Guild Wars 2

I got lucky and won a fight I should have lost. (And one of the cool things about GW2 is that sometimes people stop and chat after a WvW fight – thx to my opponent for chatting afterwards.)
http://youtu.be/41g1nid7G98

Winning this came down to lucky hits by the drake, and an opponent who just missed a heal.

So here’s the question: With a trapper condi build, how should I try to fight a diamond skin ele? It seems like I need to create a direct damage burst, but my build is really not set up for that. I guess if I knew it was going to be diamond skin ele, I could switch to a dps pet. Any other tips?

Here’s my current build – thx!
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNQQNAnfVjEq0ua3KmrQ1aABhaVA0+FChWgd9mBbQKjaEv9A-TFyCABA8AAO+QAAo+gw3fwT1fm4MAkoSwsU+FAABwRP6RP6RPazcmzcmzcmFCYxaA-w

From what I seen, the Ele hp only dropped after you hit with entangle, so if you had missed that, would be in a bad situation. Also, it was your pet, with critical hits that managed to get the hp below the diamond skin threshold as you pointed.

I’d take my chances and swap the spider for the jungle stalker for a bit of dps before the fight started. With the pressure and might from the jungle stalker and the marsh drake plus the poison to cripple the heal, would probably make it easier to hit the threshold and remove the condition immunity.

Besides that, being a full condition, without changing pets or build, I guess what you can do is kite around long enough for the pet to deal with the necessary damage.

On the other side, that ele surely didn’t used the profession to its full potential. Would be very hard for you to keep kitting the way you did and pretty much survive if had hit you with chill, poison, burning and bleeding constantly while still immune to conditions.

In these situations you need to learn to do thing like kite your opponent in front of your drake while il you cast its F2 and then try to land your condis. Since you are dependent on a long pet cool down to win the fight you need to make sure it lands, so learn to control the F2 in the sense that If your opponent has protection up, is out of range, or behind your drake and going to cancel the F2 then you should learn to use F3 and F1 to stop the skill and have your drake reattack the ele. This way you can get that damage you need without ever putting the skill on full cool down without it landing.

Direct dmg BURST? You realise that if the ele is squishy, you need to deal dmg as low as 1200 to invalidate diamond skin. Nothing to call a burst here.

If you chose to keep your current build then kite around till pets deals enough dmg. Btw drake often tail swipes just after pet swap, makes it easier to land on melee enemies if you time your pet swap well.

You could add a bit of power into your build by just swapping corruption sigil with bloodlust, you’d be surprised how many people assume you run power build and then they not ready for a condi bomb.

I personally would run sword/dagger over SB, that would help a bit as it’d give you more defence (You could have avoided much more damage) but the sword also scales decently with power which would be more than enough to take them down past the threashold. Also a feline/wolf/bird pet would have helped, they do a decent amount of damage.

Thankfully, to take Diamon skin they’ll have to forgo arcane or water, either one cripples them defensivly overall as they’ll have less condi clears if they forgo water and less attunement swapping/evasive arcana if they forgo arcana so long as you keep poison on them (S/D would help with that) it pretty much snowballs in your favour. Though I haven’t played trapper against a diamon skin ele but I can’t imagine it’s much different from normal survival condition.

I have more trouble with typical cele ele than diamond skin but thats just me.

easy, don’t go 100% condition dmg. personally, i would never run 3 traps either, i prefer 2 traps and LR, which does decent damage, even in a condi build as is ofc a stun/immob breaker.

that said, i don’t see many DS eles out there, if ever. or D/F for that matter.

Thx much for the tips. I rarely see a diamond skin ele, so I have a lot to learn there.

I did try to land the F2 on the drake, but without an immobilize, it’s hard to get more than a couple hits. I guess I would need to try to sync with concussion shot

It doesn’t seem like 1500 – 2000 is that much damage, so I guess I shouldn’t call it “burst”. But direct damage is pretty low in my build, and the opponent had life-steal food in addition to healing. I got really lucky with the drake attacks.

So far, I feel like this build could beat any other build if I played it well, so I don’t want to change it if I can find a way to play against those with excellent condi defense.

Either way, this sure is a fun build to play. Thanks again for all the help!

Curring.9752:

Thankfully, to take Diamon skin they’ll have to forgo arcane or water, either one cripples them defensivly overall as they’ll have less condi clears if they forgo water and less attunement swapping/evasive arcana if they forgo arcana

Btw, this isn’t true at all, 0/0/6/4/4 will get all the good stuff, and ether renewal for heal will take care of condis.

I have more trouble with typical cele ele than diamond skin but thats just me.

he was using cele.

the ele just didn’t play very well in that fight. his choice of signet heal prob wasn’t the best either.

scerevisiae.1972:

Curring.9752:

Thankfully, to take Diamon skin they’ll have to forgo arcane or water, either one cripples them defensivly overall as they’ll have less condi clears if they forgo water and less attunement swapping/evasive arcana if they forgo arcana

Btw, this isn’t true at all, 0/0/6/4/4 will get all the good stuff, and ether renewal for heal will take care of condis.

I have more trouble with typical cele ele than diamond skin but thats just me.

he was using cele.

the ele just didn’t play very well in that fight. his choice of signet heal prob wasn’t the best either.

It’s still an overall loss of healing/condi removal.
Renewal is very easy to interupt, he has the pet (Assuming wolf on the swap) and SB daze, so I don’t know, it could have been a worse set up in some regard.

That ele seemed rather squishy for a cele.

I don’t understand why they added diamond skin when Engi had a similar trait that got the hammer.

I chatted with the opponent afterwards. He was fairly new to playing ele, so I’m sure there are things he could do better. He was very cool to chat with, and I’m sure he would have beat me had we fought again.

I make lots of mistakes in every fight, and this one is no exception. I’m mostly trying to think about how to generate 2000 damage in small enough window that I can get conditions ticking enough to keep him below 90%.

Given that he has 4 guard-killer stacks and presumably celestial gear, I think he’s around 20,000 health.

Thx much for the help!

Curring.9752:

Renewal is very easy to interupt

With 6 in earth, most would also take the stab on earth attune master trait so they could use renewal reliably, plus there is also the stab from 2x armour of earth, focus invuln.

It’s always worth a try, but I think if they were more experienced with the class / build it wouldn’t be possible.

There are, of course, things you can do to maximise your chances (such as flawless pet management to land Drakes F2) but ultimately you are still relying on the opponent to not take measures to avoid being hit by it. Both the F2 and Tail Swipe are relatively obvious attacks, and a simple dodge would avoid most of the pain.

So.. yeah. It can be done and always worth a try… but you are in the end relying on them to make mistakes, even if you do everything right.