Guild Wars 2

I tried putting together a condition elementalist build, just to see with what I can come up with. http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAodhEmYbvx4gjEAEFtYSogBjHgohHiCXA-jUCBINBkCEkEAIFSQMHSZtaqIasKZLqWdDTHDQIgFzBA-w. Please share your input, and tell me if this build is viable, or if it lacks anything. TY. and pls be nice.

You might want to try scepter it is better in stacking bleed and burning. And your power is painfully low. Maybe try to squeeze some more power.
Also you could use superior sigil of corruption. But to be honest I think it would be better to focus more oon direct damage and make your condis hurt instead of full condi.

o kk ty for the input

The biggest problem you have is all the Rabid gear you have equipped. While on the one hand it does give you a tremendous amount of Toughness the Precision does literally nothing for you. Not only do you have virtually no power to multiply with Crits but you also have zero crit damage so you’re literally pouring into a stat that returns nothing for you.

Conditions, especially in WvW, are pretty much an all or nothing proposition because they have countless things stacked against them. Most commonly is -Condition Duration which, for example, my Warrior runs around with -93% duration on Chill/Immob/Cripple and -60% duration to base conditions. This pretty much forces you to counter this directly by going for Condition Duration yourself via Veggie Pizza (40%), 2 Superior Lyssa (10%), 2 Superior Mad King (10%) and 2 Superior Nightmare (4%) which added on from Fire (10-30%) can allow you to completely negate the -Condition Duration stackers at 94% Condition Duration.

The other problem is your total lack of Power. This leads you mostly towards Carrion Gear. If we give up 20% signet cool downs we can assure that Signet of Earth’s 180 Toughness is always on when coupled with 300 Toughness from Earth we’re pretty close to the 1600 goal. This, and since you will be spending a lot of time in Earth to keep Scepter 2 up (which the Armor gives 250 Toughness) you should be fine with this trade.

You could also afford to take 10 out of Air and put it into Signet of Air so you can get a stunbreaker which your build will desperately need while also giving you some runspeed. This will let you put 10 more into Fire for more Condition Duration and juice up the Fire Attunement which you will spend most of your time in when not in Earth.

If you’re going to stick with this much precision, you should go with Burning Precision (which is the only reason to go with Precision at all and even then it’s a REALLY bad Burn duration) or even better Internal Fire for more dmg.

The 20 points in Water are also debatable. Not a terrible decision, Shard of Ice is terrible along with the other choices other than Cleansing Wave meaning anything over 15 points (For the heal if you really want it) is wasteful. I usually throw that back into Fire which at that point if I’m asking myself between a Heal or Puissance or Persisting Flames I usually end up on 30 Fire. Not everyone’s decision and I’d get a 25/0/30/15/0 build.

I also found greater success with Signet of Water over Fire. While Fire is a super long Burn on a really low cool down (and I use it a lot for pve) the crazy Chill you get when you crank up to 89-94% condition Duration is amazing.

Hopefully this topic won’t get locked like the last one :p

Kodiak.3281:

The biggest problem you have is all the Rabid gear you have equipped. While on the one hand it does give you a tremendous amount of Toughness the Precision does literally nothing for you. Not only do you have virtually no power to multiply with Crits but you also have zero crit damage so you’re literally pouring into a stat that returns nothing for you.

Conditions, especially in WvW, are pretty much an all or nothing proposition because they have countless things stacked against them. Most commonly is -Condition Duration which, for example, my Warrior runs around with -93% duration on Chill/Immob/Cripple and -60% duration to base conditions. This pretty much forces you to counter this directly by going for Condition Duration yourself via Veggie Pizza (40%), 2 Superior Lyssa (10%), 2 Superior Mad King (10%) and 2 Superior Nightmare (4%) which added on from Fire (10-30%) can allow you to completely negate the -Condition Duration stackers at 94% Condition Duration.

The other problem is your total lack of Power. This leads you mostly towards Carrion Gear. If we give up 20% signet cool downs we can assure that Signet of Earth’s 180 Toughness is always on when coupled with 300 Toughness from Earth we’re pretty close to the 1600 goal. This, and since you will be spending a lot of time in Earth to keep Scepter 2 up (which the Armor gives 250 Toughness) you should be fine with this trade.

You could also afford to take 10 out of Air and put it into Signet of Air so you can get a stunbreaker which your build will desperately need while also giving you some runspeed. This will let you put 10 more into Fire for more Condition Duration and juice up the Fire Attunement which you will spend most of your time in when not in Earth.

If you’re going to stick with this much precision, you should go with Burning Precision (which is the only reason to go with Precision at all and even then it’s a REALLY bad Burn duration) or even better Internal Fire for more dmg.

The 20 points in Water are also debatable. Not a terrible decision, Shard of Ice is terrible along with the other choices other than Cleansing Wave meaning anything over 15 points (For the heal if you really want it) is wasteful. I usually throw that back into Fire which at that point if I’m asking myself between a Heal or Puissance or Persisting Flames I usually end up on 30 Fire. Not everyone’s decision and I’d get a 25/0/30/15/0 build.

I also found greater success with Signet of Water over Fire. While Fire is a super long Burn on a really low cool down (and I use it a lot for pve) the crazy Chill you get when you crank up to 89-94% condition Duration is amazing.

Hopefully this topic won’t get locked like the last one :p

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArdhEmYbux4gjDAkCtEeYABJMe0hGeA-jEDB4MAINgUggkAApQFRjtEMaVRBp+KsKZER1qbYmbKa2cC1CBsYOA-w . How about now. I personally think its better thank you again guys. Especially you Kodiak.3281 .

My advice is mostly traitwise. I’d only go 10 into fire for burning on crit You have 23% crit chance, you may as well use it to proc burns. Keep 30 in Earth, but you really should pick up diamond skin and ditch stone splinters for rock solid, the stability can really help you, and its one of the best earth traits. Take the 20 you hopefully removed from earth and put 10 in water and arcane. Make sure you get cleansing wave, and either regen/vigor on cantrip use (if you use cleansing flame or mist form, which in pvp you probably should) and the boon on attune change from arcane.

Condition DPS is about attrition and surviving. An ele need some points in water and arcane in order to outheal and outlast, and while your conditions wont last as long, being able to survive will be much better.

Also idk what sigils you use, but I’d consider sigil of doom, for the poison procs, since eles switch a lot, and the poison would really buff your DPS and help wear opponents down. As for the other sigil, generosity, corruption, or earth would be nice.

Also cleansing fire would fit this build well if you can slot it in. And I’d use glyph of elementals for extra DPS/boons/heals on the side since firey GS wont really help you much even if it can stack long burns.

Monkey boy.1697:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArdhEmYbux4gjDAkCtEeYABJMe0hGeA-jEDB4MAINgUggkAApQFRjtEMaVRBp+KsKZER1qbYmbKa2cC1CBsYOA-w . How about now. I personally think its better thank you again guys. Especially you Kodiak.3281 .

Here’d be my modifications:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArdhEmYbvR3gjDAkCmEeQADJMeohHkA-j0CB4MBkWAgEBMFqIaslgRrKKI1XhVJjIqWdDzcTRzmToWIgFzBA-w

1. Replaced Cleansing Fire with Signet of Earth. This was done for a few reasons:
1a. With a /Focus you get great condition management with Magnetic Wave removing 3 conditions on a 20s cool down. You’re also rocking Ether Renewal which is also huge Condition management to the point Cleansing Fire is redundant.
1b. The huge immobilize is fantastic in this build and lets you land things like Dragontooth → Flamewall → Phoenix combo.
1c. More toughness for even more survivability.
1d. You have numerous sources of burn as is.

2. Swapped Burning Fire with Pyromancer’s Alacrity. You could also still put in Burning Precision but as a 1s Burn it seems kinda pointless especially when you can pretty much perma burn with Signet of Fire. The 20% cool down will let you spam your main Fire combos more or come in handy when rocking a Staff (and this build is very Staff viable) for defensive situations where things like Static Field are too important to ignore.

3. Swapped Stone Splinters for Written in Stone. This will give you permanent Toughness and Precision. The Swiftness falls off for a few seconds after using the stun breaker unfortunately so watch out for that. Only a few seconds.

4. Swapped in Cleansing Wave into the Water line as it’s much more useful and turns Water Attunement into yet another Condition cleansing ability.

5. Changed focus to Carrion. We got enough Toughness now with Signet of Earth again. Also swapped Sigils to Corruption (debatable) and Battle (not debatable).

The power you have is decent considering you also now have Puissance for extra Might stacks. That said it’s still very low of the 2000 mark you usually want to be around to see real damage. I’m not entirely sold on /Focus but I haven’t tried it so I can’t give any commentary for or against it compared to /Dagger. As noted above all the weapons have decent conditions on them so they’re all viable so try playing around with different weapon sets and seeing what you like the most for your style (I mostly ended up on S/D personally).

Kodiak.3281:

Monkey boy.1697:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArdhEmYbux4gjDAkCtEeYABJMe0hGeA-jEDB4MAINgUggkAApQFRjtEMaVRBp+KsKZER1qbYmbKa2cC1CBsYOA-w . How about now. I personally think its better thank you again guys. Especially you Kodiak.3281 .

Here’d be my modifications:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArdhEmYbvR3gjDAkCmEeQADJMeohHkA-j0CB4MBkWAgEBMFqIaslgRrKKI1XhVJjIqWdDzcTRzmToWIgFzBA-w

1. Replaced Cleansing Fire with Signet of Earth. This was done for a few reasons:
1a. With a /Focus you get great condition management with Magnetic Wave removing 3 conditions on a 20s cool down. You’re also rocking Ether Renewal which is also huge Condition management to the point Cleansing Fire is redundant.
1b. The huge immobilize is fantastic in this build and lets you land things like Dragontooth -> Flamewall -> Phoenix combo.
1c. More toughness for even more survivability.
1d. You have numerous sources of burn as is.

2. Swapped Burning Fire with Pyromancer’s Alacrity. You could also still put in Burning Precision but as a 1s Burn it seems kinda pointless especially when you can pretty much perma burn with Signet of Fire. The 20% cool down will let you spam your main Fire combos more or come in handy when rocking a Staff (and this build is very Staff viable) for defensive situations where things like Static Field are too important to ignore.

3. Swapped Stone Splinters for Written in Stone. This will give you permanent Toughness and Precision. The Swiftness falls off for a few seconds after using the stun breaker unfortunately so watch out for that. Only a few seconds.

4. Swapped in Cleansing Wave into the Water line as it’s much more useful and turns Water Attunement into yet another Condition cleansing ability.

5. Changed focus to Carrion. We got enough Toughness now with Signet of Earth again. Also swapped Sigils to Corruption (debatable) and Battle (not debatable).

The power you have is decent considering you also now have Puissance for extra Might stacks. That said it’s still very low of the 2000 mark you usually want to be around to see real damage. I’m not entirely sold on /Focus but I haven’t tried it so I can’t give any commentary for or against it compared to /Dagger. As noted above all the weapons have decent conditions on them so they’re all viable so try playing around with different weapon sets and seeing what you like the most for your style (I mostly ended up on S/D personally).

O wow ty again, for this. I added you so I can message you in game if you dont mind, if I find questions I want to ask you. Hope Anet doesnt close thise, cus COND ELE are a very good role to choose. But just overlooked

Condi Ele is awful unless you’re full bunker.

Kodiak.3281:

Monkey boy.1697:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArdhEmYbux4gjDAkCtEeYABJMe0hGeA-jEDB4MAINgUggkAApQFRjtEMaVRBp+KsKZER1qbYmbKa2cC1CBsYOA-w . How about now. I personally think its better thank you again guys. Especially you Kodiak.3281 .

Here’d be my modifications:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArdhEmYbvR3gjDAkCmEeQADJMeohHkA-j0CB4MBkWAgEBMFqIaslgRrKKI1XhVJjIqWdDzcTRzmToWIgFzBA-w

…snipped..

Its a shame so many people try to shut this down without even giving it a chance.

As to bloodlust, personally I like to take doom (poison). Just personally. With 94% condition duration theoretically the poison should have a long, almost 100%, uptime(if not cleansed). This is coming from a sPvP point though (where the poison only really lasts 6-7 sec). I like to hit them where it hurts and remove their heal potential where possible.

Glad i found a more recent thread regarding Condi eles. been trying to go with a hybrid one for some time now. Now i’m not sure if it’s good or now with this current build i’m running. 20/0/30/20/0. Running a signet build it seems very interesting/ nice to me. Though I’ve wondered if i should take Written in Stone, over Diamond Skin. Since Signet effects still remain after being activated. Another thing too is taking Fire’s Embrace for the Fire Shield procing and elemental shielding, since you get a hefty amount of auras, weapon skills, so good access with protection. THough Deciding mainly if I should go D/D or S/D but D/D seems cooler for my character :<

TGSlasher.1458:

Its a shame so many people try to shut this down without even giving it a chance.

As to bloodlust, personally I like to take doom (poison). Just personally. With 94% condition duration theoretically the poison should have a long, almost 100%, uptime(if not cleansed). This is coming from a sPvP point though (where the poison only really lasts 6-7 sec). I like to hit them where it hurts and remove their heal potential where possible.

Haha right? I’m telling ya man, can’t have a conversation at all about it.

I fully understand why Conditions have everything going against them and most of time when running around I too am probably in the same generic setup as everyone else. That said I like to mix it up and have some fun and not play the exact same character style day in and day out and this is a fun alternative.

I get the Poison thing and it’s probably not a bad choice. Realistically people should carry multiple weapons to build up those charges then swap over like most people do with Bloodlust/Force.

Lucentfir.7430:

Glad i found a more recent thread regarding Condi eles. been trying to go with a hybrid one for some time now. Now i’m not sure if it’s good or now with this current build i’m running. 20/0/30/20/0. Running a signet build it seems very interesting/ nice to me. Though I’ve wondered if i should take Written in Stone, over Diamond Skin. Since Signet effects still remain after being activated. Another thing too is taking Fire’s Embrace for the Fire Shield procing and elemental shielding, since you get a hefty amount of auras, weapon skills, so good access with protection. THough Deciding mainly if I should go D/D or S/D but D/D seems cooler for my character :<

Fire’s Embrace. This gets brought up a lot. I mean every time. While Fire’s Embrace is a nice little perk, the main issue is that most of the perks to Auras are either in trees we don’t want (Air) for stats we don’t need (Fury) or with zero Boon duration don’t last long enough to really be useful (Protection). While it can be tempting to go halfway and build a hybrid template around this Aura generation the problem I find is it’s usually ends up either being a really weak condition build to support the new stats or a really weak power build without the superior Cantrip utilities.

Someone suggested to me in the last thread that I give up Fire 7 and Earth 10 (Alacrity in both) and give it a shot for the extra Protection but the truth is that I didn’t find myself any more defensive because the boon duration just fell short even when running through a Zerg in Zerg v Zerg conflicts (where I figured the Reactive Might would help the most). You may have a different experience and these two abilities would be where you play with that.

S/D or D/D or Staff and even S/F is a hard choice because they all have merits on a build built around Conditions and jacking up Condition Duration while still giving you decent Raw Power. I’d use whatever you’re most comfortable with and go with that.

No. trying to stack conditions as an ele is as viable as playing bunker thief.

Razor.6392:

No. trying to stack conditions as an ele is as viable as playing bunker thief.

Don’t you have Ride the Lightning and the lack of Berserker Gear choices people make to complain about somewhere?

Kodiak the problem is not the condition damage, the problem is your build !
Also I like how your build changes suggestion to the OP is a blunt copy paste of your own build.

No lol, I’d rather help fellow eles from wasting their time with useless builds that get severely outclassed by other professions.

And the troll gallery shows up right on time.

Zelyhn.8069:

Kodiak the problem is not the condition damage, the problem is your build !
Also I like how your build changes suggestion to the OP is a blunt copy paste of your own build.

I believe I explained in perfect detail why we switched things around. Had I just randomly told him to use that instead without explaining each switch I could see your point but the fact isI did provide reasons why to switch each option to which, omfgwtfbbq, he could decide to totally ignore if he wants to!

If you have a different Condition based build, feel free to suggest it as an alternative.

Razor.6392:

No lol, I’d rather help fellow eles from wasting their time with useless builds that get severely outclassed by other professions.

There’s already a plethora of information out on the cookie cutter 2000 power, 1600 toughness, 15000 hp, 50% crit, 75% crit power 0/x/x/20/20 base builds. If people wanted it, it’s readily available along with a variety of other builds even in the stickied topic up above at the top of this forum. Talking about the same build over and over and the very tiny and slight variations and their merits is boring and pretty ridiculous at this stage. Rubies give 0.001% more DPS than Divinity but give you 0.001% less defense. Cool story, bro.

How about, instead of making a drawn comparison to these existing builds that likely didn’t interest the player in the first place, talk about the merits AND pitfalls of the build or play style they are interested in. I mean if you can draw a conclusion as to why this build is a bad idea, why not discuss the merits of WHY it’s a bad idea to not only put weight behind your opinion (IE: You’re not just coming here to say, “It’s bad!” with no proof or thought) and to show you’re not entirely biased discuss any merits you might be able to think of (as not showing any merits also says a lot about you and your opinion as well).

I am going to be completely honest with you Kodiak.
No one here is expressing anything against your person.
We are saying that the build your are promoting is bad, for obvious reasons.
(The word “bad” may sound offensive, this is definitely not my intent, I am trying to be constructive here, so you may read “weak” instead)
I am going to explain to you the reasons why this is a bad build, but before you need to understand that we are not saying so to bring you down or to discredit you.
The only reason why the renown theorycrafters have not expressed their opinion on your build is because they believe it is not worth their time and that it is obviously wrong. Anyone can see this. But some people are starting to have some faith in your build and this is detrimental to the elementalist community.

Critique of your build:
The strongest argument I have against your build is that your damage output ill be very low while your sustainability is almost non-existent.
-You use direct damage increase traits specific to attunements, but in earth and fire only about one third (at most!) of your damage will be direct
-Pyromancer puissance becomes useless as soon as you swap out of fire, and since you have no arcana this will be for a good 15s.
-Alacrity spells can be interesting but they do not increase your condition damage in most cases
So in fact your build is twofold: it is a level 40 fire build and a level 40 earth build, with very little interactions between the two.
The key idea of any condition damage build is to be able to apply burn and bleed at the same time while covering them with other conditions, your build fails to do this.

I have nothing against you so please do not take this personally. I am just as disappointed as you that we have only few viable builds to work with! But it is not because you produce a build that is not mainstream that it will necessarily be a good build.

If I remember correctly Innocent Ouarrior published a condition build some time ago and it seemed decent to me, if I can find it I will post it here.

Sincerely, with no offense intended and with the interest of the community in mind.

Hey

I just created a staff WvW build based on condition damage for you. It offers extremely high condition damage while being tanky. It also offers a lot of group support for zerg fights.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImmbnR5wjDIEFmQGOeoBjgHUUMD7AA-jUyA4sgQBCSKsIasFsgU+iW5NsKZioa1Nm5uIa1SBAxaA-w

If you want to solo roam I would recommend switching to S/D. You should use Renewing Stamina instead of Blasting Staff and have a Superior Sigil of Energy in your scepter and the Superior Sigil of Agony in the dagger.

Don’t forget to have a second staff with the Superior Sigil of Corruption for some extra condition damage.

Zelyhn.8069:

-You use direct damage increase traits specific to attunements, but in earth and fire only about one third (at most!) of your damage will be direct

This is largely incorrect and why we focus on Power. Dragon’s Tooth, Phoenix, Ring of Fire and Fire Grab (4/5) all have heavy direct damage components which works very well with Internal Fire and Pryomancer’s Alacrity bringing the cool down on these abilities. Usually these things are unreliable to land in PvP, but with our large amounts of Condition based CC (such as from Signets) they are much more reliable at landing them. There are no Earth specific damage upgrades that I am aware of so I am not sure why you’d bring Earth up.

Zelyhn.8069:

-Pyromancer puissance becomes useless as soon as you swap out of fire, and since you have no arcana this will be for a good 15s.

This is an assumption based on the play style of an Arcane build (and other “renown theorycrafters” advice is generally useless in these scenarios) where as with this build we’re not going to be swapping every 15 seconds (but we do swap). The main purpose of Pussiance is to build additional might stacks so when we do swap into Earth the Bleeds are, by base, stronger. To which I’ve already argued it’s possible to go with a 25/0/30/15/0 build to get the heal instead if you’re so inclined over Pussiance. I prefer the extra Might stacks when stacking Bleeds.

Zelyhn.8069:

-Alacrity spells can be interesting but they do not increase your condition damage in most cases

They increase the frequency in which you can use your abilities which increases the more up time you have of conditions. For example spamming an ability 20% faster leads to additional stacks of a Condition. Do we really need to have a discussion again on up time of buffs/debuffs?

Zelyhn.8069:

So in fact your build is twofold: it is a level 40 fire build and a level 40 earth build, with very little interactions between the two.
The key idea of any condition damage build is to be able to apply burn and bleed at the same time while covering them with other conditions, your build fails to do this.

Given the mechanics of the game it’s virtually impossible to cover any condition. This is a fault with conditions and game design. The issue predominately comes from the fact that many spam abilities in the game (such as auto attacks in the “1” slot) have those spammable conditions you might not want to come off such as Bleed or Burn. This is to speak nothing of group scenarios (which WvW is a group scenario) where other classes will also passively apply conditions (intentionally or unintentionally) which will “uncover” your condition by applying a new application by it.

This is less a critique of my build and more a critique of the state of conditions in the game. This is a perfectly valid point to bring up when discussing any condition based build as every condition based build/class suffers from the same issue (I say that as a person with a Condi Mesmer, Condi Necro and Condi Engineer).

Zelyhn.8069:

But it is not because you produce a build that is not mainstream that it will necessarily be a good build.

This is the part you’ve never understood. No one is trying to compete with other builds except you guys. You’re the one who’s drawing the comparisons. I’m merely providing the best answer possible to the question. Obviously the person looking for an offbeat build isn’t necessarily looking for the most optimal all case scenario build. If they were, they would have asked for that.

Helping people in threads like this is all about giving people what they want. Most people, this is a game and they want to have fun and aren’t concerned about what some group of “renown theorycrafters” (which, sorry, lolololol) thinks a build or play style is best of the best of the best of the best.

We’re looking at the Double Rainbow and enjoying it while you’re explaining it’s just a is an optical and meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection of light in water droplets in the Earth’s atmosphere.

don’t use conditions if you’re going to wvw, power or healing is a more viable option

I’ve got some downtime so I’m going to test out Kodiak’s build in spvp hot join, just to see how it really works. That being said, the utter lack of sustain discourages me (you need either 15 in water OR 30 in Arcane or else you’re essentially a free kill in pvp) and after giving up, I shall try a bunker 0/0/20/20/30 Shamans Amulet build and see how well that fares, and I’ll let you guys know what I think.

If someone wants to try out a condi build, why the hell do some of you care? 100% serious. Did they buy gear with your money?

I have 6 full sets of gear (with diff stats) on my ele. Does it Make you mad that 2 of them are condi? Sometimes I like to mess around with it.

What someone else does with their time is not your business. Granted, condi isn’t as effective on an ele as direct, but my time is just that. Mine.

Some of you people…

nearlight.3064:

I’ve got some downtime so I’m going to test out Kodiak’s build in spvp hot join, just to see how it really works. That being said, the utter lack of sustain discourages me (you need either 15 in water OR 30 in Arcane or else you’re essentially a free kill in pvp) and after giving up, I shall try a bunker 0/0/20/20/30 Shamans Amulet build and see how well that fares, and I’ll let you guys know what I think.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fen.gw2skills.net%2Feditor%2F%3FfEAQJArYhEmebux2wjDAkCmEeQADJMeohHkA-ToAgyCuIKS9l7LTRyvsfNMYCC

That’s the SPvP version from the link in my Signature. Didn’t really work out the Sigils and was still experimenting with them quite a bit such as with Superior Sigil of Doom. Did a few games with it myself and had a blast against people.

After testing it out I’d say its only effective if you have great allies and you sort of snipe from a safe position, since the lack of sustain is very hard to deal with, but using a focus offhand helps with that a lot. I swapped air signet for fire, since that burn caused 8.5K DPS. Still I felt like it was relatively weak simply becuase its so hard to put condition pressure on the enemy. We only have access to bleeding and burning, and limited access to chill/cripple/weakness, whereas necromancers can apply bleed, poison, chill, weakness, fear, and torment (and possibly burning) in a matter of seconds. Engineers can stack bleeds like crazy in a grenade set up, and also have access to bleed, poison, confusion, and burn on a P/P set up with might from HGH. Elementalists simply aren’t built to apply all of their pressure through conditions. In fact I’d say that guardian is the only class worse than elementalists at condition DPS builds.

However the Bunker build I tried was a bit more promising. I still had pitiful condition application-pressure, but I had a lot more pressure simply through sustain and regen/protect/stability uptime. Which was very nice in group fights, but alone or outnumbered I wasn’t really able to kill anything, just keep them occupied.

Overall I’d say its best to respect conditions as supplemental effects that are nice for an ele to have in addition to its main damage attacks, burst and sustain, but its hard to be proficient in burst or condition without giving up attrition in the form of sustain.

Did you know: Pyromancer’s Puissance works when in fire, not just for fire skills but for skills; A) cast before entering fire but end when in fire, B) utilities & healing skills and C) through sigil activated effects.

I run a very un-optimal S/F build atm, its actually a joke, people were laughing at it last night.

20 15 10 15 10

Laughing till I killed most of them.
Only thing I couldn’t beat in 1v1 (lost to) was: Mesmer (never beat them anyways, OP 1v1 in my opinion) Ranger (waisted half the fight getting rid of his stupid spirits), a thief that ran the same build as the thief before him (one that I had beaten) and an Asura warrior with a hammer that I couldn’t see till it was too late (had him for a minute swing in thin air though unable to hurt me lol).

Only thing I couldn’t beat in 1v1 (stalemate) was a warrior with Soldiers, healing signet and banners grant regen. We were both at full health for a gold long time before we gave up)

Things that I did beat:
Warrior Sword Board / Longbow condition (hard fight)

Ele S/D GC (hard fight)

Thief P/D with stealth (similar build to the one I lost with) managed to kite his guild into a wall and DT them away

Neckros with condition and golem (hard fight, 40 something hp left at end)

Things I’m afraid of fighting:
Boon ripping thieves
Mesmers (condition or burst, I hate them both)

Things I enjoy fighting:
Warriors
Mesmer who don’t stealth (one of my favourite battles yet)
Other eles, always fun to watch them use all the heal mechanics and waist so much time healing when they could just finish me off lol (more time for my heals to come back lol).

While my build isn’t the most powerful in the game I enjoy it. Me and a friend run the same build through 5v5s and 8v8s (though more 5s) and troll the crap out of people. Never did you see an ele with 10-20 seconds of protection on it at any one time.

Edit:
As to underatted builds, I used to play wow (wraith and cataclysm). I run a demonology build on my lock, despite everyone saying go affliction. I could solo 2 man arenas vs certain builds, can tell you those guys would have been kitten ed. Then I ran Destruction on my lock and my friends told me to stop playing lock, after beating them in every dual and setup they tried.

When everyone ran daphoenix in gw2, I ran burst ele (though no where near as effective as no lagging eles lol) 0 15 0 25 30 with zerkers and divinity. I could beat your FOTM builds. Then I changed to focus (before the signet nerf … yes I say adding stun break is a nerf) and could still beat FOTM D/D builds. Now I run some random set of traits trying to find my way after the signet nerf.

Kodiak in the post where you talk about your condimentalist build you clearly state that it is designed for small skirmishes and single target attacks; so basically: duels.
You provided us with videos. Videos are a great way to demonstrate the potency of a build that is non-mainstream (for mainstream build we need maths). Then I demonstrated that your performance in those videos is largely under average.
Maybe if you were able to provide a proof of the efficiency of your build, by either defeating skilled players in duels or by showing us meaningful videos, we would reconsider our positions.

Until then what I see is the following:
-This is not a condition build, it is a hybrid damage build. The issue with being hybrid is that when you intend to do two things (direct and condition damage) there is a good chance that you will be bad at both. In your build your damage may actually not be bad (yet to be seen on video) but your sustain and supporting abilities are so few that it is obvious you will not be able to put out this damage. Nearlight confirmed this.
-The resources implied are not being efficiently used. When you are in fire you do no longer benefit from the cd reduction in earth and the bleed duration increase. When you are in earth you no longer benefit from the fire damage increase, the cd reduction and the pyromancer puissance. So half of the time half of these traits are wasted.
-Again, alacrity does not increase your condition damage output in most cases. This is because the vast majority of your conditions in scepter are applied by the Auto-attack.

Please try to understand that here we are not trying to compare builds. But we are trying to guide the less experienced elementalist away from bad builds. Many non-conventional builds are not the best choices, but that is not the question. If people want to play non-conventional build it is perfectly fine, but we will always make sure that they are non-conventionally optimal (like maybe for example TGSlaher’s build). Your build, Kodiak, is non-conventional and non-optimal.

You put a lot of effort in defending it. You are probably taking this too personally. Or maybe you just don’t know what it is to be efficient in this game?
Now stop fleeing: if you are confident about your build then go duel, even if you loose, or give us meaningful videos. Until then our position will remain the same: your build is a bad build.

To me it’s the random element of an encounter that makes me attracted to open world PvP scenarios such as WvW. I never know what I am going to face or what scenario I’ll find myself in (such as environment, allies or additional enemies, etc). Adapting and overcoming the situation is what I find quite enjoyable.

Duels on the other hand are anything but random because you know what class to expect, usually what build they’re running and sometimes you know about the player you’re facing and how to counter act that. It’s a controlled environment and I find it boring. Back in my day we called people who dueled carebears (or “do.Oling” lol).

The two videos I showed had one purpose and one purpose only: To counter the ridiculous claims that by not specing into Arcane or Water that I’d instantly die. I didn’t instantly die and I even survived through Zerg v Zerg level damage. I didn’t hotjoin SPvP and die instantly and to anyone. Instead you critiqued me auto attacking a Reinforced Door as if anything other than a Superior Ram’s thousands of damage (compared to even a couple 100 of untargeted FGS 4) would matter.

The problem with videos is that they allow anyone to Monday morning quarterback every move you make (like you did in the thread that got locked). This is why most people who post videos are posting videos that are so heavily edited they’re probably 100 hours of footage distilled into 20 minutes of various fights. Even then if you want to wanted to you could go after anyone. I mean certainly no one was going after Xunleashed and his video even tho he literally stands in a full Churning Earth in the opening fight. Just depends on how much you want to personally attack the individual and even then when you can’t do that you can just claim the people you’re facing are terrible and therefore everything is invalid.

It’s absurdity to the extreme and I can’t fathom a reason to why you’re worth the time it’d take to convince when you’ve already repeatedly proven you have no interest in being convinced. This is why I’m not interested in what you see about my build. Until you actually build it and play it in WvW and can provide basic feedback of your own experiences everything you say is academic.

I’m sorry to burst your bubble but you really aren’t doing a public service here. I’ve had numerous people message me in game and on the forums telling me to keep trucking on and don’t get discouraged by people like you. Builds and play styles in this game don’t require a “stamp of approval” by the “renown theorycrafters” club. They’re either fun and you play them or they’re not and you don’t.

Edit: Removed post as all replies were cleaned up.

Hopefully we can go back to discussing the topic but I think the OP got what he needs.