Guild Wars 2

Hi there

I’ve read the sticky about s/x LH builds and they are all 6/6/2.

However, I’ve been suggested by some guildmate another build that is 6/2/2/4 and is based on camping water attunement to get the bonuses from piercing shards and vital striking (total 30% dmg more).

Which of the two builds deals the most damage?
6/6/2 receives 10% dmg boost , 9% crit chance and 13% crit dmg
6/2/2/4 receives 30% dmg boost
In terms of sheer damage, the latter build seems to offer more but I don’t know how to exactly take into account how much that crit% and crit dmg influence my dps and how much the attunement dancing to land the lightning strike in the former build increases dps.

Thanks for your help

Well considering that any build with a scepter is going to use LH, I would say the 6/6/2 will do the most dmg. Problem is that build is pretty squishy too. I personally run either 6/6/2/0/0 or 6/2/0/6/0 or 6/4/0/4/0 depending how good the pug is. More dps build if the group keeps me alive or more healing/defensive if the group doesn’t really synergize well.

If you’re going for 4 water, you may as well take the 5th bonus and let another ele take care of persisting flames. The main reason for 6/6/2 builds over a 5/4/0/5/0 is the vulnerability for weak spot. If your party is already capped at 25 vuln and have fury covered, here’s some numbers from the DnT forum by Dekeyz:
6/6/2/0/0: 13096 DPS with Fire/Air Conjurer rotation. Your first 6 LH chains each do 34948 damage, then drop to 33586 as you lose Arcane Lightning. Average 34607 damage per chain and you stack vuln and fit in more RTL+LS combos for nearly free DPS if not prestacking might.
5/4/5/0/0:13763 DPS with Fire/Air Conjurer rotation. All 8 LH Chains each do 36339 damage since you camp air the whole time. But this tanks to DPS lower than 6/6/2/0/0 as soon as you dodge.
6/4/2/2/0: 12734 DPS with Water/Air Conjurer rotation. Your first 6 LH chains each do 36259 damage then drop to 29139 as you swap to air and lose Arcane Lightning. Average 34479 damage.
5/4/0/5/0: 13152 DPS with Water/Air Conjurer rotation. Your first 6 LH Chains each do 37507 damage, your last 2 do 30121. Average 35660 damage.

6/2/2/4/0 is a very outdated build but at one point was meta. 6/4/2/2/0 with Arcane Lightning and Piercing Shards is strictly better in terms of DPS after the ferocity patch, using the same rotation for any conjure as long as you budget your Arcane skill usage.

The reason why I recommend 6/6/2/0/0 for LH builds is that I’ve found very nice rotations (listed in my guides) that capitalize the most on extra little things like Electric Discharge procs as well as your Scepter Air 2 skill, Lightning Strike, that enable you further boost your DPS.

For other conjures, the standard 6/6/2/0/0 is relatively low personal DPS compared to a lot of other builds but brings both Persisting Flames for permafury as well as Weak Spot to get 25 vuln when fiery rushing and a decent amount of vuln with frostbow 4. It’s very hard to maintain to 25 vuln on a boss without an engi in party or with fewer than 2 party members with vuln-on-crit skills and FGS/FB, so that’s why I still recommend 6/6/2/0/0 for general conjure use. If for some odd reason you DON’T need persisting flames, 5/5/2/2/0 with fire camping (best) or water camping (okay) traits is a pretty strong build where getting Weak Spot doesn’t hurt your personal DPS portential. Similar trait distributions such as 5/4/0/5/0, 5/2/2/5/0, and 2/5/2/5/0 (all water camp) are strictly worse in terms of FGS/FB DPS, but I didn’t stumble upon how to maximize 5/5/2/2/0’s potential until a month or two after I did my last guide revisions.

There are some other, highly specialized conjure builds that can do even higher damage, but they really require organized groups in order to be worth using.

Since a lot of an ele’s power and awesomeness comes from taking the right traits, I usually recommend using a piece or two of more defensive gear (such as knight’s, celestial, or soldier’s) over changing your trait distribution.

Thanks all for the answers

I’m asking this because I usually play with guildmates and we do speedruns; during said runs, I usually pre-stack might, drop conjures and go in.

Against wall bosses, I drop FGS almost immediatly and the boss usually dies within seconds so I actually never did a full rotation. Against normal mobs, they get 2shot, and elites melt anyways and I never get to the point of dropping LH and using lightning strike and RTL.

So far I’ve been playing 6/4/2/2 or 6/2/2/4. I went to the pvp mall to test out the difference in damage between 6/6/2 and 6/2/2/4 and the latter gave an higher LH damage.
6/6/2: max 3rd AA on target with <33% hp = 5k – 5.5k
6/2/2/4: max 3rd AA on target with <33% hp = 6.5k – 6.8k (I took sigil with vuln on hit in order to proc piercing shards and simulate vulnerability up)

So what I’m probably asking is which of these 2 builds offers the most in very short or short fights and I would also like to know which one maximises my FGS damage.

Thanks for your attention