Most s/d burst setups are noob traps, relying on downing a single target within 0.2 seconds, which requires one to be in control of the opponent. This is not always the case, especially when roaming in WvW.
Nice that you mentioned WvW, because that’s exactly what i’m talking about. There are barely any good players in WvW, not claiming I myself am. Nevertheless with a total of ~15 hours in WvW I have yet to find any single player able to properly play. I’ve seen a rather good 3 men team though.
Anyway, combine this with the high likelyhood of your fight getting messed up by enemies/allies who are entering and you got the reason why I think D/D isn’t good for roaming. Not even taking into account that all Dagger animations are kinda obvious. Burning Speed and air autoattacks, ones main damage output are easily dodgeable or just kitable.
Now to the former part of your response, S/D indeed heavily relies on bursting. But not as much as you think. Aside from the initial 20k burst (on defensive (Clerics/PVT/etc. on heavy armor targets) you still have fresh air, a 4 second cooldown lightning strike (which together with the air attunement one provides some rather good “sustained burst”), RTL/Updraft to survive until your other cooldowns are off cd and all other stuff to keep some pressure, in the uncommon case that someone survives. I’ve done some tests with a PVT 0/0/30/30/0 warrior and got him down to 20% on every burst attempt, being able to reduce his healing so much to be able downing him in a second go.
However, I’m usually not playing my elementalist in PvP scenarios (I’m usually not participating in PvP anyway) because it became boring rather quick and showed some great weaknesses, especially against the current CC/Condition meta. To be able to get some condition removal you are kind of forced to go 30 into water and mostlikely a lot into arcane aswell, making the only partly balanced build unviable because of way too less damage output. Not to mention how screwed elementalists’ stunbreakers are (signet of air, glyph of elemental power…?).
Although Staff is still a better choice than D/X. In some situation Staff is the best choice, AC as an example. In situations where mobs have a larger HP pool but not as big of a hitbox instead, scepter/X is a better choice, though.
10/25/0/5/25 have to be existent in any pve guardian builds, aswell as 0/30/0/20/10 for any mesmer build in parties.
The guardian build I can understand. However on the mesmer build…. You have no illusion damage modifiers except for maybe phantasmal fury. The very bread and butter of a mesmer DPS build for dungeons is at least 10 in domination and at least 25 in inspiration as those are the main source of damage in dungeons.
Yeah, usually putting the last 10 points into domination. But 4% damage per mantra and 3% damage per illusion are much stronger than 15% phantasm damage.
As for other professions:
Warrior: 30/25/0/0/15.
Necro: 30/25/0/0/15 or 30/15/0/0/25 (solo). After 10th december both: 20/25/0/0/25.
Engineer: 30/10/0/0/30.
Ele: No set build, most have: 25/0/10/10/0, though.
Thief: 25/30/0/0/15 or 30/30/10/0/0.
Ranger: 20/25/0/25/0? In a solo setting probably 30/25/0/15/0?
Just that D/D sucks for roaming or in smallscale. And it doesn’t promote high speed play, just flats out the skill level required to bash low skill players.
I would never go to www without 10 arcana and 20 water….
If it comes to PvE….you are fine if people keeps you alive…
But i have to ask one thing:
If a more balanced ele (zerker armor 20 water and 10 arcana at least) can solo many stuff in dungeons…
How would a full offensive ele go soloing kohler for example?
I wouldn’t ever take more than 10 water and 10 arcane into WvW. Elementalists are strong in 1v1’s but can’t stand any chance in a 1v2 unless both opponents are extremely bad. I just fit to ele’s strength’s building as much into burst damage, so i can down everything but PVT warriors/necros/guardians in one go, who won’t be able to do any pressure to me and will die in a second burst.
As for kholer you’ll have problems dealing with him anyway. It’s either range him, evade everything or try to tank and die. When he spawns mobs you either FGS them down or die quick yourself. With a x/x/x/30/30 build you won’t be able to burst them down. In 25/25/10/10/0 you will.
I just hope this thread isn’t related to pve at all, because if so all of above builds are really bad, including the 30/30/0/0/10 one.
As for pvp ele’s suck anyway, in wvw roaming you shouldn’t have spent 30 points into arcane anyway. Defensive/slow builds are just a bad choice there. And about zerging: i don’t really see how the build matters much there.
@Boryn: All professions get their damage mainly with their traits. This is exactly the reason why elementalists are extremely strong but mesmers, rangers and engineers are very weak. And together with the mesmer, the ele has the best recources of improving damage via stats, just because air combines two of three important stats. Taking the guardian as example, those have power in a trait line with one modifier, precision in the line you go to 25 anyway (which is good) but critical damage in valor, which is the worst traitline existing. With 25/25/10/10/0 you are able to maximize your (solo, fgs) damage while maintaining a good part of it when your trait requirements are not met. On a guardian you’re just screwed in that case, because your stats are low.
That’s slower than druid solo.
This is what you do when there’s nothing left.
One of the reasons im now running around hours in WvW just to ocassionaly steamroll 1v3’s.
After talking to hodgins when you collected the scepter pieces, after roughlt 15 seconds the camera rumours a bit and you get the event to seach for the entrance to the bosses lair. If you are running too fast and cross the point with the grubs before the event occured, it bug’s out and you can’t completely it, therefore the boss won’t spawn. After talking to hodgins just take you time, grab the chest and rp walk to the point where you jump down. Once the camera was shaking you can jump down and run to the boss.
On a side note: how do you solo the burrow event? I know a way to bug it, but thats inconsistent. I did it legit once, but that required over 10 hours of attempts and all possible consumables. Mind sharing?
Wish you best of luck, seems like a great asset to the NA dungeon world.
The video was overedited, though.
PS: Necros have their uses and are often able to be a great asset in runs. Especially for short fights (<15 seconds) they easily out-dps most professions while bringing quite some utility to the table. They just horribly lack in movement, about as much as mesmers.
Any build with decent dps must at least be 30/25/0/0/0 in berserker (or partly assassins) armor, berserker weapons and berserker trinkets. Anything that doesn’t fit those critera is not decent in dps. People want berserker warriors for a reason, 0/0/20/20/30’ish warriors especially in PVT are utterly useless for any PvE content.
1470 with 0.5 seconds activation time is still stronger than 2595 with 3.5 seconds activation time. To be exact, axe 5 must deal 10290 to be on the same level.
But taking 40k hits from enemies you are facing is totally intended and a feature.
However, the easiest strategy for this is to just burst the molten berserker down. In our 2 warrior 1 ele 1 mesmer +1 ele/guardian setting we were able to kill him before he became any meaningful. In the precision loss fractal it took a bit longer but worked too.
I actually like this bonus fractal, it’s quite a bit faster than maw.
Let me specify: Even 10/25/0/0/25 without unscathed contender is more damage.
And honestly, stop that ‘everyone can decide for his own’ kitten, i never forced anyone to play anything, unless they want to run dungeons with me. I just tell people their builds are bad when they are bad.
I didn’t log on on my mesmer (fractal 40’s) at all and yet my other characters directly were at scale 30. Can’t be your mistake in that case, although since relogging to your main upped you to 30 then you might have considered doing that earlier
Should have used 30/25/0/10/5. Left a lot of potential on the table.
But then this wouldn’t show that the 30/0/0/10/30 hits harder than the 30/25/0/0/15 in an ideal situation ;p
With 9 boons 30/0/0/10/30 hits about 1% harder than 30/25/0/0/15. In any normal situation 30/25/0/0/15 deals more than 10% more dps than 30/0/0/10/30. And 30/25/0/10/5 hits about 6.5-7% harder than 30/0/0/10/30 in an optimal situation. At least that is what i would think, not having done the exact math.
Well, unless ember’s do damage they don’t reduce the kill time. They’re fine as long as they’re just to cover the stupid NPC AI. About the strength boosters… shame on you Xaffie!
