Guild Wars 2

Hi guys, I am terrible at math! Therefore I am having trouble figuring out what would be more damage. I would really really appreciate some help figuring this out.

A little background: Usually run as a 20-30 person zerg, fighting other zergs. I need some survivability, so I can’t go full zerker, but I don’t know what would give me more damage.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQFAWhEmKbkx4wjEAkCoEeQgBMIKYRRxOzA-jgBBYfAUEAJqFRjtMsIasKkYaXER1SBExCA-e

Here is the spec I am working towards, but I really need some help tweaking it.
Would my damage be higher if I dropped some celestrial for knights? If so, what pieces are best to switch?

I just can’t figure it out, and I don’t want to make any ascended items until I know that I made the right choice, since I am poor and it’s so expensive lol.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I would strongly advise this guide:

http://intothemists.com/guides/107-staff_build_for_organized_groups.

Don’t focus too much on dps and fire attunement in zergs. Static field and healing rain is where it’s at. And not dying. Very much not dying

I agree with that guide, except that I think you should put in as much DPS as possible. Healing rain and static field work exactly the same no matter how much defense you have, so as long as you can stay alive I would try to get as much DPS as possible.

Thank you for the link

Being in a zerg, you’ll likely be receiving boons from allies. I’ll assume you have a good up time on swiftness,100% up time on fury and 12 might stacks (most likely more but I don’t want to over assume, + I have no experience with zerg fights in WvW). Fighting a zerg, I’ll assume you have 25 perception stacks too.

Regarding gear, assuming swiftness from allies, you won’t need to worry about that +25% speed increase via runes. This opens up a wide range of runes which improve your effective power, effective health or both. For effective power, offensive upgrades such as ruby orbs, runes of the scholar, runes of the ogre etc. For effective health, defensive upgrades such as runes of the dolyak, runes of earth, runes of dwayna, etc. For both, runes which offer a balance of defensive and offensive attributes such as runes of the wurm, runes of altruism, etc.

Regarding traits, if you’re staff and fighting a zerg, I would assume you’re fighting at 900+ range. If you in fact fight closer, you’d get more damage from 10 earth for stone splinters.

For utilities, especially since you’ll be hitting multiple foes at a time with each attack, you’ll get more damage out of signet of fire instead of arcane blast.

Knights Vs. Celestial. Celestial offers higher survivability. Comparing vitality and toughness, celestial offers around 100 higher effective health. This is further increased by the healing power also gained. Knights offers a very small +20 effective power. If it’s a choice between celestial and knights, in this case I’d take celestial.

You can squeeze small effective power increases out by swapping your consumable buffs and sigil stacks around to balance out power and precision, but in this case any change will be very small.

You don’t need to know any maths to be able to improve your build, you can use this very helpful tool: http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/. If you’re interested though, you can find formulas for effective power on the same site in the FAQ section here: http://gw2buildcraft.com/articles/calculator-faq/.

Oh I should mention, if you use the calculator I linked to, use an exotic staff, and under manual adjust the stats to account for the differences (power: 9, precision: 6, critical damage: 1).

This is because that calculator provides effective power for build strength comparisons and later using that figure to calculate damage, but for some reason it assumes you’ll be using an exotic weapon strength regardless of whether you selected exotic or ascended. So it attempts to account for the ascended weapon strength increase by putting an +5% damage modifier on a main/two handed ascended weapon because an ascended weapon’s weapon strength is 5% greater than an exotic weapon strength. This is flawed because damage modifiers stack multiplicatively, so the more and greater damage modifiers you have, the less accurate the calculated effective power will be. Then, when you come to use the effective power with an ascended weapon strength, the result will be way off.

Using an exotic weapon to avoid that +5% modifier and adjusting the stats manually to account for the increased attributes will avoid the inaccuracy.

My main advice is to not use travelers, but -condition duration or +boon duration runes, and to use a sigil of battle after you stacked your sigil of perception. I’m confident that is solid advice at least.

Another suggestion would be to take 10 points out of fire magic to get 30 in arcana for evasive arcana. A great heal + condi cleanse when dodging in water, and a blast finisher when dodging in earth (area healing when used into water field), is too good to pass up. This is more of a personal preference thing but I’m 90 percent sure it’s a better option.

This is great guys! Thanks so much Impact and Gokil, I have a lot of reading and testing to do lol.

A couple things

1. Runes of the Travelers. I think I am wrong about how these work. I was thinking that if I am in combat, I would have travelers + speed buff, which would give me a nice speed buff. Does it not work this way? Do they not stack?

1. The build I posted is a little wrong. The gear is right, but the traits and utilities are wrong. Here is an updated one

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQFAWhEmkbwx5QlDAkHucCLiCWUeszM2A-jgBBYfAkFAJqFRjtMsIasKkYaXER1SBExCA-e

Sorry about that.

Gokil, in regards to sigil of battle, how much dps would that add in comparison to a sigil of fire? I always thought fire was better but I could be wrong.

Thanks a lot guys, I am gonna test stuff out

Movement speed increases do not stack :/ so as long as you have swiftness, all other boosts are wasted.

On the topic of sigil of battle, about 15 percent. Definitely more than sigil of fire BUT it takes a while before the damage increase starts to get going. Also, if you get a lot of might from others, it might be wasted since your might might (:-D)already be at 25 stacks. Fire might actually be better.

EDIT: the new build you posted is infinitely better no comments whatsoever