Guild Wars 2

Monkey boy.1697:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArdhEmYbux4gjDAkCtEeYABJMe0hGeA-jEDB4MAINgUggkAApQFRjtEMaVRBp+KsKZER1qbYmbKa2cC1CBsYOA-w . How about now. I personally think its better thank you again guys. Especially you Kodiak.3281 .

Here’d be my modifications:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArdhEmYbvR3gjDAkCmEeQADJMeohHkA-j0CB4MBkWAgEBMFqIaslgRrKKI1XhVJjIqWdDzcTRzmToWIgFzBA-w

1. Replaced Cleansing Fire with Signet of Earth. This was done for a few reasons:
1a. With a /Focus you get great condition management with Magnetic Wave removing 3 conditions on a 20s cool down. You’re also rocking Ether Renewal which is also huge Condition management to the point Cleansing Fire is redundant.
1b. The huge immobilize is fantastic in this build and lets you land things like Dragontooth → Flamewall → Phoenix combo.
1c. More toughness for even more survivability.
1d. You have numerous sources of burn as is.

2. Swapped Burning Fire with Pyromancer’s Alacrity. You could also still put in Burning Precision but as a 1s Burn it seems kinda pointless especially when you can pretty much perma burn with Signet of Fire. The 20% cool down will let you spam your main Fire combos more or come in handy when rocking a Staff (and this build is very Staff viable) for defensive situations where things like Static Field are too important to ignore.

3. Swapped Stone Splinters for Written in Stone. This will give you permanent Toughness and Precision. The Swiftness falls off for a few seconds after using the stun breaker unfortunately so watch out for that. Only a few seconds.

4. Swapped in Cleansing Wave into the Water line as it’s much more useful and turns Water Attunement into yet another Condition cleansing ability.

5. Changed focus to Carrion. We got enough Toughness now with Signet of Earth again. Also swapped Sigils to Corruption (debatable) and Battle (not debatable).

The power you have is decent considering you also now have Puissance for extra Might stacks. That said it’s still very low of the 2000 mark you usually want to be around to see real damage. I’m not entirely sold on /Focus but I haven’t tried it so I can’t give any commentary for or against it compared to /Dagger. As noted above all the weapons have decent conditions on them so they’re all viable so try playing around with different weapon sets and seeing what you like the most for your style (I mostly ended up on S/D personally).

Fishbait.6723:

Magnetic Wave: This skill is now blockable.

This ruins everything. I’m so sick and tired of all these constant nerfs. Now we have to campaign endlessly on the forums to get Magnetic Wave reverted like Ride the Lightning.

DOES ANET EVEN PLAY AN ELE!?!

The biggest problem you have is all the Rabid gear you have equipped. While on the one hand it does give you a tremendous amount of Toughness the Precision does literally nothing for you. Not only do you have virtually no power to multiply with Crits but you also have zero crit damage so you’re literally pouring into a stat that returns nothing for you.

Conditions, especially in WvW, are pretty much an all or nothing proposition because they have countless things stacked against them. Most commonly is -Condition Duration which, for example, my Warrior runs around with -93% duration on Chill/Immob/Cripple and -60% duration to base conditions. This pretty much forces you to counter this directly by going for Condition Duration yourself via Veggie Pizza (40%), 2 Superior Lyssa (10%), 2 Superior Mad King (10%) and 2 Superior Nightmare (4%) which added on from Fire (10-30%) can allow you to completely negate the -Condition Duration stackers at 94% Condition Duration.

The other problem is your total lack of Power. This leads you mostly towards Carrion Gear. If we give up 20% signet cool downs we can assure that Signet of Earth’s 180 Toughness is always on when coupled with 300 Toughness from Earth we’re pretty close to the 1600 goal. This, and since you will be spending a lot of time in Earth to keep Scepter 2 up (which the Armor gives 250 Toughness) you should be fine with this trade.

You could also afford to take 10 out of Air and put it into Signet of Air so you can get a stunbreaker which your build will desperately need while also giving you some runspeed. This will let you put 10 more into Fire for more Condition Duration and juice up the Fire Attunement which you will spend most of your time in when not in Earth.

If you’re going to stick with this much precision, you should go with Burning Precision (which is the only reason to go with Precision at all and even then it’s a REALLY bad Burn duration) or even better Internal Fire for more dmg.

The 20 points in Water are also debatable. Not a terrible decision, Shard of Ice is terrible along with the other choices other than Cleansing Wave meaning anything over 15 points (For the heal if you really want it) is wasteful. I usually throw that back into Fire which at that point if I’m asking myself between a Heal or Puissance or Persisting Flames I usually end up on 30 Fire. Not everyone’s decision and I’d get a 25/0/30/15/0 build.

I also found greater success with Signet of Water over Fire. While Fire is a super long Burn on a really low cool down (and I use it a lot for pve) the crazy Chill you get when you crank up to 89-94% condition Duration is amazing.

Hopefully this topic won’t get locked like the last one :p

Where have I seen this topic before…

Healing Rain → Tornado

It’s great when everyone is bunched up such as recovering from a fight in WvW cause if the enemy rushes you for Round 2 not only are you healing but then you can kick out Blinds as well.

Kyon.9735:

http://en.gw2skills.net/ might be better and is more complete. I don’t think gw2buildcraft.com has Celestial and Sentinel gears in it.

IMO celestial gear is only good for balancing out stats. Going full celestial will land you High Crit Damage(on stat sheet) but will be pretty useless because you’ll have very low Power.

I have 2x celestial daggers and a full set of celestial trinkets but I don’t use them at the same time. I mix them with Ascended Cavalier trinkets and Berserker/Valkyrie Ascended trinkets to make up for the loss in power and toughness.

Yea you gotta manually punch in the numbers into gw2buildcraft cause it hasn’t been updated in many, many months.

Kylun.2935:

Thanks for the replies, I will try your suggestions and see how it goes.

Yeap and from there you usually end up going:

50 – 20/0/0/20/0
60 – 20/0/0/30/0
70 – 20/10/0/30/0
80 – 20/20/0/30/0 (or respec to another spec)

Big advantage of Water is it powers up your Cantrips while sitting in Water Attunement. When you gain 3 stacks of Might, Vigor, Regen (which will cleanse a condition at 60) and the fact you’re blinding everything AOE every 1.5 seconds (which is why Dredge suck cause they’re immune to Blind) and have the passive Soothing Mist regen ticking on it’s all pretty defensive while kicking out massive damage with Lightning Hammer.

Around 50+ I think it was I started using Knight (Tough/Power/Prec) gear. Also remember Sigils still build with Conjures so use a Major Sigil of Bloodlust while leveling too.

By far the biggest thing that will hold you back is other players because people see a Lightning Hammer and go “OOO SHINY” and come steal it and doubly so with Fiery Greatsword. Around other players you have to “tactically” place your Conjures so they aren’t readily visible for people to take. Worse case scenario you fall back on S/D which you should have learned how to use from 1-40.

Crit is kinda a waste if you aren’t also going Crit Power. The advantage of going 30 points into Air instead of Power is you get 30% Critical Damage from the passive stat boosts. With the build listed you’d want to go more Clerics gear than Magi and then go for more Soldier/Invader (Power-Vitality-Toughness) jewelry (karma or wvw badges) slotted with Celestial Quartz. That’ll give you a really strong Power base and still give you decent +Healing plus a good chunk of Toughness. That also makes the 10 points in Air kinda pointless and you’re probably better off investing it more into the Support side of things.

Also Signets are largely regarded as terrible without significant advantages placed for them (such as Condition Duration to make their effects strong or Earth Traits to further augment them). You’re better off going with another Cantrip (such as Lightning Flash, which can be very handy in WvW if you get caught in a bad situation) or Arcane Wave (which can be used as another blast finisher for an AOE heal, AOE Might, AOE Swiftness, etc). The heal can be replaced with GOEH or the Dwayna heal. I prefer GOEH because it’s another source of Swiftness when running around mostly as well as other boons (Protection and Regen).

Therefore you’d end up with something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImKbxR5QlDAkHvcCLBFEwQRxM7A-jEyAoNASEQWsIas1tioxqew0lER1eeioaXAmQAyGDA-w

Over 2000 Power (with Sharpening Stone)
Over 1600 Toughness (with Food, without 1577)
Over 18000 HP (this gives you massive EHP with that much Toughness)
Over 1000 Healing (which is more than enough to support with)

You also have absurd Condition management with the ability for all of your Cantrips to remove a condition as well as provide massive AOE condition removal with AOE regeneration (from just swapping to Water) as well as Healing Rain for recovery after.

I found from 0-20 that I was best off leveling with S/D using Power gear. From 20-40 I used Power/Vitality gear still with S/D. Traits put into Water tree for the Vitality it gives which will help out early on. Usually something along the lines:

10-20: 0/0/0/10/0
20-30: 0/10/0/10/0
30-39: 10/10/0/10/0

The standard “power” combo in PvE is: Dragon’s Tooth -> Ring of Fire -> Phoenix -> Fire Grab. That will gib most things around your level and under and take a huge chunk off Veterans. It’s very effective AOE, but you have to be cautious about your survivability as well early on.

Otherwise normally you will mostly use Air / Earth. Air’s auto is solid damage and it lets you rotate the blinds while kiting around. Most kiting is done via back + strafe in a direction (mostly strafing) and use of dodge. The idea is to get a good rotation of avoiding their hit by blinding a mob, then using dodge, then blinding again. If Blind is down in Air, switch to Earth and continue and use it’s blind and Knockdown as needed switching back to Air when you can.

Water is mostly kept as a defensive attunement to heal/cleanse conditions and Frost Aura then swap back to another.

Arcane Wave will let you stack more AOE Might in Fire and do more AOE damage. Otherwise I like Cleansing Fire because it cures a lot of conditions that can be applied to you as well as Armor of Earth (which can give you Stability while channeling Churning Earth if you got mobs that knockdown).

At 40+ you can spec into the Lightning Hammer builds (20/0/0/10/0) which are amazingly easy for leveling. Just sit in Water with 2 Cantrips (Cleasning, Armor of Earth) and just auto attack your way to victory. The Auto on Lightning Hammer is ridiculously powerful and the 10 extra charges you get from Conjurer in Fire allow you to keep going with it permanently. You can level like this all the way to 80 with minimal effort and ease. The most difficult opponents will be Dredge, which you can fall back on the S/D Fire combos for (or Conjure Firey Axe?).

That’s how I leveled up multiple Elementalists. Was very easy.

As another primary WvW player your critique of WvW Staff Elementalist doesn’t make much sense.

Fishbait.6723:

If want to support other players at risk of your own life, because you will be easy kill, good luck to you.

Anyone doing Zerg WvW needs to go defensive due to how Zerg game play is done (basically each Zerg runs through each other, separates to recover, then repeats). However there a variety of ways to build for self survivability and support for others while maintaining decent offense. The most common method these days is PVT with Divinity/Scholar/Ruby/Boon Duration with Emerald/Soldier/Celestial Acessories and Weapons. Very easy to hit 1600 Toughness, 15000+ HP, and around 2000 Power (with varying Crit and Crit Dmg) which is more than enough to survive.

Fishbait.6723:

But tbh, staff is crap, stability negates the cc, damage is pitiful if you don`t want to go gc & at best, some like meteor shower is random chance of hitting anything & a cast time so long, anyone & their gran could`ve killed you by the time you`ve even half cast it.

Making that an argument something is useless because Stability exists is silly. Not everyone brings stability (they should) and you will catch a lot of people who didn’t want to blow their stability cool down so soon (if they brought it at all). This certainly doesn’t make Hammer Jammer warriors, Necro Fear, Guardian Walls or anything else not worth bringing.

Meteor Shower is a stationary spell for stationary targets (such as defending a choke point in StoneMist Lord) and certainly isn’t something you’re going to use majority of the time. However Fireball is a targeted AOE blast that will guaranteed hit a large chunk of bunched up people. Chain Lightning is amazing for tagging multiple targets. Even Ice Spike might not hit the front of the enemy AOE Zerg but it will hit the “tail” of their zerg as they pass through. Most of the moves can be done on the run.

That said S/D and D/D also have tons of merits, especially D/D in this setting but they lack any kind of stopping power. I’ve disrupted whole zergs countless times with a well placed Static Field and Frozen Ground skills to really make it great.

Fishbait.6723:

If you want a really good staff build, go necro

No misinformation here. Necros are pretty beast in WvW and completely a viable alternative to Elementalists.

Then you should be fine with all the standard templates built around 0/10/0/20/20 (add in the other 20 points where you want: Usually 30 Air or 30 Water and Arcane) and build your gear around the same PVT gear (Divnity, Scholar or Rubies depending on your cash) and Emerald (slotted with Charged Quartz) or Berserker jewelry depending if you need more or less defense/offense.

Should be good to go. Again I run like this and it’s extremely defensive and still offers me good offense since I can swap in more defense or offense as needed.

Really you can make Staff work with a variety of builds. For example I often times use staff for WvW on my 0/30/0/20/20 spec with PVT gear (same as from AC) with Divinity Runes and Emerald Jewelry with Charged Quartz Gems slotted. Works just as well using D/D or S/D as well. For PvE I tend to use the same armor, but then swap in Berserker (Ascended) Accessories instead on the same build.

I mean really if you look at a lot of people’s builds most of the stats they run are about the same. If Divinity runes are too expensive then Rubies might be a good fit and give you (more or less) similar results.

If you’re more interested in super support time, Evasive Arcana (30 Arcane) is always solid if you use it for Water/Earth. Unfortunately I was not a fan of it for PvE as many encounters it forces you to dodge roll which could end up wasting the cool down on the ability. These days I’d probably go more 0/20/0/30/20 for support staff in dungeons.

Can’t ever go wrong with a Guardian. It’s like the default choice to be good/decent at everything.

There are a lot of skills and traits that work differently in this game from WvW and PvE.

The difference is that unlike GW1 where they completely separated out the two in this game they are working towards having the characters largely play the same in PvE, PvP, and WvW. This means they’re going to minimize this as much as possible.

That means if people are boohooing about not being able to get around with Ride the Lightning as a convenience for mobility purposes in PvE you probably won’t see much traction with that argument.

After trying my Mesmer after the 5 Illusions nerf I also ended up on a 20/20/0/30/0 (Phantasm) spec and chose the Cleanse on Shatter skill. So far I really like it and it’s really helped out because I basically don’t need to worry about Conditions as much.

tumble weed rolls on by

oZii.2864:

Kodiak you seem to be a decent player but saying staff has no reactionary defenses is kind of a stretch. The only thing d/d offers over staff for reactionary defense is the auras as you can pop those when stunned and staff has a reactionary aura in magnetic aura. Staff has the AOE CC to allow you to escape/kite/create distance but if you used those skills to get a kill then that’s the trade off which is true of every weapon set for every profession.

I was trying to keep it brief and probably was a little too generic what I meant by reactionary defenses and “virtually none.” By reactionary defenses I meant abilities we can do to counter a situation and not necessarily with the subtext of us wanting to flee.

With that in mind, Staff is actually pretty poor. Burning retreat is basically a 3rd dodge, not bad, but it’s medium cool down is fairly poor (double the cool down of an actual Dodge without Vigor). Gust is laughably bad, better than it was now that it goes through targets, but as a projectile is easily avoided. Windborne Speed is good for chucking immobilizing conditions. Magnetic Aura is only affective against projectiles.

Geyser and Healing Rain are pretty great Water fields but it’s difficult to take advantage of them depending on spec and build. Frozen Ground is solid but is easily avoided by range and really is only reliable at catching large groups who can’t really avoid it. Static Field is a staple but a 2s stun rarely is going to save your life but it can be devastating at disrupting a huge zerg. Unsteady Ground suffers from the same problems as Frozen Ground only in a smaller area. Shockwave is another decent skill because it’s targeted but like Gust is prone to miss.

I compare this to say /Dagger. With /Dagger not only is usable while stunned anytime my opponent hits me they are chilled. Melee, ranged, avoidance whatever any time they strike they get Chilled. Cleansing Wave also works in any spec, removes a condition, and is a decent burst heal. Ride the Lightning was so good we still got people complaining about it on these forums months after the nerf. It’s basically our “F this…I’m outa here” button to create huge distance on most opponents to regroup and recover. Updraft gives us total control over anyone close enough and can be used defensively (such as to prevent a stomp or disrupt attacks) or offensively (to prevent heals and press offense). Earthquake functions similarly as Updraft again offensively or defensively. Finally Churning Earth, which is such a televised attack that (as people repeatedly say) “no good player ever gets hit with Churning Earth without Lightning Flash” basically allows you to create area denial as just casting it should get people to move out of the way.

This is not to say a Staff player can’t survive. In my support spec (0/0/10/30/30) and gear (Shaman/Boon Duration, Passiflora Jewelry) I’m pretty kitten ed bunker and can even survive burst thieves (not forever, but enough to make it to a friendly base or get to allies for a peel). It’s merely to say why it’s a sub-par small action weapon. It simply lacks the reactive/active defensive abilities that are consequential to that game play.

That said very few other classes in the game can bring what we can bring to the table in Zerg v Zerg conflict with our Staff. I’ve on numerous occasions stopped/disrupted whole zerg trains with a single Static Field in a choke point. I’m okay with having different tools for different jobs.

dukevonart.2691:

More on topic, I’d rather see grandmaster traits that change play-styles rather than just stat adjustment. It offers both more satisfaction in using a trait when its effects are immediately obvious in requiring a play-style shift and creates a greater interaction in trait choices beyond simply min/maxing stats. It also leads to some of our more popular traits currently in Fresh Air and Evasive Arcana.

This is what I like about the idea of adding a poison proc on crits instead as a final trait similar to the way Necros got with burning. It would open up gear choices like Rabid and make new traits that add a lot of Fury (such as Persisting Flames adding Fury on Might Combos) a lot more tempting. I’d be much more tempted to go with something like Rabid Armor in that scenario than I am currently where there’s really zero reason to focus on Critical at all in our current condition spec. I then also wouldn’t necessarily feel the sting of losing Signet of Earth on use because with Rabid gear my Toughness would be much higher than it is now (at the cost of my ultra high Vitality).

The biggest problem with Staff isn’t it’s damage or how it even deals it’s damage. The real issue is it has virtually zero reactionary defenses. When you look at /Dagger or even /Focus both have attunements/abilities with active defense moves they can be of use when being pressured. Staff on the other hand largely lacks this in favor of AOE CC which isn’t nearly as effective in a smaller combat scenario but great in larger combat scenarios. That, more than anything, keeps the staff from being a viable alternative. The damage is actually halfway decent.

Anything representing the RMT Cash shop is evil.

Kiel is the default choice.

Kamui.3150:

Yeesh, if these details are true about conditions, then they really do get screwed over. That means in group settings that if 3 people each stack a 5 sec burn but the strongest one is applied last that it would be the last one to do damage, correct? That really sucks, since it means in WvW or the like, you’re praying that your conditions will be the ones at the front of the queue and won’t get cleansed right away, while direct damage dealers get all their damage delivered right up front.

Yeap. It’s all pretty bad when you really get into the details of it.

That said it’s hilarious when you see people not prepare their build to deal with conditions. You literally just melt their HP away.

All depends on what you want do in WvW. PUG Zerg WvW, Guild Zerg WvW, Solo Roam, Small Group Roam, etc etc etc.

I’ve been playing MMO games since Ultima Online back in 1997 and I can tell you now that if your enjoyment of the game is hinged on the Developers of your game reverting a change they made in almost every case imaginable be prepared to be disappointed.

You essentially got three choices:

1. Adapt/Deal with the change.
2. Reroll another class
3. Quit the game

Sitting around on the forums and continuously complaining accomplishes absolutely nothing (not saying you’re doing that but certainly some people around here definitely do). It’s not even cathartic because once you realize how much time you wasted being miserable on the forums about something was really time you could have spent having fun elsewhere it just brings you down even further.

That, really, is how I look at things. I’m here to have fun. When my Necro wasn’t fun at release I made something else and kept going till I found something I did enjoy. When I’m bored of the standard power spec on my Elementalist I shake it up and try different things like a Condition build. When I’m not having fun period I go play something else instead. Not like any of this is going anywhere and my toons will still be here after countless balance updates 6 months down the line.

All that said, Developers rarely make uninformed decisions. Everything you and everyone else does in game is logged and tracked. Most modern day developers can pull up user data and see hard facts about what kind of abilities are being used, builds are being used and classes are being used. Some crazy person on the forums could go around claiming it’s impossible to 1v1 people in WvW now but all they gotta do is run a report and see for themselves. This is why you see “useless” abilities get updates, because they want to change them to drive usage. They can then see if the ability gets used more than it already does and see if additional updates need to be made. The same thing happens when you see say an ability like Ride the Lightning have 300% the usage of any other ability for an Elementalist it might be time to review it.

Developers rarely share these insights because this is kinda like the secret sauce of their game. More over, they aren’t usually looking from their users for counter points to their decisions. If they did want feedback, they would ask for it. Even then, feedback is useless when you can see what people actually do in game by tracking usage and see what people actually do rather than what they say on some forum.

DiogoSilva waging the war against the malcontents that make up our forums/class.

You are going to lose

TGSlasher.1458:

@Kodiak, its a shame that everyone hated your Conditionmenalist.
I run something simlar 20 10 30 0 0 and 10 spare (usually arcane or air). But more for burst then conditions. I also use the Focus, that will incite the rage.

ghettogenius.9174:

Totally agree here. Signet builds are hit hard by conditions, and if you dont run with Cleansing Fire or Ether Renewal you’re in for a world of hurt – but then this hurts the whole synergy derived from additional signet bonuses in some builds.

Hell even in PvE it can cause problems. Got downed several times last night in dungeon explorer runs due to running out of condi removal. Any form of PvP is much worse.

Sadly Signet of Water doesn’t really appeal to me in its current state. They should increase the damage a bit and give it a passive healing bonus like the others. That might make it more worthwhile.

I’ve used Bowls of Saffron-scented Poultry Soup on my thief for additional condi removal to great effect. Not so much an option in sPvP though. Perhaps Bowls of Lemongrass Poultry Soup with Runes of Hoelbrak are also an option (-60% condition duration).

Not everyone hated my Conditimentalist build. It was more an issue with people hating me because I like to call people on their nonsense and get into with them as a result.

Even then most of it was regarding two videos one I posted to show you can survive zerg diving in WvW with the build and the other was to show you don’t instantly die if you’re 30 Fire in SPvP. If you really look at what people were going on about it was more ridiculous things like me auto attacking doors (because anything other than a Superior Ram matters on a Reinforced door amirite?). I guess this is why everyone takes weeks of footage and cuts it down into a 10 minute highlight video.

Personally I’m all about functionality and enjoyability. I also play 0/30/0/20/20 in addition to 0/0/10/30/30 and of course my 30/0/30/10/0 builds. If you’re having fun, you’re not dying and the people/mobs you’re going after are dying that’s all that really matters.

That said I am not a fan of the Power based Signet builds. Signets to me are a shakey proposition from the get go. Cantrips provide a whole slew of options (Mobility, Condition Management, Stability/Protection, Immunity) that even after all the nerfs are really tough to beat. However through focusing on enough Condition Duration (which we can achieve +94% to counteract the -98% mentioned by ghettogenius) it really juices up the conditions they do to the point they are now a tempting alternative. A 6 second immobilize is a death sentence in most cases. An 8 second Chill can be the same. Unfortunately Condition Duration often times takes up the same slots we use for +Crit Damage (Runes and Food) which makes focusing on Crit (which is useless without Crit Dmg) pointless instead of focusing on Power. Based on that, it leads me to either being a Power/Condi/Condition Duration build or a Power/Crit/Crit Dmg build. If I’m on the later (Power/Crit/Crit Dmg) then I will likely end up going with Cantrips over Signets which leads me back into the Water and Arcana lines instead (because there’s huge Synergy down there for all that).

By going this route I have found I solved a lot of the common headaches I initially ran into and mentioned by ghettogenius.

What do you want to do in WvW?

People glitching says less about players and more about bad dungeon design.

AC used to be one of the most popular dungeons. People even did Kohler sometimes. Then they changed everything and made it all super hard or broke mechanics entirely (P2). Now people only do the paths that are easy and can be glitched with minimal to no effort (P1 and P3). CM was the same way because you could glitch over the instance and skip most of it. They removed that glitch (mostly) and people stopped running it.

People are going to take the path of least resistance. If you plug one path by changing it or making it hard, people will seek another. If you nerf everything, many people will stop doing them at all which will severely diminish the population you have to do them with.

If they are going to make any dungeon changes at all they need to make dungeons challenging but also profitable and not tedious. If you give me a path an hour long I better be able to make more money doing that than if I just went gathering instead and certainly not frustrating or boring.

Zenith.7301:

Define “super fast”.

I’ll let ya know the next time I go farming.

sonicwylde.2906:

So far its not to bad with counter conditions, although the signet of water is only every 10 seconds, but I do try to keep water attunement free, so when I get a few conditions I swap to that and it cleanses a bit. I will know more when I get into WvW (taken it in there but I think it was a quiet time for it). I am still tuning it a bit, and changing stuff around etc.

Well PvE conditions are nothing compared to the conditionfest that is WvW. My first Zerg Dive I knew that Signet of Restoration was just not going to cut it because you just get literally slammed with conditions. Sure a decent number end up falling off due to AOE removal from others but I found without going for Ether Renewal it just wasn’t going to work.

I did take those things into account.

Still trying to grasp that combination of stats you use to get those totals. I use PVT/Divinity gear, Knight/Charged Quartz Jewelry and Zerker weapons and I come close but you have me beat by 20% on crit Dmg, 5% off on crit, and around 200 power but are around 100 off in Toughness to what I got.

Possibly 10 in Earth for the extra 10% dmg?

Zenith.7301:

If you’re running scepter in cof it’s not a speed group.

They don’t need you to stack might. It’s called signet of inspiration, battle standards, and for great justice.

And yet somehow we’re still able to kick through COF runs super fast.

It boggles the mind.

shankyu.6154:

Seems like others didn’t quite catch what you were saying, but I get it. To put it simply you think condi damage is a viable source of damage for those builds that don’t have a viable way to output damage because they’re more focused on providing support. For instance, a healing/support guardian can throw around burns for dps.

I would like to agree, except to incorporate condi damage into traits or gear on a healing specc’ed class could kitten it. For instance, on a 0/10/0/30/30 d/d bunker ele designed for aura sharing and healing any trait points thrown into earth or fire would stop it from doing its job as effectively and may also hurt its survivability. Gearing for it would do much the same where you could have a pvt or clerics piece in place of say a rabid piece.
Also pure damage still might be a better option over whatever you’d be getting from conditions. On such a build you’d probably end up doing more damage just from might stacking.
Furthermore, whatever conditions you’d be throwing around as a support specc would be significantly weaker than anyone actually built for pure condition damage and you’d only make it harder for them to do damage.

We caught it, we just dismissed it out of hand because support specs are relatively non existent and extremely niche in this game because, again, the game design works against you on it by severely limiting what support you can actually provide.

That said you wouldn’t run something like this on a D/D Bunker ele. You’d do it more as the Staff build on a 0/0/20/20/30 build in Shaman Gear (Vit/Heal/Condi) and Passiflora Jewelry (Tough/Heal/Condi) as part of Zerg group support for healing.

innocent ouarior.1954:

Bloodmage spec (which sounds 10 times cooler than Condimentalist), that being full Rampager perma 25bleed+burn using does incredibly good single target PvE damage as long as your team doesnt use much bleeds and burn. With sharing poison Thief or Poison Filed supplied its even more impressive.

Of course its a very niche.

Yea if you can go Asura for the Radiation Field plus stack condition duration you can get a really crazy source of Poison. Almost makes me wish I hadn’t deleted my Asura Elementalist for a Human one. As it is I tend to run with Reaper of Grenth instead but that’s a huge recast for limited duration, but also is extra Chill.

All of which ignores if you can even apply those 10-12 stacks at all on the target because they’re capped out or not.

The caps are the entire issue.

Zenith.7301:

Scepter is not a pve weapon.

It is a pvp weapon. Don’t use it in PvE — speed groups will kick you because your sustained damage with scepter is terrible. Scepter is a burst weapon with very little sustained.

For PvE either go staff or lightning hammer for damage. DD is almost decent and packs good aoe burst that can be useful in places like grawl shaman elementals, but that’s about it and a proper fire staff spec outdamages, and lightning hammer puts MUCH, MUCH higher DPS than any of the ele mainhand weapons.

Never been kicked in a group for using Scepter even in speed COF farm groups.

Long as I stack might they usually don’t care what I use.

Zelyhn.8069:

Acutally I really like conditions
if you think of it, it takes a direct damage zerker a lot of resources (traits, gear, etc) to produce the damage output of what a humble condi build can have.
This is probably the reason why it is limited to 25 stacks.
The design of the game is quite clever: if you run a dungeon you can have two people in your group applying condition damage while providing additional output, such as heals or tankiness. My belief is that conditions were designed so that support roles could deal decent and useful damage.
The problem is not that the stacks are capped, it is that people just keep thinking that they have definite and limited roles. We could learn to play with conditions, but people don’t want to learn how to play for their group instead of just in their group.

Actually you need just as much focus and attention on Condition damage that you would give to Raw damage to pull it off and especially on classes that aren’t the Elementalist. As a person with a Necro, Mesmer and Engineer almost all base bleed durations are non-existent on those classes (because they got nerfed in beta) meaning maintaining stacks to deal damage actually require Condition Duration. Gearing for Condition Duration usually ends up taking the same slots as where you’d focus on Crit Damage only it’s not possible in the Jewelry slots (another easy way to gear out for +Dmg as you noted elsewhere they have the highest stat ratio). The only class that can get away without Condition Duration is the Elementalist who has absurdly high condition durations when you compare them to other classes (go look it up) unless they go WvW/PvP where -Condition Duration will need to be countered.

You can “play for the team” all you want, none of that is going to erase the 10+ stacks the Warrior is going to put passively on the target with each crit which is a Minor Trait they can’t remove from the Greatsword/Crit line. Same with the Mesmer example above. Running up to a zone raid event and seeing that the bleed stacks are stuck at 100% basically means a Condition based player will be unable to output anything as their Bleeds will never apply and their Burns/Poisons will sit in a queue till doomsday along with everyone else.

Navzar.2938:

They just need to add more high defense low hp mobs I guess?

The issue is rooted so deep into game design that side stepping the solution like this doesn’t really fix anything. It’s so deep that I doubt we will see a solution to the problem for years. Likely it will involve reverting back more towards the GW1 way of working which would mean increasing the effects dramatically.

For PvE I got (assuming raw damage):

Zerker/Ruby Armor
PVT/2 Sup Water, 2 Sup Monk, 2 Maj Monk Armor
PVT/Divinity Armor

Emerald/Charged Quartz Jewelry
Ascended Zerker Jewelry
Ascended Zerker Back

Zerker Staff/Fire
Zerker Scepter/Force
Zerker Scepter/Bloodlust
Zerker Dagger/Battle
Knight Dagger/Force
Knight Dagger/Battle

Mix and match as needed. If survivability isn’t an issue I gradually add more and more Zerker in. If I am sucking or my group is sucking or I want it I add in more defensive stats and gear. For WvW I tend to roll with my PVT/Divinity, Emerald/Charged Quartz and Zerker weapons giving me crazy mix of Power, Crit, Crit Dmg, Toughness, Hitpoints and all around survivability on a 0/30/0/20/20 spec which also works great for PvE (which I tend to run more Zerker jewelry).

It’s a complicated topic that can’t easily be boiled down into Staff is better than any other choice.

In Zerg WvW play Staff has a lot going for it. I have cast a Static Fields that have literally routed or caught entire Zergs in it basically stopping their entire advance or causing them to get clustered up prematurely. Not a zerg stopped another zerg, but one player with 1 ability stopped 20+ people. Combined with Frozen Ground it’s undeniably a powerful utility tool that when enough Elementalists are using it can make or break a battle. Facing Static Field alone has made me switch from using Mist Form to Armor of Earth because it’s just that kitten annoying to go up against when two Zergs clash. Dropping down Water Fields for people to blast finish into for healing is also extremely clutch even if you are 100% offensively geared with zero healing.

However damage component wise Staff is largely mediocre on the move and really relies on Chain Lightning auto attack to deal damage on the go because Fireball’s projectile is easy fooled and Field based damage won’t ever tick for more than 1 tick on the go. All of those are projectiles and subject to reflect which is quite common in big groups. The field based attacks are okay when zergs clash, but the stop-and-cast nature of Meteor Shower really leaves it in a position best when attacking walls or defending an area.

On the other hand Dagger play is amazing in a Zerg because Dagger/ is full of close range PBAOE and Cone attacks designed to be up close and surrounded by targets with no real central target to focus on. Scepter’s damage is almost the reverse of Staff with its’ damage mostly being single target in many attunements with still having some AOE (such as Fire is heavy AOE, Arc Lightning chains through targets, etc).

The most challenging part about Staff is the sheer lack of defenses it brings to the table for the Elementalist personally. While it can kick out fields like Static Field or Frozen Ground on a large scale these rarely help the Elementalist survive the dive. At most you’re looking at is movement impairment removal (with Windborne Speed) and projectile Reflect. This is also what makes it virtually impossible to play in a 1v1 scenario against a decent opponent since you’re entirely reliant on your Utility for defenses.

Again, using /D will give you any number of defensive options at your command from Earthquake (Knockdown) to Frost Aura (Reactive Chill and 10% reduction in dmg) and Cleansing Wave (AOE Heal and Condition Removal) as well as of course the staple Ride the Lightning to get out or Updraft to interrupt and evade away. Focus is more like Staff in that there’s very few defenses associated with it so it’s hardly worth mentioning outside of a few situations. Swirling Winds can be good protection for downing people since most downed abilities are Projectiles.

Long story short is any competent group will bring multiples of each Elementalist. D/D play is extremely powerful for a Zerg as well as Staff as well. Most Guild groups tend to run with both. They all really kinda have a role and place except for Focus and that’s because /Dagger just shines so much better than Focus that it makes Focus a non factor.

sonicwylde.2906:

well I fine tuned a build that has been working pretty well, and I think will work even better when I finish getting some of the gear

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhMmebux2QlEAkCtEUIACjHgMCJiCPA-jwyAYrASQAJRAZPl1EogY9sIas6FMV5iq1mAejI7OGyKA-e

so far its done well in groups and solo.

Seems like it’d be countered hard by conditions. Otherwise seems like it’s your standard signet Aura build. If you’re having success with it though more power to ya

Leo G.4501:

That could be an effect of dynamic level scalings.

As is, your gear and food scale down with you and since that is the only place you can obtain -condition duration, it’s logical it scales and there is no display in the character window that shows how much -condition you have.

In blazeridge steppes, levels are scaled to level 40-60, so expect your Lemongrass to be scaled to Clam Chowder which offers -28% condition duration and expect your runes to be downgraded to the level 40 version so -14%. Traits don’t scale down, they always provide their bonuses in full (assumption here, this should be true but the only part about traits that scale is the stats you get from a trait line). That ultimately gets you 33 + 28 + 14 = 75% condition reduction.

It’s unlikely this scaling is taken into account in WvW.

This.

They changed all this a while back so being leveled down was more dramatic so you didn’t have guys like me in Full Zerker end game gear one shotting everything. Thems were the days….

Navi.7142:

As we leveled our eles (not the first characters that we brought to lvl 80) there was a time we got really frustrated and we tried a lot.. but in the end we leveled them up through crafting from 60 to 80 (or maybe from 65 to 75.. who knows).. it was a horrible experience.
Leveling our necros had been very easy and relaxed.. it was such a difference.
Mesmer was a little struggle until lvl 20, but then okay and got better with each new level!
So in my opinion of all three “light professions” ele is the most demanding and tedious to level up.

Playing the lvl 80 ele in nice gear is fine!

I found the opposite for my Ele. Till I “figured it out” 1-20 was abysmal. After that it was all very easy with S/D and then faceroll, laughably easy with Lightning Hammer.

Greatsword Phantasm Mesmer.

Most Phantasms are all done at range. The classic case being “iZerker” (Illusionary Berserker) which for me is around 6k+ damage instantly from range on any targets it goes through.

Sword/X is often chosen as the second set and Sword in itself lends itself to the “dart” style of play with being able to pop in, Blur Attack, pop out, send a clone in then swap with the clone, etc. Your dislike of guns won’t fail you as Focus is pretty staple for an offhand.

The “pets” are dumbfire and largely don’t need to be micromanaged beyond shatters. There are other builds more focused on the Shatter play style and more Clone management.

Mesmers have conditions but they’re largely separate builds and focus. For example Scepter/Staff is more condition/clone based while Greatsword/Sword are more raw damage oriented and any conditions are applied secondary and not intentionally (such as Phantasm crits applying bleed).

The game is not balanced at all for PvE. For all the theory crafting we do here on the Ele forums for damage it’s paltry damage output compared to Warrior or Mesmer damage. Both classes combine strong base defenses that let them get away with Zerker gear or minimally focusing on defensive stats while both having access to strong amounts of raw damage. I would argue the point that anyone capable of pulling off an Ele in PvE currently would most likely be even better if they played one of the holy trinity of this game (Warrior, Mesmer or Guardian). Honestly if I didn’t play Zerg vs Zerg WvW as much as I do I would have shelved my Elementalist for my Mesmer a long time ago.

Razor.6392:

…who are you talking to?

I believe he thought you were replying to him Razor initially and then he replied to your reply that was intended for OP.

This is why quoting is good.

On that note I agree Mesmer is pretty boss. I play on a 20/20/0/30/0 build in Knight/Zerker gear and it’s brutal damage, great survivability and amazing utility. If I hadn’t dedicated so much time to the Ele and all my gear sets…

morrolan.9608:

See I think much of the SOR commentary has come in response to the clear trolling by BG posters including commanders.

Its a vicious circle so we should all take a step back and even counsel those on our own servers against trolling.

I think you’re better off aiming for world peace.

On that note JQQ will be back in T1 next week so you’ll have your crutch to lean back on when they come back on up. Until then this is probably the most fun I’ve had in WvW in a while as all sides are openly attacking each other in EB.

mjharrison.3209:

Fundamentally, condition Ele is broken because of the long attunement switching timer – if you need to switch out of Earth/Fire, you can’t do any appreciable damage for at least 9 seconds – and that’s if you have 30 arcane, which offers little to a condition build.

Attunement times need to come down for Ele. You shouldn’t need 20+ point in arcane just to play the class fluidly.

If you’re going to talk fundamentals any Condition based spec is pretty bad by virtue of game design. Conditions basically have everything working against them.

In PvE Conditions can be stacked at maximum for 25 for bleeds or duration for other effects. This largely means your damage is going to have to wait in line to be done if at all. On my Mesmer I passively apply 10+ bleeds without wanting to (minor trait) with 0 condition damage. That means any class that seriously wants to apply them are unable to because even more powerful bleeds won’t overwrite weaker ones. In addition for stacking duration conditions a weaker burn/poison is also not prioritized lower. Even if they were prioritized based on effect power, if two people intentionally apply a high damage burn as part of their damage only one will take effect meaning by game design one person will always be doing lower damage.

In PvP (and/or WvW) things are even more grim because of the number of counters. The huge advantage raw damage has over condition damage in PvP is you can’t quickly or easily “erase” raw damage where as all classes have a wide variety of options to remove condition based damage. There is also an entire stat (-Condition Duration) dedicated to countering condition durations which forces you into +Condition Duration options to give you base durations in the best case scenarios. Except the base duration on many conditions is so pitifully small because they were balanced around the idea you could increase said condition duration. Also with the stacking nature of Bleed it’s extremely difficult to “cover” them as the last condition applied because Bleed was designed to be stacked and is available on most spam abilities.

This is not to say Condi specs are impossible to pull off, have fun with or even that they can’t excel. It’s just the very way the game is designed is set against them (regardless of class) which makes them and abilities like this seem so lackluster.

loseridoit.2756:

naw, making an ele take a util slot is actually a buff to some extent, since it accessable to all weapons

a comparable nerf to engineer is losing either fire or lighting attument

Which is why my suggesting it was my round about way of saying that you can’t really pick out a similar or even identical ability on another class and claim we should be similar because the entire class and how it’s balanced must be taken into account.

If I had to guess it’s because if people are putting 10 points into Earth, they’re usually doing so for the protection on Auras, 10% damage increase or because they are doing some Condition build and take the 20% bleed increase. Same goes for Arcana line. Arcana V and Arcana VI are very popular and common choices because they fill other parts of a build.