Guild Wars 2

haviz.1340:

Yes, it’s 7k when you stack. In intended situations, when people don’t stack, it’s much less. Plus, you don’t go deep in fire for power stats, that’s just a bonus.

This conversation reminds of me conversations with people using ptv + ah + staff as guardians. It works but there’s absolutely no reason to use it, especially on scales below 40.

So which adept and master fire traits are so amazing in pve? I can’t find them.

I’ve always assumed 30 points in fire and I’m sure they’re better than lingering elements and arcane precision but to be sure check 2 of the 3 stickies. There, you should find a long explanation why they are so amazing.

One final note, when anet nerfs vigour on crit by 50% and you no longer be able to dodge just to trigger ea, what will you do?

The only thing you really, really need are reflects (Earth: Staff, Scepter) or projectile blocks (Air:Scepter) and Glyph of Storms:Air.

When it pops the bubble, throw a Lightning storm at it, and the bubble goes poof, because what you need against that bubble is not damage, but hits. Many, many hits in a short time.

The rest is just the same as always. Reflect the attacks from the elementals, kite them, take them out and revive people before going back the Shaman.

Oh, and remember to keep strafing side to side all the time, as enemies will almost never hit you with ranged attacks because they will aim where you are going to be, and you move in the opposite direction right away. This also works with the arrow that puts that fire sphere on you that burns nearby allies, as it’s rather hard to see.

haviz.1340:

I’ve always assumed 30 points in fire and I’m sure they’re better than lingering elements and arcane precision but to be sure check 2 of the 3 stickies. There, you should find a long explanation why they are so amazing.

One final note, when anet nerfs vigour on crit by 50% and you no longer be able to dodge just to trigger ea, what will you do?

As a matter of fact we discussed arcane versus fire in my D/F thread just a day ago

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Zelyhn-s-Advanced-D-F-PvE-Guide/page/6#post3678417

haviz.1340:

I’ve always assumed 30 points in fire and I’m sure they’re better than lingering elements and arcane precision but to be sure check 2 of the 3 stickies. There, you should find a long explanation why they are so amazing.

One final note, when anet nerfs vigour on crit by 50% and you no longer be able to dodge just to trigger ea, what will you do?

I’m still waiting for 2 good traits, not minor ones. I don’t think the chance to trigger flame barrier or sunspot are better than lingering and arcane precision respectively, as mediocre as those can be.

The only conjures I use are FGS and ice bow. So there go the extra conjure charges.

Are eles also getting hit in the vigor dept? So far I’ve only read about guardians and mesmers. They have vigor on minor traits unlike ele.

So far no conclusive evidence as to why the infamous fire trait line is so superior. Even if it’s better I don’t think it would be more than a slight advantage. You can’t compare spell slinger, internal fire or any master trait to elemental attunement. Fire gets better at 25 points and higher but in my opinion it still doesn’t justify the lackluster adept and master traits, the worthless condition duration and the lack of everything in other trait lines.

Bottom line is, I prefer more survivability, group support and versatility than simply being a 1/2 hit damage bot with fury combo fields. I’m not gonna lie, I’d probably not be able to survive as a full glass cannon (I already run full zerk) with 0 healing, garbage condition removal, terrible attunement swap rate and very low boon duration.

Please allow me to quote master Zelyhn’s Mantra:

Zelyhn.8069:

Hey Mikhail, I am going to try to give you a detailed answer as to why fire is much more desirable than arcana.

First let’s take a look at what arcana gives you:
- Fury on swap (very desirable)
- Vigor (very desirable)
- Lingering Elements (public enemy number 1)
- Elemental attunement (desirable for the most part)
- Arcane precision (public enemy number 2)
- Evasive Arcana (cleanse and blast are desirable)
- Boon duration (somewhat desirable)
- Attunement recharge (insignificant due to fresh air and relevant skills’ cooldown)

Then let’s look at the advantages of fire:
- Flame Barrier (public enemy number 3)
- Burning precision, internal fire, or Conjurer (all desirable)
- Sunspot (desirable)
- Pyromancer’s alacrity (very desirable: aligns the cooldown of our important fire spells with the rotation pattern of a build with little arcana points)
- Burning Rage (desirable)
- Persisting flames (very desirable)
- Power (very desirable)
- Condition duration (desirable)

Now let’s analyse the contributions:
- First, Evasive Arcana. This trait is actually detrimental. This is because you are going to use your dodges for something else than dodging. Therefore you are actually more likely to take damage and conditions. So either you use this trait strategically and the outcome is paradoxical, or you don’t and then it is simply useless.
- I am going to assume that you are using EA strategically, and therefore that you are not dodging as efficiently as you could. This means that you need more sustain. Therefore boons like protection and regeneration are relevant for you. But you could do without them if you used dodges for dodging. Therefore only the might from Elemental attunement is relevant. This is a nice group contribution, but it is very weak compared to what you could get in fire for the same amount of points.
- Boon duration is nice. If we disregard unnecessary boons then the best we can get from it is the following: say you can maintain 19 stacks of might on average then boon duration will bring this to 25 (rounding a bit), this is a contribution of 6, and that is 210 power. Fire gives you 300. Granted, there is also a group effect to take into account.
- I personally use 10 in arcana to maintain perma vigor and ensure my fury uptime. This is because I tend to play in non-optimised groups. However it can be argued that persisting flames nullifies the contribution of fury on swap if you can realise a proper rotation.

In comparison, fire gives you the following:
- Offensive defense via the use of defensive conditions (chill, cripple, etc)
- Much greater group effect: fury for the group (equivalent to a 420 precision boost for the group), increased vulnerability stacks from Weak Spot = more damage for the group.
- Synergy everywhere.
- Damage, damage, damage. And well, the “Zerker Paradigm” dictates that the faster you kill your foes the less likely you are to get hit before they die. Therefore damage is defense, somehow

To conclude:
Once you are confident in your ability to rely on dodges to survive, then the defensive contribution from arcana becomes irrelevant and paradoxical. In contrast fire brings much more to the table.
In the future, burning speed and frozen burst will be buffed. This implies that pyromancer’s alacrity and persisting flames will be even more desirable.
My advice to you is to start playing with less arcana progressively. Keep vigor but start putting points elsewhere (water is a safe choice to start with). Then gradually increase your investment in fire. Also, you should grab a focus. In the end the most efficient build is 30/30/x/0/x (+10 in either arcana for vigor or earth for damage).

And this is a quote from myself, based from my experience in Fractals

Iris Ng.9845:

Sarahfull.4930:

I already have a night and force daggers, and you havent said WHY its “too good imho”
:/

Hey Sarah,

This is an ideal setup of my ele when using 30/30/10/0/0 build.

• D/F variant: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAodnEEVZYnByGgjYAJ8QAYgCYUoDEPsAHgDB-jQCBYfChkfgUBBJzUZNPVQs4qIas6aYKXER1GcFRrWIARTAA-e

With D/F as a ‘close quarter cleave’ weapons, it benefits the most from three traits Burning Precision, Burning Rage and Persisting Flame; and a nice 300-point boost in power. In a long fight like with Bloomhunger, I’d like to have Persisting FLame to keep up fury and boosts my crit chance to above 90%. Now with this trait setup, when we crit more, we proc more burning and deal more damage in Air Attunement. Burning Speed is a personal favorite, which I use as a mini FGS to clear a clutter of trash rapidly (e.g. the chanter blob in Cliffside).

• Staff variant:
  http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArdnEEVZYpByGwjYAI8gAGKYUoDxDLooCA-jQCBYfJk8DkKAJzUZNPVQs4qIas6aYKXER1GcFRrWGg8tA-e

I use staff as a ‘blob nuking’ weapon. For staff, the two most essential traits would be Pyromancer’s Alacrity and Internal Fire, which boosts your main DPS power. Then we have Bolt to the Heart, Stone Splinters and Arcane Lightning as your extra damage modifiers. I use staff most of the time in the Urban Battleground and Molten Boss duo fights.

In my conclusion, with the same trait setup, I gain access to two variants of play style, equally powerful and incredibly effective in fractals and general dungeons. So 30 points in Fire is just too good to me. However, if I am in an optimized party with another ele, I will have to switch traits for a better group damage. Or, switch to 30/30/0/0/10 in Arah.

Strangely enough, I find my survivability has improved significantly after weaning myself from Vigor on Crit (with the exception on Lupi fight). Arcana is nice to have but not the ‘be all, end all’ trait line for eles in PvE. Furthermore, EA only deals half of the damage of the normal skills. Let’s say even if I can dodge all the attacks during the Grawl boss fight, it doesn’t help my party at all. For example, if I want to heal by dodging into my water field, that means I have to dodge out of all the pre-set reflection field. Then I’ll be the only one who get healed!

I’ve read that already, and I facepalmed several times throughout. No one is denying that of course 30 in fire will do more damage in the long run, but to say the following:

" Offensive defense via the use of defensive conditions (chill, cripple, etc)" Yep, 1 extra second on conditions will save the day.
“Much greater group effect” TIL party fury > elemental attunement / healing ripple / diverse effects through EA / might stacks with huge uptime.
“Synergy everywhere” ok
“If we disregard unnecessary boons” …

That last statement proves that the guy is only in for the damage (and of course most of those are just placeholder reasons). And while that is fine it certainly isn’t my approach.

If I had to choose between superb damage / limited utility and great damage / great utility, I’d go for the latter.

Eles are the jack of all trades after all~

Anyway, different playstyles. I’d like to think that I bring more to the table than just extreme raw damage and some occasional fury fields. It’s not like I hit like a wet noodle with 100% crit dmg either…

Razor.6392:

I’m still waiting for 2 good traits, not minor ones. I don’t think the chance to trigger flame barrier or sunspot are better than lingering and arcane precision respectively, as mediocre as those can be.

The only conjures I use are FGS and ice bow. So there go the extra conjure charges.

Are eles also getting hit in the vigor dept? So far I’ve only read about guardians and mesmers. They have vigor on minor traits unlike ele.

So far no conclusive evidence as to why the infamous fire trait line is so superior. Even if it’s better I don’t think it would be more than a slight advantage. You can’t compare spell slinger, internal fire or any master trait to elemental attunement. Fire gets better at 25 points and higher but in my opinion it still doesn’t justify the lackluster adept and master traits, the worthless condition duration and the lack of everything in other trait lines.

Bottom line is, I prefer more survivability, group support and versatility than simply being a 1/2 hit damage bot with fury combo fields. I’m not gonna lie, I’d probably not be able to survive as a full glass cannon (I already run full zerk) with 0 healing, garbage condition removal, terrible attunement swap rate and very low boon duration.

Burning rage and sunspot are much better than lingering elements and arcane precision, there should be no discussion.

Elementalist will get hit by vigour nerfs, anet has already wanted to move vigour trait to master but because players said their survivability is already low anet abandoned that idea. Once they increase ele’s sustain it’s certain the vigour on crit trait will be nerfed. It’s the only class that still hasn’t been hit by recent nerfs to vigour.

I’m not sure where do you need condition removal in fractals, magnetic wave is more than enough. When I play it, it’s mostly about damage negation, not conditions. Besides, if you can’t survive with glass builds, maybe it’s time to go back to soldier’s, knight’s, or valkyrie’s gear.

Razor.6392:

I’ve read that already, and I facepalmed several times throughout. No one is denying that of course 30 in fire will do more damage in the long run, but to say the following:

" Offensive defense via the use of defensive conditions (chill, cripple, etc)" Yep, 1 extra second on conditions will save the day.
“Much greater group effect” TIL party fury > elemental attunement / healing ripple / diverse effects through EA / might stacks with huge uptime.
“Synergy everywhere” ok
“If we disregard unnecessary boons” …

That last statement proves that the guy is only in for the damage (and of course most of those are just placeholder reasons). And while that is fine it certainly isn’t my approach.

If I had to choose between superb damage / limited utility and great damage / great utility, I’d go for the latter.

Eles are the jack of all trades after all~

Anyway, different playstyles. I’d like to think that I bring more to the table than just extreme raw damage and some occasional fury fields. It’s not like I hit like a wet noodle with 100% crit dmg either…

Chill, cripple and immobilize actually save the day if you melee at max range which is trivial with daggers since they have increased range over other melee sets.

Please link me to the part where they’re nerfing ele’s vigor. Unlike guardians and mesmers, eles have it on an adept trait and not a minor one (I actually wanna see if it’s true).

Anyways, can’t believe you compare me to the awful pvt noobs because I choose a healthy mix of damage and utility as opposed to 100% damage and 0 utility. I’ll remain versatile while you’ll just be a full dps guy. Why is that so wrong? Do you think that 4000-4200 attack (with might stacks) and 100% crit damage is perhaps low?

I’ve been against pvt and other people who refused to build berserker for the longest time, it’s kinda funny how the tables turn now… but whatever. Like I’ve said I always liked to bring utility even in moba games so if I had to choose between 8/10 damage and 6/10 utility or 10/10 damage and 3/10 utility… yup, the choice is simple.

Arcane does not give you utility, nor versatility. It gives you survivability. However this comes at a huge cost in terms of damage, and you can survive much better by learning how to dodge.

Haviz and I are strong proponents of utility, but there is none to be found in the arcane trait line.

There is no need to get personal, Razor.

We are trying to explain why fire is more desirable than arcane. We have stated many reasons for this. The main point is synergy.

At the same time, we are aware of the difficulty of playing this class to its full potential. I am going to eminently quote myself and say that “every build is specific to its owner”. Some people prefer more survivability because they can not rely on their dodging skills and pro-active defense to survive. This is understandable and to anyone in such situation I would advise to invest in defensive traits.
However, it is possible to survive without those traits in most situations (including pugs and solos). At the same time, the offensive contribution of fire is so much more valuable than the defensive contribution of arcane. This is why it is best to learn how to survive without arcane traits. This is not easy, but it allows you to play the elementalist to its full potential.

By saying this I do not mean that “you do not know how to dodge”. What I am saying is that if you are skilled with pro-active defense then fire will benefit you much more. You are the only judge of your skill level.

Razor.6392:

Please link me to the part where they’re nerfing ele’s vigor. Unlike guardians and mesmers, eles have it on an adept trait and not a minor one (I actually wanna see if it’s true).

Anyways, can’t believe you compare me to the awful pvt noobs because I choose a healthy mix of damage and utility as opposed to 100% damage and 0 utility. I’ll remain versatile while you’ll just be a full dps guy. Why is that so wrong? Do you think that 4000-4200 attack (with might stacks) and 100% crit damage is perhaps low?

I’ve been against pvt and other people who refused to build berserker for the longest time, it’s kinda funny how the tables turn now… but whatever. Like I’ve said I always liked to bring utility even in moba games so if I had to choose between 8/10 damage and 6/10 utility or 10/10 damage and 3/10 utility… yup, the choice is simple.

Preview of december 10th update said that renewing stamina together with elemental attunement became master trait. Only because elementalist is in a bad spot in pvp that change was postponed and instead they moved arcane ressurection (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/December-10th-Elementalist-changes/first).

It doesn’t matter if they are minor or major, you cannot compare traits between classes. There are traits like incendiary powder and dhuumfire and guess which ones is going to be nerfed in the nearest balance patch. I can give you a hint, the one that’s already weaker in pvp and is a grandmaster one.

Typical guardians go deep into valor to get altruistic healing and use staff to give might stacks while healing people. They also bring up their attack value (which does absolutely nothing) and their critical damage. Exactly what you do, so I’m not sure why you were offended by that.

Gear is not the only part of your build, you could run full zerker gear with 0/0/30/30/10 as a guardian, claim you have more critical damage than meta zerker build, just 100-200 raw power less but much more utility and survivability. And all of that would be true or at least partially true.