Well they said that they were planning on releasing Ascended with the other tiers at the start of the game, but it just wasn’t ready and that making it available only one way was a mistake, so they’re implementing all of the different ways of getting them.
And you believe them when they say this? What evidence is there that this is the case?
As it stands the game was not designed to have more than one upgrade slot on an item, hence the ham-fisted “baked in” stats on the ascended gear and the slot used for “infusion”. If Ascended was in the design since day one then ascended gear would have two slots, one for a standard upgrade plus an infusion slot.
And who wants an ascended weapon without a decent sigil or even being able to choose your sigil because the only slot is for infusions?
Yeah, but all this Ascended stuff was in the design doc since day 1 and wasn’t conjured up in panic to appease bored content locusts. Scout’s honor! Pinky swear!
It’s true, there’s a sucker born every minute.
People aren’t leveling alts only a fraction of the people at the typical DE grind spots that were packed when I leveled my first 80 (e.g. Kessex Hills Centaurs, Harathi Centaurs, Undead/Griffon Eggs, Orr).
like you mentioned, Runes of Scholar is craftable by players and I am fine with the price, it’s all about supply and demand. If the sellers took the time to gather materials to make them, why shouldn’t they make a profit?
No no no, that’s not what I was saying. There is very little profit to be made if any for making the runes yourself. The materials aren’t gatherable, they’re extremely scarce, which is why the price is so high. I’ve never gotten a charged lodestone and I play daily. Let alone 6. I’m not sure if I’ve ever gotten a T6 rare mat aside from putrid essence.
OP you should go to the Mists and test these runes out for free on the training dummies. You’ll be surprised at which ones kill faster and which ones make no difference. For example, you might get 1% more damage with a 24g set vs a 5g set. But in most cases your last attack on the enemy goes way more damage than their remaining health. This means you still kill them in 30 seconds with 20 attacks, the 1% was just wasted.
There are other runes that are more specialist runes that are really good too, like Rune of Grenth, which is cheap as heck, but with a player who uses a lot of chill, it’s like giving your whole team quickness frequently. Foods & sigils can bolster specialist rune sets and give you a valuable role in group play, as well as make solo play more interesting.
Another alternative is to use a set of offense/defense mix runes and put all offense on your armor and weapon stats. Every class can do with some Vitality and/or Toughness, so instead of putting that on your armor pieces, put it on the runes, and use Berserker’s armor, weapons and Ruby Jewellery.
Valid points, but you don’t understand the OP’s way of thinking. In his mind, anything that doesn’t directly contribute to dealing “MOAR DAMAGE” is a useless gimmick that should never be considered under any circumstances.
Yup.
Me. I play to win. I enjoy killing stuff faster and maximizing my DPS and ignore gimmicks that don’t contribute to that end. It’s how I have fun.
You. You enjoy silly pet bird and golem that provide nothing. It’s how you have fun.
I’d personally rather run a dungeon with me than you and get done faster and more efficiently but w/e enjoy your pet bird that you gave up like 10% of your DPS to obtain.
ANet will make gold easier to get and of course Sigil of Fire and Eagle Runes will be like 10g a piece and Divinity Runes like 20g.
In terms of direct damage nothing is a bigger boost to expected damage than 6x Eagle runes (assuming your crit damage is good). 5x scholar + divinity rune is also good.
Nothing compares except divinity, especially not summon garbage gimmick bonuses.
And you’d better not go out there and find content you’ve already done because it has a slightly better drop rate on the ridiculous numbers of mats needed or ANet will smack it with the nerf bat and the True Believers will lecture you on how you’re “doing it wrong” without providing an alternate way of doing it besides adding more time to the grind equation.
And that’s the rub. When you get to level 80 and complete the map there is nothing left to do “to play normal” except grind stuff. At that point grinding becomes normal because there is literally no content left to get the mats.
3. Play the game normally, and collect what’s needed over a long period of time.
Play the game normally, what does this even mean?
I am confused about what this, how does it work? How do you play the game “normally”?
If you do 100% map completion you won’t get all the 250 stacks of t6 mats you need. Not even close. What other “normal” stuff is there to do? Wander around in Orr? Kill Jormag 1,000,000x? Stand around bored in LA?
Oh, wait, I was standing around in LA spamming LFG when a Vial of Powerful Blood and an Elaborate Totem magically appeared in my bank. Nevermind, and here I thought I had to actually go out and get the mats somehow.
It’s simple. When people see a grind to get something they want they start grinding.
Simply saying “yer doing it wrong!” is not a valid rebuttal. How else are you supposed to amass multiple 250 stacks of t6 materials without buying from TP or grinding for them in some way?
Are all of these high priced mats going to fall in your lap somehow if you simply log on every day for a year? You will not get the all from simply doing map completion or gathering tokens for the the other components of your legendary. You can get 500 tokens from dungeons and WvW a lot faster than you can get the ridiculous amount of mats needed for the other gifts.
Again, how exactly does one get multiple 250 stack of t6 items without using paypal or doing any sort of grinding?
24g for 6x runes on the TP…
Is this supposed to be some kind of sick joke?
Not funny.
The supply obviously isn’t there to meet the demand for these runes and sigils. They should be made easier to obtain it’s stupid to expect people to pay 5g-6g for a single rune.
I like grinding DE’s with this build. I plan on trying it in dungeons once I get all the gear I want for it.
0/20/0/20/30
- Good for DEs/AOE/Support
- Big AOE Might Stacks
- 100% uptime on AOE Swiftness (w/ Horn)
- Requires Banner Management (1 Banner)
- Condition Damage is main stat (both weapon sets benefit),
- Carrion/(Koda/Orr/Nightmare)/Rampager. Flexible secondary stats.
- High Adrenaline Gain for Longbow Burst spam
- Rotation: Longbow Burst -> Longbow 3 -> Banner 5. Repeat every 10 seconds (CD)
- 6 to 12 AOE might stacks per rotation (initial Banner drop gives 3, For Great Justice gives 3).
- MH Sword for Bleeds, Leap (can leap into your own field for a Fire Shield), and Snare
- OH Sword for more bleed stacks
- OH Horn + Banner for 100% Swiftness Uptime (Excellent on escort events)
- Recommend 20% crit damage (via Jewels/Trinket) if you plan on using gear with a lot of precision
Writeup:
http://en.gw2codex.com/build/22039-longbow-sword-sword-or-horn-condition-banner-support
I plan on tweaking my stats by getting 6pc Koda (Cond/pr/tough) and weapons, berserker neck and the rest carrion with four ruby gems (for a power boost and 200% crits). That will give condition damage, crit, some power and enough crit damage to get a good return on all of the precision.
I guess I do not understand your issue here …
Critical Hits do an additional .5 damage per point of damage you would normally do. So if you normally hit for 1000 damage, you would crit for 1500 damage without ANY +Crit Damage gear ot traits.
When you add in the passive bonus you get from the trait tree it increases that amount by an additional 30%, bringing your 1000 damage hit up to 1800 damage on crit.
I do agree that 200% +Crit Damage is a good amount to aim for (higher if you can manage it with your build) I am not sure why you feel anything less is a substantial damage loss. Prehaps I am not fulling understanding what you are calling “Long Run Damage”.
It’s about damage scaling and maxing your direct damage, glass cannon or not. You don’t need to be GC to have 50% crit rate and do 15%-20% more damage by not stacking as many poorer scaling stats.
At less than +50% crit damage your precision effectively gets scaled DOWN as it contributes to your DPS over the long term.
As for long term damage it’s simple. When you hit something with an attack, you either crit or you don’t. If you crit you will do:
P * (1.50 + D)
Damage, where P = power and D = crit damage % (as a , 1.5 -> 150)
You will do this X% of the time (i.e. over the long run), where X% is your crit rate, C.
P * (1.50 + D) * C
The other 100% – C or 1.0 – C of the time (i.e. over the long run) you will do a normal hit for basically whatever your power is.
If you assume that you’ll be doing the same dungeons, etc. in either spec then everything else basically factors out (same weapons, same enemies, etc.) and that’s what the difference in stats boils down to.
Simply add them together:
Long Term Damage = Regular hits + Critical Hits
Long Term Damage = P * (1.0 – C) + P * (1.5 + D) * CFactor…
Long Term Damage = P * (1.0 + C * (0.5 + D))
It should make sense if you think about it. 0% crit and your long term damage is basically a measure of power.
There are some interesting things to note, like how well power scales, the relationship between power, crit and crit damage. The way D makes (0.5 + D) less than or greater than 1.0 if D is 50% (0.5). This is what irks me. That less than 50% and C is scaled DOWN over the long run.
It is not a trivial trade off. I don’t mind that it is a stat but it is a brutal trade off if you are stacking precision and sacrificing power.
To the extent I think I understand your conclusions, I think you’re mistaking the significance.
Formula has (bunches of things omitted for simplicity)
Damage = P + PC(1/2 +D). Noting that C is always less than 1 and D + 1/2 is likely somewhere from .8 to 1.2, the dominating factor is Power.But of course most of our gear choices have power in them, so power is going to work itself out by ANet’s itemization.
Yes. You always get a 1:>1 return on damage for every point of power, it is the best scaling damage stat and only scales better the more crit and crit damage you have. That’s what the formula says and that’s the truth. Math doesn’t lie. This is easily confirmed on golems.
My point is that if you are trying to do good direct damage and you have less than 50% crit damage then you are doing it wrong. If you want to do direct damage DPS that 200% crit damage threshold should be a top priority. Otherwise you are not getting a 1:1 benefit from your precision, not getting a 1:1 on your three most important direct damage stats. If your goal is DD why would you want anything less than a 1:1 return on your most important stats?
According to the Wiki page on Critial Hits (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit) The table that lays out what % of damage you increase by for every 5% of Crit Chance, and Crit Damage.
As you say, you do not have to be a GC to reach 50% crit chance, but according to the chart listed on the Wiki page, 50% crit chance, with ZERO Crit Damage still increases your Long Run Damage by 25%.
If you increase your Crit Damage to 30 (availiable through traits) and still have 50% crit chance you then increase your Long Run Damage by 40%.
At 100% Crit Damage (through traits and gear, not including base) and run at 50% crit chance you increase your Long Run Damage by 75%.
@5% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by .25%
@10% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by .5%
@15% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by .8%
@20% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 1.0%
@25% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 1.3%
@30% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 1.5%
@35% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 1.8%
@40% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 2.0%
@45% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 2.3%
@50% Crit Chance every 5% Crit Damage increases your Long Run Damage by 2.5%So at 50% Crit Chance:
0% Crit Damage = 25% Long Run Damage
25% Crit Damage = 37.5% Long Run Damage
50% Crit Damage = 50% Long Run Damage
75% Crit Damage = 62.5% Long Run Damage
100% Crit Damage = 75% Long Run DamageI am still not sure how this is not scaling well. Please do not misunderstand me, I am still a pretty new player and just want to fully understand this process.
yes, 50% rate with 0% crit damage increases it by 25%, 50% crit damage increase it by 50%, i.e. your crit rate.
P * (1 + C * (0.5 + D))
D is crit damage. Set it to 0 and it inscreases damage by HALF (50%) of your crit rate. If it is 0.5 or more (i.e. 50% or more) then you get 100% of your crit rate added to your long term damage.
You have three damage stats for direct damage. If you want to maximize your DPS, then you probably want to get the most you can out of your damage stats, in this case power, crit and crit damage. If you have less than 50% crit damage then you are getting a less than 1:1 increase in damage for each percentage of crit. 50% is easy to get, any less and your precision gets less bang for the buck which means your power gets less bang for the buck which is damage.
Why would anyone trying to max their direct damage, or at least do efficient damage, not want at least a 1:1 return on their their damage stats and damage BOONS? Paltry healing? procs that you’ll get anyway?
Where did you get the formulas?
Several people in this thread should take a look at the table a the bottom of that page.
haha that is the first time I’ve ever seen that page I just sat down and derived on my own a few weeks ago because I wanted to compare different gear setups to see what the tradeoff in damage was. thanks for posting that.
I guess I do not understand your issue here …
Critical Hits do an additional .5 damage per point of damage you would normally do. So if you normally hit for 1000 damage, you would crit for 1500 damage without ANY +Crit Damage gear ot traits.
When you add in the passive bonus you get from the trait tree it increases that amount by an additional 30%, bringing your 1000 damage hit up to 1800 damage on crit.
I do agree that 200% +Crit Damage is a good amount to aim for (higher if you can manage it with your build) I am not sure why you feel anything less is a substantial damage loss. Prehaps I am not fulling understanding what you are calling “Long Run Damage”.
It’s about damage scaling and maxing your direct damage, glass cannon or not. You don’t need to be GC to have 50% crit rate and do 15%-20% more damage by not stacking as many poorer scaling stats.
At less than +50% crit damage your precision effectively gets scaled DOWN as it contributes to your DPS over the long term.
As for long term damage it’s simple. When you hit something with an attack, you either crit or you don’t. If you crit you will do:
P * (1.50 + D)
Damage, where P = power and D = crit damage % (as a , 1.5 -> 150)
You will do this X% of the time (i.e. over the long run), where X% is your crit rate, C.
P * (1.50 + D) * C
The other 100% – C or 1.0 – C of the time (i.e. over the long run) you will do a normal hit for basically whatever your power is.
If you assume that you’ll be doing the same dungeons, etc. in either spec then everything else basically factors out (same weapons, same enemies, etc.) and that’s what the difference in stats boils down to.
Simply add them together:
Long Term Damage = Regular hits + Critical Hits
Long Term Damage = P * (1.0 – C) + P * (1.5 + D) * C
Factor…
Long Term Damage = P * (1.0 + C * (0.5 + D))
It should make sense if you think about it. 0% crit and your long term damage is basically a measure of power.
There are some interesting things to note, like how well power scales, the relationship between power, crit and crit damage. The way D makes (0.5 + D) less than or greater than 1.0 if D is 50% (0.5). This is what irks me. That less than 50% and C is scaled DOWN over the long run.
It is not a trivial trade off. I don’t mind that it is a stat but it is a brutal trade off if you are stacking precision and sacrificing power.
Sigils, abilities on crit.
Nuff said. Rune of fire FTW.
Yeah, and? With more crit damage you will have equal if not more crit, so you still have high crit and still use sigils and do those things.
Yeah I like not having to revive a player each time they are hit too. If you are 100% crit and power you aren’t very effective when you are dead 90% of the time.
I am saying glass cannons don’t work so well. If that is what you are suggesting please don’t.
I don’t know? Tell them to L2P? I’ve done most dungeons as 30/30/0/0/10 GC elemenatlist (low hp/light armor) with ~51% crit and over 60% crit damage and find that choosing the rights skills before the encounter and filling keeping your endurance filled goes a lot farther than vitality and toughness. Easy to avoid a lot of stuff at 1200 range. Don’t need vitality if you remove the burn or your glyph’s CD/regen can beat it, don’t need toughness if you spec/food for endurance and save your dodges for when they are most needed and strafe otherwise.
This is only relevant for direct damage.
You know, real damage and stuff.
Oh I understand. I guess my point was I can understand the decision to make crit rate impact pure damage less than crit damage, because crit rate can contribute to a number of other things not related to damage. (Buffs, conditions, etc…)
True. But with high crit damage you can still get the procs and do more damage at the same time. It’s not really about procs since you can still proc, it’s more about what you give up when you trade long term damage (usually crit damage) for healing/defense/survivability or condition damage.
I look at a lot of builds and plug the values in and sometimes I’ll find direct damage builds where people totally ignore their crit modifier and end up trading up to 30% or 40% of their long run damage for things like gimmicky 1-2k heals or vitality/toughness because they ignore crit damage and use those other stats in their build. They still have high crit and get lots of stacks and proc lots of stuff but overall it still scales rather poorly due to that stupid crit modifier buried in the factor that they ignored/don’t understand.
It’s a very good point. But like I said, crit rate isn’t only related to damage though. Some players actually don’t really care about damage, but are more worried about critting frequently to activate certain effects. So if an equivalent amount of crit dmg and precision contributed the same amount to pure damage, there would be no reason (or very few reason) to get crit damage.
….So I guess I’m agreeing with you. Yea, Crit Dmg (after power) is the stat to go instead of precision for damage, but I can understand why Anet made it so precision is weaker (in terms of damage)
Yea, I used to run this two, but it’s only a 1 second bleed. You’re better off with something else in the 1st tier of Skirmishing, like the 30% crit damage or movement speed for pets.
Thanks for the suggestion. I didn’t know it was only a 1s bleed. But I mainly use Devourers as pets, and mainly use them as a source for quickness. So the speed/might/crit damage really isn’t too useful for me. So I end up choosing the least suckiest trait…(First World Ranger problems)
The thing is, regardless of whehter or not crit is related to damage in someone’s build, there is usually a gimmicky substitute for crit damage in their spec too, usually some sort of paltry healing. They ignore the crit modifier they sacrificed to get it and then point to something else in the build like healing or might stacks, sigils and procs, etc. which actually makes my argument stronger because, again, power/might scales better the more crit and crit damage you have and you aren’t giving up any crit, just ditching the extra gimmick. When you take the extra gimmick at the expense of prowess you are doing it at the expense of getting more benefit from anything based on power and crit, not just precision and crit damage itself. It’s a trap.
You can wear soldier, knight, carrion, clerics, armor (or trinkets) and get your crit damage to 50% with traits/trinkets/weapons (or armor) to start making precision pay off at least 1:1 in the long run while still being able to support, it’s when people try and shoehorn another gimmick like more +healing (or they stack a LOT of healing) they typically sacrifice their crit damage because they still want to proc/sigil/etc. and when you do the math the decrease in damage for the extra gimmick is like 10% or more, deck yourself out in 100% cleric/karma healing gear and it’s an easy 40% damage reduction compared to focusing on damage stats.
Personally when I spec for condition damage I try to minimize crit as much as possible because my crit damage is typically 10% or 0% so im only getting 50%-60% benefit from any precision towards my long term direct damage, I feel like I am being punished by stacking crit with less than 100% modifier.
Sigils, abilities on crit.
Nuff said. Rune of fire FTW.
Yeah, and? With more crit damage you will have equal if not more crit, so you still have high crit and still use sigils and do those things.
This is largely related to PvE and mostly in response to support builds (e.g. warrior shout builds, ele heal builds) that also claim they do good DPS.
Many of them like to give up over 15% of their long term damage and lock their bar to shouts for <2k heals. I saw an ele build the other day that gave up 40% damage for three ~2k heals all on 10+ seconds CDs.
This is only relevant for direct damage.
You know, real damage and stuff.
Oh I understand. I guess my point was I can understand the decision to make crit rate impact pure damage less than crit damage, because crit rate can contribute to a number of other things not related to damage. (Buffs, conditions, etc…)
True. But with high crit damage you can still get the procs and do more damage at the same time. It’s not really about procs since you can still proc, it’s more about what you give up when you trade long term direct damage (usually crit damage) for healing/defense/survivability or condition damage.
I look at a lot of builds and plug the values in and sometimes I’ll find direct damage builds where people totally ignore their crit modifier and end up trading up to 30% or 40% of their long run damage for things like gimmicky 1-2k heals (that scale worse than anything else in the game and/or have long CDs, lock your skill bar, etc.) or vitality/toughness or 80% crit rates because they ignore crit damage and use those other stats in their build. They still have high crit and get lots of stacks and proc lots of stuff but overall it still scales rather poorly due to that stupid crit modifier buried in the factor that they ignored/don’t understand.
(edited by Nonlinear.9823)
My guardian grants might to nearby allies on crit.
Giving boons to allies heals me.
I like crit. But I’m not really built for dealing damage.The logic in the top post would lead to the conclusion that you really should stack as much power as possible because it’s a multiplier on both crit and regular hits.
It’s true, power scales the best and even better the more crit and crit damage you have because of the way they influence each other when calculating damage. You can plug in the numbers, change them up, compare the two and the % difference will translate to how long it takes to kill something. It can be tested on golems. It’s a classic synergy that exists in every MMO (and most RPGs in general) that I’ve played.
In those other games, though, you are either handed 200% crits or have some other way to get to that threshold without having to juggle your main stats as well.
It’s actually a brutal tradeoff and seems to be overlooked by many.
The difference is not trivial. If you have 50% crit and +50% extra crit damage (200% crits), you will do 50% more direct damage over the long run due to crit, a 5% crit increase is the same thing as a 5% damage increase except you’ll get more procs from on crit stuff.
If you have +0% extra crit damage (150% crits) you will only do half that, 25% more damage over the long run due to crit. Anything in between 0% and 50% scales long run damage from crit/precision DOWN over the long run. Yes, having less than 50% crit damage as a direct damage dealer will decrease the contribution you get to long run damage due to crit/precision. Not until this number (D) is at or above 50% will precision increase overall damage more than 1:1, 50% = 1:1, < 50% = 1:<1.
Condition damage also gets 0 benefit from crit, and chances are high that in order to get high crit and high condition damage you have low crit damage, maybe 10%-30% from spec so all that crit that is getting you procs but is also also scaling down your long run direct damage by 20% to 40% over the long run. Condition damage has a lot of ground to make up if it wants to close that gap. Meanwhile crit damage influences crit, crit influences power and power influences direct damage while condition damage only influences itself.
4 of the 8 classes intergrate Crit Damage in with Percision in their Trait tree. This increases your base Crit Damage from 50% to 80%.
It increases it from 150% to 180%, the 30% means D = 0.3, so 0.5 + D means your crit modifier is only 80% and in the long run only 80% of your precision is being applied to your long term damage.
As a crit based Thief I run with ~80% Crit Chance (100% when I pop Fury) and ~150% Crit Damage. This seems to be a pretty good starting point, but I do plan on trying to raise it to ~200% as I get better gear.
A good starting point is 200% damage crits (at least 50% from traits/gear) as it is in every other game that calculates crit damage this way. Less than that and your crit rate will contribute less than 1% damage per each point of crit to your overall damage. At exactly 200% crit damage each % of crit will icnrease your long run damage an equivalent amount. Anything more than 200% and you get slightly higher than 1% damage for every 1% of crit.
In those games they just give you the extra 50% and cap it at that but in GW2 it is up to the players to do so by trading off other stats and it is uncapped.
With no extra crit damage you only get half your crit % towards your long term damage. At 30% from spec you get 0.8% increase in direct damage for every 1% of crit.
This is only relevant for direct damage.
You know, real damage and stuff.
Just based on the three damage stats (you can further modify for boons like fury/might), assume all else equal (enemy toughness, weapons, traits, etc. but if you know what said traits modify you can add them in). Mostly used to determine tradeoffs from tweaking your gear.
Long Run Direct Damage = P * (1 + C * (0.5 + D)
P = Power
C = crit rate (%)
D = crit damage (%)
Plug in current stats to get X1, C and D as % (e.g. 40% = 0.40).
Plug in what you are thinking of modifying (e.g. more/less D, more/less C, more/less P) to get X2.
Compare X1 to X2, whichever is higher will do more damage for you in the long run.
The percentage difference will tell you much extra time it will take for you to kill something with direct damage. You can test this on golems in the mist, 10% difference in long term damage means 10% more time for the smaller number to kill something.
Learn it. Use it. Love it.
11. People failing at math.
So you have like 50% crit and have 10% extra crit damage.
Way to make 40% of that crit worthless in the long run without 200% damage crits.
High Crit -> AT LEAST 50% extra crit damage or precision gets scaled down in the long run direct damage calculation.
Long Run Damage = P * (1 + C * (0.5 + D)
P = Power
C = crit rate (%)
D = crit damage (%)
I don’t mind that ANet included this tradeoff, which does not exist in other MMOs I’ve played (they just hold your hand and give you 200% damage crits nowadays or at the very least had a mandatory talent you had to take back in the day if you wanted to even think about doing top tier DPS) because I know how to do math, but I sadface whenever I read about all these builds that stack might, power and lots of precision and blah blah blah while totally neglecting their crit damage modifier, which (obviously) modifies crit, which modifies power, which is further modified by might.
It’s like being 2’ tall as a teenager and thinking you can grow enough in the time you have to be a 6’6" professional basketball player. It just ain’t going to happen.
If you are going to DPS, get your crits to 200% damage or go home.
(edited by Nonlinear.9823)
Staff Water is bad, DPS is poor, staff healing scales poorly and every second in Water is a second you aren’t doing decent DPS in fire, air or even earth (if you’re condition damage spec). Every second you are doing actual DPS (i.e. not hitting stuff for 600 damage and critting for 1,200 with Water Slash) is time shaved off the fight. The difference in time to kill stuff between a full power build and a full heal build is upwards of 40%. Go test it on golems in the mists, with a full power it takes ~16-17 seconds to kill a golem while a full support build will take ~27-28 seconds. That is a big loss of DPS and during that time stuff can go wrong, shorter fight means using fewer CDs, a dead boss does no damage, etc. it can mean the difference between popping your elite skill once, twice or even three times.
We excel at putting down combo fields (we have the only water/ice fields that are weapon skills and not utility skills, the only lightning field and it’s a weapon skill, lots of fire fields, etc.) for others to combo off of and laying down AOE. Power scales the best and scales even better the more crit and crit damage you have.
Personally, as a staff user aiming for a full glass cannon DPS build I see no reason not to take 30 in both air and fire to get the most out of every point of power for maxed DPS and don’t think any talents in the other lines are worth trading for the 100 power you lose for every ten points you move from Fire or trading the 10% crit damage and ~4.5% crit you lose for every ten points you don’t put in Air. They all synergize, the 30 air makes the 300 power more powerful. I find that at least in dungeons survival is more about filling your endurance bar and removing a condition or two every now and again than stacking heal/tough/vit, at least for a glass cannon. Attacks that are dodged and conditions that are purged don’t do any damage.
This is true. I’ve rolled support more often than not in dungeons/FOTM simply because we would be lacking in support roles. I’ve never opted for a full glass cannon build (and haven’t changed traits much since hitting 80) but are there specific glass cannon builds for both D/D and Staff exclusively or do they share the same makeup?
I only use staff in dungeons but just from my experience most D/D specs go deep into water for 20% increased damage to vulnerable targets and lower cooldowns on your water skills (e.g. boomerangs). Plus healing and resto signet is better on D/D than other weapon sets because the daggers have fast attack speed so your heal gear is working more and you can do decent burst but I prefer the range of the staff.
My point is that it depends on your build and what you’re doing. Not every ele is D/D in sPvP. I find staff superior in dungeons for both direct damage and condition builds and my direct damage build uses 30 fire because that is how I do the most damage. 10% damage increase, -20% CD, conjure trait if using fiery greatsword (it has it’s uses) , might trait if not, but the last ten points is mostly for the +100 power. So yes, there are reasons to spec deep into fire.
Classic synergy: Power, crit and crit damage.
“remember that time that elementalist kept using mist form to run back into its keep, preventing us from using rams and stuff and totally stopping us from zerg-plowing the keep?”
Said nobody ever.
Go out, get gibbed in 5 seconds, mist back, wait for hp penalties.
Repeat.
Man, sounds like tons of fun can’t wait to try this… and also totally unbeatable what an imbalance may as well give up on WvW forever now that someone has discovered elementalist whack a mole and turned elementalists into breathing walking Gods of WvW.
I run 30/30/0/0/10, full glass, and have no issues. I also stand at 1200 with a staff. Make friends with heavies that shout and like to tank stuff. If you are nice they will give you 25 stacks of might.
mist form is the only thing we have in downed state that isn’t terrible. It makes me miss it on my other characters.
I do design around min/maxing, at least for PvE, and for direct damage this is the formula for long run damage:
Long Run Damage = Power (1 + crit % * (0.5 + crit damage %))
Plug in two sets of number whichever is higher will do more direct damage over the long term.
The more crit and more crit damage (i.e. Air) you have the more damage you get from each point of power. If you are going to go glass cannon and max damage then imo you should do it right: max crit and max crit damage to get you the most bang for your buck on max power and not spec and gear as if you are going to enter a pvp tournament.
As a staff user in dungeons I have no use for water let alone 20 points.
When it comes to PvE no stat scales better than power.
And even better yet….
Superior Rune of Water x2 and Superior Rune of Monk x2 give you +30% boon duration.
Um, SE 3 can be done in twenty minutes with a good group.
20-30 minutes tops. Either less trash or even better give us an actual incentive to kill the trash. Some dungeons could easily fall into the 20-30 minute range if the bosses had some of their hp axed.
I don’t understand the point of hp sponges with 1 phase, e.g. SE 2, HotW 1/2/3. Some of them take longer to kill then the rest of the kittening dungeon combined. If you can master the gimmick mechanic for 3 minutes you can do it for 6 or 10 or w/e.
Thankfully everyone is busy spending hours LFG for fractal level X to bother opening temples or Arah or anything else in Orr anymore. It was also easier to open temples and Arah when there were lots of people grinding Plinx who would take a few minutes to WP wherever in the zone and help, in fact I haven’t even zoned into Orr a single time since the patch. Way to go ANet. Way to kill your sadistic and ugly desert and dead things zone. Just sink it back down into the ocean again nobody will miss it. It’s kittening ugly as kitten anyway whenever I’m there I feel like I’m in an ugly barren California desert full of ugly bland kitten brown risen character models. Hey look, another risen, and it looks like a stick figure textured in muddy brown dog kitten like every other risen. Orr ROCKS!
Besides Arah story is really stupid and boring and poorly designed anyway, ANet is merely doing you a favor by not subjecting to you its failness. Isn’t that nice of ANet? It’s looking out for you by barring access to terrible content. Now, knowing all that, don’t you feel ashamed for all the mean things you’ve said?
(edited by Nonlinear.9823)
If the last mob of every trash pack you killed granted 5-10 silver or had increased chances to drop exotics or even offered a measly token for killing them (maybe 5-8 extra tokens in a run) then you’d see a lot less trash skipping.
I mean, if ANet is REALLY REALLY REALLY interested in people not skipping trash, then give trash packs a chance to drop one wonderous bag per pack and a small, known, set quantity of silver.
(edited by Nonlinear.9823)
It’s simple: No incentive to kill means no kill. Give us a REASON to kill it. Make the trash WORTH killing.
Either remove the stupid trash or give us an incentive to kill like the scavengers in AC (i.e. 5s). Make them drop silver, tokens, loot, SOMETHING to give groups an incentive to kill them, something worth 1 minute of time. I’m sure all the genius ANet devs can think of something….
(edited by Nonlinear.9823)
Honestly I can already see the tears forming if they gave us an out-of-combat weapon swap…
“whaa! Whaa! I swapped to staff to keep swiftness up on myself while running from A to B and I got ambushed, put into combat and couldn’t access mah daggers to fight back!!!! WHY DOES ANET HATE ME?!?!? WHAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!”
I am guessing that powerful auras will someday work with all auras.
Nah, they seem to enjoy nerfing auras just check the last patch notes.
the problem with signet builds is all the signets.
I like that Eruption has a delay on the blast finisher because it gives the group a chance to see it and put a field on top of it before the blast pops and you can do fun gimmicky stuff like stack uber swiftness on yourself with Eruption → Swap to Air → Static Field → Arcane Wave → Heal Glyph (even more with Inscription trait)
In order to make it good you need fast weapons (i.e. D/D), heavy traits and +heal. Using it without signet CD reduction or Written in Stone just seems like a bad idea to me. And it only gets 10% of your healing so with 1400 healing each hit will heal for an additional 140 health. Wow. Without 30 in Earth it will heal for nothing while you wait for the CD on it’s puny active heal.
Most easily available gear that has healing has it as the main stat. Every primary point of +heal you have is a primary point you are giving up in a stat that scales better and is used more. I spent 252,000 karma on a healing set what a flipping waste of karma that was.
Yeah I drool thinking of the things I could lay down if I could switch between Staff and D/D or w/e and w/e during combat.
I love the powerful Aura skill. I was trying to come up with a viable wvw build that uses 20/10/10/30/0 to get fire shield aura on signet activation (and then run signet of resto, and signet of earth, as well as two cantrips for regen/vigor) but I just feel naked and useless without at least 10 pts in arcane for elemental attunement and shorter cooldowns on attunement swaps.
I suppose I could build it without the 10 pts in earth as the protection buff is a short duration, but it’s a short duration cause prot kicks kitten as a boon, it’s difficult to let go. You’re also very squishy without it.
Yeah, 20 in Fire for Fire’s Embrace for auramancer is kind of a trap imo. You can’t take 30 Earth for Written in Stone so whenever you pop a signet you’ll lose the passive effect. With D/D your best auras are weapon skills and the points in arcane will not only let you swap faster but every ten points adds 10% boon duration.
Healing scales poorly on ele, leave it to other classes with better scaling imo and focus on power since it scales better than any other stat and even moreso if you stack crit and crit damage.
Staff:
Splash on Water Blast gets 10% of +heal
Regen gets 12.5% of +heal
Geyser ticks three times, each tick gets 25% of +heal, 75% if you stand in it for all three ticks
Dagger:
Cone of Cold gets 32% of +heal
Cleansing Wave gets 100% of +heal
Scepter:
Water Trident gets 100% of +heal
Skills:
Signet of Restoration gets 10% of +heal
Glyph of Elemental Harmony gets 75% of +heal
Attunement:
Soothing Mist gets a whopping 5% of +heal
Healing Ripple gets 100% of +heal
Staff scaling just sucks. With 1400 healing you’ll get about 500 splash healing at level 80 while doing paltry DPS with Water Splash and Ice Spike. The only good heal you get is when you actually attune to water.
Scepter is also meh, the only heal outside of ripple has a 20 sec CD.
D/D + Resto Signet is okay.
Water sucks unless you are D/D and it probably sucks then too . Soothing mist is bad no matter what you are using, it heals for less than 150 a tick with 1400 healing. When using staff, Water Blast and Ice Spike are bad and will always be bad, every second you spend in Water is a second with kitteny DPS and paltry heals. Staff water if only good for popping in for Regen/Condition Removal (Healing Rain), throwing down a Frozen Ground Ice Field and a bad geyser clutch heal (which is slightly better with healing from Healing Ripple factored in), i.e. you are about to die. Can throw down the fields in like 5 seconds then attune to a more useful element.
But yeah, I wasted a lot of time getting a ful heal set to discover that elementalist healing pretty much sucks, especially for staff, D/D might be different I think healing sucks to bad to mess around on it when glass cannon is so much more efficient. The DPS loss just isn’t worth it and unless you are using a healing signet then the healing on your gear is pretty much worthless unless you are actually casting a spell that uses it and most of those scale poorly.
Staff Water is bad, DPS is poor, staff healing scales poorly and every second in Water is a second you aren’t doing decent DPS in fire, air or even earth (if you’re condition damage spec). Every second you are doing actual DPS (i.e. not hitting stuff for 600 damage and critting for 1,200 with Water Slash) is time shaved off the fight. The difference in time to kill stuff between a full power build and a full heal build is upwards of 40%. Go test it on golems in the mists, with a full power it takes ~16-17 seconds to kill a golem while a full support build will take ~27-28 seconds. That is a big loss of DPS and during that time stuff can go wrong, shorter fight means using fewer CDs, a dead boss does no damage, etc. it can mean the difference between popping your elite skill once, twice or even three times.
We excel at putting down combo fields (we have the only water/ice fields that are weapon skills and not utility skills, the only lightning field and it’s a weapon skill, lots of fire fields, etc.) for others to combo off of and laying down AOE. Power scales the best and scales even better the more crit and crit damage you have.
Personally, as a staff user aiming for a full glass cannon DPS build I see no reason not to take 30 in both air and fire to get the most out of every point of power for maxed DPS and don’t think any talents in the other lines are worth trading for the 100 power you lose for every ten points you move from Fire or trading the 10% crit damage and ~4.5% crit you lose for every ten points you don’t put in Air. They all synergize, the 30 air makes the 300 power more powerful. I find that at least in dungeons survival is more about filling your endurance bar and removing a condition or two every now and again than stacking heal/tough/vit, at least for a glass cannon. Attacks that are dodged and conditions that are purged don’t do any damage.
(edited by Nonlinear.9823)
For runes, make sure to use Monk x2 and Water x2 to get the most out of your boons.