I’m curious here if the extra critical chance from Accuracy is “worth” more than the extra damage from Air. I know there are many things at work here, like the uptime of Fury, if you have banners and/or Spotter, but I think it’s unreasonable to change the Sigil often. Until Legendary sigils are available, I have to choose one of them. Which one to pick?
I see on metabattle for example the Fresh Air builds are using Air, but the Staff builds are using Accuracy, since I play both D/W and Staff and change according to the situation, which one would be the best general choice?
d/w uses the trait that increases precision while attuned to air and spends the majority of its time in that attunement. Staff just camps fire mostly
If you camp fire you are playing it wrong
nope
Camping fire is very often the way to go. Swapping to air while channeling meteor storm and then using glyph of storms and overload air and then back to fire results in marginally higher dps, but is very situational, and prevents you from doing what staff ele is good at and the reason you’re likely taking staff in the first place: strong ranged damage. for instance, you can’t drop lava fonts on orbs at gorseval while you are in air
and in any case, you’re spending a minority of your time in air, so the precision boost isn’t really worth building around (in fact, I usually don’t even take it)
From what I’ve tried out, swapping to Air is never worth it unless you have an icebow to cast while waiting for Overload Air. In which case it’s marginally better.
Regarding the Accuracy sigil, there was a discussion about the same thing in the dungeon forums about a month ago. I’ll copy paste my reply there for reference.
Okay, so I went in to compare sigil of accuracy over sigil of air for staff ele in the most optimal set ups for both with and without Spotter.
In terms of EP, I got following (I disregarded damage multipliers as they will work as linear coefficients which won’t change the comparison):
Without Spotter:
Accuracy: 13994
Air: 13460
With Spotter:
Accuracy: 14163
Air: 13988
So going accuracy over air we get an increase of 3.97% EP without spotter or 1.25% with. Air sigil seem to have an annoyingly large variance of hitting 1.5-3k. After taking the average of ~50 strikes I got 2126, making it a 709 single target DPS increase. I’d love to take a bigger sample to make this estimation more accurate.
Assuming the damage on a single target is all that matters, then we can calculate the required DPS we need in order for accuracy > air.
X > 709/0.0397
X > 709/0.0125
where X is the required DPS and the two cases for spotter and without spotter.
Now the result, remember that the estimation here is with a final DPS number after an entire fight and not a number gotten after dummy practice.
Without spotter: 17859
With spotter: 56720
Now make your conclusion! I don’t think there’s a clear winner in the case of no-spotter but Air wins by miles in cases with.
One more thought on the subject of Accuracy vs Air.
Accuracy gives +7% critical chance, which means 147 points of Precision. If you swap the Staff and 2 Accessories from Berserker to Assassin you will get 144 points of Precision, which means you will get that +7% critical chance. You will have left-over precision from the rest of your gear, it won’t be exact.
In effect you trade 144 Power for 144 Precision. So the next question becomes: is a Superior Sigil of Air “worth” 144 Power or not?
d/w uses the trait that increases precision while attuned to air and spends the majority of its time in that attunement. Staff just camps fire mostly
If you camp fire you are playing it wrong
nope
Camping fire is very often the way to go. Swapping to air while channeling meteor storm and then using glyph of storms and overload air and then back to fire results in marginally higher dps, but is very situational, and prevents you from doing what staff ele is good at and the reason you’re likely taking staff in the first place: strong ranged damage. for instance, you can’t drop lava fonts on orbs at gorseval while you are in air
and in any case, you’re spending a minority of your time in air, so the precision boost isn’t really worth building around (in fact, I usually don’t even take it)
I was under the impression that doing anything to interrupt meteor storm yields fewer meteors? I’m rather new to ele, so please be gentle D= Ive been messing around with faster dps rotations and it seemed that if I interrupted meteor shower fewer meteors would fall.
Basically you can switch to air mid cast and then use air 5 while half of the meteor is still falling. This is the typical dps rotation for a staff ele. If you are tempest you can follow up with air overload.
Basically you can switch to air mid cast and then use air 5 while half of the meteor is still falling. This is the typical dps rotation for a staff ele. If you are tempest you can follow up with air overload.
So swapping mid cast to air doesnt decrease the number of meteors that end up getting cast? Also why would you cast staff air 5, I didnt think it did much other than CC D=
if you are running a dps staff build you should be running lightning rod too. Even if you aren’t running lightning rod it will trap opponents in your meteor cast
if you are running a dps staff build you should be running lightning rod too. Even if you aren’t running lightning rod it will trap opponents in your meteor cast
Ive been running bolt to the heart, I figured 20% dmg at <50% would add up to more than lightning bolts through the duration of a fight, but Im certainly not attached to it
I have a feeling Frowny is discussing from a WvW perspective without making that clear. Lightning rod is definitely worse than Bolt to the Heart in a PvE scenario.
To answer your question, attunement swap doesn’t cancel the ongoing cast. This means you can start any channel and change attunements without fear of interrupting your skills.
One more thought on the subject of Accuracy vs Air.
Accuracy gives +7% critical chance, which means 147 points of Precision. If you swap the Staff and 2 Accessories from Berserker to Assassin you will get 144 points of Precision, which means you will get that +7% critical chance. You will have left-over precision from the rest of your gear, it won’t be exact.
In effect you trade 144 Power for 144 Precision. So the next question becomes: is a Superior Sigil of Air “worth” 144 Power or not?
I have a feeling Frowny is discussing from a WvW perspective without making that clear. Lightning rod is definitely worse than Bolt to the Heart in a PvE scenario.
To answer your question, attunement swap doesn’t cancel the ongoing cast. This means you can start any channel and change attunements without fear of interrupting your skills.
That would explain a lot bahah. Thanks for the response =)
One more thought on the subject of Accuracy vs Air.
Accuracy gives +7% critical chance, which means 147 points of Precision. If you swap the Staff and 2 Accessories from Berserker to Assassin you will get 144 points of Precision, which means you will get that +7% critical chance. You will have left-over precision from the rest of your gear, it won’t be exact.
In effect you trade 144 Power for 144 Precision. So the next question becomes: is a Superior Sigil of Air “worth” 144 Power or not?
144 Power vs Sigil of Air
for sustained dps, the power is notably stronger
and a lot stronger if you have quickness
air is only useful if you already cap crit without needing accuracy
or if you can’t do sustained dps, making the 3 second cooldown less of an issue (like against players)
if you are running a dps staff build you should be running lightning rod too. Even if you aren’t running lightning rod it will trap opponents in your meteor cast
You are talking about wvw… For pve (expecially raids) staff temepest HAVE to Camp in fire, even glyph is casting into fire. Each second you are not putting lava font under the boss you are losing dps, swap on air is a huge dps lost. The only time you have to use air attunement is for the start, using glyph>air overload> fire attunement and never swap anymore. Also in pve, even open pve, is not worth take lighing rod over bolt to the heart, 1 for the damage modificher, 2 because a lot of mobs have stability or breackbar
Personaly I use accuracy on staff and air on Dagger warhonr.
That because you benefit on precision buff from air traitline. I don’t even use assassins accessories when in Dagger warhonr (I always have signet of fire on) and I close to never seen a not critic hit (talking about have discipline banner, fury and possibly spotter from druids)
For staff I use accuracy, signet of fire, and also assassin accesories, is not nice when some meteors doesnt crit
