Guild Wars 2

Does this include making Ride the Lightning take up a utility slot like Rocket Boots?

Leo G.4501:

Softspoken.2410:

Edit: Silly me, Leo G was already talking about this.

I think the coolest thing Rennoko’s video proved was that condition duration over the cap continues to act as a counter buffer. I always thought that, since conditions cap at 100%, it’s pointless to get anything higher. While the opportunity cost of building a counter buffer doesn’t seem worthwhile, it could come into play in a team environment.

And then there’s the point that -duration has a ceiling since you can’t get -100% no matter what combo you make, but it’s possible to get +160% or higher for specific conditions.

That said, things could have changed since Rennoko’s testing. Can’t hurt to put math to the test, although it looks like Avatara already has. You should post the results :-P

You can even get +90% for all condition types. I think I run something like +90% for all conditions, +125% for bleed

Neko.9021:

sonicwylde.2906:

I am trying out one of the S/D neko builds you have, but I was somewhat interested in a signet build that uses the S/D … could I adapt the build to be more signet friendly? (not a huge fan of the conjured weapons, mainly because I cant use them to their fullest)

Unfortunately, other than Signet of Fire and Signet of Restoration, Signets are not strong enough to have a build centered around them at the moment that I would feel comfortable including in a guide, that would fulfill the base minimum Utility or DPS to a dungeon team.

I’m not a fan of conjures myself (other than Fiery GS). I think they’re poorly implemented. However, the truth is Lightning Hammer’s sustained DPS combos really well with Scepter’s burst. That’s why I always pair them together for dungeon builds.

Well there is a build that uses Signets but we can’t discuss it without people raging.

I can’t really blame anyone wanting to leave JQ. I’ve been fighting against JQ for weeks now in Eternal Battlegrounds and their over all tactic and plan seems to be basically pile on to whomever is losing the SOR/BG tug of war at the moment. That’s basically aiming for second place which has only ever netted them last place as a result.

I wish the remainders of JQ best of luck and hope they can organize the groups left towards winning.

I had no real issues with Staff in Orr and preferred it for event tagging back when the event farms used to go on and got used to using it everywhere. A lot of it is learning how to kite through your ground based fields when in Fire avoiding the target while also keeping them in your Lava Font. Knowing when to use Chain (Air) or Targeted AOE (Fire) is important as well.

Otherwise it’s PvE. Isn’t much that’s impossible to pull off in PvE. Just depends on how obsessed you are with marginal gains in performance.

Personally I leveled with Conjure Lightning Hammer from 30-80.

20: 0/0/0/10/0
30: 0/0/10/10/0
40: 20/0/0/10/0
50: 20/0/0/20/0
60: 20/0/0/30/0
70: 20/10/0/30/0
80: 20/20/0/30/0

Lightning Hammer can be used full time once you get 40 with Conjurer trait. The damage of Lightning Hammer is absurd. In addition the 3rd attack on the auto is a massive AOE blind every 1.5 seconds. Once mobs fall into the rotation, you mostly won’t ever get hit by anything not immune to blind because most of them will attack once every 2 seconds. You’ll learn to be annoyed by Dredge cause they’re immune to the Blind. The most annoying aspect will be people picking up your second hammer which can lead to some in between time.

You rely mostly on Cantrips for utility and pump them up via traits (Fire IV, Water III, Water IX). Trait setups are largely negotiable outside of 20/0/0/20/0 as a build. I think I geared for Power, Power/Vit then Power/Prec/Tough later.

Honestly made the whole thing face roll easy on both my Eles. Could take on whole waves Warrior style and not even break a sweat because of how much damage prevention the AOE blind was doing.

Then once you hit 80 you can decide if you wanna lean on that Evasive Arcana crutch or not.

Oh and if I had to choose anything, I would have stolen a page out of the recent Necromancer changes and gone with:

“Toxic Earth: 100% chance on Critical Strike to inflict Poison for 4 seconds.”

This would play into things like Signet of Fire’s Precision as well as Rabid gear and possibly (for my build) Persisting Flames (for the Fury).

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Bumping. Nobody cares that this GM trait isn’t worth it?

We all agree it’s bad.

We have no power to do anything about it. It took them over 10 months to address the initial set of bad traits. The immediate future isn’t exactly hopeful.

oZii.2864:

Or it could be a thread for theorycrafters that enjoy theorycrafting

You understand that it is calculations that doesn’t mean the numbers are law and will be correct in every single scenario we all know this. It’s not like this thread is some detriment to elementalist and spreading false information unless someone reading it is a person that believes everything they see on T.V. You read the thread give to the discussion or not and take away from it what you will you aren’t required to play by it nothing more nothing less.

Example Zephlynn gives an example in one build that his fury uptime is 150%(with 60% boon duration) he states that he gave a human error factor of 25%. We all know that doesn’t take into account if the guy has a keyboard with keys that get stuck, if he has 10 kids running around his house screaming at him etc. It’s an example not the law of the land.

I want to say that I actually read and enjoy all the posts talking about math, real numbers and facts of an Elementalist rather than the hoodoo voodoo assumptions and superstition about what was the best way to play an Elementalist.

However leaving out important parts of the over all equation is faulty and it skews the numbers to show a very favorable position. For example it was previously brought up that 3% is 3% and no matter how you scale the numbers 3% will always be 3%. While that’s true on a level it’s also talking around the point that 3% of 10 is a hell of a lot of different than 3% of 5000.

This is why leaving out factors such as Protection, despite having a fixed value, is faulty and shouldn’t be overlooked. When you do punch in real numbers into the equation and you do see real results in game what you theory crafted as “better by 3%” actually equates to a difference of 10 more damage (taken or mitigated) but then you apply protection and that’s only 6 damage you can then really evaluate the the value of that 3% increase.

Scrambles.2604:

scepter offers the best might stacking. I’ve been messing around with a lightening hammer build and might stacking with scepter is crucial to get perma fury with 30 fire traits.

Scepter has always been pretty decent. The only weapon that has changed significantly IMO is Focus, since you can’t block trebs with it anymore.

Yea Scepter was always a solid choice but it gained a lot of hate there for a long time because people couldn’t reliably land the Dragon’s Tooth → Ring of Fire → Phoenix → Fire Grab combo and so it was “worthless.” The same was more or less true with Staff’s ground based AOE abilities so Dagger was “the” choice for a long time.

Zelyhn.8069:

They will not allows us to pick up the second weapon to add charges or duration because this erases the group sharing part of this utility, in a way.
The developers rightfully want us to share the conjures, they want to make the spell optimal for this.
The cooldowns are not that long in fact, just 60s! Yes this means it is not easy to have this weapon permanently, but maybe people should start thinking that it does not have to be permanent?
For example you are about to zerg dive, if you conjure a lightning hammer then you and a friend can dive in and pop two static fields, which is deadly.
It is a utility, and we are not engineers.
Also stop trying to improve the conjures by tweaking the numbers: cooldowns, power, charges, duration etc … the devs have tried this once already: they increased the stats given to the wielder. This hardly made more people use the conjures, it is a bad way to make it more attractive.
Making them instant would be better, but it would require a limitation for a trade-off (and not breaking the theme: again, we are not engineers). That’s why I gave the idea of requiring attunement swap to trigger the instant conjuration.

And how does adding the capability of picking up your second weapon “erase” the ability for someone else to pick up the second weapon? You still cast it on the ground and anyone else or you can pick it up. My idea removes no functionality over the current way it works and solves some of the huge quality of life issues that come with using Conjures.

Furthermore your supposition that because the stat buffs they did try didn’t work no changes would work is flawed. It’s true to say that adding stat buffs to the conjures were not incentive enough for them to be used more but going one step further and saying no changes would help is a huge assumption. When you look at the most commonly used Conjures (Hammer and FGS) you can see they combine a powerful auto with a powerful set of utility. This is compared to say Frostbow which has a weak auto and decent utility or Earth Shield with a terrible auto and potentially great utility (but is ultimately hampered by the fact it’s strong utility roots you in place) or the other extreme with Axe having a decent auto but mediocre utility.

With the ability to cast all Conjures on the run (except FGS) I have never had the cast time ever once be a consideration or thought on the matter despite using them to level from 30-80. I am not sure why you think this is an issue with them.

Mithfir.1038:

I agree with your analysis but lets keep in mind not only the original way conjures were made but also the way Elementalists function at their core. A 1 use non instant weapon will almost never be picked over a instant utility except in a very specific set of circumstances. So really there is no change in the current form that you or I could agree on. In your ideal situation how exactly would you like to see them? I’m genuinely intrigued.

I feel like I should also point out that Anet obviously intended for all the charges to get used, but in their current form that won’t happen in most builds bar a few.

I’ve leveled two Elementalists now 30-80 mostly using a Conjure/Cantrip build with Lightning Hammer. The number one issue I had was there was always some shmuck who came along and picked up my second weapon so there was always a period of time where I’d be in S/D waiting for my Conjure timer. On my 2nd Elementalist I gave in and just did D/D full time instead around 60 because it got annoying having some dude random dude find my hammer, cycle it’s abilities to check it out, then drop it entirely wasting it.

The simplest solution to that would be to allow us to pick up our second weapon and add it’s charges to the original total. So this would mean 30 or 50 (if traited) within the same 60s duration. This is functionally no different than the current model as it allows someone else to still pick it up (if you want to share) or if we want to split the uses ourselves (such as cast a bow, use Ice Shards, drop bow…fight with normal abilities…pick 2nd Bow up and cast again) while removing probably the biggest headache of all. It also maintains the disadvantage of limited abilities while using the subset and you can’t just drop it and get those charges back.

If you notice Firery Greatsword’s auto attack is a channeled style attack which allows it to kick out a lot of damage for only a single charge. If they add the ability to pick up your second weapon and add charges I don’t think this will be an issue for the other weapons. For example many times, with Conjurer, I could easily go the full 60s with just two Hammers and auto attacking most of the charges away.

The next step would be looking into the Conjures themselves and determine if they offer anything competitive with our base abilities. For example one of the first things I’d do is look at the after cast time of a lot of the abilities (something they really didn’t do with the last update on Conjures) and adding more mobility to the abilities (Earth Shield really suffers here).

Navzar.2938:

2. Invocations * – These can often take a long time to cast, though not always. If successful they provide a very powerful effect (often a large, strong aoe). However, in exchange for their powerful effects they leave their castors exhausted. For gw2, this would put the user’s own skills on cd and/or possibly an effect that hinders movement/dodging. Taken from gw1 exhaustian skills as well as high energy skills suck as Rodgort’s Invocation and Deep Freeze. (The closest thing to this atm would be Meteor shower.)
*I chose invocations as the name because of Invoke Lightning and Rodgort’s. I felt it sounded better than overcast skills.

I really like that idea. Invocation where you cast and it puts all your other abilities on cool down for 2 seconds but provides huge burst or maybe costs Endurance to cast as part of it’s cost?

Really I’d settle for any kind of ranged burst damage like we had in GW1.

I think GW1 had a wealth of ideas that they’ve left untapped.

For example the delayed effect abilities in GW1 on Elementalists really setup some ranged burst options (Such as Lightning Surge or Shatterstone) that were targeted skills that put a debuff on the target and after 3 seconds would do damage. This let you prep a target, then dump damage that would all burst at the same time.

However if they ever bring back Shut Down Mesmers (where you’d be punished for attacking or using abilities) then screw this noise I’m so going to play that instead haha.

Mithfir.1038:

@Kodiak.3281

Well currently one can summon the fire axe drop a fire field and go into a blast finisher chain if they wanted to. I have actually used it like this before as well. I have also slotted fire axe and used it to get a killing blow. How ever increasing the cooldowns of more powerful skills so they can only be used 2-3 times for the duration that conjure is up in my mind keeps it balanced.

Having the ability to add charges to the weapon you currently have will still cause the same issue of using it for 1 skill and then dropping it. While I realise that it will be a very close idea to that of engineers kits the draw back would be the charges and the long cooldown on skills. Engineers kits have no charges and ideally would have significantly shorter cooldowns even when our conjures are traited.

That picture is EPIC had me in stitches.

Simply increasing the recast timers (and you also mentioned duration) is really just a lateral shift of the current scenario. All conjured weapons have a 60s recast currently. Most of their stronger abilities are on a 20-30s cool down. The more you increase the cool downs the closer you get to using the ability once every 60s which is no different than the current model. The farther away you get from that and the closer you get to it not being balanced because not only will you still have access to those abilities quicker than once every 60s but for the remainder of the time while the conjure abilities you wanted to use are on cool down you now have full access to your normal abilities.

By giving people access to the Conjured Weapon abilities and allowing them to return to their normal abilities you’re undermining that balance aspect to conjured weapons. Your method of balancing it doesn’t really change anything in the current scenario let alone balance it.

I won’t be happy till I can have Earth Shield on my right arm while gripping a Fiery Axe while my left arm is wielding a Fiery Greatsword with a Ice Bow attached to the arm to fire off like a crossbow while I have a Lightning Hammer to headbutt people with.

Lets make it happen…

Baladir.2736:

oZii.2864:

ARM.3912:

Wow so you are saying that with more healing power, you heal for more? Great post!

You obviously don’t understand what his post said at all smh /fail attempt rofl

I think he did. He was just distilling the thread down for humor. The fact is the analysis is fun but is not a measure of much of anything. There are so many variables left out and assumptions made that the conclusions lack merit. Combat is so fluid that the value of the constants change during battle which means they are not constants anymore. The OP acknowledges this but then does not, because he cannnot, account for it in his calculations.

It’s all very entertaining but elaborate nonsense. Or, as he said, if you have more healing power you heal more.

For example, his methods would tell us that the elementalists’ three healing skills have a ranking of effectiveness and are constant. Yet, any elementalist knows they each have their uses and all are better than each other under different circumstances and/or builds. Under certain circumstances, they each are also almost entirely useless and have no value at all.

Really couldn’t have said it better myself.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Sharing the Lightning Hammer is a staple of CoF p2 skips. Without the Lightning Hammer sharing, the only group (to my knowledge) that could do that would be all-Warrior-and-Ele groups.

But you’re right, most professions would rather stick with their own weapon skills for serious fights. This is more a symptom of a lot of conjure skills being kinda bad combined with the generally low number of Eles who pack conjures (which means nobody else ever knows the benefit from grabbing a conjured weapon). Conjure Fiery Greatsword could be a massive boon to roaming parties in WvW; the Ele could drop a Greatsword for his Necromancer so they could both stand a chance of escaping from a big group.

Rangers (Sword) and Guardians (Greatsword) also have leaps.

That said, ignoring a more exploit oriented focus, the Frost Bow sharing is a staple of any physical object destruction. There was even a period of time there where people thought Elementalists were “mandatory” to destroy the Graveling Pits in AC Explore.

Your initial suggestion (where you can resummon so long as you have charges/buff) basically makes them into timed duration Kits which doesn’t really address balance concerns brought up by them being turned into kits in the first place. To repost:

Kodiak.3281:

The easiest answer why they don’t (or won’t) work as kits is you have to look at the class where they do work like kits, the Engineer. The engineer gets 1 weapon because he has the ability to equip a kit instead which acts like a second weapon in addition to their utility bar giving them additional abilities. The elementalist gets 1 weapon because he has the ability to change attunements and effectively gets four weapon sets (instead of just two) plus these temporary conjures which can alter our play style.

(Disclaimer: I’m speaking pretty broad terms here, there’s a lot that really goes into the balancing of a class so lets not dissect too closely)

This means you can’t really change the Conjures to kits without offering a clear and direct advantage to the Engineer mechanic. Each one offers us an additional weapon set up to 8 (4 more conjures on top of 4 attunements) which would be insane for one class to have.

They’re just not going to give us more permanent weapon abilities or choices. The entire idea that allows Conjures to continue at all on our class is the fact that they are temporary. Ignoring that point or coming up with ideas and ways to skirt around that fact (the temporary nature) likely will not happen. Your idea also opens up some ridiculously powerful combinations. For example Conjure a Fire Axe and spawn a Fire Field anywhere then “drop” it while in Earth Attunement and do a series of combo fishers as a result without wasting attunement timers. The game play would quickly become use one powerful utility (such as Ice Storm) then switch back till the cool down was up.

Personally I’d like to just see a real simple fix and make it so we can pick up our second conjured weapon and have it’s charges added to our total. It’s simple, effective and eliminates the most annoying aspect to using Conjures (everyone else wants to pick it up even if you didn’t want to share it…but maintaining the ability to do so). I leveled 30-80 on Lightning Hammer build two times on my Elementalists and this by far was the biggest issue.

Bovinity.8610:

Good points all around. (But you’re BG so I still have to hate you <3)

It has been a while since I played with Scepter, but it’s hard for me to give up some of the perks of MH Dagger. (Having a basic attack in Air that’s a cleave attack is one of the things that I just can’t get over!)

I’m not a big fan of Staff anymore, either. I do still carry one around in case I need to bomb something on a wall, but that’s about it. I do miss Static Field a lot. Meh.

I’ll have to give Fresh Air/Scepter a try sometime.

I definitely like D/D too. Every attunement has something extremely useful for that Zerg v Zerg action. Watching Lightning Whip cleave out on capped targets is beautiful.

The thing that got me to switch to S/D was one too many times where our 2-3 servers would be near and we all get that unbelievably nasty lag to the point things stop registering and people start warping around. I mean I’ve gone back and looked at videos and what looks me doing nothing but you can see me furiously mashing the abilities and having nothing actually happen lol!

It can be tough as is to land stuff with S/D or Staff in that kinda lag let alone melee attacks where you run up on someone and they warp ahead 10 feet cause the server can’t keep up with our massive clashes. Pretty hilarious to watch my Arc Lightning be channeling into no where only to have the target catch up to where it’s channeling a few seconds later.

Bovinity.8610:

I’ve tried Fresh Air, but my WvW matchup (BG/JQ/SoR) tends to be extremely zergy, so it’s hard to justify giving up so much sustain/support for single target burst. It sounds like it’s designed a lot more for dueling/small group engagements than zerg vs. zerg.

Still flip-flopping between 0/10/10/20/30 and 0/10/0/30/30 for my D/D build. Although Stone Splinters was bugged last time I checked and not giving +10%, so that’s a bummer.

Most of the big zerg fights on JQ/BG/SOR are basically one zerg on a commander running as a swarm of angry bees. When you encounter another zerg it’s basically one swarm pushing through the other swarm while trying to catch the other where it’s weakest on it’s side or rear. You don’t stop, you don’t slow down and you don’t pause to cast a thing. This is what I refer to as “Zerg Diving” because you’re literally running through the enemy lines.

Scepter isn’t really better or worse than the other options for that activity. Personally I prefer the damage that’s kicked out in Scepter fire line and Air Burst is handy for mopping up the left overs that Dagger would be out of range of in these kinds of big brawls. Also if things get dicey can always pop that RTL to get out still. Staff is definitely more CC heavy and a solid choice as well but not a fan of it. Dagger works pretty darned good too but I prefer the range of Scepter.

Red Jay.2516:

The problem I have with conjures, besides the whole stuff of being locked off from 20 skills, is the clunkiness of long cast time and being rooted while picking them up from the ground. Let’s face it: how many of you use conjures to share it with party members; and how many party members are willing to use them instead of their own, besides the novelty factor that dies off after first equip.

Imo gaining additional charges when picking up the second conjure would be just a band aid of mechanic that simply does not work. Conjure weapons must be reworked completely in order to see use outside novelty builds and gimmicks.

In situations (Explorable Dungeons) where objects are destroyed then Frost Bows are are all the rage and have been forever.

Dalo.3941:

PS: New Elite: Gain all auras for 8 seconds. All aura related traits effect the Elite.

I’d love to see a revival of the GW1 Shatterstone/Lightning Surge hexes where you cast them and then 3 seconds later a spell effect occurs. Could make it attunement based so each one would have a different effect after 3 seconds W, X, Y, Z happens based on attunement. Used to setup some nasty burst combos in GW1 with these abilities.

Really there’s a wealth of mechanics they had in GW1 that were amazing and setup some great game play. If they ever brought back the Shutdown Mesmer I’d totally be there in a heart beat haha…

The easiest answer why they don’t (or won’t) work as kits is you have to look at the class where they do work like kits, the Engineer. The engineer gets 1 weapon because he has the ability to equip a kit instead which acts like a second weapon in addition to their utility bar giving them additional abilities. The elementalist gets 1 weapon because he has the ability to change attunements and effectively gets four weapon sets (instead of just two) plus these temporary conjures which can alter our play style.

(Disclaimer: I’m speaking pretty broad terms here, there’s a lot that really goes into the balancing of a class so lets not dissect too closely)

This means you can’t really change the Conjures to kits without offering a clear and direct advantage to the Engineer mechanic. Each one offers us an additional weapon set up to 8 (4 more conjures on top of 4 attunements) which would be insane for one class to have.

Probably the best way to address the issue entirely is simply to allow you to pick up your own conjured weapon to add those charges to your current weapon. This way you maintain the ability to share the Conjured item (handy for dungeons like AC with Frostbow) while at the same time making a Conjured play style viable. You don’t even have to worry about some random dude coming to pick up your conjured weapon or running back for it while leveling (which was a huge hassle for me when I leveled 30-80 on a Lightning Hammer/Cantrip build as people would randomly run up and steal my 2nd hammer). This also maintains the balance of it being on a cool down meaning you can’t just hot switch between the various lines without a huge 60s timer in between each (like you can currently). If this is still not enough for balance, I could also see making this the 20 point Fire trait (instead of the current Conjurer trait).

Personally I would like to see one of two scenarios:

1. They reduce the base cool downs of the Attunements by 30% and change the Arcana tree to reduce the cool down by 30%. This way you’re still getting a 60% cool down if you spec deep but not specing into Arcane isn’t as taboo as most people think it is now. This is pretty much a direct upgrade to the current system.

2. They leave the cool down as is but make two changes:

-They reduce the cool down reduction in Arcane to 1% per point.
-They add an effect to the Adept Minor Trait (5 points) where every point spent in that tree reduces the cool down timer of that Attunement by 1%.

This way if you spec into say 30/30/0/10/0 as a spec (Berserker spec) you can still get reasonable cool downs on Fire/Air (where you will spend most of your time) as well as other forbidden specs that we can’t have a nice conversation about without people losing it.

PinCushion.7390:

I named mine Jack Squattery, ‘cause that’s all this class is good for!

You should put that on a hat and make some money!

In beta I had my Norn (smallest height) with a cool beard (has a metal thing in it) and kinda an Arbian theme named Kodiak X I really liked. Release I went with an Asura named Machiavelli X but I didn’t care for the hoppity animations and fell back on a Human named Kodiak X again.

PinCushion.7390:

@Kodiak

I like your build, but I think you could tweak it a bit so it gels a bit more. Some of the traits don’t seem to work with one another.

I’d probably swap your traits around to:

Fire:
Puissance become Fire’s Embrace.

I know what you’re going for. You’re wanting your Fire skills to serve as a make-shift Burst, and the might stacks increase your burning damage a bit. It doesn’t seem to do enough to warrant how much you’re losing in defense, though. Which leads me to…

Alacrity becomes Elemental Shielding

Now, I know this makes it take a bit longer for your Churning Earth to refresh, but from the video I saw you almost never used Churning more than once a fight. I’m gonna say that you probably don’t need the 20% CD reduction. Honestly, you probably don’t need either CD reduction but it’s not a big deal. However, taking Shielding means that every time you use a signet you now get Fire Shield (which gives you Might stacks if you get hit so it kinda fills in for Puissance) and you get Protection. This makes your build a bit tankier against burst without costing you that much in damage output.

All in all, I think it’s a pretty cool build no matter what you do with it. I’d want to build a little more mobility into it, since the big strength of long duration conditions is that you can load someone up with Bleeds/Burns and then kite them around while they die or waste cooldowns. More mobility would require a lot of changes, though. So all I think it needs is a touch more defense against getting burst, and Elemental Shielding does that quite well.

Just my 2 cents, and thanks for posting.

You are 80% right how I use Fire. Contrary to this one video I actually sit in Fire most of the time because of that mini-burst. My “ideal” scenario is I land my miniburst combo in Fire and with the might stacks built up I switch into Earth which is now charged up with some Might stacks for additional damage on Bleeds plus the additional defenses with Rock Barrier.

Alacrity (in both lines) are certainly negotiable. The big reason I had 20% in Earth was actually for Earthquake because (especially in WvW) it’s an amazing tool to stop runners (RTL -> Earth -> Signet Chill -> Earthquake and watch the Zerg run over the people). The additional protection could help out if you’re having problems surviving and as you mentioned build additional Might stacks. I’d still be loathe to give up Puissance as typically it’s pretty easy to build 3-5 stacks of Might from it while doing your standard burst combo (which builds even more). If roaming with a group I will sometimes switch Puissance out for Persisting Flames because the amount of Fury you can build for a group is pretty crazy.

All in all good insights.

Moderator.9604:

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QQing.3089:

Yeah, one condition every 10s in a wvw environment isn’t really worth it. I just wish signet of fire, or more of the signets for that matter, were 5 targets instead of 1. It would be very viable. Doesn’t mean I won’t waste me gold anyway ^^

I’ve caught a lot of people with that nearly 6s immobilize by using RTL to catch up to them and then stop them with Chill (they remove) then Immobilize (oh noes) and then they get run over. It’s admittedly fairly situational, but since I already have perma Burn in Fire attunement I found it was useful enough to use most of the situations I ran into.

Cempa.5619:

Kodiak.3281 why sceptre over dagger in the main hand?

I’m a ranged guy at heart and prefer S/D over D/D is mostly what it comes down to.

The critique of Scepter (and Staff) back in the day is that the damage it deals in some of it’s attunements (Fire/Water) is ground based and therefore unreliable against moving targets. For example Dragon’s Tooth → Ring of Fire → Phoenix → Fire Grab is a great combo but if they’re moving it’s really tough to land. This is where our control conditions from our Signets come from by giving us the ability to land these combos more reliably. This doesn’t mean you will land them every time, only that they become more reliable to land against a stationary target.

Furthermore Scepter Earth also offers us some great abilities. For one the base attack stacks bleeds much quicker than Impale does on the Dagger. For two Rock Barrier is +250 Toughness when used which is pretty great all around. Ring of Earth is pretty competitive admittedly (quick recast bleed and cripple) but again I’m more of a fan of the ranged element (even tho Stone Shards is a projectile you do run into the risk of reflect/negation as a result).

However you could always try D/D with this build. There’s a lot of conditions to be had from D/ as well such as the same Burn, Chill, Vulnerability, Weakness, Cripple as well from various other attunements. Don’t see why it wouldn’t work but you’d have to give it a shot.

QQing.3089:

The build seems interesting. The only thing that really bothers me about signets (water or earth) is that they are single target. I might tamper with this a little bit, maybe substitute lighting flash to make that curbing earth to right into the middle of people.

Yea I completely admit this is a much more single target focused build. I found Churning Earth very easy to land in SPvP because people are forced to defend/take a point so it forces them into a tighter/enclosed space. In WvW it’s a lot more difficult to land simply because nothing is forcing anyone into a particular area and when you’re Zerg Diving you don’t stop.

Like I say, give it a shot as is and tweak as needed for you and your play style. We all play things a little differently. You may get much better results when you play it with Lightning Flash instead and if I had to pick one utility to give up it’d be Signet of Water.

covenn.7165:

Conditions on an ele….. lol.

You should try it.

It costs nothing in PvP to give it a shot. Why not give it a kitten try and see if it’s as bad as you think it is? Worst case scenario is you don’t like it or won’t take it serious enough to give it a real go and go back to playing something else instead.

Cempa.5619:

Kodiak.3281 thanks for replying to the post and never mind the haters…You went out and did something EVERYONE said can not be done, is it perfect? No idea but it works and I bet many players like myself are glad you took those first steps towards a condiele.

I stated leveling an ele because of your video and have no idea how it will play out but since its my last level 80 I hope it works out!

PS Signet of Fire does crazyyyyyy dmg, thoughts?

There’s been guys like them on these forums since the start where if you don’t fall into the cookie cutter build/templates/ideology they attack/dismiss you relentlessly. I’ve gotten into one or two (understatement) discussions on the merits of alternative play styles in the past and it’s gained me few friends.

At some point people will realize/recognize that multiple builds and multiple ways of playing any class in this game are perfectly viable. Personally I don’t play just this build, it’s a variation I enjoy from time to time because it’s different yet still effective.

So there’s two Signets we miss:

Signet of Fire is fantastic. It’s so much burn it’s crazy. When I first rolled out I had Signet of Fire/Water/Air in fact. Against people with zero/low condition removal it was just mean because you could apply Burn even in Earth attunement. However what I found was that the additional CC from Earth/Water was extremely strong at being able to land our ground based AOE which lead to more reliable damage and kills.

In addition, I’m a firm believer that without significant (even just 40%) Crit Damage then Crit is pretty worthless. That makes the passive not too good. This was one of my earlier mistakes trying to mix in Rampager/Rabid gear (which with Fury on Area Might blasts wouldn’t sound bad from 30 in Fire) but just didn’t have the Crit damage to see the results. It spreads you just way too thin trying to cover Power, Crit, Crit dmg and Condition damage while also having decent Vitality/Toughness so I instead replaced Crit with Condi Duration instead.

For PvE I still swap out to Signet of Fire because having access to Burn while doing Earth is pretty great without having to swap to Fire prematurely.

Signet of Restoration was another early mistake I made mostly because I found when fighting in a large Zerg I’d get bogged down with so many Conditions and no way to get rid of them reliably. Ether Renewal really helped out with that instead and when getting bogged down and I’ve already swapped to Water I can just flip on Ether Renewal and keep on going without getting stuck constantly.

Aether McLoud.1975:

Not it doesn’t, not at all. There are lots of videos out there of good players playing good (the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club!). No matter what you think, there is actually a way to objectively measure performance in pvp. Things like how often you get hit, how well you manage your cooldowns, how well you dodge heavy-hitting attacks, etc. Neither you nor your enemies did any of these things.

Also your argument has no merit because as I said the community as a whole is actually really good when judging play skill from videos (i.e. compare Teldo or Phantaram or Zoose videos to yours).

I stand by my point. When the only way you can prove something is through videos and people dismiss the content of your videos it creates an impossible situation. I realize that’s inconvenient to point that out, but that’s just a fact.

Aether McLoud.1975:

It’s funny how again, when you’re out of arguments and are up against a metaphorical wall, you try to attack your opponents again instead of their arguments. Also you fall back to strawman argumentation (You’d probably make a really good politician).

AAAAAAAnd on top of that, you actually try to argue that we all here are just theoretical pvpers and you are the once with so much gameplay experience that you are able to issue judgements on gameplay, when you yourself told us 2 post ago that you almost never pvp. And you spent 2 posts theoretically explaining your build.

Now THAT is irony.

Strawman is another argument that’s impossible to counter. It’s extremely dismissive of anything I say because I’m “just saying it as a distraction.” What’s next, “U mad bro?” Being dismissive of my points doesn’t refute them.

I also never said you’re theoretical pvpers but instead that you’re bringing up theoretical scenarios that happen in pvp but you imply they happen every time. I’ve actually been PvPing since Ultima Online back in 1997 and I know that talking about the “What ifs…” in a PvP situation is largely pointless because they don’t happen every time. Part of the thrill of PvP is never knowing what you will encounter or how the people will react. As an off topic this is why I dislike Arena/Battleground style PvP, because it’s even less organic than solo roaming around in WvW where any one of a thousand scenarios could occur.

Aether McLoud.1975:

And no, you haven’t proven anything, not in the least that your build is anything close to viable. Go to a tournament against actual pvpers and see yourself on the ground 10 seconds after you engage and then try to come here again with your silly proof.

Now the only way for my build to not be terrible is if I’m playing tournament against “actual pvpers” (yet another escape route as any video proof of it could be dismissed as them not being “actual pvpers”)?

At some point you’re going to realize I’m not here to impress or convince you. Quite frankly I’m struggling to even think of a reason to respond to your trolling.

Aether McLoud.1975:

You stated it’s viable which it isn’t. You stated it’s good, which it isn’t. You stated you won against pvpers, which you didn’t. Every competent pvper will tell you that eles don’t have any viable condition build.

Your obsession with poking holes or saying I’m wrong despite all the evidence to the contrary is cute and all but it doesn’t make what I’ve shown, stated, or prove on a day in an day out basis any less true. I’m flattered you would take the time out of your day to come post your thoughts and opinions on me or my build they are not needed or wanted. While I’m sure that won’t really stop you trying to drag everyone else down into the miserable time you’re having with the Elementalist (based on your post history) you really haven’t proven a thing but instead just did a lot of talking.

Zelyhn.8069:

Your WvW video (where is PvE?):

I haven’t made a PvE video yet at all because as I mentioned I hadn’t really planned to fully make a post for the build yet. The WvW video was posted primarily in response to another person on these forums who said I couldn’t possibly survive on a 30/0/30/10/0 build in a large zerg (Hence the name: Conditimentalist – Survivability) and there I am running into Stonemist and still able to keep kicking

Rest of your post is nonsense but thanks for the comments from the peanut gallery!

Aether McLoud.1975:

No offence, but that’s some of the worst gameplay I’ve ever seen, both from you and your opponents, even in hotjoin.

You realize that this creates an impossible scenario where it’s impossible to prove anything right? Any video made as proof can be dismissed out of hand by implying anyone and everyone in the videos are “terrible” and therefore they’re invalid. I could take on arguably the best player in the world and win and all you have to do is say they played poorly and therefore what I present is invalid.

This is the problem you and others around here have. You’re too concerned with the theoretical. “Such and such will happen.” “If you played against so and so this would have happened.” “Without this you would be screwed in that scenario.” While all these theories are wonderful they don’t reflect actual game play experiences but rather only things that can happen in game play.

Talking about how a fight will go and how you will counter/react to things is entirely different from actual fighting. People panic. People don’t react as fast as they think they could. People don’t encounter what they thought they would. At the end of the day all that matters is whether or not something is effective. I’ve proven it can be and is effective.

Also I don’t recall ever stating that this build is the build to end all builds and that there’s no other possible viable alternatives. I leave that nonsense to you guys. I’ve stated it’s a build I play and have fun and succeed with. Others who are looking for something different than the standard cookie cutter builds out there might enjoy it as well. I realize this goes against your ethos that there must be one alpha build better than anything else with no viable alternatives but that doesn’t make this go away.

titanlectro.5029:

Condimentalist! Use Ketchup Attack!

(Sorry, someone had to say it. Personally I prefer the sandwichmancer.)

Supposed to be Conditimentalist :/

I was going to make a post somewhere down the line when I had more time dedicated to building videos to it.

Continued…

0 Arcane, you’re insane!
Actually most of the cool downs on S/D are at around 30 second mark. This really isn’t a fast attunement switching build like 0/30/0/20/20. We certainly do switch attunements but most of the time you will be rotating between Fire/Earth with Water for defense purposes (you should see the chill stack Frost Aura builds with this much Condi duration) and Air mostly to escape as well (Ride the Lightning forevaaaa!) or because Earth/Fire is on cool down for a few seconds (again raw damage isn’t totally terrible). The base 16s attunement timers keep you from switching too early and switching into a cool down when it’s powerful /D utility isn’t up.

Really the 0 Arcane hurts the build mostly when using a staff because it’s just Ripe for staff play with this much power/condi and staff. I had considered using a 20/0/30/0/20 build just for that but thought better of it in the end because I found the times I’m defending on walls relatively low compared to the amount of time I’m roaming in a zerg where S/D is great.

Duels and Skirmishes
I’ll be honest: I don’t really play SPvP much at all. The only reason I even made that vid was to show someone that 30 points in Fire wasn’t a death sentence like they were proclaiming.

By far the toughest battles I had in SPvP are against heavy control opponents such as Hammer Warriors. This is because we basically have only 1 form of escape (Signet of Air) and if you blow it on the wrong escape that means you can end up in a bad spot. I thought Condi necros were going to be bad as well but once the few I fought blew their heals they fell over pretty quickly because how high I could stack my bleeds/burn and my condition removal was better than theirs. The difficult part about SPvP I find is that you can’t tell if that’s how you’d perform or if your opponent was just bad (same for duels, etc).

Skirmish (WvW) was one of the main reasons I made this and I love skirmishing/roaming with this build. Even in large battles I like to find the 1-2 guys who go off to the side of the main clash and engage them instead and just overwhelm them with bleeds rather than dive through the enemy force. The number of thieves I’ve killed is staggering. They go to stealth but still have a “bojillion bleeds” on them and they fall out of stealth pretty quickly as a corpse on the ground. The condition bleed ticks also give away which mesmer is the real mesmer very easily. By far the longest/hardest fights I have are with D/D eles and Shout Guardians because of the aforementioned condition removal they get (but they usually get overwhelmed as well).

Okay sorry for the broken links in the other areas.

First off I primarily play PvE and WvW. I like playing builds that fly in the face of what others consider “mandatory” and pulling them off. In this build there is 0 Arcane which many people would say is impossible.

SPvP:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmebux2wjDAkCmEeQADJMeohHkA-ToAgyCuIKS9l7LTRyvsfNMYCC

WvW/PvE:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmebtR3wjDAkCmEeQADJMeohHkA-j0CB4MBkABkMAIFqIaslgRrgJsVRBRNBTjiIq2hAzjgIqWIgFrBA-w

Basis of the Build
The main idea behind the build is that our class was skipped over/forgotten during the old condition balance updates back in beta. See back in the day all those condition based classes like Necros and Engies used to have really long duration conditions like us but over time they were nerfed down to 1-4s durations because when stacked with condition duration the damage output was pretty insane. The main reason we might have been overlooked/skipped is we really don’t have the same AOE condition application those classes do but that doesn’t take away from how powerful the durations are with us fully capable of reaching perma burn and 25 stacks of bleed with little effort.

But don’t conditions just get removed?
Yes they do but you have to consider even the most stalwart condition removal is never enough to keep up. As you can see in my PvP video above, that’s a defensive Shout Warrior with condition removal on Shouts. Even then you can see once he blows his initial round of shouts he’s simply unable to keep up with the amount of burn and bleed I can reapply. This is true of any class in the game even our own class. Once we’ve blown our few sources of condition removal there are gaps where we are vulnerable.

The key to any condition based build is having sustained condition application and Duration. Again referencing that video once you reach the gap you see my bleed stacks rise up to 14 in the gap in the Warrior’s cool downs. That’s a lot of bleed to be stacked up on someone. A short duration bleed of 1-2 stacks you might be willing to “eat” because the over all damage will be relatively minor. However you can’t just “eat” a huge duration bleed that’s going to deal 13000 damage and prevent regen or leaving combat. You have to remove it.

Why Signets?
Signets are amazing because the fill the gap created by Staff or Scepter/Dagger ground based abilities. Most of our crowd control is in the Earth or Water lines. This means we have to blow our other attunements to CC then switch to Fire/Air to do damage. With Signets you gain Chill and Immobilize on demand. Again in the PvP video you can see a part where I catch a Ranger who wants to jump away from my Dragon’s Tooth combo and instead is stuck there in Immobilize and has to eat it leading to her death.

I’m still not convinced on Conditions!
I don’t like one trick ponies and that’s why we went in Carrion Gear instead of Rabid gear. The huge amount of Power we gain from Carrion gear plus might stacks we get from Puissance all adds up to give us really solid raw damage. Certainly my Dragon’s Tooth combo isn’t going to hit as hard as someone who’s stacking Damage/Crit/Crit Dmg but it’s not exactly going to just tickle them either and the conditions it applies (lots of burn) will hit pretty darned hard.

Unfortunately the only real way to test a build is until you’ve gone “Zerg Diving” (where your team in a giant zerg rushes straight through the other Zerg) and see how you fare. That method has shown me a lot of holes in other builds/setups I used.

Maybe if the WvW area had some gauntlet of damage, condition application and CC going on to see how well you do/react running through it haha?

I don’t use just solid white. I use a Charcoal base (faded black) with White Gold and Tarnished Silver which are white but off white slightly. Actually looks pretty good and it’s current my favorite set for looks. My other sets look like this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Post-a-picture-of-your-Elementalist-Merged/page/11#post1651815

Elemental attunement look to them

TGSlasher.1458:

I’m sure the OP said he is only 21 … so that would be a 10 0 10 0 0 build he was referring to making.

BTW, I absolutely hate buildcraft.
Into the mists or gw2skills is much easier to read

The reason I like Buildcraft is because you get a nice set of stat summaries on the side and it allows you to manually edit the stats as needed. It’s also pretty accurate and predicting condition damage and it lines up perfectly for me. This makes it perfect for comparing X instead of Y to see what kind of increases you will see and what the costs are.

The only downside is because buildcraft is never updated anymore things like the new Charged Quartz Crystals have to be manually plugged in. For example Signet of Earth is dated unfortunately and it is only listed as 90 instead of 180 so you can add in 90 Toughness and it’ll update your Effective HP.

TGSlasher.1458:

I have 1 set of gear for my 80 ele, infact, the skins I brought for that gear cost more then the gear did lol. You can tell I’m hardcore PvE

I have…

Magic Find + Magic Find (Heritage)
PvT/Divinity + Knight/Celestial (Priory – White)
PvT/Boon (HoTW Armor)
Zerker/Ruby + Zerker Ascended (Human T3)
Shaman/Boon + Passiflora (Priory – Blue)
Carrion/Condi Duration + Carrion (COF and Hellfire)

Tons of weapons for each with different runes and stats too. I also had a set of Clerics (replaced with Shaman/Boon cause I found I was more survivable in Shaman with Passiflora) and a set of Rampagers (replaced with Carrion after I couldn’t pull off the lack of survivability or crit dmg to my tastes on my Condi build).

Lots and lots of testing WvW viability.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

All teachers of all gametypes are welcome. However I find that tPvP players generally make the best teachers, and personally I start off many of my students in the Necro school in PvP, so that they can theory craft/learn without having to spend ridiculous amounts of gold.

Right? I’ve spent soooo much money and have 6 sets of gear and then the cost for the bags to carry all that gear!

Cempa.5619:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmkbxR3gjDIhCGw4hG4BdY5xMsD2AA-j0xAINAaBQOsIasl2ioxqZw0oER1ekioVLEwi1A-w

Thoughts?

My thought is you should nut up and go full on Conditimentalist

Works with staff as well. Lead with Signet of Water Chill to get them to blow Condition removal. Follow up with Signet of Earth Immobilize → Eruption → Shockwave → Fire → Lava Font → Flame Burst.

This is how I use a 30/0/30/10/0 build and not be terrible:

Conditimentalist

Works in WvW and PvE. Needs a few tweaks to make it work in SPvP notably since you don’t have food or access to Mad King runes.

Aether McLoud.1975:

The message is always more important than the messenger.

Ideally that’s true, but reality is another matter entirely.

Zelyhn.8069:

Except when it’s Kodiak, in which case both are not imporant :p

Ironically this is exactly what I’m talking about. Thank you Zelyhn for taking a break from figuring out if 0.034 Fury duration is greater DPS than 2 Power. Our community as a whole suffered for this needless distraction from your great work.

Aether McLoud.1975:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Commonly abbreviated as L2discuss.

Haven’t you realized that sometimes who is saying something is more important than what they are saying?

kirtar.8453:

QFT if you’re not going to even try to be productive. You’re basically doing the same thing you did in PvE build thread.

But…like…ya know…there’s these situations it’s good in! No, really! Situations. I mean these are real situations where this utility would be just amazingly useful.

I don’t know why you aren’t taking me seriously

Aether McLoud.1975:

No matter what gale just has a ridiculous cooldown. 50 seconds for a ranged single target knockback with a casttime? LOL. Updraft is instant, AOE, and even gives you swiftness on a 40 seconds cooldown, with the only drawback being melee ranged.

Wait, Aether McLoud thinks something is bad and or terrible? I am so shocked and surprised!

Only time I pulled off Glyph of Storms was in earth in a Zerg dive where the AOE blind was a ghetto Necro well.