Guild Wars 2

Zelyhn.8069:

So basically you just take away the 10 earth points in Guang’s build to put them in air.

This makes you deal slightly less damage on average.

Am I missing something with tempest defense?

25 points came out of earth. 15 go into air and 10 go into water (vital striking). The 15 points in air outright = 15% more critical damage just from having them in the trait line. So instead of having 10% damage while closer than you should be, and a useless bleed trait (since you should be in fire anyway) you get vulnerability stacking, 25 more critical damage + precision and 10% more damage over 90%, which is what scholar users want to aim for anyway.

Tempest defense = 20% more damage to stunned and knockdown foes. Admittedly I wish there was something better, but there it is.

Edit: Oops. I looked at the second build he posted. Argument stands for that one, but yea pretty much what you said for the first one, except arcane blast > signet of air. Also some trait differences.

I’ve personally had an extremely difficult time roaming in WvW on my ele. A fact I attribute mainly to my extensive use of staff. However lately I’ve been using a weird D/D build to some effect. While I can’t exactly expertly pick apart your build, I can make a few suggestions.

Use Travelers runes instead of Divinity. The extra 25% run speed will change everything.

You should have a precision stacking weapon set, your crit damage is halfway decent but your chance is abysmal. Using Maintenance Oils (utility) will also help with this.

Foods are generally very play style oriented, but I’d recommend condition duration subtraction. Loafs of Saffron Bread is a nice food to have when you run into the inevitable stun-you-forever warrior.

Since you’ve gone fresh air you’ve forced yourself out of 30 Arcane for Evasive Arcana, which means your self healing ability will be greatly diminished, despite the regeneration from cantrips. You may find healing your larger HP pool more difficult than you planned, and may want to adjust for additional toughness. Switching your trinkets to Knights will increase your toughness and compensate your power loss with additional critical hits. More toughness will increase the effectiveness of all your lower ticking healing blurts throughout the fight.

I run full celestial gear, which means I don’t actually have to chose between anything. I would recommend it over mixing things.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.3|6.5g.h3.d13.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e|2s.d1e.3s.d19.2s.d13.3s.d1e.2s.d13.2s.d13|u67c.u67b.0.a6.0|69.1|1l.26.1o.1r.28|e

This still isn’t fully accurate due to infusions, but it’s close enough. It’s especially effective when your party is fielding any kind of CC.

This build can get up to 3,030 power in a fight with food + bloodlust stacks, before might. It also self sustains roughly 9-15 stacks of might and maintains a crit rate just high enough that Fury isn’t required. Granted you may see better results doing a few fancy tricks here and there, but this build is incredibly reliable DPS in a usually not so ideal world.

I highly doubt this build out shines my staff build for raw hits or dps.

Zelyhn, one of these days we need to actually find a way to test LH and Staff side by side, because I’m 90% sure my current staff build will blow LH out of the water in DPS. Despite whatever figures you have. Every time I pick up some other ele’s LH I look on the numbers with sadness.

All you have to do to survive in Orr is know how to play. I farm there on a zerker ele while watching movies. This goes for any profession really.

O SNAP!

Looks… complicated, and complicated always makes the people who have a hard time using it argue any figures you might spit out based on it.

As a member of the said group, I highly doubt your second tab is the highest DPS an ele and get.

I also can’t grasp the concept of a coefficient by reading about it as I’m bad at math.

It’s true ideally you don’t want to switch attunements, but when I do it’s usually for water skills. This tends to be frozen ground + both water fields followed immediately by earth, also using every skill 2-5 whether or not it might simply miss… cause earth. Then if Fire is still on CD I cook off Air 2,4 and 5. By this time fire should be up and all of your support skills have been used. The result tends to be a locked down group of mobs after a large burst of healing on your team. If done right it helps with your next fire fields fairly significantly. At least you’re still being somewhat useful when out of fire, but it still equates to all 3 other elements combined being almost worth it in this build.

As far as the lack of Fury, it’s true it’d be nice to have, but I’ve found that 60% does pretty well for reliable criticals. I’d try not to go lower than that though.

So I’ve updated the build to conform to what I’m currently using and to use the updated traits now that the site has them. I’d also like to add that lately I’ve managed to dramatically increase my damage output again. Between the Ascended additions and a full set of power infusions (+30 power) I’m fairly confident I’ve increased my minimum damage by roughly 500. This number seems to scale slightly the harder I hit. Nowadays I get average hits of 7-9k in dungeon groups on my auto attack, with Meteor Shower hitting over 11k on the same target.

With 25 bloodlust and the +200 power from food after a kill, I maintain 3,030 power without might. One of these days I might actually upload a fight somewhere where you can all see the numbers without having to take my word for it.

This glyph does not trigger the “Inscription” Master trait in the Air line.

So I noticed a while back ( a few months) that at certain times fields I placed, such as Lava Font, simply failed to work under a specific condition. Most notably was the Dredge fractal after level 20 or so during the APC part. After killing the boss away from the spawns, my group would come back and start finishing off the adds, but after the invulnerability wore off there were times where my fields simply did not hit anything despite the dozen dredge standing still on top of it. I noticed this bug every single time without fail. I gave up on fractals a while ago after passing level 30 when I ran 8 fractals in a row without a single rare drop (including Maw twice) so I haven’t been back to see that bug in a long while.

More lately I’ve been WvWing heavily with a support staff build. Maguuma has been going up against heavy zerg servers such as Dragonbrand and Tarnished Coast. 3 way qued zerg fights have been common. Today I fought in one such battle, each side running full enough blobs to get SEVERE skill lag for quite a while. Tagging enemies is not an issue.

To the point, I’ve been noticing for quite a while that I simply cannot seem to hit an entire blob with any fields ever after a few seconds when the fighting starts. My numbers simply vanish. I tag nothing. I don’t even get “immune” from the mass of stability enemies passing through a lightning field I placed and I KNOW they pass through it because I stand there watching them do it. It only occured to me recently that this may in fact be the same bug I noticed way back in the day. It seems to happen when the servers becomes overloaded, and may be attributable to lag where a field is droped, then wears off before the server can catch up and calculate damage to those standing inside it. I could see this logically, but that wouldn’t explain the same issue in a 5 man fractal instance.

Has anyone else seen this? This may even be the reason I couldn’t seem to tag worth a kitten with staff in the scarlet invasions.

This thread makes me smile.

spoj

I dont know of any skill which bursts as high as fiery rush.

Bluefox

God forbid Ele’s actually have something they can contribute that’s well respected in this area.

Playing a class where you refuse to use 1/4 of your entire tool set probably isn’t the class for you.

I’ve been debating that particular question way too much lately. Just pick whatever you like more, they both do great right now.

Fiery Rush is fine how it is. Using examples of the extremes in the most ideal situations is hardly a compelling argument to claim a skill is too overpowered to be allowed. not to mention in the actual time it takes for this damage to be applied, burst builds can probably achieve their own 6 digit numbers.

Even if this skill was used in PvP to any kind of effect beyond MAYBE the occasional lone golem kill on a gate, the ease of it to be avoided is laughable considering all the damage is on a spot the size of one person.

That said, it IS an elite skill after all. From my understanding these skills are supposed to be an ace card only available to you for a short time. God forbid Ele’s actually have something they can contribute that’s well respected in this area.

He just said Ele’s are okay once they nerf everything else. Yea, pretty sure that’s what he just said.

I read that thread and had to go take some pain killers. I guess I should be happy I can nearly comprehend all of it.

STAFF GOOD!

Zelhyn

Sabull and I calculated staff’s dps some time ago.

By some time ago do you mean before or after the staff buffs?

I wish the damage in tool tips actually meant something to me.

Using ER mostly as of late. I used to run the glyph with glyph cooldowns, but I haven’t run glyphs for some time now. I believe the glyph to be our most powerful heal by far when traited, maybe with the exception of the signet with an arcane/d/d build. The lack of condition removal when not traited to water can be difficult to cope with, so ER has become my fallback.

I really wish the Dwayna heal for humans had less of a cooldown…

The elite glyph also does not trigger a boon if you have that traited.

The total damage dealt in that particular video by hammer was 163,883 over a period of roughly 18 seconds. Now from what I can tell he was able to attack for a few seconds longer than I, but as I suspected staff is right behind hammer in the ideal situation. I’ll grant you that these numbers are highly situational, but it does give us an initial frame of reference for DPS output in similar situations.

The hammer is much more inefficient and prone to difficulties; such as people taking your second, and having to sacrifice a utility slot AND a trait simply to use it. Not to mention getting downed removes the weapon entirely which is bad news since you have to be in melee range to even use it.

This particular CoE boss is a fair target for example damage output as he really is just a punching bag, but what do you do against Lupi, or many other of the very unfriendly melee bosses in this game? Using hammer puts ele’s from being slightly better at DPSing than a versatile staff ele, to a less effective backup weapon ele with a tied up utility slot and a useless trait in effect. Upon rethinking that I realized that’s not actually true, though you are still forced to potentially have 20 in fire you may not want at the time.

Regardless of my personal feelings towards hammer, it’s obviously a viable build. All I’m really trying to point out here is that staff is no where near as ineffective as many are making it out to be.

This is an interesting screenshot I managed to take that shows the scale of Staff DPS over the course of about 10-15 seconds.

Screenie

If you assume the first 2 numbers were from round one of the boss, round 2 clearly starts near my minimum damage. It then scales with some vulnerability, some might (mostly self sustained with the grandmaster trait) and culminating in the rather large numbers when it fell below 33% HP. Unfortunately I don’t have an identical example for hammer, but I’d imagine it’d fall just short of the total damage sustained, but at much higher risk to the user. Also note that fight took place without the 200 additional power from the food I use, despite seeing the shield icon. The total damage dealt was 123,089 starting at the 4th number in 10-15 seconds on one target, and that’s with only 1 meteor shower hit.

I’d also like to link this screenie to show just how high those numbers can be in some situations, and to remind everyone this is done at 1200 range meaning very little interruption.

Theoretically the hammer may dish out slightly more DPS in ideal situations, but I deal in practicality. I too would like to see this figured out using accurate math though.

Neko.9021:

I have no clue what happened for why Scepter suddenly became so popular in PvE. While it has the best might stacking in the game, and while Scepter’s burst damage is very good (making it an excellent pair with Lightning Hammer), on its own, it’s very subpar in terms of damage.

Staff has always been a favorite of Elementalists, mainly for flavor reasons. I can understand its popularity. It’s unfortunate that ANet made it primarily a Utility weapon instead of a Blasting one. I truly think that was a mistake on their part. I hope in upcoming patches when Eles get more weapons that they get a weapon set with DPS similar to that of Grenades for Engineers – high damage from far away.

Anyway, I do not see Staff becoming the new meta for Dungeon Eles. It just doesn’t do as much as other weapon choices. Given that, if you go truly deep into your damage trees, I do find you can put out pretty decent damage. But only decent. And it comes at the cost of any real utility to your team since you spend most of your time in Fire attunement and don’t even Might Stack like a Scepter Ele does.

And indeed, Dagger/Focus is the best non-conjure choice for Eles. I believe I said so in my guide. It’s what I use when PUGing difficult content. While it is true that Focus is a little bit awkward at times, it’s actually a very high utility option that compliments Dagger Ele fairly nicely in PvE.

I will update this guide soon enough. I’ve just been busy with school work. A few things have changed here and there and I’d like to add them all to my guide.

The change in traits is what spurred the use of Scepter recently, I believe.

I don’t know how many times I have to repeat myself to get the point across.

STAFF IS THE HIGHEST DPS WEAPON ELE’S HAVE.

I understand the skepticism, but I know the numbers I get. Between Lava Font and Fireball always hitting, all the time for 5-7k EACH every second, this means you’re doing FAR more consistent damage than anything else, even hammer. This is before even taking Meteor Shower into account. When MS and Lava Font are up, and auto attacking, you can be hitting a single or group of mobs for over 25k repeatedly, up to 3 or 4 times if you get lucky with MS, all within Lava Font’s duration(4 seconds). I doubt even the entire burst from S/D can match the total damage dealt in the same amount of time.

It seems there’s a Staff meta currently evolving for eles on the forum now that the enormous shadow of D/D is fading. I have played ele since release using staff. According to /age, that’s over 1400 hours of Elementalist play time for me using mainly staff, so I hope you can trust I have an informed insight. More recently I have used all combinations of weapons and have found a consistent feel for each.

• Staff: By far the most underestimated weapon due to it’s extreme difficulty to use in PvP, but probably the most effective weapon in PvE for ele. The staff excels at sustained damage because it’s always trying to hit with multiple attacks at the same time with fields. This means the numbers may not as pretty as Phoenix or Churning Earth, but the damage per second (DPS) overall is higher. This coupled with the control effects makes it one of the best group control weapons in the game, and requires the high skill cap of an experienced ele to truly utilized without putting traits into Arcane, but it is easily worth it. I would recommend every Elementalist to be fluent in staff function, but would not recommend it for a new player.

• Scepter/Dagger: Currently the best burst/combo finisher weapon set for ele. This set is what I would call the current meta for ele due to recent patches. This set is indeed incredibly powerful not only for its relatively good damage output, but this set can perma stack Fury and a great deal of might without much effort (Persisting Flames grandmaster trait). This set is also very effective at debilitating a single target, making it the most ideal setup for 1v1 engagements. I, however, tend not to use this setup myself because I have been staff so long, I can’t seem to get out of the precision I use for staff control rotation and fire field DPS. I would highly recommend this set to new players.

• Scepter/Focus: Probably the most resilient weapon set eles have access to due to Focus’ defense nature coupled with the range of Scepter. This is the weapon set I have the least experience with, as the DPS is atrocious compared to the others. I have however used this weapon set while commanding in WvW because of the enormous group defense and self survivability it delivers. This weapon set is best used to whittle down resilient targets when survival is paramount and time is not a constraint. I would recommend this set to new players looking for group content (dungeons).

• Dagger/Dagger: I doubt I need to explain this set much. Focused on hitting hard and being maneuverable, this set has had it’s place in the class uprooted by balancing taking place on Anet’s level. This set hasn’t found it’s new home yet, but still proves to be very high-risk high-reward oriented. I would not recommend this set to a new player currently.

• Dagger/Focus: As far as I know, no one ever uses this set (at least to no outstanding effect). Currently the 2 weapons seem rather incompatible as each weapon expresses the extreme of damage and self defense. A seemingly complementary concept, limited by actual skills not working well together. However, I might encourage some radicals to see what they might be able to find hidden in this combo of weapons and share with your peers. I would not recommend this set to a new player.

All that said, I feel the hammer that seems to be so popular would fit into the scepter/dagger area, as being melee is incredibly risky in our line of work in most cases. however I have found it’s damage to be rather disappointing when I compare it to my staff DPS output and the much higher risk it brings to use. In the few times I need to be in melee range (Subject Alpha in CoE for example) I find I’m using the FGS to more effect than hammer would ever be in the same situation. Until a more fluid change can be introduced into the utility weapon summons, I feel they are too much of an interruption in ele’s combat flow to be worth using in most situations.

I foresee staff becoming the norm soon for PvE, and the S/D shining for at least a few weeks until new variables are introduced. I hope the debating cropping up lately is helping people to realize the true potential of staff.

EchenSketch.9142:

Why do you guys need stability? Anet made it so we have better stunbreaks. Signet of Air and Glyph of Elemental Harmony, L2P Noobs

The ignorance in this post is painful.

Please refer to:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Staff-and-its-greatly-underestimated-damage/first#content

for a detailed argument for staff viability in PvE.

Unfortunately the thread turned into another WvW debate, which was not my intention.

An updated version of the build can be found here,

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmKbsRywjDAkCoEeQADJIeYBESA-jgxAYrgQ+DSyrIasF3ioxqrxUuER1SBMxEA-e

I know staff better than anything in the game, having played it entirely without waver for 10 months from release. Essentially it is the best option for safe ranged sustained high DPS. This makes it excellent for stationary targets and group settings. The primary advantage for staff is it’s safety. Your approach is trying to use it like daggers, this will not work. Yes, you get a nice shield, but the 4th attack that hits you may very well end you.

If you choose to go staff and be a damage dealer you MUST utilize the ranged advantage it is designed for. You must also be able to utilize every tool at your disposal to survive, this means above average to excellent awareness of your surroundings and timings. #4 fire is one of the best skills available to eles.

Demonstration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlqjucmBbzk&feature=youtu.be

Undead slaying was not used, and my normal sigil of night was equipped (likely not in effect during the video).

I’ll leave you all with your own opinions, but it’s a simple fact that staff is an extremely different play style than what most ele’s are used to these days, as they like to follow the d/d meta. The damage may seem underwhelming, but keep in mind that your primary DPS output is an AOE that can be sustained without effort, anywhere you want, at 1200 range, while being supplemented by the fireball projectile.

On average I hit dungeon mobs for 5-7k with both lava font and fireball due to a partial stack of vulnerability and the food I eat, as well as self sustained might.

Screen 1
Screen 2
Screen 3

Granted there’s a lot of warriors in these screenshots, but the damage can’t be denied, and isn’t rare. I’ll also grant that Berserkers tend to get hit harder than most because of frenzy? I think. The highest numbers I’ve seen on that stairwell was a 16k meteor shower hit and a 12.5k fireball hit.

TLDR: Staff is for safe playing damage dealers who know their role in PvE. It is difficult for ele but extremely effective if it caters to your play style.

You know you’re an ele if:

-You dropped an AOE in zerker, downed, then ressed yourself then got downed and repeated enough times to die outright from down penalty in less than 3 seconds because there’s NOTHING you can do about it. (AC spiders anyone?)

-You enter combat in WvW with signet of air because you forgot to switch it.

-You’ve used your signet instead of swapping it out just before combat. (tiny buttons above skills ftl.)

-One or more of your burst numbers in zerker made you squee.

-You actually stopped to stare at your screen after realizing how badly Gust missed someone you were 2 inches from.

-You yelled a curse word loud enough to attract odd stares when someone interrupts dagger earth 5.

-You’ve killed an alpha golem on a gate in 5 seconds with a FGS.

-Retaliation killed you from one meteor shower on top of rams.

-You’ve been called a “squish” class by some ignorant twit in a dungeon group.

-You’ve wondered why you don’t get any good looking staves.

-You’ve stopped 50 people in their tracks with one surprise lightning field and made a commander squee.

-You’ve compared dagger offhand lightning to bowling.

-You’ve mist formed in down state to the very edge of the portal to safety, but didn’t make it. (WvW)

-You sunk someone, then raised them, then sunk them again underwater and giggled to yourself.

-You’ve gusted yourself off a cliff when it was reflected.

-You’ve somehow whirled the wrong direction with FGS.

-You’ve drawn permanent aggro from a world boss despite the other 50 people hitting it.

Then in theory it’d probably be 5 ele’s in perfect sync with various field + blast and leap combos providing the maxed might stacks and 5 FGS extreme damage while cycling elements for permanent protection/healing. In theory of course.

Ele’s are the ultimate class in combining all the factors of your engagement with a tactical mindset to provide advantage. Providing combo fields for yourself and your group is essential to any situation(staff), as well as the finishers required for other’s providing them(s/d). This means it’s most likely the most difficult class to play at an impressive level. Not only do you have to know at least 3x as many skills in your tool belt as most other classes, but you must be able to use them effectively in conjunction with each other at the proper time, both for you and your opponant(s) AND knowing exactly how long your cooldown time will be to use them again(d/d(f)). Not a simple task.

This of course means you’ll encounter a myriad of difficulty compared to other classes, but it also provides opportunity to be unexpectedly effective. I acknowledge that few have managed to master this, and it needs to be addressed to some degree for the masses who are carried by meta, but make no mistake. Ele’s are far from useless in any situation.

I also still firmly believe that Ele’s are the highest DPS output classes in the game, but only slightly more so than warriors.

I would imagine there’s some kind of cooldown somewhere that would screw up this idea.

Hammer’s always been good for getting some pretty numbers and feeling beefy. Looks like it could be fun but the promise of death that comes with it would offset that a bit. I really wish they’d completely remove the #4 skill for something that’s not utterly useless that complements the feel of the air element (a burst of quickness maybe?).

I also didn’t really see anyone in that video who was actually tanky, lots of uplevels and obvious glass builds.

There is no such thing as an optimized group due to the sheer versatility of all classes and diversity of boss and trash fights. Though I will say the highest DPS group I’ve ever had was 2 warriors 2 engis and myself as an ele, the support skills were also abundant.

I guess most/all of you just sort of skipped over the very first thing I said in my post.

Bluefox

So I just got finished reading the guide to PvE up at the top of this forum.

The majority of the numbers used were intended to be taken in a PvE context, however I know for a fact that I routinely hit over 11k with meteor shower on light classes in zerg fights. This is, however, usually with 25 bloodlust stacks and the 5-10 self granted might stacks from spamming other skills and the full 127% critical damage I have. The entire intention of this post was to demonstrate the strength’s of staff for the PvE ele beyond control and support.

As it stands many of the arguments here hold merit, with exception to the “stars align” term being tossed about. I find these instances not very rare to be frank. CC is thrown around like candy in this game, with the exception of bosses with Defiant. Why not take advantage of it to burst this foe in PvE or even PvP with 20% more damage? All foes you end up killing drop below 33% health at least once anyway, so you can hardly claim that these circumstances are rare. The rest of my setup is not situational, it only varies in the power you output. The numbers provided are indeed at the high end of possibility, but you cannot deny the devastating numbers that are possible. As it stands the highest meteor shower I’ve ever seen was 17k, and I recently had a 14k fireball. Now these were stars aligning numbers, AND they were in PvE. ( I always hit up in this area on the frenzy mobs in CoE in path 2 and 3, go try it )

All that said, I would actually recommend against zerker + this trait combo in general WvW as retaliation alone can down you easily. Best situation to use this kind of build in is in a qued zerg. I myself have switched to 0/30/0/20/20 with complete (almost) celestial gear for my staff WvW needs.

It’s an interesting argument to buff your team with Might and Fury, as I find generally most pugs I run with simply don’t make use of the extra DPS because they themselves are also tank builds. This means when they pop the support for me instead of vise verse, it’s the equivalent of the entire group gaining buffs from my DPS output increase alone. An unfortunate reality with puging dungeons.

So I just got finished reading the guide to PvE up at the top of this forum. For the most part its an excellent guide aimed at those who would be reading a guide to learn how to play. I was reading it to see what my peers have concluded about the class after I have self taught myself how to play this class.

I’ve played full zerker ele since release simply because high risk high reward is my general play style. After a bumpy leveling experience and a nightmarish trek in Orr with its state right after release, I managed to start getting the hang of it.

Today I have the most powerful DPS staff ele I know of, and I’d like to share it with you guys because I am always trying to find ways to increase my damage. I also always love to show up the meta game.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.3|6.1g.h2|0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e|2s.0.3s.0.2s.0.3s.0.2s.0.2s.0|u67c.u67c.0.a6.0|69.1|1l.26.1o.1r.28|e

UPDATED BUILD 9/17
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.3|6.5g.h3.d13.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e|2s.d1e.3s.d19.2s.d13.3s.d1e.2s.d13.2s.d13|u67c.u67b.0.a6.0|69.1|1l.26.1o.1r.28|e

This build is the most un-newb friendly build in the game! (probably)

Unfortunately this site seems outdated with air traits. I use the combined 20% damage to knocked down foes and aura when stunned trait, as well as arcane lightning which is 10% critical damage, not 3. This puts the total self sustained critical damage at 127%.

To any experienced Ele, the first thing you’ll notice is it’s the extreme for damage. This of course means extremely low survivability. However because it’s staff, this means you don’t need to put yourself into harms way nearly as often as you might with a hammer or dagger build. Staff also has enough control skills to keep you alive with excellent battlefield awareness. I cannot stress this point enough! One mistake can cause you to be downed, or lose a significant portion of your health! The reflection and root/cripple with earth allows you to maintain distance. Combine these with frozen ground and entire groups of enemies are all but defenseless against you and your party. (this also goes well with sandstorm)

Most of the time you’ll be attuned to fire as it’s the obvious choice for raw damage output for staff. Not only does fireball hit as hard as hammer auto attack 1 and 2(even with the same stats), but Lava Font hits for identical damage. This means you’re hitting for the equivalent of the hammer 3 all the time. But this is just the beginning! Meteor shower was significantly buffed recently, and hits reliable vs any target, and the dodge #4 skill is a highly underestimated asset for survivability. It moves you extremely far from the action, and even leaves a fire field behind to blast if you desire.

Unfortunately with such fantastic damage output comes probably the most significant drawback of this build, which is the majority of this damage is reliant on fields. Moving targets provide great difficulty despite fireball hitting very hard. Fortunatly staff has the previously mentioned snares which helps offset this, however this drawback makes this build all but useless when roaming solo or in small groups in WvW. This aside, I do extremely well in large groups in WvW and all PvE content with this build.

Using this build, I’ve hit knocked down targets under 33% hp for over 12k with my auto attack alone. A normal hit was roughly 9-10k on the same target not knocked down. I hope some of you can realize the awesome potential of this understated weapon like I have, and point out ways I might be able to increase damage output.

There’s a rather annoying and completely debilitating bug for one unfortunate member of a party on each alpha fight. The purple stun crystal he spawns on someone appears to have 2 phases of activation; first the crystal appears, then it casts a second stun with a duration. The bug occurs when the first phase (the crystal with hp appearing) is destroyed before the second can activate. This leaves the target stunned for 15 seconds with no hope of rescue (as there’s no longer an object to destroy).

A video can be viewed demonstrating it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VnkuyvItzQ&feature=youtu.be

I’d love to see this fixed.

Oh, and I’d love to see the targeting dead things bug gone too.

I put this in the wrong forum didn’t I?

There’s a rather annoying and completely debilitating bug for one unfortunate member of a party on each alpha fight. The purple stun crystal he spawns on someone appears to have 2 phases of activation; first the crystal appears, then it casts a second stun with a duration. The bug occurs when the first phase (the crystal with hp appearing) is destroyed before the second can activate. This leaves the target stunned for the full duration with no hope of rescue (as there’s not longer an object to destroy).

A video can be viewed demonstrating it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VnkuyvItzQ&feature=youtu.be

I’d love to see this fixed.

Oh, and I’d love to see the targeting dead things bug gone too.

So I did some trials, it seems the mobs are simply varied, unlike AC. The Alpha is not Inquest.

Rainzar.6905:

don’t need a source, i received ghost slayer achievment from killing a graveling in AC. based on other posts i’ve read in the past it seems safe to assume the appropriate slaying potion (based on what the dungeon vendor sells) works for every mob in the related dungeon, inquest slaying for CoE etc

without someone testing it, guess you can’t be 100%.

In this case the CoE vendor actually sells Undead slaying potions themselves, but the inquest recipe. So, you know, confusing.

That’s interesting because it seems that the gravelings in AC are actually considered ghosts, which implies that the appropriate potion will be effective per dungeon. Also, I seem to remember a bunch of golems that I would consider inquest throughout the dungeon (path 1 hack room/laser room). Though I would acknowledge that there’s too many mixed mobs for the potion to be worth it over a sharpening stone.

I’d love an official response from one of those fancy red posters on this, I hate trying to find it out by trial. I also read once that the alpha was considered inquest, though I can’t seem to find that article again even though I clearly remember reading it on the wiki.

Edit: it seems wiki has Alpha as an unspecified race.

In a dungeon, specifically CoE is what I really want to know, is EVERY mob inside considered 1 type of enemy? As in CoE is every mob considered an inquest mob? I ask mainly because I want to know if my potion will effect the Alpha, and the dragon minions in the beginning.

I am having this exact same problem down to the letter, except I was using a perfectly good 460 GTX, and now am having the same problem with no change with a new 660 TI I got for Christmas. These crashes are impossible for me to provide any kind of idea behind what might be causing them, they truly are random to the user. I have the latest Nvidia driver, fresh install. The crashes began immediately after a small patch 2 weekends ago I believe it was.

Please look into this for us, it was bad enough yesterday that I could not enter the Ascalonian Catacombs without crashing, I tried 10 times and had to give up. (The only time I was able to actually re-create a crash.)

I bought this recipe out of the Ascalonian Catacombs vendor in Lion’s Arch, used it, and received the recipe for Extended Potion of Undead Slaying. I look back at the vendor and it says I own the recipe for the Ghost Slaying. Should be pretty easy to replicate. Is this a known issue and will it be addressed in a Soon™ to be released patch?