Chillionmancer
I am liking the MM with well. The control build above is good for some situations but lacking in damage for 5v5. I used this 20/10/20/20/0 with well build last night and it’s great for point defend or assault. Staff and d/d with well of corruption though well of suffering would work too. Full eagle runes which despite what you might have read should give the most damage against opponent under 50% health including sigil of air. Minions are bone minions, bone fiend and flesh golem. Fastest I’ve ever killed a thief …
The problem with extended duration skills in tournament or structured pvp is good players never leave up conditions for long so there are better runes to utilize.
The problem with extended duration skills in tournament or structured pvp is good players never leave up conditions for long so there are better runes to utilize.
Would they be decent to bait cleanses out of opponents? I don’t do tournaments, but it seems like that’s what they’re designed to do. I also get the feeling that spammable group cleanses are way more common than they ought to be.
The problem with extended duration skills in tournament or structured pvp is good players never leave up conditions for long so there are better runes to utilize.
Would they be decent to bait cleanses out of opponents? I don’t do tournaments, but it seems like that’s what they’re designed to do. I also get the feeling that spammable group cleanses are way more common than they ought to be.
It’s done all the time, but the rate at which condition cleanses are available in a good ele/guardian team means your goal is to blow a guy up with conditions in 2-4 seconds before they can drop a light field or ele regen bomb. Good teams wipe conditions extremely fast, so it becomes more about managing, interrupting and timing and less about damage or duration.
Where chill works best is in PvE against several trash mobs you cannot afford to ignore. Its use is limited but can very potent if reducing incoming damage is more important and dodging is difficult. Chill is like Protection but requires the targets do not remove conditions. However, when facing multiple mobs, the damage-reduction from Chill, Blind, Fear, and Cripple are worth a lot more than Protect because the benefit multiplies by the numbers you face. Epidemic also becomes essential for the same reason.
In PvP, your opponent has healing and condition removal timers you need to keep in mind so doing more damage faster using bleeds, poisons, bursts and direct damage should get higher priority than just making chill longer. Use runes that improve your overall damage instead of those that just improve chill.
(edited by Anchoku.8142)
The problem with extended duration skills in tournament or structured pvp is good players never leave up conditions for long so there are better runes to utilize.
Would they be decent to bait cleanses out of opponents? I don’t do tournaments, but it seems like that’s what they’re designed to do. I also get the feeling that spammable group cleanses are way more common than they ought to be.
It’s done all the time, but the rate at which condition cleanses are available in a good ele/guardian team means your goal is to blow a guy up with conditions in 2-4 seconds before they can drop a light field or ele regen bomb. Good teams wipe conditions extremely fast, so it becomes more about managing, interrupting and timing and less about damage or duration.
2-4 seconds?!?!
That makes most conditions in the game effectively worthless! Why even design them in the first place?
The problem with extended duration skills in tournament or structured pvp is good players never leave up conditions for long so there are better runes to utilize.
Depends on your team-wide condition output vs their team-wide condition removal. Sure plenty of teams might have good condition removal, but it is usually 1 condition every 5-10 seconds per person removing (assuming it is spread out). That makes high single condition duration builds (like only trying to keep up chill) quite bad because it has a high likelyhood of being passively cleansed off in battle. However if you have a build with high weakness, chill, poison, and bleeds (and then consider that allies will be putting out burning, bleeds, and various conditions depending on build/class), you will see that condition application can very, very easily outpace condition removal.
The question is really can you make use of that kind of condition coverage, or are you better off doing something else?
Something I’ve yet to learn about GW2…..
Is cleansing “First In First Out” or “First In Last Out?” Do you cleanse the most recent or the oldest condition first?
In a big wvw team, setting up as a conditionmancer, corrupter, and well-bomber can be pretty productive as far as driving the battle line but focusing runes on chill duration is less effective than improving power, precision, and critical damage (bonus percent over normal crit damage) because of condition removal. Focus on maximizing direct and condition damage. Save chill duration for PvE.
The problem with extended duration skills in tournament or structured pvp is good players never leave up conditions for long so there are better runes to utilize.
Would they be decent to bait cleanses out of opponents? I don’t do tournaments, but it seems like that’s what they’re designed to do. I also get the feeling that spammable group cleanses are way more common than they ought to be.
It’s done all the time, but the rate at which condition cleanses are available in a good ele/guardian team means your goal is to blow a guy up with conditions in 2-4 seconds before they can drop a light field or ele regen bomb. Good teams wipe conditions extremely fast, so it becomes more about managing, interrupting and timing and less about damage or duration.
2-4 seconds?!?!
That makes most conditions in the game effectively worthless! Why even design them in the first place?
Bhawb has the numbers correctly it’s effectively every 5-10 seconds depending on team makeup.
Conditions are far from useless, as many condition removals can only remove one condition type at a time or three if they are lucky. This means massive condition stacking and spreading is an amazing form of damage.
Plus if you forced the opposing team to focus on condition removal, you have done your job because they aren’t dealing damage and are playing defensive.
Something I’ve yet to learn about GW2…..
Is cleansing “First In First Out” or “First In Last Out?” Do you cleanse the most recent or the oldest condition first?
Condition types are cleansed in order of application. At times that’s annoying because I will want to cleanse a Poison and instead I cleanse a bleed and vulnerability.
Something I’ve yet to learn about GW2…..
Is cleansing “First In First Out” or “First In Last Out?” Do you cleanse the most recent or the oldest condition first?Condition types are cleansed in order of application. At times that’s annoying because I will want to cleanse a Poison and instead I cleanse a bleed and vulnerability.
So that would increase the value of pulsing skills like CPC and Well of Darkness (traited for Chill) because it would ensure that Poison, Weakness, or Chill were always the “newest” condition and therefore would be less likely to get cleansed?
Something I’ve yet to learn about GW2…..
Is cleansing “First In First Out” or “First In Last Out?” Do you cleanse the most recent or the oldest condition first?Condition types are cleansed in order of application. At times that’s annoying because I will want to cleanse a Poison and instead I cleanse a bleed and vulnerability.
So that would increase the value of pulsing skills like CPC and Well of Darkness (traited for Chill) because it would ensure that Poison, Weakness, or Chill were always the “newest” condition and therefore would be less likely to get cleansed?
Yes and no. Well of Darkness is great if no one notices in fights that you are blind/chilling them. Once you get to a certain level of Tournaments players become too good at avoiding standing still for 5 seconds. CPC is the same, you drop it, you get a tick maybe two and they dodge out of it.
Something I’ve yet to learn about GW2…..
Is cleansing “First In First Out” or “First In Last Out?” Do you cleanse the most recent or the oldest condition first?Condition types are cleansed in order of application. At times that’s annoying because I will want to cleanse a Poison and instead I cleanse a bleed and vulnerability.
So that would increase the value of pulsing skills like CPC and Well of Darkness (traited for Chill) because it would ensure that Poison, Weakness, or Chill were always the “newest” condition and therefore would be less likely to get cleansed?
Yes and no. Well of Darkness is great if no one notices in fights that you are blind/chilling them. Once you get to a certain level of Tournaments players become too good at avoiding standing still for 5 seconds. CPC is the same, you drop it, you get a tick maybe two and they dodge out of it.
I would imagine so, but isn’t that the point? Stand still and take damage or dodge and burn more endurance. I’m talking “In Theory” here, because I don’t really do tournaments (certainly not high-end). I am very interested in how they work, though (WTB Spectator Mode in GW2). I feel like all other areas of the game design are hinged around tournament balance, and so what works or doesn’t work there is a good clue to what will be balanced in the future.
I fully expect Elementalists to get more nerfs because (from what I hear) they are nearly required for tPvP teams. I don’t do tPvP because I’ve also heard that in order to really excel you have to play the game like it’s your job, and you end up spending more time talking with your team members than your family. I don’t know if that’s true, but it fits the mold other MMOs have set.
I remember higher end WoW players, both raids and arena, had to devote a large portion of time to the game in order to really succeed.
I would recommend checking out the podcast by Khalifa and Symbolic, and once we get the EU and NA tournament updates rolling listening there as well for better tournament advice.
CPC and Wells are amazing in WvWvW and sPvP, but they lose a lot of value in Tournaments unless timed when a team goes to burst down a player by dropping CPC or WoD right on your teammate thus protecting him while focusing down the opposing player. It’s all about communication and timing. However, in tournaments there is no reason not to take both epidemic and signet of undeath for any condition build. so that leaves you with one free spot for whatever you want.
As for ele’s nerfed, probably not in the way you think. They are highly valued because of their mobility which is mandatory in tournaments for a roamer. If it’s simply must have’s then the following classes are in both EU and NA all the time.
Bunker Guardian, Bunker/Portal Mesmer, Balance/Bunker Ele, Condition/Hybrid necro
Everything else rotates, but your standard teams carry those four with a fifth being whatever they have. This is your current Meta. The reason is those 4 have great synergy, and almost all of them can fit into any makeup of a team without any heavy adjustments. If you run Burst Ele, 100bWarrior, Theif, or Power/Minion Necro than you have to build your team around the player to make sure they are protected. Because while they can do some serious damage they also face some serious issues if not protected by the right team.
I agree with the chill build probably not being suitable for tournaments though I haven’t tried it. That’s why I mentioned spvp thinking that implies 8v8 hotjoin, where any decent build can work or fail miserably because you run into all kinds of players and builds. It’s fun for that, the mobile classes hate it lol. I will say in my opinion if you’re going to do a chill build you need to add duration. Keep in mind that this is a LOT of chill too. Every weapon swap, the well, staff 3, dagger 4, focus 5, DS 2 and I probably missed something. Oh plague too if you want to do that. So no big deal if it’s wiped because it can be on again in 5 seconds or less. I also think this is a lot more playable build than the Mr. Freeze ones I remember with d/d and d/f.
The second build was really good in one night of tournaments. I held home point great, was good to attack mid and only died 1v1 to a ranger that got the jump on me when I was trying to backdoor their home point and that was still a close fight. You can actually just run any normal MM build like 30/0/20/20/0, 20/0/30/20/0 or 20/0/20/30/0 and swap in well of suffering or corruption. I used only corruption but I think suffering will be good too. The main idea is to explore what can be done freeing up one minion utility slot and adding a well certainly does the job for me. I like it better for tournament than any all-in MM build that I’ve tried.