOne. Your losing out on so much potential
from a class that has such great variety if you are locking yourself
into a single attack. IMO as a glass cannon Ele, the combo AOE chains are the most rewarding (Ive done over 15k damage to multiple targets withing a few seconds).

It seems you don’t understand that while Ice Spike and Eruption do take a while to activate, they only take a fraction of that time to actually cast them. While they’re busy, you can move on to other spells. Their damage is actually higher than fireball, and if you spend the same amount of time casting them, who cares if they activate 5 seconds or 10 seconds later? You still get more damage for the same amount of time spent casting.

What you’re saying equals not casting anything until Flame Burst’s burning is done…that makes no sense right? So why on earth would you wait until Ice Spike has landed? Go on and cast somethign else as soon as you’re able, the ice crystal will drop just as well without your attention.

And with all that might stacking you’re doing, the damage from your bleeding won’t be insignificant at all. So why not use it and make eruption do truly massive damage because it can benefit from both bonusses your might stacks give?

Alright, I’ve read the thread, and I’ll toss in my 2 cents:

I conducted some number crunching using the base damages from the wiki and left out gear and traits, since they are a non-factor (ie, they can be applied to both instances and it won’t change a kitten thing). I also assumed both sample ele’s would use D/D as that is what the OP says he uses. Both damaged also discounted armor for sake of simplicity.

The first is a combo setup, as follows: Ride the Lightning → Burning Speed → Ring of Fire → Drake’s Breath → Fire Grab → Magnetic Grasp → Earthquake → Churning Earth → end
This combo results (in terms of damage and everything hits fully) in 3.6k raw damage over about 8.5 seconds. However, over 8 of those seconds, we are burning our foe for 2.6k damage, bringing the total to 6.2k damage, not counting the end bleed. In addition, we get a fire shield, a knockdown, 2 blast finishers in fire fields for might (which increases our damage further), and an immobilize. Please note, I did not account for the additional might gained from combos.

The second ele simply spammed fire 1 (Dragon’s Claw) (the OP’s favored playstyle) over the same 8.5 seconds. the damage comes out to 6.5k raw damage.

CONCLUSION: while you will deal more damage (theoretically) by spamming aa’s, simply trading a few hundred damage (in a game that deals in thousands, not a huge deal) for locking down your target, applying might to yourself and any allies nearby, gaining a fire shield, and applying unmitigated damage (if it all hits) is a favorable tradeoff.

^ while actual numbers are nice but leaving out traits make a major difference. one of the biggest argument here for staying in fire is the auto might stack from grandmaster trait combined with 10% bonus dmg in fire since ur in it the entire time basically compared to swapping to attunements without it. also staying in fire doesnt mean just using autoatk, it means using everything in fire that can boost dps and using auto when its on cd.

8D though if ur using D/D it might be better to go 30/30/0/10/0 and stay in water using piercing shards trait for 20% bonus dmg to vunerable foes. without the might stack and lower dmg but 20% bonus is alot especially since vunel is always on.

Who is it that is giving you a hard time about playing Ele as glass cannon?.. I have never seen nor heard from anyone that they don’t like glass cannon Ele’s that use Fire attunement a lot. I don’t think anyone even cares, TBH.

Play how you like. Find what works best for you and that which you have the most fun playing in the game and have at. I can verify that the glass cannon Ele is extremely viable in all weapon sets, because I have been running that for many months now with zero issues and still extremely good survivability relative to the environment I’m in. For PvE, glass cannon is definitely the way to. For Wv3, glass cannon is definitely the way to go. For sPvP or tPvP, I would not personally go glass cannon, but to each his or her own.

If your opinion is that staying in fire and AA’ing is better than attunement switching, why don’t you guys just duel each other or something. The arguments you provide tell me that you’re very experienced with the class.

ArashiKai.2496:

CONCLUSION: while you will deal more damage (theoretically) by spamming aa’s, simply trading a few hundred damage (in a game that deals in thousands, not a huge deal) for locking down your target, applying might to yourself and any allies nearby, gaining a fire shield, and applying unmitigated damage (if it all hits) is a favorable tradeoff.

If anything, your testing supports the OP.

The problem with the Fire Line traits are they often only help fire spells (longer fire fields, might stacking on casts, etc). Showing a combo of abilities through swapping doing around the same damage as the fire auto-attacks shows how even it can be. You discount some of the extras like the bleed stacks and the extra might on team mates, but then you also assumed the fire mage didn’t apply burning, that they didn’t use any of their other spells and that fire magic is the attunement with all the fire fields for might stacking.

After reading this thread, I’ve come to several conclusions:

-The elementalist forum has become alot more elitist. Now it seems common that everyone needs 30 in Arcane and have to dance constantly or else they are trash. This isn’t true. Not only can you do well without anything in Arcane, you can specialize in certain aspects or your build by doing so.

-A ‘fire mage’ seems to be a viable spec, if only for PvE and dungeon encounters. In many circumstances, there is plenty of support already. You don’t have to be a 1-man support team, simply offering fields for others to capitalize on is support enough. And a ‘fire mage’ will probably be good to stack might on allies by simply using their fields more which they can more easily do by staying in the attunement.

-Reading, some posters have said they can do well by sticking with Water or Air attunement too. I’m betting you can be a viable contributor to a team if you have a ‘Water mage’ build or ‘Air mage’ build (although I’m curious how such a build would work) by being capable of acceptable/good damage while providing the utility of that specific attunement.

-What’s viable in PvP or WvW is a rather different story. Being able to down n00bs with ease or following a zerg doesn’t win against cheating NPCs with gajillion HPs.

Calle.8746:

Just lol… I promise you bro, if you only stay in fire, even though you’re traited glass cannon and I’m traited more as a hybrid semi pewpew/tanky tank I’m gonna do more damage than you are.

I take it as you play with staff, if I’m wrong feel free to correct me. Myself, I play D/D.

Now you spam your no.1. Throw in a burn once in a while. Maybe drop down metor shower. Hitting your awesome wicked badazz damage. Cool cool.

I keep constant burns and bleeds on my target. Even if they may not be ‘perma’ burns and bleeds I always have atleast one of em’ up. Ontop of that my max crits with stuff like Cunning Earth, Fire Grab, Burning speed is ~6(when I got no might stacks)- ~9k when I got 25 might stacks. And on top of that I hit 1,2k-1.5k with each auto attack in lightning (as lightning being the auto attack I find myself using the most). And just as a side note, dagger auto attacks are twice as fast as staff.

You ask yourself how you’d do more damage by changing to another attunement? Now you play staff, and I think staff suck so I don’t play it so can’t tell you much about the combos you could use there but with dagger.

Starting out in Earth throwing down a Cunning Earth – BAAM 9k+8 stacks of bleed. Ring of Earth BAAM another 2.5k and another stack of bleed. Change to fire, Bruning Speed BAAM 9k plus burning. Fire grab BAAM 9k, Ring of fire another 2.5k and change to lighting RTL BAM 2k plus spamming auto attacks for 1.5k each hit with bleed and burning on. Repeat and repeat and repeat. So by the time you spam your no.1 skill in fire I’ve been doing kitten load of damage.

AND beyond me doing more damage I also provide support to my group.

So have you acctually put your hands on an Elementalist?

And what’s that crap about “the traits are realy not that hard to figure out.”? Did you know that there’s more than 1 glass cannon build? Amazing isn’t it!! woooo.
if you’re gonna be a smartass atleast have the brains for it.

Interested in what gear and traits you’re running for this, and how squishy you are if you get caught in an attack.

Not being hostile here, I’m interested because I run a more support oriented build, and am wondering how this would work in FotM to increase damage.

(hey, I like big numbers too!)

plasmacutter.2709:

Calle.8746:

Just lol… I promise you bro, if you only stay in fire, even though you’re traited glass cannon and I’m traited more as a hybrid semi pewpew/tanky tank I’m gonna do more damage than you are.

I take it as you play with staff, if I’m wrong feel free to correct me. Myself, I play D/D.

Now you spam your no.1. Throw in a burn once in a while. Maybe drop down metor shower. Hitting your awesome wicked badazz damage. Cool cool.

I keep constant burns and bleeds on my target. Even if they may not be ‘perma’ burns and bleeds I always have atleast one of em’ up. Ontop of that my max crits with stuff like Cunning Earth, Fire Grab, Burning speed is ~6(when I got no might stacks)- ~9k when I got 25 might stacks. And on top of that I hit 1,2k-1.5k with each auto attack in lightning (as lightning being the auto attack I find myself using the most). And just as a side note, dagger auto attacks are twice as fast as staff.

You ask yourself how you’d do more damage by changing to another attunement? Now you play staff, and I think staff suck so I don’t play it so can’t tell you much about the combos you could use there but with dagger.

Starting out in Earth throwing down a Cunning Earth – BAAM 9k+8 stacks of bleed. Ring of Earth BAAM another 2.5k and another stack of bleed. Change to fire, Bruning Speed BAAM 9k plus burning. Fire grab BAAM 9k, Ring of fire another 2.5k and change to lighting RTL BAM 2k plus spamming auto attacks for 1.5k each hit with bleed and burning on. Repeat and repeat and repeat. So by the time you spam your no.1 skill in fire I’ve been doing kitten load of damage.

AND beyond me doing more damage I also provide support to my group.

So have you acctually put your hands on an Elementalist?

And what’s that crap about “the traits are realy not that hard to figure out.”? Did you know that there’s more than 1 glass cannon build? Amazing isn’t it!! woooo.
if you’re gonna be a smartass atleast have the brains for it.

Interested in what gear and traits you’re running for this, and how squishy you are if you get caught in an attack.

Not being hostile here, I’m interested because I run a more support oriented build, and am wondering how this would work in FotM to increase damage.

(hey, I like big numbers too!)

I’m not him but I have a pretty good idea what he’s running.

Probably 0/10/0/30/30 or perhaps 0/20/0/30/20 for higher crits and CD’s on air skills.
p/v/t gear with Monk & Water runes. Knights & Clerics accessories.

Along with Sigil of Battle which gives you might on attunement swap (every 9 secs), you can throw down Ring of Fire and then Arcane Blast for area might, and then Earthquake & Churning earth within RoF for two more area might blast finishers bringing you to 13 stacks in ~5 seconds. With that and the perma-fury from auras, you get around 2000 power and ~45% crit chance.

skinnyb.5920:

plasmacutter.2709:

Calle.8746:

Just lol… I promise you bro, if you only stay in fire, even though you’re traited glass cannon and I’m traited more as a hybrid semi pewpew/tanky tank I’m gonna do more damage than you are.

I take it as you play with staff, if I’m wrong feel free to correct me. Myself, I play D/D.

Now you spam your no.1. Throw in a burn once in a while. Maybe drop down metor shower. Hitting your awesome wicked badazz damage. Cool cool.

I keep constant burns and bleeds on my target. Even if they may not be ‘perma’ burns and bleeds I always have atleast one of em’ up. Ontop of that my max crits with stuff like Cunning Earth, Fire Grab, Burning speed is ~6(when I got no might stacks)- ~9k when I got 25 might stacks. And on top of that I hit 1,2k-1.5k with each auto attack in lightning (as lightning being the auto attack I find myself using the most). And just as a side note, dagger auto attacks are twice as fast as staff.

You ask yourself how you’d do more damage by changing to another attunement? Now you play staff, and I think staff suck so I don’t play it so can’t tell you much about the combos you could use there but with dagger.

Starting out in Earth throwing down a Cunning Earth – BAAM 9k+8 stacks of bleed. Ring of Earth BAAM another 2.5k and another stack of bleed. Change to fire, Bruning Speed BAAM 9k plus burning. Fire grab BAAM 9k, Ring of fire another 2.5k and change to lighting RTL BAM 2k plus spamming auto attacks for 1.5k each hit with bleed and burning on. Repeat and repeat and repeat. So by the time you spam your no.1 skill in fire I’ve been doing kitten load of damage.

AND beyond me doing more damage I also provide support to my group.

So have you acctually put your hands on an Elementalist?

And what’s that crap about “the traits are realy not that hard to figure out.”? Did you know that there’s more than 1 glass cannon build? Amazing isn’t it!! woooo.
if you’re gonna be a smartass atleast have the brains for it.

Interested in what gear and traits you’re running for this, and how squishy you are if you get caught in an attack.

Not being hostile here, I’m interested because I run a more support oriented build, and am wondering how this would work in FotM to increase damage.

(hey, I like big numbers too!)

I’m not him but I have a pretty good idea what he’s running.

Probably 0/10/0/30/30 or perhaps 0/20/0/30/20 for higher crits and CD’s on air skills.
p/v/t gear with Monk & Water runes. Knights & Clerics accessories.

Along with Sigil of Battle which gives you might on attunement swap (every 9 secs), you can throw down Ring of Fire and then Arcane Blast for area might, and then Earthquake & Churning earth within RoF for two more area might blast finishers bringing you to 13 stacks in ~5 seconds. With that and the perma-fury from auras, you get around 2000 power and ~45% crit chance.

I ask because I have similar gear to what you’re quoting and I’m definitely not seeing churning earth hitting (or critting) for 9k + bleeds.

plasmacutter.2709:

I ask because I have similar gear to what you’re quoting and I’m definitely not seeing churning earth hitting (or critting) for 9k + bleeds.

Because you can’t hit for 9k with CE with pvt plus clerics gear with only 10-20 trait points in air line. I hit for about 10k-12k with CE with knight’s armour and everything zerker with 0 in fire and 25 in air.

haviz.1340:

plasmacutter.2709:

I ask because I have similar gear to what you’re quoting and I’m definitely not seeing churning earth hitting (or critting) for 9k + bleeds.

Because you can’t hit for 9k with CE with pvt plus clerics gear with only 10-20 trait points in air line. I hit for about 10k-12k with CE with knight’s armour and everything zerker with 0 in fire and 25 in air.

and that’s what I was asking, for actual builds and gear.

it seems that kind of damage is asking to be a floor stain when you get to read boss moves through a confusing mess of spell effects from the rest of the party and yourself.

plasmacutter.2709:

and that’s what I was asking, for actual builds and gear.

it seems that kind of damage is asking to be a floor stain when you get to read boss moves through a confusing mess of spell effects from the rest of the party and yourself.

If you have problems with seeing through spell effects, consider turning post processing off.

haviz.1340:

plasmacutter.2709:

and that’s what I was asking, for actual builds and gear.

it seems that kind of damage is asking to be a floor stain when you get to read boss moves through a confusing mess of spell effects from the rest of the party and yourself.

If you have problems with seeing through spell effects, consider turning post processing off.

Still not seeing a build or gear post.. still seeing haviz talking down as usual.

clearly I don’t need the information i’ve requested, and clearly I’m being told to make my game uglier!

uugh.. nobody posts a straight answer anymore!

plasmacutter.2709:

haviz.1340:

plasmacutter.2709:

and that’s what I was asking, for actual builds and gear.

it seems that kind of damage is asking to be a floor stain when you get to read boss moves through a confusing mess of spell effects from the rest of the party and yourself.

If you have problems with seeing through spell effects, consider turning post processing off.

Still not seeing a build or gear post.. still seeing haviz talking down as usual.

clearly I don’t need the information i’ve requested, and clearly I’m being told to make my game uglier!

uugh.. nobody posts a straight answer anymore!

I posted it. I swap traits very often so they are variable.

Turning post processing off, it’s either that or complaining about particle effects mess.

Leo G.4501:

ArashiKai.2496:

CONCLUSION: while you will deal more damage (theoretically) by spamming aa’s, simply trading a few hundred damage (in a game that deals in thousands, not a huge deal) for locking down your target, applying might to yourself and any allies nearby, gaining a fire shield, and applying unmitigated damage (if it all hits) is a favorable tradeoff.

If anything, your testing supports the OP.

The problem with the Fire Line traits are they often only help fire spells (longer fire fields, might stacking on casts, etc). Showing a combo of abilities through swapping doing around the same damage as the fire auto-attacks shows how even it can be. You discount some of the extras like the bleed stacks and the extra might on team mates, but then you also assumed the fire mage didn’t apply burning, that they didn’t use any of their other spells and that fire magic is the attunement with all the fire fields for might stacking.

While you are correct in that simply aa’ing will do more damage than stance dancing, I did that number crunching in a vacuum, and did not account for traits, skills missing, etc. Basically, the conclusion says that if, in a vacuum, damage is all we cared about, the optimal strategy is aa spam; however, this simply is not the case. Control and support is needed, depending on the situation, something that stance dancing performs very well while sacrificing little damage (~3% damage loss). What we should take away is we get much more bang for our buck by switching around stances than simply staying put in just one stance and aa’ing until pigs fly.

Personally, I don’t giving a flying kitten if you hang around in fire all day long, so long as you remain standing, lay down fields the group can use, and swap attunements when necessary.

skinnyb.5920:

Staying in one attunement for an entire fight is limiting yourself to a quarter of your skills.

When I come across Staff “Fire Mages” in dungeons, I either politely ask them to help their team by providing DoT, CC’s, and heals or to please leave the group.

This… This right here

It seems a lot of elementalist never seem to dish out their vast amount of support and are content with sitting on fire with glass cannon. Then they complain and whine that they’re always getting one shot.

Also it seems a lot of eles don’t know the absolute power of putting a few traits in Water/Arcane.

It totally depends on what you measure too. It’s already been established that the displayed skill recharges are inaccurate, and that the actual casting sequences take longer (Fireball fires every 1.4 seconds for example, even though its tooltip shows a 1 second recharge).

The one thing we can all agree on I think, is that assuming Fire deals more damage than an attunement swapping elementalist, the difference will be small enough that the extra support and boons more than make up for it. That means that it’s not totally unviable to go for full fire. But it also means that going for full fire won’t neccesarily be better than swapping either. Just different.

And let’s leave it at that…

So… how does a D/D fire only ele stay alive while DPS’ing vs any dungeon mob though?
I like the numbers by Arashi and franky I’m not suprised. It’s not the first time spamming auto attack deals more damage than using other skills + you get the most out of Pyromancer’s Puissance and Internal Fire that way which is good.
But still…how does he stay alive?

Utilities? A more careful approach? Dodging?

I mean, it’s not like your heal is locked behind water…or that you can’t use utilities like mist form.

ThatOneArtistGamer.2914:

From a party leader perspective, I would rather have someone who is frail, but can majorly support the party with a wide variety of tools, than someone who is actually MORE frail due to the lack of attunements that wants to simply inflict damage. There are much bulkier, much stronger classes for that.

Even those “bulkier, much stronger” classes get crap when they try to do what they’re best at. You wouldn’t believe the kvetching directed at any warrior who isn’t a shout-healer.

There are people who are bound to the idea of being a DPS build, that’s true. And often they won’t consider how they might benefit others with only a little more effort. Letting a couple people shoot projectile finishers through a lightning field is a great way to get massive vulnerability.

BUT, for each of those people, we have people equally hidebound who scoff at any builds that aren’t “for the group”, sometimes without even considering whether that’s actually a good idea. Have you ever seen a necro trying to support with those dinky little 3-second protection buffs per well? That’s just sad.

It’s time for people to understand that DPS is a form of support. DEAD MOB is a buff that grants:
100% reduction in damage from that source.
100% removal of future conditions from that source.
100% reduction of knockdown, launch, immobilize, chill, and indeed all CC from that source.

We won’t enumerate the buffs granted by destroyed mob generators.

That doesn’t mean the DPS-centered player is always right. Particularly for mages, who can sacrifice a little DPS for what I believe to be a lot of support.

Play Elementalist and not using ALL attunments is like playing a mage in other game and not using skills…

Knox.3748:

Play Elementalist and not using ALL attunments is like playing a mage in other game and not using skills…

In alot of those other games, over half a mage’s skills aren’t very useful.

Manticore Five.9867:

Have you ever seen a necro trying to support with those dinky little 3-second protection buffs per well? That’s just sad.

Agree with pretty much all of your post, but wanted to make one little footnote on this part.

Yes, on its own, it’s hardly worth the trouble to cast. However, what makes boons so uniquely useful in Guild Wars 2 is how they stack. If you have 5 people all casting their 3 seconds protection, it translates to 15 seconds of protection. Which does matter quite a bit.

It’s one of the things I feel people often overlook. Skill on their own are often weak, but thanks to thestacking mechanics that other games lack, boons and conditions become worth using. It’s actually one of those small, hidden gems of brilliance that I like so much in this game. Abilities are no longer standalone, they actually work together in some way. But I suppose that’s a whole different discussion.

Manticore Five.9867:

It’s time for people to understand that DPS is a form of support. DEAD MOB is a buff that grants:
100% reduction in damage from that source.
100% removal of future conditions from that source.
100% reduction of knockdown, launch, immobilize, chill, and indeed all CC from that source.

I agree with this 100%. With friends We can clear dungeons quickly and efficiently because self heals and dodges are by far the best Defensive abilities in the game. and you dont need anyone else to use them for you. I dont mind people that like to support. but give me a DPSer that knows how to play well any day of the week.

CC is all well and good but the simple fact is that in dungeons its not nearly as effective as it is in world encounters or PvP. Bosses are not as effected and often immune. If we are strictly talking about a boss encounter and dungeons, I have to agree with the OP. I spend most of my time in Fire because it simply does the most damage during boss fights (except for the few times where air pulls ahead). If I was pure speced for fire, I could definitely see staying in the attunement almost always.

Open your minds people The guy is saying that a pure fire spec build deals more damage staying in fire than anything else. And the numbers prove him right. While it’s true buffing teammates (can) also increase the over all DPS you have to realize that is 100% dependent on a source you cannot control. AOE Might means nothing if one or more of your party is constantly dead, afk, only healing, or heck just out of range. Assuming the OP is a good player, Keeps himself alive and dishes out his DPS well He would be a great asset to the team, and putting down encounters with speed and efficiency. Its funny that people get stuck in this attitude when it comes to Elementalist but no one thinks twice when the Thief joins the group as a pure glass cannon.

Might want to consider rolling another class if the attunement dance is too hard for you mate. I would never want a pure damage d/d ele in my group.

Pure Fire build / attunement is only for staff. Its almost 100% direct damage (which actually scales from power and precision and crit damage%)

Leaving that attunement means losing might stacks like mad.

With boon duration+ (Omnoms and 20 into Arcane) plus might duration+ you can raise your potential max stacks (since the base is 10 sec per fire spell cast).

Sure you have stacks drop off when not in fire, but you certainly still have the utility to drop fields when kitten hits the fan. It is a pure dps build, with the option for utility.

If you play this style, there isn’t another class with your sustained AoE damage. Single target is close as well. The Lava Font ticks with Meteor and Fireball/Nova is really insane. Can keep it up on the run very easily too.

You can get 5k Meteor crits (which on large mobs tick real fast, 3k Font ticks, 3-4k FBs)

Condition build just plain suck in team play (PvE) There is no guarantee your bleed/burn is working to the effectiveness as solo play. The scaling for all +dmg% , +crit damage, power and precision is zero.

Ele’s still have the utility at hand, as well as the option to equip a utility wep set for certain fights. High DPS itself lowers incoming party damage and fight durations to a large degree. To say that ’doesn’t have a place in a party’ is well …. something I don;t agree with.

FYI, this build actually has a ton of damage synergy*, hence the large numbers you can get. Currently running 3 Valk 3 Bers (with Bers Staff of course) 2 Valk Earrings, Frac dps rings and Ori Ruby Amulet.

Felt I needed the extra vit for survivability, but I may go full glass gear at some point.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmObuR2wjEAkCoEecABJIKYRRxM7A;TsAg0CnoqxIjQGbNuak1Mg4IycBA

+5% damage Burning (100% uptime from Fire field projectile combos from Font)
+10% damage Fire attunement (15 pt Arcane skill helps this when swapping)
+10% damage while >90% HP (range and great heal CD makes this up a lot)
+20% damage with mob <33% HP (third of most boss fights)

More with Glyphs and Food if you want as well (Force/Curry Butternut)

Old Internet saying: “don´t feed the troll”.

If he believes his Fire attunement is the best, let him go. If he believes party buffs mean nothing, that conditions mean nothing… let him go. If his party members let him go that way, he´s not hurting anyone…

…except their own party members.

Now, what i feel this game lacks is any kind of DPSmeter addons. Still, party buffs are hard to calculate, but in other games, in a 5 players party where everyone DPS (6 party where one heals), a simple 5% DPS for the party brought about the same damage as a 20% buff for oneself, even considering some factors -that´s why it was just around 20%.

The thing is, if we´re considering the “perfect” party where everyone is doing what they must do, you can have some few pure DPS spots. What i´m sure is that there are better classes for doing that than a pure, single attunement Fire mage. But for a DPS AND support class, there will be a spot for Elementalist.

If we´re not talking about perfect party composition, then who cares. Any spec of any class is good as long as the player behind the keyboard was good.

Medio.4821:

If he believes his Fire attunement is the best, let him go. If he believes party buffs mean nothing, that conditions mean nothing… let him go. If his party members let him go that way, he´s not hurting anyone…

…except their own party members.

And I’m finding it funny the attunement dancers have to have the last word in regards to the spec’s viability. It’s actually making an sole-attunement focused build seem more attractive actually…in PvE at least.

The way I see it, if the team has 90% uptime of 25 stacks of might because you’re constantly and strategically putting down fire fields, then that’s something attunement dancing isn’t going to do (unless you’re scepter…it’s pretty easy to get those might stacks up and keep them there all by yourself.). Plus you’ll be doing lots of damage and burns yourself. With coordination of the party, you can get alot done with just one attunement.

It makes me curious about other builds focused on air or maybe water…