Hey all, I’ve had this build up on GW2 Guru’s PvE Elementalist section (I’m Kitsune on there) for a while, and we’ve been improving it as we go. I currently do NOT have full ascended accessories, so that could skew the stats a bit higher, and in my current set up I’m not personally optimized as strongly as I could be, but despite that I’ve yet to find a build that comes close to the potential, and realized, damage my build can achieve.
If you want the full details of the build, it can be found here .
For now I’ll go over the highlights and answer any questions anyone has.
The Build and the Rational
The most important features of the build require a little explaining, and probably the most important thing to understand is “unlocked” potential. I use this to refer to the notion that, in a group who knows what they are doing and can offer you specific Boons and Conditions, they can unlock your full potential to unleash the highest damage in the game.
What I mean is, this build does not stack might, it is not a durable bunkery support, it does not apply its own vulnerability (to eek out those last bits of damage), and it has absolutely no Boon duration. You are not the nice-guy for the group, you are the guy that the other nice-guys enable to become a behemoth damage dealer.
You are frail. You have little room for error. If downed, you need good team mates who, at the very least, know how to use two people to almost instantly rally you should you go down for what ever reason (the damage loss from a support-built player reviving you is minimal for what you will be bringing during your up time).
That said, it does have excellent heal per second potential of over 300 hps, so if you are dinged every so often, you can recover in a reasonable time.
Damage Amplification
You want to maintain your multiplicative stacking damage increases as often as possible, which are the following:
NOTE: to the best of my knowledge and testing, damage increases scale in a multiplicative fashion, and even if they do not, I do not believe any other profession can achieve the same level of damage amplification even if it is merely cumulative.
- 20% from Piercing Shards (effects all skills, not just attunement-weapon skills) if foe is Vulnerable and you are in Water Attunement. This should not be a problem with most groups, but you could find yourself with out this. Again, there are other options with less potential damage if you do not have a consistent team, such as taking the 25 air minor trait to keep this applied yourself.
- 10% and another 10% from Rune of Scholar and Vital Strikes when your Health is > 90% (this will reward you for avoiding any possible damage, and WILL improve how you play this game out of necessity. Maintain this at least more than 33% of the time will result in more damage than any other rune combination).
- 5% and another 5% if your target is Burning, easy for some groups to maintain, if not then you do have options, but it will cut into your normal damage potential, if you have to pop Signet of Fire for example and lose the free crit chance.
- 2% Per Boon on you (18% max). This is completely up to your allies to maintain and mostly out of your control since we lack boon duration. (assuming on average you have at least 3 boons, that’s a 6% bonus, but likely could be over 10% with some group compositions. Assuming Might and Fury permanently, that’s a hard minimum of 4%. Swiftness Fury Might and Regeneration usually have high up-times, but with the full list of 9 Boons, that’s a gigantic 18% bonus)
- 5% from Superior Sigil of Force. I’ve tested this thoroughly, the weapon sigils do work. Ideally, the Blood Lust Sigil fully stacked would be higher, so for pure min-maxing that is ideal, but Force is more reliable and consistent. You could always abuse the stacking of Blood Lust and THEN swap to Force for absolute highest potential, but I don’t abuse that bug.
This results in a normal damage amplification of +78.2%
- 20% Once foes reach under 33% health. Very, very powerful, since all foes eventually reach this point, and it makes finishing off foes your primary goal in a group, as your damage will absolutely soar with this additional large bonus.
With this bonus, it yields an impressive 113.8% damage amplification.
These stipulations are maintained with what easily accessible in a normal group, with someone keeping vulnerability and burning on a foe, while the rest completely depends on your ability to avoid taking damage and dipping bellow 90% health for an extended period of time.
I can kite and CC melee based champions until I whittle their health down to zero, but twenty or thirty charr I can’t take on myself.
