Guild Wars 2

I wanted to know how much benefit swapping attunements really gives to Elementalist DPS, and how much of the benefit is utility.

Method:
Set traits to 0, unequip all gear except the relevant weapon(s). Record the (tooltip) damage and cooldown of all weapon skills. Calculate optimal damage rotation (via graphical optimization) in fire only over 60 seconds based on cast-time and cooldown information. Divide total damage by 60 to get DPS. Repeat for stance dancing rotation. Repeat for stance dancing rotation with 9s element return cooldown instead of 15s. Calculate DPS percent differences. Repeat for all weapon sets (Dagger/Dagger, Dagger/Focus, Scepter/Dagger, Scepter/Focus, Staff, Trident.)

Currently I only have data for Scepter/Dagger (it’s a lot of work.)
Fire attunement only: 802 DPS
Stance dancing, 15s return timer: 811 DPS
1.1% difference between fire only and stance dancing.
Stance dancing, 9s return timer (30 points in arcane): 910 DPS
13% difference between fire only and stance dancing.
Stance dancing, return timer removed: 1024 DPS
24% difference between fire only and stance dancing with the return timer removed, 12% difference between stance dancing with the 9s timer and no timer.

Sources of error:
Most trait lines currently provide significant benefits for staying in one attunement. Not having traits thus benefits stance dancing.
Cast times are not explicitly listed. I timed with a stopwatch and rounded to the nearest half second. Most (but not all) casts take about 1s.
I assume you can swap from one element to another and cast a skill instantly, with no delay. This benefits stance dancing.
I assume all skills hit, and all do their total damage instantly, possibly after a delay (eg Dragon’s Tooth drops after 2s, so if vulnerability runs out before it would do damage but after the cast I don’t add vulnerability.) Since conditions are currently stacking capped this provides benefits to Earth’s bleeds that are unlikely to be realized in a fight with another condition user who can afford to stack pure condition damage. Not counting this benefits stance dancing.
In addition, power and condition damage are additive stats, and gearing for a mix tends to be worse than focusing on one (or better, power + precision/crit damage, which are multiplicative stats.) Stance dancers do much of their damage from a combination of direct attacks and conditions, and thus have worse itemization. Not counting this benefits stance dancing.
Several sigils provide benefits when you “swap to this weapon in combat” which works on attunement swap. These may benefit stance dancers.

A 1.1% difference is not terribly significant, especially due to the increased effort required. A 13% difference is significant, but requires a heavy investment into Arcane traits. This would likely be offset by the reduced points in other trait lines (most non-staff builds take at most 10 points in Arcane, adding, say, 20 points in Air would give ~10% crit chance and +20% crit damage) In addition, almost all of my assumptions were made to benefit the stance dancers. The real DPS benefit is almost certainly lower, possibly even in favor of the non-dancer.

TL;DR: Swapping attunements provides a slight DPS benefit at best, possibly a detriment, and should be used primarily for utility. This seems to stem from the lack of synergy between trait lines and the presence of the timer to return to a previous attunement. Removing the timer to swap back to a previous attunement would increase DPS by up to about 12% for a stance dancer and up to 25% for someone converting from staying in one attunement to stance dancing.

Interesting. Can you give more details on how you are doing the math and the results of it. The hard numbers vs the % increase for example.

Also how can an Elementalist remove the CD on switching completely? Or did you do the math on that just for theory?

How does optimized stance dancing look damage wise compared to only using Stone Shards?

What is the highest burst damage they can output for each of these options you’ve created with just weapon skills within 15 seconds? How does that compare to just spamming Stone Shards?

Lots more questions along this vein if you have interest in running the math. I assume you already have some speadsheets or something set up to help you?

Did the math for removing the cooldown completely on theory.

I’m actually using Inkscape to design the rotations.
I’ve attached the fire rotation, each box of the grid = 0.5 seconds. Time extends to the right, box length indicates cooldown (or cast time in the case of auto attacks.) The boxes extend downward just to make it readable.

Stone shards alone would do 810 DPS, putting it almost the same as a 15s cd normal stance dance.

The hard numbers are the DPS, which I’ve already given. If you want total damage, multiply by 60.
Fire only: 48,146 damage. Stance dance, 15s cd: 48658 damage. Stance Dance, 9s cd: 54583 damage. Stance dance, theoretical cooldown removed: 61439 damage. Stone Shards only: 48600 damage.

15 second bursts:
Stone shards: 12150 damage = 810 DPS
Fire Only: 13078, 872 dps
Earth Only: 14747, 983 dps
Stance Dance 15: 16309, 1087 dps
Stance Dance 9: 16309, 1087 dps
Stance dance 0: 16855, 1124 dps
A 13% difference between the burst damage of Earth only and Stance dancing with no cooldown, and a 10% difference for Elementalists as they are now.

I think this is great information. Could you give the rotation you used for calculating the dps, i.e. which skills did you use in what order? Thanks for you efforts!

So just using Stone Shards out DPS’s all of fire over 60 and 15 seconds when it is optimized and everything hits (including Dragon’s Tooth)?

I knew it was the best sustained DPS spell ele’s have but didn’t realize it compared so well everything else in rotation.

Is it easy for you to compute the time frame in which each of the above options has its highest DPS?

It’s probably just couple seconds with a Dragon’s Tooth, an auto attack and Lightning Strike but I want to make sure.

Appreciate your work, thank you.

I can tell you straight up I do waaaay more damage than that without changing attunements, ever. I am a condition damage Elementalist, with roughly 1300 condition damage and I do well over 1500 DPS steadily with bleeds and burns. Each one of my bleed ticks is at around 110 and I can easily get 12 stacks of bleed one, though typically I get it upward to 20 using Churning Earth or my Glyph of Storms which does bleed/blind. This is a Scepter/Dagger build btw, in which I can spam the auto attack and stack 12 bleeds by itself. Then my crits have a chance to burn as well as having signet of fire which is like 11 seconds of burning. I think 1500 might be a little low I’d have to check the numbers again sometime since it has been a while since I looked at the numbers coming up since nothing lasts long against me anymore short of bosses and other players. I think it is closer to 2000 DPS honestly.

Good information here Peregrinus

I think attunement swapping is good but there should not be a need to constantly do it. I know I don’t do it too frequently and I have a “base” attunement in which I start from and then finish in.

I think Anet should modify the elementalist in a manner that will make each attunement have good dps but will promote attunement swapping infrequently. A person shouldn’t have to “constantly” do it just to match the output of another class.

Yeah it’s definately the lack of synergy.

They need to focus on traits to be useful in every element. Traits like 30% on crit to burn. As opposed to, 10% more dmg while in fire attunement.

is…this….hope….for…new elementalists to not be swayed away from the profession due to the amount of “work” perceived?

Zadi.2784:

is…this….hope….for…new elementalists to not be swayed away from the profession due to the amount of “work” perceived?

Possibly, but as it currently stands we’re still below the other classes for both DPS and survivability, and the utility gain is not terribly significant given our long cooldowns.

Shisho, of course you do. You have gear and traits. Traits tend to improve single elements (10% damage while attuned to X anyone?) over swapping, except for Arcane which improves swapping. The point of not using traits is to improve the situation for the stance-dance case. The point of not using gear is to remove that as a variable, especially since different builds get different benefits from gear.

SAI Peregrinus.8410:

TL;DR: Swapping attunements provides a slight DPS benefit at best, possibly a detriment, and should be used primarily for utility. This seems to stem from the lack of synergy between trait lines and the presence of the timer to return to a previous attunement.

Exactly what I came to believe. Fire is the attunement you want to be in. If you cannot be in Fire, because stuff is killing you, then you switch to control in Earth and Air or heal in Water. The DPS skills in non-Fire attunements are often only used to pass the time till Fire is ready again, with a few exceptions. I’d love to be able to truly focus on one or two elements, alas currently that’s not really possible because of damage differences and lacking skill synergy within attunements.

Fascinating data in this thread. Thank you so much for the effort!

You simplified this way to much. There are way more things you need to take into account when calculating, the actual dps all depend on the build. all you did was prove that before you have traits unlocked you might as well stay on one element. my personal build is all about boons and to max my damage i need to combo with my own attacks and with my build i can boost my damage up almost 1k. but no matter what the build you have 70 trait points meaning that its not going to all be in one element causing switching to give certain bonuses, also the fact that each element is made for different situations. Its eles like you that stick with 1 element that are making us all look bad. This class is not made to sit on one element and any elementalist doing so is a subpar player.

By the way with my build I can get up to 3.6k damage easy with 44% crit 15k hp and 2100 armor and a 33% damage reduction most of the time, not having a problem surviving or keeping up with other classes damage. Yes our class is harder to play but stop using that as a crutch and start trying to find ways to level the playing field. The way I see it you have two choices 1. Sit on 1 element and be out damaged by just about all other classes and have less survivability 2.put in the extra work to be one of the few pro eles in the game right now, I chose the ladder and im having a great time proving my dungeon parties and pvp groups wrong.

Killer, just FYI I did the simplified version first. I’d love to see your build, as I’m currently testing various builds for both “stay in 1 element” and “stance dance constantly” playstyles. My goal is to find provably optimal strategies for various situations, this thread just came out of an interesting observation from the start of that project. I’m using PVP gear for tests including gear, since that lets others easily replicate or contribute to the testing.

In that case I apologize I misunderstood the intent of this test. I thought you were just trying to show that 1 element is better and it was giving me flashbacks of having to revive eles ridiculous amounts of times in dungeons that sat on 1 element and assumed they were out damaging me cause I wasn’t dying lol. as for my build im still ironing it out. It’s a variation of the normal ele boon build but I went 10/10/10/10/30 instead of 20/10/10/10/20. So far its works better than I could have imagined the only issue im having is holding my might stacks at 25, as of now I can reach it relatively easy but without other group members helping replenish my stacks it tends to fall and stay between 13-18. My plan is to test out different runes with might duration. Currently im using one that gives 20% and also gives me 50% magic find but im debating about going with three groups of 2 runes to get 60% might duration total because the magic find doesn’t seem to help at that low of a percentage and my survivability seems good so the only thing I really want is more damage and more crit. But as of right now i’m running with random stats on my armor so once I get the power precision toughness armor and the 981 max damage power precision crit damage daggers( replacing my 808 max and 869 max ones) I should have no problem out damaging other classes and staying alive.

yeah theory warriors at its finest, you know in pvp you actually get hit and you actually have to move, and im not sure who said stance dance should boost your dps ?

check a pvp scenario (assuming you play ele staff, otherwise go learn to play before posting)
you cast your fire stuff (obviously) and see 5 kids standing where ur meteors are falling, naturally you change to water so you can slow them and throw and ice spike while your’e at it. Then bounce towards lightning to put static field and buff yourself while youre at it, in case you need to run, since the attunement will have recharge after this. And then go to earth to do shockwave followed by well placed cripple while your eruption is channeling. Also you’re ready to use a magnetic wave thing the one that repels projectiles which is the best skill in the game tbh.
Sure you can sit on fire attunement and spam fireballs and lava fonts but they wont hit anyone unless you actually slow them with your other attunements, or you’ll die cuz u wont have speed/reflection buffs

what killer is saying is similar to the build im using since first beta on ELE and it works great. You die in 2 sec, if you let them get you. IF they don’t get you then theyre in for a bad ride

incisorr.9502:

yeah theory warriors at its finest, you know in pvp you actually get hit and you actually have to move, and im not sure who said stance dance should boost your dps ?

check a pvp scenario (assuming you play ele staff, otherwise go learn to play before posting)
you cast your fire stuff (obviously) and see 5 kids standing where ur meteors are falling, naturally you change to water so you can slow them and throw and ice spike while your’e at it. Then bounce towards lightning to put static field and buff yourself while youre at it, in case you need to run, since the attunement will have recharge after this. And then go to earth to do shockwave followed by well placed cripple while your eruption is channeling. Also you’re ready to use a magnetic wave thing the one that repels projectiles which is the best skill in the game tbh.
Sure you can sit on fire attunement and spam fireballs and lava fonts but they wont hit anyone unless you actually slow them with your other attunements, or you’ll die cuz u wont have speed/reflection buffs

what killer is saying is similar to the build im using since first beta on ELE and it works great. You die in 2 sec, if you let them get you. IF they don’t get you then theyre in for a bad ride

Well the way I have it my auras give my 33% protection and I have earth armor as one of my skills and I have the arcane shield that comes on at 25% hp so i don’t die quite that fast and I also run d/d for pve. Haven’t gone that far into pvp to care enough to change so im usually d/d accept in wvw I usually roam with d/d and use staff in big fights. By the way staff ele is not the only viable weapon choice for eles.

Incisorr, I’m saying that the people who keep saying “Stance dance and you’ll suddenly gain tons of damage!” are wrong. “Stance dance and you’ll gain some utility.” is correct. I’ve never said anything about that, and as you point out chill can be quite important to actually get your spells to hit. I’m simply attempting to provide some data to the “Ele is UP vs Ele is fine” debate, not to tell anyone that they’re noob/can’t play/shouldn’t stancedance/should stancedance/etc.

An easy example: You can do nice damage as a pure earth condition damage S/D ele. You have a good slow to keep them in your range, good toughness, and health from Carrion gear. You’ll still swap to water when you need to heal/get more slows. But that’s a case of utility being needed, and as per the thread title this is “when utility is not needed.”

Also, I’m obviously ignoring the 25 stack global limit on bleeds, and the “highest condition damage wins, everyone else does nothing” on burns.

SAI Peregrinus.8410:

Incisorr, I’m saying that the people who keep saying “Stance dance and you’ll suddenly gain tons of damage!” are wrong. “Stance dance and you’ll gain some utility.” is correct. I’ve never said anything about that, and as you point out chill can be quite important to actually get your spells to hit. I’m simply attempting to provide some data to the “Ele is UP vs Ele is fine” debate, not to tell anyone that they’re noob/can’t play/shouldn’t stancedance/should stancedance/etc.

An easy example: You can do nice damage as a pure earth condition damage S/D ele. You have a good slow to keep them in your range, good toughness, and health from Carrion gear. You’ll still swap to water when you need to heal/get more slows. But that’s a case of utility being needed, and as per the thread title this is “when utility is not needed.”

You gained 522 EXP

SAI Peregrinus.8410 has levelled up!

Intelligence + 1

SAI Peregrinus.8410:

Incisorr, I’m saying that the people who keep saying “Stance dance and you’ll suddenly gain tons of damage!” are wrong. “Stance dance and you’ll gain some utility.” is correct. I’ve never said anything about that, and as you point out chill can be quite important to actually get your spells to hit. I’m simply attempting to provide some data to the “Ele is UP vs Ele is fine” debate, not to tell anyone that they’re noob/can’t play/shouldn’t stancedance/should stancedance/etc.

An easy example: You can do nice damage as a pure earth condition damage S/D ele. You have a good slow to keep them in your range, good toughness, and health from Carrion gear. You’ll still swap to water when you need to heal/get more slows. But that’s a case of utility being needed, and as per the thread title this is “when utility is not needed.”

but your still leaving out combo fields. an example would be making a fire field and comboing with a blast finisher this will give you 3 stacks of might thus increasing your damage. so by changing skills you do actually gain dps.

I’ll not be attempting to include combo fields in the next set, but after that (once I have determined the power coefficients for all S/D skills and can thus accurately calculate their damage as power increases) I’ll include might and combo fields.

Basically, it’s easy math (nothing more than multivariable calculus,) but lots of it and I’m a bit time-limited. Just like with physics where you learn projectile motion on a point mass with no air resistance, then a sphere, then a rigid sphere that can collide with the ground, then a sphere that deforms on collision with the ground, then a deforming sphere with air resistance… etc. If I tried to start this with all the variables I’d be unable to build the equations.

And after that, I’ll find the power coefficients for staff, then D/D, D/F, and S/F. Underwater weapons if time permits.

Also, again, please post your build (traits/stats, etc.)

makes sense and im looking forward to hearing the results. i will post it for you eventually but as of right now i really want to work out all the kinks before i have it evaluated.

Quick data:
PVP gear, Scholar runes, Berserker’s amulet and Jewel, 30 (III, VI, XII)/25 (VI, IIX)/0/15 (III)/0 traits.
Power: 2304
Attack: 3299
Condition Damage: 0
Precision: 1810
Crit: 47% chance for x2.03 damage
+10% damage to burning targets, 60% chance to cause vulnerability on critical hit

Now with crits! And average vulnerability!
Earth, 60 second rotation:
E5, E1 18x, E5, E1 18x
69470 damage over 60 seconds = 1158 DPS
Earth, 15 second rotation:
E5, E1 8x
19715 damage over 15 seconds = 1314 DPS

Fire, 60 second rotation:
F4, F2, F3, F5, F1 x2, F2, F1 x3, F2, F4, F1 x2, F2, F1, F3, F1, F2, F1 x2, F4, F2, F1 x3, F2, F1 x3, F2, F3, F4, F1, F5, F2, F1 x3, F2
120220 damage over 60 seconds = 2004 DPS

Fire, 15 second rotation:
F4, F2, F3, F5, F1 x2, F2, F1 x3, F2
33918 damage over 15 seconds = 2261 DPS

TODO: Condition damage build for fire/earth standstill, then a stance-dance build. Calculate coefficients. Calculate combo field bonuses. Edit above to account for chance-based vulnerability and crits. Other weapons. Determine player runspeed, use to account for DPS increase caused by chill. More stuff I won’t list for now.

Sooo where’s the staff data.

DrTenma.7249:

Sooo where’s the staff data.

OR….
How about thanks for all the work you are doing while not working (if you do work) to help us obtain some information and perspective.

I dont know, i have over 1200 rounds with ele in spvp since i started this game (from beta till now) and its currently not my main class (but is my most played class.)
From experience i can say that staff glass cannon is by far the best choice ele can make, it also does highest damage (with ease) and provides best survivability.

What you don’t count is like i said that people move around and the range, if you fight in the middle of foefire legacy thing and if you’re with a d/d or a s/d then you won’t even have range to hit everywhere on the place and you may spend precious seconds in trying to get close. As a staff ele you can hit the entire time since 1200 range is huge. Not to mention meteors which all do 3-6k hits with the glass cannon build, really, other stuff can’t even begin to compare to staff

d/d is easily counterable by stability buff which everyone with half brain has
s/d is counterable but stability + condition cure, arc lightning spammers are really meat for warriors and such.

Considering i know ele to the bone, i really find d/d and s/d eles as food for my main class(which right now is warrior , and is going to stay warrior unless they make them boring or something). Easiest to kill are eles who come up your face and start doing some random stuff and jump around, just lol its embarrassing to even watch them.. altho i have to admit that toughness/condition damage ele is okay for 1v1 with scep/dagger or even d/d but this game isnt a 1v1, its really bad in anything else

BlueprintLFE, thanks for the kind words.

Dr. Tenma, hopefully later tonight I’ll have constant-attunement for fire staff with 30/20/0/0/20 build up.

Incisorr, I’m attempting to (slowly) build a model for damage in all situations.
My main is an Ele, so I started with Ele.
I’m trying to quantify damage output potential, once I have that modeled I can add mitigating factors (dodges, snares, incoming damage, values for every major and minor trait in the game, etc).
Once that is modeled numerical methods can be used to find the optimal Ele build for any given situation.
Then I can expand to other classes.
I’m not sure how much I’ll end up actually doing, a “maximum potential” model is useful in its own right, and is easily modifiable to a minimum potential (assume all conditions are immediately cleansed/all AOEs dodged out of). So ATM I’m working on:
Maximum potential damage modeling of stance-dance and constant-stance builds (this thread).
Average ability damage/healing modeling, and stat valuation (elsewhere).
Actually playing the game.

The second requires multivariable calculus, and I’m loath to scare people here off with “difficult” maths. I mostly just use it in constructing the builds I chose to test, and picking what gear to use anyway.

Awesome stuff here guys.

Ok, Staff, Fire, 30 (6 7 12)/20 (6 8)/0/0/10 (5 8), Scholar runes/Berserker gem
60 seconds:
F1 x24 + F5 x1 (Meteor shower’s cast time makes it a poor idea single target) + F2 x13 + F3 x8
On average, 4 stacks of might are maintained in this period (attunement bonus wears off)
76256 Damage over 60 seconds = 1271 DPS

15 seconds:
F1 x6, F2 x3, F3 x2
On average, 5 stacks of might are maintained in this period
18324 Damage over 15 seconds = 1222 DPS.