Guild Wars 2

Tried searching everywhere but couldn’t find a specific topic. Is there an “optimal” critical chance an ele should have? Let’s say running a staff PvE build. What critical chance numbers are you guys running around with?

Just run full zerk.

Optimal is making sure you don’t go over 100% in a party situation, which is very easy to do as an elementalist depending on build. E.g. if you play a Fresh Air build and use Signet of Fire, you can easily get to 65% pre-fury and pre-food. Add a Ranger and Warrior to your group and you hit the cap of 100 and are essentially wasting stats. If you play a Fire Staff build though and wanna go Tempest instead of Water/Arcane, you will most likely also want to drop Signet of Fire. Then you suddenly drop to a much lower amount. To the point where you might wanna use a few Assassin’s pieces over Berserker (assuming you’re talking about Fractal Meta for PvE). I’m personally looking more to raids and am focusing more on the new maps so I run more of a defensive build with different gear and traits than what is now meta in Fractals. Even so I still have around 55% crit chance unbuffed. Crit chance is very important. The higher it is, the more consistent critical damage you deal which just means much higher DPS. The difference between 50% crit and 75% crit is huge. Crit chance and Crit damage is where the bulk of your damage comes from, take that out of the equation and DPS drops abysmally low. I think it’s a good idea to always have at least 90% fully buffed in a party enviroment. This would equate to about 50% unbuffed, 60% with food, 80% with fury and ~90% with party buffs. I wouldn’t go over 60-65% base.

Acutally curious question on this. I am not too well versed in food as I always stick to things like Lemongrass poultry soup/Another thing that mitigates condi duration and damage while CC’ed and your standard sharpening stone (ogre) but…which utility and food buff (name) do people use for PvE? I’m thinking of exploring Raids and Fractals in the future if Fractals get better rewards. Before I stuck to open world meta events in PvE.

I did the numbers, like, a long time ago. The values have probably changed a bit, but basically you’ll want to maximize power before investing in precision. Exceptions to this are more rare than common.

So, full berserker.

I have been using this distinct build for Ele. For me personally Berserk is not where Elementalist will ever be since the armor/trait rework to the present and beyond. Marauder maybe what those Elementalist wanting high p,p,& crit. will enjoy as it comes with 1 extra, Vitality. So on to the build.

Optimal Critical Tempest

?? What this build rely’s on is the stack of vulnerability and its duration applied on enemies. By doing so you increase critical damage while increasing damage. Before it was important to stack might to do higher damage, but if you understand how vulnerability works, it operates like might stacking but in reverse, (A Debuff). This is done with Glyph of storms, Air Attunement, Air Overload, Chain Lightning, Lightning Surge, and water attunements, Ice Spike.
?? Using skills like Static Field, Gust, Unsteady Field, and don’t forget Lightning Rod will apply weakness, making enemies attacks decrease by 50%.
?? Your condition damages will come from Earth, and Fire skills allowing you to still do good damage while either waiting to attune back in to air or water.
?? Arcane Line works very well with a high critical Tempest build. Arcane Fury, grants you fury when switching attunements, 20% critical chance additional increase. Arcane Precision grants more vulnerability when attuned to water, and more weakness when attuned to air, if landing a critical hit. Elemental Contingency grants more fury if struck while being attuned to air.
?? Depending on your play style, you can swap out the final Arcane trait, Evasive Arcana with Elemental Surge, and Flash-Freeze/Mist Form for one of the Arcane utilities, (Arcane Blast, Arcane Wave, Arcane Power), gaining an additional 150 ferocity.