Guild Wars 2

Scepter/Focus will have damage and utility from both weapons and range to allow you to attack earlier and kite effectively. Healing will be weak. A Scepter/Focus build could go condi (Fire focused) or power (Fire & Air focused).

If building for Condi, your key stats are condition damage and expertise, with secondary attention to power and precision. If building for power, your key stats are power, precision, and ferocity. For Condi, I recommend a Fire/Earth/Arcane or Fire/Arcane/Tempest build. For Power, I recommend Fire/Air/Tempest or Fire/Air/Arcane.

Condi will be easiest. You’ll do your damage from Fire (prioritizing burning damage) and activate utility skills and defenses from the other attunements only as needed. Signet of Fire is your most damaging attack. You’ll use Conjure Fiery Greatsword and your Arcane utilities as available, too. I favor condi at the moment, specifically this build. Just replace the dagger with a scepter and you have what I’d recommend for you.

Normal Power will be next easiest. You’ll do your damage from Fire (prioritizing “normal” damage) and activate utility skills and defenses from the other attunements only as needed. You’ll use Glyph of Storms, Conjure Fiery Greatsword and either Conjure Frost Bow or Conjure Lightning Hammer when your best Fire attacks are on cooldown. Signet of Fire will be left on passive to increase Precision.

Fresh Air is a more active and difficult variant of Power. You’ll do your damage in Air, using Fire to perform single attacks to “reload” Air quickly. When in Air, you’ll do most of your damage with Air Overload and conjured weapons. Conjure Fiery Greatsword and either Conjure Ice Bow or Conjure Lightning Hammer will be used while waiting for Air Overload to become available. Glyph of Storms will also be a good damage source. Again, you’ll leave Signet of Fire on passive.

Sephylon.4938:

Just to add to my original post, power reaper is now out-performed in pve by a power mesmer. MESMER! A class that was known for sub-optimal dps due to the amount of utilities it gave to the group. And they just spam 2 buttons to out dps us.

To be fair, Power Mesmer outdamages Power Ele, too.

Imagine if power builds had an equivalent trait to Lingering Curse. It’d take something like +650 power to Axe attacks to match what condi gets from LC.

Vanilla Condi Elementalist

Goals: 100% burn duration, vanilla spec (Fire/Earth/Arcane), permanent passive Signet of Fire, 16s recharge on Signet of Fire, massive base condi damage, self-generation of Might (switch Fire to 1-1-1 if you have raid buffbots).

Notes: Updated 8/25/2017.

Dagger/Focus for a Condi F/E/Arc build might compete with Tempest? You give up overloads, all the Tempest traits, and warhorn. You get back a 100pt bump in condi damage, faster recharge on Signets, and maintained passive effects on Signets.

Focus is close enough to Warhorn and Flame Wall would be up a lot more often than Wildfire (16s vs. 24s cooldown). The bump to condi damage and permanent passive Signet of Fire is really nice.

I’m not sure it could compete with Condi Tempest, but it’d likely be viable DPS and probably top Power Eles now.

Edit: Posted an example in the post your build sticky. I think I like it!

The FA (and Zealot’s) is for constant auras and some damage (remember, Overload Air took a beating anyway). It’d be down to about 40% of the damage of a Dagger/Warhorn meta build with perfect boons from teammates, but it’s not for raiding and it likely won’t ever have perfect boonbots with it.

I keep toying with a FA Air/Water/Tempest Auramancer for open world, dungeons, and fractals. That’s a constant easy stream of fury, swiftness, healing, regen, and vigor. Likely to run Zealot’s so I don’t die of old age in combat, but you could give up on offense and go full Magi’s on the same spec. It would use boon food and a Sigil of Concentration to keep duration up.

This is where the meta doesn’t fit with open world PvE. The meta is built for raiding.
It assumes boons from teammates that you may not receive in open world and also assumes that you’ll stay stacked in melee range to continue to receive those boons.

If you’re running around in open world PvE, you won’t receive all those boons from dedicated boonbots and your own boons become more important. You also won’t have any reason to stack. Range is really good for defense in those circumstances, so Scepter and Staff will have non-offensive advantages that may outweigh the offense of other sets.

Fun! Any idea of the build or buffs used?

The Overload Air changes hurt FA builds a lot. Overload Fire took a hit to power damage, so condi damage is still viable. Basically, they cemented the Dagger/Warhorn condi meta for Ele. I suspect they’ll roll back the Overload Fire changes eventually.

Right, the current meta for Ele is Dagger/Warhorn Condi Fire/Arcane/Tempest. It should still be the meta after the patch. My example above was for a Staff Hybrid build, not meta. I’m not a stickler for the meta, but if you wanted to build to it, I’d look to the benchmarks on the Quantify site.

I’d recommend Quantify over Metabattle. The Scepter build gives pretty decent range, though not quite as much as the Staff.

It depends what you want to do. If you want to enjoy open world PvE, it’ll be just fine. You’ll be able to use the skillsets of all your elements well whenever you want. You’ll be fine in dungeons and low-end fractals, too.

Things will get more difficult in PvP, WvW, high-end fractal PvE, and raid PvE. Celestial is too much a generalist stat set and those modes favor specialization toward damage or an auramancer build.

Staff hasn’t been meta for a while. Power Staff was meta before Power Dagger/Warhorn, which was replaced by Power Scepter/Warhorn, which was replaced by Condi Dagger/Warhorn. If reviewed now, a Condi Staff build would top the Power Staff build, but it still wouldn’t be good enough to replace Dagger/Warhorn for either.

The only reason the former meta build can be found is because it wasn’t taken down a year ago when Dagger/Warhorn replaced it and that was long before the Condi meta took over.

Definitely agree that dagger is better than staff for condi (and power), but I’m sticking to the OP’s question. I played the Power Staff Ele meta for months and it was fun. I’d still go hybrid now if I wanted to play Staff.

That 250% damage bump for the power component (assuming lots of precision boons) is really nice for the power build, no issues there. Can’t ignore 500% damage on the condi side and the ability to use the whole skillset as a hybrid, though. Ice Bow 3 and Overload Air definitely favor Power. No question there, but I wouldn’t use either on a Hybrid or Condi build. Ice Bow 4 has a lot of condi damage in it, btw.

Condi outperforms Power for Overload Fire and Firestorm (Glyph) if you feel like running Glyph of Storms over one of the Arcane utilities on the hybrid. The burning component of each is just too big. The same is true of GFS. Hybrid and Condi builds can use GFS2 for outstanding damage (15k burns, 5s cooldown) and still make use of GFS4 and GFS5. GFS net damage favors Hybrid pretty significantly.

I wouldn’t ever go pure Condi with Carrion, Dire, or Trailblazers on a Staff Ele. You’re just not going to get enough out of the skillset without paying attention to Power and Precision. You really need to go Power or Hybrid to get the most out of Staff. I stick by Hybrid, but you can have a lot of fun and do well with Power, too.

Celestial will probably never be optimal, but it can be fun. Pretty much any spec can handle open world PvE. It’ll have a lot better sustain than power, condi or hybrid builds, so you can be a bit more relaxed in your gameplay. It won’t have anywhere near the offense of the focused power, condi, or hybrid builds, though.

Arcane Power’s cooldown is a bit long, but I do like the autocrit. I might swap out GoEP for it, Arcane Blast, or Arcane Wave. Whatever works best for you is what works best

Lava Font and Meteor Shower both cause damage over time, so burst isn’t particularly strong on Power Staff Ele. Signet of Fire and Overload Fire are outstanding burns, and Flame Burst is really good. That’s three. With Glyph of Elemental Power, you add five strikes with burns. With Arcane Shield, you pick up another good burn. Both of those also break stun. Toss in Arcane Brilliance as your heal for another burn.

Plus, it’s not like you can’t do power damage. You don’t ignore skills just because they could be more effective with a different build – this is a hybrid, after all. While power will cause roughly 250% of the power-based damage thanks to advantages in precision & ferocity, a hybrid will cause over 500% the condi-based damage.

With a staff, I’d take a Vipers hybrid (1 Sinister earring, 1 Sinister ring) over the pure power build. Use Accuracy & Bursting Sigils with Balthazar runes. You’ll come up short on the power and crit/ferocity calcs, but more than make up for it in condi damage over a Berserk pure power build. You can camp Fire and enjoy your whole rotation, using Signet of Fire whenever it comes off cooldown.

Dagger/Warhorn is a lot easier, no question. Unless you really want the range or that 2k DPS against a large hitbox (and can hit the rotation to get it), Dagger/Warhorn is probably the better choice.

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

For comparison I have a necromancer in full viper’s gear, I can kill things soo much faster and the more the merrier. So far no ele build I’ve played can survive/handle the level of conditions, mobs, and equal damage output. I don’t expect them to play the same, but there should be comparable builds to handle those situations which the Ele severely lacks.

Eles are glass cannons: high damage, low sustain. You can build to be low damage, high sustain, but it’s difficult to get a good mix – particularly if you’re used to the much higher base health and extra health bar of Necromancers. Many Ele players rely on teammates and mechanics-based defense (e.g. dodge at the right time, stay out of red circles, etc.) for sustain, but that also cuts into offense.

The trick is finding that right balance of damage and sustain for your playstyle. Looking at your current build, I’d say that Earth/Fire lends itself to condi better than power, so I’d want to shift gear in that direction. With concerns about sustain, I’d recommend Carrion base, mixing in Dire later on, if needed. Both can be bought cheap with dungeon currency.

With the pending patch in September, I hesitate to recommend the 4xNightmare/2xTrapper Runes for your armor. Instead, I recommend Balthazar. With that and Smoldering Sigil in one weapon, you’ll have 85% burn duration, which will help a lot. Run a Malice Sigil in the other weapon for 10% global condi duration, taking your burns to 95%.

Finally, I’d swap the off-hand dagger for a warhorn, then switch to a 3-3-1 Tempest spec, which will give you a 20% boon duration boost (you seem to like that with your other gear) and Sand Squall if you’re hit below 90% health (great defensive power). You’ll also have Sand Squall on demand with Earth4 and Dust Storm with Earth5.

Build Example

Post-patch condi burn build, based off of Quantify’s current condi tempest

Note: will use Toxic Focusing Crystal post-patch. Master Tuning Crystal is for current use and closest spec. Final condi damage should be 1825 with the TFC.

Goals: Get as much burn duration (100%), condi damage, power, and crit chance (up to 91.19% with spotter, banner of discipline, and fury) as I could, while avoiding condi duration food and utility.

Quantify’s current build