Guild Wars 2

It’s taken me quite a few rebuilds, and I’m certainly open to more suggestions… but barring the acquisition of a full set of exotics (some of my gear is rare) and a legendary weapon this is the best Glass Cannon I could build…

http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/?lang=en&code=3210206vliljgllm00uu00a0h0l0ne6ecf009

edit for some reason the link doesn’t work from the GW2 forums though it does from social media, so here’s the low down if it still isn’t working. I run staff with glyphs of elemental harmony, storms, lesser elementals and the elite glyph; as well as cleansing fire. Traits are 30 fire (burning precision, internal fire, pyromancers puissance) 30 air (quick glyphs, inscription, tempest defense) and 10 arcane (elemental attunement)

My character’s stats are:
Power – 2,046
Precision – 2,160
Toughness – 916
Vitality – 916
Attack – 3,087
Critical Chance – 63%
Armor – 1,731
Health – 10,805

I’m running a full set of Superior runes of Balthazar, which grant an unaccounted for +15% Burn Duration, 5 seconds of Haste when health falls below 20% (90 sec CD), and using a healing skill burns nearby foes for 3 seconds (10 second CD). Weapon is equipped with Superior Sigil of Rage which grants quickness on criticals (10% chance).

What I was aiming to do with this build is keep a constant might buff equipped, while causing as much damage and DoT through burning as possible. I’ve found that I attunement swap a bit less than previous builds… but mobs seem to die noticably faster which is good since I die fairly fast myself lol.

Anyways, any tips for different utility skills to try out or perhaps a trait to substitue would be appreciated… only costs 3 and a half silver to try them out so I’m not afraid to.

I can’t read builds on that site without a lot of trouble — but wow, that is a really glassy build.

I tend to favor

Power first
Condition damage and the defensive stats in some order next
Precision low
Crit damage lowest

I’m also suspicious of condition duration, because of rounding to whole numbers of seconds, if that’s still how it works.

If you’re a little conservative on your stats, then you can have a strong offensive bias on utilities. Glyph of Lesser Elementals and Arcane Wave have rarely left my skillbar; when I was at your stage, I ran Arcane Blast as well. (Now it’s more Glyph of Storms, and I die less.)

I don’t quite know what to say about this build or what to criticise. Because any change to stay in this style will be very small, or any change towards more group oriented is completely changing the build.

You have simply just taken everything to absolute max the direct damage of your skills and nothing else. So if this is what you want and you don’t need to cleanse nor heal party, nor pull big packs, then yea sure this is abouts what you do. So can’t say much about it.

But for my uses I would use arcane wave and cantrips, ruby orbs, 20+ water, 20+ arcane and Air 1 to combo with icefields. But againg, this build is completely different already.

It’s a glassy build cause lately I’ve been soloing a lot lol… I had a good group build but when I do PuG dungeons or dynamic events anytime I did skills to help heal the group I would always see them using heal skills right after like it was completely wasted effort.

I’ll prolly make a more support based build if my guild ever gets super heavy into dungeon runs, but having things dead as fast as possible is my current target.

Afaik this should work in PvE solo play because glass is fine there. However in parties you would just be a liability. The other day ran fotm with 2 staff ekitten th were dps glass both spent a lot of time downed. It got to the point that I was suiciding to rez everyone because they all went glass.

Glass has some very limited uses in this game because in many cases you have to deal with your own aggro and mobs. The problem with ele is our burst is not very bursty outside some boss battles. Vets packs etc will eat through you without some form of defensive stats. You don’t have to heal a party (your’e right its mostly a waist outside cleanses). The thing to remember is that our personal healing is on the very good/great side. You don’t need to change you build for the general but most glass builds like this are heavily dependent on support classes in group PvE.

TheGuy.3568:

Afaik this should work in PvE solo play because glass is fine there. However in parties you would just be a liability. The other day ran fotm with 2 staff ekitten th were dps glass both spent a lot of time downed. It got to the point that I was suiciding to rez everyone because they all went glass.

Glass has some very limited uses in this game because in many cases you have to deal with your own aggro and mobs. The problem with ele is our burst is not very bursty outside some boss battles. Vets packs etc will eat through you without some form of defensive stats. You don’t have to heal a party (your’e right its mostly a waist outside cleanses). The thing to remember is that our personal healing is on the very good/great side. You don’t need to change you build for the general but most glass builds like this are heavily dependent on support classes in group PvE.

Interesting, I’ll have to keep this in mind as I continue to play. I haven’t done a lot of FotM and not had this build since the last normal dungeon run I’ve done, so it’ll be interesting to see if I can manage alright with the healing skills not having much oomph to them.

I will say that the thing that hurts me the most in group PvE is other players not doing any damage lol. Guardians and Warriors want to run up and melee the vets and champions and by the time they get there I have all the aggro and they’re stuck chasing the mob chasing me. Even in Orr I once ran with an 80 engineer and groups of mobs would ignore him (even if he attacked ones that I wasn’t directly attacking) and run me down…

Being as there’s no real class system to this game, I’m wondering what a dungeon run would be like if there were 4 other people with builds similar to mine so that the mobs would simply be dead instead of a challenge.

do you ever use this build in pvp?

Bedinar.1754:

do you ever use this build in pvp?

Getting the gear to support the stats for this build is beyond my knowledge – I played in 4 sPvP matches during the first month but noticed that everyone I fought against only used attacks that had no casting times…

I can’t dodge attacks that have no build up animation, and if it’s just a place that people go to button mash their fastest attacks it’s not something I’m going to get into since I’ll never enjoy it.

However from what I understand I could take this build directly into WvW exactly as originally posted. Wish for me to check something out for you? I’ve kinda just avoided all PvP related content since discovering sPvP has no tactics behind it.

sPvP may seem like it has no tactics if you’ve built the squishiest ele you can. You pretty much just die in a few hits, and people in the know… once they hit you once and notice how much damage you took they’ll just blow everything to burn you in a few seconds. Try creating a more balanced build and join sPvP… its an entirely different game when you do.

It’s completely blank for me. What do?

Bhima.9518:

sPvP may seem like it has no tactics if you’ve built the squishiest ele you can. You pretty much just die in a few hits, and people in the know… once they hit you once and notice how much damage you took they’ll just blow everything to burn you in a few seconds. Try creating a more balanced build and join sPvP… its an entirely different game when you do.

Yeah not the problem I experienced, of the four matches I played I succeeded 1v1 fights with whatever armor/weapon you start with and held down a capture point against upto 3 other players. I wasn’t just dying in a few hits because I hadn’t learnt this build back then.

I watched people I fought believing I would get the chance to anticipate skills and then dodge them – for example when I cast Meteor Shower I have no idea why people didn’t gtfo the way. It has a clear animation for casting spells. I’ve played Ranger and Thief and Warrior with little experience in Mesmer. The only attacks people used were ones that had no lead in animation because they didn’t want their attacks dodged.

I don’t care how fast paced it is, I like chess and if it requires thought and timing I’ll get into it. I’ll have to check it out again sometime but highly doubt anything has changed and it’s just a place where people can go to spam their skills and hope for kills. There was no tactics last time so even though my experience revolves around a whole 4 matches I’m not going to be entering it again hoping it’s any better this time.