Guild Wars 2

I would say the answer to your question op, depends primarily on the type of build you are running and what’s your main focus with the profession. For some builds/focus 1-3 pieces are best. For others could be most or their entire gear set while for others like the ones I run 0 celestial gears/trinkets are beneficial.

Wow I wonder how he does that

Regenc.9256:

I’m not sure why I can’t figure out how to quote you Just, but how about this. Make the dual’s only in PvP zone! I mean your asking for it by going there so leave it there right?

btw, here’s that video again lol, I really like it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGQSm6DwMaA

I like this duel system. The instance can be a little more creative though, such as with obstacles and water to be able to use our environment towards our advantage.

Latorn.4209:

A bunch of us wishing for dueling were probably so trolled by the latest Queen’s Jubilee announcement lol T-T

Yes, it is a complete nonsense spvp towards all of us that want a dueling system with our own gears and consumables.

The Game Slayer.7632:

mjharrison.3209:

Neko.9021:

We have all been asking this question, every day, ever since the game was released.

The other question we ask every day is why we all have to spec 20-30 points into arcane just to make the class playable.

To make the class playable? Ive got 1400 hours played on my ele on my 2000 hour account. I almost never run arcana anymore unless i need to, such as staff trait or bunker. This isnt a case of it being unplayable at all, its a case of the players not wanting to try other things and get used to not having arcana. Believe me, it is the players not wanting to change, and resisting it. Adapt to the game, and you will find out you CAN play the ele without arcana. I honestly feel like arcana traitline is training wheels for a noob ele player. (unless, like ive said, you NEED to run it for staff or bunker). L2P.

I second this ^. Never been a fond of investing more than 10 points in the arcane tree. As a burst focused ele , more than 5 points in it is not necessary and it is most certainly playable.

Untrue, with the scepter you can start and finish a fight while dealing massive dmg at range. As a matter of fact if you run against a warrior that has the mace,shield/gs stun build, you will have to burst him down while at range. Even if you have 3 stunbreakers, a skillful warrior with this build will eventually get you stun locked on 1v1 if you don’t keep yourself at range with RTL, LF and/or FGS.

SAKRAY.3690:

Do you PvP if so do you use this build/trait as well with what Amulet

I don’t spvp/tpvp anymore Sakray. Back when I used to, I ran a zerker amulet/soldier jewel and rune of the eagle with 2 pieces of divinity.

Nikkinella.8254:

I’m going to wait until after the patch they’re eventually going to do that removes magic find as a stat from gear. I’m hoping once they take the mf off of celestial they’ll boost its other stats. I’m still saving up charged quartz though. I can just craft it all in one shot if I need to when the time comes. Maybe the celestial gear will be the first armor and weapons we can ascend once we are allowed to do that. In that case, it would be superior to the other gear.
I’ve also been playing around with cavalier armor which you sometimes get in fractals. and none of those build sites have cavalier armor on it so I cant really figure things out without testing it in game and wasting money.

That’s a smart move Nikkinella. Personality I put zero importance towards stats such as healing power, boon duration, condition damage and attunenment recharge as a burst none glass Ele. The way I think about it is If I sacrifice a good amount of offense stat (power,crit chance and/or crit dmg) I want a great amount of defense stat (toughness, vitality) in return and not a distribute amount towards all the stats including to those I find no need to improve within my build (rune of divinity was the only exception and that was simply because I gain more damage and armor than having a mix of orbs) When the ascended armor upgrade takes place i’m sure it will require a bit more defense to adapt to the increase dmg percentage from exotic to ascended gear. if that turns out to be the case i would gladly sacrifice a bit over 100 power and 6% critical chance to increase my armor over 2900 while having rock barrier up and possibly increase my heath pool a bit too.

Yes! Implement a duel system where pvp players can use their gears +consumables in a matter that doesn’t affect the straight pve lovers ^^

Nikkinella.8254:

I’m surprised you posted your build on here. You realize you’re going to have a lot of people copying you now and asking you for advice right? I thought you didn’t’ want that?

Anyway, really impressive stats. I run something similar. I have a bit more crit damage and toughness than you, but my power isn’t quite as high. I’m happy with my traits where they are now, but I keep changing my gear, not quite satisfied yet with where that is and I’ve started experimenting a bit with celestial gear now. don’t really like it that much though, I think what I had previously was better.

I know! I already got burst down instantly (in one sec) by one ele from db that was using this build lol. For the record he caught me off guard xD. I was getting so many whispers, mails in game and private messages through here that I just decided to share it… to avoid that! kidding.

I don’t mind anymore since fresh air trait release pretty much gave it away the idea that eles can burst players down without been glass cannon.

I’m on the same boat regards to celestial gears/trinkets. I was debating to replace 2 pieces of my gear with celestial but the lost of power is too much for me to feel comfortable.

SAKRAY.3690:

You’re stats look pretty nice mate. Question though what trait setup did you use as an D/D and did u use this gear setup for that?

I’m not fond of S/D in WvW and lately I feel my damage is really lacking after the bountiful power nerf im a bit high on tougness sure I can tank loads but seems like its getting harder and harder taking certain classes down.

When I used to roam with d/d I found great success with this build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhEmKbzR5wjEA0DmMUEiIiHP4QDVBA-jEzA4rASWAICgZPg0n0aCMhN8ioxqtxUuAa3ErhhUxoCBMaMA-w. I have never been a fond of investing more then 10 points within the arcane tree since my main focus always have been to burst while having more than enough survivability. Never encountered an inconvenience with the attunements cd either.

Liquid Swords.1740:

After reading this got bored and made a build that is sort of maxing out crit damage without going full glass. Not sure if I would use it for wvw myself but it would definitely burst very good. I build my ele with less vitality cause I got guards maxed for an easy 250 while roaming. Could still probably improve on it but the stats are crazy imo.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k;4BJ-V0w4VLkY0;9;5T9J9;158B5;045-4;05o0;3V19cV19cg-FrV6;4Vt5uaK1v5V3w53H0BN2s;5k2EwF2Eo;9;9;9;9;7V8-6t

I would focus more on the power stat than the critical dmg. I don’t know about the math behind it but I always noticed that power is the main source of dps/burst follow by critical dmg. A few months back when I lowered my critical dmg by 15% but increased my power by over 100 there was a noticeable increased of damage.

Jayne.9251:

Map queue popped?

This ^

I understand the hp wvw bonus boost but not the reduction before wvw weekly reset. I mostly solo/small group roam and unless I get ambushed by an unexpected zerg i rarely die thus my stacks, consumables armor/wep set remains intact for a great amount of time. Also want to point that if I change to a different battleground or get out of wvw and come back in, my stats resets back to normal (while only missing the 25 stacks of bloodlust of course)

zerospin.8604:

Guild bonuses being turned on/off perhaps?

The last guild I represented was in over a month ago. This started happening recently during the past 2-3 weeks. I have asked a few in game friends and only one has noticed it while the others never paid attention to their stats panel.

Okamikazi.8652:

• Able to transform into a dolyak at any allied camp and carry supply to any fort.

I only like this one but should be limited to the exact time dolyak spawns and station themselves in the camp. .

There’s also downed opponent rallying in wvw without having anything that was killed first.

Anyone else notice your stats being reduced in wvw as you kill more and more players without you getting killed? My buffed stats are illustrated in the attached picture. After certain amount of time my critical chance would be reduced to say 46 as well as my power to 3320. On other occasions the armor or hp decreases by over 100 on each. Sometimes the reduction happens twice within an hour and half time frame. Is this some type of bug?

This is true, I tested it today with an ele friend from sor. Every 10-15 minutes of him roaming without getting downed he would let me kill him. All 4 times he gave 0 wpx.

Columbo.5924:

Very nice video by the way. I liked “the heart of a champion” a lot – you should include this in all of your videos.

Regarding your build, I like the use of celestial equipment. What I don’t really understand is the use of Air V (5% prec is converted to healing) instead of Air X (10% more damage in air attune).

I agree with you on these first 3 sentences.

He is giving a bit more focus on surviving longer than increasing his burst. The Air V trait doesn’t make much difference regards to his survivability when his healing power stat is still pretty low but I’m sure he’ll figure that out and keep improving with time and experience. He is already an awesome s/d ele ^^.

An arena needs to be implemented where you use your pve gear and the option to participate on 1v1, 2v2 and so on. As much as I would love sa imple open world dueling system, implementing it at this point will cause so many complains from the straight pve lovers.

Sir Erighan.9260:

Awesome feedback LB. I’ll test some of your other sigil recommendations and how I might address condition removal. Generosity may just prove too valuable even at it’s current price.

Also, I know scaling on healing power sucks, but is there any reason to increase this stat or is it best to completely ignore?

When it comes to burst builds, you can completely ignore this stat. However for builds like bunker/healer is the main focus high points within this stat comes very helpful.

There are 4 main aspects you want to consider in order to be very efficient in wvw regardless of the build or what type of roaming you are doing.

1-) A good amount of hp and armor . Here’s my personal preferences. Hp must be at least 16k without wvw buff and 2500 of armor minimum even if it is buffed. You got 17k hp with your build, with wvw bonuses your hp can go way over 18k which is fantastic, You armor reaches over 2600 with rock barrier = great too.

2-) More than one way to remove conditions and one of those ways have to remove multiple conditions at once instead of just one. In this area your build lacks. You have two ways to remove conditions but both ways only remove one condition at a time and highly depend on the water attunement cd. I use Ether Renewal and superior sigil of generosity primarily for this purpose.

3-)At least one stun breaker utility and you pretty much have two. I count lightning flash as if it was still a stun breaker simply because I can still port while i am stun (avoid a lot of incoming dmg) and by the time the enemy tries to get to me after I use LF I’m out of stun and can react.

4-) An escape mechanism. RTl and lightning flash alone won’t give you enough mobility to escape any sudden outnumbered situation unless enemies don’t want to chase you. At this point within wvw I consider Conjure Fiery Greatsword to be a must have elite. FGS provide awesome mobility combined with swiftness and insane amount of damage as well while keeping you actual attunement skills intact.

You are right my build does lack swiftness a bit but I find it sufficient with just the swiftness bonus I get from Arcana trait V, specially combined with fresh air trait. When I don’t feel like using updraft or constantly switching to air attunement while i am running round looking for an opponent I tend to temporary switch mist form for signet of air and before I engage i quickly switch to mist form or battle with the signet.

The sigils you can use on your main weapon without breaking your bank could be superior sigil of air, Purity, fire or Energy. Superior sigil of energy and fire are a bit expensive but nothing you can’t afford without a bit of savings ^^. Sigil of air and purity are pretty cheap below 1g and they are really good. My number one favorite sigil is generosity follow by sigil of fire. I always find it funny when a necro tries to fear me and he gets feared instead or when a ranger is trying to get away while immobilizing me and he gets immobilize haha.

Btw that combination of orbs is superb too!. Before i started using divinity I had a mix of ruby and azurite orbs.

Bovinity.8610:

Also, how much friggin’ toughness do you need to survive an opener from a glass thief, heh.

1700 toughness and 18.5k hp and I still almost get downed instantly from an opening combo if I don’t see it coming.

You are probably reacting the wrong way when a full glass cannon thief ambushes you. If they get me with a backstab it will take from 60-70% off my health with that single skill. Your initial reaction is more likely to dodge and try to heal which is a big mistake because it leaves you vulnerable. Most full zerk thieves will start going nuts spamming heartseeker right after they got you with a backstab to finish you off. If you try to heal during that moment he will outburst your heal or down you before your heal even finish casting. I find like 3 different ways to counter them. One is to give your self some distance with lightning flash/rtl then heal or casting mist and have them waste some of their initiatives and then burst them down or dodge and immediately switch to air attunement to updraft. With a burst build they will melt with 3-4 hits max and those hits you can accomplish in one sec with instant cast skills.

Ok guys I shared this build in order for interested eles to burst others players… except me!. Today while I was taking a camp finishing the last npc, an ele from DB (won’t mention his name but I got my eyes on him O.O) got me from my blind spot with one of the most devastating burst combo the ele possess(chunning earth+LF, air attunement, air 2, 2 arcane skills) instantly downed me in one second while my hp started at 100%.. He then sent me a party invite and said “the student has surpass the master” lol. This is worst than getting ambushed by a full glass cannon thief. At least a squishy thief will give away his ambush by using his stone elite skill first or take 2 seconds to burst me down if I don’t react by then. This ele was using this build except his replaced mist form for arcane wave and the weapon sigil to superior sigil of battle.

Yessssssssssss it is a horrible idea within a pvp settings. On pve it is perfectly fine but rallying in spvp/wvw does not fit well. If only this feature is removed both zerging and solo roaming will be a lot more fun.

Ptolomy.6984:

TGSlasher.1458:

Ptolomy.6984:

Actually 10 in arcana with scepter isnt that bad. If you get used to it it wont feel that long.

Indeed, especially if you were using fresh air. I run a 10 arcane build most of the time without fresh air and it is fine (focus offhand reinforces this a bit with its slow cds)

Exactly ive never had more points in arcana than 10 and ive never had a problem with it. Imo it is just getting used to is and the remaining points cam be put to good use

Yea I never considered the arcane tree to be a “must” when it comes to burst builds. However for other type of builds it does come very helpful. That is why my 3rd favorite build has 0 in arcana and my number one favorite burst build only has 5 points in it.

Myst.5783:

I did a comparison of my build to yours, not that much difference TBH.

I like the look of your ele! and that scepter was my favorite prior of me getting Meteorlogicus. I still use that skin for my scepter that I do bloodlust stacks. Wish my asura was taller to have all weps look even more epic. I’m so jelly of the human race.

What Anet needs to do is bring Tybalt back and have him as a candidate. I’m sure everyone will vote for him even if all he offers is a bag filled with apples.

Update: One out of the 4 eles figured it out perfectly, the other 3 came very close. I have received a whole lot of mails and whispers in game and personal messages through here asking me about the gear, runes, sigils, and consumables i use to get these stats so I figured I’ll just share it. Here you go:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmIbzR5wjEIEFmAKMKECiHWgDwhlCzAA-jEDBoLA4LgUgAEBgZPDZMBKqVNFRjVXDT5SIV7Ky2bCZmcRVKgKGDA-w

Note: This calculator is not completely accurate but this is what I had when I took this screenshot. Just add 250 more power with bloodlust. for an op 3400 attack! . Now go nuke players and have them whispers you that you have been reported because they think you hack and others raging at you because they believe you are glass cannon…On the positive side once you are accustomed to the build and if you solo roam you will receive a lot of duel requests for 1v1 2v2 and so on. You will also make a lot of friends from the opposite servers. The build is great for solo/group roaming and when rolling with the zerg. The only difference you may want to make when running with the zerg is replace arcane blast for armor of earth. Here’s something fun I like to do; Pop rock barrier (don’t use hurl) and armor of earth and jump right in the middle of the entire zerg, quickly burst 1-5 players down with earth and fire skills and rtl out or finish one with mist form. Head back to your zerg and heal!. or you can nuke those players that are a bit separated from their zerg.

Also if you are bored and want to simply troll a zerg do the following: Solo approach the zerg, head on without fear! Once you are close enough dodge, to avoid get in combat mode, execute mist form and waypoint. I have been doing that a lot lately towards Dragonbrand and sor zergs and they have been getting really mad at me with so much angry sentences. Ele is so much fun! Enjoy!

RashanDale.3609:

what im wondering: with that amount of precision, you should have ~45% crit chance.

crit-sigil?

as for the rest:
the jewelery is obvious: Zerk-Amulet, Zerk/Valk-Rings, Zerk-Earstuff. I guess backpack is Zerk too cause everything else would be dumb given its crit-damage-to-stat-ratio.

with divinity-runes, ptv-scepter and zerker-dagger i get exactly 91% crit damage.

btw, the displayed magic find comes from the account-wide achievement based magic find (dont have gw2 on this pc so i cant check)?

screw this. this is the closest thing to your build i got:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArIIAIKAAgRhOEPAAAAKFAA-j0CBYLgoLAEEgEBAZPKqJQCjVNFRjVXDT5SIV7KyWyFRrWIAZjBA-w
never managed to get the numbers for P/Pr/T/Vit right…always like 2 or 3 pts difference.
edit: for some reason it doesnt save the 25 stacks…

That is extremely close! very well done!

Bovinity.8610:

what im wondering: with that amount of precision, you should have ~45% crit chance.

crit-sigil?

Heh, was just thinking the same thing while running it through a build calc. Came up with the exact same amount of Precision but 45% crit, so figured a sigil was at work.

That is correct!

nearlight.3064:

LightningBlaze.4913:

nearlight.3064:

Congrats on getting meteorologicus! I plan on going for that eventually when I have a bit more time and whatnot.

Thank you!. Originally I went for and obtained the incinerator because i was mainly a d/d ele for both pve and pvp. Then I realized how much better the scepter legendary looked and I was getting a bit good with the s/d wep set so I sold the incinator and started over. It went fast because I bought all the t6 mats and it only took me like 5 days to get the rest for this legendary, still made like 600g of profit haha. After I got meteorologicus I just force myself to get better with s/d in pvp :P

Hahaha what advice would you have to someone going for that weapon relatively from scratch? All I have right now is the 77 mystic clovers (256 tries so I have a decent amount of T6 mats) and the gift of mastery should be done by the time I’d get everything else, still waiting on a color switch for WvW completion, and getting a character with 200 skill points, but I’m not worried. The thing that concerned me the most was the charged lodestones, so I think I’ll probably start running CoE all the time pretty soon.

O yes! I loved going for the mystic cloves i failed so many times the 10 clovers recipe but i was happy every time I failed because I usually got a lot of the t6 mats haha. When I went for the incinerator i got most of them like this the rest I just took my time farming. With the gold I gained from selling my incinerator i bought all 100 charged lodestones (don’t quite recall if that was the exact amount needed for Meteorologicus but the point is I bought them all) the precursor and the t6 mats ….spent a bit over 1500g but still made great profit. I would strongly recommend instead of farming coe for the lodestones, farm cof p1 to obtain a lot of gold and then buy the lodestone. The reason is because you can spend the entire day farming coe without getting a single charged lodestone drop whereas if you spend around 2 hrs farming cof p1 speed runs you can buy around 7 or more charged lodestones per days. Also if you cof p1 and p2 daily with all your alts, you gain a lot of tokens and with those tokens you can buy the weps and try it on the mystic forge to get your precursor. That’s how I got spark when I went for the incinerator.

haviz.1340:

LightningBlaze.4913:

Fantastic! that’s very close! what about your crit dmg?

Same.

Sweet! you nuke players too!

haviz.1340:

Got similiar stats with 10 less power and 23 less toughness but with 14 more precision and 57 more vitality.

Fantastic! that’s very close! what about your crit dmg?

nearlight.3064:

Congrats on getting meteorologicus! I plan on going for that eventually when I have a bit more time and whatnot.

Thank you!. Originally I went for and obtained the incinerator because i was mainly a d/d ele for both pve and pvp. Then I realized how much better the scepter legendary looked and I was getting a bit good with the s/d wep set so I sold the incinator and started over. It went fast because I bought all the t6 mats and it only took me like 5 days to get the rest for this legendary, still made like 600g of profit haha. After I got meteorologicus I just force myself to get better with s/d in pvp :P

Kodiak.3281:

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.

That was one of the two reasons why these 4 eles requested for me to post this picture. They wanted to figure it out by themselves without me linking or telling them. The traits and trinkets(except the back piece) are given. The runes I use too if you look carefully at the stats. All that is left is the armor and wep set stats. Hint: my burst builds are a mix of 4 different gears now. Also for those 4 eles the consumables I used last night for our duels aren’t the same as the ones I was using when I took this screenshot… So you did to consider that too :P.
P.S: To the few ppl that I have linked my entire gear in game chat please don’t spoil it.

TGSlasher.1458:

@LightningBlaze
I assume you mean “1 – D/D could tank over 5 people and kill half” (snipped and edited by me) is directed toward WvW? Because that isn’t true in sPvP unless vs 5 really bad people (sure you could bunker v5, but not kill them). D/D bunker build was that, a bunker build. The D/D builds that people started running towards the end if it reign were not bunker builds. They were zerker builds who’s aim was to confuse your enemy expecting a paper towel hitting them in the face then you open up with your death lasers.

The reason people complained about the original build is because you could take on 5 people and not be killed. Then they started seeing these higher damage eles and thought it must be the same build, complain more. Mean while back in ele town, 2 different builds, 1 that could tank 5 guys and 1 that could take 1, maybe 2 but destroy them (other bunker D/D eles included).

@OP. With warrior, all you have to do to level is take GS and sword. Take healing signet and use your GS to kill everything and your sword for movement on 2 (since there is no weapon swap cd out of combat you can keep doing this).

Yes I meant in WvW setting TGslasher. I started with D/D in spvp/tpvp up to rank 50. I have always used burst builds and definitely saw how hard d/d eles with this build were to kill even when 2 or 3 more players were focusing fire on it.. Heck I even tried the build myself for a few weeks and I felt unbeatable in spvp/tpvp with it. When I changed to WvW pvp it was even more annoying encountering one of these eles xD.

I believe the main reasons towards all those that complain about these NEEDED nerfs are primarily because of the following:

1 – D/D ele no longer have the easy god mode as it used to, where it easily solo tanked over 5 ppl and kill half or all of them while in the process. Whether they were skillful or amateur players is out of the question; even when going against 4 beginners lvl 80 fully geared players that are attacking you at the same time, no ele should be able to survive and kill 2 or more alone. It was easy to master because even beginners lvl 80 eles instantly became great with the build but when playing with any other build they would died easily.

2-Rtl was a skill that everyone carelessly used during and out of combat and be completely sure it was going to be available for a free getaway if anything goes wrong. Now it requires a good perception on your part as a player whether to use it in combat, out of combat to gain a bit of mobility or save it to gain distance if the situation gets out of hand. It is still a great skill with the 1200 range (as it was suppose to be since the description always remained intact) and not being affected by chill or cripple conditions.

All that have really changed is that now it requires a bit more thinking to play this profession right in a pvp setting. Eles still have great amount of damage, mobility and survivability on both pvp and pve.

Well I discarded one of the 4 burst builds I use a week ago. I use only 3 now. This one is my second favorite and it is indeed 0/30/10/20/10 but I like to use earth embrace trait just for those warriors that can stun lock you to death once you run out of stun breakers.

It’s not hard at all to achieve. Like I told all of you focus on one main area and keep improving your build over time and with experience from duels against various professions.

Edited: To have the build link up here http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmIbzR5wjEIEFmAKMKECiHWgDwhlCzAA-jEDBoLA4LgUgAEBgZPDZMBKqVNFRjVXDT5SIV7Ky2bCZmcRVKgKGDA-w

Travlane.5948:

LightningBlaze.4913:

Travlane.5948:

purgatoryz.6038:

That was awesome. I can’t personally say I’ve ever ran in to 5 bad mesmers, all at the same time, on Tier 1. They literally all just exploded, lol.

oh man tier 1 has HORRENDOUS 1 v 1 players in general. prolly some good ones in there but last time i fought against t1 it was JQ and BG and they were just horrible lol. many others in my server said the same. i mean taking out legends and generals in seconds…..prolly just used to zerging bc you cant get awawy from it in t1 i imagine. just a guess tho. not saying there ALL bad just most :P that week i didnt lose even a single match of 1 v 1 or 1 v 2. sickness

If you ever make it back to t1, go to sor bg, find my asura burst s/d ele from blackgate and lets see if you can even come close to win a 1v1 against me.

just msged u i work tommorow but back around 930 pm EST

Awesome! looking forward to it! ^^

Travlane.5948:

purgatoryz.6038:

That was awesome. I can’t personally say I’ve ever ran in to 5 bad mesmers, all at the same time, on Tier 1. They literally all just exploded, lol.

oh man tier 1 has HORRENDOUS 1 v 1 players in general. prolly some good ones in there but last time i fought against t1 it was JQ and BG and they were just horrible lol. many others in my server said the same. i mean taking out legends and generals in seconds…..prolly just used to zerging bc you cant get awawy from it in t1 i imagine. just a guess tho. not saying there ALL bad just most :P that week i didnt lose even a single match of 1 v 1 or 1 v 2. sickness

If you ever make it back to t1, go to sor bg, find my asura burst s/d ele from blackgate and lets see if you can even come close to win a 1v1 against me.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I don’t see the point of solo roaming, even on a thief.

#1: You don’t accomplish objectives that well. Maybe you can slowly solo a camp or if you hide well you can solo a tower, but in general forming a 4-5 man does things so much quicker, offers so much more power, and offers so much more safety.

#2: You don’t get that much loot. In group vs. group you get a lot more loot bags and experience than wandering around picking off enemies 1 by 1.

#3: You are bellying yourself up for ambush by anything that is built for an ambush, or also anything that doesn’t roam alone. This makes solo roaming more expensive due to repair costs.

1- You are right, it is slower but it is a whole lot more fun specially when one or two enemies are trying to prevent you from taking a camp and you got to defeat them first.

2- I tend to get bunch of loots starting from mobs to get my stacks, from npcs while taking camps and lands. My inventory of 7 bags of 20 fill up really quickly.

3- Wrong, a great solo roamer doesn’t make a build only to win 1v1 encounters. The build i have been modifying ever since beta is awesome for 1v1, 1v2 and rolling with the zerg.

The main point is that solo roaming is a whole lot of fun. It reminds me of aion where wvw is the open pvp world. When you solo roam you have to be aware of your surroundings constantly even while fighting a single enemy. Overall, you develop pvp skills that you won’t gain if you only zerg or spvp/tspvp all the time.

Solo roam with my Burst non glass cannon Ele and thieves are the easiest profession to kill, follow by rangers and then warriors.

You gave valuable hints… You should send a ticket to anet with screenshots instead.

I can’t wait to meet all the great pvp roamers Dragonbrand must have. My ele is usually in sor bg. Hope to meet some and keep improving with my s/d asura burst ele!

Most thieves that already know me don’t even bother to engage my burst s/d build ele from bg even on 2v1 because they already know their outcome (even to those that constantly steath). They are squishy even when they think they are “bunker” against burst. Have a burst non glass cannon build with your profession and they are a piece of cake as long as you interrupt them when they are about to stealth or burst them down before they even get a chance to stealth.

Baladir.2736:

BlackBeard.2873:

Zelyhn.8069:

Arguably you could say that I left out protection, but well anyone can see its effects, you don’t need calculations for that. On the contrary, it is valuable to have a model that helps measuring and evaluating what your intuition tells you but fails to describe in accuracy.

Zelyhn, I very much appreciate this input, and it is very awesome of you to run these calculations. One thing I would suggest is that you should try to include protection in your calculations as it is an important part of boon duration. In other words, you are currently penalizing boon-duration builds builds that reach higher protection uptime.

To modify the calculations, we say that protection makes
damage = 0.66*(opponent dmg)/armor = (opp dmg)/(1.5*armor)

Where opp damage is a function of power, crit. chance, and crit damage. Thus, the simple modification is:

armor_modified = prot_dowtime*armor_unmodified+prot_uptime*1.5*armor_unmodified = (1.5-0.5*prot_downtime)*armor_unmodified

where armor_unmodified is the base value you are using, and prot_uptime is the percentage of time that protection is up. Prot_downtime = 1-prot_uptime.

From here, you simply plug in the armor_modified where your old “armor” values were.

I have to agree with ARM on this one. Testing in game and making adjustments is the only way to truly evaluate the relative values of all these variables and how they apply to an individual player. If you are wondering, OP, why I seem to have a kitten against your methods, it is because they are fundementally flawed and lead players to false conclusions if they buy into them.

Exactly! you really know your stuff!.

With the fresh air trait many eles became aware of the viability s/d already had since beta. Unfortunately many tried and gave up on the weapon set simply because it is not as easy to play s/d than to play with d/d.