Guild Wars 2

Just out of curiosity, Olba, if in main hand someone had the 60% chance to bleed on crit and in the other hand had a Superior Sigil of accuracy which adds +5 to critical chance with no cooldown, how do those compare for procing the crit bleed?

Never use the Lesser Elemental anyway. There are much better utility skills available.

LordByron.8369:

D/D to run toward a combat/commander…

Staff to actually play……

…..

/signed

Duh OP lol. You are using 1v1 tactics in team/group play and not applying group synergy/tactics ie. 5v10. You have successfully proven the diminishing returns of running into melee range of 10+ players in your light armor regardless of the number of stun breaks and condition removals you have.

yes, it is a confusing thread. I think alot of players are confusing builds developed for sPvP for use in Pve. Getting mobs down quickly with everyone still on their feet is a big priority in Pve and WvW, not so in sPvP where 1v1 and 1v2 occur more often than not. Continuous healing is not needed in Pve or WvW, it’s just nice for those dicey situations. Most players most of the time can take care of their own healing. If they can’t, no amount of Ele healing is going to allow them to survive.

Razor.6392:

Dang 10% crit chance and 10% crit damage… that’s painful to watch.

ouch lol. I am not sure where you saw that lol but yes that would be hard to watch. If that is what over 1000 in healing is doing then that is sacrificing too much imo. We don’ t have to have a min/max crit build to take advanatage of crits.

There are no “roles” any of us have to play in this game which is good because we would suck if we did. We do not play any one role well enough to justify being there all the time. Actually in this game I think min/max builds give up too much no matter which way they lean just for that reason. The exception of course would be sPvP where an Ele might be expected to protect a point and that is all he is expected to do, or some other equally singular role.

Intigo.1653:

PinCushion.7390:

Compare Mist Form to Engineer Goggles.

Or, you know, compare it to its counterpart skill which is Elixir S? http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elixir_S

The Elixir S that actually allows you to use your kit skills while invulnerable and has a lower cooldown than Mist Form.

Mist form with the Soothing Wave major water trait is:

Mist Form, Frost Bow, and Signet of Water grant 6 seconds of regeneration. Damage and inflict chill and vulnerability to nearby foes while in mist or vapor form.

with the Spell Slinger fire major trait is:

Cantrips grant you 3 stacks of might when used.

with the Soothing Disruption water trait is:

Cantrips grant you regeneration and vigor.

I guess what I am saying is that Mist Form can be accentuated with different builds to good effect. Others have posted that the damage proc can hit pretty hard. There are additional traits that can proc when regen is procd and when a cantrip is used(Mist Form is one of those) with some builds. Some procs also help others in the party. It is a intricate web.

Better or worse than Goggles I will not attempt to judge. I do know comparing different classes’ skills is a tricky affair. The classes are not designed to do the same thing in the same way. The game is actually a team affair. 5 individual characters standing alone are never as strong as a team working together.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Elementalist has light armor and lowest base health in game. We need to go full on on healing power if we want to last as long as the other classes do. Neither do we have stealth, death-shroud or lots of aegis boon procs.

No, but we have procs for vigor, (100% endurance regen) which can be up at all times giving us nearly bottomless dodges. Dodge is the best defensive move in the game. Our dodge also procs all kinds of effects in addition that are both offensive and defensive.

The ele can do a fair mix of dps and support. Weapons selected and the stats on the weapons I select depends on the specific situation in the dungeon and the rest of the party make up. I go for a balance. My main two specs are precision and vitality so I can take a hit but I am also almost always at 62% crit chance and have decent power, crit damage, healing power, and condition in my stats.

The scepter/dagger is unbeaten for stacking might for the party and ourselves in Pve and still has some decent combo fields. To do that of course we need to be in melee range up against some pretty tough mobs. Consequently I feel I need to be able to take take huge hits and heal up quickly. Hence the viability of a balanced build.

In a free for all with lots of mobs running the field, the staff can often work very well with it superior ranged dps, crowd control and combo fields. Most dungeon groups run pretty loosely in dungeons and are rarely grouped together. Putting combo fields on the mobs themselves allows melee to get the direct benefit of the fields and ranged to benefit from projectile finishers. Watching vulnerability, burning, healing etc stack and proc is a pretty satisfying experience for me and I feel in those situations, when my dps is less, that I am still doing my part. I get no complaints and don’t fail.

Dagger/dagger is nice on occasion. Its best use is one on one in melee range of course and offers little synergy for anyone else. It is a selfish weapon in that sense. I don’t feel the dps is enough to justify narrowing down the class to a dps role in a party in dungeons. We simply do not do enough dps. The devs designed the ele and continue to emphasize that it is the superior support class. It will never be a superior dps class. There is so much we can do to increase the effectiveness of everyone else as a result.

all imo. It’s the way I like to play and that is the most important thing. Find the way you like to play and what makes you happy. Really, no one else cares as long as you are pulling your weight and the party is succeeding.

PinCushion.7390

…..
I’ve been waiting for someone to do a decent comparison, so we’d know how long a battle would have to go on before Condi builds caught up to Crit, and how hybrids would fare on that scale. I don’t think there will be such a thing, because the answer is most likely “Never.” In my experience, Condi builds never catch up to crit builds even in cases where the bleed cap is never reached and cleansing never occurs.

In theory it should be pretty easy since we can set up a character any way we want in the Mists and go hit a battle golem. But, I can’t copy/paste my combat logs and have not attempted to find them on my computer, believing that would be impossible anyway. In addition, there are so many variables such as might, durations, attunement cooldowns, skill combos etc the possibilities are endless. They don’t give us any guidence on combos in the wiki. I carry about 400 condition out of a dumb blind trust in the devs that because conditions bypass armor and toughness, they must hit pretty well and the stat by its mere existence has some value. Am I a fool?

lmfao, Asura has gone and taken the exact same post and necrod a bunch of 6 month old threads.

Lol Razor. Kudos to Asura for necroing the thread. Not much has changed in 6 months. With 1000 hours in Asura, that’s all there is to say about the Ele?

I doubt I will ever build a glass cannon. I would have liked to give one a try, but the class does not favor that.

0 in water and 2 in earth goes a long ways towards explaining that. The ele improves dramtically in its ability to take a hit at higher levels and with better gear and traits. Many builds and play styles suffer at lower levels. You are in a tee shirt and jeans lol, you can’t take a hit yet by a mob, and less with multiple mobs, swinging a great axe without alot more vitality and/or toughness.

ThiBash.5634:

If you start out with a frozen ground, followed by a few stonings to build up the chilled duration, you can then pretty much defeat them with fireballs and meteor shower before they can do much to you (some may not even reach you).

Oh wow. I never tried or even thought of that. So, if I cast Frozen Ground and then cast Arcane Blast, a projectile finisher, I get an aoe Chill effect on every mob in a 1500 radius! Is the duration of the finisher 2 seconds, the same as the original chill from Frozen Ground?

I am assuming a player is soloing with a staff because he wants to learn all the nuances of the class and game play. If a player has already learned the mechanics of movement and dodging, staff will go alot easier. If solo leveling was the only goal, why use staff at all for that I guess is my point.

Kiting gives good training to be successful with the class later on. Kiting requires continuous movement, dodging, and use of the crowd control skills and these are needed with d/d or any other weapon set in PvP, Wvw, and Pve. Standing still is not effective in this game for long. Moving well takes practice.

I dislike soloing with the staff because most of the skills have a significant casting time and kiting mobs, or rather maintaining distance from mobs, can be alot of keyboard work. The elemental works very well to draw agro and lessens the kiting a bit. I have always carried one. I guess my point is that there are other better ways to level. If you are going to use a staff, might as well make it as challenging as possible.

ElenaDragon.8401:

Baladir.2736:

One agro mechanic that appears certain sooner or later is to focus on the player who is not moving. On the other hand, if a player is moving he is less likely to get agro and more likely to lose it.

I’m curious, is this something you have learned from experience or has it been stated by the devs somewhere? Also, do you know if it is actually based on movement or on the distance the player is from the mob?

I play D/D and I move around a lot, so I’m just curious how that helps aggro.

The devs have stated the agro mechanic chanages from boss to boss, mob to mob, and can even change during the same enounter. The devs also designed the game to be fluid.

From observation, moving and dodging absolutely affects gaining and losing agro which fits right in line with their design intent. There are times a mob has chased me and will not stop to the point we are all laughing because I can not shake the s.o.b. Other times a mob will bounce back and forth between players doing little damage. One minute I can be kiting a mob, the next I can swivel and fire, and the next minute he bounces back at me. Move and if the mobs can’t catch you, sometimes they switch agro and sometimes they don’t. If we circle a boss so he has to face his target, we can see how often they do change and get an idea why they change, especially if they do ranged attacks.

What I can guarantee is that if we have agro and aren’t moving, a mob will hit us till we die lol.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

Apparently, hardly anybody still remembers that a lot of the the bugged elementalist skills have been fixed, and are now actually usable and useful.
(e.g. Fire Grab, Tidal Wave, Ride the Lightning, Magnetic Grasp)

Also, the downed skills have greatly improved since launch.

If someone did not like the ele to begin with, would those changes be enough to change someones mind and come back? Certainly not the OP. He said and I quote:

“the class was pretty much useless apart from spamming AoE outside a keep in WvW. It had absolutely no survivability and barely any damage. It just wasn’t fun having to slowly work down enemies when a thief could kill them in a second and also had better survivability,”

Lol. He said nothing about bugged skills. Best he could come up with for the class was spamming aoe in wvw. He couldn’t stay alive and in his opinion an otherwise useless class. Either 1) he needs a better understanding and playing the class or 2) he can find new appreciation for the strengths of the class he never developed before.

I can’t think of a single reason he should come back except to try again. Many of us have put down a class and come back to it later only to find we are much more successful the next time around. Did any of us ever go into the class forum blasting the class as subpar when we first played it, as if we were uber players. Imo he never had a handle on the class to begin with. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

You should check the following:

- Is your staff within a few levels of your actual level? A level 9 staff on a level 14 character will hardly deal any damage.

- Is your armor within a few levels of your actual level and better than white quality? Inferior armor is one of the major causes of getting hit so hard.

- Staff is not very forgiving for low-level elementalists. I would advise you to try scepter/dagger. Scepter deals decent damage to single targets at range (at least at lower levels), and dagger off-hand deals a lot of damage to enemies who are close by. (Scepter becomes a sub-par choice around level 50-60 or so, when you have enough survivability to switch either to dagger/dagger or staff.)
Also, note that the staff is the most support-oriented weapon the elementalist can choose from. Therefore, it is most suitable for party play, when you have allies who can prevent the monsters from closing you. At level 14 solo, you rarely have that ability.

- Having said that, I recommend the utility skill Glyph of Lesser Elementals. This will summon an elemental to fight by your side. The earth elemental is the sturdiest, although the ice elemental can be a decent replacement.

- I recommend Signet of Fire as a utility skill. Against low-level enemies, conditions hit really hard, and burning is the hardest-hitting one of them all. Plus, it passively boosts your precision when you don’t use it.

- Finally, when you fight, don’t just stand there spamming attacks while getting hit. That is the “classic” way of playing a wizard-type character in most fantasy RPGs, but it is NOT a viable way to play in Guild Wars 2 for any profession. Every character has access to a dodge-bar for a reason. When you see a monster charging an attack skill, make sure you’re not standing where the blow will land.

agreed, and worth repeating for emphasis. Dodging and moving are the top two defensive techniques for any player in gw2. The devs designed the game this way.

The agro mechanic is not based on dps and that is why the game can get away from dedicated healers and tanks, etc. The agro mechanic is different under different circumstances and different mobs. One agro mechanic that appears certain sooner or later is to focus on the player who is not moving. On the other hand, if a player is moving he is less likely to get agro and more likely to lose it.

Dodging simply is the single best way to avoid damage. It is also the fastest way to move from one point to another, faster than running.

I think the OP has left the building lol.

I think if is fair to say most players who enjoyed the ele to start still enjoy the ele. Except for some PvP players, most did not find the changes to the ele profession since the start of the game enough of a reason to come back and play after a discouraging beginning.

Stentorian Goat.7241:

It seems the dev’s mostly stay off the profession forums. This wasn’t so much the case right after release, but I can’t blame them for changing. Essentially when they poked their heads out on profession pages, everybody went into the topics with guns blazing on “omg, my profession needs major buffs naow! You’re terrible for not doing this!”

The only one I’ve seen recently is Rob over on the ranger forum. Even then, he’s told us that he isn’t over rangers in development; he just visits, listens, and discusses with us because he also plays a ranger :P

If this is the case, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. The devs don’t need to hear the same qq they can read in any other thread in the forums. They are well aware of the gripes. They can be of great assistance to us in many ways. If they get badgered entering the forums though, if I was them I would stay out too.

I for one would like to see some math or guidance on condtion damage vs. direct damage including a discussion of armor and boss elites as a variable (do they have condition resistance?) and vitality vs. toughness to mitagate incoming damage.

I can definately see many in these forums don’t have the ability to be polite in adult company. What was a thread about devs has somewhat already devolved into moaning about our traits.

I think staying in Earth and Fire the most is hurting you. Water and Air both also have some awesome crowd control skills, in fact 4 more in addition to the 1 in Earth (Unsteady Ground). Water has Frozen groud and also has the heals of course. Healing Rain will root you during the cast though and needs to be used when you have gotton some distance on the mobs, which is usually possible and best of all give you a regen buff in addition to the big heal. Air has a swiftness buff (they can’t hit what they cant catch) and a knockback, Gust, in addition to Static Field.

I have to agree Staff is hard for a lower level Ele to play imo because you pretty much have to use most all the skills in all the attunements. You have not had enough time to become familiar with them. You don’t have the attunement cooldown traits so can’t use the best skills more frequently but that is true of all the weapons. If you find yourself in auto attack because you can’t switch, chances are you could have used some more of the skills in the attunements that are still on cooldown. Try to stay out of autoattack as much as possible.

In a bind, just simply run. Cast either Static Field, Unsteady Ground, or Frozen Ground in front of you and run thru it. The mobs will get stuck. You gain distance and can turn and fire or continue to run give yourself a chance to heal up. Staff is not a weapon designed for melee range. Keep away from the mobs, damage from a distance, and kite mobs through the aoe. In other words, the staff requirs kiting if the mob isn’t dead.

Staff is a wonderful weapon to use for group support imo. I often pull it out for dungeons. The combo fields are wonderful for the group as well as the aoe crowd control and heals. I hope you don’t become discouraged by your experience and stop using it.

Get your Elemental skill asap. The earth elemental is tough and good at gaining and holding agro. The water elemental is tough too and will heal you. The air elemental will stun your enemies and die quickly. The fire elemental will put out some damage but die quickly too.

These are some basics.

pixieish.9627:

To the glorious, skillful, barely present SBI, who are constantly fighting off the hordes of IoJ and DR, outnumbered 10-1! Given how from what I’ve read there really is only five of you fighting against, oh, what is it, a thousand of us online? …I hereby congratulate you on your brilliant tactics, your helpful comments on how IoJ and DR should be teaming up against you, and I trust that, on your journey to Tier 4, you will use your brilliant skills in killing constant hordes many times your size and your astounding diplomatic skills to organize other servers to your cause and will swiftly defeat Maguuma and make your way up to Tier 3.

Lol. As an SBI player, I still have to agree with you.

The reaon we were kicked down to this Tier had everything to do with being outmanned ourselves. You would think we would have learned to recognize it.

Perhaps the competitive match up the last two weeks has significantly increased turnout on SBI to the point we will be competitive in Tier 4. idk. But, while it started out as competitive, it turned into a big zerg at the end here. Almost to the point of being bad sportsmanship imo. As much of a beating SBI took getting kicked from Tier 1 to Tier 5 one would think they would recognize if you get to the point where you are beating the snot out of someone, it’s a good time to stop if you want them to keep playing with you.

No doubt, the beating will be explained as an attempt to get back to Tier 4 where no doubt the beaters believe we belong. We’ll see. Last time we were there we got regulary stomped with much better coverage and never had a chance. I thought the matchups here in Tier 5 were looking pretty good.

My prediction? We will be back lol. Maybe next time we wil be a little bit better behaved and you all together will have better strats to stretch our resources.

Used to be when I was a kid, when we played pick up games we would sometimes swap players between teams so they would be competitive. Even professional sports do a version of that. geez, you would think from looking at the WvW state of this game no one ever considered running up the score is a bad idea. What a bunch of putzs this game has.

Or, you could use different weapons to level. Scepter/Focus works great leveling with alot of range and protection. Someone in a different thread used Conjures to help level.

You will hear alot about the d/d weapons, but few found them acceptable for leveling. Also, Most elementalists know how to use the other weapons. Skipping them entirely is a mistake imo.

It’s complicated OP, even more so because attunement swaps with points in arcana can proc effects with swaps and dodge more often such as healing, protection, condition removal, dps, etc., and some of those effects can be on the party as well (support). Faster attunement swapping also affects skill combinations and what skills are being used and the weapon used is an additional variable there. Sometimes the lower attunement cooldown can seem to be or is wasted with many skills still on cooldown when going back to an attunment too early.

I think to a great degee it comes down to how much survival you need for what part of the game you are running with that character. How much damage you can live with and be happy with results. How much and what party support you feel is appropriate. Most importantly, how you like to play. You will find many builds that already have put all this together and favor certain weapons and play style. Or you can put your own together.

There was talk a long time ago about the devs having some predesigned builds. We may see that some day. With the ascended gear, we are already seeing a reduction in build choices since not all exotic gear has an ascended alternative. The advantage of fewer allowed builds is the fact it becomes very hard to mess one up to the point it is useless lol. You will not find an item with crit damage that does not have power as the main stat for example.

Arheundel.6451:

A reduction of the base CD of attunement is mandatory in my opinion to allow more builds without restricting the ele too much for moving away from 30 Arcana too much.

The base CD of attunement should be reduced to 11s from 15s while the recharge bonus for Arcana should be reduced to 10% from 20% for eevry 10 pts spent in the trait line

This would allow eles to experiment with more builds ( assuming fire/air traits get improved) while not losing too much flexibility and that feeling of great versatility when having 30 pts in the Arcana trait line.

What is your opinion?

http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=5139dbe2e4b0b3dfeaf56b4d

Imo this would drastically reduce the number builds by virtually removing arcana as a trait line.

It would drastically increase the dps of the class as points are put into fire, air. The cooldown in aracana allows those who have it to offset the loss in dps by staying out of autoattack and putting together fast combos. Give that away for virtually free and add in the bonuses to dps players will be able to pick up in fire and air and you have big dps numbers.

It would drastically increase suvivability as the class puts points into toughness.

All just when it appeared the devs seemed to be happy with the balance of the class. This last update was pretty mild compared with what the community was expecting.

Before someone says it lol, no, I do not think the trait bonuses in the arcana line would still be worth having anyway. This idea has been floated before btw. Sounds to me that glass cannons want more cannon in their glass. Did the OP float this question before? I seem to recall a poll like this before.

I was wondering if there is a Dev who watches over Elementalists, kind of like a god of Elementalists, with little priests of Elementalists running around. j/k No, really, I went looking at thread Dev Tracker to see what Devs had to say. They are very active with bugs and peoples computer issues, which is great, but I didn’t see activity in the profession forums.

I don’t know what I would expect one to say, so I guess I am not expecting anything. Maybe there is something in my genes that urges me as I stand at the edge of a canyon to yell, “hello”.

If you are listening, great job with our professsion. Having lots of fun. Glad I bought the game. Looking forward to more to come. Tyvm.

Lavadiel.6231:

>Well, the player who has 75 percente damage has alot of power

not always the case
this is my current build:
72% crit dmg and 1700 power
http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/3069/gw004se.jpg

same build/place/mob but after some tricks/combos/food
http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/4343/gw013ei.jpg

the damage is multipled by 2

From the wiki re the formula for Base Direct Damage formula, explaining the variable Weapon Damage in that formula. (the formula for regluar damage does not use this variable, but a different weapon damage description btw):

“Weapon damage: a uniformly distributed random number taken from within the range listed as “Weapon Strength” on the equipped weapon. The weapon damage used for a skill will typically be that of the weapon associated with that skill; utility and elite skills are typically not affected by weapon damage and use a range based on the player’s level. "

In other words, crits depend on a random number generator and can vary. Your two examples are not enough of a sample. The random number had alot to do with the result.

Power is a variable in the Base Direct Damge formula. That Base DIrect Damage number is then used in the Critical Damage formula (along with the Critical Damage percentage stat), so Power is a significant variable. But Power is modified in the Base Direct Damage formula by a Skill Specific Coefficient. We all know Fire Grab hits for huge numbers. One reason would be the crit obviously, but also that Power is enhanced by the Skill Specific Coefficient for Fire Grab in the Base Direct Damage Formula. We don’t know the coefficients for any of the skills but I would bet is a significant one for Fire Grab.

Since your Critical Damage stat in the two examples only went up by 10% but your critical damage given doubled, I could theorize that power played a big part in the underlying Base Direct Damage number and affected that crit. Need more samples to be sure is not just an aberation.

You won’t find crit damage gear without power, the two are interlinked to be sure. And, the whole story is not in the Critical Damage stat. Ty for clearly pointing that out.

At the start of the game there were alot of players who were very upset with the class and felt it was underpowered, ineffective, whatever. A huge number of us never had any problems with the class and felt it was just fine. There were a lot of l2p posts in the forums back then. As time has gone on, many of us who were perfectly happy with the class to have learned there are even better ways to play the class and we are even happier than before.

You are one of those who thought the class was, as you say, “useless.” It was never so. It is not so now.

The poster might be correct in that if you failed to find use of the class the frist time, you will not find use now. It is possible however you can find use in the class. If at once you don’t succeed, try try again as they say.

teg.1340:

I move the mouse to the top of the screen, doubleclick, then RTL away.

I’ll have to try that. Currently I use the escape key to deselect and that is hard to work with the left hand with everything else the left hand is doing.

I alwasy have auto target off.

I only use hot keys to target. One for nearest enemy, one for next enemy, and one for previous enemy.

i read a post once at www.killtenrats.com (although I can’t find it, I want to give them credit for the idea) that discussed the difference between the way a game works and the way we want it to work. We have an conceptual idea of what our profession is and how we want to play him. The developers on the other hand really put a monkey wrench in things because the class can play an entirely different way entirely.

As an extreme example, if my character can fart and blow the hinges off a gate 2500 units away, that is there for the player to use. But, many players will not use that because 1) they play a beautiful girl and we all know girls don’t fart 2) It must be a mistake, no one can fart like that 3) my character is for support, not dps.

I struggle with this with the elementalist. Anet has in writing that this class can do dps but is a superb support class. They say support will always be the primary purpose of the class. We all know support classes do support, not dps!!!!! We have pictures of what the support class looks like. The picture has high vitality, high healing, high stuff for party members. Truthfully, it rankles the mind to think someone took the high vitality part out (as one example) and built a viable dps build that can survive. It’s not supposed to work that way.

Actuallly I am a bit jealous. I need 17,000+ vitality to stay alive in a dungeon, WvW, soloing or duoing champs, mulitple mobs. etc. However, if you can fart like that, my hat is off to you. Have fun.

Raptured.9307:

As someone who currently mains warriors, I appreciate the heals a lot. Personally i prefer 3war1mes1ele, 3wars1mes1guard groups especially now for that huge increase in survivability instead of living/fighting on the edge, especially for that acolyte part in cof runs.

That is gratifying to hear. I have a high precision build which includes Lyssa gear on my elemental and Lyssa gear has healing power as a stat. I carry little toughness and need the healing power for myself and also because I provide support with healing and condition removal for my party in my build and in my skill sequences.

omg, from the wiki, never knew:

When retaliation is applied to a character they will occasionally shout out one of the following lines, depending on their race and gender.
Race Gender
Female Male
Asura “Go ahead, hit me!” “Feedback loop initiated.”
Charr “Retaliation incoming!” “Go ahead, hit me!”
Human “Pain for pain!” “Go ahead, hit me!”
Norn “Come on, hit me! I’ll hit back.” “I’ll return the favor!”
Sylvari “This rose has thorns, and here they are!” “I dare you, hit me.”

Elementals definately need this retaliation!

Ty, Raptured, for that explanation.

Danicco.3568:

…..

I’m not saying it’s better to stay in one attunement, but the difference between 13~9 seconds and 1.3 to 0.9 doesn’t seem too much, it’s manageable pretty well even with 20 in Arcana if you’re using D/D.

…….

Essentially it means almost never having to use an auto-attack. If I am using an auto-atttack it means I fk’d up somewhere, usually.

9 seconds is the cooldown in an attunement before I can proc Evasive Arcana in that attunement.

I can proc Elemental Attunment effects every 9 seconds instead of 13. One example, I can proc Protection for 5 seconds every 9 seconds, but also the 5 seconds can be extended, so it is really up most of the time.

Minion of Vey.4398:

I’ve fiddled with that gw2buildcraft site quite a bit, it’s good.

Only bad thing is it gives me bad flashbacks of fiddling with WoW DPS spreadsheets to find ways to increase my DPS by 0.2%

I don’t think we will ever get to that point. Impossible to calculate. Too many variables and skills with too many damage effects. We are limited a great deal in how we set up the power/precision/crit damage/condition damage balance because some stat combinations on gear is just not available. This no doubt serves to keep us from totally botching our builds as well as totally insane OP builds.

Lol. I haven’t played Wow in years, buts seems to me it was alot easier in there to make decisions on builds. Maybe because we had agro meters that effectivly put a top end on the dps we could do and not wipe the entire raid. Fewer variables in builds too. I like GW much better. Frustratingly difficult at times. Just never having to hear people yelling, “heal me” in chat is worth it for me.

Well, since you guys hijacked the thread in favor of Messmer talk, whatever happened to the old adage, kill the real messmer? Past threads have favored this strat. Simply put a target above his head and take him down? Obviously if one cant do that quickly he will get in alot of hits, but seems to me every messmer I have seen turns and runs whenever I have blown by his clones or whatever on RTL and gone straight for him. Granted, I am not an expert.

TooBz.3065:

You are leaving out precision. Crit damage is meaningless if you don’t crit.

The easiest way to compare (no math required) is enter your build into http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/

Look at the damage and survivability pane on the rights.

Make a change and see what happens.

I know it left out precsion, that why in my last sentence I said so, couldn’t do the math. This link: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit has a chart as it turns out that does the match comparing crit damage out put but does not take into consideration how different varialbe that make up total crit damage, namelly the power and crit damage stat, affect non crit damage such as regular direct damage and condition and compare that total output. Impractical to do as it would involve a separate chart for every weapon and skill and then what do you do with that lol.

I like that link of yours. That is great. Hopefull will give players a head start in a build without the mistakes of trial and error.

Lavadiel.6231:

high crit damage and low crit chance actualy = low dps and dpm.
I wonder why many of you go 35% chance and 75% damage…
It gives you damage multipler 1.43 while 75% chance and 35% damage gives multipler of 1.63
Check the chance/damage ratio table here:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit

After nerf perm fury is no longer an option and arcane power util/trait is not enought for 35% chance and 75% damage to make any sense. You will just see bigger red numbers from time to time but overall your damage will be not as good as with many smaller red numbers ^^
Going crit damage makes sense after your crit chance is 50% + . There is no magic just simple math.
ps.
I am in a process of creating simillar table as the one on wiki but in 3D where on the Z axis there will be power and you can see the optimal power/crit chance/crit damage ratios

You don’t need a 3D table and don’t have all the varialbes anyway. If you increase Power by 103% or Crit Damage by 103% (multiplicative), has exactly the same effect on total damage from a crit, with the exception that 1) a crit can hit for more or less damage due to the random number used for weapon strength which we don’t know and 2)the higher power number increases damage on a regular hit and conditions and that weapon strength number we do know, it is the average of the variable range of the weapon and is equal to the weapon damage tooltip number.

You won’t find an item with an increase in crit damage that doesn’t also increse power and don’t need to. They both increase crit damage, and each has just about the same effect.

I believe the table you refer to can be misleading. It is comparing simply the damage relationship between crit damage given for a different combinations of precision and the crit damage stat. That does not take into consideration the effect power, which is part of the crit forumula, also has on Regular hits and Conditions. Regular hits and Conditions are also increased by Power, there I said it again. So, yes, the chart ignores the damage a character is dealing when not criting.

To restate. You say:

I wonder why many of you go 35% chance and 75% damage…
It gives you damage multipler 1.43 while 75% chance and 35% damage gives multipler of 1.63

Well, the player who has 75 percente damage has alot of power and is hitting his regular hits and conditions for alot more and the chart does not recognize that. With that lower precisions his build is also entirely different and likely has a lot more vitality and toughness.

What the chart does show is how precision trumps crit damage to produce total damage. A character with high precision need not be as concerned about crit damage to get the same end results as someone without precision

:) I was looking at some of my gear last night. The Exquisite Beryl Jewel has +25 Power, +3% Crit Damage, and +15 Vitality. I found the same with other stuff too. Items with Crit Damage also have Power for double the effect on Crit Damage, cause get the effects from both Power and Crit Damage. I did not find an item with Crit Damage that did not have Power but that does not mean anything.

the wiki thread on damage is here:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

I agree lol. Screw the math. Another nice thing about crits is that in the “damage done” equation above, the actual number used for “weapon damage” in a crit is random, meaning it can come from the top of the weapons range. The weapons tool tip for damage uses “average weapon strength”.. Big difference. That’s why our crits vary and why we can get some huge burst damage.

I see alot of builds from that screen shot thread going around with zero condition damage. Condition damage completely bypasses all armor and toughness. A little goes along way, but I seem to have hijacked my own thread.

Both affect the damage done by a crit.

The formula in the wiki for Base Damage is:
Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

The formula in the wiki for Critical Damage is:
Critical hits default to 150% of base damage and this amount can be increased by the Critical Damage player attribute.

If we increase Critical Damage by a mulitiplier of 2% (not additive) and decrease Power by 2% , the damage on a crit is exactly the same. 1500 power and 200% total critical damage is exactly the same as 1470 power and 204% critical damage. The difference is that obviously the player with 1500 power is doing 2% more regular damage than the player with 1470 when there is not a crit.

Increasing Crit damage by 102% at starting level 150% only takes 3% on an attribute but at starting at 200% takes 4%.

The formula for total damage output over time includes Crit Chance to compare total actual damage output over time. In the example above, the total critical damage output was the same, but that was when the crit hit and assumed = crit chance. Using the same numbers, player one 1500 power and 200% crit damage and player two 1470 power and 204% crit damage, if we increase the crit chance of by player two by 10%, , this is where my math skills abandon me. I am too old and have been out of school too long. Can anyone help out here?

Nikkinella.8254:

Well thanks for your input guys. I guess i can just play around with different combinations of exotics for now though and see what i like best before getting ascended things. still a long way off from getting them anyway. I wish they were just account bound like the karka shell and didn’t soulbind when you equipped them. then i could atleast use them on another character if i end up picking the wrong ones.

That’s what I did. Seems there were three primary stats on the ones I considered. Two were marginally better than the exotic I already had and the third was a good sized jump. So, I picked the piece that had the same stats but the big jump in the area I felt weakest in.

Salacious.7358:

I am curious, after reading all these threads and seeing what people are doing it seems this class can only run DD/S. Nothing else. Most people are going air, Some Are fire….Most Mix (like you should). But when it comes down to it, it’s either:

healer – Bringing back the holy trinity.
DD/S – this month till its nerfed

or nothing.

Where’s the variation?

am I doing it wrong, insta kicked, intsa hated if I choose to deviate? Seems that way. I was yelled at yesterday in a group for running the wrong build. Seems you can only “run a ele the right way or GTFO”

Mind you I am like level 6……

lol at someone having a build to crit at level 6.

The forums are not a place to get a fair sample of what players are running or like to run. It is a place to pick up tips you missed that you would otherwise have to discover by accident or trial and error or never. I have never entered a class forum in any game until after I think I have a solid handle on the class and have studied it, like at level 50 in this game. Then I enter the forums and start learning the class for real.

As for the party you were in, the player either knew what he was talking about (doubtful), was just a loudmouth who liked to hear himself talk, or was a loudmouth who liked others to hear him talk. Any way you cut it, ignore those players.

My recomendations. Build up a friends list of players and look them up to run stuff. Join a guild. You will have a lot of good luck withs PUG in this game. Most players are very good, but you will have to weed out some like you already ran into. Chances are if you requested the group to boot him, they would have.

To answer the question, “which is better and why?” is probably impossible lol. It seems subjective based upon the tweaks to the classes to strenghten or weaken various weapon skills and traits anet regularly makes.

Certainly there are ways to favor either crit, condition, or power damage and yet it would still be impossible to ascertain which is best if that was all we took into consideration. Add to the confusion the fact we are affecting vitality and toughness and healing power in the process and one more simple fact, a dying ele is a not doing dps but is dead or healing. None of which answers your question.

I think most players feel trying to answer the question is pointless. The answer rather lies in how you like to play.

What I do know is that we have only two damage conditions. In group play, depending on the other players and their preferences, I do see bleeds stacked to the max intensity of 25 and I can’t stack anymore. Burns stack in duration and those are usually stacked too. If there is a thief around, vulnerability is stacked at 25 too. How the game establishes the preference on whose burn or bleed is used in what order is beyond me. Knowing that would help. becuase it looks to me like we can be stuck unable to use our condtions. All the other conditions we have fall broadly under crowd control. Although not all are technically so for purposes of boss immunity, they are all non-damage dealing skills. Imo, because of this, a condition ele often falls primarily into a support role, or CC role, and not really into a damage role at all in group play.

Our power and crit skills on the other hand will always count. Power sacrifices high burst damage for a lower sustained continuous damage.

As I started the conversation with though, the characters vitality and toughness make a big difference in how often damage skills can be used. If the character is vulnerable to condtions and stuns, again a big difference. In my definition a glass cannon for example, it is a cannon that can fire. My crit build has 17,000 health, decent crit chance, decent crit damage, 4 condition removals, and 3 stun breakers. The character too provides good party support. It’s a team game after all.

The blind in earth attunement with Sandstorm is very effective from what posters have said in the forums and has been enough of a reason to carry the skill all by itself. I wish a version of this was available as an elite. I find I am running all defensive oriented utility skills and can’t seem to get away from those.

Electro.4173:

Razor.6392:

Electro.4173:

I find it kind of odd that Elementalist has absolutely no snow or blizzard attacks

Water focus 4 would like a word with you.

I suppose that kind of fits the bill, but I was thinking more along the lines of a powerful AoE blizzard, not a single-target chilled wind.

Plus, that attack is so mediocre I tend to forget it exists.

Frost Aura, Frozen Ground, and Frozen Burst, none are better than the Focus’s Freezing Gust. It’s chill for 3 seconds, a 66% reduction in movement and skill recharge rate, at a selected targetable 900 range with a 25 second recharge rate and is pretty good.

I understand your point though. The Focus is at the bottom of the popularity list but if that skill was on a dagger it would be OP.

MarkusParkus.8467:

Dive straight in to enemy zerg, earthquake – updraft – ring of fire – burning speed – remove your conditions – mist form.. run back to the safety of friendly zerg

I like it! Ride the LIghtening into the zerg ftw. I will often try to land a Churning Earth with an Arcane Shield after Earthquake to see how fast they are with their targeting. That is often a suicide run, but if I don’t have time to get my staff out it’s better than running. Running is tiring and hard on the knees. Besides, it’s no fun.

Staff is just so useful in a group with the CC and combo fields.

I don’t see any condition removal in that build Salacious. Are you able to do without?

Also, I am seeing more and more “builds” where I have to wonder what people are carrying in Health. There is a thread going called “show me your stats” or something. There are level 80 Elementalists in there fully geared out with 12,000 health. Imo that is beyond squishy. That is dead if I “fart in your general direction.” Not sure what your health will be, but just beware some of the builds people are claiming are glass cannons are just all glass. The cannon is at the bottom of the sea unfired.

Razor.6392:

You are the one who doesn’t seem to realize how much of a difference crit damage makes.

1000 base damage
1500 critical hit with 0% crit damage
2000 critical hit with 50% crit damage
2500 critical hit with 100% crit damage

We’re talking about a difference of 1000 damage between a normal crit with 0% damage and an enhanced crit. That’s twice the base damage of the ability.

1500-1800 critical hit to 2500. I don’t know about you but the difference is massive. It’s an additional 60% damage on average.

SIXTY PERCENT, not 5% from sigil, 10% from traits or 20% from bolt to the heart. And the damage difference is even greater if the skill in question is a nuke.

High damage values scale well with high % bonuses.

Once your critical chance is high enough, you’re supposed to capitalize on it with crit damage instead of power. It is absolutely pointless to have a moderate crit chance rate with little crit damage, just like it’s pointless to have condition duration without condition dmg, and high power with no crit chance at all.

If you are responding to Lert, I have to agree with what he said. Crit percentage is > Crit Damage. That’s all he said lol.

It is, imo, btw, not pointless to have Crit Chance without huge amounts of Crit Damage. Obviously it would become the area of damage one would want to concentrate in instead of power or conditional damage. To me it depends on the rest of the build and gear and how much toughness and vitality the character needs as to how much Crit Damage is available. There are too various effects that proc on a crit which give the stat added versatility. In other words, a character with high crit chance does not have to be made of glass.

Edit I see, I missed a post of his. Still lol he is making the point I just made. There is a trade off in the case he is mentioning of 600 armor. I like that approach for the most part. I personally have never liked min-max builds.

Ralloff.7359:

So many posts implying 0/10/0/30/30 builds are all bunkers rather than balanced if armored without PVT/Healing gear.

/signed I have noticed the same thing. We rarely see the stats at the end of the build including armor and weapons which is all that really matters. There’s a thread now asking players to show screen shots of their build. It’s very eye opening to see the real stats that some people are running. Seeing those, I am sure I am not sure I know what a “glass cannon” is. Is it 12,500 health buffef lol? How much glass and how big does the cannon have to be?

Ah, in that situation a scepter dagger can be a great setup. In melee range, Ring of Fire-Dragon’s Tooth-Phoenx-Fire Grab-Earthquake-Churning Earth gives 4 blast finishers for might, a huge frontal aoe with Fire Grab. If taking too much damage use Arcane Shield. Next, Rock Barrier for 200 toughness. If health is ok, move into Air for Ride the Lightning for the aoe immobilize, maybe Blinding Flash on one mob, Lighting Strike, then into water to heal up and Frost Aura.

I have not tried this in there, but it is a very effective Pve use of S/D in small area combat or if mobs can be pulled into melee range.

There’s no good reason to play only one weapon set. That is especially true at lower levels.

I can’t see your skill setup through the link for some reason. Use your earth elemental to get agro or water elemental for more healing if needed.

Puzzles often require ranged skills and scepter will fill in nicely too.

GuildWarsPlayer.5608:

Nittles.1582:

We have so few weapons that you should just try them all out and see what you like. You should definitely keep a staff with you at all times, to switch to before doing large events, but if you like to run something else, go for it. I personally love D/D. It’s melee range, but the defense is much more active than a warrior or guard, so it’s a lot more engaging.

Appreciate that double dagger info.I’ve been staying away from them because I thought it would be better to range enemies with the staff since elementalist wear light armor.I didn’t know double daggers provided defense.

Heh, I dare to say you are missing alot of defense the class has to offer in all the weapons. The list is really really long on how we can avoid damage, mitagate damage, and heal over damage thru boons on ourselves, conditions on mobs, and heals, all by any number of means including dodges, traits, skills, sigils, and runes.