Guild Wars 2

It all comes back to the same problem the Ele has always had.

It’s never been a question if you can pull it off and make it happen. It’s just a lot of extra work to pull off to get the same results another class can do with faceroll ease.

ThiBash.5634:

Yet they have the same 5-target cap. In fact, the only ranged nuke that bypasses the limit is, in fact, Meteor Shower.

And Illusionary Berserker which will spin through more than 5 targets.

LightningBlaze.4913:

I agree with the superior rune of Perplexity outlook. Yesterday I had a draw outcome against a warrior within wvw after I already downed him simply because I didn’t expect him to add over 15 stacks of confusion on me and by the time i noticed it was too late to recover lol. Still fun, made me laugh how unexpected wvw encounters can be.

This is why I love WvW over SPvP.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Really has the chance to become a solid condition build, but alas – Anet doesnt want it

This the part I struggle with on the Conditimentalist. It’s so close and yet so far.

They’ve done some pretty amazing changes actually to help with it, such as moving the 20% bleed duration to Adept. Unfortunately since reduced Condition Duration is so prevalent in the current meta it’s really bad not to get as close as possible to 100% for all conditions which renders that extra 20% useless.

The most limiting factor, and why I’m beginning to hate my Elementalist in general, is the lack of over all hitpoints. This pretty much ties one hand behind your back when building a spec or deciding on gear. Even if there were some better condition traits to take advantage of the Precision of Rabid gear you still will be lacking HP.

Unfortunately gear is either Prec/Tough/Condi or Power/Vit/Condi so that puts us between a rock and a hard place for gear choices. The only other alternative is trait lines, which since Vitality is in Water leads to a Bunker build…and I’m sorry but a Bunker build isn’t a Condition build. It’d be like a Deathshroud necro who has Condition damage and uses a Scepter/Dagger when out of Deathshroud saying they’re a Condi necro lol…

So there seems to be a lot of confusion on how to do the Live Event or, rather, get into the map to do the Live Event.

Essentially this is how you can get into the event:

1. Every hour, on the hour, a new map will be chosen. So far maps have been fairly high so you will likely need to be on a 70-80 character to guarantee the full selection of maps (highest seems to be Frostgorge).

2. Join the map on the hour. Even if you get placed into Overflow, the event will be active if you joined within 10 minutes

Source:

All overflow maps created within 10 minutes of the start of the invasion will host a concurrent version of that hour’s event.

3. Do the event as presented. It’s pretty straight forward.

IF YOU JOIN AFTER 10 MINUTES THEN THE EVENT WILL NOT BE ACTIVE AND YOU WILL BE PLACED INTO AN OVERFLOW WHERE THE EVENT IS NOT ACTIVE

So if you join too late, even hh:11 then that’s too late and you will be placed into an Overflow map where the event isn’t available. You will need to wait till the next hour to join and get in. Even if it’s not full. When the event is over, and presuming the map still isn’t full, you will be allowed to return your home server.

IF YOU ARE IN AN OVERFLOW WHERE THE EVENT IS ACTIVE YOU SHOULD NOT LEAVE

If you get the prompt to return to your main server the event there is likely done and it’s allowing you to return which you will lose all credit for the event on the Overflow you were on and you will get nothing.

Hopefully this helps clear up some confusion on the event and how to get into it.

Entire event has been a failure to me. Been trying to get into zones each time and they fill up near instantly and nothing going on in Overflow.

To quickly answer your question there are certainly better classes that will perform better in a Condition based build. It does not come naturally to an Elementalist.

The main issue is a lack of sheer tanking power (Necro) or trickery (Mesmer stealth, clones, etc) which presents hard gear choices to pull it off. A number of us have made builds such as Frownyclowny’s bunker build (which is basically just all bunker with some condition damage and is still susceptible to -Condition Duration builds) or my more hybridized Power/Condi build (which while it handles condition duration better has less toughness over all and is mostly single target).

The two builds I was last playing with were:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmabvR3wjDAkCmEeQADJMeAyIkA-jkCB4MAYNJkWAg6IhpQFRjtEMI1XTjVzATjiIq2joIa1CBsYNA-w

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmYbvR3wjDABFCgw4BIjQSRxN6A-jUCBYNCh0CAUHJMFqIaslgBp+aasaGYqUER1eEFRrWIgFrBA-w

The work is not commensurate with the pay off.

Until it is I don’t see the point in playing my Ele outside of anything but Zerg WvW.

This topic has been brought up before and it prompted me to make a Guardian and play it in WvW.

The amount of healing they could do seemed about on par with a Support spec’d Elementalist. There really wasn’t much extra here and in fact faced a bug when spreading the healing from Virtue of Resolve to nearby allies (since it’d tick faster then it’s replace timer meaning it’d clip itself and not heal always). The ONLY compelling argument I’ve heard for Guardian healing is their easy access/fast cool down (5s) to Blast Finishers with a Hammer to AOE Blast finish heal on Ranger…or Ele. Since Staff is the other forgone conclusion, this gives them effectively zero range which leads to…

The one area they were definitely weaker was during keep sieges and a Staff Ele’s innate ability to reach very, very far onto a Wall. Even with Greater Symbols it’s just not the same reach as Meteor Swarm which, while random, can still usually is reliable enough to hit an area in the back at least once. Their AOE CC was also severely lacking compared to the utility of Frozen Ground or Static Field both of which have massive radii compared to just Line of Warding.

However the one area I did feel the Guardian superior on was sources of Boons. They have a lot of AOE shouts which work really well but ultimately end up taking up Utility slots. The Stability every 30s was unbelievably awesome.

Guardian was pretty good, no two ways about it. They are like the jeep of this game and no matter what activity you are doing they are a solid class and worth bringing. However to say that the Elementalist has no unique roles that the Guardian can’t fulfill is incredibly misleading an inaccurate.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

I stopped using a Shield on my Engineer because it was giving me mad amounts of threat even with a Flame Thrower on. Usually something along these lines (obviously not a shield but another factor).

Gilburt.9146:

The double Ride the Lightning nerf that they implemented while completely ignoring the absurd mobility of warriors was ridiculous.

Haha right? I’m addicted to Sword+Horn & Greatsword.

silvermember.8941:

It sucks how all out defensive skills are on such a long cool down where a mesmer has access to invulnerbility every 9.3-13 secs for 2 seconds + a decent amount of damage while ours either come with 50 second or 70 cD and the former provides no damage while the latter no longer provides any benefit.

while the necro has access to 2 hp bars and high damage.

Honeslty, I don’t think a small bump of toughness would be enough, they will have to cut the CD on our defensive abilities and reduce the need spam buttons to achieve parity with other classes.

But don’t you see how overpowered that would be! If Mistform had some sort of reasonable cool down like 60s when combined with /Focus and Obsidian Flesh we could be immune to damage for 7 seconds out of every 60 seconds while also maintaining our awesome offensive capabilities like…Fire Aura or Flamewall or Comet!

cheshirefox.7026:

i somewhat disagree with your last sentence, a viable solution should have been reached long ago
the handling of the elem profession thus far is like watching a child try to get the square peg in a round hole.. the sad part is, the child eventually figures it out

It took them literally years to address the Elementalist problem in “Hard Mode” in GW1 where Elementalists had no armor bypassing moves but all the mobs had maximum armor.

This isn’t a company that moves fast. At all. I mean there are still bugs and issues in classes that still exist from day one and it’s been a full year. I hop onto my Mesmer and notice that Temporal Curtain still doesn’t give Swiftness if you already have it yet they already have the coding to make sure you only get 1 application like with the Guardian Staff abilities.

This is why I say people will either quit or find a new class. The only thing people can be sure of is there’s no changes coming any time soon.

None of this really addresses the core issues at the heart of the Elementalist.

The fact is we have two weapon sets too many. Our class is heavily penalized in the balance department because of our access to four weapon sets (attunements) at all times even if they don’t offer divergent game play (IE: Melee, Ranged) in each attunement. We, in theory, have access to double the damage abilities and utility abilities from our weapon slots than any other class. Our utilities as a result are weaker and often times on longer cool downs despite having near identical function to other classes.

That leads to the fact it’s extremely hard to get away from Arcane because, by design, we’re supposed to make use of all four weapon sets (attunements) but in order to do so efficiently we usually need around 20 in Arcane to make the attunement swap timer manageable. Can you get away with less than 20 Arcane? Sure. Some builds make it work. However it’s still an extremely noticeable point when playing without 20 Arcane.

We have the lowest HP pool going against everything in the normal game design. Necro/Engie are tanky and have highest base HP. Ranger has healing and a Medium pool of HP with some mobility abilities. Thief has low HP but really high burst and lots of mobility/stealth abilities to avoid damage entirely. This is where it gets messed up… Mesmer has Meidum pool of HP with mobility/stealth abilities to avoid damage entirely (plus clones). Elementalist has low HP with healing and mobility. It’s crisscrossed for Light Armor from Medium and what to they do to answer it? They reduce our mobility and healing with zero compensation.

That fact ultimately leads to our second core issue of it’s extremely hard to get away from Water because we need the assistance in it’s survivability attributes to pull builds off in addition to the fact it enhances Cantrips which are usually also necessary to pull builds off. Utilities like Glyphs and Signets suffer because they simply can’t fulfill the lack of survivability that we innately don’t have.

It also leads into huge issue with gearing as we need Toughness due to general lack of “trickery” (IE: Stealth, Clones, spammable mobility, etc) because we will have to take the hits but in addition we also need to gear out Vitality. Compare this to say my Mesmer who, with 30 points in Inspiration (+300 Vitality) is at roughly 18000 or so without any gearing towards Vitality at all. This pushes us more towards the “All or Nothing” proposition of a Thief where you see either extreme bunkers (Nothing) or extreme DPS sets with no defense (All). In WvW and PvE we can mix and match enough to get a balance, something not an option in SPvP.

All of these problems are so tangled up into each other it creates a kind of tangled mess where the more you pull or tug on one part it tightens the grip and problem of the tangle in another. There are no quick and easy solutions to the point that it’s probably not even their radar for this year or even the next.

Nikkinella.8254:

We’re only good at 2 things right now. Gimmicky burst build, which although fun as hell can still be outdone by any other class with their burst build with a fraction of the effort, and being everyone else’s boon monkey. That’s all we can do right now. We are not jacks of all trades, that would be engineer. We do 2 things that can be done better by other classes for less effort. We’re wanted for fire and water fields in wvw and that’s about it, but warriors can make fire fields as well, and rangers and engineers can make water fields, so we can be replaced there too. And necro always has been and always will be better at controlling zergs, even more so now with their fear wall and their gigantic marks. Guardians can buff as well as we can with shouts. And I don’t know where the rumor came from that we had the best burst healing, it is simply not true. That would be warrior. I’ve tested both ele and warrior in full clerics gear and warrior outdoes it by a long shot in burst healing. My shouts can heal for over 3k each and I can put 3 of them on my slot bar. That’s an over 9k heal all of which are on pretty decent cooldowns compared to us swapping to water and then dodgeing and healing for a little over 2k twice.

This is a pretty over the top view on things.

For one Necros have their own crosses to bear, specifically around Stability. Stability usually means life or death in Zerg play because getting stopped by Fear Walls, Static Fields, Hammer Jammer warriors and all the other crazy amounts of CC means you’re pretty much dead. Also without the Zerg providing it, they have non existent mobility or have to take up one of their precious Utility slots (precious because they have a huge number of amazing options for Utilities) for a Signet to keep their speed going. It’s these kinds of little realities you don’t pick up on till you actually play one.

As for burst healing the general burst healing combination goes from Earth → Eruption → Water (Area Heal, Area Regen) → Geyser (Area Heal) → Arcane Wave (Area Heal) → Eruption Finishes (Area Heal) → Dodge Roll (Evasive Arcana Area Heal)…and Soothing Mist. Most of these contribute greatly from +Healing gear (they get nearly full effect) meaning it’s all fairly potent and all on a relatively short cool down. If you really wanna get more situational from there I’ve dropped a Healing Rain then did Tornado while spewing out Healing Bolts to nearby friendlies as well.

Staff Eles are actually a super solid choice for WvW game play and any serious group pretty much brings 1-2 of them. You might have good healing on that Warrior and good CC on that Necro but Ele combines the two pretty smartly.

Jack of all Trades always end up having an identity crisis if they don’t excel at any route.

Unfortunately the biggest thing we excel at is AOE Group Support with a staff. We combine the powerful ranged AOE of a Necro with the powerful AOE healing support of a Guardian. If that’s what you’re looking for, then really there should be no complaints because no one else can do that better. Really now that I think about it, these seem to be the people most happy with the class.

However in any other scenario you end up better off playing other classes. I mean people around here argue about optimal this and optimal that but after getting my warrior to 80 and geared our “optimal” isn’t even on the radar of a Warrior for PvE. I don’t really see any reason to not just give into ANet’s kittened design and make the optimal class for each element of the game.

This is not to say you can’t pull off an Ele. It’s just to say every other class does it better and in a game where leveling is beyond trivial (thanks Pavilion!) and gearing them out in exotics is easy (thanks changes to dungeons to encourage other dungeons being ran!) it’s hard to find a reason not to just level and gear a character that’s ideal for your scenario and just play the right tool for the job. It’s like attunement swapping on a character level (haha).

If I was only considering PvE I’d go with the Ele.

If you bring in anything else and Necro is really strong.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmkbzR4wjEAEFmcyoQIiCPUeMTO2A-jUyAYrASiApCAZviox2GKiGr+BTdSEV75Jiq9GYCBMaMA-w

These would be my modifications to your build. This brings you to 2000 power, 38% crit chance, 56% crit damage, 1638 Toughness, 15595 HP. Like Thrashbarg I’d replace Windborne Dagger with Renewing Stamina. With Fury up should have plenty of Crit.

FrownyClown.8402:

This is gw2 there is never a build that can beat every other build. it will last about 5s ticking at about 680 per tick. It does only like 3k damage. If you are solo roaming simply run. If not, let your team mates deal with it. And the Arcane Fury 33% up time is probably not that great now that I do the math. Experiment with the sigils. There are probably better ones out there.

I can respect that.

Yea if you’re more focused on this style of combat most likely Corruption or simply Force for additional damage could likely fall into place since there’s already an “On Swap”

FrownyClown.8402:

also, haven’t tested against condition duration builds. Given the fact that most of my damage would come from drake’s breath, I see you having a hard time. Good thing these warriors are easy to kite. They would still have a hard time if you landed a churning earth on them though. Don’t underestimate air auto attack still. It will give you the pressure you need when they are at low hp

So essentially you don’t account for it at all.

At -60% condition duration the burn would last for around 5 seconds (for the entire breath) which is around equal damage to the base damage of the attack itself (before mitigation) and is also has a duration equal to the recharge meaning you’d pretty much have to permanently stay in Fire to keep burn on your opponent.

Your build is neat. Seems like you essentially swapped in Condition Damage for Power out of the normal Bunker builds. Unfortunately you don’t seem to account for any of the additional challenges that Conditions are presented with due to game mechanics basically leaving you with just a super Bunker build not really focused on any kind of damage at all as your weak direct damage will be as low as your potentially as weak conditions. If that works for ya, cool beans.

Also I’m not seeing your source of Fury other than Arcane Fury which is around 3 seconds every 9 seconds or so from swaps meaning only a 33% up time. Hopefully that’ll be enough to keep the proc cool down going.

Condition damage is all relative to duration.

If there’s no one else applying a Condition in PvE, Conditions are pretty fantastic. You can maintain the full Duration of your Conditions (very few creatures remove conditions) and deal your full damage potential.

This is pretty unrealistic however as many classes can apply conditions whether they want to or not. Case in point: Greatsword Warriors (very common) who passively apply bleed with Crits with a minor trait of “Precise Strikes” which invariably end up taking up precious Bleed slots from a more powerful source of Bleeds. Since you can’t apply your conditions they effectively have a zero duration and are therefore worthless.

In WvW or PvP the matter of duration is only exasperated.

The primary issue involved is the amount of condition removal. As Razor pointed out, a skill like Ether Renewal will simply remove any number of conditions no matter how deep they’re stacked or “covered.” Every class in the game short of Mesmers and Thieves have sources of condition removal (and most of it is AOE only furthering the problem in group scenarios). Condition removal represents resetting the duration to 0 (since it’s removed) effectively removing damage potential of the condition.

The most kitten ing however is the reduced Condition Duration builds that are very common in WvW style setups. As condition’s damage is based around duration a -60% duration is effectively a -60% damage output from that condition.

By not focusing on Conditions one could certainly forgive the low damage but also the low duration effectively makes them a non-factor. You essentially will have no power, no crit, no crit damage but on top of it your conditions will not last very long to the point they will ultimately end up doing less damage than our auto attack’s base damage. This is why I’m extremely skeptical of a condi-bunker ele: it’s just a bunker with zero damage output because it refused to pick any route to go.

I guess my two main questions on this build:

1. Why use a Sigil that revolves around crit % when you have 8% chance to crit? The same goes with “Renewing Stamina” in the Arcane line?

2. How does this handle the reduced Condition Duration builds that are very prevalent today in WvW? My warrior runs around with -60% condition duration and -93% against any form of Chill/Immobilize/Cripple. Even your own build takes advantage of the “Lemongrass Soup” and “Geomancer’s Freedom” acknowledging the issue but doesn’t appear to account for it?

biofrog.1568:

Kodiak, I know you’ve been an avid supported of condition builds in these forums, and I respect that. I’ve read many of your posts about your condition build.

To that point however, I sigh in dismay at the amount of comparable damage I do to the berzerker direct-damage crowd. Sure I’ve stacked toughness and condition damage up to the ears, so I generally survive really well, and seeing those spouts of ~180+ bleed damage texts float around the screen is awesome.. but it just isn’t the damage I hoped for. A low-power high-condition spec should be able to punch out comparable damage, given the huge negatives of condition removal and condition stack limit.

It’s not so much I’m an avid supporter of Condition builds as much as I seem to be one of the very few willing to offer thought out advice for a Condition build other than “They’re bad and you should feel bad for thinking about playing one!!!!!11”

Conditions have literally everything working against them in most game modes. I know this as a person who’s played (and geared at 80) a Condi Necromancer, Condi Engineer and Condi Mesmer. Maximum condition stacks destroys Condition viability in most PvE encounters. The absurd number of ways to counter them in WvW can make them seem pretty unreliable as well.

Raw damage on the other hand has very little working against it because, unlike GW1 where everything had a counter, there’s really no widespread direct damage countering via large amounts of healing or mitigation abilities (such as block, max % of HP lost, reversal of fortune, etc). While some of the mechanics do exist, they aren’t wide spread enough or common enough (unlike condition countering options) to every really be noticed.

This is not to say Conditimentalist doesn’t have any class specific issues working against it only that there are certainly game design factors working heavily against as well. This is why, when asked, if I had to pick a build (as I have been) I always recommend people build a “standard” set of gear (2000 power, 40% crit, 75% crit dmg, 1600 toughness, 16000 HP) before trying different builds like this one.

Personally I’ve been toying with a 20/0/30/0/20 build lately and it’s pretty fun. Dropping a Frozen Ground with that much Condition Duration is always hilarious to watch whole groups in choke points just slow down to a grinding halt.

Shockwave.1230:

The issue really is that there’s nothing that gives the ele attributes for survivability and condition damage like what is available for necros and engis. The ele’s naturally low HP is a big issue. I think Anet should take at the elementalist overall. Lowest health, lowest armor, lots of effort for mediocre results combat results. A lot has been identified in this forum alone. I wonder if players are moving away from using the ele, I now main a thief due its interesting resource management, which I find comparable to managing attunement recharges. For condition builds I may look to the necro at some point, death shroud seems interesting to actually use.

Yeap which is why I pointed out it’s pretty hard for us to get the stat combinations we need to really pull it off. That said, I honestly doubt Anet will do anything. They have a pretty bad reputation from the first game even for leaving terrible mechanics in place and revisiting them long past when they needed to be looked at. It was years before they addressed the gross imbalance of Elementalists in “Hard Mode” due to the increased armor and our inability to do damage in that mode. Fast ward to GW2 and look how many months it took them to even address the trait issues in the game. Sure, we got Fresh Air…but we also got Diamond Skin.

Honestly I use my Necro in WvW like I use my Ele: as a tool for control on a large scale. Staff gives you an AOE Chill, AOE Poison, and AOE Fear. Utilities give you a number of useful abilities from Wells to things like Spectral Wall (fear if you touch it) which are all pretty amazing in Zerg v Zerg. Works well.

As I mentioned above I already know the “optimal” specs for the Ele. Everyone knows them and likely plays or played them at some point. However when you’ve been doing the “optimal” route day in and day out it gets pretty stale and I start looking to alternative play styles to keep the game play fresh on the character I’ve dedicated a lot of time and resources to. Conditimentalist is that for me. It’s fun to play and make work.

XcmGT.3847:

Oh so you are going for the 2v1 excuse, never heard that before…

Haha you’re so ridiculous. You can try to pretend there’s no 2v1 going on but when both other servers are literally standing next to each other it becomes less of an excuse and more of just a fact.

That’s fine though. The same thing happens every time JQQ comes back up to T1 from being punked down to T2. They come up, fired up, focus on BG with SOR for a few weeks and BG drops in rankings. Eventually JQQ grows a pair and attacks SOR only to tumble ever downward back into T2 because without the SOR team up they can’t hack it in T1. This has gone on forever now and has been happening as long as the Henge of Denravi days.

Say what you will about TC and DB, at least they played to win.

Perma Swiftness can be maintained by rotating:

Glyph of Elemental Harmony
Windborne Speed
Static Field + Arcane Wave

Sometimes these can be dangerous to use if you’re near or at an enemy but when you’re just trucking around part of the Zerg they can be used with relative ease.

Can you use this instead:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

Then link back what you use. Be sure to click whether or not it’s a PvP, WvW or PvE based build and maybe explain what it is you’re trying to do and what you’re having trouble with.

Zumy.6318:

I appreciate your input very much Kodiak and will look into all of them.

The one problem is that i dont pve if very necessary and in WvW only solo or max 5-8men. Thats why I barely see changing build without affectig efficiency.

Most classes though have the “best” spec at intended roles however. For example Shattercat Mesmer is fantastic for smaller group play but in Zerg v Zerg the clones die instantly and it just doesn’t work. On the Ele this is really no different and certain builds shine more than others due to game mechanics in that scenario.

I definitely think there’s some room for improvement in the Ele, mostly by untying the Attunement cool downs to entirely to Arcane, to open up other builds but unfortunately I don’t run the show over there and most of these forums are just places for people to vent frustrations so they fool themselves into their ideas actually being heard

Zumy.6318:

I really would love to find a way to play apothecary-ish condi-ish elementalist.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImebxR4wjDIEFvwJMeoBeQHWUMD7AA-jUCBIOA0CAZQFRjtEMIVRRr+KsaGYqVER1eFFRrWKAIWDA-w

Could always give something like this a try. Can’t say how it’d work because I haven’t tried it but it’d be something to build and give it a go. Sounds like you don’t have a lot to lose if you did try it.

Raif.9507:

I personally find conditions on an elementalist lackluster and prefer the direct damage approach. I think we are limited in our applications of damaging conditions and cover them and to use the class mechanic while trying condition builds leads to slowing down the damage.

Conditions in general are lackluster over direct damage simply because Conditions have every game mode working against them. This is not a class issue. No class in the game can really cover spammed conditions like bleed, poison or burn. Not only are these on many spammed “1” slot abilities they’re heavily spread amongst every class so if anyone is around they can easily uncover your condition without even trying.

Condition covering is typically done via Bleeds and other spammable conditions to cover more valuable conditions such as Immobilize or Confusion. Landing a solid Immobilize or Chill in WvW is often times a death sentence and is easily covered by a quick Bleed or Burn.

The main advantage of other condition based classes is the reliable amounts of AOE conditions they have with the Necro being the actual king in this department. Epidemic is absurd. Where as we’re reliant on a few staff AOEs for condition application a Necro has a wide variety of skills to shell out large amounts of AOE conditions. Even the Engineer has great AOE condition application through either piercing Pistol shots or even better through Grenades (which can proc a bleed on explosion, a bleed on crit as well as whatever base condition they have).

Asmodal.6489:

no need to bring me down… (well maybe there is since the question was for the meta game) since you seem to be the one defending out of the box builds (i stated that mine is pretty one sided and more or less just for fun)

I didn’t mean nothing by it. I’m totally with the “if it’s fun then you’re doing it right” philosophy. Unfortunately the rhetoric around here is “maximum efficency!!!!!!11” which truthfully never pans out on a jack-of-all-trades class because there’ll always be some other class who does the role you’re looking to perform at that time better. That said there are ways we can optimize here and there while maintaining the same fun idea and it’s very common for people building Condition based builds to build with rabid gear even if the Crit does nothing for them (which then only makes the performance seem even weaker).

Zumy.6318:

What makes me sad and think about alting every day (I still dont do it) is not that I feel underpowed. It is that i dont see any more viable build for me on d/d than the one that i already have after testing almost everything. This one is it! I love my ele and its d/d traiting and gearsetupt. But I feel like everybody can change clothes and do something completely different and all I can do is change to staff or scepter.

I play WvW and PvE and I run a variety of builds:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmabvR3wjDAkCmEeQADJMeAiHkA-jkCB4MBkWAgEBMFqIaslgBpKKa1XhVzATjiIq2joIa1CBsYNA-w

This is my Condi build. It really plays up the huge condition durations while maintaining respectable amounts of Toughness and HP. It also makes use of the raw base Power to do decent direct damage as well. Also it answers the people who run -Condition Duration by matching their amounts with equal Condition Duration even for movement impairing effects. If I’m going to run Conditions, this is the best build I’ve found for it. There’s very little waste going on and there’s a reason for every decision. In PvE I might swap in Persisting Flames so I can provide perma Fury for the group and swap in Signet of Fire instead of Water.

You mentioned needing Arcane, in this build you really don’t. Most of the time will be spent in Fire or Earth and if you swap to other attunements it’s usually to use cool downs far longer than the 16 base timer. It’d be nice if the cool downs were shorter, for sure, but it’s not unmanageable.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImmbxR4wjDIEFmgLIeYBUAHWUMD7AA-j0xAYrgQiCS2rIasVtioxqrxUnER1eeioapAiYMA-w

This is my “normal” build and it’s pretty much the one I use most of the time. It’s your standard Elementalist aiming for the 2000 Power, 40% crit, 75% crit power, 1600 Toughness, 16000 HP marks and hits most of them. Really isn’t much to talk about here that hasn’t been done literally a thousand times in every other build topic. The main reason I use it most of the time more than any other reason is simply because of Stability on Armor of Earth which is clutch when doing Zerg v Zerg WvW on the T1 servers where zergs run through each other.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImKbxR4QlDAkHvcCLjChUeMzO2A-jkyAotgQfAyiFRjtuF2qbQKvRT1gpUJiq98ER1uEMhAkNGA-w

This is the support build I ended up settling on. It really juices up my AOE heals for passive healing like Regen (which I boost with huge 80% duration) that take advantage the most of the high Healing Power while giving a ton of Survivability through extreme Toughness and still decent HP.

That’s three different play styles that are entirely different and honestly it’s that versatility that keeps me playing my Elementalist in most cases. None of it even takes into account that as you do introduce other weapons into each build their play styles also completely change.

I’m still angry they nerfed magnetic wave!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111

It’s not that we don’t have a build it’s that people are still trying to build around the same principals as a Engie/Necro the “king” of conditions. As one of the very few people around here who doesn’t immediately outright say, “No conditionele is bad and you should feed bad for even thinking about it!!!11” this is by far the most biggest problem I see.

Case in point:

this is my, absolutely stupid, condition build.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmSboR2gjDIjHagH0hCFVAFUUMD7AA-jgxAINAyDQOsIasVzioxqkJiqV3YSBAxaA-e

Necros, Engineers, Mesmers and Warriors build around Rabid gear (as Conditions) because not only do they have a huge pool of Hit Points to start out with so they can afford to give on Vitality but mostly because they have traits (major or minor) where every time they Crit they have a chance to apply a condition (or in the case of Mesmers, their clones). This means even if their Crit Damage or Damage is low it didn’t matter because the real benefit is that potential Condition.

Elementalists do not have anything like that. At all. This makes any kind of Precision/Crit utterly wasted in the build. This puts you into a tight spot for gearing out a Conditimentalist because while you may want Rabid’s Toughness you won’t have the same high base HP of a Necro/Engie and you will end up wasting stats into Precision or you have to forgo most Toughness in favor for Carrion gear which is hardly ideal either. This puts skills like Diamond Skin in an even worse spot because there’s no way to get the Power/Toughness/Condi stats we want without getting other stats we don’t want.

If you want to pull off a Conditimentalist with any measure of success you have to approach it entirely differently and most simply fail to grasp this.

I ran this identical trait setup for a very, very long time in full Berserker gear relying on the heavy survivability from Water. In any kind of siege scenario (attacking or defending) it’s pretty amazing. As necros are very common these days, along with their huge Marks, the condition removal does not end up going to waste and you end up having a lot of damage you can dish outwards while having great recovering power.

In my build I replaced Armor of Earth eventually for Arcane Wave. Arcane Wave was pretty fantastic since you can use it to blow a water field for AOE Heal, a static field for AOE Swiftness, or Fire field for AOE Might. However also over time I ended up replacing Mist Form with Armor of Earth because that source of stability is crucial when running in a Zerg. This is because right before you engage if you run through the enemy you will be running into fear walls, chill fields, static fields, guardian fields etc and Stability will let you pass through them all.

Another critique I’d make is forgoing the “Magi” gear and instead going with Knight gear. Healing Power tends to be an “All or Nothing” proposition where you’re either going to focus on it very heavily (such as with Cleric’s gear) or you don’t worry about it at all. This will also bring your Toughness up towards a more manageable 1456 or so while still having over 15000 HP.

Sigil of Energy is largely a waste as well if you aren’t going Evasive Arcana. I’d consider something like Sigil of Fire or Sigil of Battle instead.

Finally, the Boon Duration from Runes is kinda wasted because you aren’t going to be really putting out that many boons all around. You will have a few sources of Regen and Swiftness but on the whole other than Elemental Attunement you really aren’t sharing Boons like you would on a D/D Aura Share build so the Boon duration is kinda a waste. You’re likely better off going Ruby Orbs for more damage or Scholar Runes if you can afford 6 of them.

This will end you up something along these lines:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImKbxR4QlDAkHvcCLBFEwQRxM7A-jUyAYLAyCQyTZNBKI2GKiGr2GT7GZ1bSVxACBIaBA-w

pmnt.4067:

• Coordinated zergs will stop to stack might before attacking. With 30 points in Fire (and trait XI: Persisting Flames) your fire fields (lava font) will last longer and you also grant fury in addition to might with a blast finisher in a fire field. If you can afford to lose a cantrip, use Arcane Wave as an additional blast finisher (the other blast finisher is staff-earth-2, eruption). It’s your decision if you want to trade survivability for offensive support.

The problem is the Fury only works if you actually erupt the field I believe. So at most you’re going to provide Fury from 2 sources (Eruption → Lava Font → Arcane Wave) to 5 people in your massive Zerg. This is compared to a near infinite amount of condition removal and extra hit points, it’s a pretty hard sell.

Puissance could be another matter but the main issue with the Fire Line is since it really only buffs itself outside of Condition play. This is why I eventually abandoned the 30/0/0/30/10 or 20/0/0/30/20 play styles in favor of putting those points from Fire into Air which not only boosted my Crit rating and Crit Damage but also gave me more universal traits (IE: Traits that help all lines) to work with.

What are you doing?

I think Elementalists are wonderful and great.

Now if you excuse me I have stuff to do on my Warrior and Necro.

LightningBlaze.4913:

Most of the problems come from people negative thoughts. Even irl small issues are made huge by these sort of thinking.

I think the other major issue is people go into classes with expectations of how it’s going to play and what they expect/want from a class even if it was never really designed to perform that way.

I’ve made a lot of classes. I like most of them for their own various reasons, but I always end up coming back to the Ele because it has everything I want in a class instead of 1 or 2 things.

Xillllix.3485:

There is just not much point playing this class anymore beside the fun of bashing 4 times more button than other classes. They’ve unbalanced it. My new ranger is dealing way more damage with the great-sword just bashing a few keys, it has a bigger health pool, and its traits aren’t even optimized yet nor is he equipped with ascended gear.

Honestly I don’t see the problem with playing multiple characters.

Really it’s all a matter of how much you want to invest into them. On my Ele I have Ascended gear, max backpack slots, 20 slot bags, perma gathering tools and like 5-6 sets of gear. This is compared to my other dudes who all have one set of exotic gear and some 15 slot bags.

All the classes are going to have their ups and downs. You may be down on your Ele now but who knows how you’ll feel about it in 6 months from now.

Cavalier.

Toughness is pretty low and you can afford to give a smidge on HP.

Dunno that site told me just now about Ferguson’s Crossing and it’s open here.

Why isn’t this mega topic sticked?

It’s getting close to 500k views!

Hopefully we can go back to discussing the topic but I think the OP got what he needs.

Edit: Removed post as all replies were cleaned up.

Switched to Armor of Earth a while ago.

To me it’s the random element of an encounter that makes me attracted to open world PvP scenarios such as WvW. I never know what I am going to face or what scenario I’ll find myself in (such as environment, allies or additional enemies, etc). Adapting and overcoming the situation is what I find quite enjoyable.

Duels on the other hand are anything but random because you know what class to expect, usually what build they’re running and sometimes you know about the player you’re facing and how to counter act that. It’s a controlled environment and I find it boring. Back in my day we called people who dueled carebears (or “do.Oling” lol).

The two videos I showed had one purpose and one purpose only: To counter the ridiculous claims that by not specing into Arcane or Water that I’d instantly die. I didn’t instantly die and I even survived through Zerg v Zerg level damage. I didn’t hotjoin SPvP and die instantly and to anyone. Instead you critiqued me auto attacking a Reinforced Door as if anything other than a Superior Ram’s thousands of damage (compared to even a couple 100 of untargeted FGS 4) would matter.

The problem with videos is that they allow anyone to Monday morning quarterback every move you make (like you did in the thread that got locked). This is why most people who post videos are posting videos that are so heavily edited they’re probably 100 hours of footage distilled into 20 minutes of various fights. Even then if you want to wanted to you could go after anyone. I mean certainly no one was going after Xunleashed and his video even tho he literally stands in a full Churning Earth in the opening fight. Just depends on how much you want to personally attack the individual and even then when you can’t do that you can just claim the people you’re facing are terrible and therefore everything is invalid.

It’s absurdity to the extreme and I can’t fathom a reason to why you’re worth the time it’d take to convince when you’ve already repeatedly proven you have no interest in being convinced. This is why I’m not interested in what you see about my build. Until you actually build it and play it in WvW and can provide basic feedback of your own experiences everything you say is academic.

I’m sorry to burst your bubble but you really aren’t doing a public service here. I’ve had numerous people message me in game and on the forums telling me to keep trucking on and don’t get discouraged by people like you. Builds and play styles in this game don’t require a “stamp of approval” by the “renown theorycrafters” club. They’re either fun and you play them or they’re not and you don’t.

You should use this time to reflect on your losing strategy of “pile onto the losing side” in T1 between SOR and BG and try to actually be relevant and win. Picking up the scraps and left overs between the great BG vs SOR war is always going to net you last place and eventually sent back down to T2.

nearlight.3064:

I’ve got some downtime so I’m going to test out Kodiak’s build in spvp hot join, just to see how it really works. That being said, the utter lack of sustain discourages me (you need either 15 in water OR 30 in Arcane or else you’re essentially a free kill in pvp) and after giving up, I shall try a bunker 0/0/20/20/30 Shamans Amulet build and see how well that fares, and I’ll let you guys know what I think.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fen.gw2skills.net%2Feditor%2F%3FfEAQJArYhEmebux2wjDAkCmEeQADJMeohHkA-ToAgyCuIKS9l7LTRyvsfNMYCC

That’s the SPvP version from the link in my Signature. Didn’t really work out the Sigils and was still experimenting with them quite a bit such as with Superior Sigil of Doom. Did a few games with it myself and had a blast against people.

Zelyhn.8069:

-You use direct damage increase traits specific to attunements, but in earth and fire only about one third (at most!) of your damage will be direct

This is largely incorrect and why we focus on Power. Dragon’s Tooth, Phoenix, Ring of Fire and Fire Grab (4/5) all have heavy direct damage components which works very well with Internal Fire and Pryomancer’s Alacrity bringing the cool down on these abilities. Usually these things are unreliable to land in PvP, but with our large amounts of Condition based CC (such as from Signets) they are much more reliable at landing them. There are no Earth specific damage upgrades that I am aware of so I am not sure why you’d bring Earth up.

Zelyhn.8069:

-Pyromancer puissance becomes useless as soon as you swap out of fire, and since you have no arcana this will be for a good 15s.

This is an assumption based on the play style of an Arcane build (and other “renown theorycrafters” advice is generally useless in these scenarios) where as with this build we’re not going to be swapping every 15 seconds (but we do swap). The main purpose of Pussiance is to build additional might stacks so when we do swap into Earth the Bleeds are, by base, stronger. To which I’ve already argued it’s possible to go with a 25/0/30/15/0 build to get the heal instead if you’re so inclined over Pussiance. I prefer the extra Might stacks when stacking Bleeds.

Zelyhn.8069:

-Alacrity spells can be interesting but they do not increase your condition damage in most cases

They increase the frequency in which you can use your abilities which increases the more up time you have of conditions. For example spamming an ability 20% faster leads to additional stacks of a Condition. Do we really need to have a discussion again on up time of buffs/debuffs?

Zelyhn.8069:

So in fact your build is twofold: it is a level 40 fire build and a level 40 earth build, with very little interactions between the two.
The key idea of any condition damage build is to be able to apply burn and bleed at the same time while covering them with other conditions, your build fails to do this.

Given the mechanics of the game it’s virtually impossible to cover any condition. This is a fault with conditions and game design. The issue predominately comes from the fact that many spam abilities in the game (such as auto attacks in the “1” slot) have those spammable conditions you might not want to come off such as Bleed or Burn. This is to speak nothing of group scenarios (which WvW is a group scenario) where other classes will also passively apply conditions (intentionally or unintentionally) which will “uncover” your condition by applying a new application by it.

This is less a critique of my build and more a critique of the state of conditions in the game. This is a perfectly valid point to bring up when discussing any condition based build as every condition based build/class suffers from the same issue (I say that as a person with a Condi Mesmer, Condi Necro and Condi Engineer).

Zelyhn.8069:

But it is not because you produce a build that is not mainstream that it will necessarily be a good build.

This is the part you’ve never understood. No one is trying to compete with other builds except you guys. You’re the one who’s drawing the comparisons. I’m merely providing the best answer possible to the question. Obviously the person looking for an offbeat build isn’t necessarily looking for the most optimal all case scenario build. If they were, they would have asked for that.

Helping people in threads like this is all about giving people what they want. Most people, this is a game and they want to have fun and aren’t concerned about what some group of “renown theorycrafters” (which, sorry, lolololol) thinks a build or play style is best of the best of the best of the best.

We’re looking at the Double Rainbow and enjoying it while you’re explaining it’s just a is an optical and meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection of light in water droplets in the Earth’s atmosphere.

And the troll gallery shows up right on time.

Zelyhn.8069:

Kodiak the problem is not the condition damage, the problem is your build !
Also I like how your build changes suggestion to the OP is a blunt copy paste of your own build.

I believe I explained in perfect detail why we switched things around. Had I just randomly told him to use that instead without explaining each switch I could see your point but the fact isI did provide reasons why to switch each option to which, omfgwtfbbq, he could decide to totally ignore if he wants to!

If you have a different Condition based build, feel free to suggest it as an alternative.

Razor.6392:

No lol, I’d rather help fellow eles from wasting their time with useless builds that get severely outclassed by other professions.

There’s already a plethora of information out on the cookie cutter 2000 power, 1600 toughness, 15000 hp, 50% crit, 75% crit power 0/x/x/20/20 base builds. If people wanted it, it’s readily available along with a variety of other builds even in the stickied topic up above at the top of this forum. Talking about the same build over and over and the very tiny and slight variations and their merits is boring and pretty ridiculous at this stage. Rubies give 0.001% more DPS than Divinity but give you 0.001% less defense. Cool story, bro.

How about, instead of making a drawn comparison to these existing builds that likely didn’t interest the player in the first place, talk about the merits AND pitfalls of the build or play style they are interested in. I mean if you can draw a conclusion as to why this build is a bad idea, why not discuss the merits of WHY it’s a bad idea to not only put weight behind your opinion (IE: You’re not just coming here to say, “It’s bad!” with no proof or thought) and to show you’re not entirely biased discuss any merits you might be able to think of (as not showing any merits also says a lot about you and your opinion as well).

Razor.6392:

No. trying to stack conditions as an ele is as viable as playing bunker thief.

Don’t you have Ride the Lightning and the lack of Berserker Gear choices people make to complain about somewhere?

TGSlasher.1458:

Its a shame so many people try to shut this down without even giving it a chance.

As to bloodlust, personally I like to take doom (poison). Just personally. With 94% condition duration theoretically the poison should have a long, almost 100%, uptime(if not cleansed). This is coming from a sPvP point though (where the poison only really lasts 6-7 sec). I like to hit them where it hurts and remove their heal potential where possible.

Haha right? I’m telling ya man, can’t have a conversation at all about it.

I fully understand why Conditions have everything going against them and most of time when running around I too am probably in the same generic setup as everyone else. That said I like to mix it up and have some fun and not play the exact same character style day in and day out and this is a fun alternative.

I get the Poison thing and it’s probably not a bad choice. Realistically people should carry multiple weapons to build up those charges then swap over like most people do with Bloodlust/Force.

Lucentfir.7430:

Glad i found a more recent thread regarding Condi eles. been trying to go with a hybrid one for some time now. Now i’m not sure if it’s good or now with this current build i’m running. 20/0/30/20/0. Running a signet build it seems very interesting/ nice to me. Though I’ve wondered if i should take Written in Stone, over Diamond Skin. Since Signet effects still remain after being activated. Another thing too is taking Fire’s Embrace for the Fire Shield procing and elemental shielding, since you get a hefty amount of auras, weapon skills, so good access with protection. THough Deciding mainly if I should go D/D or S/D but D/D seems cooler for my character :<

Fire’s Embrace. This gets brought up a lot. I mean every time. While Fire’s Embrace is a nice little perk, the main issue is that most of the perks to Auras are either in trees we don’t want (Air) for stats we don’t need (Fury) or with zero Boon duration don’t last long enough to really be useful (Protection). While it can be tempting to go halfway and build a hybrid template around this Aura generation the problem I find is it’s usually ends up either being a really weak condition build to support the new stats or a really weak power build without the superior Cantrip utilities.

Someone suggested to me in the last thread that I give up Fire 7 and Earth 10 (Alacrity in both) and give it a shot for the extra Protection but the truth is that I didn’t find myself any more defensive because the boon duration just fell short even when running through a Zerg in Zerg v Zerg conflicts (where I figured the Reactive Might would help the most). You may have a different experience and these two abilities would be where you play with that.

S/D or D/D or Staff and even S/F is a hard choice because they all have merits on a build built around Conditions and jacking up Condition Duration while still giving you decent Raw Power. I’d use whatever you’re most comfortable with and go with that.