Guild Wars 2

Seeing how many Viper Builds appear for other professions, like Necromancer, Ranger, Engineer, Warrior, I was wondering what the best Viper build would be for an Elementalist. I’m making Viper gear for my necromancer and once I get the complete set I’ll try it on my Elementalist to see how it goes. But what build should I use. Talking about PVE here btw and if able Raids

Staff is a no-no because it doesn’t have any damaging conditions other than burning and burning application is rather limited, not to mention the rest of the skills deal high power damage so no reason to go condition.

Main hand
Dagger
Some application of Burning and Bleeding. Will probably camp Earth for the easy application of Bleeds, then swap to Fire for Overload + Burning speed/drake’s breath then back to Earth. Too bad there is no “Fresh Earth” to swap back to Earth quickly

Scepter
Similar to Dagger, Burning and Bleeding in Fire and Earth. The question is, which one is better in the end, Dagger or Scepter?

Off hand
Dagger
Ring of Fire provides some nice burning, combo with blast finishers and leap finisher (with Magnetic Grasp for example). Churning Earth applies loads of bleeding but it’s churning earth… not likely to hit.

Focus
Really it’s Ring of Fire vs Flamewall here.

Warhorn
Dust Storm + Wildfire provide conditions but their cooldown is huge compared to Ring of Fire, not sure if it’s worth it or not.

Utility skills:
Glyph of Storms in Fire Attunement or Earth Attunement
Feel the Burn Tempest shout
Signets?
Ice Storm from Frost Bow should be really powerful with all the Bleeds it provides plus the Frost Bow itself gives +20% condition duration
I was wondering if Flame Axe can be useful

Traits:
Power Overwhelming? (Fire)
Serrated Stones (Earth)
Written in Stone (Earth) for signet build
???

Ideas?

Viper PvE Ele

This is what I came up with between my own opinions and what you mentioned already. Its pure theorycrafting, and I haven’t bothered to run the numbers through any sort of deep comparisons, so take it as you will.

Weapons: Dagger vs Scepter is interesting, but I went with Scepter because I feel it hold up better when auto attacking. Flamestrike has that second attack that allows it to maintain even more burning than before and frequent blast finishers like Dragon’s Tooth are always enjoyed. On the Earth side, Hurl now adds a lot of long bleeds to pair with Stone Shards. I chose Warhorn because of the boon sharing and duration increase from Fire and Earth. Wildfire and Duststorm also add a good amount of extra damage.

Utilities: Wash the Pain Away, Arcane Brilliance, and Resto Sig are all options. I think the utility of WtPA is more desired though. Signet of Fire will probably do more DPS than most other options. Glyph of Storms and Glyph of Elementals should both be activated in Fire and probably add top DPS. Frost Bow also adds a lot of DPS and potential breakbar damage.

Traits: Fire is obvious, and Tempest’s Overloads add a lot for condition builds. Earth doesn’t really offer too much for Raid style PvE, so Arcane is the next best choice. In Arcane specifically, Elemental Surge and 2 Arcane skills could be interesting when activated in Fire Attunement, but Bountiful Power should win out overall. Pyromancer’s Training probably beats out Power Overwhelming in DPS and Persisting Flames might beat Pyromancer’s Puissance. You could maybe use PP as a Condi PS War replacement, but I’m not sure if it will actually work. Tempest doesn’t offer a ton through traits, but Unstable Conduit is added DPS and Imbued Melodies adds Boon Duration both individually and by proccing Sand Squall. If IM ends up not being that useful in practice then Elemental Bastion becomes the obvious choice.

I’ve always liked the idea of Condi Ele, especially with Scepter. After seeing the more recent balance changes to Flamestrike and Hurl I really wanted to make one regardless game mode. Now that I have a character slot free, I’m in a good position to do it.

I have no raid experience but i use a mix of viper/rabid/celestial on my ele.
Damage version is fire/earth/tempest. Overloads (expecially fire) do significant damage with viper.
Vor easy PvE signet build looks fine. In PvE i use the storm glyph and both fire or earth usage is fine depending what you need.
I could not get warm with dagger and prefer scepter but dagger should be fine too.
Warhorn is a good PvE weapon, i prefer focus.
No place for conjures on the toolbar. Ice bow can be tried. The greatsword is good but 180 CD is so huge …
Something like this pulls off some nice hybrid damage.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJArdncMA9XiNNAmNAcYiFBAzN1+aztBBgQ5BYIIsDKCA-T1RFABtrHIu9HqS53AnAg+V/pPlgA8AAWHcA8VvCgLswCLswCGwszO7szKEwi1A-w

Keep the builds coming. I’d love to see some DPS comparisons so we can judge if Ele condi dps is fine or not.

My build is not DPS maximized. It´s an allrounder to run araund. Ghotistyx build is a hard hitting one more glass cannon build. If you want to maximize my build then pick another rune like balthasar or what Ghotistyx did mix trapper + nightmare for condi duration or pick berserker rune but this costs runspeed.

If the idea is to maximize the amount of condis, why not use D/D? It applies more burns and the cooldowns are a lot shorter, and burning doesn’t really suffer in PvE, since mobs rarely have cleanses. With D/D, it’s no big deal to stack 20 burning on a foe.

So, there has to be a secondary reason, which I’m not seeing.

Sc/Wh should actually average out to more Burn stacks than D/D just based on weapon skills. I’m assuming 100% condition duration, Pyromancer’s Training and Persisting Flames, all other traits don’t matter.

• Flamestrike: ~7 stacks
• Dragon’s Tooth: maintains 3 stacks, spikes at 6
• Wildfire: 4 Stacks with 41.66% uptime (1.66 stacks)

• Drake’s Breath: maintains 4 stacks, spikes at 8
• Burning Speed: 3 stacks at 50% uptime (1.5 stacks)
• Ring of Fire: 2 stacks at 66% uptime (1.33 stacks) if stationary. An almost negligible additional stack if mobile.

Sc/Wh can maintain 11.66 stacks of burning while D/D maintains 6.83. Sc/Wh spikes at 17 stacks while D/D spikes at 13. This doesn’t take Power damage into account where D/D beats Sc/Wh. Sc/Wh can also stack and maintain more bleeding from Earth than D/D can (30.5 vs 25.33). This assumes you’re camping Earth. Proper DPS will be swapping from Fire to Earth and back with Overloads, but with Alacrity that should be about 11.5s cd. I’m not going to try to do the math to figure out how much burning and bleeding that averages out to be. I’m already wary of what I’ve done so far.

I am fascinated with this thread as well. Last time I asked about condi ele I got a bunch of grief for it, so I’m glad this is a viable thing now.

Not sure how this would work but it could be a good hybrid power/condi build

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBLhdygI0fJW2A43AwhJWEAshfwOoIEEAClPA3UbsN3C-TxBBQBVT53/2fwZPAAHq+DAOBA+TPwMVCSKA/EWB-e

weapons are changeable, just no staff.

I’m still a bit away of finishing my ascended viper set but once I get it I’ll test out all the builds to figure out if they are worth using over power or not.

In Raids, Viper Tempest is a solid No Go. There just isn’t enough damage, the cleave potential is minimal, and the July patch happened to hit all potentially viable Ele condi builds hard.

I did a bunch of theorycrafting and calculations to find the best builds several months ago. The Fire/Arcane/Tempest one really relied on you dodging every ~6.6 seconds to keep up with DPS. I believe D/Wh happened to be the best weapon combination due to how the cooldowns aligned, but again, this build doesn’t work anymore due to the nerf.

There’s an alternate Fire/Earth/Tempest build that uses Sc/Wh, and you actually get to Overload both Fire and Earth as part of the rotation.

In all cases, the damage is pitiful. You are nowhere close to the damage of Condi vanilla Engineer/Ranger, and you can barely do as much as a Necro before they Epidemic the crap out of everything and actually offer meaningful utility and damage. Oh, and if you’re curious I investigated the Fire/Earth/Arcane vanilla builds but they were strictly worse than both Tempest builds.

This may all change this Tuesday, but probably not. Anyways, here is the high watermark build (switch Shrapnel mine for Glyph of Storms if you’re not a Charr, and you can switch Sigil of Earth for Geomancy if you’re always in melee):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFIQJBLhdSfJU2AW0A4zGwHBWEAsgAQo8AMED2BFB3W7sN3C-TBSFQBub/BhpGAAeAA+6EA0QlfjUJY70D0PVfIFwiKrA-e

Alternate gearing is simple: Just try to get as close to 600 Expertise as you can.

To play, only cast Glyph of Elemental Power while in Fire. Cast Fire 2 and 5 and whatever crappy utility skills you’ve chosen off cooldown. Overload Fire, then stay in Fire until you have ~10 seconds left on the overload cooldown. Switch to Earth, cast Earth 2 and 5 and one auto attack, then Overload Earth. Switch to Fire after it finishes, repeat.

why viper and not sinister on ele?

for PvE i would also say at least a good portion sinister. WvW is diffent, there you should get your short duration condies last longer and without some vitality and toughness its goes just splat …

Interesting changes for condition builds in the latest balance patch. Drake’s Breath, Impale and Glyph of Elemental Power all provide more condition damage. Maybe the conditionmentalist isn’t very far away.

I have Viper Tempest build on metabattle with numbers. I also put the numbers on several posts on reddit.

From memory, with 100% bleed and burning:
Sceptre/Warhown is roughly 25.7k if you use cleansing fire, earth and fire signet.
Dagger/Warhown with cleansing fire lowers the dps to 23k but this I mostly blame on not knowing the rotation yet.
Both Sceptre and dagger do the same with Glyph of Elemental Power at roughly 24.7k.

This was tested on golem with 10k hp, all buffs, all profession buffs, and all conditions on golem.

If any of you haven’t watched Mighty Teapot’s stream… Watch. <3

I like to see a viper / zerk staff ele in wvw a kind of all in dmg build with the updated glyph.

maddoctor.2738:

Keep the builds coming. I’d love to see some DPS comparisons so we can judge if Ele condi dps is fine or not.

From a spvp point of view, in my opinion condi elmenetalist is a no go. You can make damage from burning and bleeding but for being viable , at least in spvp , the most important thing is not how much stacks you stack but how many different condition you stak. If i stack you 1, 2 or 3 condition quite often , it is quite easy to clean.
If i stack you 5 or 6 conditions it is really harder to clean. Conditions are cleansed by number, not by stack . Cleaning 10 burning stack or 1 burning stack is the same.
So condi ele becomes unviable against all the condi cleans that are in this meta.

You could go Sigil of Torment and Sigil of Blight for some cover conditions — although Blight looks pretty much useless compared to Torment.

blight has a much to short poision duration and long CD. 3s Poision with 5s CD would be great.

:P when raid first started. I was running ele burn build for vg. not the best compare to other condi prof for individual dps, but the support plus fire field were great. I have to try again if I have a chance