Guild Wars 2

Looking over our selection of skills I’m consistently amazed with how many of them have Burning or Bleeding on top of them. We have several traits that add Burning/Bleeding, either by extending the duration or just having it proc when we crit. Several of our utility skills apply burning. Since we have so much condition damage folded into our weapon skills, how come more people don’t use Power/Condition builds (or at least talk about them)?

Whenever anyone talks about high damage they seem to be implying that damage has to come in giant spikes, but why is that the case? Is it because there’s a defense against conditions (Utility skills/Vitality)? Because there’s a defense against burst as well (Utility skills/Toughness).

There’s no real point here, other than me noticing that my scepter auto attacks hit for around 2k bleeding or burning with full Carrion gear. That isn’t terrible damage for an auto attack! So….what’s the deal?

The deal is that people used from different games like big “white” numbers appearing on screen , anything different is considered useless, but the truth is 50% of ele dmg is conditions so….

Most decent players don’t usually keep conditions on them for very long. Eles have several traits that get rid of them fairly quickly. That being said, I use full carrion/undead runes and I can get a fair amount of kills.

I don’t know why people don’t talk about it more. I wish I could get more ideas for my build and gearing by reading what others are doing.

EDIT: I also play mostly WvW and only rarely do I do sPVP and actually haven’t touched any dungeons. For sPvP I don’t use condition builds.

Eh…damage is damage. Conditions ignore armor, but can be cured off. Different people like different things. So, that being said….

Can anyone suggest a decent, balanced Power/Conditions build? I currently use Signets, and trait for an Aura based build 20/10/30/10/0. I run w/ Carrion gear and Undead runes. It works pretty well, and I like it, but I don’t feel like I’m getting all that much value out of the signets. I enjoy the uptime I get on Fury/Swiftness/Protection from all the aura combos, but I don’t know if there’s a better way to maintain Protection. I could probably ditch Fury altogether since Conditions don’t crit, and I have no Precision on any of my gear.

What do you guys use?

Well in pvp its usually cured quickly. For pve, its not as good for large scale events because of stacking limits. Overall there’s nothing wrong with it though, you can use it while using a tanky build, or when the enemy has high defense. I think people just want more instant damage.

There are 2 large downfalls—
1. Cleansing them off in PvP (Biggest down side for pvp)
2. PvE conditions stack to a max duration or intensity. Once those stacks have been reached you get a very small fraction of your total condition length.

Conditions—As an ele—are still fantastic in most situations. I use them in PvP to make people blow cleanses early and THEN lay into them. It’s a rock paper scissors game even if they know how to play. Conditions can also be favorable if you are one who likes to hit and run (kiting around whilst they slowly die). This, most of the time, won’t kill them all that quickly, but when used properly and if you know your enemy it works out pretty well.

WvW—Using conditions in WvW is strange. In big fights it doesn’t work well because so many others get rid of conditions. They can be powerful, but rarely get full duration on targets.

PvE—Condition dmg is amazing—until you hit the 25 bleed cap and the 29sec burn cap. At that point your timers are getting pushed off by the next guy putting the same condition on. I think the condition balances need to be fixed a bit on PvE situations (Mass farming, champion fighting, and some dungeons).

Overall, however, I think the pros DO outweigh the cons. Mathmatically speaking, condition dmg builds should shine well—but the reasons above cause people to go with garaunteed damage builds (even though mitigated by armor). I love my condition build. Though it doesn’t have the bling like crit damage, its really fun to watch 15-18 stacks of bleed come of a target when they’re all yours! (2001 Condtion Damage with Corruption stacks).

The thing is Burst damage even with max Toughness builds we still get hit for 6k damage. Which is if you go for a vitality build is about 1/3 of our life. So Toughness actually does not stop burst damage. Where a condition only does about 500 – 800 damage a tick and can be cured by many methods.

I had said that better players will clear off conditions quickly in a previous post. I still stand by that. Luckily, enough people in WvW either don’t know they can clear conditions or don’t notice they have conditions on them. I often see my bleeds go their full duration.

I know that I’ve made assumptions that people are bad, but until I’m proven wrong it is working for me.

A guide I did about my condition build:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_eVeVSJri0&list=UUIPmJXRHX_2L7MMSPerCzgw&index=1&feature=plcp

And here some action:

Whats wrong with conditions?

The stacks don’t work well when 2 people or more run condition. Run with a necro, a guardian, a P/D, or D/D blossom thief, rifle warrior, short bow ranger, P/S P/P engineer and some staff mesmer builds and you will understand. The overwrites are a pain. That doesn’t mean condition damage is bad. Theoretically in a long fight you do more with condition damage (if you have enough conditions) than you will with direct.

In the long run though power crit combos just mesh better with others. There is 0 wrong with going with condition damage as long as you have enough power to back up all the direct damage you have.

Michael.1268:

I had said that better players will clear off conditions quickly in a previous post. I still stand by that. Luckily, enough people in WvW either don’t know they can clear conditions or don’t notice they have conditions on them. I often see my bleeds go their full duration.

I know that I’ve made assumptions that people are bad, but until I’m proven wrong it is working for me.

Got to sort of disagree. Burst players usually don’t carry enough condition removal to survive the dots anyway. Good condition spammers wait for you to blow the cleanses then dot you again or just continuously dot you. The more conditions the more likely you cant get rid of them all.

I will say this I usually heal through/cleanse conditions in such a way its not to big of a worry. I have faced some rifle warriors that just continue to pour it on.

I like condition damage as an ele, especially because it’s usually very reliable to apply. A lot of our skills are easily dodged, but you can’t dodge flame burst. I think it works well on a bunker elementalist, because while you are dodging, healing, and ccing the conditions are usually ticking away at the player health. I’m not an expert or anything, but it’s worked okay for me.

When I run with scepter dagger I usually switch out clerics for shaman, giving me a nice amount of condition damage (weakens my other skills a bit). I also carry 1 of each amulets on my current dagger dagger build. I switch the appropriate amulet for each occasion. If someone doesn’t dodge my churning earth in a fight and doesn’t hurt me too much the second fight I’ll chuck in carrions to ruin their day.

conditons are pretty strong but they have two main flaws

burning – stacks with duration rather than intensity. if you have 2 people doing burning, 1 person is getting the short end of the stick most of the time
Bleed – stacks to 25, which is good, but can be quickly reached if you run with necromancers. less likely to screw you over, but still a chance

Also certain bosses (indeed, I believe anything stronger than a champion) has some kind of natural resistance (ala guild wars 1) that causes conditions to end on them sooner. Some bosses will literally never even get weakness from my ele auto-attacks because it ends too quickly on them. Similar issues happen with burns and bleeds.

It’s hard capped while burst damage is given free reign.

A mix of burst and condition damage would be in order I think. If you only focus on condition, you will feel annoyed at the lack of skills for it. 30 earth/30 water/10 arcane with D/D is fun enough though. The burst damage is non existant, but you can survive for a long time and won’t lose in 1 vs. 1, but might not win either, since noone wants to dance around forever and will eventually just find other prey.

Conditions are too easy to remove / have removed.

I’m water specced – as are most other pvp elementalists out there – and by simply taking 2 traits in that line you render every condition based class / spec out there useless, and that’s not even mentioning any condition removal skills.

Any decent player will get conditions off of them as soon as anything reaches threatning levels – and the other players that actually let conditions run their course… well, you can kill those with pure direct damage just as easily.

For a viable condition build you need to be able to put up 4-5 conditions in a VERY short amount of time. Ele cannot do that therefore I think an ele condition build will never be viable.

There are SO MANY skill, traits, utilities, and even passives with VERY short cooldowns (10s for passives mostly, 10-20 seconds for skills) that remove a single condition. So you’ll never get the real damage condition ticking unless you can force a lot of the onto the enemy at the same time (e.g. conditionmancers. poison thiefes, etc.)

An elementalist overpowers enemies based on versatility and survivability. You should never spec too much into one type of damage, as an ele utilizes both condition damage and power fairly equally.

D/D elementalists utilizes the most out of conditions relative to S/D, staff ,etc. Staff and S/D tends to focus more on power/precision. In WvW, most people do not carry more than 1 or 2 condition removals at a time, and generally do not actually remove conditions when they need too. In addition, most people in WvW don’t have that much PvP experience, and don’t run full exotics.

If you look at a D/D elementalist, you have two types of condition damage – burning and bleeding. Both ignore armor, and they can be removed. Against an average WvW player, you don’t have to be concerned with your conditions being removed, and can assume that your conditions will do full damage. Against a skill player, all you have to do is apply cover conditions using Water 1’s invulernability, Water 3 and Water 4’s chill, Earth 2’s cripple, Earth 3’s immobilize, Evasive arcana dodges, etc. In most cases, your burning CD skills / bleed CD skills / cover conditions far exceed the enemy’s condition removal, with the exception of necros. Plus anyone who specs into condition removal loses DPS traits / utility skills as well.

Alot of AoE damage comes from conditions. Drakes breath (fire 2) and churning earth (earth 5) are two of your strongest and widest range AoE abilities and both are primarily condition damage based. Condition damage plays a big factor in how much AoE damage your dealing, so its important to have a decent amount when charging into an enemy army.

Also against high toughness enemies / damage mitigating enemies such as guardians, conditions damage is vital. You need burning and bleeding with cover conditions to kill a proper tanking guardian.

In WvW, most people do not carry more than 1 or 2 condition removals at a time, and generally do not actually remove conditions when they need too. In addition, most people in WvW don’t have that much PvP experience, and don’t run full exotics.

I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to say here. If the people you are fighting are either bad, or outgeared, then it really doesn’t matter whether you use the most efficient means to kill them, or the 2nd most efficient, or the 3rd most efficient.

@Arc

That was a generalisation that holds true in most scenarios from my experience in WvW. You should factor in the effectiveness of a trait/ skill / damage type based on the enemies you generally face, as this accounts for how successful that trait /skill /damage type is. For instance, if all of your enemies can remove conditions immediately repeatedly, then what would the point be in applying conditions in the first place? It would be useless and ineffective by this standpoint. I wouldn’t exactly call not having lots of methods to remove conditions a “disadvantage” either.

Against a skilled player, if you read down further, you simply apply cover conditions / apply more conditions than the player can remove.

Not having personal condition removal is a disadvantage, precisely because you leave yourself open to get tooled by heavy condition oriented builds.

If you’re a decent player, you build to kill guys at your skill level, not below. You can steamroll people below your skill/gear level no matter what build you run, but if you have a bad build and run into a guy who knows as much about what he’s doing as you do about what you’re doing then it comes down to the prep that’s gone into the build, so if the build is bad you’re going to lose the fight (unless your opponent makes some huge mistakes, obviously).

I’m not saying condition damage is bad, or that there aren’t ways to make it work – I’m saying that ‘well, there a bunch of nubs running around in WvW with terrible gear and builds, so condition damage is great!’ isn’t a glowing recommendation of it’s advantages. Likewise, if I said ‘there are a bunch of nubs running around in WvW with terrible gear and builds, so auto-attacking them to death is a masterful strategy!’ I’d be completely wrong, and providing an incomplete picture of reality.

If you’re better than them, bad players will die no matter what you do. Don’t build to kill bad players.

Here is why condition damage isn’t ideal on elementalist: condition damage is best for classes that can stack various conditions (especially bleed or confusion, since they stack intensity).

Can elementalist do this? Yes, but only in dagger/ or scepter/ earth form. And even then, you are limited to only bleed. You could switch to fire to apply burning on top of that, but then you are locked out of earth for over 10 seconds and you will stop stacking bleeds. Switching to either air or water would kill your dps entirely since they do not have any damaging conditions. Elementalist is best played using all 4 attunements and all their abilities, so using only earth and fire is not a good limitation.

Classes that do well with condition damage, like pistol engineers for example, can easily stack a large amount bleeds on auto attacks and get much easier access to other conditions like burning and poison to add even more to their dps.

You could play elemenatlist with a condition damage build, but you would be sitting in earth auto attacking almost all the time except for maybe starting fights in fire to apply burning. That would be pretty boring in my opinion and you would probably not deal as much damage as other condition damage builds.

At the end of the day, conditions do play a big role in elementalist damage, but they don’t work particularly well with a condition damage spec and a condition damage spec doesn’t compliment our class mechanic.

TheGuy.3568:

Whats wrong with conditions?

The stacks don’t work well when 2 people or more run condition. Run with a necro, a guardian, a P/D, or D/D blossom thief, rifle warrior, short bow ranger, P/S P/P engineer and some staff mesmer builds and you will understand. The overwrites are a pain. That doesn’t mean condition damage is bad. Theoretically in a long fight you do more with condition damage (if you have enough conditions) than you will with direct.

In the long run though power crit combos just mesh better with others. There is 0 wrong with going with condition damage as long as you have enough power to back up all the direct damage you have.

Michael.1268:

I had said that better players will clear off conditions quickly in a previous post. I still stand by that. Luckily, enough people in WvW either don’t know they can clear conditions or don’t notice they have conditions on them. I often see my bleeds go their full duration.

I know that I’ve made assumptions that people are bad, but until I’m proven wrong it is working for me.

Got to sort of disagree. Burst players usually don’t carry enough condition removal to survive the dots anyway. Good condition spammers wait for you to blow the cleanses then dot you again or just continuously dot you. The more conditions the more likely you cant get rid of them all.

I will say this I usually heal through/cleanse conditions in such a way its not to big of a worry. I have faced some rifle warriors that just continue to pour it on.

This guy put it the best. Condition cleansing isn’t that big of a deal, conditionmancers specifically are much more of a worry.

But the biggest issue is that if you get 2-3 condition damage players together, they just about cancel eachother out.

Also condition damage doesn’t work against objects, ex. WvW doors or oh so many aggressive things in the ground in PvE. Since conditions don’t work, you have to rely on pure damage. I know that ArenaNet is aware of this issue, but I haven’t heard much on it in quite a while. I’m sure it’s in a priority list somewhere.

Besides the staff Ele does always apply conditions. It is good for PvE solo and PvP just because one cannot cleanse it all the time. Look at conditions as a nice addition to the other damage you make.

Also, Earth magic provides some defense, toughness and condition damage increase which is not bad at all. As I said, nice addition but do not consider it as only source of damage as it will fail in certain situations.

I have tried all-round build in PvP and results were good enough. 20 earth/20 arcana the rest water/fire (whatever works better). ~2k attack, +~950 or so condition damage and ~2.3 toughness along with divinity rune. All this with increased precision from items (46% critical chance) and you have free base damage increase which works good with multiple projectile weapons. I can see this working even better in PvE especially with burning chance on crit or Glyph of elemental power.

Conditions can be cleansed but direct damage can be reduced via toughness and the reduction is permanent. So there is no ideal situation.
I personally choose the middle ground. The big pro about conditions is that it really works well on glass cannons in PvP and ticks while kiting in PvE

I use conditions on my S/F(D) point defender build, scepter has easy ways of applying conditions so no matter how often they cleanse they will always have conditions on them. As a point defender you can’t really rely on brute force (You leave your defense open) so I prefer to outlast my opponent, as far as I know I have about 1k healing and 900+ condition damage with 3k toughness so I can usually outlast. Guess it’s playstyle more than anything.

Just from running around a couple of days in WvW fiddling with a S/D Carrion build I can see one great benefit to conditions. Big numbers appear on your opponents screen too. When you hit them for 7k with one shot they go overboard with the defensive and healing skills. When you tickle them with bleed they seem not to notice until half their health is gone. I’ve got some more fiddling to do, and I’m trying to come up with a bit more burst to quickly take someone from 50% to 0% before they heal.

With my elementalist, I prefer to put a little bit in everything because as an elementalist, I do a little bit of everything. Given standard diminishing returns apply on any stat, this is actually more efficient too.

This allows me to deal reasonable damage, condition damage and healing without relying on any of them.

We dont have enough reliable AoE and we cannot stack condition on single target fast enough. That is why. And because of attunemnet swapping, it is harder for us to keep constant pressure on target. After all, only fire and earth can pressure with condition dmg. Generally, power/crit can still do decent condition dmg (as a nice little bonus) while hybrid or condition builds suffer from low direct dmg.

My Elementalist is just shy of 60 and I’ve been working on a build based on condition damage. Granted, I don’t do WvW or SPvP, but I love it! All of those bleeds and burns add up to some very nasty damage, especially when using AoEs.

When I hit 60 my traits will be 20 apiece in Fire and Earth, and 10 in Water. I’m wearing Carrion gear with 4 Major Adventurer Runes, and a couple of Major Necromancer Runes. For slots I’m using: Signets of Restoration, Water, and Earth, along with Cleansing Fire and Glyph of Elementals.
All totalled I’m focusing on Conditions, Vitality, Toughness and a dose of Power; this gives me a nice balance of survivability and deadliness. Seriously, so far it has been great, my dagger-wielding Elementalist is a lot fun to play, and she is very effective at what she does.

Now, of course, this being the Internet and an MMO forum, there will be all kinds of people keen to point out the flaws in my build.. But, this works extremely well for me, and that is what counts.

I use carrion gear myself with D/D. I like it in WvW, though I don’t usually do the zerg thing and focus instead on small-group objectives like camps. A lot of my teammates are softer so I usually initiate by zooming in and unloading AoE conditions (you have plenty to cover your initial burns/bleeds with). If they’re falling back, I keep on trucking. If not, I use LoS to let my condis tick while I heal up and my guildies keep pewpewing.

I like balanced stats on a ele because I hit for solid direct damage and my conditions do solid damage, so I’m not really useless against any type of build.

Burns are infinately easier to apply than bleeds, and one burn is worth 7 stacks of bleed. Opponents removing conditions doesn’t mean much when your fire attacks are constantly re-applying one of the best damage oriented conditions available.

Rather than focus on bleeds, consider condition damage for burning in a more realistic situation. This is why I feel that power + condition damage is good for elementalists. Yes, burning is easy to cure, but it will deal a sufficient amount of damage with only 1 or 2 ticks before it’s cleansed, and punishes opponents for not cleansing it immediately with additional damage. Elementalists have many ways to inflict burn, much more so than bleeds.

What’s wrong with conditions? Nothing. Not as long as you use them properly. If you’re focusing on conditions, you won’t be a top damage dealer in events where you have to focus on one mob for a long period of time alongside 30 other people, but so what?
In an explorable dungeon, you’ll kick butt. In WvW, you’ll kick butt. Farming, Condi Eles kick butt because our condis are pretty much all AoE. sPvP, you’ll also kick butt.

Some people talk about how good players cleanse their conditions in tourneys and stuff. This is true, but that’s why we have several attunements with different conditions and different strategies. Personally, I start off in air, blow stuff, swap to earth fast, lay down boatloads of bleeds, and then swap to fire the second I see them cleansed. From then on, they’re getting burned and slammed with damage. Or you can start in fire and swap to earth. The nice thing there is that you get extra toughness in earth for later in the fight but you have the option to stay in fire if you really want since burns are easier to keep applied after a cleanse.

As for how an ele does damage best, it depends on your playstyle AND your weapon. With staff, power precision builds can be better for damage than condi damage builds.

I have to totally disagree with Lifelike, though. D/D earth attunement has TONS of bleeds. Also, burning is only about as powerful as approximately 3 to 4 stacks of bleed. With the sigil of the geomancer, you can get that many stacks on someone instantly and start building from there. And by myself, I can maintain 12 stacks of bleed on someone in an ideal situation. And that doesn’t even count Churning Earth.

I haven’t really played much with Scepter, so I can’t speak to that, but I’ll link my build for anyone interested.
http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/elementalist#3|3|1119|2817|48|100|1342|20|1665|1653|0|10|1887|0|0|30|1645|1646|1891|10|1684|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|3|28043|61745|49988|49988|49988|49988|49988|26064|48790|0|0|0|0|

I’ve been toying with using water signet in place of cleansing fire and I’ve thought about swapping the purity sigil for something else, but that’s it for now.
In PvE, I use an identical trait build aside from the reduction in glyph CD from the air tree and I use glyph of storms and glyph of elementals in place of lightning flash and tornado. I also use half carrion gear and half knight gear.

PinCushion.7390:

Eh…damage is damage. Conditions ignore armor, but can be cured off. Different people like different things. So, that being said….

Can anyone suggest a decent, balanced Power/Conditions build? I currently use Signets, and trait for an Aura based build 20/10/30/10/0. I run w/ Carrion gear and Undead runes. It works pretty well, and I like it, but I don’t feel like I’m getting all that much value out of the signets. I enjoy the uptime I get on Fury/Swiftness/Protection from all the aura combos, but I don’t know if there’s a better way to maintain Protection. I could probably ditch Fury altogether since Conditions don’t crit, and I have no Precision on any of my gear.

What do you guys use?

This is my dilemma, and I am struggling to decide on my exotic armor stats because of it.

I am thinking that I will go half Carrion/half Berserkers. As a S/D, condition damage is absolutely unavoidable, because no matter what you are not going to be spending the majority of your PvE time in air or water. So why not increase your condition damage? And then the fury is just too good to waste, so I will probably get half Berserkers, for the precision and critical damage.

Conditions are funny. I reached 19s eruption with 13k dmg bleed on it. And thats not even its max. Its brutal in wvw when i get to land it several times. Pepople often dont cleanse it so 2 eruptions down most players.

PinCushion.7390:

Looking over our selection of skills I’m consistently amazed with how many of them have Burning or Bleeding on top of them. We have several traits that add Burning/Bleeding, either by extending the duration or just having it proc when we crit. Several of our utility skills apply burning. Since we have so much condition damage folded into our weapon skills, how come more people don’t use Power/Condition builds (or at least talk about them)?

I suppose because all the “cool kids” are running high Arcana builds based on some fantasy belief that they simply must stack tons of boons to be effective. Its not true, but there you have it.

I have run a balanced Power/Condition build for weeks and loved it! It did really nice spike dps and the bleeds with +20% bleed durations were always enough to down pretty much everyone. Eruption + Lava Font with this build was pure evil at taking down pretty much everyone that got caught by the Eruption blast. Condition removals in Wv3 really do not happen all that often so a build like that with Staff is freaking amazing.

They don’t go Arcana for the boon duration … It’s nice, but that’s not why.

Rainshine.5493:

They don’t go Arcana for the boon duration … It’s nice, but that’s not why.

Certainly that’s why. Leaving the Traits out of this discussion, the boon stacking is really the only reason to go high in Arcana. Attunement swapping CD is meh and certainly not a good enough reason by itself to do it except for possibly a D/D build, and even that is very questionable.

…Why would we leave the traits out of a discussion about why people trait arcana?

Rainshine.5493:

…Why would we leave the traits out of a discussion about why people trait arcana?

Well, you have a point.

Its just another thing thats wrong with the combat in this game. Burning should stack just like bleeds do. There should actually be less was to remove dots, that would actually balance out the burst of thieves and warriors.

I dont really understand how this game allows only two real classes to actually make a real glass cannon build. People wouldnt complain about thieves so much if other people could 3 shot them back.

So far the way the pvp in this game works its seriously lacking since all you have are two classes with extremely high burst and a bunch of classes with bunker builds playing the supporting cast.

If you’re planning to 1v1 w/ conditions, Glyph of Elemental Power has a lot of potential, especially as used in Air or Earth.

boozer.7815:

Rainshine.5493:

They don’t go Arcana for the boon duration … It’s nice, but that’s not why.

Certainly that’s why. Leaving the Traits out of this discussion, the boon stacking is really the only reason to go high in Arcana. Attunement swapping CD is meh and certainly not a good enough reason by itself to do it except for possibly a D/D build, and even that is very questionable.

It’s not. As staff user, you go 20 arcana for Blasting Staff. As D/D, you go 20 arcana for faster attunement swaps, permanent vigor and fury on attunement (which coupled with Zephyr’s Boon in air pretty much spells permanent fury). 30 arcana can be negotiable based on whether you like Evasive Arcana or not (personally, I don’t care about it). Funny enough, 25 arcana could be useful for a condition build, since it has a chance to apply conditions on critical hit.

Condition build is a problem in groups, that’s all there is to it.

Sharpe.1485:

Conditions are too easy to remove / have removed.

I’m water specced – as are most other pvp elementalists out there – and by simply taking 2 traits in that line you render every condition based class / spec out there useless, and that’s not even mentioning any condition removal skills.

Any decent player will get conditions off of them as soon as anything reaches threatning levels – and the other players that actually let conditions run their course… well, you can kill those with pure direct damage just as easily.

i disagree.

with the right choice of traits sigils and runes you can apply so many bleed per second that only a guardian purely skilled for condition removal can keep up.

scepter channels 9 stacks in 1 1/2 second. so basically your opponent has to start removing conditions quickly. the trick is to apply more then one condition and to do it constantly.

i am really having fun with my bleed ele. single handed applying 25 stacks of bleed in about 4-6secs on boss mobs is a lot of fun…

Ether Renewal, Cantrips providing Regen which provides condition clear, Cleansing Wave (skill), optionally Cleansing Wave (trait). Keeping conditions off as en Ele is stupidly easy, even as a dps build.

Some condition damage is good.

Throwing ALL your damage into condition is bad.

As someone else said you can reliably throw burns on people pretty easily with d/d. They’re not going to be able to cleanse everything. However if you solely depend on condition damage you’re going to get owned. You need a mix.

does burn work???
i played condition a few weeks ago going with bleed and it worked very well against non thieves.
thieves just vanished then killed me.
but i would chew guardians and warriors and other large people up and spit them out. it only takes 4 rotations to stack lethal amount of bleeds on a target unless they clense.

oflow.2157:

Its just another thing thats wrong with the combat in this game. Burning should stack just like bleeds do. There should actually be less was to remove dots, that would actually balance out the burst of thieves and warriors.

I dont really understand how this game allows only two real classes to actually make a real glass cannon build. People wouldnt complain about thieves so much if other people could 3 shot them back.

So far the way the pvp in this game works its seriously lacking since all you have are two classes with extremely high burst and a bunch of classes with bunker builds playing the supporting cast.

There’s an Ele spike build that’s AS powerful as backstab thieves but with a shorter CD.
It’s not just thieves and warriors. they’re just the most obvious.
And glass cannon builds aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Pure condition builds are awesome in their own right.