Guild Wars 2

This is what I use:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fen.gw2skills.net%2Feditor%2F%3FfEAQFAWhImKbxR4QlDAkHvcCLjChUeMzO2A-j0yAYLE0GA9BgEhk9KiGbdLIV3wWejmyGTpSEV7SIiqFCQ2YA-w

1. More defensive build designed for a purely support Ele role. I’ve found in WvW battles Toughness really is the King and a huge reason why you will live or die in most cases such as when a high dmg burst Rogue gets on you. Even without food you are sitting at 1700 Tough/16k HP and means you can swap in the Saffron Mango Ice Cream if you wanted for more (160) healing.

2. You still have decent power (1900 with Stone) so your spells aren’t completely neutered when you throw some Fire spells into the mix. You do end up giving up Crit/Crit Dmg for Healing Power however so don’t expect anything super amazing to occur damage wise but there are other spec’s for that.

3. I prefer Sigil of Energy since the on swap of attunements means an extra dodge roll for Evasive Arcana.

4. Healing Power is a complicated topic. Healing Power in general is regarded as bad for two primary reasons. First, because of it’s bad performance in SPvP (due to all SPvP specific nerfs). Second, because Guardians have more access to repeatable blast finishers and whomever does the blast Finisher does the healing.

However this is not to say we don’t actually benefit pretty greatly from Healing Power. Evasive Arcana, Healing Ripple, Area Healing Blast Finisher all benefit 100% from +Healing. In addition our wide availability of Regeneration (Healing Rain, Cantrips, Elemental Attunement) which greatly benefits from Healing Power makes it not really a huge waste of a stat that people make it out to be. Also with Arcane Wave we potentially get 2-3 Blast Finishers depending on how much you want to micro Evasive Arcana and attunement swapping.

However I wouldn’t go and do what you did and bank everything into Healing Power with Cleric/Magi because it basically wrecks any chance you have at any kind of measure of an offensive stat (such as Power). You will find times where you will drop Lava Fonts and Meteor Showers and every bit here helps.

5. Following that I also went with addition duration on Boons with my Runes including making Regen last pretty kitten ed long (at +80% duration) since our Regen will likely overwrite many other sources of Regen (with stacking duration buffs like Regen the most powerful effect is the active one) on other players since it will be stronger with the healing power we are offering.

Honestly tho most GvG groups all have a set build that they expect you to follow and works for them so I’d check with your guild first and see what they want you to run.

Jnaathra.6549:

The class has been a failed concept from the “getgo” if you ask me. It is to different from the rest of the field and thus to hard for the developers to work with, so they ignore it.

I would trade my max lvl Elementalist for ANY other class in this game right now. I hate her that much.

Honestly with the sheer lack of vertical progression I don’t understand why it’s so hard to reroll. I’ve deleted four level 80s at this point for various reasons (2 of which same class for entire purpose of changing race). The only significant investment is a Legendary.

My most recent guy was rerolling my Mesmer from a Human into a Charr. I basically leveled up to 16 doing hearts and then said screw it and bought the rest of my levels by leveling up jewelcrafting, cooking, tailoring, leather, armor, artificer and weaponsmith. This cost me (based on what I already had gathered) around 20g tops (probably cost more now cause of new ascended crafting). Even then it’s really not hard to level and you could easily level to 60 and then just max out Cooking and a bit of Jewelcrafting to hit 80 pretty kitten fast with even less investment.

At 80 I immediately began to run Fractals to start that progression up to level 10. This way after 20 days of dailies and Fractals (L2 and L10 every day) I would have an Ascended Neck (Laurels + WvW), Back (Relics, 100 a day) and 2 Rings (Pristines). I also ran COE/COF for Zerker armor, SE for Knight’s Armor and weapons I mostly crafted working on 500 weaponsmith/artificer.

If you’re concerned about the alt paying for itself never fear as currently (as of 9/9) the prices on things like ancient wood are so high that the 24 (or more) you collect each day on the new toon (not counting the 30 odd Ori) will more than pay for itself over the course of those 20 days as well.

There is a way. Do you have the will?

Maybe we should all spam Cliff’s email?

Haha…

Kyle.2507:

That double team on FABL garri… thanks jq and bg… real cool

JQ’s just practicing for when SOR comes back up next week.

Doomdesire.9365:

Maybe because BG has the biggest 24/7 coverage?

JQ contests BG’s SEA, SoR contests BG’s EU/NA/OCX. It’s logical. Neither of these servers have the numbers and coverage BG has.

BG get’s matched up with SoR – >>> ticks 350+ for late OCX/SEA
BG get’s matched up with JQ – >>> Ticks 330+ EU/NA/OCX
BG get’s matched up with SoR AND JQ – >>> No more PVD during offhours. Sorry to break it to you, but that’s how WvW works

Give JQ EU/NA/OCX guilds and I’m sure it will be a different story. JQ is one of the best/if not the best servers with their numbers. Being condescending to them because you have more coverage doesn’t make sense.

Thanks for agreeing with me! I’m glad we can all come to understand and know that without SOR then JQ can’t hold their own and without JQ that SOR can’t hold their own.

I might have more sympathy for your coverage plight if you didn’t respond to it by double teaming BG with each other every chance you get. You know. Because coverage.

(and I don’t mean your “tee hee whoopsie 2v1” scenarios that happen in a 3 way battle environemnt. I’m talking about the trebs in Aldons and Trebs in Jerrifers level of BS)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsdRlwzipHVzqGa9IypHM3yNdkUoapWJF42FC-jQDBYfQYLChIMYEEAUFYEBKiJPCjJQKqlhFRjVbDT5KoaYIqYRGA-e

This is what I use. I have had no issues with any element of the game and I’ve been pretty much using this build (or a slight variation of it back in the 20/20/0/25/5 days) since the start of the game.

I’m a huge fan of these runes.

And we again see how well JQ (or SOR) holds up in T1 without a third server to hold their hand.

They don’t.

Great ideas!

Given Arena Net’s long history of taking advice from players and these ideas being so awesome I see these being implemented soon.

woeye.2753:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Nothing to do with resources, they just simply dont care. Just think where this game would be if it didnt have a gem store but Pay monthly instead. You can bet all these issues would be getting worked on due to fear of losing customers.

At this point, they have enough people in PvE wasting money on pointless crap in the gemstore to have no interest in balancing the game as it would not bring them any money, money is the ONLY thing they care about.

Sure you can say they are a business and thats what businesses do, well they should also want to keep the customers happy, this clearly isnt happening either.

Oh, I am pretty sure there are many people inside ANet who care a lot. But they can’t address all those things because management doesn’t let them.

And ANet’s management primary aim is to make money, you’re right. I can only guess that the gem store doesn’t generate enough money to pay the bills for the amount of developers it would take to fix all those bugs.

I cannot speak for the US. But in Europe artists/content creators are generally way more cheaper than software developers.

But I agree with you: in the long run it will hurt the game if it takes forever to fix bugs or implement much needed features.

However, we all know that management rarely cares about long-time issues. It’s all about quarterly results.

You two should have matching tinfoil hats.

ANet has always been a super slow developer when it comes to balance changes. Anyone who played GW1 for any length of time knows this. Most of their slow to react development style has to deal with them basing their original game pretty heavily around competition and the constantly shifting and emerging “meta” game that players come up with to get an advantage (be it PvP or PvE).

You can see this in the very class we play. It took them forever to slowly pull apart and nerf the Elementalist while people raged for months about Bunker Eles. It wasn’t one fell swoop and Elementalists became the sad state they were today, it was over the course of multiple patches and months. Even then when you look at the current criticism of the Elementalists and it’s never, “I’m unable to perform because XYZ” but instead “Look at this other class, it’s so much stronger than me!” The later has never inspired class changes in any game ever.

ANet isn’t afraid to do complete and total overhauls of their classes when it’s needed. Look at the way they gutted the Dervish class mechanics in GW1. Look at the huge Elementalist buffs in GW1 against armored targets. If it’s needed here I’m sure we’ll get it, but only after they’ve let us exhaust every possible build option and small tweaks just won’t get the job done.

Well for one lets remember they actually have access to the numbers and skill data. If they say across all the Elementalist characters out there, which even the forum participation here only represents a fraction of, a good amount of time is spent in 1-2 attunements it’s probably not inaccurate.

From our perspective it really depends on build and what you’re doing. There are plenty of cases where I just throw on a staff and use Fire because I am feeling lazy. This is especially true for things like champ farm. Simple truth is you don’t need to be some super crazy 4 attunement rotation to just get tags when sitting in Fire and spamming 3 buttons will work. Another I might be sitting in Air most of the time cause I’m just running around gathering.

There are of course other scenarios where it might be unimaginable to never swap such as WvW or PvP.

In either scenario I think everyone should be well aware that the Elementalist isn’t going to be getting any boosts so if you don’t know it you know your options at this point. I for one am enjoying my Mesmer thoroughly.

I’ll believe it when I see it. Until then I’m expecting:

Water Blast: Damage coefficent changed from 0.3 to 0.4

…and them to call it good.

Mesmer.

In PvE Mesmers are part of the holy trinity of this game (Warrior/Guardian/Mesmer). This is because their projectile reflects (Focus and Feedback) are clutch on many encounters in the game. All their other utility (boon stripping, portals, timewarp, etc) are all pretty great.

In WvW Mesmers are also pretty good in most scenarios. In 1v1 they are exceptionally strong. In Zerg v Zerg you have many abilities like Portal, Mass Invis, Veil and a laundry list of other abilities that are fantastic.

Your performance and what you excel at largely is determined by your spec. I personally play a 20/20/0/30/0 Phantasm spec and it’s pretty awesome all around. Conditions aren’t an issue since I can generate a large amount of clones and just rotate Shatters to AOE cure conditions off me and allies. I also have extreme burst damage from the form of Phantasms hitting near infinite targets (each spin on a Zerker hits 5 targets and as it spins through a crowd it’s a lot of damage). This also helps for farming events since the high burst of Phantasms is always a guaranteed loot right off most mobs it hits. It’s an all around spec that while it doesn’t probably perform as well as some Shatter focused specs it’s a great all around spec that works for all the elements of game play I’ve run with no issues.

They also don’t face the same gearing issues as Elementalists because they start out with 15,000 base HP and loads of escapability (multiple stealths, multiple sources of evasion, CC and much much more).

The only downside I’m really aware of is you don’t have access to a 25% runspeed passive or a permanent source of Swiftness without going certain Runes. This can make it a bit tedious to run around out of combat but even with Runes of Air you can maintain around 100% up time on Swiftness.

The only real positive I can speak to on the Elementalist is they excel in WvW and large area farming. For example during Scarlet event an Elementalist could rake in some serious loot tags. Also in WvW they really excel at being able to provide Guardian level heal support while also still providing Necromancer level area CC. This is a rather unique combination and not offered by any other class but other classes can offer one aspect or another (as mentioned).

Never understood this. It’s been simple and will continue to be simple. If you don’t like your Elementalist you have three choices:

1. Reroll to a different class. Be sure to pick something that interests you such as either fun game play or being overpowered. We all know Warrior/Guardian/Mesmer are solid in just about every capacity.

2. If you don’t want to reroll your other option is to quit or take a break for a while. I understand getting attached to a character and when it isn’t working out for you and you don’t want to invest yourself again this is the best route.

3. Shut up and deal with it. Lamenting forever or creating endless forum topics on the doom and gloom of your daily misery accomplishes nothing. You’ve chosen to stick with it and just deal with the way things are there’s really no sense in crying about it when you know the alternatives. The sheer volume of your tears on topics like Ride the Lightning have literally became an joke they publicly mock (such as with the Sanctum Fire move description).

Devs are going to do what devs are going to do and it’s pretty obvious our input into the matter is read, never acknowledged and summarily ignored.

FrownyClown.8402:

please refer to my build. have a nice day.

Speaking of have you heard about the new Dire gear replacing Travelers?

Condi/Tough/Vit.

Honestly after they nerfed EA initially by removing all the blast finishers from each one I found EA mostly to be more trouble than it was worth.

We have a number of abilities like EA that are pretty difficult to micromanage due to ICDs. For example lets say you want to save your Dodge to do a Blast Finisher in Earth but while in Air you’re forced to dodge to counter a mechanic or attack in PvP which blows EA into AOE Blind (whoopity doo). You’re now forced to wait 10s before you can pull off that blast finisher from Earth now. I literally cringe when I see an AOE Fire/AOE Blind go off when I have EA slotted. The same principal applies to “Rock Solid” because now you have to save your Earth attunement to cover Ether Renewal heal which just isn’t always feasible. Can things like this be micro managed? Sure. Do I want to play on that level all the time? Hell no.

Bar none of all the issues, all the joking around and all the other parts the biggest thing that gets me down about my Ele is the sheer lack of HP. Every character is going to have to gear for Toughness but we also have to gear/spec for HP. A thief can get away with no gearing for HP because they have great mobility and escape options where ours were basically gutted. This really forces you into a build like the one I linked to get any measure of balance between Toughness, HP and enough offense to not just be another bunker spec.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImKbxR4QlDAkHvcCLjChUeMzO2A-j0yAYLE0GA9BgEhk9KiGbdLIV3wWejmyGTpSEV7SIiqFCQ2YA-w

This is what I use for WvW Staff Support. Plenty of power, healing, toughness and survivability. You can also go full Clerics too if you want but I don’t like the drop in HP since without Food it’s only at around 16k HP and Clerics drops it down to the 13k HP range.

Again the idea here is to be bunker as hell while heal supporting your group.

Should represent that chart with hours played on each class.

To those who want to use D/D then use D/D. I prefer S/D because I prefer to be ranged instead of melee.

Jarek.2430:

Fixed for you:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmKbkR4wjEIkCmwQRHMCiHWgDwhlCzAA-jkyAYLhQCCAJKhZvioxWGDS1Nsl3oprxUnER1eeioapAYSZE-w

All you did was take a good build that functioned well in all aspects of the game and modify it for $up3r l33t 1v1 VVvVV do.Ols that contribute nothing to anything.

Way to go rock star.

There, there. It’ll be okay.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhImKbxR4wjDIEFmgLIeYBOAHWUMD5AA-jEyAYLhQCCAJKhZvioxW1KiGruGTdSEV75JiqlCIilRA-w

ARM.3912:

I agree. I am clearly the best candidate for the interview.

We should all come up with a fictional story for ARM’s Elementalist and submit it.

I recommend you contact ARM.3912

He would be the most useful in this scenario.

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.

Shadowfax.7562:

this buid: 20 stacks of bleed ~ 2760 dps + burning ~ 800dps = 3560dps
direct build: lightning whip ~ 2035dps

I did not consider might stacks here, with this build you can manage 13-18 stacks, + 9 compared to direct damage build.

Why you say it has lower dps than a direct damage build?

Because we don’t play in a bubble and reality will kick in:

1. If only 5 bleed slots end up being available (even temporarily), that’ll reduce your DPS down to 40% of what it could be which is marked lower than Lightning Whip which will do it’s damage regardless.

2. In addition, Lightning Whip is AOE. To switch to AOE you need to switch to Staff which presents it’s own challenges such as total loss of /Focus support or large amounts of Might (and Fury depending on build).

3. You do not instantly start out at 20 bleedstacks. If you’re using a staff for example, it would take 18 seconds (Eruption x3) to ramp up to 18 Bleeds. Consider this on bosses with mechanics like Destroyer in COE path 3 where you have a limited amount of time to damage them and then the boss goes back Immune (a common mechanic seen throughout the game) which will cause your DPS to failcascade down to 0 and have to be ramped back up again.

It’s all well and good to theorize about the maximum possibilities of Condition based DPS but when you get down to the nitty gritties of actual game mechanics in actual scenarios it becomes a lot less appealing.

Zelyhn.8069:

Nope nope nope

This build is optimal. You can keep trying to find flaws and I will keep proving you wrong, like I have always done in every discussion with you.
This is simply the best response that has been produced to fulfill the idea of doing condition damage in PvE.
You can keep trying to say that since conditions have a tough spot in the meta then the build is suboptimal and I will keep telling you that the optimality of this condition build has nothing to do with the state of conditions, this is a different topic.

You can keep saying it but you have yet to prove it.

I keep asking you to prove it, but you don’t seem to be willing to.

Zelyhn.8069:

Like I said all along in this discussion the difference with OP’s build is that it does a little less damage in the situation where we stay in earth, but provides much more flexibility and constancy. One of the biggest advantage is having access to EA.

Evasive Arcana gains you what, exactly? The Might Stacks are the same because there are same number of Blast Finishers in either rotation combat:

(with 30 Arcane):
Earth → Air → Swirling Winds → Lightning Strike → Fire → Dragon’s Tooth → Flamewall → Phoenix → Arcane Wave → (backup) → Earth → Dodge Roll (Evasive Arcana) → Magnetic Wave

(with 30 Fire):
Earth → Air → Swirling Winds → Lightning Strike → Fire → Dragon’s Tooth → Flamewall → Phoenix → Arcane Wave → Dragon’s Tooth (!!!) → Earth → Magnetic Wave

I tested both of these in the Mists and they both work. The only net gain here is 1 Bleed, 1 Cripple, and 1 Might, 1 Protection, 1 Swiftness (due to Elemental Attunement) compared to a loss in direct Damage and 50 seconds of AOE Fury.

Where’s the flexibility? Where’s the consistency? Using vague descriptors with nothing to back them up doesn’t help us understand the point you are trying to make.

Zelyhn.8069:

Yes I calculated the dps of such build in an other thread and it was high, very high (around the 5k dps when spamming bleeds with perma burn). It is not easy for a direct damage elem build to get this high.

So you calculated the maximum possible theoretical DPS you could do if you were entirely alone and no one was with you on a single target.

I don’t understand how that will help in actual scenarios where you are grouped up with people, they will take bleed slots, and they will take up mobs. Also if a Lightning Whip build does 2000 DPS and you’re facing more than one target then your DPS also is sub-par because the Lightning Whip will hit 3 targets for 2000 DPS (6000 DPS) while you will be dealing 5000 DPS on one target with Bleeds.

How is that optimal?

Zelyhn.8069:

No Kodiak, we discuss the build.

And the build is 100% condition based and therefore we discuss the build: Conditions.

Again, please feel free to show me what else the build brings that isn’t Conditions.

Zelyhn.8069:

The build does not provide fury like D/D does, but it provides sweet uptimes on debuffs that protect the group, and it does tons of more damage.

KazNaka.4718’s build provides Fury. It also provides sweet uptimes on debuffs that protect the group. You said that you couldn’t prove which build does more damage or less damage a few posts ago. Why are you saying now it does “tons of more damage.”? Did you get access to your spreadsheet and you can educate us with the numbers behind that statement?

Zelyhn.8069:

Being a condition dealer surprisingly enables you to fill the role that consist of dealing damage with conditions. This is a good dps increase for any decent group.

Do you have any kind of DPS numbers to back up what you’re saying? How does the DPS of your build compare to Neko’s builds? What kind of DPS loss are you seeing if the target already has 5 bleeds on it? 10 bleeds? 15 bleeds?

Zelyhn.8069:

No you do not need two sets of gear to pull it off. Read again what I wrote: if objects are going to be a problem for you (which it is not for anyone) then carry two sets.

What I read was you didn’t have an answer and that it was someone else’s job to contribute to the group while you let them carry you and the only solution was to carry two sets of gear.

Do you have an alternative way to destroy/deal with objects other than just DPS them with no power?

Zelyhn.8069:

The strongest burn is applied first, so it is better to perma burn if you have strong condition power.

Yes the signet cd reduction is a choice we are considering, it is in the base build as you can see from the start. And no 14.4 sec out of 16 is not virtually perma burn.

In the base build there is already near permanent burn because of the additional condition duration and the Signet cool down leaving a 0.75s gap. With him actually planning to contribute AOE Might and AOE Fury to the group and being in Fire that stacking duration of Burn will automatically be permanent. In addition since he already has Renewing Stamina in his build he’s already going to get perma Vigor as is (especially with perma AOE Fury).

So far I’m seeing a lot of merits for the original poster’s build and little for the 30 Arcane version is offering. Hopefully when you back up your numbers on your opinions when you get access to your spreadsheet you can make it more clear.

imaginary.6241:

Isn’t rule number 1 in groupplay to always carry at least a second set of gear, if you lack of something in general to switch on bad situations if you’re talking about group friendly play that is?

Why not play a build that works in all scenarios regardless of group? By shackling yourself to only Conditions you’re pigeon holing yourself into a very specific role that does require you to swap.

imaginary.6241:

But yes. This Build doesn’t seem to be optimal for Dungeon friendly or General PvE friendly Groupplay like high level Fractals but more for your regular single PvE roaming or random gameplay with uncoordinated PuGs (might work with coordinated Groups as well). If he ‘s having fun? Let him be, that ’s the way he likes to play. And to be honest: Putting theory and optimal Builds aside, there are way worse builds out there. I don’t believe he would pull down anyone(!). Heck so many players don’t even think about Builds at all …
and he ’s in the upper top of those who do.

I fully agree on all points. It is not an optimal build at all and would be terrible in group play if your aim was being optimal. However if your aim is to have fun and not worry about being optimal then I 100% support and respect that. However lets not kid ourselves and go on about how optimal it is when it’s not just because it is fun. This would be entirely misleading and inaccurate.

imaginary.6241:

That said I just WTF’ed for what you’d still need Signet of Earth after stacking >2500+300 Toughtness and still ask for more Defense? Or did I get confused about that part?

The Elementalist faces two problems: Low HP and Low Armor.

The only way to get HP and Condi damage is Power/Vit/Condi. The only way to get Tough and Condi damage is Precision/Tough/Condi.

If you focus on the former you will have a lot of HP (around 18000) but only around 1400 Toughness (also you gain more power at the cost of no precision and slightly less condi damage because toughness % is lower).

The later gets you lots of Toughness but without any Vitality you’re at 11k base HP (terribly low) even if you have a truckload of Toughness that’s only so much Effective HP. Ironically this makes you incredibly weak to the one thing you’re good at, Conditions. Entire reliance on Ether Renewal for condition management (or again, group party members) is tenuous at best. Also since Precision is a dead end stat that won’t really increase your DPS (since you already can get perma burn without Burning Precision) so it’s kinda a dead end stat that goes no except to feed Vigor.

This is why I said I would love Power/Tough/Condi gear. It would give you to balance that gear with Power/Vit/Condi gear and come up with a good mix of survivability while not feeding a dead end stat like Precision. It also gives you an alternative route to go since your base Power will be high that direct damage attacks are not entirely out of the question anymore.

imaginary.6241:

Overall it seems to me a Scepter Conditionbuild might be better for situations where constant Condition reapplies need to happen like in PvP or WvW roaming (or few Dungeon Situations). Also it feels more like substain Conditiondamage that requires you to be more tanky. But that ’s my personal opinion. Seems just inpractical for general PvE.

This largely has been my experience as well only I found D/D to be better over Staff. Staff is nice for all the reasons you brought up, and for a long time I played around with a 20/0/30/0/20 build, but all the extra conditions on D/D or D/F are pretty great.

In WvW however I found S/D to be fantastic because, as you said, there’s so much condi application you need to reapply it fast. You do an Eruption, it gets cleared and it’s like “dang…” haha.

So now to pull off this build we want to have 2 sets of gear? Why not just one set of gear and use a standard power based build?

What are you accomplishing by being Conditions instead of Power other than just being Conditions?

Furthermore, we discuss the merits of Conditions because that’s all this build does. It does not provide a lot of boons to the group like a D/D Boon build would. It is incapable of dealing any significant direct damage because it has no power or crit damage to go along with the crit. The only thing this build has is conditions and crit for vigor. Crit for vigor can also be obtained on a power based build meaning the only thing unique here is conditions….so we discuss conditions and their merits.

Have you even looked at the passive burns that a Guardian applies Burn for every member of the team taking up Burn time? Have you considered the 20% reduction to Signet Cool Downs giving you 16s cool down alongside a 14.4s duration Burn meaning virtually zero downtime (presuming no other sources of burn)?

Seems like a lot that hasn’t been considered.

Also, I’d hope mostly for a Power/Condi/Toughness setup. Carrion gear is alright for plugging our missing HP but still need a bit more Toughness too even with 30 Earth and Signet of Earth.

Zelyhn.8069:

I cannot help but notice the contradiction in what you are saying Kodiak: in your sig you advocate some kind of condition build and in that discussion you argue that people should be free to try what ever type of playstyle they want, while here you are telling us that some playstyles aren’t meant to be?

So this is a less serious build and more just a build for giggles? Okay I can respect that. But then you say:

Zelyhn.8069:

Anyway the topic is not about the viability of conditions but about the optimality of this condition build.

If a build is not serious and just for fun you aren’t really worried about being optimal. If you are being optimal, then you should be optimal. I’m merely pointing out the ways it won’t be optimal and asking for you, the build designer, to explain how you account for those non optimal decisions and scenarios.

Zelyhn.8069:

With this build you would indeed swap to fire and do fire might combos, but only if you had to: if you had to swap out of earth into air for swirling wind then you would swap to fire while waiting for earth to be up again, but it would not be a logical choice to swap from earth to fire just for might stacks.
So while you stay in earth burning precision is definitely valuable.

Are you saying that passing up on 15-18 stacks of Might with +30% boon duration isn’t worth the DPS loss to you and the rest of the Might you’d give to your party? Do you have any kind of numbers to back this up? Please be detailed as I know from threads like in your signature you are capable of proving these things with numbers.

Zelyhn.8069:

Objects are irrelevant no matter the team and builds. Anyway everyone fulfils his role, so yes direct damage dealers carry the condition dealer on objects, but it is the condition dealer who carries them on mobs with protection.

Objects are far from irrelevant. Look how many people look to a good power based Ele for Conjures to make AC1/3 super easy mode. There’s too many other scenarios to even count or list them all. Now it’s fine if you want to let your party carry you because you are having fun on a Condi build. However don’t pretend like they aren’t doing it and don’t pretend you don’t have other builds available to you that would allow you to contribute in all scenarios equally.

You still will want to rotate to Fire to apply Might rotation as wasn’t boon duration one of the reasons to be 30 Arcane? Also wasn’t swapping attunements to Fire/Air and minimize the downtime out of Earth one of the primary reasons you’re 30 Arcane?

Objects are irrelevant when you have others to pick up the slack and do them for you.

Those encounters are the only situation where conditions are better than raw damage because conditions bring something direct damage could not.

You don’t even have to try the build to see how many condi slots get taken up. I’m currently in a Fractal group with 1 D/D Ele, 1 Warrior (Bow), Mesmer (me), and 2 Rangers and the bleed stacks are at 15-20 on average with spikes up to 25. I asked, no one is conditions spec’d.

Dagger MH has a variety of AOE conditions from AOE Bleed, Dragon’s Breath (AOE Burn), AOE Vulnerability, AOE Chill and AOE Weakness.

Sometimes things aren’t meant to be.

Avatara.1042:

Kodiak, base, Kodiak! Freebiiirrrttthhh!

ghostly roar

haha yes! Most people think I’m from Alaska. In fact I was a huge Mechwarrior fan back in the Kali days.

Zelyhn.8069:

The build I am advocating has + 60% burn duration (10 from weapons, 10 from fire, 40 from food), so signet of fire is not enough alone to maintain perma burn (14.4s). I remember having calculated that burning precision procs around 3.5s every 16s on scepter from auto attacks on average, so this fills the gaps.

This ignores the duration of Burn from Dragon’s Tooth (4.8s) and Flamewall (12.8s if stays in entire time or 1.6s per second in field) which when both are stacked along with Signet of Fire (14.4) equates to permanent burn meaning Burning Precision is 100% wasted.

Zelyhn.8069:

1. Objects are never s problem. In snowblind you have to kill the elementals anyway, and they are tough, in urban battlegrounds you slso have adds to kill around. And you are not alone: your team is not brought down by having one player being low on power when facing objects, they are a formality!

So basically your counter point is you don’t have one but your other 4 party members shouldn’t mind carrying you. Nice.

Zelyhn.8069:

2. Poison is good, but honestly I have almost never thought to myself that I would have done a better run if I had access to it. Only in Hotw maybe. Actually this is the least useful condition in PvE: damaging conditions, weakness, blind, chill and cripple are just so much more important! And luckily we have access to all of them. I think we can agree to ignore immob here.

Poison is the only one who can actively reduce incoming healing. There are plenty of encounters in the game that have healing mechanics such you mentioned HOTW or even COF P1. This doesn’t mean they require poison, but these are the only situations where conditions are uniquely useful over direct damage.

Zelyhn.8069:

3. I agree, a bit of organisation is required, but that is only so important as to simply not have an other condition based damage dealer present in the group: the build stacks bleeds to 21 at most, which leaves some room for the residual conditions applied by other members.

I apply 10 bleeds on my Mesmer with iWarden Alone. Up to 15 with iZerker and iWarden out. Greatsword Warriors are the same. These are not uncommon classes and these are not few enough to be “residual.”

Zelyhn.8069:

5. Staff solves this problem.

Staff also creates plenty of new problems as well, primarily that you end up losing most of the /Focus utility in the process. While it’s good to be academic and say you’d swap based on the encounter, there are many encounters that are AOE that you’d still want the /Focus skills for (which is why I said Dagger MH).

The build is 100% reliant on Conditions, therefore the talk about the build is also the same talk about Conditions.

Condition Duration is capped at +100%. This means at most Burning Precision will ever be is a 2 second burn with +100%. Since Burn only stacks duration this means any additional sources of Burn are wasted (since Signet of Fire has 100% Burning up time) unless they are AOE. So why is it essential when it’s not being utilized at all since you already have perma Burn from Signet of Fire and Might Rotations when in Fire Attunement?

Also feel free to answer points 1, 2 and 5 (since we’re already talking about 4) which are all build related and not simply a case of Conditions (because as already mentioned they aren’t issues for other Condition classes).

As person who’s actually tried a Condi build on an Elementalist and actually put the gear together and tried it out in various forms of content if that’s the only point you got then you are in for a rude awakening after you invest the gear.

1. The Precision/Condi build is worthless on any kind of object encounter. There’s too many to even fully list, but the two most immediate ones that come to mind are Snowblind Fractal elemental and Siegemaster in Urban Battleground.

1a. Since Conjure Weapons are 1 in hand and 1 on ground and 100% power based you’ll effectively be wasting 50% of the Conjure since you will do no real damage on it for object destruction.

2. The most useful Condition out of them all is Poison to help non preventable healing on mobs. We do not have access to this.

3. Condition Caps limit your total, theoretical, DPS. You can only apply a bleed if there’s room for it. Passive condition application from team mates means anything short of a premade, organized team where others will willfully attempt to minimize their condition output a majority of your DPS will actually poof into no where.

4. The only purpose of Precision in this build is for Toughness and Vigor. Toughness because there’s no other Toughness/Condi gear options. The crits that are done will be of so little damage due to a lack of power and a lack of crit damage. The 1-2s Burn from Burning Precision will be meaningless with Permanent burn with Signet of Fire.

5. There are zero ways to apply AOE conditions to targets with Scepter. The majority of your Bleed Damage (in S/F) is all single target. At least with Dagger MH you can apply AOE conditions. I won’t even get into Epidemic here.

The Elementalist has no way to answer any of those problems and even a Necro only hits some of them.

There’s only one class who can hit all these points and come out shining on the other end: The Grenadier Engineer. With Grenades they have plenty of physical damage when needed, plenty of Bleed stacks (3 procs with Sigil of Earth, Sharpshooter, and Shrapnel...×3 PER skill use with 3 grenades per toss) and can easily go into Rabid Gear. Their Grenade set gives them all the important conditions (snare, poison, bleed, blind, etc) and quickly swap out of Grenade kit to P/P. Their traits give them 50% chance to proc Vulnerability on Crit. Also they get Permanent Swiftness and Vigor in combat due to crits. They also have crazy condition management with Tossing Elixirs (affects even party members) or drinking one removing an Condition each time. Even then they can drop all of the Grenades and swap back to P/P and have access to even more Condition abilities before going back.

Now if grenades only had auto attack I’d play my Grenadier more

Condition Necros are considered garbage in PvE for a variety of actual, factual reasons. Even they use Power based builds for high end PvE content such as Fractals.

@KazNaka.4718: You can take the theoretical advice of people who theorize about doing it or you can take the advice of people who have actually tried it in multiple scenarios (PUG groups, speed runs, Fractals, etc). When the premier condition class of the game are saying it’s a bad scene you really have to question whether or not putting all your eggs into the Condition basket is a smart move.

There are many encounters in this game that favor direct damage over Condition damage. It doesn’t take a dungeon superstar to know how many destroyable objects are in the game and they’re all immune to conditions and Crits. The only time Conditions are really favored is when you need Poison to slow down healing, a condition we don’t even have access to.

Now if you’re playing for funzies and don’t really care about all that, then sure. I mean really since no one can actually measure how bad (or good) you’re actually doing (and not just theorize how you would do) no one will be the wiser, right?

KazNaka.4718:

ah, I see what you meant. However, you’re still opting to lose -20% condition duration by putting only 10 pts in fire. I’m wondering what arcane traits is so good that would be worth the sacrifice. It’s true you can swap attunements faster, but I don’t think it’s worth it.

you have 180% bleed duration, my build has 200% bleed duration and 170% burning.

And with more Fire you also get more Power which works well against physical objects you gotta destroy in which conditions (or crits) are useless. The Arcane in a 10/0/30/0/30 build is mostly wasted:

1. The 30% boon duration is nice for Might Stacks. That’s about it. You lack the boons gained from normal D/D Aura play and without around 60% boon duration boons are rarely worth it.

2. The only really useful Major trait would be Arcane 6 for Vigor since you have sufficient crit to get perma vigor.

3. Swap timers are mostly useless because all of your /Focus or /Dagger utility is 16 seconds or greater cool down. The idea behind building for Burning Precision is you don’t want to swap out of Earth to continue to bleed and burn at the same time (with Signet of Fire filling in the gaps). Even when you do have to swap you can usually make a full rotation of it and Earth will be up when you get back. The extra 20% duration is usually enough to help keep the stacks on there long as possible during this period.

As a person with ACTUAL experience (instead of just theorizing what “should” work) running a Condi Ele in Dungeons and group PvE settings I’m going to reinforce the point that your allies are bar none your biggest weakness. My first run of the my build was in HOTW alongside a Necromancer and Warrior spec’d for Conditions as well and a Mesmer who was passively procing bleeds on the standard shatter spec. While I wrote that largely off as bad luck (and the warrior eventually went to respec) there hasn’t been a group I’ve been in where bleed slots were ever really not at minimum half full from passives or abilities that got spammed.

By making a build that can’t fall back on direct damage is just asking to be worthless. This is one of the #1 reasons why Necros are considered garbage in PvE, because they focus entirely on Rabid stats (Crit and Condi) with zero power when they need it. This is because their DPS is gated by the number of Condi slots available for them to deal damage and not because their actual “theoretical” DPS is bad. In fact their theoretical DPS is quite high, but their actual DPS being entirely held back by the number of condition slots available ultimately means only a percentage of it is actually done.

Wryog.5073:

Also for zerg vs zerg eles are worse than necros ATM. Organized they’re useful, but in random blobs it’s better to go necro.

This is largely inaccurate, at least on a Tier 1 server (don’t have experience on other servers) were everything is go Zerg or go home. In a Zerg a necromancer has many things that are helpful (and SOR uses them to great effect) as well but have one critical area where they are held back: Stability.

In Tier 1 (which again I only specify because I’m not sure if it’s different in other tiers), even disorganized to a PUG level, most combat fights are one Zerg running through the other Zerg and seeing who comes out on the other side. Necro’s lack of stability in this scenario in fact gets them caught up on the huge amount of AOE CC such as Static Field which effectively separates them out from the rest of the classes or the people who didn’t bring Stability.

Also when built properly you can easily bring a ton of self support without needing organized play. We have a few blast finishers and plenty of AOE healing any group, organized or not, can easily take advantage of. A necro on the other hand has no ability to support like this and is basically just a large amount of AOE Conditions (subject to AOE Removal) as well as AOE CC.

Yeap.

Dunno why anyone would consider conditions for PvE with the way the current system is designed.

LightningBlaze.4913:

In this game 2v1 is not easy against 2 good players no matter what profession and build you are using. This is one of the reasons why players go for bunker type because they want to be hard to kill during outnumbered scenarios. The reality is even if you are very bunker and you go against 2 good bursty players you will still suffer defeat easily. Again, this is only my opinion and mostly my experience in WvW.

110% agree with this.

Most time I talk to people they see the bunker videos of guys taking on 1vX and think that it’s common place or that their opponents are normal. They miss the subtle things like that 1v5 is actually 1v2 with 3 up leveled people or that they’re downing people but have zero ability to finish anyone off even if they wanted to.

No and honestly the fact you had to ask means you probably knew but are trying to look for a justification to play the Ele anyways. See the “It’s fun!” responses above for that.

There’s literally no PvE scenario where you aren’t better off or just as good bringing your warrior (or mesmer/guardian if you have them). Most people who try to convince you otherwise simply haven’t been part of a Warrior/Guardian/Mesmer farm team. They talk about nonsense like combo fields or might stacking not realizing that the other classes are already bringing perma fury and 25 stacks of Might and combo fields are largely irrelevant.

This is not to say an Elementalist is 100% worthless. If you put your mind to it you could work 3x as hard making sure you time all your combinations perfectly, memorize every encounter so it doesn’t disrupt your combinations, and work out an elaborate gear set that offers you decent damage and enough survivability to equal the base survivability of the previously mentioned classes…and then you’d still lower damage than the Warrior but not 100% worthless!

Then we get into that silly argument: The Challenge. Some reason people have convinced themselves by handicapping themselves to a sub-par class that it’s “worth it” because it “more challenging.” To me this is no different than tying your arm behind your back and playing the game one handed and then bragging about how hardcore you are.

On a funny aside you could probably still play the Warrior one handed and still do better than an Ele lol…

The ONE area that Eles excel at more than any other class is in Zerg v Zerg WvW. They have the capability to bring group level support with combo fields that are actually used and useful with the number of people around. Their AOE CC (Static Field, Frozen Ground) can stop whole enemy Zergs of people in their tracks (or at the very least separate the non stabilizability users like Necros from their Warriors). They are capable of all this at full range which is more than similar style support classes (Guardian) can offer.

KazNaka.4718:

I think you’re talking more about WvW than PvE dungeons? In PvE dungeons, you don’t have to worry about cover conditions or that much condition removal.

Instead it’s just your allies that hold you back.

I checked in every hour yesterday and didn’t see Frostgorge from about 10am CST to 2am CST.

Boy did I sure see Bloodtide, Harathi, Sparkfly, Iron Marches though!

Missy.3854:

I agree, Fields of Ruin, was up at the 9am hour cdt, and it is now up at the 10am hour cdt (Crystal Desert server). I have been waiting for Fireheart Rise to show up.

They’re the same for all servers. Seen the repeat same zone back to back thing a few times now and it’s pretty annoying.

Arheundel.6451:

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/88780/gw156.jpg

Attempt replica build
http://intothemists.com/calc/index.php?build=-k;9;9;9;1T-JJ;159B;145-54-SR;4V19cV19cn-knN6;5K-P0T1ZYdZi41i-HN2kI

Now add:
- server bonus ( 7-8% vitality and toughness )
- food buffs
- WvWvW ranks buffs ( defense against guards = 1k HP )

And you’ll get the stats I’ve posted..ty

That’s with all that plus it’s also with Rock Armor on. There is no adding because it’s already added into that picture.

Close, but not quite.

Arheundel.6451:

…when they disregard any comment coming entirely from a wvwvw perspective..shall we take a look at raw numbers?

Typical s/d ele build 0/30/0/20/20

PvE (with all food buffs and server bonus):
-HP=19K-20K
-Toughness=1.8-2K
-Power (base)= 2.3K
-Crit dmg= 80%+
-Crit chance= 50%+

Please show me the gear setup to pull this off.

The only way I could get it to update was to log into a different character and do the events on it instead.

Kyon.9735:

TL;DR – This build is very fun but don’t expect to faceroll your enemies a lot especially if you’re against another good player.

I already asked him how he handled all that.

“Tactically withdraw.”

:)

Everything was updating for me yesterday.

Today I have done 3-4 new unique zones I didn’t do previously (my 3 were Harathi, Fireheart, and then Blazeridge) and after that I don’t seem to get any updates for any of the unique zones I’ve done in Bloodtide, Lornar’s or Dredgehaunt.