Guild Wars 2

@ Assassin: Let’s look at the dmg you get from traiting into Fresh Air. It comes from 2 sources: the 15 minor in Air, which does single-target dmg when swapping to Air, and Lightning Strike, the Scepter 2 Air instant-attack, which is on a 5 sec CD, the same CD as Fresh Air. You can play it in 2 ways: either stacking Might with s/f and trying to fit in burst via Air 15 and Lightning Strike via Fresh Air, or forgetting about Might stacking and trying to maximize burst dmg via those 2 sources.

Trying to fit Fresh Air burst into s/f Might stacking rotation:
Fire 2 > Fire 4 > Fire 3 & Arcane Wave > Air Atune & Air 2 & Arcane Brilliance > Earth Atune > Earth 4 > Water Atune > Water 5 > summon/pick up LH > 6 complete LH AA chains > Air Atune > 2 complete LH AA chains > Fire Atune & drop LH > repeat

Because you swapped to Air to activate Air 15 and use Air 2 between Fire and Earth Atunes, your LH hits 1.625 secs later than it would have had you not gone Air. This means it does not combo Area Might, since your fire field expires before the first chain finishes. The extra dmg you do by using Air 2 and 15 do NOT compensate for losing 15 Might total (3 stacks * 5 party members). Therefore, if you’re trying to maximize group dmg, Fresh Air is useless.

You might be thinking “well, why don’t I atune swap while using the LH to activate Air 15 more often, instead of staying in Water with the LH?” If you swap out of Water, you lose the 20% dmg modifier – and that is FAR more important that the amount of dmg you get via Air 15.

The alternative is to abandon Might stacking and try to use Fresh Air to activate Air 2 and 15 the maximum number of times. Assuming you don’t trait into Arcana, you have a 13 sec CD on each Atune and a 1.625 global Atune CD, as I said before. Fresh Air also has a 5 sec internal CD. Air AA w/ scepter has a 3.5 sec duration. If you are PERFECT at timing Atune swaps (and I mean perfect) and lucky with crits, that means you can:

Time: 0.000: start in Atune 1, swap to Air to activate Air 15, AA in Air and use 2 while channeling,
Time: 1.625: swap to your 2nd atune while channeling,
Time: 2.000: assume an instant crit with the channel and instantly swap back to Air, activating Air 15,
Time: 3.500: start a 2nd Air AA,
Time: 3.625: swap to Atune 2,
Time: 7.000: assume the last tick of the Air AA channel crits, and swap to Air to activate Air 15. Use Air 2. AA in Air
Time: 8.625: swap to Atune 3
Time: 10.500: Air AA ends; start to AA in Atune 3
Time: 12.000: Assume the Atune 3 AA crits, and swap to Air to activate Air 15. Use Air 2. Start to AA in Air
Time: 13.625: Swap to Atune 1, continue to AA Air channel.
… etc

What problems do you see with a rotation like this, that makes maximum use of Fresh Air, Air 15 minor, and Scepter Air 2 attack? I see a bunch: no Might stacking (and I proved in the previous example that losing even a single Area Might combo is disastrous), and you’re spending a LOT of time using the Scepter’s weak AA… oh, and of course, it’s humanly impossible to maintain a rotation like that to the 3rd decimal place of a second. The first 2 secs of rotation are very good burst; after that, though, Fresh Air doesn’t do much for you. Average DPS over a 30-sec time period is FAR lower than what you’d get with the rotation I showed in this vid, using the LH: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeRhQ40ckQ4

I welcome the changes you have done to your guide. You managed to get rid of many mistakes, you made a more appropriate contextualisation and you dived into more details. Your guide is much better this way.

I hope that now you will be able to put aside your ego and become a reliable source of guidance for this community without being irritating.

Don’t count your chickens yet – I can still be annoying. lol

Eg. As per the DISCLAIMER, in all dungeons and fractals up to 30 (IMO, up to 40), what logical reason would anyone have to use your d/f build instead of one of my meta builds? (“Fun” is not a logical reason; I’m asking in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.)

Anierna.6918:

Don’t count your chickens yet – I can still be annoying. lol

Eg. As per the DISCLAIMER, in all dungeons and fractals up to 30 (IMO, up to 40), what logical reason would anyone have to use your d/f build instead of one of my meta builds? (“Fun” is not a logical reason; I’m asking in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.)

Because a person wants to play a Dagger Elementalist. The damage is still good and not all people want to run Lightning Hammer or Staff.

Anierna.6918:

(“Fun” is not a logical reason; I’m asking in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. )

@ Neko: … so, in light of what I actually asked (above), there is NOT a reason? OK, thanks for clearing that up

@OP : I’m acting here in Zelyhn’s stead.

His words for you were : “There are many reasons as to why D/F is better than any dedicated LH build for fractals at any level”.

He’s banned for 2 weeks and will explain when he’ll be back anyways

He doesn’t need to explain; there are obvious reasons. This thread is assuming a specific group format though. Stating something is efficient in one or two cases isn’t the same as stating nothing else is efficient in a different group format.

E.g. It’d be suicide to run as glass with 4 tanks. Furthermore of course not everyone has the same level of skill or experience, and would benefit from investing in some survival aspects while they learn how to react to different situations.

It’s ok to dispute, but not to seek it. Else it becomes easy to misinterpret a statement to conflict with your own beliefs when the area they concern is irrelevant to the topic.

Oh man. This thread is full of ego and “fun-sucking”. I’m glad this is here though as it adds some insight to a class that I haven’t touched in a few months. On the other hand, I’m more interested in having fun… so… maybe I’ll just glance at it or find a less “pick this OR DIE” guide.

@ Daedalus: That’s how I play; I suck the fun out of the game by turning it into a science. I suppose you could say I find replacing “fun” with “efficiency” to BE fun. To my mind, the optimal is the ONLY viable, and the quest to discover the optimal IS the fun. Anything that’s not optimal is: (1) a burden on your team; (2) because of (1), is not viable; and (3) not fun. Playing the optimal with others who play the optimal is incredibly fun; playing any other way is not fun, as it wastes not only your time, but also the time of your teammates.

On that note, I’m looking for another project, now that this Ele guide is finished. Any suggestions? I don’t suppose any other class is lacking a comprehensive guide to its meta?

Anierna.6918:

@ Daedalus: That’s how I play; I suck the fun out of the game by turning it into a science. I suppose you could say I find replacing “fun” with “efficiency” to BE fun. To my mind, the optimal is the ONLY viable, and the quest to discover the optimal IS the fun. Anything that’s not optimal is: (1) a burden on your team; (2) because of (1), is not viable; and (3) not fun. Playing the optimal with others who play the optimal is incredibly fun; playing any other way is not fun, as it wastes not only your time, but also the time of your teammates.

On that note, I’m looking for another project, now that this Ele guide is finished. Any suggestions? I don’t suppose any other class is lacking a comprehensive guide to its meta?

I’d suggest moving to a T1 class like Warrior or Guardian if you’re that feverent about it for guide making. Probably Guardian more than anything else, since it does have quite a bit of build variety with its various weapons.

Mesmer needs a guide for how to utilize its utilities in various spots in dungeons, such as spots to Focus pull or when to do certain tricks.

If you’re looking for a challenge, explore the world of making a Necromancer optimal in a dungeon group.

(Just to be clear, this isn’t sarcastic or meant to provoke a fight- just offering honest advice if you’re looking for something else in the game to turn into a ‘science’ for PvE Speedrunning)

A photo gallery of where to focus pull for every dungeon sounds like a great idea; I’ve played mes enough to know them all (I seem to be playing mes almost exclusively these days). I can also include all the spots you need to Feedback, when to Sig of Insp, how to make sure your Warden placement works out, etc. I think I’ll get on that ASAP.

I haven’t played my war or guard in a while, but I hear there’s an enormous amount of rubbish in the guard sub-forum about holding aggro and how great clerics gear is and other ridiculousness. Dispelling such myths might be fun.

With war, I’m pretty sure others have already figured it all out. I’d just be kicking a dead horse. Necro could be interesting, but I’ve hardly played it, and I’ve heard that Spoj has already done a lot of work on it.

Thanks for the suggestions, Neko. Helpful as ever

Anierna.6918:

@ Assassin: Let’s look at the dmg you get from traiting into Fresh Air. It comes from 2 sources: the 15 minor in Air, which does single-target dmg when swapping to Air, and Lightning Strike, the Scepter 2 Air instant-attack, which is on a 5 sec CD, the same CD as Fresh Air. You can play it in 2 ways: either stacking Might with s/f and trying to fit in burst via Air 15 and Lightning Strike via Fresh Air, or forgetting about Might stacking and trying to maximize burst dmg via those 2 sources.

Trying to fit Fresh Air burst into s/f Might stacking rotation:
Fire 2 > Fire 4 > Fire 3 & Arcane Wave > Air Atune & Air 2 & Arcane Brilliance > Earth Atune > Earth 4 > Water Atune > Water 5 > summon/pick up LH > 6 complete LH AA chains > Air Atune > 2 complete LH AA chains > Fire Atune & drop LH > repeat

Because you swapped to Air to activate Air 15 and use Air 2 between Fire and Earth Atunes, your LH hits 1.625 secs later than it would have had you not gone Air. This means it does not combo Area Might, since your fire field expires before the first chain finishes. The extra dmg you do by using Air 2 and 15 do NOT compensate for losing 15 Might total (3 stacks * 5 party members). Therefore, if you’re trying to maximize group dmg, Fresh Air is useless.

You might be thinking “well, why don’t I atune swap while using the LH to activate Air 15 more often, instead of staying in Water with the LH?” If you swap out of Water, you lose the 20% dmg modifier – and that is FAR more important that the amount of dmg you get via Air 15.

The alternative is to abandon Might stacking and try to use Fresh Air to activate Air 2 and 15 the maximum number of times. Assuming you don’t trait into Arcana, you have a 13 sec CD on each Atune and a 1.625 global Atune CD, as I said before. Fresh Air also has a 5 sec internal CD. Air AA w/ scepter has a 3.5 sec duration. If you are PERFECT at timing Atune swaps (and I mean perfect) and lucky with crits, that means you can:

Time: 0.000: start in Atune 1, swap to Air to activate Air 15, AA in Air and use 2 while channeling,
Time: 1.625: swap to your 2nd atune while channeling,
Time: 2.000: assume an instant crit with the channel and instantly swap back to Air, activating Air 15,
Time: 3.500: start a 2nd Air AA,
Time: 3.625: swap to Atune 2,
Time: 7.000: assume the last tick of the Air AA channel crits, and swap to Air to activate Air 15. Use Air 2. AA in Air
Time: 8.625: swap to Atune 3
Time: 10.500: Air AA ends; start to AA in Atune 3
Time: 12.000: Assume the Atune 3 AA crits, and swap to Air to activate Air 15. Use Air 2. Start to AA in Air
Time: 13.625: Swap to Atune 1, continue to AA Air channel.
… etc

What problems do you see with a rotation like this, that makes maximum use of Fresh Air, Air 15 minor, and Scepter Air 2 attack? I see a bunch: no Might stacking (and I proved in the previous example that losing even a single Area Might combo is disastrous), and you’re spending a LOT of time using the Scepter’s weak AA… oh, and of course, it’s humanly impossible to maintain a rotation like that to the 3rd decimal place of a second. The first 2 secs of rotation are very good burst; after that, though, Fresh Air doesn’t do much for you. Average DPS over a 30-sec time period is FAR lower than what you’d get with the rotation I showed in this vid, using the LH: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeRhQ40ckQ4

Hey,

I appreciate your text and video guides, they were very helpful.

The problem for me is that I generally run with PUGs, or even if I run with guildies, the groups are never going to be optimal enough where I can use my heal spell and magnetic wave purely for offensive purposes. Do you have a good damage focused build that is still sustainable enough to survive in a ‘bad’ group?

@ The Great Al: Assuming your group won’t be able to melt bosses immediately (eg. a pug), you have 2 options:

1) Because your group is a bad pug, you have to do all the work; you can’t rely on your team. You need to maintain all the fury and all the might, and stack all the vuln all by yourself. Therefore, you should go Build G, 30/30/0/10/0. This is the glassiest of the glass builds, but it provides the most utility; you just have to hope that all the group buffs you’re providing are enough to help your noob group kill the boss before you go down. Survivability-wise, you can use Arcane Shield and Glyph of Elemental Harmony in Water Atune to provide Regen.

2) You can use the tankiest of the glass builds, Build C, 10/10/25/25/0, which has greater survivability due to 25 in both Earth and Water. It also has Conjurer, which you’ll need since your noob group will probably prolong the fight past 30 LH charges. If you need greater survivability, same as above: Arcane Shield and Glyph of Elemental Harmony in Water.

If you need even more survivability (gahd, your pug group must be REALLY noob, lol), you can use OH dagger instead of focus for Frost Aura and Cleansing Wave, and CC’s via Updraft and Earthquake. Believe it or not, the AoE cleanse and heal of Cleansing Wave has saved many a stacked-up bad pug. lol. I usually stick with focus for the invuln though.

Anierna.6918:

Don’t count your chickens yet – I can still be annoying. lol

Eg. As per the DISCLAIMER, in all dungeons and fractals up to 30 (IMO, up to 40), what logical reason would anyone have to use your d/f build instead of one of my meta builds? (“Fun” is not a logical reason; I’m asking in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.)

Why isn’t fun logical? Life is more than “logic” anyway-which you should learn ASAP to deal with different personality types other than your own, which are as valid as yours.

Stop attacking those who play for fun-they have done nothing to you or your builds, and don’t impede the way you have chosen to enjoy GW2.

Anierna.6918:

D: S/F, 0/25/25/20/0

-snip-

Aiming Dragon’s Tooth:
With S/F and S/D builds, you start off your Might rotations with Fire 2 (Dragon’s Tooth). To make it drop almost exactly on top of yourself, hold both mouse buttons to make your character run forward, then simultaneously hold the backwards key (“S”) to make your character stand still. Angle the camera up to the sky, then release both the mouse buttons and the back key. Wait 1 sec, then cast Dragon’s Tooth. Quickly cast Fire 4 afterwards to make Dragon’s Tooth combo Area Might.

Aiming Phoenix:
With S/F and S/D builds, when stacking might on boss, you want to cast Fire 3 (Phoenix) slightly behind the boss, but still within your fire field, so it combos Area Might and hits the boss 3 times.

I can’t make it. The tooth never drops down or drops like 500 range away from me ?!! Is my timing wrong?

@ Iris: What I used to tell people was: It takes a bit of practice to get the camera angles and the timing right, but after a few tries, you’ll figure it out, and it’ll work every time.

That was 3 or 4 months ago, though. Back then, this method worked perfectly for me, every single time. Recently, though (in the last month or 2), it’s only been working about 50% of the time for me. Maybe it’s because I’ve been playing Ele far less and have just lost my touch, but I suspect a ninja-fix. Anet seems to be kittening us with those a lot.

You can just look up in the sky, make sure to move a tiny bit and then use DT. It will land like ~130 range (melee range) in front of you, in your camera direction.

Great guide, Anierna. I have a question. You write:

Playing the S/F Build (G):

Same as “Playing the S/F Builds (C, E, & F),” except that you swap to Air Atune after the 6 complete LH AA chains instead of Fire Atune. You then swap to Fire Atune between completing the subsequent 2 LH AA chains and dropping the hammer.

This seems to imply that the build would execute the 6 LH chains in water, which would not make sense. I would think that build G would execute 6 LH chains while attuned to air, then attune to fire and execute 2 LH chains, then drop LH and refresh. Am I missing something?

Also, I presume your recommendations are based on maximizing group damage. Do you have any thoughts about the relative performance of the builds with regard to personal damage?

sry for spelling, im typing from phone.

build g has piercing shards, the 20% modifier while in water. all the builds have this trait, which is why every build LH AA’s in water as long as possible. however, in order to use comet during the next might-stacking rotation, you need to leave water a little early, which is why you execute the last 2 LH chains in a different atune.

the builds that have the 10% modifier while in fire execute those last 2 chains in fire; build g has the 10% modifier in air, so you execute the last 2 chains in air.

I cant answer the question about personal dmg at the moment cause my spdeadsheet with effective powers in on my other comp, but personal dps should not matter at all. group dps is the only thing that matters, and that means providing fury/might/vuln for your group as needed.

Thanks for the prompt response. Sorry but I had misread water VI for water IV.

I agree with your point about group vs. personal damage. Still, I would be curious to see how the different builds stack up against each other from personal damage standpoint.

Guys! Just a question! I’m watching the Skills from the Traits. In Water Attunement there’s Soothing Wave (V) “Gain regeneration when critically hit”. Does that trait affect to all the others? Or only when I’m using Water Attunement?

This is a really awesome guide grats on the sticky.

@ Xinsa: This is a PvE guide. Soothing Wave (V) should NEVER be used in PvE.

Answering in a PvP/WvW context, though, Soothing Wave does activate in all Atunes, not just Water.

Can I see the calculations for this? I would think that the Precision and Crit Damage from 30 Air could make 30/30/0/10/0 more personal DPS than say 30/10/10/20/0 simply because of your already very high power and thus good synergy with the 200 precision and the 30% Crit Damage (10 from perma Arcane Lightning, 20 from traits), even if you already assume 25 stacks of external vuln.

Also wouldn’t Build G go over 100% crit chance assuming Disc Banner, Fire Sig, LH Buff, and Curry Butternut?

@ MagicSlurpees: Gahd, I knew I forgot something! The LH buff isn’t in my assumptions section, and I didn’t include it in my calculations either. With that, Build G would go over 100% crit chance. /facepalm

I’ll redo everything now. More work

EDIT: LH buff is 5% crit dmg and 180 prec, right?

OK, fixed all the gear/stacking/food combinations for each s/f build, taking into account the Conjure Lightning Attributes buff. I also added that to the Assumptions section.

Here are the new Effective Powers for each build:

A 19505.92
B 23820.38
C 22542.28
D 23341.00
E 21853.86
F 21607.91
G 20803.00

A few things to remember when looking at those Effective Powers:
- READ THE ASSUMPTIONS SECTION
- You can’t compare Build A to the other builds via EP because it uses Staff
- All builds have Air (VI), and there’s no easy way to factor it in, so I just excluded it
- Vuln, Wep Strength, Attack Coefficient, and Target’s Armor are not factored into any of them; those all come afterward.
- EP = Power * (1 + Crit Chance (Crit Dmg – 1)) * Modifier

@ MagicSlurpees: Build F has higher EP than Build G because dmg modifiers > raw stats, since multiplicative > linear.

EDIT: Updated EP numbers

So why is that multiplicative is neccessarily better than linear? If, say, you have 2000 power, a 10% increase would be similar to increasing power by 200, 200 power would also do the same effect. If you have 2000 power, a 10% increase, and another 10% increase, you get 2410 power, starting at 2200 power then a 10% would still be 2410 power.

Mind Google Docs’ing your spreadsheet and linking it in forums/pm?

Edit: I do understand though that 200 power at 2200 power isn’t the same as it is at 200 power, but that doesn’t make having extra crit/power a bad thing if you get enough extra of it.

Forgive my english. i have few more question.
i ususally use S/D. but in your diagram, there is no s/d build.
so.. do you recommand s/f instead of s/d for zerk or leveling up?

and when do i use FGS?

MagicSlurpees.4851:

I do understand though that 200 power at 2200 power isn’t the same as it is at 200 power, but that doesn’t make having extra crit/power a bad thing if you get enough extra of it.

Actually it is the same. Whether you have 200 power or 2200 power, an additional 200 power will still multiply your weapon strength and skill coefficient an additional 200 times. I think you’re trying to look at power and a damage modifier as the same thing so much that you accidentally treated them the same there =P.

MagicSlurpees.4851:

So why is that multiplicative is neccessarily better than linear?

“Necessarily”… it’s not. Multiplications/Percentages are relative to the value they are modifying. Therefore, if the value being modified is below 100 or the multiplier is less than 100%, an increase of 1 of that value type will be better. Although of course, here you cannot directly increase 1 damage value, you’d need to modify its component parts which are power, weapon strength and the skill itself (not the skill coefficient since you can’t modify that either).

However, she is not wrong to state that multiplicative is always better. She is of course speaking with regard to what is laid out in her guide, which assumes a level 80 character, level 80 berserker gear and trinkets at exotic or higher, and of course, the GW2 combat system. Berserker grants high power, and since the resulting increase of a multiplicative multiplier is dependent on the power value, multiplicative multipliers become more effective as power increases. In terms of the GW2 combat system, multiplicative will always be better than linear (1% > 1 power [even > 10 power once you gain 84 power from gear]) because the modifiers are always going to be greater than 100% (“an increase of 10%” translates to a 110% multiplier).

The lowest damage multiplier you can get is 1%. At level 80 you get a natural base 916 power, so +1% is equal to +9.16 power. So instantly, 1% > 1 power.

You picked 200 to compare to 10. I don’t know why you picked those figures to state that multiplication isn’t necessarily better than linear. I don’t see how 20 power relates to a 1% damage modifier in order to support your argument. It appears to me that you’ve cheated, taking 10% of the 2000 assumed power which OF COURSE will be the same as a multiplicative +10% modifier since when you come to apply it, 2000*1.1 = 2200 (increase of 200). Furthermore, any damage calculations done to test this theory using the specific/narrow range and the combat formula will prove true, because: assume you’ve equipped full berserker gear, berserker ascended trinkets, and two berserker daggers, setting yourself at 1981 power. +1% now translates to +19.81 power; very close to 20! (Or 20 if they rounded up)! You’re using generalisation, which isn’t allowed! =P.

EDIT: Just went to check something half-related, and saw I had precision at 1644. Reminded me I used 1689 here. It should have been 1644, but since I used the same value for each calculation it shouldn’t matter. I thought I should point that out in case anyone with a keen eye and has done similar calculations reads it.

Obviously, when damage calculating, we’d calculate for gear first since you get additional stats with the gear, and knowing that at a certain point crit chance+damage becomes more valuable than power (again, due to the multiplicative nature). Let’s look at full berserker with two daggers and scholar runes, as is described in this guide (2146 power, 1689 precision, 78% crit damage, +10% modifier) as our stats before trait point allocation, and for the comparison use lightning whip’s 0.7 skill coefficient (it really doesn’t matter what is used) for 100 hits against 2600 armour using the following formulae:
Non-crit_damage = ( ( weapon_strength * skill_coefficient * power * CAPITAL_PI( 1 + ( 100 / modifier ) ) ) / armour ) * ( ( number_of_hits / 100 ) * ( 100 – ROUND_DOWN( ( precision – 822 ) / 21 ) )
Crit_damage = ( ( weapon_strength * skill_coefficient * power * CAPITAL_PI( 1 + ( 100 / modifier ) ) ) / armour ) * ( ( number_of_hits / 100 ) * ROUND_DOWN( ( precision – 822 ) / 21 ) * ( ( 150 + crit_damage ) / 100 ) )
Damage = Non-crit_damage + Crit_damage

Non-crit_damage:
= ( ( 952.5 * 0.7 * 2146 * 1.1 ) / 2600 ) * ( ( 100 / 100 ) * ( 100 – 41 ) )
= 605.35771153846153846153846153846 * 1 * 59
= 35716.104980769230769230769230769
= 35,716

Crit_damage:
= ( ( 952.5 * 0.7 * 2146 * 1.1 ) / 2600 ) * ( ( 100 / 100 ) * 41 * ( ( 150 + 78 ) / 100 ) )
= 605.35771153846153846153846153846 * ( 1 * 41 * 2.28 )
= 56588.838874615384615384615384615
= 56,589

Damage:
= 35716 + 56589
= 92,305

Damage with +200 power:
Single non-crit hit: 662
Non-crit_damage: 39,045
Crit_damage: 61,863
Damage: 100,908
Increase: 9.32%

Damage with +10% modifier:
Single non-crit hit: 666
Non-crit_damage: 39,288
Crit_damage: 62,248
Damage: 101,536
Increase: 10%

Check:
+200 yielded a 8603 damage increase overall, which shows a 1:43.015 power:damage increase ratio.
+10% yielded a 9321 damage increase overall, which shows a 1:932.1 modifier:damage increase ratio.
1% damage modifier at 2146 power is therefore equivalent to 21.67 power (932.1/43.015).
It’s enough to show that it’s close to 21.46. It’s not going to reverse engineer perfectly because of the rounding.

Then of course there’s the logic part which I’m too lazy to do maths for. For example, in a Fresh Air build, you’d just know through reason that Air Training is better than 20 points in Fire due to significant use of lightning whip on top of the 20% critical damage and 9.52% critical chance that 20 in Air also provide (ignoring the other 10 points in Air for the purpose of comparison).

Google Docs link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-zwZEZiI96oSEVzb1NxSXQ4ZTQ/edit?usp=sharing

This is the summary; I have a slightly different spreadsheet with drop-down menus for each piece of armor with zerk/assassins stats when mixing-and-matching, and also for the food and sigils.

I checked my results with gw2buildcraft.com, and they’re the same, as long as you use exotic weps and manually put in the stat differences for ascended (8 power & 6 prec). Using ascended weps gives an unwanted 5% modifier, which messes up the EP.

For the dmg modifiers, I allowed them to go out to infinite decimal places during interim calculations, then rounded them down to 4 dp at the end. This was totally arbitrary on my part; I have no idea what GW2 does concerning dp. For the prec-to-crit chance conversion, I rounded it down to the nearest full percentage; I’m pretty sure this is what the game does, but I could be wrong.

@ MagicSlurpees: Impact said it in his 2 posts; this guide assumes you’re already lvl 80, and you have full ascended zerk trinks, ascended zerk weps, and exotic zerk/assassins armor, as well as a bunch of modifiers and buffs (banners, scholar runes, modifier sigils, etc). When all of that is baseline, % dmg modifiers will ALWAYS be better than raw stats (power/prec/crit dmg). At lower lvl/gear, it’s possible that raw stats may be better than % modifiers, but idgaf about that situation. I’m only talking end-game here.

EDIT: Updated the link for the spreadsheet to incorporate eliminating Build C and the subsequent re-lettering

@Impact: I think you have me for some person who’s very knowledgable with the game, I was just giving a simple example to illustrate my point, I could have said if you have 2000 cookies, or whatever and I figured my message would have gotten across. Thank you for answering my question though, very concise, I liked it. I do have another question though, what’s “CAPITAL_PI” in your non-crit_damage calculation? Also, if we assume that considering weapon strength/armor/skill coefficients are all the same regardless of build, we can look solely for Effective power when theorycrafting right?

@Anierna: For any builds using Arcane Lightning, why not assume full uptime on the 10% Crit Dmg? It should be possible if you rotate Brilliance and Wave. Also, for build G, would it not produce more damage to use the 10% scholar buff in water and swap to air attune for the 10% damage rather than water? This should provide 121% damage instead of 120%, damage change is marginal but there.

Anyways, love the guide, and love the numbers even more. Thanks for answering my inquiries.

Gah. I forgot to put that in the crit part as well. It’s meant to be in both, as you can see from the ‘* 1.1’ in the crit damage workings below it. I’ll fix that.

Capital pi is a mathematical notation for multiplicity, just like sigma is for summation. In a formula that says ‘* modifier’ or ‘* multiplier’ you might assume it’s the total, i.e say you have 3 modifiers: 10%, 10%, 15%, it becomes 35%. They stack though, so instead of being 35%, they pack a little more punch. So for 10% 10% and 15%, you’d CAPITAL_PI( 1 + ( 100 / modifier ) ) to get a multiplier of 1.3915. I decided to express the multiplier as a formula instead of just ‘multiplier’ for clarity, that’s all.

Breakdown:
The expression ‘modifier’ has elements: ‘modifier1’ = 10%, ‘modifier2’ = 10%, ‘modifier3’ = 15%. A percentage as you know is also expressed as 1 / 100 * %. In the example I’ll just use those resulting decimal values to simplify it, so they become 0.1, 0.1, 0.15 respectively.
The expression ‘i’ is used in this notation as the iterator. It starts at 1 and increases each iteration until it reaches the last element, expressed as ‘n’. In this case, ‘n’ = 3. In the notation, ‘i’ is shown below the capital pi symbol, and ‘n’ above it.
For each iteration, the equation is carried out using the value at the ’i’th element in ‘modifier’, then multiplied by the current value, which starts at 1.
1st iteration: (1 + (100 / 10)) * 1 = 1.1
2nd iteration: (1 + (100 / 10)) * 1.1 = 1.21
3rd iteration: (1 + (100 / 15)) * 1.21 = 1.3915
i == n so stop. The value used in the equation is therefore 1.3915.

As for effective power for theory-crafting, yes you’re right. I’m not a mathematician though. I tried some time ago to see how I might convert what I came up with into a smaller equation that leaves out weapon strength, providing an effective power value which when multiplied with weapon strength and the skill coefficient produces the same results. I failed. I do know it now, however. After I made that post, a discussion on effective power I had with Anie lead to some searching and eventually I found the the effective power formula the guy behind http://gw2buildcraft.com/ used, and it was exactly what I had been trying to come up with. I tested it against my own formulas for damage calculation, and they produced the same result.

I know it wasn’t directed at me, but since I’m here.

MagicSlurpees.4851:

For any builds using Arcane Lightning, why not assume full uptime on the 10% Crit Dmg? It should be possible if you rotate Brilliance and Wave.

^! Told her the same thing yesterday lol.

MagicSlurpees.4851:

Also, for build G, would it not produce more damage to use the 10% scholar buff in water and swap to air attune for the 10% damage rather than water? This should provide 121% damage instead of 120%, damage change is marginal but there.

Nice thinking, but no, because you’d have to take out Arcane Lightning for Air Training which would lose you that 10% crit damage. You’re getting rid of a +10% to all crits in exchange for +1% to all crits and non-crits. For that +1% to everything to be equal to the +10% to crits, it would need to affect 10x more hits, which would require a crit chance of 10%. Assume 100 hits for easiness, at 10% crit chance you’ll crit 10 times: 10*1.1=11 [+1]. The 1% will affect everything: 100*1.01=101 [+1]. As you can see the difference is the same.
Of course, that build has close to, if not half a point over 100% crit chance. So it becomes 100*1.1 VS. 100*1.01, making arcane lightning the winner.

EDIT: Disabled textile >.>

Anierna, thanks for following through with the damage estimates for the various builds. I think the estimates are overly optimistic for builds that include water VI. If you were to attribute a reduced weight to water VI (e.g., 1.025 assuming a 25% uptime for the bonus), and applied the same armor bonuses to builds F and G, then I believe build G would surpass build F. Even if you assumed 50% uptime, build G would pull ahead. Also, I am not sure it is realistic to assume 100% fury uptime for builds B-E. These builds might be optimal in organized groups but would likely be suboptimal in PUGs.

@Impact: I’m learning so many maths from you, it’s great! For serious though, it’s very interesting.

The build has 30 in Air (as it would need 25 for vuln, and the extra 5 points are better put in air for the crit than anything else… I think), so you have Bolt to the Heart, of course, Arcane Lightning, and then one more slot, since no other major really makes sense Anie slotted in Air Training so that one could swap to air while LHing to have water up after might stacking rotation, if that makes sense.

So you’re not losing out on either Arcane Lightning nor Bolt to the Heart with having Air Training. Another bonus to this is that you don’t have to be in Water attunement for max dps, you simply have to be in air, or fire if traited with Fire VI (Internal Fire).
On the other hand, you’d be more reliant on staying above 90% health, and you wouldn’t have Soothing Mist most of the time as you wouldn’t often be in Water Attunement. But if you are always above 90% health and you and your party don’t need that extra heal then it theoretically could be better, I think.

@Moon:

Anierna.6918:

This guide is oriented towards players who do PvE content in zerk groups, and would like to maximize their group’s damage, which is the best way in which they can help their group. The term “zerk groups” includes both organized guild runs and pugs who ping zerk gear – yes, you CAN pug with these builds!

I think for most fights in organized groups keeping above 90% for an entire fight isn’t too hard for most dungeons I would be running an ele in.
100% fury uptime is pretty easy with warrs, rangers, thieves, etc. Since the builds assume at least one warr for disc/str banner that’s part of the fury right there, or even all of it if you prestack fury with disc banner and kill bosses really quickly. Cough FGS *Cough

Anierna.6918:

@ The Great Al: Assuming your group won’t be able to melt bosses immediately (eg. a pug), you have 2 options:

1) Because your group is a bad pug, you have to do all the work; you can’t rely on your team. You need to maintain all the fury and all the might, and stack all the vuln all by yourself. Therefore, you should go Build G, 30/30/0/10/0. This is the glassiest of the glass builds, but it provides the most utility; you just have to hope that all the group buffs you’re providing are enough to help your noob group kill the boss before you go down. Survivability-wise, you can use Arcane Shield and Glyph of Elemental Harmony in Water Atune to provide Regen.

2) You can use the tankiest of the glass builds, Build C, 10/10/25/25/0, which has greater survivability due to 25 in both Earth and Water. It also has Conjurer, which you’ll need since your noob group will probably prolong the fight past 30 LH charges. If you need greater survivability, same as above: Arcane Shield and Glyph of Elemental Harmony in Water.

If you need even more survivability (gahd, your pug group must be REALLY noob, lol), you can use OH dagger instead of focus for Frost Aura and Cleansing Wave, and CC’s via Updraft and Earthquake. Believe it or not, the AoE cleanse and heal of Cleansing Wave has saved many a stacked-up bad pug. lol. I usually stick with focus for the invuln though.

Thanks for the advice. One question -

why 25 in earth and 25 in water? Maybe I am missing something, but how often is your endurance going to be full as a mid-to-close range glass cannon? How are you mitigating damage if you aren’t dodging? Wouldn’t 20 earth 30 water be more helpful?

MagicSlurpees.4851:

@Impact: I’m learning so many maths from you, it’s great! For serious though, it’s very interesting.

lol, glad I can be of use!

MagicSlurpees.4851:

The build has 30 in Air

You’re right.. for some reason I saw it as 20. In which case you would get the extra 1% and no loss, making it an increase to effective power indeed. Nice catch =P.

I updated the guide just now, and the spreadsheet. New link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-zwZEZiI96oSEVzb1NxSXQ4ZTQ/edit?usp=sharing

Changes

- Water 25 trait is 1% per boon; changed from 5% to 1% ^ 5
- Redid zerk/assassins mixes for every build due to a rounding error when converting prec to crit chance
- Build G is now 30/30/10/0/0 AA’ing in Air, since 10% * 10% > 20%

EDIT: Updated the link to the spreadsheet to incorporate the elimination of the previous Build C and the subsequent re-lettering

- It’s a noob question, but what to do after the first rotation, when someone in the group picks up the lightning hammer? I usually have a 1s mind lag and if the boss does not die at that point, I feel ‘vulnerable’ without my hammer. So what is the best move?

- I’m currently trying build F. The dragon tooth, even with the trick, always lands in a melee range, not at the stacking place. So is it OK for me to forgo it and only use to stack might when engaged? With pugs, sometimes the melee breaks up to range because of the pressure, like with the Nightmare tree in TA Forward path, what is the best course of actions to keep the DPS while sustaining survival? I found myself get tangled and downed by the vet a lot.

Thank you in advance,

Iris

Iris Ng.9845:

- It’s a noob question, but what to do after the first rotation, when someone in the group picks up the lightning hammer? I usually have a 1s mind lag and if the boss does not die at that point, I feel ‘vulnerable’ without my hammer. So what is the best move?

- I’m currently trying build F. The dragon tooth, even with the trick, always lands in a melee range, not at the stacking place. So is it OK for me to forgo it and only use to stack might when engaged? With pugs, sometimes the melee breaks up to range because of the pressure, like with the Nightmare tree in TA Forward path, what is the best course of actions to keep the DPS while sustaining survival? I found myself get tangled and downed by the vet a lot.

Thank you in advance,

Iris

I think the main assumption with these guides is that you are running with a group that won’t do that.

@ Iris: If anyone steals my LH, I kick them instantly. No 2nd chances, no talking about it, nothing – just the kick. The only exception is if the Mesmer already has 3x phantasms up and wants to use my hammer, but that needs to be discussed beforehand.

The trick for aiming Dragon’s Tooth doesn’t always work atm. It worked a lot more consistently in the past.

The last boss in both TA up & TA fwd should be stacked so cleaves & AoEs hit twice each time, and reflects should be rotated to protect the stack (eg. standing inside of WoR). Leaving the stack results in being kicked.

Thanks, I guess I should improvise when the situations show up again. Is it ok to ask how can I make the most out of build F when at TA fwd stacking fails? Should I just leave the group? Since I pug, most of the time, I’m too shy to kick someone =D

Anierna.6918:

@ Iris: If anyone steals my LH, I kick them instantly. No 2nd chances, no talking about it, nothing – just the kick. The only exception is if the Mesmer already has 3x phantasms up and wants to use my hammer, but that needs to be discussed beforehand.

The trick for aiming Dragon’s Tooth doesn’t always work atm. It worked a lot more consistently in the past.

The last boss in both TA up & TA fwd should be stacked so cleaves & AoEs hit twice each time, and reflects should be rotated to protect the stack (eg. standing inside of WoR). Leaving the stack results in being kicked.

Please make sure to kick yourself when you miss a dodge or differ from an optimal rotation (which you have yet to figure out, I think).

I’m all for increasing people’s usefulness and teaching them how to play effective. Pretending to be perfect and kicking others without explanation doesn’t help achieving this, though.

And seriously, not even everything you say is right. You yet refused to show any reaction and seem to proceed that way, but that isn’t going to make some stuff of you less wrong.

You’re criticizing my work without any evidence. Your accusations are groundless.

You’re saying that what I’ve done is incorrect, yet you fail to specify which parts of my work contain errors. You’re not offering better alternatives to anything I’ve posted. You’re insinuating that you know what the optimal rotations/builds are, meaning those are better than mine, yet you have not provided any evidence of their existence. You believe that for some reason, it is your responsibility to hide these mythical better methods of yours; perhaps because I would be able to find flaws in them, were you to post them and I to thoroughly analyze them. I am confident enough in my work to put it up for peer review, and you aren’t.

I’m calling your bluff. There’s nothing wrong with my work, unless you want to argue over assumptions. You don’t actually know any way to improve my builds.

In regard to the optimal rotation specifically, the s/f LH rotation I advocate provides the maximum amount of Might (21 stacks) in a single rotation without external fire fields or blast finishers. It’s true that you would increase your personal DPS by simplifying that rotation (eg. excluding Comet), but this would only be beneficial for group DPS if your party could maintain maximum Might without you using that extra blast finisher. For the purposes of this guide, I assume that your party cannot, in which case, the increase in your personal DPS does not come close to comparing to the total of 525 Power and Condi dmg from that extra finisher.

On another note, whenever I criticize someone, I ALWAYS:
1) specify exactly which parts(s) of their argument it is that I’m criticizing;
2) offer a better alternative; and
3) explain why my alternative is superior.

I do this for two reasons:
1) to provide evidence to support what I write; and
2) as a favor to the OP so he can improve (even if he doesn’t recognize it as a favor, due to my frequent lack of tact).

My aim has always been to collaborate publicly in discovering the most effective methods, and to disseminate that knowledge as widely as possible. That’s the whole point of writing a publicly-available guide. If these are also your goals, I suggest you act similarly.

Dub.1273:

I’m all for increasing people’s usefulness and teaching them how to play effective. Pretending to be perfect and kicking others without explanation doesn’t help achieving this, though.

And seriously, not even everything you say is right. You yet refused to show any reaction and seem to proceed that way, but that isn’t going to make some stuff of you less wrong.

No reaction? She’s been replying to people’s questions, suggestions and sharing calculations since she posted this guide… That’s plenty of reacting. I can only assume you mean no reaction to you specifically? I don’t see any reaction warranted toward you. What can you say to someone who comes along, declares something that has been tested, proven, proofed and supported is wrong and that their knowledge is superior, but has no examples, evidence or even reasoning to support their claims. And when there’s hostility with it, what can you do besides think “ugh, trolls have found this thread”.

Guides offer help.. and this author has taken the time to address a range of different situations, create builds for them, relate them to the different situations players might encounter via reasoned assumptions, and provide mathematical workings for those wishing to investigate or try to develop them further. It is therefore quite a diverse and flexible guide, without sacrificing clarity or specification. If you are as you say, in favour of helping and teaching, then why come and attack someone who is already doing it?

And the subtle attempt to make the OP appear petty? Really? “Pretending to be perfect and kicking others without explanation”? Ok then, I’ve got one for you. Since she never said that, those are all your words. So, how can you say you advocate helping people while thinking that kicking someone makes you perfect? Kicking is merely a party control function. People are allowed a different view to yours. (Although your thus far evident lack of the concept of critical thinking or care for constructive critisism has caused your view, reasons and evidence to be omitted.)

Okay, so I’ll sum some mistakes up once again.

First, the rotation. Your’s basically consists of Fire 2, 4, 3, Earth 4, Water 5, LH, one blast and somewhen in between the new heal skill and arcane wave. But you’re using rather low skill coefficients in that rotation, especially the heal deals close to no damage. Simple improvement would be to simply kick it from your rotation. As a result you get: Fire 2, 4, 3, Earth 4, Water 5, Arcane Wave, LH, two LH blasts. You’re simply replacing the heal with an additional LH swing in time. This is indeed not very reliable, but you’ve been making non-practicable assumptions anyway. I’ll come to that point later. As a further improvement, since earth attunement, magnetic wave and water attunement do not interrupt skills but have a 1.325 second (?) delay between swap (some miliseconds still getting consumed by phoenix), you can use the new heal skill exactly in between that window, to simply gain an additional finisher, leading to 24 stacks of might.
Again, highly theoertical.

Which leads to the next point: ‘strange’ assumptions. If I recall correctly, you’re assuming warriors banners beeing up (i.e. a team setting) but also assume you’re the only person blasting fields. /logic? Involvig other party members (even just one) into your rotation does not make S/F being optimal anymore. Assuming S/D, others can blast your fire field much easier and assuming you get to 25 stacks of might, dagger offhand offers higher skill coefficients. Fire Grab as example is leading to a slight dps increase over a pure LH chain and is aswell useable in the small downtime of the LH. Oh and you can technically get to 24 might stacks with S/D, which sadly leads to ~45% uptime on hammer instead of 90%. Other than that you’re missing out on an amazing 3 stacks might in comparison to S/F, once again under the assumption your party members are all really bad pugs (which might lead to problems keeping all amplifiers in a build and make other build choices better for such situation.

As I am too lazy to search out more fauxpas’ of you, I’ll just mention the most recent ones:

-“Frostbow is not good for anything else than skill 4 on large hitboxes”
-Look at the damage skill 3 puts out in melee, additinally to the chill (which is heavily underrated, since most monsters have no auto attack without cooldown. Frost bow #4 is always worth casting, as it even is extremely strong against asura sized models and #5 is amazing in certain circumstances. Especially when trying to stay above 90% at… well, vevina.

-“Staff is useless in PvE” (or something similar).
- This doesn’t even need explanation. As you can glitch you meteor shower to make all meteors land at the same position, this skill alone justifies using it. Aswell as Fireball+Lava Font + Burning Retreat lead to some nice vulnerability stacks and a peemanent firefield. Also, a frostbow is much better useable in a staff, rather than in a LH build. Although, LH is definitely more versatile.

I might take a look at your suggested builds now, didn’t calculate any of them through yet. (Note: this sentence might be comllete rubbish as I attempted to take a german phrase into english. Furthermore please ignore any obvious spelling or grammar mistakes, as I’ve been writing this from my mobile phone.)

I appreciate the work you put into all this, but you’re not solely right. Also:

Zelyhn

Also, Aniernas arrogance is very irritating.

.. since we have yet to see any ingame action of you, not counting the macro’able S/F rotation on LA dummies.

Dub, your attacks against Anierna are unwarranted. Anierna has invested a lot of time into developing and revising this guide and responding to questions. Healthy discussions of rotation changes to improve group damage and the validity of Anierna’s assumptions can be constructive. However, personal attacks will only turn people off to what you are saying. Frankly, I fear the death of this game will come not from failures to fix longstanding bugs and balance professions but from the impacts of negative and elitist attitudes on more casual players.

Your idea to remove arcane brilliance from the rotation to make room for an additional LH blast finisher seems worthy of exploration. I am not a fan of wasting heals to accrue side benefits. However, I envision that your suggestion would only be actionable for builds that trait persisting flames.

Dub.1273:

But you’re using rather low skill coefficients in that rotation, especially the heal deals close to no damage. Simple improvement would be to simply kick it from your rotation. As a result you get: Fire 2, 4, 3, Earth 4, Water 5, Arcane Wave, LH, two LH blasts.

True. But then it’s well known that S/D doesn’t have many high hitting abilities. That first statement merely states the obvious, and doesn’t contribute toward any claims you’ve made. I’ll address it anyway. Consider the fact that lightning hammer, after all charges are used up, will still be on cool down. What are you to do during that time, if not use your low hitting skills? Doing nothing doesn’t sound very helpful. I’d rather deal at least some damage. It so happens that that cool down period is enough time to complete two might stacking rotations with a little time left over, and that is exactly what was proposed: use that time to stack might in between summoning lightning hammers and in between finishing with the first and picking up the second. Furthermore, among the might stacking blast finishers used, are the two abilities from fire which do hit high.

There are improvements that could be made, but you did not see them. See where I said “enough time to complete two might stacking rotations with a little time left over”? Also after the first of the two lightning hammers, you have a little more time to kill before water attunement has cooled down. To account for that time, you can switch to air before fire and land lightning strike, which beats earth auto attack and doesn’t waste the fire field up-time. Even swapping after earth and before water is still an improvement; because water is on a 2 second+ cool down still., that 1.5 second cool down period after an attunement swap becomes irrelevant. Another improvement would be casting arcane wave early during lightning hammer swings so it still blasts for area might and gets that +20% damage modifier for you being in water attunement. Yet another improvement can be made to pre-stacking might with S/F: position yourself on the fire field while casting phoenix and earth abilities, tilt the camera down and cast comet so it lands in the field for area might.

However, none of these improvements reveal and address problems with the guide. They are in fact showing an interest and pointing out minor adjustments to improve it, thereby implicitly acknowledging the usefulness of the guide and proposed builds and ideas. They do not reveal any fundamental flaws, and do not undermine the usefulness of this guide or practicality of the builds and rotations in the specified situations. Your attitude suggests you believe they do, and I can’t see why.

Speaking of those 1.5 second attunement swap cool downs, you can fit arcane brilliance in and suffer no loss of lightning hammer swings in the fire field, which is exactly what the OP demonstrated (you can still get another LH blast in). You of course know this despite saying it would be better removed, because not only is it in the video which I must assume you watched based on your description of the rotation, but also because you went on to contradict yourself by stating how it can be used in coordination with attunement cool downs in order to be effective – again, what Anie did in the video. You sought to undermine its use in her rotation, then took what she did in the video with a slight tweak for suggestion as your own idea for improvement. This is a reasoning flaw which I believe is called the ‘straw person’: creating a weakened version of the argument in order to dismiss it in favour of something else.

Dub.1273:

As a further improvement, since earth attunement, magnetic wave and water attunement do not interrupt skills but have a 1.325 second (?) delay between swap (some miliseconds still getting consumed by phoenix), you can use the new heal skill exactly in between that window, to simply gain an additional finisher, leading to 24 stacks of might.

Furthermore, Anie demonstrates entering earth while casting phoenix so no time is lost. Your suggestion to cast arcane brilliance in fire before entering earth means that the attunement swap cool down will start close to a second later, which would leave you with nothing to do while waiting to enter water to cast comet. So unless I’ve miss-interpreted something, it sounds like you’d have less time, and possibly miss a lightning hammer blast finisher.

I’m not disagreeing with getting 24 might stacks. It is possible with persisting flames using the same rotation in Anie’s video. I miss it quite often, and when I do get it, it’s only just. Losing even half a second would, as far as I can see, make it impossible for me to get 24 stacks.

Dub.1273:

Which leads to the next point: ‘strange’ assumptions. If I recall correctly, you’re assuming warriors banners beeing up (i.e. a team setting) but also assume you’re the only person blasting fields. /logic?

Strange..? She assumes the gear they use, since it’s not uncommon to request specific gear for a dungeon run. The rest accounts for the likelihood that the other party members won’t concern themselves with playing for the group i.e providing might and fury. That concerns their trait setup and play style which, if you want to control, makes you arrogant, not the OP. You can simply ask a warrior to use a banner. It’s not difficult and certainly isn’t a ‘strange’ request.

Involvig other party members (even just one) into your rotation does not make S/F being optimal anymore.

Isn’t that why lightning hammer is used..? To increase the otherwise low damage? That being said, S/F is a logical set. It’s defensive to compensate your loss of blinds when lightning hammer is used up, and it can stack might faster and arguably better than S/D.

Dub.1273:

Fire Grab as example is leading to a slight dps increase over a pure LH chain and is aswell useable in the small downtime of the LH. Oh and you can technically get to 24 might stacks with S/D, which sadly leads to ~45% uptime on hammer instead of 90%. Other than that you’re missing out on an amazing 3 stacks might in comparison to S/F, once again under the assumption your party members are all really bad pugs (which might lead to problems keeping all amplifiers in a build and make other build choices better for such situation.

Now this is constructive! Fire grab is nice indeed, and I agree it’s a a higher DPS ability. Remember though that since you start stacking might in fire, your next attunement will not be water, meaning fire grab does not get the 20% damage modifier (which works out to be more than 20% when stacked with other active modifiers), and it will be cast with 12+ might stacks less than when you use lightning hammer (420 less power). These are important factors to consider when calculating damage – not the skill coefficient alone.

Dagger’s earth 4 blast finisher isn’t instant like the focus’s earth 4. You lose that window in which to cast arcane brilliance for no DPS loss. Dagger’s earth 5 however, can be landed in water for that +20%, but due to its cast time the direct DPS is about the same as the lightning hammer auto attack. For pre-stacking might, dagger’s earth 5 cast time is a valuable 3.25 seconds added to the middle of the rotation, which costs you blast finishers in the fire field with the lightning hammer, thereby reducing the amount of might you can stack yourself.

Here, I don’t see where the 24 might stacks come from. I still only count 6 blast finishers available, and the time taken to cast dagger’s earth 5 as I said, will cost you blast finishers with lightning hammer. Considering that, I really don’t see how you can stack more than S/F. Perhaps I’m missing something though. If I am, I’d be interested to know what it is.

Dub.1273:

- This doesn’t even need explanation. As you can glitch you meteor shower to make all meteors land at the same position, this skill alone justifies using it.

Uh.. being able to exploit a skill doesn’t justify using it in order to do so. Relying on, or teaching reliance on a glitch that will eventually be fixed isn’t good practice, or at all helpful. That undermines your point about using staff… Note that I’m not saying it’s a bad weapon though. I can see where it would be useful to use legitimately.