Guild Wars 2

I can get off 2-3 Ice shards (scepter 1) in the time it takes for shatterstone to finish it’s thing, and each ice shards does as much damage kittenterstone. But instead, for some reason, I have to stand there with my hand down my pants watching his really cool ice crystal grow and explode while being unable to do anything unless I switch attunements. Where’s the value in using shatterstone at all?

You can cast two rounds of ice shards during the recharge period of Shatterstone.

Shatterstone is not about doing damage, it’s about stacking Vulnerability, which increases the damage the target takes from subsequent attacks. The value in using Shatterstone is to have partymembers or teammates wail on the target while you spam Shatterstone to stack its vulnerability sky-high so that it takes a ton of extra damage.

Isila.2574:

spam Shatterstone to stack its vulnerability sky-high so that it takes a ton of extra damage.

To clarify for folks who don’t know and aren’t likely to check the wiki or anything (you know they’re there), that’s up to a max of 25% extra damage. Each hit of shatterstone gives 4% extra damage.

Isila.2574:

You can cast two rounds of ice shards during the recharge period of Shatterstone.

Shatterstone is not about doing damage, it’s about stacking Vulnerability, which increases the damage the target takes from subsequent attacks. The value in using Shatterstone is to have partymembers or teammates wail on the target while you spam Shatterstone to stack its vulnerability sky-high so that it takes a ton of extra damage.

I see, thanks for the answer. I guess I was just hoping that it wasn’t meant to prevent you from doing anything during the whole 2 seconds that it’s casting because in a fight, 2 seconds feels like an eternity.

I do agree with op, it just breaks the flow of combat. In the other hand you´re doing quick attunement dancing and skillcombos, then you´re suddenly limited to just waiting till the animation is done….how the hell are we supposed to react to that?

Shatterstone, switch to lighting while casting, lightning 2 and 3. Or switch to earth and use earth 2 second effect if you have the shield already on you. Or arcane skills. But this skill default vun last 15sec and can be cast strait after its finished, 15sec/2 ~ 7time in 15 seconds, 7 × 4 = 28 with a cap of 25 so you can spam this whilst the other 4 guys in your group lay down 25% more damage.

TGSlasher.1458:

Shatterstone, switch to lighting while casting, lightning 2 and 3. Or switch to earth and use earth 2 second effect if you have the shield already on you. Or arcane skills. But this skill default vun last 15sec and can be cast strait after its finished, 15sec/2 ~ 7time in 15 seconds, 7 × 4 = 28 with a cap of 25 so you can spam this whilst the other 4 guys in your group lay down 25% more damage.

Is that really worth it, though? It’s not like the Elementalist is the only one who can apply or maintain high stacks of Vulnerability, and you would be sacrificing a lot of damage to do that – keeping that up full time would be like telling your teammates to do your damage for you while you don’t bring much else to the fight, which kind of makes the whole thing moot while also making it harder for you bring other utility to the fight while you keep spamming it. Any time you switch out to another element you’re also going to be dropping stacks.

Shatterstone does so little damage. I think it really should be instant like the lightning 2 skill.

Delayed skill always lock you half or a sec after casting the skill.

Ice spike, shatter stone, dragon tooth. All are same and breaks my combat flow.

I almost never use shatterstone.

I went off and tried it on a golem dummy. Even with an extra 20% Condition Duration (20 into Fire tree) for 18 second stacks of Vulnerability, you top out at 20 stacks of Vulnerability, and even then it only lasts for maybe 2 seconds before you drop back down to 16 stacks. With the 20% cooldown reduction for water skills trait it’ll stay at 20 longer than it’ll stay at 16, but yeah. And of course, doing this means your own personal damage is nonexistent, so you’re basically hoping that the extra 20% damage each of your teammates is doing makes up for the fact that you’re not doing any real damage yourself.

On the other hand, I could simply go Engineer, and keep up like 12+ stacks of Vulnerability while simultaneously dealing really high AoE damage and inflicting chill/bleed/blind.