Guild Wars 2

Hi all,

Last week I hit level 80 and am now running CoF for the cool looking armor and weapons. So far I have aquired the head piece and shoulder piece. But without thinking I just bought the power focused versions of the armor.

In the long run if I continue to buy all the power focused armor will this make me less powerful then say some one who chose the precision based armor?

I find it hard to beleive that precision can be THAT much better then power since im asuming they go hand in hand. But everyone in my guild says precision is far better for everything. But in your opinion if all I want to do is PVE for now am I making the right choice by having a power build CoF armor set?

Or am I making the ultimate mistake and I will be forever inferior to other elementalists with precision builds? XD

Long story and lots of math short. Unless you have crit damage multiplier precision falls behind power and either way you’ll need power to justify precision.

Also note precision is a stat that pays few dividends on its own (especially with out class). So if you really want to go for a precision build for us the end of that road needs crit damage to balance out the cost.

As far as dungeons go you cant dps if your always down. PVT in most cases is the smart choice but if your’e really good go full dps and fly through runs. GC ele in PvP = dead ele 9 times out of 10.

Last note certain builds ie Altruistic healing etc can rely on precision with out multipliers. Proc builds do that just fine.

TheGuy.3568:

Long story and lots of math short. Unless you have crit damage multiplier precision falls behind power and either way you’ll need power to justify precision.

Also note precision is a stat that pays few dividends on its own (especially with out class). So if you really want to go for a precision build for us the end of that road needs crit damage to balance out the cost.

As far as dungeons go you cant dps if your always down. PVT in most cases is the smart choice but if your’e really good go full dps and fly through runs. GC ele in PvP = dead ele 9 times out of 10.

Last note certain builds ie Altruistic healing etc can rely on precision with out multipliers. Proc builds do that just fine.

Or, you could build a hybrid ele with decent power,pre, and crit dam.
pretty high vit, and you will float at around 700 or so healing power…. . .

Solori.6025:

TheGuy.3568:

Long story and lots of math short. Unless you have crit damage multiplier precision falls behind power and either way you’ll need power to justify precision.

Or, you could build a hybrid ele with decent power,pre, and crit dam.
pretty high vit, and you will float at around 700 or so healing power…. . .

You would have to define decent, and if we get into real min maxing you have start putting your values in order. First off, vitality in our case would get out shined by toughness in the long run. Were not eating hits most of the time and our condition wiping is incredible so toughness makes more sense.

Then we go into how much power, how much precision, and how much crit damage. Now there are lots of things account for and what realistic, but in most cases for us 30% crit rate with a build that has near or permanent fury (since it will bump up to 50%) would be ok. Then you have to worry about crit damage. Your looking at at least 50%. So then you go into the stats and what gear combinations are feasible. Your’e probably going to be looking at a combination of Valkyrie and Knight’s with Opal and Beryl orbs.

If it were me I would go for as little healing power as I feel comfortable with probably way less than 700. Our heals heal hard no matter what even with reduced healing power you’ll likely be a ok. Unless you were super tanky you’ll barely feel it as the best scaling we get is 100% and that’s a 1 to 1 ratio. The heals hit over 1k all by them selves plus all the ambient healing would suffer very little.

Now here the kicker. I would say go to tree 2 ie air and invest there because in the long run the crit damage multiplier you get from there would be invaluable. However, because most find the second tree of our class lack luster past 10 points your pretty much left making up the gap with gear. if you are making it up with the gear you have to consider that critical damage is only ever paired with 2 things beside power those are precision and vitality. If you made up the gap with gear your toughness would be low and you would be rather squishy. Now depending on your set this may not matter.

The other thing is pairing a little bit of precision in favor of power is basically gimping yourself. If you pair it with power you may boost yourself a little but the difference would be marginal as our big hitting skills are all on long cool downs. For lets say a back stab thief or just about any other class this makes a great deal of sense as their biggest hitting skills are on short or nearly no cool down. We however do not have this luxury.

In the long run power pays off better with defensive stats. Our access to fury and an unbelievable capability to stack might makes it that when we use a hard hitting skill we hit hard 100% of the time. Leaving too much to rng in our case is not good. Another thing for the DD SD and SF conditions are applied often, If I wanted more DPS I would actually toss in more condition damage in. Since might pairs with condition damage and power simultaneously (ie it boost both at the same time) and usually we have a lot of access to it there is more sense in adding a little more condition damage than precision and crit damage.

I know its long but read if you like.

In summation its still smarter to go pure power with defensive stats for us and in most cases condition damage makes more sense to boost our dps.

just do a bit of everything like 4/6 PVT and 2/6 something with prec.
Ele’s need the healing power so they get healing/tough/power with some vit stuff on the side.

The most efficient stat layout for an ele IMO:

Berserker (POWER/precision/crit damage)
Shoulders
Gloves
Shoes
Accessories
Amulet
Daggers

Soldier (POWER/toughness/vitality)
Helm
Chest
Pants
Rings
Back

All exquisite ruby jewels in your amulet, accessories, back and rings.
6x runes of divinity
or
2x superior water 2x superior monk 2x major water/monk
Battle or Energy in one dagger
Bloodlust and a backup dagger with Force

With the standard 0 10 0 30 30 build you would have the following stats with exotic gear and divinity runes:
17,025 health
1,977 power
32% crit chance (52% with fury)
67% crit damage
2,158 armor
360 healing

I’m not 100% satisfactory with the explanations yet so I’ll give mine aswell in slightly shorter blunty statements.

- Your friends are wrong Power is the superior stat in almost every case. This is true especially for standard D/D because of the constant fury uptime.
— Special cases for pro percission are Omnomberries, 25 might stacks and condition proc builds. And extreme glass cannons, where you have to take percission anyway, due to armor sets.

- Survivability and DPS wise you always want balanced stats. This is because the more stat x you have, the better it’s partner stat y becomes. This is why combination of T/V is strong. And heavy percission is not an option.

And lastly I can give full support for the setup Caffynated.5713 gives above for reasons:
- For survival part it uses Soldier (mix of stats with power as main)
- Gets high crit damage from stat efficient sources, jewels (ruby&divinity)
- When defencive stat are enough, uses Bersker over Rampager. Because condition damage is in most cases the less reliable option, especially in groups.

Well balanced setup tbh. The last bit of min maxing the power vs percission can be done very well in swapping between power or percission stack sigil and oil/stone consumable.

Power is a much better investment than precision by a long shot.

Due to the effectiveness of the 0/10/0/30/30 bunker build, precision is actually not needed. You’ll have 2.6 seconds of Fury after every attunment swap which will be on a 9 second cooldown. If you’re rolling with a pair of Daggers and Zephyr’s Boon in the Air tree, Shocking Aura will give you 13 seconds of Fury. Frost Aura in Water will give you 6 seconds of Fury.

This enables you to focus on Power, Vitality, Toughness and Crit Damage. I’ve found that might stacking with Superior Sigil of Battle is beast. 3 stack of might for 26 seconds everytime you swap attunment. While in combat, you can swap attunments 3 times in 18 seconds for 10 stacks of might. While in Earth, do a dodge roll into your ring of fire (Evasive Arcana) for 3 stacks of might then do an earthquake or churning earth for another 3 stacks of might. In just under 18 seconds you’ll have over 22 stacks of might if you swap attunments correctly.

In terms of gear choices…

Power/Vitality/Toughness
Power/Vitality/Crit Damage
Power/Toughness/Crit Damage (ascended only)

Use Master Maintenance Oil for a 30 minute 10% crit buff and Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash Soup for another 5% crit and 10% crit damage. Your base crit is 4% + 15% from buffs + 5% from the 100 precision in the air tree + 20% from fury and thats 44% crit without using ANY precision on gear.

TheGuy.3568:

Solori.6025:

TheGuy.3568:

Long story and lots of math short. Unless you have crit damage multiplier precision falls behind power and either way you’ll need power to justify precision.

Or, you could build a hybrid ele with decent power,pre, and crit dam.
pretty high vit, and you will float at around 700 or so healing power…. . .

You would have to define decent, and if we get into real min maxing you have start putting your values in order. First off, vitality in our case would get out shined by toughness in the long run. Were not eating hits most of the time and our condition wiping is incredible so toughness makes more sense.

Then we go into how much power, how much precision, and how much crit damage. Now there are lots of things account for and what realistic, but in most cases for us 30% crit rate with a build that has near or permanent fury (since it will bump up to 50%) would be ok. Then you have to worry about crit damage. Your looking at at least 50%. So then you go into the stats and what gear combinations are feasible. Your’e probably going to be looking at a combination of Valkyrie and Knight’s with Opal and Beryl orbs.

If it were me I would go for as little healing power as I feel comfortable with probably way less than 700. Our heals heal hard no matter what even with reduced healing power you’ll likely be a ok. Unless you were super tanky you’ll barely feel it as the best scaling we get is 100% and that’s a 1 to 1 ratio. The heals hit over 1k all by them selves plus all the ambient healing would suffer very little.

Now here the kicker. I would say go to tree 2 ie air and invest there because in the long run the crit damage multiplier you get from there would be invaluable. However, because most find the second tree of our class lack luster past 10 points your pretty much left making up the gap with gear. if you are making it up with the gear you have to consider that critical damage is only ever paired with 2 things beside power those are precision and vitality. If you made up the gap with gear your toughness would be low and you would be rather squishy. Now depending on your set this may not matter.

The other thing is pairing a little bit of precision in favor of power is basically gimping yourself. If you pair it with power you may boost yourself a little but the difference would be marginal as our big hitting skills are all on long cool downs. For lets say a back stab thief or just about any other class this makes a great deal of sense as their biggest hitting skills are on short or nearly no cool down. We however do not have this luxury.

In the long run power pays off better with defensive stats. Our access to fury and an unbelievable capability to stack might makes it that when we use a hard hitting skill we hit hard 100% of the time. Leaving too much to rng in our case is not good. Another thing for the DD SD and SF conditions are applied often, If I wanted more DPS I would actually toss in more condition damage in. Since might pairs with condition damage and power simultaneously (ie it boost both at the same time) and usually we have a lot of access to it there is more sense in adding a little more condition damage than precision and crit damage.

I know its long but read if you like.

In summation its still smarter to go pure power with defensive stats for us and in most cases condition damage makes more sense to boost our dps.

Power-1564
Crit chance-37%
Crit dam-50%
Vit-1776
healing-616
tougness-1065

I favor vitality because I kamikaze in WvW ( I run to the back, earth quake the range spammers, updraft the front liners fron behind, and watch the confusion)..and the main thing that actually hits me is conditions from marks.
While our condition removal is superb, we cannot remove all conditions every second.

The healing power is something like a soft toughness stat imo. While i do take harder hits, my healing from attuning to water dodgeing and using cleansing wave heals me for 6k, 4.9k every 10 seconds, and if things get really bad I can use my actual heal skill.

The build is fun, but it isnt easy to play :I

Some people spend too much time playing with math without being able to apply it properly to the situation. With that said, a few people need to think a little more about what they posted.

covenn.7165:

Some people spend too much time playing with math without being able to apply it properly to the situation. With that said, a few people need to think a little more about what they posted.

Im looking for other viable options besides our standard PVT bunker.
I dont expect that build to be around much longer and with it being in the front of anets watch list, i expect the build to go the way of the grenade engi’s.

This forum is going to explode when the 0/x/x/30/30 build implodes, but it doesnt have to if we can discover other viable options that people can help others learn.

We just have to start exploring..

0/30/0/20/20 is the build I use in WvW to run in the back and hit stuff.
Its ok for 2v2 + skirmishes, and 1 v 1 mesmers are they hardest for me

But precision comes with power on the best armour so why all this discussion?

Solori.6025:

covenn.7165:

Some people spend too much time playing with math without being able to apply it properly to the situation. With that said, a few people need to think a little more about what they posted.

Im looking for other viable options besides our standard PVT bunker.
I dont expect that build to be around much longer and with it being in the front of anets watch list, i expect the build to go the way of the grenade engi’s.

This forum is going to explode when the 0/x/x/30/30 build implodes, but it doesnt have to if we can discover other viable options that people can help others learn.

We just have to start exploring..

0/30/0/20/20 is the build I use in WvW to run in the back and hit stuff.
Its ok for 2v2 + skirmishes, and 1 v 1 mesmers are they hardest for me

The day they nerf that build to uselessness and replace it nothing tangible; will be the day I uninstall GW2. I tried every single class and none of them keep me awake enough to continue playing the game other than the Elementalist.

When you play a staff ele, you’ll have to keep in mind that the base damage from attacks is very low. This means that critical hits will do relatively less damage.

haviz.1340:

But precision comes with power on the best armour so why all this discussion?

Pre does not only come with power on the best armor

Solori.6025:

haviz.1340:

But precision comes with power on the best armour so why all this discussion?

Pre does not only come with power on the best armor

True, it comes with crit damage as well.

Caffynated.5713:

The most efficient stat layout for an ele IMO:

Berserker (POWER/precision/crit damage)
Shoulders
Gloves
Shoes
Accessories
Amulet
Daggers

Soldier (POWER/toughness/vitality)
Helm
Chest
Pants
Rings
Back

All exquisite ruby jewels in your amulet, accessories, back and rings.
6x runes of divinity
or
2x superior water 2x superior monk 2x major water/monk
Battle or Energy in one dagger
Bloodlust and a backup dagger with Force

With the standard 0 10 0 30 30 build you would have the following stats with exotic gear and divinity runes:
17,025 health
1,977 power
32% crit chance (52% with fury)
67% crit damage
2,158 armor
360 healing

I have some small questions if you don’t mind because just looking at the numbers I’m tempted to switch from a simple knight build to this. I’ve been pretty content but I know there are definitely better builds out there. So to the questions.

1. Does your power listed reflect power with or without full stacks of bloodlust?
2. If you know, how much squishier is this than a knights build(With adequate condition removal) if at all squishier? I like a durable build.
3. What kinda crits do you see against glass? What kinda crits do you see against tanks?
4. Will this build work in pvp as well as WvW? If not, what variations exist for both?
That’s actually all of them. Thanks in advance.

Ralloff.7359:

Caffynated.5713:

The most efficient stat layout for an ele IMO:

Berserker (POWER/precision/crit damage)
Shoulders
Gloves
Shoes
Accessories
Amulet
Daggers

Soldier (POWER/toughness/vitality)
Helm
Chest
Pants
Rings
Back

All exquisite ruby jewels in your amulet, accessories, back and rings.
6x runes of divinity
or
2x superior water 2x superior monk 2x major water/monk
Battle or Energy in one dagger
Bloodlust and a backup dagger with Force

With the standard 0 10 0 30 30 build you would have the following stats with exotic gear and divinity runes:
17,025 health
1,977 power
32% crit chance (52% with fury)
67% crit damage
2,158 armor
360 healing

I have some small questions if you don’t mind because just looking at the numbers I’m tempted to switch from a simple knight build to this. I’ve been pretty content but I know there are definitely better builds out there. So to the questions.

1. Does your power listed reflect power with or without full stacks of bloodlust?
2. If you know, how much squishier is this than a knights build(With adequate condition removal) if at all squishier? I like a durable build.
3. What kinda crits do you see against glass? What kinda crits do you see against tanks?
4. Will this build work in pvp as well as WvW? If not, what variations exist for both?
That’s actually all of them. Thanks in advance.

1. Without Bloodlust
2. Going all knight/emerald with exquisite ruby upgrades will net you a ~13% effective hit point* increase over this setup at a cost of about the same amount of average DPS. With substantially higher toughness you would have improved sustain. Your average DPS is still ok, but your potential burst DPS is substantially lower. If everything crits with both setups, you will be doing roughly 1/4 less damage. If you already have knights/emerald, it’s still a good setup and I don’t see any reason to rush out and change it.
3. It’s tough to say exactly because of variations in might/bloodlust stacks, but 6-7k fire grabs against glass and 3-5 against tanks are pretty typical. Numbers obviously go down a lot when they have protection up.
4. It works great in WvW. In sPvP I usually run with a berserker (hot join) or valkyrie + berserker jewel (tournament) amulet. Everything else would be the same as WvW.

• effective hit points are your actual ability to absorb damage before dying and includes damage mitigation.

Formula = Health / ( 1 – damage mitigation)
Example: 10,000 / ( 1 – 25%) = 13,333 effective hit points
Example: 10,000 / ( 1 – 50%) = 20,000 effective hit points

@Caffynated

Thanks for the response. With what you said I’m not going to rush out and grab all the gear, but the next regear I do I’ll probably give this one a try. Gotta gear my soon to be 80 Guardian first though. This is an awesome build by the way.

The correct answer from the above posts are those that suggest hybrid builds.

Pure bunker running mostly P/V/T has its uses in WvWvW. Running small man and to push/disrupt/support in the front line of large fights. There really is no reason to nerf this build despite the people whining about the fact that D/D’s running this can out last and beat most people 1v1. Why? It comes at a balanced tradeoff of hitting like a wet noodle.

Much like bunkers, glass cannon builds do not need nerfs. Why? Any ele running around glass cannon is sacrificing the fact that they will be 2/3 shot by anyone that gets on them for damage.

The balanced builds in the middle are more effective overall in more situations on average than the other two builds. Those too really don’t have a justifiable reason for a nerf.

Anyways, people cry about eles because of vaporing when downed through keep walls and the fact that we are highly mobile with dagger. Unfortunately due to having the lowest health and armor in the game, the mobility is a requirement for survival. Again… fair trade.