Guild Wars 2

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmoblR2wjDIhHGADUAjHaAI0hlC5AA-jAyAINhQKAIVBIHWEN2qZR0YV3Y6YioazdR0qFCYxaA-e

The gear is full rabid. The goal is to be able to effectively apply bleeding and burning simultaneously while also being able to stack (up to 18) might. Since burning stacks only on duration, this is very feasible by spamming earth skill 1 while using utilities like Signet of Fire and Flame Axe (enhanced by Burning Fire trait).

In case you don’t know, the fire combo:
Dragon’s Tooth -> Ring of Fire -> Phoenix -> Dragon’s Tooth -> Swap to earth -> Earthquake -> Churning Earth -> Arcane Wave. This is possible via Persisting Flames’ +30% duration. At this point, you’re in earth and the burning should almost run out, so you can either: drop Conjure Flame Axe on the target, use skills 4 and 5, then go back to spamming earth 1, OR just use signet of fire. When you get a chance, swap to fire and redo your combo to get might stacks.

With food buffs and full corruption stacks, this build has 2340 cond dmg, +100% bleeding and +70% burning duration. With 18 might stacks, that number goes up to a whopping 2970 cond dmg!

We talked about a PvE condi build in a previous thread, it is very efficient indeed! I am yet to try this myself, but it seems to me that the more optimal route is to go 10/0/30/0/30 with givers weapons, so you have perma burn, 180% burn duration and the less cost to swapping out of earth. This build is working because condition duration food is completely OP.

wait how did you get +180% burn duration, and why would you want to go over +100% (since it’s capped at 100%)? Which arcane traits would you take?

So you’re giving up 180 cond dmg from choosing giver’s weapons over rabid to get +20% cond duration which you could have gotten if you put 30 pts in fire instead of arcane?

Okay! That’s a good start, but here’s how I would tweak it to make to conditions even more deadly.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmYbtx3wjDAkCtEecADFMeoBIkA-jAyAINhQaBIVBIHWEN2qZR0YV3Y6YioazdR0qFCYxaA-e

The rundown:

I switched Diamond Skin to Written in Stone because keeping the passive effects of signets up while using the actives is AWESOME!. Especially with Signet of Fire. The only downside is the loss of about 200 condition damage which can be made up for by using a Sigil of Corruption.

Then I switched the utilities to Signets to get the most use out of Written in Stone. Signet of Earth gives more toughness and the immobilize is a great cover condition too! It’s a toss up whether you’d want to go with Signet of Water for more condition removal or Signet of Air for the stun-break. Either chill or blind are both good cover conditions (though I’d probably go with Signet of Water since chill is a better condition than blind, in my opinion).

I then switched Fire traits from Burning Fire (applies 3 seconds of burn when using certain skills) to Ember’s Might since burning should have nearly 100% uptime just by using Signet of Fire’s active effect alone (15&1/4 second burn on a 16 second cooldown).

And lastly, (here’s where I am going to get the grief…) since you don’t need Fire attunement to keep burning up, you really don’t need to reduce the cooldown on attunement swaps. I personally think that Shard of Ice from the Water trait line is better since it provides another cover condition (vulnerability) every time you activate a Signet. Also this build does not really benefit much from the increased boon duration from Arcane (or the extra vigor for that matter since you will most likely be sitting at about 900 range using Earth’s auto attack for the bleed stacks anyway) and the little bit of Healing and Vitality never hurts.

It might also be interesting to put a Sigil of Doom in on a second off hand weapon so once you have 25 stacks of Corruption you can switch that out to get poison after attunement swaps.

The only downside I see to this build is that while it is great at stacking conditions on single targets, things get dicey in the AoE battles. If you know a large battle is coming with many enemies then it might be good to switch to Staff. Then again, Fiery Greatsword might have enough AoE capability to handle those situations also. I’ll have to play with it to find out.

What do you think?

I think you’re talking more about WvW than PvE dungeons? In PvE dungeons, you don’t have to worry about cover conditions or that much condition removal.

I agree it’s a good build for PvP (signet of earth immob is super OP).

Ember’s might is a viable option if you’re not having any trouble keeping up burning.

Lastly, while it’s true you can sit back in earth and spam 1, my build is more about getting might stacks via fire field blast combo every once in a while. Having the need to get close range at times, I find the perma vigor helps a lot with survival.

KazNaka.4718:

I think you’re talking more about WvW than PvE dungeons? In PvE dungeons, you don’t have to worry about cover conditions or that much condition removal.

Instead it’s just your allies that hold you back.

yea the system is flawed. it sucks :s

Yeap.

Dunno why anyone would consider conditions for PvE with the way the current system is designed.

We do use conditions in PvE, but indeed it is usually limited to one big condition damage dealer. Try high level dredge without conditions ^^
@ OP sorry I meant 180% bleed duration, so a 80% increase. Yes 20% condition duration is likely better than 180 condition damage, but I have not calculated it myself, I will let you know more about this in the future

ah, I see what you meant. However, you’re still opting to lose -20% condition duration by putting only 10 pts in fire. I’m wondering what arcane traits is so good that would be worth the sacrifice. It’s true you can swap attunements faster, but I don’t think it’s worth it.

you have 180% bleed duration, my build has 200% bleed duration and 170% burning.

Yes but you just take burning precision in fire so that you still maintain perma burn, then in arcana you can take what ever you want (V-VI-XI is always strong, but you can also do a nice elemental surge build, think and adapt to the relevant situations). You should use the focus in PvE by the way.
Loosing 20% conditions duration is a 5% to 7% dps loss (depending on boons and corruption stacks), which is nothing compared to the incredible utility you gain from using arcana (for example you can use swirling wind from the focus reactively at little cost). This is because with the chance to apply bleed on crits you will still maintain around 21 bleed stacks on scepter (19.5 on staff and 18 on dagger MH). With more condition duration the stack cap gets in the way of your proc on crits, so you don’t benefit from it fully. I have never tried this myself but in theory this build looks quite good In fact condition duration food is so OP in PvE that I am considering using it for my direct damage build …!

Edit: I forgot to say that you should use signet of fire actively, don’t take the fire axe. And try GoEP!!

Do not even try this build guys, 10k health just sucks, 2 back stabs from a thief and you will die.

Heck, I say you could even die with one backstab or even one eviscerate from warrior.

Sorry to say this, but your class is useless… I only use my elementalist to farm on big mobs or the scarlet events

Hitman.5829:

Do not even try this build guys, 10k health just sucks, 2 back stabs from a thief and you will die.

Heck, I say you could even die with one backstab or even one eviscerate from warrior.

Sorry to say this, but your class is useless… I only use my elementalist to farm on big mobs or the scarlet events

Reading comprehension! Try it next time.

Hitman.5829:

Do not even try this build guys, 10k health just sucks, 2 back stabs from a thief and you will die.

Heck, I say you could even die with one backstab or even one eviscerate from warrior.

Sorry to say this, but your class is useless… I only use my elementalist to farm on big mobs or the scarlet events

This is a PvE build, not a PvP build.

KazNaka.4718:

ah, I see what you meant. However, you’re still opting to lose -20% condition duration by putting only 10 pts in fire. I’m wondering what arcane traits is so good that would be worth the sacrifice. It’s true you can swap attunements faster, but I don’t think it’s worth it.

you have 180% bleed duration, my build has 200% bleed duration and 170% burning.

And with more Fire you also get more Power which works well against physical objects you gotta destroy in which conditions (or crits) are useless. The Arcane in a 10/0/30/0/30 build is mostly wasted:

1. The 30% boon duration is nice for Might Stacks. That’s about it. You lack the boons gained from normal D/D Aura play and without around 60% boon duration boons are rarely worth it.

2. The only really useful Major trait would be Arcane 6 for Vigor since you have sufficient crit to get perma vigor.

3. Swap timers are mostly useless because all of your /Focus or /Dagger utility is 16 seconds or greater cool down. The idea behind building for Burning Precision is you don’t want to swap out of Earth to continue to bleed and burn at the same time (with Signet of Fire filling in the gaps). Even when you do have to swap you can usually make a full rotation of it and Earth will be up when you get back. The extra 20% duration is usually enough to help keep the stacks on there long as possible during this period.

As a person with ACTUAL experience (instead of just theorizing what “should” work) running a Condi Ele in Dungeons and group PvE settings I’m going to reinforce the point that your allies are bar none your biggest weakness. My first run of the my build was in HOTW alongside a Necromancer and Warrior spec’d for Conditions as well and a Mesmer who was passively procing bleeds on the standard shatter spec. While I wrote that largely off as bad luck (and the warrior eventually went to respec) there hasn’t been a group I’ve been in where bleed slots were ever really not at minimum half full from passives or abilities that got spammed.

By making a build that can’t fall back on direct damage is just asking to be worthless. This is one of the #1 reasons why Necros are considered garbage in PvE, because they focus entirely on Rabid stats (Crit and Condi) with zero power when they need it. This is because their DPS is gated by the number of Condi slots available for them to deal damage and not because their actual “theoretical” DPS is bad. In fact their theoretical DPS is quite high, but their actual DPS being entirely held back by the number of condition slots available ultimately means only a percentage of it is actually done.

Necros are not consudered garbage in PvE. A good necro deals good damage.

Conditions are very useful in PvE. In fact you can easily do more damage than most direct damage builds, just not as simply. If, like this build, you do not max out the stacks, then you team will not “eat” your stacks.

The point of arcana in the build is not only the utility at little damage cost (5% damage in exchange for 20% more boon duration, vigor, attunement cd reduction, EA or elemental surge, it is a no brainer) but also for the ability to use the essential focus skills with little down time on your bleed spam. You will need to use the focus in air and water, so refucing the earth and fire cooldown is a good way to increase your damage. In fact the 200 power from more points in fire is close to useless: the direct damage output of the build is extremely low and 200 power would not make it much better anyway.

D/D gives mainly fury, the build does not need this.
Boons like might are extremely worth it no matter the condition duration.

Edit: I forgot to mention that conditions damage dealers have a hard time in low level pug groups, like Kodiak is suggesting from his experience, but in higher levels we almost always take one good condition guy. Again, I have not tried this build myself, but I am really tempted. I am definitely not the best elem around tho, so we would have to wait until guys like Haviz try this to be really sire it is worth it

Condition Necros are considered garbage in PvE for a variety of actual, factual reasons. Even they use Power based builds for high end PvE content such as Fractals.

@KazNaka.4718: You can take the theoretical advice of people who theorize about doing it or you can take the advice of people who have actually tried it in multiple scenarios (PUG groups, speed runs, Fractals, etc). When the premier condition class of the game are saying it’s a bad scene you really have to question whether or not putting all your eggs into the Condition basket is a smart move.

There are many encounters in this game that favor direct damage over Condition damage. It doesn’t take a dungeon superstar to know how many destroyable objects are in the game and they’re all immune to conditions and Crits. The only time Conditions are really favored is when you need Poison to slow down healing, a condition we don’t even have access to.

Now if you’re playing for funzies and don’t really care about all that, then sure. I mean really since no one can actually measure how bad (or good) you’re actually doing (and not just theorize how you would do) no one will be the wiser, right?

Kodiak has one point: if you are scared of destroyable objects then conditions are not for you
But if you are not, then I believe our discussion has given birth to an interesting condition build that I would like to try myself!
I am only concerned about its viability compared to other condition classes, but my intuition tells me it could pass the test.

Kodiak.3281:

@KazNaka.4718: You can take the theoretical advice of people who theorize about doing it or you can take the advice of people who have actually tried it in multiple scenarios (PUG groups, speed runs, Fractals, etc). When the premier condition class of the game are saying it’s a bad scene you really have to question whether or not putting all your eggs into the Condition basket is a smart move.

Oh, I know. I tried the build, then I tried 30/30/10/0/0….then I stayed in physical build. I’m not worried about putting all my eggs in one basket as gold is of no concern to me. You see, I’m flexible…and I was wondering what was the theoretical best condition build in the game (for PvE dungeons). I’m probably about to change my build again, into 30/20/10/10/0 because I’m glassy as hell atm (die in 1 hit by Lupi).

One advantage of condition build though: damage per action is high. It’s good against Liadri.

As person who’s actually tried a Condi build on an Elementalist and actually put the gear together and tried it out in various forms of content if that’s the only point you got then you are in for a rude awakening after you invest the gear.

1. The Precision/Condi build is worthless on any kind of object encounter. There’s too many to even fully list, but the two most immediate ones that come to mind are Snowblind Fractal elemental and Siegemaster in Urban Battleground.

1a. Since Conjure Weapons are 1 in hand and 1 on ground and 100% power based you’ll effectively be wasting 50% of the Conjure since you will do no real damage on it for object destruction.

2. The most useful Condition out of them all is Poison to help non preventable healing on mobs. We do not have access to this.

3. Condition Caps limit your total, theoretical, DPS. You can only apply a bleed if there’s room for it. Passive condition application from team mates means anything short of a premade, organized team where others will willfully attempt to minimize their condition output a majority of your DPS will actually poof into no where.

4. The only purpose of Precision in this build is for Toughness and Vigor. Toughness because there’s no other Toughness/Condi gear options. The crits that are done will be of so little damage due to a lack of power and a lack of crit damage. The 1-2s Burn from Burning Precision will be meaningless with Permanent burn with Signet of Fire.

5. There are zero ways to apply AOE conditions to targets with Scepter. The majority of your Bleed Damage (in S/F) is all single target. At least with Dagger MH you can apply AOE conditions. I won’t even get into Epidemic here.

The Elementalist has no way to answer any of those problems and even a Necro only hits some of them.

There’s only one class who can hit all these points and come out shining on the other end: The Grenadier Engineer. With Grenades they have plenty of physical damage when needed, plenty of Bleed stacks (3 procs with Sigil of Earth, Sharpshooter, and Shrapnel...×3 PER skill use with 3 grenades per toss) and can easily go into Rabid Gear. Their Grenade set gives them all the important conditions (snare, poison, bleed, blind, etc) and quickly swap out of Grenade kit to P/P. Their traits give them 50% chance to proc Vulnerability on Crit. Also they get Permanent Swiftness and Vigor in combat due to crits. They also have crazy condition management with Tossing Elixirs (affects even party members) or drinking one removing an Condition each time. Even then they can drop all of the Grenades and swap back to P/P and have access to even more Condition abilities before going back.

Now if grenades only had auto attack I’d play my Grenadier more

But luckily this thread is not about the viability of conditions, just about the build
Burning precision is essential because it generates 3s of burning every 16s on scepter which enables to keep perma burn with only 10 in fire.

The build is 100% reliant on Conditions, therefore the talk about the build is also the same talk about Conditions.

Condition Duration is capped at +100%. This means at most Burning Precision will ever be is a 2 second burn with +100%. Since Burn only stacks duration this means any additional sources of Burn are wasted (since Signet of Fire has 100% Burning up time) unless they are AOE. So why is it essential when it’s not being utilized at all since you already have perma Burn from Signet of Fire and Might Rotations when in Fire Attunement?

Also feel free to answer points 1, 2 and 5 (since we’re already talking about 4) which are all build related and not simply a case of Conditions (because as already mentioned they aren’t issues for other Condition classes).

The build I am advocating has + 60% burn duration (10 from weapons, 10 from fire, 40 from food), so signet of fire is not enough alone to maintain perma burn (14.4s). I remember having calculated that burning precision procs around 3.5s every 16s on scepter from auto attacks on average, so this fills the gaps.

1. Objects are never s problem. In snowblind you have to kill the elementals anyway, and they are tough, in urban battlegrounds you slso have adds to kill around. And you are not alone: your team is not brought down by having one player being low on power when facing objects, they are a formality!

2. Poison is good, but honestly I have almost never thought to myself that I would have done a better run if I had access to it. Only in Hotw maybe. Actually this is the least useful condition in PvE: damaging conditions, weakness, blind, chill and cripple are just so much more important! And luckily we have access to all of them. I think we can agree to ignore immob here.

3. I agree, a bit of organisation is required, but that is only so important as to simply not have an other condition based damage dealer present in the group: the build stacks bleeds to 21 at most, which leaves some room for the residual conditions applied by other members.

4. I do not understand the begining of this point, and I replied to the second part.

5. Staff solves this problem.

The Necro has access to a viable Hybrid Buil, that works almost as well as the typical HGH-Engineer. The only difference is that Necro focuses a little more on Condition Damage (or at least I do) while Engineer gets more out of Direct Damage in most Situations.

That being said I believe a Hybrid Build for the Ele could work as well, as they’re able to apply burning, not only on a single target, like most other classes do. Yes we don’t have Posion but almost constant Weakness. It ’s a Win-Win as multiple classes apply Posion, but little Weakness and little Burning (and mostly only single target). That aside we even apply Chill regulary. For both Engis and Necros the sweet spot for their Conditions are around 1000-1500 Condition-DMG while still maintaining a high amount of Direct Damage. One would have to find the sweet spot for Ele as it might probably different thought.

Here ’s a link to a great and detailed Necro Hybrid tutorial (over an hour), you might use it to get some inspirations when trying to build for an Hybrid Ele:

Btw. you could also use either Staff or Dagger with Glyph of Elemental Power and something like Quick Glyphs and Inspiration in addition to Glyph of Elemental Harmony (f.e. 6 Stacks of Might regulary from Glyphs+Fire-Attunement and another 6 Stacks from AW and Eruption @ Firefield). Sadly Glyph of Elementals doesn’t trigger Inspiration … seems like a Bug.

Kodiak, base, Kodiak! Freebiiirrrttthhh!

Zelyhn.8069:

The build I am advocating has + 60% burn duration (10 from weapons, 10 from fire, 40 from food), so signet of fire is not enough alone to maintain perma burn (14.4s). I remember having calculated that burning precision procs around 3.5s every 16s on scepter from auto attacks on average, so this fills the gaps.

This ignores the duration of Burn from Dragon’s Tooth (4.8s) and Flamewall (12.8s if stays in entire time or 1.6s per second in field) which when both are stacked along with Signet of Fire (14.4) equates to permanent burn meaning Burning Precision is 100% wasted.

Zelyhn.8069:

1. Objects are never s problem. In snowblind you have to kill the elementals anyway, and they are tough, in urban battlegrounds you slso have adds to kill around. And you are not alone: your team is not brought down by having one player being low on power when facing objects, they are a formality!

So basically your counter point is you don’t have one but your other 4 party members shouldn’t mind carrying you. Nice.

Zelyhn.8069:

2. Poison is good, but honestly I have almost never thought to myself that I would have done a better run if I had access to it. Only in Hotw maybe. Actually this is the least useful condition in PvE: damaging conditions, weakness, blind, chill and cripple are just so much more important! And luckily we have access to all of them. I think we can agree to ignore immob here.

Poison is the only one who can actively reduce incoming healing. There are plenty of encounters in the game that have healing mechanics such you mentioned HOTW or even COF P1. This doesn’t mean they require poison, but these are the only situations where conditions are uniquely useful over direct damage.

Zelyhn.8069:

3. I agree, a bit of organisation is required, but that is only so important as to simply not have an other condition based damage dealer present in the group: the build stacks bleeds to 21 at most, which leaves some room for the residual conditions applied by other members.

I apply 10 bleeds on my Mesmer with iWarden Alone. Up to 15 with iZerker and iWarden out. Greatsword Warriors are the same. These are not uncommon classes and these are not few enough to be “residual.”

Zelyhn.8069:

5. Staff solves this problem.

Staff also creates plenty of new problems as well, primarily that you end up losing most of the /Focus utility in the process. While it’s good to be academic and say you’d swap based on the encounter, there are many encounters that are AOE that you’d still want the /Focus skills for (which is why I said Dagger MH).

Avatara.1042:

Kodiak, base, Kodiak! Freebiiirrrttthhh!

ghostly roar

haha yes! Most people think I’m from Alaska. In fact I was a huge Mechwarrior fan back in the Kali days.

With this build you are not using the fire spells much, you mostly sit in earth.

My point about objects is that it is a non-problem. Objects are irrelevant.

In these encounters not having poison is not much of an issue…

I have never noticed things like this but you could be right!

Yep, staff has issues, and also advantages…
Dagger MH has little aoe bleed.

Still I can’t think of a better build to deal damage with conditions.

You still will want to rotate to Fire to apply Might rotation as wasn’t boon duration one of the reasons to be 30 Arcane? Also wasn’t swapping attunements to Fire/Air and minimize the downtime out of Earth one of the primary reasons you’re 30 Arcane?

Objects are irrelevant when you have others to pick up the slack and do them for you.

Those encounters are the only situation where conditions are better than raw damage because conditions bring something direct damage could not.

You don’t even have to try the build to see how many condi slots get taken up. I’m currently in a Fractal group with 1 D/D Ele, 1 Warrior (Bow), Mesmer (me), and 2 Rangers and the bleed stacks are at 15-20 on average with spikes up to 25. I asked, no one is conditions spec’d.

Dagger MH has a variety of AOE conditions from AOE Bleed, Dragon’s Breath (AOE Burn), AOE Vulnerability, AOE Chill and AOE Weakness.

Sometimes things aren’t meant to be.

I cannot help but notice the contradiction in what you are saying Kodiak: in your sig you advocate some kind of condition build and in that discussion you argue that people should be free to try what ever type of playstyle they want, while here you are telling us that some playstyles aren’t meant to be?

Anyway the topic is not about the viability of conditions but about the optimality of this condition build.

With this build you would indeed swap to fire and do fire might combos, but only if you had to: if you had to swap out of earth into air for swirling wind then you would swap to fire while waiting for earth to be up again, but it would not be a logical choice to swap from earth to fire just for might stacks.
So while you stay in earth burning precision is definitely valuable.

Objects are irrelevant no matter the team and builds. Anyway everyone fulfils his role, so yes direct damage dealers carry the condition dealer on objects, but it is the condition dealer who carries them on mobs with protection.

If objects are a problem, spawn FGS and one member of your party increases his dps against objects by a large factor. It’s a team game.

Zelyhn.8069:

I cannot help but notice the contradiction in what you are saying Kodiak: in your sig you advocate some kind of condition build and in that discussion you argue that people should be free to try what ever type of playstyle they want, while here you are telling us that some playstyles aren’t meant to be?

So this is a less serious build and more just a build for giggles? Okay I can respect that. But then you say:

Zelyhn.8069:

Anyway the topic is not about the viability of conditions but about the optimality of this condition build.

If a build is not serious and just for fun you aren’t really worried about being optimal. If you are being optimal, then you should be optimal. I’m merely pointing out the ways it won’t be optimal and asking for you, the build designer, to explain how you account for those non optimal decisions and scenarios.

Zelyhn.8069:

With this build you would indeed swap to fire and do fire might combos, but only if you had to: if you had to swap out of earth into air for swirling wind then you would swap to fire while waiting for earth to be up again, but it would not be a logical choice to swap from earth to fire just for might stacks.
So while you stay in earth burning precision is definitely valuable.

Are you saying that passing up on 15-18 stacks of Might with +30% boon duration isn’t worth the DPS loss to you and the rest of the Might you’d give to your party? Do you have any kind of numbers to back this up? Please be detailed as I know from threads like in your signature you are capable of proving these things with numbers.

Zelyhn.8069:

Objects are irrelevant no matter the team and builds. Anyway everyone fulfils his role, so yes direct damage dealers carry the condition dealer on objects, but it is the condition dealer who carries them on mobs with protection.

Objects are far from irrelevant. Look how many people look to a good power based Ele for Conjures to make AC1/3 super easy mode. There’s too many other scenarios to even count or list them all. Now it’s fine if you want to let your party carry you because you are having fun on a Condi build. However don’t pretend like they aren’t doing it and don’t pretend you don’t have other builds available to you that would allow you to contribute in all scenarios equally.

If objects are going to be a problem then just carry a second gear set with power, problem solved.

No the build is not just for fun. I keep explaining to you in several threads that they are two things: the playstyle choice, and the efficiency of the build used for this playstyle. Here we are not discussing if the OP should use conditions or not, but how efficiently he should use conditions.

I have no idea wether it is better to swap to fire on cd to produce might. I do not have my spreadsheet available to calculate that at the moment. My intuition is that it is not optimal to do so. Anyway it is still very valuable to have burning precision so that you can perma burn while in earth.

On a side note, I wish there was a power/condition/healing set for eles, it would be godly.

At little side notice about stacking Bleeds with the Scepter …

Eruption. Yes we all know Eruption is really slow but that doesn’t make it bad in PvE as Mobs are mostly so predictable – if they even move at all.

6 Stacks Bleed for 12s base duration every 6s is lovely. With 100% Bleed-duration it’s 6 Stacks Bleed at 24s and you should be able to stack up to 24 Stacks Bleed alone in a short timeframe without taking Geomancers Alcracity into consideration (or take the least to Condition Burst even faster or both to overstack Bleeds which is always a bad idea).

Also this Skill is AoE while Scepters Stone Shards is Single Target only. Now if you’re not utilizing the constant reapplied Burns or Blast Finishers from Scepter, it feels a waste.

Overall it seems to me a Scepter Conditionbuild might be better for situations where constant Condition reapplies need to happen like in PvP or WvW roaming (or few Dungeon Situations). Also it feels more like substain Conditiondamage that requires you to be more tanky. But that ’s my personal opinion. Seems just inpractical for general PvE. Eruption gives you a little breathing time to reposition yourself and utilize your other skills.

And don’t forget the Weakness from Earth Autoattack … that would be 50% Miss and 50% less Endurance for 6 Seconds while Eruption is on CD and makes around 24s or 48s Weakness at 100% Conditionduration (overall).

And yes … P/C/H would be lovely.

So now to pull off this build we want to have 2 sets of gear? Why not just one set of gear and use a standard power based build?

What are you accomplishing by being Conditions instead of Power other than just being Conditions?

Furthermore, we discuss the merits of Conditions because that’s all this build does. It does not provide a lot of boons to the group like a D/D Boon build would. It is incapable of dealing any significant direct damage because it has no power or crit damage to go along with the crit. The only thing this build has is conditions and crit for vigor. Crit for vigor can also be obtained on a power based build meaning the only thing unique here is conditions….so we discuss conditions and their merits.

Have you even looked at the passive burns that a Guardian applies Burn for every member of the team taking up Burn time? Have you considered the 20% reduction to Signet Cool Downs giving you 16s cool down alongside a 14.4s duration Burn meaning virtually zero downtime (presuming no other sources of burn)?

Seems like a lot that hasn’t been considered.

Also, I’d hope mostly for a Power/Condi/Toughness setup. Carrion gear is alright for plugging our missing HP but still need a bit more Toughness too even with 30 Earth and Signet of Earth.

imaginary.6241:

Overall it seems to me a Scepter Conditionbuild might be better for situations where constant Condition reapplies need to happen like in PvP or WvW roaming (or few Dungeon Situations). Also it feels more like substain Conditiondamage that requires you to be more tanky. But that ’s my personal opinion. Seems just inpractical for general PvE.

This largely has been my experience as well only I found D/D to be better over Staff. Staff is nice for all the reasons you brought up, and for a long time I played around with a 20/0/30/0/20 build, but all the extra conditions on D/D or D/F are pretty great.

In WvW however I found S/D to be fantastic because, as you said, there’s so much condi application you need to reapply it fast. You do an Eruption, it gets cleared and it’s like “dang…” haha.

@Kodiak.3281:

Isn’t rule number 1 in groupplay to always carry at least a second set of gear, if you lack of something in general to switch on bad situations if you’re talking about group friendly play that is?

But yes. This Build doesn’t seem to be optimal for Dungeon friendly or General PvE friendly Groupplay like high level Fractals but more for your regular single PvE roaming or random gameplay with uncoordinated PuGs (might work with coordinated Groups as well). If he ‘s having fun? Let him be, that ’s the way he likes to play. And to be honest: Putting theory and optimal Builds aside, there are way worse builds out there. I don’t believe he would pull down anyone(!). Heck so many players don’t even think about Builds at all …
and he ’s in the upper top of those who do.

That said I just WTF’ed for what you’d still need Signet of Earth after stacking >2500+300 Toughtness and still ask for more Defense? Or did I get confused about that part?

No Kodiak, we discuss the build.
The build does not provide fury like D/D does, but it provides sweet uptimes on debuffs that protect the group, and it does tons of more damage.
Being a condition dealer surprisingly enables you to fill the role that consist of dealing damage with conditions. This is a good dps increase for any decent group.

No you do not need two sets of gear to pull it off. Read again what I wrote: if objects are going to be a problem for you (which it is not for anyone) then carry two sets.

The strongest burn is applied first, so it is better to perma burn if you have strong condition power.

Yes the signet cd reduction is a choice we are considering, it is in the base build as you can see from the start. And no 14.4 sec out of 16 is not virtually perma burn.

It seems we really considered everything

imaginary.6241:

Isn’t rule number 1 in groupplay to always carry at least a second set of gear, if you lack of something in general to switch on bad situations if you’re talking about group friendly play that is?

Why not play a build that works in all scenarios regardless of group? By shackling yourself to only Conditions you’re pigeon holing yourself into a very specific role that does require you to swap.

imaginary.6241:

But yes. This Build doesn’t seem to be optimal for Dungeon friendly or General PvE friendly Groupplay like high level Fractals but more for your regular single PvE roaming or random gameplay with uncoordinated PuGs (might work with coordinated Groups as well). If he ‘s having fun? Let him be, that ’s the way he likes to play. And to be honest: Putting theory and optimal Builds aside, there are way worse builds out there. I don’t believe he would pull down anyone(!). Heck so many players don’t even think about Builds at all …
and he ’s in the upper top of those who do.

I fully agree on all points. It is not an optimal build at all and would be terrible in group play if your aim was being optimal. However if your aim is to have fun and not worry about being optimal then I 100% support and respect that. However lets not kid ourselves and go on about how optimal it is when it’s not just because it is fun. This would be entirely misleading and inaccurate.

imaginary.6241:

That said I just WTF’ed for what you’d still need Signet of Earth after stacking >2500+300 Toughtness and still ask for more Defense? Or did I get confused about that part?

The Elementalist faces two problems: Low HP and Low Armor.

The only way to get HP and Condi damage is Power/Vit/Condi. The only way to get Tough and Condi damage is Precision/Tough/Condi.

If you focus on the former you will have a lot of HP (around 18000) but only around 1400 Toughness (also you gain more power at the cost of no precision and slightly less condi damage because toughness % is lower).

The later gets you lots of Toughness but without any Vitality you’re at 11k base HP (terribly low) even if you have a truckload of Toughness that’s only so much Effective HP. Ironically this makes you incredibly weak to the one thing you’re good at, Conditions. Entire reliance on Ether Renewal for condition management (or again, group party members) is tenuous at best. Also since Precision is a dead end stat that won’t really increase your DPS (since you already can get perma burn without Burning Precision) so it’s kinda a dead end stat that goes no except to feed Vigor.

This is why I said I would love Power/Tough/Condi gear. It would give you to balance that gear with Power/Vit/Condi gear and come up with a good mix of survivability while not feeding a dead end stat like Precision. It also gives you an alternative route to go since your base Power will be high that direct damage attacks are not entirely out of the question anymore.

Zelyhn.8069:

No Kodiak, we discuss the build.

And the build is 100% condition based and therefore we discuss the build: Conditions.

Again, please feel free to show me what else the build brings that isn’t Conditions.

Zelyhn.8069:

The build does not provide fury like D/D does, but it provides sweet uptimes on debuffs that protect the group, and it does tons of more damage.

KazNaka.4718’s build provides Fury. It also provides sweet uptimes on debuffs that protect the group. You said that you couldn’t prove which build does more damage or less damage a few posts ago. Why are you saying now it does “tons of more damage.”? Did you get access to your spreadsheet and you can educate us with the numbers behind that statement?

Zelyhn.8069:

Being a condition dealer surprisingly enables you to fill the role that consist of dealing damage with conditions. This is a good dps increase for any decent group.

Do you have any kind of DPS numbers to back up what you’re saying? How does the DPS of your build compare to Neko’s builds? What kind of DPS loss are you seeing if the target already has 5 bleeds on it? 10 bleeds? 15 bleeds?

Zelyhn.8069:

No you do not need two sets of gear to pull it off. Read again what I wrote: if objects are going to be a problem for you (which it is not for anyone) then carry two sets.

What I read was you didn’t have an answer and that it was someone else’s job to contribute to the group while you let them carry you and the only solution was to carry two sets of gear.

Do you have an alternative way to destroy/deal with objects other than just DPS them with no power?

Zelyhn.8069:

The strongest burn is applied first, so it is better to perma burn if you have strong condition power.

Yes the signet cd reduction is a choice we are considering, it is in the base build as you can see from the start. And no 14.4 sec out of 16 is not virtually perma burn.

In the base build there is already near permanent burn because of the additional condition duration and the Signet cool down leaving a 0.75s gap. With him actually planning to contribute AOE Might and AOE Fury to the group and being in Fire that stacking duration of Burn will automatically be permanent. In addition since he already has Renewing Stamina in his build he’s already going to get perma Vigor as is (especially with perma AOE Fury).

So far I’m seeing a lot of merits for the original poster’s build and little for the 30 Arcane version is offering. Hopefully when you back up your numbers on your opinions when you get access to your spreadsheet you can make it more clear.

Nope nope nope

This build is optimal. You can keep trying to find flaws and I will keep proving you wrong, like I have always done in every discussion with you.
This is simply the best response that has been produced to fulfill the idea of doing condition damage in PvE.
You can keep trying to say that since conditions have a tough spot in the meta then the build is suboptimal and I will keep telling you that the optimality of this condition build has nothing to do with the state of conditions, this is a different topic.

Like I said all along in this discussion the difference with OP’s build is that it does a little less damage in the situation where we stay in earth, but provides much more flexibility and constancy. One of the biggest advantage is having access to EA.

Yes I calculated the dps of such build in an other thread and it was high, very high (around the 5k dps when spamming bleeds with perma burn). It is not easy for a direct damage elem build to get this high.

If I had a build that answered perfectly to every situation in the game I would not only use it but also make sure it is stickied in bold at the top of this forum and I would not let anyone use anything else. Sadly, but not surprisingly, I don’t. Luckily this is a team game.

I have already explained why this build would be interesting compared to the base build, just read the discussion again.

Btw. a little bit OT but for checking Condition Damage this Tool seems handy:
http://gw2calc.com/conditions/

This is a good dps increase for any decent group.

Conditions are not a dps increase. They would be if they did more damage than direct damage and there was a need to fill the conditions until you reach the maximum stacks but they don’t. The only condition that is a dps increase is vulnerability, having 25 stacks of that is an actual dps increase.

this buid: 20 stacks of bleed ~ 2760 dps + burning ~ 800dps = 3560dps
direct build: lightning whip ~ 2035dps

I did not consider might stacks here, with this build you can manage 13-18 stacks, + 9 compared to direct damage build.

Why you say it has lower dps than a direct damage build?

Zelyhn.8069:

Nope nope nope

This build is optimal. You can keep trying to find flaws and I will keep proving you wrong, like I have always done in every discussion with you.
This is simply the best response that has been produced to fulfill the idea of doing condition damage in PvE.
You can keep trying to say that since conditions have a tough spot in the meta then the build is suboptimal and I will keep telling you that the optimality of this condition build has nothing to do with the state of conditions, this is a different topic.

You can keep saying it but you have yet to prove it.

I keep asking you to prove it, but you don’t seem to be willing to.

Zelyhn.8069:

Like I said all along in this discussion the difference with OP’s build is that it does a little less damage in the situation where we stay in earth, but provides much more flexibility and constancy. One of the biggest advantage is having access to EA.

Evasive Arcana gains you what, exactly? The Might Stacks are the same because there are same number of Blast Finishers in either rotation combat:

(with 30 Arcane):
Earth → Air → Swirling Winds → Lightning Strike → Fire → Dragon’s Tooth → Flamewall → Phoenix → Arcane Wave → (backup) → Earth → Dodge Roll (Evasive Arcana) → Magnetic Wave

(with 30 Fire):
Earth → Air → Swirling Winds → Lightning Strike → Fire → Dragon’s Tooth → Flamewall → Phoenix → Arcane Wave → Dragon’s Tooth (!!!) → Earth → Magnetic Wave

I tested both of these in the Mists and they both work. The only net gain here is 1 Bleed, 1 Cripple, and 1 Might, 1 Protection, 1 Swiftness (due to Elemental Attunement) compared to a loss in direct Damage and 50 seconds of AOE Fury.

Where’s the flexibility? Where’s the consistency? Using vague descriptors with nothing to back them up doesn’t help us understand the point you are trying to make.

Zelyhn.8069:

Yes I calculated the dps of such build in an other thread and it was high, very high (around the 5k dps when spamming bleeds with perma burn). It is not easy for a direct damage elem build to get this high.

So you calculated the maximum possible theoretical DPS you could do if you were entirely alone and no one was with you on a single target.

I don’t understand how that will help in actual scenarios where you are grouped up with people, they will take bleed slots, and they will take up mobs. Also if a Lightning Whip build does 2000 DPS and you’re facing more than one target then your DPS also is sub-par because the Lightning Whip will hit 3 targets for 2000 DPS (6000 DPS) while you will be dealing 5000 DPS on one target with Bleeds.

How is that optimal?

Shadowfax.7562:

this buid: 20 stacks of bleed ~ 2760 dps + burning ~ 800dps = 3560dps
direct build: lightning whip ~ 2035dps

I did not consider might stacks here, with this build you can manage 13-18 stacks, + 9 compared to direct damage build.

Why you say it has lower dps than a direct damage build?

Because we don’t play in a bubble and reality will kick in:

1. If only 5 bleed slots end up being available (even temporarily), that’ll reduce your DPS down to 40% of what it could be which is marked lower than Lightning Whip which will do it’s damage regardless.

2. In addition, Lightning Whip is AOE. To switch to AOE you need to switch to Staff which presents it’s own challenges such as total loss of /Focus support or large amounts of Might (and Fury depending on build).

3. You do not instantly start out at 20 bleedstacks. If you’re using a staff for example, it would take 18 seconds (Eruption x3) to ramp up to 18 Bleeds. Consider this on bosses with mechanics like Destroyer in COE path 3 where you have a limited amount of time to damage them and then the boss goes back Immune (a common mechanic seen throughout the game) which will cause your DPS to failcascade down to 0 and have to be ramped back up again.

It’s all well and good to theorize about the maximum possibilities of Condition based DPS but when you get down to the nitty gritties of actual game mechanics in actual scenarios it becomes a lot less appealing.