Guild Wars 2

Im still putting my Ele together (only lvl 30) but I like to plan ahead to what my final lvl 80 exotics will be. So far im going with power, tough/vit, and either condition damage or precision. I’ll be mainly using fire attunement on the staff, and spamming signets while maintaining their passive ability (namely Signet of Fire). So the question is will I get more benefit from trying to crit on each attack, or boosting condition damage when using Flame Burst and Signet of Fire? (and I suppose Burning Retreat to a lesser extent). Purely PvE and dungeons btw, dont worry about them curing conditions etc.

Thanks in advance

Since the discussion isn´t about what´s more effecttive for ele trait wise, but rather which stat is better for dealing damage, i´ll just say condition damage 9 time out fo 10.
Precision requires good amount of crit dmg to work, so condition damage (which is plentiful in our skill sets) give a lot more bang with lot less investment. Add to that the duration boost from fire and the choice is clear.

….but i can´t refrain from commenting that staff really is group support weapon rather than dps tool.

precision is weak for damage unless you have crit damage to back it up (and of course tons of power)
But if you’re not going to be using any bleeding at all, burning has the weakest scaling with condition damage

Churning earth on earth attunement is CRAZY with a lot of condition damage.

I hope that “mainly using fire attunement” does not mean “I’ll stick with fire 90% of the time” because you’re locking out 60% of your class skills this way

Yareon.2835:

I hope that “mainly using fire attunement” does not mean “I’ll stick with fire 90% of the time” because you’re locking out 60% of your class skills this way

It IS possible to stick with fire most of the time. Arcane is the only trait line that focuses on Attunement swapping, so why not let the man go full fire? I run with lightning only when I sPvP, occasionally switching to water for some added healing. There are traits directly tailored to spending most time in 1 atunnement like 20% reduced cooldowns, 10% damage in fire/water etc.. That combined with a good utility skill set is extremely powerful and makes sticking to 1 Attunement very much possible.

I toyed around with the numbers in terms of damage and going full into lightning rather than switching around did a lot more for me. Sure attunement swapping is fun and effective, but the game is still young and people need to toy around with a lot more specs. What the point in swapping into earth with a precision spec? You will deal severely less damage. Sure you got a knockdown, but then you’re stuck waiting for your main attunement to come back up.

In dungeons I’ve skipped the “swap constantly” thing and tried a water with all healing spec. It was not only easier but also much more effective. Regen on signet activation plus the constant passive regen and debuffing with vulnerability did much more for the group rather than swapping around like a monkey, while being moderate at everything.

Ferny.8250:

Churning earth on earth attunement is CRAZY with a lot of condition damage.

I’m pretty sure that’s an offhand dagger move. Everyone recommended dagger/dagger for PvE and I honestly almost ragequitted the whole profession, on a whim I tried staff, found it to be much more effective at picking enemies off before they reach you, and generally easier to strafe around outside of melee range (except for those risen thralls that turbo behind you.)

Chipster.6713:

Yareon.2835:

I hope that “mainly using fire attunement” does not mean “I’ll stick with fire 90% of the time” because you’re locking out 60% of your class skills this way

It IS possible to stick with fire most of the time. Arcane is the only trait line that focuses on Attunement swapping, so why not let the man go full fire? I run with lightning only when I sPvP, occasionally switching to water for some added healing. There are traits directly tailored to spending most time in 1 atunnement like 20% reduced cooldowns, 10% damage in fire/water etc.. That combined with a good utility skill set is extremely powerful and makes sticking to 1 Attunement very much possible.

I toyed around with the numbers in terms of damage and going full into lightning rather than switching around did a lot more for me. Sure attunement swapping is fun and effective, but the game is still young and people need to toy around with a lot more specs. What the point in swapping into earth with a precision spec? You will deal severely less damage. Sure you got a knockdown, but then you’re stuck waiting for your main attunement to come back up.

In dungeons I’ve skipped the “swap constantly” thing and tried a water with all healing spec. It was not only easier but also much more effective. Regen on signet activation plus the constant passive regen and debuffing with vulnerability did much more for the group rather than swapping around like a monkey, while being moderate at everything.

This. I tried swapping frequently but found that the fire base attack was just too good to give up, I do occasionally change to water if myself/the melee members are starting to get low on health (surprisingly good heal without putting anything into healing power.)

Dolan.3071:

Chipster.6713:

Yareon.2835:

I hope that “mainly using fire attunement” does not mean “I’ll stick with fire 90% of the time” because you’re locking out 60% of your class skills this way

It IS possible to stick with fire most of the time. Arcane is the only trait line that focuses on Attunement swapping, so why not let the man go full fire? I run with lightning only when I sPvP, occasionally switching to water for some added healing. There are traits directly tailored to spending most time in 1 atunnement like 20% reduced cooldowns, 10% damage in fire/water etc.. That combined with a good utility skill set is extremely powerful and makes sticking to 1 Attunement very much possible.

I toyed around with the numbers in terms of damage and going full into lightning rather than switching around did a lot more for me. Sure attunement swapping is fun and effective, but the game is still young and people need to toy around with a lot more specs. What the point in swapping into earth with a precision spec? You will deal severely less damage. Sure you got a knockdown, but then you’re stuck waiting for your main attunement to come back up.

In dungeons I’ve skipped the “swap constantly” thing and tried a water with all healing spec. It was not only easier but also much more effective. Regen on signet activation plus the constant passive regen and debuffing with vulnerability did much more for the group rather than swapping around like a monkey, while being moderate at everything.

This. I tried swapping frequently but found that the fire base attack was just too good to give up, I do occasionally change to water if myself/the melee members are starting to get low on health (surprisingly good heal without putting anything into healing power.)

Put bluntly this is possible with staff but like many will tell you the problem is you remove a lot of your effectiveness. When you swap you can pull off combos and cover more roles than when you stick to one attunement. Most of your cds are based around the idea your not going to just sit in one attunement. Now let me make it clear that it is completely possible to sit in one attunement and make it through content but compared to the ele who’s swapping you will be less effective.

This is more of a design flaw than anything and why so many still put points in arcane. No matter what weapon set you use the ele who swaps is likely going to do a better job than the one who sits in one attunement.

Strang.8170:

….but i can´t refrain from commenting that staff really is group support weapon rather than dps tool.

err…I dps like nutz with fire/staff. Of course I’m only 50 and still mostly solo leveling around the world, but I haven’t yet run into something I couldn’t take down. I’ve tried switching in and out different specs and weapons, but for me nothing goes down faster than fire/staff. Everyone plays differently but for me, I don’t have any complaints with the dps of the staff.

doublecup.5469:

Strang.8170:

….but i can´t refrain from commenting that staff really is group support weapon rather than dps tool.

err…I dps like nutz with fire/staff. Of course I’m only 50 and still mostly solo leveling around the world, but I haven’t yet run into something I couldn’t take down. I’ve tried switching in and out different specs and weapons, but for me nothing goes down faster than fire/staff. Everyone plays differently but for me, I don’t have any complaints with the dps of the staff.

Oh, don´t understand me wrong, staff is capable of dealing damage. Infact i levelled my toon with staff, and regularly use it for pve. Aoe is awesome against groups of mobs.

But strong point of the staff is not damage, most of other classes can deal better single target and many come on par even against 2-4 enemies. And those are what matter in dungeons and against bosses etc.
Real strength of staff is that it can keep 4 other members of your team dpsing and not running around for their life.
But support role ofcourse doesn´t mean that you´re not throwing around damage yourself, it just means you don´t spec for high numbers or priorize it over cc/heals.

Best is to get off your head that staff can excel at dps compared to toher classes.Well aoe maybe but not gonna be effective enough without your utility.
Then completely forget that you can play this class without swapping.Normal pve difficulty is a joke and thats why you made it so far but trust me you need almost EVERY spell on your weapons set in order to perform well not to mention that fire is not the only good damage.
For example staff air 1 does much more damage when there are 2 enemies cause it bounches.Earth staff 2 does huge damage too over time even when you are not specced at condition.
Swapping is the only way to go and you ll realise it the moment you do some hard content or some serious pvp(not running in 8 man hot join spamming fireball like a harry potter wizard)

Thanks for the comments, bit of an eye opener. I guess I’m trying to simplify a complex profession by sticking to one set of attacks. But I’ll definitely invest in condition damage and start alternating to earth attunement to stack on the bleeding, and eventually start looking at air. Also i might be investing in healing power as on a recent dungeon run I found myself sitting in water attunement, barely managing to keep the front liners from dying.

Dolan.3071:

Thanks for the comments, bit of an eye opener. I guess I’m trying to simplify a complex profession by sticking to one set of attacks. But I’ll definitely invest in condition damage and start alternating to earth attunement to stack on the bleeding, and eventually start looking at air. Also i might be investing in healing power as on a recent dungeon run I found myself sitting in water attunement, barely managing to keep the front liners from dying.

You ll see it would be crazy fun when you get the hang of attunement “dancing”.
Its better for support too.For example geyser heals a lot but if you were on earth and casted an eruption before switching to water for geyser you would get MUCH more healing cause of the blast in combo field.Also every time you switch to water you get hewaling from the 15 pts trait which means that is effectively better to switch in more than staying long times there.
Also staff condition/healing is great in pve and dungeons.You can go for toughness/cond/healing stats and be support and cond damage dealer at the same time applying burns from fire,bleeds from earth and your water fields occasionally switching to air for that swiftness or cc.

I use 100% carrion gear with condition duration runes, mostly PvE:

Link to Build

As stated above I don’t recommend crit unless you are going to get at least 50% crit damage to back it up. The build I use doesn’t realy on crits at all, just bleed/burn damage. IMO Carrion gear synergizes well with the build because it gives you vitality and you get 300 toughness from Earth so you have more survival. Throw in weakness on Earth 1 and Earth Elemental and you can act as a tank in a pinch.

I have 65% duration increase on Bleed, 35% on Fire and 20% on everything else (10 points fire + Mad King Runes). Unbuffed I have 1283 condition damage, my bleed ticks for 107 and my Burn for 649. Bleed gets 5% of your condition damage (Eruption basically gets 6×5 = 30%) and Burn gets 25%. I can keep up 18 stacks with burning it is about 2.5k damage per second, with Sandstorm to get to 25 stacks it is about 3.3k damage per second.

One cast of Eruption does about 13.8k damage over 20 seconds. Signet of Fire does about 10.3k damage over 16 seconds. With 20% duration increase I can stack up to 30 seconds of weakness with Earth 1.

IMO if you are going to go direct damage then stack power/crit/crit damage and if you are going to go for condition damage then go condition damage and trade it off for healing because they both scale at about the same rate, 5% to 25%.

On my build I hang out in Earth like 90% of the time and only swap to water to remove conditions. It’s more of a field finisher and not a field generator like direct damage staff builds. I’d rather pump out 13.8k eruptions every 5 seconds and apply weakness on a boss than dance around and put down fields.

When I roll as direct damage, glass cannon fire I am in fire like 90% of the time because I’d rather be launching Fireballs and putting down lava font and doing damage rather than attunement swapping and putting down fields. Let the melee blast/projective/whirl finish your lava font for more dps as your support role.

I have a similar question but for dagger/dagger use. I’ve just gotten my ele to 80 and about to start gearing up but I don’t want to waste precious gold. I’m running mostly wvw and some dungeons and fractals here and there.

At the moment I’ve got my eye on the karma set since I have about 200k karma to spend. So that’s power, vitality, toughness. But I don’t know what to slot in my rings, accessories and weapons. I’m thinking berserkers or clerics, or a mix? I don’t want to be squishy but I also want to be able to kill things with formidable speed. Should I bother with condition damage? I have the karka trinket with +25 to all stats which is nice since I benefit from all those stats.

Could use some input.. this became longer than intended, lol.

Nonlinear.9823:

I use 100% carrion gear with condition duration runes, mostly PvE:

Link to Build

As stated above I don’t recommend crit unless you are going to get at least 50% crit damage to back it up. The build I use doesn’t realy on crits at all, just bleed/burn damage. IMO Carrion gear synergizes well with the build because it gives you vitality and you get 300 toughness from Earth so you have more survival. Throw in weakness on Earth 1 and Earth Elemental and you can act as a tank in a pinch.

I have 65% duration increase on Bleed, 35% on Fire and 20% on everything else (10 points fire + Mad King Runes). Unbuffed I have 1283 condition damage, my bleed ticks for 107 and my Burn for 649. Bleed gets 5% of your condition damage (Eruption basically gets 6×5 = 30%) and Burn gets 25%. I can keep up 18 stacks with burning it is about 2.5k damage per second, with Sandstorm to get to 25 stacks it is about 3.3k damage per second.

One cast of Eruption does about 13.8k damage over 20 seconds. Signet of Fire does about 10.3k damage over 16 seconds. With 20% duration increase I can stack up to 30 seconds of weakness with Earth 1.

IMO if you are going to go direct damage then stack power/crit/crit damage and if you are going to go for condition damage then go condition damage and trade it off for healing because they both scale at about the same rate, 5% to 25%.

I like it. However I was looking through traits and saw that at 30 in arcane you can add things like churning earth to the end of a dodge roll, surely that would slide in nicely with your bleeds and would be worth shuffling 10 points around to achieve? HAVNT actually tested the trait though, but in theory it sounds good.

Dolan.3071:

I like it. However I was looking through traits and saw that at 30 in arcane you can add things like churning earth to the end of a dodge roll, surely that would slide in nicely with your bleeds and would be worth shuffling 10 points around to achieve? HAVNT actually tested the trait though, but in theory it sounds good.

30 in arcana is never wasted when you swap attunements frequently, but the true strength of evasive arcana is the blast finisher of dodge roll in earth. The bleed and fire´s damage effect are rather pathetic, water heal is nice and the blind is kinda meh.

You could probably do something like 10/0/30/0/30 and dodge for 8 more stacks, could probably hit the bleed cap or get to at least 23-24 stacks without Sandstorm. Personally I like Quick Glyphs for the reduced CD on the Healing Glyph and Storms Glyph but the trade off doesn’t seem bad, faster swaps and boon duration is always nice and you don’t really gain anything from the 100 crit/crit damage you get from Air. Another variation is to go 20/0/30/0/20 and take Written in Stone and Fire’s Embrace and run a signet heavy build, or 20/0/30/10/10 to add some condition removal support.

I try to stay between 900-1200 at all times and only dodge when I need to avoid damage but I could see Churning Earth from EA complementing the build plus it gives you a second blast finisher. I’ll probably give it a try.

Nonlinear.9823:

You could probably do something like 10/0/30/0/30 and dodge for 8 more stacks…

8 stacks?
Ea only gives 1.

Nonlinear.9823:

I’d rather pump out 13.8k eruptions every 5 seconds

every 7* seconds if you have the earth cooldown reduction trait
8.5 if you don’t

it has a cast time too, not just a cooldown

this is why it’s better to swap attunements
for maximum condition deeps, open with fire for flame burst (may as well throw down a lava font while you’re at it. it has a super short cast) and then switch to earth for eruption. eruption again once it’s ready and swap to fire during the cast, and flame burst again (and lava font under your eruption if anyone is in range to get the might) then do other useful stuff while earth cools down. most of the time that earth is on cooldown, eruption is too. Assuming you have some points in arcana. which you should if you’re using a staff. Just make sure to swap out of earth as soon as you start casting eruption to get the cooldown ticking sooner

reikken.4961:

Nonlinear.9823:

I’d rather pump out 13.8k eruptions every 5 seconds

every 7* seconds if you have the earth cooldown reduction trait
8.5 if you don’t

it has a cast time too, not just a cooldown

this is why it’s better to swap attunements
for maximum condition deeps, open with fire for flame burst (may as well throw down a lava font while you’re at it. it has a super short cast) and then switch to earth for eruption. eruption again once it’s ready and swap to fire during the cast, and flame burst again (and lava font under your eruption if anyone is in range to get the might) then do other useful stuff while earth cools down. most of the time that earth is on cooldown, eruption is too. Assuming you have some points in arcana. which you should if you’re using a staff. Just make sure to swap out of earth as soon as you start casting eruption to get the cooldown ticking sooner

Personaly i think it´s better to start in earth for the blastfinsher, and cycle through water for icespikes vulnerabilitystacks.

yeah I start in earth too, but that doesn’t give maximum dps

I like to eruption->lava font->flame burst for general purpose PvE. since things aren’t going to bleed for 20 seconds without dying
and I’ll usually swap to water or air 2 seconds before fire or earth cools down and use skill 2, and then swap to said fire or earth. or 3 seconds before it cools down, and cycle through both of them. if I don’t need any of the other utility the two attunements provide