Guild Wars 2

Does anyone have any proof that pve staff fire/air/water does more dps than fire/air/arcane? You are trading a conditional 10% modifier for grp fury, 150 ferocity (at a 90% crit rate this is about equivalent to a 9% unconditional modifier), quicker attunement cd, and about 8 stacks of burning.

Vicissitude.6845:

Does anyone have any proof that pve staff fire/air/water does more dps than fire/air/arcane? You are trading a conditional 10% modifier for grp fury, 150 ferocity (at a 90% crit rate this is about equivalent to a 9% unconditional modifier), quicker attunement cd, and about 8 stacks of burning.

So where to begin,
Crit damage % does not equal a damage mod, crit damage scales linearly while damage modifiers scale multiplicatively.
Secondly a pve staff by in large sits in 1 attune, the main reason to ever leave fire is only to take advantage of the 20% damage mod in water but that is only with a conjure in hand, when the conjure is gone it’s back to fire. So not having that water mod means only fire or less damage.
Arcana at best has a 6~12% realistic modifier on it where water has a 10% mod for health and. 20% mod while in water while also helping with vuln upkeep. Arcana is good for moments where a player can not maintain their health but that’s not really the goal of a dps build anyways since they are designed around people maintaining scholar anyways.

Assuming that the exact same traits for Fire and Air here is how Water and Arcana would be different (with a DPS focus):

Water:
-10% Flat base modifier based on Health
-20% Flat base modifier based on attunement to Water (Note you lose the 10% from not being attuned to Fire so I would argue this is only a 10% modifier overall).
-Extended duration on Vuln (which naturally come from Air Spec)

Arcana
-2-22% conditional base modifier based on number of boons (realistic minimum of 6% with an anticipated 10-12%)
Or
-10% Flat crit modifier after using an arcane skill.

As far as ‘on-paper’ is concerned Arcana would win if you somehow managed to have every boon on you simultaneously. For burst situations Water would win assuming your health stays above 90% as you can start off the fight with your damage channelling through Water and then switching to Fire for sustain.

As far as non-DPS traits are concerned Water is more reactive with its heals and cleanses to where Arcana is more proactive through its Boon granting, Shielding, and lower attunement cd’s.

So, to answer the OP. Water offers more damage, but I would still recommend Arcana to Ele’s for higher utility.

savacli.8172:

As far as non-DPS traits are concerned Water is more reactive with its heals and cleanses to where Arcana is more proactive through its Boon granting, Shielding, and lower attunement cd’s.

So, to answer the OP. Water offers more damage, but I would still recommend Arcana to Ele’s for higher utility.

Higher utility…
Water has,
Aura Share for reflects when needed,
Healing on water attune,
Increased outgoing healing to allies (15%),
Condition cleanse on regen as needed, or
Flat healing when you rotate to water. (soothing mist)
And allows for the use of water attune without or with much less dps loss while supporting allies.

Arcane has,
Vigor on crit, (Selfish)
Fury on attune, (selfish)
Aoe boons on attune on short durations,
A free arcane shield when health goes from 25%< to <25% but doesn’t proc if you would go down, (Selfish)
-1.5s of attune recharge, (Somewhat allows for more support but not enough to offset much)
Boons when hit, (Selfish and somewhat meh, only good ones being earth and air)
or a 10% res speed buff,
15% increase boon duration,
a 2~22% damage mod, (This being the best reason for the line.)
or a 10% crit mod on a 50% uptime or 100% uptime at a 9% crit loss or worse power loss for assassin’s gear,
or a small spell on dodge.

If a party can maintain 10~11 boons on the eles for more than 50% of the fight duration then yes arcane is better by far but that is anything but realistic. (assuming fights of 20s or longer) If you can’t rely on party members for things then arcane is ok… mainly because it lets you take vigor at a smaller dps loss than it would to be dead in a party where you constantly have to dodge. But the arcane is not higher utility it has a few good selfish buffs but these don’t help your team beyond keeping you up in some niche spots.

In PvE, being able to mitigate/eliminate the damage is preferred over recovery. Yes, I agree that Water has more utility in the sense of recovery (heals, cleanses, etc), but even all it doesn’t go as far as an extra dodge that you get from vigor uptime.

The same applies to Elemental Attunement and Contingency boons. 5 1/2 seconds of protection applied to the team goes much further than a splash heal on Water attunement.

The reasoning behind this is that in PvE you’re generally looking to dodge the bigger, yet slower hits. Thus, in instances such as high level fractals recovery techniques aren’t as useful as Ele’s tend to go down one-shot from just about anything with Defiant.

However, if you’re in a situation where you know you’re going to running into a lot of conditions Water works much better over Arcana.

Anyways, OP is wanting to know damage.

Water works best under certain conditions and will generally require a more skilled player to make sure they are able to keep above thresholds. Arcana, realistically, won’t offer as much damage but is generally easier to maintain the damage bonus.

savacli.8172:

In PvE, being able to mitigate/eliminate the damage is preferred over recovery. Yes, I agree that Water has more utility in the sense of recovery (heals, cleanses, etc), but even all it doesn’t go as far as an extra dodge that you get from vigor uptime.

The same applies to Elemental Attunement and Contingency boons. 5 1/2 seconds of protection applied to the team goes much further than a splash heal on Water attunement.

The reasoning behind this is that in PvE you’re generally looking to dodge the bigger, yet slower hits. Thus, in instances such as high level fractals recovery techniques aren’t as useful as Ele’s tend to go down one-shot from just about anything with Defiant.

However, if you’re in a situation where you know you’re going to running into a lot of conditions Water works much better over Arcana.

Anyways, OP is wanting to know damage.

Water works best under certain conditions and will generally require a more skilled player to make sure they are able to keep above thresholds. Arcana, realistically, won’t offer as much damage but is generally easier to maintain the damage bonus.

Look not trying to make a fight, but if in pve you want to avoid damage as a staff ele you don’t need an extra dodge all you have to do is take half a step back from max melee and suddenly all you have to dodge is 1 aoe every 10s at most while still being in buff range, there is no NEED for vigor. Vigor can be helpful in bad parties but it’s still not that great, and you said that an ele will die anyways in one hit, so you can’t also make the case for getting more boons on hit because those boons don’t help you when you are dead, it’s the same issues we have with auras in pve that require you to be hit. As for a “splash” heal an ele can pump with 0 healing power up to 9k health into everyone in the party allowing for a full reset for most players that got hit, also allowing players to more often keep up the high health modifiers.

Xcorpdog.2840:

Secondly a pve staff by in large sits in 1 attune, the main reason to ever leave fire is only to take advantage of the 20% damage mod in water but that is only with a conjure in hand, when the conjure is gone it’s back to fire.

You also want to use Air for the Glyph of Storm (Vulnerability) and Earth for Glyph of Storm (Blind) and #2 as a blast. But you usually only do one rotation each fight so the attunement reduction don’t help at all.

In PvE you want to do damage and fully block/dodge some time. The one healing skill is all healing you usually need. I recomended fire/air/arcane to a friend going full arcane utility for added blasting(critical damage + ferocity boon). You support your team by blowing up the mob …
You go to air for running around and swap to fire after using a few air skills. If you realy want healing swap to water and put down water flields and swap to earth as long as fire is on cooldown.

Thaddeus.4891:

Xcorpdog.2840:

Secondly a pve staff by in large sits in 1 attune, the main reason to ever leave fire is only to take advantage of the 20% damage mod in water but that is only with a conjure in hand, when the conjure is gone it’s back to fire.

You also want to use Air for the Glyph of Storm (Vulnerability) and Earth for Glyph of Storm (Blind) and #2 as a blast. But you usually only do one rotation each fight so the attunement reduction don’t help at all.

Yes, hence the “by in large” comment.
And bare in mind this started out as a Water vs Arcana thread, where when it comes to numbers the Water is better in terms of damage and recovering from mistakes. What keeps bothering me is people being dead set on the crit modifier in Arcana on top of thinking that just because the goal to dodge all damage means you don’t ever benefit from the healing from the water tree, which is sheer bonus on top of the better damage numbers.
Reminds me of the guardian who didn’t want to take shelter because “I don’t take damage so I don’t need damage mitigation.”

Swapping to Air to use Glyph of Storms is pretty mandatory. Because of that, it leaves you lacking some modifiers during the time you’re locked out of fire, and thus the Vuln Water modifier is essential. Ice Bow does more damage than Fire attunement skills, and the most sensible time to use it is when you can’t get to fire, otherwise you’ve got practically nothing, so either way, you’re not getting the 10% in fire or the power buff with your Ice Bow, thus go with Water, and you’ll be using higher dmg skills than fire skills with a 10% greater modifier to (more than) balance out the 150 less flat power. If you go Arcane, you’re arguably invalidating the use of Ice Bow at all, because Ice Bow itself is probably equatable to a 10-20% boost. In addition, you’re invalidating Glyph of Storms as anything other than an opener, because swapping to Air will stunt you without the Ice Bow. In addition to all of that, you’re also completely stunting you’re own Arcane traits, because the resulting build (if it’s intended to be staff dps) doesn’t benefit from attunement swapping, so it won’t trigger it’s own minor. This also stunts the Arcane Grandmaster, because Arcane is about gaining buffs, but you’re not fully taking advantage of that part of the trait line. You wouldn’t even have a reliable way to generate might for yourself because swapping to earth for a blast finisher would be too big a loss to validate having might and 2% more dmg.