Guild Wars 2

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Molch.2078:

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

The only viable build with the staff is support/healing.

Besides anyone who thought “dps all the way” left ele a long time ago.

Thats funny, because Ele is #1 dps in PvE.

Ele is #3 but it’s a pretty close call.

Is there any class that can deal more than 14k dps ?

Humans didn’t wait until the Russians put a man in orbit to check whether the earth is flat or not you know. The ancient greeks proved everything long before, using maths. Sounds familiar?

ThiBash.5634:

Hence the 24 meteors * 5 targets each * 2000 damage per meteor…

Hence I need more coffee.

ThiBash.5634:

ARM

Your imaginary numbers aren’t a fact. Hence, the lack of video.

If each meteor deals 2000 damage, and you cast it into a WvW zerg, you’ll get 24*5*2000=240,000 damage. Is that enough for you?

You could actually get more than that since each meteor can hit up to 5 targets

This means that you have 5 days left to complete this challenge and claim the golds, don’t wait any longer!

Yes that’s why I often make two computations:
- A realistic situation computation: with only the buffs self-provided and generic sigils.
- A speedkill situation computation: with all common speedkill buffs but no content-specific sigils or potions.

Comrades!

I have updated the thread for clarity.

Announcement:
The Weekend variety trials will be extended to a full week time-frame (now Weekly Variety Trials). This gives you more time to complete them. They will be designed so that many types of entries are valid, but only the best will get the prize! Oh yes, the rewards have increased too

Check out this week’s trial:

Challenge: “Hollywood-style Hacking”
This is a group challenge. You have until Monday the 7th of October at 03:00 GMT to accomplish it. All entries must provide a video. The group to accomplish the challenge the fastest will get the prize.

Prize: 10 golds, to be split between the group members.

Complete the hacking event in Crucible of Eternity submarine path (with the exploding golems) by hacking the console one level by one level. A player can hack only once. This means that all five members of the group will have to hack in turns. Be quick: the group who can finish this challenge in the least amount of time will get the prize!
(Hint: try to minimize the time in-between each hacking. Killing everything may not be the best option)

Good luck!

Fuzzion.2504:

Remember the saying ? “Alt + F4 if you cant kill a staff ele”

I am pretty sure the AI can’t Alt + F4

By the way I think Goku just shattered the record with a 4:48 kill

Staff has is strong in utility, but its damage is also very significant (in fire).
I would say it is a balanced weapon and a safe start in PvE if you are less experienced

ThiBash.5634:

Zelyhn.8069

However Sabull just found out that the blasting staff trait boosts the radius of each meteor from 90 to an estimated 120, which increases your chances to hit.

That’s actually VERY interesting. Didn’t know that. Thanks. :-)

All credits go to Sabull
This requires further testing though, I’ll try to confirm this asap.

so the formula for hit chance per meteor is
( ( meteor radius + target hitbox radius ) / shower radius ) ^ 2

Thanks for testing this.

Actually I made a mistake.
Sabull and I rechecked and retested the chance to hit, and we found the following:
- light golem (human size): 3.1 hits on average
- heavy golem (almost twice as big): 5.4 hits on average
So the numbers on a human-sized target are lower than what I previously claimed.

However Sabull just found out that the blasting staff trait boosts the radius of each meteor from 90 to an estimated 120, which increases your chances to hit.

I think Sander soloed the archdiviner in cliffside 48, didn’t he?

Let me get out of work to be able to watch this vid and then we’ll see

But I have a strong feeling that what ever videos people will provide they will not disprove my point, for a number of reasons:
- the conditions of the test have to be the same for both skills
- the traits have to be optimal, or use no traits, for both

Just try it for yourself like I advised: go cast MS on a human-size target and see on average how many meteors hit it.
If that number is around 6, then maybe Anet is not giving me much money.

Erebus.7568:

silvermember.8941:

Erebus.7568:

ARM.3912:

Zelyhn.8069:

Indeed I won’t admit this, not because it is untrue but because this is not what we are discussing here.

Someone made a claim that no ele can deal damage comparable to that of 100b in a single attack, I proved it wrong.

If we start discussing anything more than this, like class designs, then this conversation will never end. We do not have the skills or the knowledge to solve the “grand equation of classes” across all game modes and in all types of content. All we can do is compare simple concepts.

You didn’t prove anything, you just rattled off some numbers you made up. Find a video or find a new lie.

his always like that -.- no proof all talk and trolling…. its freaking annoying to discuss with him becouse of his bs, so just give it up early.

I feel like he is a paid shill design to give new or uninformed ele misinformation.

yup same feeling or that he simply is paid to keep praising anet to make their bad decision look better on the forums. even though its clear to any person not braindead that they continually choose to ignore the issues with the ele instead of fixing them

Please look at my complete posting history and then review your statement.

The keyword is can.

The assumption is that it requires similar conditions for the test to validate anything. In a solo situation these conditions are likely different.

Try something else: go in PvP, take stable weapons, go naked with no traits and compare the two skills.

ThiBash.5634:

Zelyhn.8069:

I haven’t watched the videos because I am at work, but I guess they show comparisons between these two skills in solo situations?

That’s correct.

It seems we’re mostly comparing apples and oranges here. The skills both have completely different cooldowns, different purposes, different ranges and different mechanics. When the shower is cast for example, the ele can do other things while the warrior is stuck in the animation. The ele can have up to 2 summons also attacking the target at the same time. The ele also doesn’t have to walk over there before they can actually hit stuff. And on the other side, the warrior has 8 seconds cooldown where meteor shower has a much, much higher cooldown.

Compare hundred blades and meteor shower on a burrow in AC explorable, and the results will favor Meteor Shower. Compare it on a single target trash mob and hundred blades will come out on top. Are those really things nobody expected?

I agree. Apples and oranges are two different things we different uses. Oranges can be useful in situations where apples are not, and vice versa. However someone made a claim that oranges are sugary while apples are not. All I did was proving that apples can be sugary too.

I’m hungry.

@UltraHiDef.4809
Without

I haven’t watched the videos because I am at work, but I guess they show comparisons between these two skills in solo situations?

47% per metor
there are 24 of them

I agree that empirical validation is required.

Here is the thing; there are so many warriors playing that the data for 100b is large. Do you often see staff elems in speedkills? If people started playing a bit more with it we could have the right example, but until then all we can do is provide calculations to motivate people.

That would make them have a 47% chance to hit a human-size target, which would be completely op.

How about meteor shower is perfectly fine as it is?

Or don’t.

But please take a look at lingering elements

Do you also get a bug with burning speed when the fire field doesn’t go all the way to the blast location? I think this is due to speed boosts

Edit: if burning speed was working with a target (leap towards it, 600 range max) then all problems would be solved: we could swap to fire in melee to hit sunspot and land burning speed with the trail right on target.

They have already reduced the rng in MS

Comparing classes versus comparing specific skill’s damage …

Hey I think Poland > Italy
Bam! endless debate
But if I say Italy’s GDP per capita > Poland’s GDP per capita the debate takes 5 seconds.

How about we stick to things we can accurately measure?

Yes warriors hit hard, but it is often the last hit at the end of a lengthy chain.
Don’t do the mistake of feeing belittled by the big numbers they make occasionally, in fact we can do just as much: we hit for less, but much more frequently.

I am quite ok with comet. It is hard and you have to plan for it, but it delivers enough for me.

Yes I also considered to take 10 in arcana. The benefits from it as as follow:
- take reduction in arcane spells’ cd (arcane wave to 24s) so you can use this as a replacement for either comet or magnetic wave, while the fury proc on swapping and the boon duration fills the fury uptime gaps for you (but not for your group)
- access to vigor
- access to elemental attunement, but I don’t find it very desirable for this build

The downside is the wasted resource: fire attunement cd is shorter than burning speed’s cd and boon duration may not be necessary. Also 10% loss in damage.

Yes, and also this is not constant: you have to consider the number on average, not just as high as it can get:
- from the combos: 3 * 3 * 20 / 30 = 6
- from the sigil: 3 * 15 / 20 = 4
So on average you sun with 10 stacks of might with no bonus duration (with peaks at 15).

The rotation produces 3 * 3 = 9 stacks of might for 20s every 30s, so that is 6 stacks on average with no duration bonus.
How would you get as high as 20 with duration bonus?
(Mind that you must ignore sigil of battle since it is a self buff only)

After quite a bit of practice I find it very difficult to land sunspot and burning speed as it must be for the rotation to work

(which is a loss of 2.3% of our damage)

Excelsior comrades

You may have noticed how many people come up with dps calculations for various classes. You must have also noticed how varying these figures can be. Lately it was Gaung and I who disagreed on elem staff’s max dps. We cross checked our computations and it appeared that we had a few differences in our approaches.

One of the things I would like to discuss is what buffs we should include when calculating max dps. Guang’s view of “full buffs” is quite literal, whereas I consider a speedkill situation: no ranger.

The question is: should be include ranger buffs? With traits?
also:
Should we include mob-specific potions?
Should we include bloodlust or perception stacks in addition to weapon sigils (debatable since they are going to be tied to the weapon you have equipped in the future) ?

It would be nice if we normalised our calculations a bit so our figures could be comparable and reliable

To be honest I don’t see why all movement skills of all classes don’t go on double cd if not hitting a target, just like RTL.

The fact that I don’t post videos doesn’t take away the fact that an elem can do 100b worth of damage in a single attack.

I have a strong feeling I am the one being trolled here

Hmm interesting statement ARM! Would you care to let me know which number I made up? That would enlighten my evening greatly

And then you realise that Guang has failed to prove his calculations so far despite my numerous requests for his spreadsheet.

The best “dps” so far in the game is the LH ele. (14k+)
Staff ele can do 12k+ (until proven otherwise)
FA ele with support does 9k5
FA ele no support does 10k5 + burning.

Indeed I won’t admit this, not because it is untrue but because this is not what we are discussing here.

Someone made a claim that no ele can deal damage comparable to that of 100b in a single attack, I proved it wrong.

If we start discussing anything more than this, like class designs, then this conversation will never end. We do not have the skills or the knowledge to solve the “grand equation of classes” across all game modes and in all types of content. All we can do is compare simple concepts.

Well 2nd rate at both makes you best overall.

Yeah actually I should be more precise in my question: is it reliably feasible?

Is it possible to use engineer’s air blast to counter the electric orbs sent by the harpies in the uncategorised fractal?

LH 2 jumps across gaps
I think shield bash does that too btw

Humans don’t let warriors get close, they don’t let warriors channel for 4s without interruption or breaking free, etc etc, can we stick to comparing damage?

Once you have the average coefficient for the cast just use the damage formula. I used a 30/20/10/10/0 build for the 66k, and I did not include all buffs.

Still without including all buffs, a 0/25/25/20 build would do 80k (swap to water at the beginning of the cast).

Edit: I can get to 87k with full buffs (mainly adding sigils of night and slaying to my previous calculation)

haviz.1340:

Compare eviscerate to firegrab.

It’s like having a managerial job versus playing roulette in a suburban casino in Syria while being underage.

Caffynated.5713:

Never mind that meteor shower takes 10 seconds to put out its damage and has a 30 second cooldown, while hurr durr blades can hit for 106k damage in 3.5 seconds with an 8 second cooldown.

Clearly comparable skills.

Yeah but 100b requires you to be rooted and has melee range, while meteor shower has aoe etc etc, we are comparing the damage not the class.

In the optimal rotation you wouldn’t need Drake’s breath or cone of cold, indeed. This is because we already cap burning and because their direct damage isn’t desirable on small groups. However these spells are very strong anyway, mainly on larger groups, due to having no target limitations (while LW can hit 3 target at most).

However it may be interesting to include drake’s breath in the rotation, not for damage but for ease of execution purposes: instead of swapping to fire in melee (sunspot) and hoping that our pre-casted LW will give us enough time to get into the right distance with the target before using burning speed, we could swap to fire in melee and cast drake’s breath for just enough time to get to 400 range (around 2s) before interrupting it with burning speed. The extended range is quite desirable since we are betting a large part of our output on the burning speed execution. This would result in a small damage loss, but could help land sunspot, so depending on how accurate you are it can be a good move to consider.

As for fury capping, boon duration does the trick, I agree. But simply slotting arcane wave as an utility also solves this problem. I think a utility slot is "cheaper’ than discarding scholar runes for this purpose. Also since comet may fail to hit the target on the fire field, arcane wave can ensure you to gain fury anyway, while boon duration would be useless (if you miss a blast with boon duration your fury output is cut by half, while if you have arcane wave you only loose one third of the fury uptime).

Well I get it you are talking about WvW.
I don’t do this game mode.
What is there even to talk about in WvW ?? :o

The fact is, due to fresh air, we do damage comparable to warriors in PvE.
And at the same time we have access to much higher utility, we provide support, etc.

You also have the earth trait to gain protection when you gain an aura

Ok time to talk about 30/30

Here is what I have come up with:

Traits
Fire: ember’s might, burning precision, persisting flames.
Air: air training and fresh air as usual, and what you like for adept (bolt to the heart is a safe choice).
Earth: stone splinters.

Optimal spell rotation:
There are two phases: earth and water.
1) earth:
-swap to fire, cast burning speed
-swap to earth, cast ring of earth and magnetic wave to blast your fire field
-swap to air and use lightning whip until fire is back up
2) water: same, except you use frozen blast and comet in water instead of being in earth.

With this rotation, if you manage to blast your fire fields you will produce 20s of fury every 30s. All you need to cap fury for your group is to use an other blast finisher. Arcane wave is the obvious choice.
Burning precision will enable you to maintain a very high uptime of burning on your targets (80% on average) and if your burning speed trail hits you will maintain more than perma burning.
The chance of failing fresh air procs virtually null.

It could be good to have assassin gear instead of zerker. This is because a high crit rate enables us to produce more burning and more vulnerability, while our damage is not compromised. I need to work more on this before I can confirm.

Thoughts:
pros
- very high damage, comparable to warriors.
- share perma fury
- requires high attention only for a short amount of time (fire combo)

cons:
- difficult to achieve: the fire combo chain is hard to pull off, and it may fail due to overlapping fields or moving target.
- burning speed’s trail does not always go all the way to the blast location, so making sure it hits is not easy.
- blast combos have a small radius so fury sharing may fail
- no access to vigor or any elemental attunement boons
- no extra heal or support
- sigil of battle may proc oddly due to our swapping pattern
- since we are using magnetic wave in our rotation and since we do not have cleansing wave (water trait), our condition removal is weak. In addition, we have a low health pool, so conditions will hurt us even more. Basically, three seconds of burning is all it would take to bring us down to below 90% hp (=damage loss). This is an important concern to me.

Conclusion:
Very desirable in an optimized group. High risk, high rewards
Things to consider: for trait variations we are locked into 30/30, this gives us 10 points to play with. Earth is the obvious choice for damage, but we could also use them in arcane (will talk about this variation later).

Discussion
Let’s talk about this. It is easier to be more complete in our evaluation of the build if we discuss it. We could play around with runes and sigils. I would like to hear what you have to say about this!

Actually meteor shower can deal at least 66k+ damage on a single human-size target, under speedkill conditions. And I am not even taking all possible buffs into account (like potions, night or slaying sigils, and non-stacking bloodlust)

For your information, on a human sized target (45 radius), the chance for a meteor to hit is: [ ( meteor blast radius + target hitbox radius * 2 ) / ( shower radius ) ] ^ 2
so: [ ( 90 + 45 * 2 ) / ( 360) ] ^ 2 = 0.25 (25%)

This has been empirically tested and confirmed.

So on average 24 * 0.25 = 6 meteors will hit a single human-size target.
Each meteor hits with a coefficient of 1.3
So on average a target will receive a coefficient of 6 * 1.3 = 7.8
The cast time is 3.8s, with an extra animation time estimated at 0.3s

To compare: 100b has a total coefficient of 5.5 and a cast time of a little under 4s.

Now you want to guess how much damage you can deal with meteor shower on a target bigger than the size of a human?