Guild Wars 2

So I kinda have to make this quick before i go into work, but I will be able to check it during breaks.

This is my problem. I have really fallen into loving Slic’s “WIld Bill” build, It does wonders in WvW and in sPvP. It isnt burst but it allows for a player to stay in a fight and continuously deal damage.

My problem is this… how could I change the major traits, and possibly weapons be be effective in PvE?? I know I could respec but that is something I want to say away from. I really want to be able to jump from WvW to dungeons to farming without the respec.

the build – http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mckMzzzz0MMxvMMMxvMG0xG0mRosqcR8khG7kiO7k…

The more I look at it, I could do a S/p build for vemon share, go d/d for a DB build and stealth for grouping, or a S/p build with stealth/support.

Ideas?

Thanks!!

Mrbig.8019:

I was really waiting for this kind of thread to arise.

I’m playing an S/D 10-30-30-0-0 build.

Damage builds:

D/D

Works well both as a glass cannon ( 30-30-0-0-10) and as a stealth bunker cannon ( 10-30-30-0-0 with condition removal and heal on stealth).

Any point spent in acrobatic is really a waste on a power build.

Works well also as a bunker bleed build ( 0-0-30-20-20) with caltrops, heal on stealth and vigor spam.

One of the few high survivability build the thief has.

Could you shed more light on these builds for me? I am not a huge fan of glass cannon builds I like to be able to survive and not have to hide out after blowing cool downs.

I should play around more, but I am struggling with finding a build I can take some abuse with, pull some decent damage and be able to handle a 1v1+ situation…

God I hate to put it this way…)

@MrBig – So what you are saying is it is like the Rogue stun builds of old vanillia WoW(cringe)

Honestly I like that play a lot more then the “BS burst and hope to god it lands, then hide for 1min.” I am not against burst builds and BS I just hate being worthless and blowing all my skills for 1 kill.

Build looks promising I must say, what extra skills are you using with it? 6-0 and then how does it work in WvW? I currently like Slic’s Wild Bill setup for WvW

@daphoenix

Watched the entire vid and must say it was great! Good job with the voice over and then slowing it down as well to really explain and show what was going on.

Also you said you were able to Stomp in mist form!? Cool if you can, kinda reminds me of using haste with a thief,

@daphoenix

Simple is an understatement i have been watching the video as well, greats stuff!

on another note, I posted awhile back about trying to find the right food and such. The problem was trying to find a list that made it easy to find what I really wanted.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/User:Dacromir/Food

This is the best list that I have found, hands down!

Foods that standout:

Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew - 100% Chance to gain might on dodge +40% Endurance regeneration

Plate of Fire Flank Steak +100 Power +70 Condition damage

Rare Veggie Pizza +40% Condition duration +70 Condition damage

Bowl of Orrian Truffle Soup +100 Condition damage +70 Vitality

Loaf of Omnomberry Bread +100 Vitality +70 Toughness

Mango Pie - Gain health every second +70 vitality

Omnomberry Cookie +100 Healing power +70 Vitality

Omnomberry Bar +30% Magic find +40% Gold from monsters

I couldn’t find anything with condition and healing, which would be awesome but that is ok… Omnomberry Bar is more for farming, But the top three stand out to me with the stew being one that you could really stack the might for the extra damage. I tested it with a lesser version and it only gave one stack but was still nice. The issue is see is that you could get more power from the steak, but with the +40% End regen you could dodge more and thus lead to more Evasive Arcane procs.

Veggie Pizza would be great for the fire burns and earth bleeds.

Mango Pie for just surviving

@Slic

Love the vids, between you and Daphoenix (D/D tank ele build) I am torn between which prof I want to focus with. Speaking of ele’s that go D/D, do you have a lot of trouble with them (good ones mind you)

I notice in #6 you use p/d and then d/d, and #skill 2 to the wall… do you find that better then using the SB?

One last thing – the change in your build from 30 in deadly Arts to 20 and then increasing Shadow Arts to 30. Was the loss of the 10% damage from 25 in deadly Arts worth the extra regen in stealth? is the might from stealth making up for it or might a combo of 25 in each be better?

@Hagnefelt

While the stats do looking interesting to change to, it is hard to give up all the other stats for just the condition damage. Especially in Wv3 when a player could use food or Tuning Crystal. NdranC bought up the good point with fury as well, giving the extra crit chance so the +crit damage doesn’t go to full waste.

Elementalist is the one prof that I have played so far that benefits from all stats (maybe not so much precision) Where on the other hand a prof like Mesmer really has no use for condition damage… at least not a GS or s/p Mesmer.

I spend some of the day playing around in spvp with this build, and I have to stay it was rough, compared to pve i cant be as reckless with my skill casting and make sure they count (aka landing the blast at the end of Burning Speed.) First couple of matches were really rough, but it did get better. Compared to playing my thief, I felt I had more control and options, I felt I bought more to the table when dealing with multiple targets.

@Daphoenix

You talked about playing and lvling a warrior and how it just isnt the same. I go back to the thief and i feel the same, it feels to simple… What more is I go back to a 32 Mesmer and I just feel slow and sluggish. Granted I like the Mesmer more then the thief now, i would however hate taking a Mesmer into Wv3 just to roam.

What it comes down to is a lot of practice, then more, and then maybe some more. I look back and rethink some spvp matches and realize I know I could have been better with breaking stuns and such, and that is just going to take time on my end not to panic and remember my binds.

@ReQuiem
@Daphoenix

I forgot to mention, that with Wv3 and PvE you can can make up the lower con with food and such, not sure what kind of a food would be the best, maybe go with a +healing and +con

also

Master Tuning Crystal –
Nourishment(30 m) Gain Condition damage equal to 6% of your toughness
Gain Condition damage equal to 4% of your vitality
+10 Experience from kills

with this you would gain +159 con damage

This way in pve and Wv3 you could easily up your healing and con damage without have to sacrifice other areas, not to mention Crystals and food is pretty cheap

@volfie

I was going to say something about how VIT looked a little low and I might rework to try and get around 18k. Then I saw your edit.

Power is pretty high which personally I think is fine, I would much rather have raw damage then relying on things like crit damage. That being said condition damage could use a boost.
I have looked at either using the +con damage on kills which would push it up another 250. Either that or I believe using the +5% sigil boost condition damage as well as raw damage.

Granted my abilities in Wv3 and spvp are getting better but I dont know if I would ever be able to get the max benifit out of the +con per kill. PvE it would be amazing.

EDIT – I cant find anything with con/vit/toughness, at least in rings/amulets/ears.

So my thinking is to change all the accessory’s to power/toughness/healing and then mix in Vit/healing/con armor to try and get stats around -

power – 1725
prec – 1075
toughness – 1550
vit – 1650
healing – 525
con – 500
hp – with above it should be around 18k

@hidden

rias.6872:

daphoenix.4283:

Full Vigil Armor (Power,Toughness,Vitality) < Not sure if I can get this though…I’m not a vigil member. Maybe I can make another class to unlock it? Anyone know?

Mix of Jewelery (Toughness, healing power, and Power) and (Condition damage, vitality, power). I personally want toughness in every item possible.

Only problem with this build is that I can’t find jewelery with the stats I want… condition damage needs to be sacrificed to get toughness. I personally find precision to be a stat that I don’t really want as the effects are diminished when you have an already +20% crit chance from fury on most of the battle.

PTV set is available in few different sources.

• Dungeons – AC, SE and HOTW
• WvW Tokens
• Karma Vendors in the Cathedrals @ 42k/piece – 252k tokens Total (AFAIK only 5/6 set are available)
  http://dulfy.net/2012/09/08/gw2-templegod-karma-armor-sets/

I think to fully complete a customized set, you need gear from dungeons too. They have a variety of different options. There are only 2 healing types of gear. Perhaps those could be used as your some-healing-but-not-too-much set.

Precision Vitality Healing – AC, HOTW, TA
Vitality Healing Condition – CM

Dungeons sorted by Armor
Sorted by Armor Types:
Power Precision Condition – AC, CM, COF, COE, TA
Power Precision Toughness – SE, Arah
Power Precision CritDmg – COF, COE, Arah
Power Vitality Toughness – AC, SE, HOTW
Power Vitality Condition – SE, COF
Power Condition MagicFind – COE
Precision Toughness Condition – CM, TA, HOTW, Arah
Precision Vitality Healing – AC, HOTW, TA
Vitality Healing Condition – CM

Weapon wise I think you can get the same stat weapons from the same areas

@daphoenix
@ Wildclaw

d/d shines in large battles, 1v1, and spvp. It just takes time to adapt to the different battles. D/d is a chaos making machine, and drives other players nuts, if you dont give them some respect they will destroy stuff.

I was messing around in Spvp with a p/d thief and I had a d/d ele in a few games. you simply cannot ignore them. D/D eles make the other team adjust and react, they can make you burn dodges, and retreat from AOE areas. Many times I wish I was playing ele to just deal with other thief’s using stealth builds. Stealth or not you still get hit by AOE.

@daphoenix

yea the problem is that the skill doesn’t give a exact percent on its proc rate (unlike the 25 point air trait)

So going by the rough figures I have and then with some “fuzzy” math…

- 18 crits on 24 hits = 75% crit rate (which was what the game was telling me )
– AP procced 0-4 times per mob (for math sake we will use an avg of 3)
– so the skill has a proc rate of 17% on a critical hit
– in this test case AP procs 3 out of 24 hits so 12.5% (this was with 75% crit rate)

Now I will try and update things late but I want to retest some things as well. My concern is that there might be a conflict in using lighting whip. The skill hits twice, and each hit can crit independently. I am wondering that because AP says it has a chance to proc per “skill use.” In my testing it took 24 hits with lighting whip to kill a target but I only used the skill 12 times.

EDIT – I retested things… and yea it is still bad

- used a staff and skill1 with same crit rate as above. (10 target sample)
– 20 hits to kill target
– 15 crits per target
– AP proc a burn 6 times over the 10 targets(WTF) burn only ticked once as well…
– simply put on 200 hits I got 5 procs with a 75% crit rate
– that is a 3% proc per cast

If this is the case then simple logic would say to double the % above to get it on skill use. But I will retest with some different skills to find out for sure.

That being said, I still believe the skill is very sub par for 25 points either way. The burning proc under fire is very quick, I think I got 1-2 ticks at most. AP procing on any crits would be ok, honestly I love to have 50% chance for an aura to proc on crits instead…. One can wish right?

Crit Rate in General

I have really come to the understanding that not a lot is needed. With Zephyr’s Boon (Air 10, #1) you jump over 30%, and by dumping damage after auras you should be able to the most out of Flurry then. you have three auras that you have have with d/d (not sure if it procs when you hit 25% health and gain arcane shield)

I agree with @daphoenix in that a health pool around 18k is ideal, any less and just doesn’t help survive. If you are downed/dead then that 25%+ crit rate really doesn’t help does it?

So over the last few days I have had a little time to play around with crit and to run some test on Arcane Precision.

Granted I should test it out some more but I use the the Dummies in Heart of the Mist and did all of my testing with around 76% crit (high enough that I could get moderate results)

Condition that procs –
Fire – Burning
Water – Vulnerability
Air – Weakness
Earth – Bleed

My raw numbers are semi rough but I can tell you that by using lighting whip it took around 24 hits to kill a heavy dummy and I crit 18 out of 24 on avg. ( Reconfirming the crit rate above)

On avg (ten dummies killed) Weakness proced 0-4 times
– 0% to 22% chance for Arcane Precision to proc on a CRIT
– 0% to 17% chance for AP to proc on any hit

NOTE – this was with a 75% to crit as well. Imagine the percent if your crit is lower (20% and under)

So I truly believe that this skill is complete worthless in its current from. As a 25 point minor trait it is horrible, i personally believe that for 25 points it should be “Skills apply a condition on a critical hit.” I dont see it as OP because even if you run with a moderate crit % (20-30) that is still low for a said condition.

I hate to say it but looking over this build I dont see a reason to worry about the crit percent. Granted I might try to hold mine around 20% just for the little extra damage. I believe that it would much more beneficial to take any extra stat room and use it for condition damage OR fit in vit/toughness.

EDIT – If fine with an even lower crit rate (10% or under) I would say push condition damage or even healing

@Nearo

You made a thread with this same post, and then copied it to this thread and one other… Not to be mean but it kinda trollish…

Now you say your wife has not spend any traits and using the same skills? I find that hard to believe, mainly because you start with a axe and then either get a off hand after the starting part. So if she is using a bow she had to pick it up and switch skills, and not spending skill points?? I wont go after that.

Now…. Elementalist =/= mage. I cannot stress that more then anything.

honestly I want to post a ton more but for some reason it is going to turn into troll food for your post. All the post is a rant…

/sigh

reQuiem.5986:

Cleansing Wave vs. Soothing Wave….hmmmm – thoughts?

I think from a spvp and a wv3 standpoint you have to go with Cleansing Wave, the condition remove is needed.

pve is a different story though..

My question is – pve I know dagger/dagger works but say in a dungeon instance you wanted a go the range/support route. Would daggers still work or could you switch it up and use staff? I think even this build staff could be great with attunement swapping and the PTV approach. Maybe try to stay around the 35% mark with crit, sense this build/style is a more balance build stat wise.

I looked at scepter as well and focus… I donno though Staff just seems more group friendly

Thoughs?

@daphoenix

Have you played around the the idea of having a moderate amount of crit then mixing in condition damage and power? I believe you mentioned before that at some point power and +condition has diminishing returns., but have you found a happy medium?

I have debated trying to to stay around maybe a 25-35% crit rate and then mixing in +condition and PTV route.

Also for all the people that are reading then thread, playing a ele like this is not easy, it takes time and a lot of it to really feel comfortable playing it. You kinda do ride the fine line of control and chaos, and taking a whole day off from playing I can tell coming back in that it did take some effort to settle in.

Honestly it is going to take a fair amount of time to for me to really feel at ease with this build. That is fine though, I have plenty of levels to go and I am sure as you get higher, the traits, gear and stats tend to help the build out more.

love this build, and style!

yes it is very taxing be this involved, but i went back and played a few things with my p/d thief and the enjoyment wasn’t the same. It takes time to play and i bet even longer to play well, i honestly wouldnt recommend jumping into spvp cold turkey.

is it harder to play? i think so but that is the fun in it. d/d tanky has a grace that is hard to describe but amazing to dance with