Guild Wars 2

Thanks a lot!

I received some good advice over at this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Highest-Possible-Burst/first#post4085288

TL;DR version is that “Utility strength” uses an inherent weapon strength based on your level and possibly the quality of the weapon you’re using. For exotic users, the average value would be 952.5, and for ascended users it would be either that or 5% higher, though no-one seems to be quite sure which and due to my lack of ascended gear I can’t test it.

Well, I am looking for the theoretical maximum burst, so one of the assumptions is that everything goes perfectly. When you think about it, if I used the mean value, around half the hits would actually end up being higher than my supposed “highest possible” burst.

So, my only remaining question is, what is the highest possible value that the inherent weapon strength can get?

For the sake of clarity to others reading this thread, the utility strength I’m refering to is the one in this formula:
Damage = Utility strength * Power * Skill coefficient / Armor
(http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage_calculation)

That’s basically the problem I have with the calculations – I hadn’t been able to find any explanation on what it actually is until Darox came along.

Thanks, that helps a lot!

I’m still a little confused on how that works though – the damage varies, so the utility strength must vary too. What I’m looking for is the absolute highest value it can get, but I have no idea where to find it. I take the value you listed is the average, but do we know the minimum and maximum values as well?

Looking at some weapon strengths, the inherent weapon strength you gave me seems to be the same as scepter’s average weapon strength. If that’s the case, could the maximum value utility strength can get be the same as maximum value scepter’s weapon strength can get?

At any rate I now have some numbers to work with, so I’ll at least get reasonably close to the real highest possible burst even if I just roll with the inherent exotic weapon strength.

oZii.2864:

Maybe give him a PM for help.

Thanks, I did just that

Aiden.6483:

562xx or 56×2x are both higher damage than 26221.

What about 16520? It has an extra 10% from enduring damage.
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArYhUMKZ25wlBdEBOABp6IT/yEHFkA-TlBEABMt/o8rN9AAcCAI4BAko6PbpEMAwBgzP/8zP/8+93f/93fLFQELjA-w

Aiden.6483:

Im not sure if churning earth is better than the 20% modifier you give up on (tempest defense) someone would have to do the math / check it, otherwise maybe earthquake -> LF insta phoenix -> air+ arcane might be higher.

There’s a one second delay between swapping attunements, so if we stick with my sub 1 second limit we only get to do that once. I’ll probably have to do the math on both Churning Earth start and Earthquake start though, and if we end up not using tempest defense, it might even be worth not traiting for tempest defence and going for something else instead. Elementalist traits are hard

Talking about traits, is there an internal cooldown on weak spot? If not, we’ll get +1% damage for every individual hit we land.

Good, but it’s not feasible we’re looking for here, just raw damage

EDIT: Wait a minute, are you calling a 5+ second combo burst?

Carpboy.7145:

Yes, im pretty sure utility dmg is the same as weapon skill dmg. I believe utility power is the same thing as weapon strength. An easy way to test this would be using utilities with ascended weapons, then with exotics and see if the dmg changes

There are two different formulas for weapon skill damage and utility skill damage though. The numbers for your tests would indeed be different, but only because power is part of the formula, not because weapon strength changes. Then there’s the fact utilities work regardless of the weapons, so I think we can conclude that’s not the way it works.
The damage formulas can be found here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

Does anyone actually know how this works? I’m trying to figure out just how much damage an elementalist burst could do in a ideal case scenario, and for that I need to know how to calculate these things.

It turns out the utility strength seems to be somehow randomized as well – I removed all my weapons, traits and PvP gear in general and spammed some utilities on golems, and never received two identical hits from any of them. The actual numbers don’t seem to be documented anywhere.

^Being a necro player I see what you mean – some of those bugs have been around since the beta events :P

Are you sure? It seems to change with power, so we’d get crazy increase in damage when we increase the power.

For ordinary weapon skills the tooltip number is calculated like this:
Tooltip damage = (average weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (level-based Armor value),

I’d imagine it’s something similar for utility skills, except the average weapon strength would probably be utility power instead.

According to the wiki, the formula for calculating utility skill damage would be
Damage = Utility strength * Power * Skill coefficient / Armor

What puzzles me is that Utility strength part – I see no explanation on how to actually find it. How is that calculated?

Great, now all we need to do is to do the math and see what we end up with

How many might stacks could you stack before the burst though, and how? I’m counting 6 + another 6 during the burst, assuming you place a Ring of Fire next to the target without actually hitting it prior to bursting.

EDIT: As a side note, calculating damage for utility skills appears to be tricky – “utility strength” isn’t documented anywhere as far as I’m aware, and it seems to be randomized based on my tests.
(Damage = Utility strength * Power * Skill coefficient / Armor – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage_calculation)

Oh well, I suppose I’ll use the outdated values then and hope they aren’t too far off.

Removing steady weapons is a horrible idea though. We need some way to test things, so I’m really hoping they add something to replace them.

Are they gone?

I was planning to do some calculations, and since most of the skill data seemed outdated I wanted to calculate the skill-specific coefficienct myself, but to do that I need to know the weapon strength, and with ordinary weapons that is picked randomly. We used to have special steady weapons that didn’t have that variance, but with the updates to PvP they are no longer available via the weapons merchant.

Was this essential theorycrafting tool removed, or is there still some way to get them?

Skrill.6170:

Highest possible burst
(I realize that this will never actually happen, but the question was “What’s the highest possible burst”)

That’s exactly the kind of burst I was looking for – I want the highest theoretical burst, not a feasible one

There is a one second delay between swapping attunements though, so both of your rotations go beyond the one second limit, and since we started with a ½ second limit I’d rather not increase it beyond that.

To some of the posters: please read the OP before posting! We’re only interested in sub 1 second bursts here, and we’re looking for enough details for me to actually calculate how much damage they do.

So far, we’ve settled for this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArYhUMKZ25wlBdEBOABp6IT/yEHFkA-TlBEABMt/o8rN9AAcCAI4BAko6PbpEMAwBgzP/8zP/8+93f/93fLFQELjA-w

Our current burst rotation is:

- dragon’s tooth, phoenix and churning earth in ring of fire for 9 might, glyph heal or arcane brilliance for another 3.
- pre-cast earthquake and start hurl
- Lightning flash as the first projectile from hurl hits (another 3 might from spell slinger)
- Attune to air, air 2, pop both arcanes and ride the lightning in melee range.

Any improvements, or are we looking at the biggest burst know to elementalists here, FGS trails aside?

You can’t get 1 shot by a lich if you have 18k hp. It just won’t happen. 2 shot maybe, but if I were to take a guess I’d say you’d probably get 3 shot.

As for necromancer survivability, a glassy one would take around 30k damage to take down, and if you know what you’re doing, they have no way to really stop it. Necromancers have ridiculous amounts of firepower when built for it, but they can’t deal with focus. A decent thief on the other hand should never be pressured down – if you’re taking damage, leave and come back before the poor necro can recover.

As I said in the OP, this is for figuring out the highest theoretical burst in the game. Actual usability is irrelevant.

As for the rotations, the timer starts when the first tick of damage lands, so long animations are not an issue, so long as we haven’t hit the target with anything before that. If slow animation skills give us the most damage during our short time window, that’s what we should go with.

Which combo does the most damage?

^Agreed, for the most part. I’m just having a hard time finding those good players in random WvW roaming

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

—Snip—

We are talking about the highest possible theoretical burst under ideal conditions here though. Fresh Air does absolutely nothing for us during our sub 1 second time span, and we don’t care about guarantees. Tempest’s Defense and Scholar Runes are definitely the way to go, but Sigil of Air is actually a solid point. It’ll be a close call, but it might be higher.

You make a fair point for actually usable builds, but that’s not what we’re here for.

Gokil.2543:

—Snip—

Could be. At any rate, I’ve long wondered how high I could theoretically push my burst, so I’m going to calculate it anyway.

26520 has one trait point more than it should though. I think 16520 is our best bet, though we will lose those 3 might, and you crushed my dreams of 5% bleed modifiers as well. Still, I think I’ll go with that unless someone can think of further improvements. It’s too late for math today, and I’ll be too busy tomorrow due to real life getting between me and my beloved computer, so I’ll do the damage calculations the day after that. Maybe I’ll finally have conclusive proof that people have no reason to complain about thief burst soon

Dee Jay.2460:

This isn’t 2012 anymore where you could kill most enemies with a single Cloak and Dagger + Backstab combo.

Not entirely true – people who actually dodge my obvious signet burst when I run straight at them seem to be a rare breed.

Do we need those points in arcane though? It’s only for fury as far as I can tell, and for our purposes we can just assume every skill crits.

We also have two builds to decide between now. Going in fire essentially gives us extra 205 power, going in earth gives us 10% and 5% extra damage. I’ll have to do some calculating first, but I think the earth build wins this round?

Well timed CnD should hit at the same time as steal, and that’s when the timer starts. After which you only have a 1/4 second backstab to worry about, so unless aftercasts wreck my timing it should work

Your post is pretty much perfect Gokil. We could increase the amount of time allowed slightly, but let’s keep it below the 1 second mark.

Great, that’s what I was looking for! I added a Sigil of Bloodlust and went with LightningBlaze’s build. Can anyone think of any further improvements to this? http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArYhUMKZ25wlBdEBOABp6pfZijCSqA-TJRBwAX3fYxJAgcZAAPAAA

What about the rotation? Assuming this is the build we use, how would you squeeze the highest amount of damage out of it during a span of 0.5 seconds, and what preparations would you do to do so?

15k? Was that a bunker?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-1do5naLmU

It’s not me getting hit, but you get the idea. In WvW the best I’ve seen would be 22k, though I’m wearing mostly exotics. Nothing compared to the total amount of burst my thief has though..

It’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be, I’m still getting the occasional 15k+ crits even in sPvP. If your damage is really that low, why don’t you just go glassier?

Of course, the nerfs suck, but I’m still more than capable of one shotting (Fine, one-bursting. Steal-CnD-Backstab) anything that moves

As a side note, I’ve been told elementalists have the highest burst in the game. I’m still waiting to do the actual math on this, but for now address your burst related complaints to them :P

Are you using a Sigil of Battle? That combined with good combo field usage should get you pretty high.

A few days ago I found myself in a debate about the highest possible burst in the game. I was told s/d elementalist would be the biggest bursters, and while I initially dismissed the idea due to my obviously superior 4 signet thief spike, I soon realized I actually have no idea how high elementalists are capable of bursting. Rather than making it a yet another pointless “Mine is bigger!” argument, I decided to just do the Math and find out.

That’s where I ran into a problem: I’m not familiar with the ways of elementalist burst. In order to do the calculations, I’ll need to know the build and all the damage sources used during the burst, as well as the amount of might stacks the build might be able to stack up before bursting. Just to be clear, we’re looking solely for pure damage here, so whether the build is actually practical is irrelevant as far as I’m concerned.

That’s where you, the greatest theorycrafters of the elementalist subforums come in!
- What is the highest theoretically possible elementalist burst build?
- What damage sources does the build use during the spike?
- How many might stacks can it stack up?

We’re talking about an approximately half a second burst here, starting from the first tick of damage done. No buffs from allies allowed, and no FGS flame trails because reasons :P

Keira Ferland.5619:

lol wat

He asked for a burst build, and I consider myself an expert <3

Ah, ok. I usually don’t find that a huge problem, but to be fair it is a 1200 range skill, so being a little bit weaker in point blank ranges is fair IMO.

You’ll generally want to save your fear to secure a couple of good hits, and in my case that’s usually enough. If you get jumped on, your first priority is to make them stop attacking you, and a couple of ~4k crits on 10k health thief usually does the trick.

Dodge, turn, fear, spam 1 and you’re going to score some solid hits

If it’s burst you want.. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoYVl8MpxpFOxzJ8PNRLRtdIMCfgXnh2PQAEiA-TFSBwAROCAX3fU+dT9HU6DWcIAAcCAe8AAMrEMAwBA/+7v/+7vlCIilRA-w

When bursting, cast basilisk venom and all the signets. Use Cloak and Dagger and steal during the animation and immediately backstab. After that, finish them off and run – you don’t want to fight fair with this build. The video is a little bit outdated, but I still hit more or less the same just by adding blood lust stacks I was too lazy to get earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9d4Og8KbEM

For easy mode replace Signet of Malice with Hide in Shadows

Maybe I’m missing something obvious here, but what’s POB?

As for thieves, being a glass cannon necromancer I tend to fear them, follow up with a couple of life blasts and then DS 5&4 when he stealths, after which I try to cast some marks on my feet and heal up if he’s still alive.

Most of the time I deal easily enough damage to force them defensive or out right burst them down, and a defensive thief won’t last long against the amount of raw damage necromancers can do. Most thieves are not a problem for me 1v1.

I’ve never really had issues with not hitting melee targets either, but maybe that’s just me.

I’m not sure why, but I had a sudden urge to log in, record a single hot join game and upload it unedited. It’s not your typical Yski video, but I’m going to spam it all over the forums anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChBvHPTT-cY

I’m fairly sure that was my first game this week, so I was a little bit rusty

Go glass cannon and burst them down. You’ll have a hard time winning a sustain battle against a thief, so the safest bet is to apply a large dose of overkill.

No worries, the upper half of my reply was in character as well. I just felt I should perhaps explain a little bit why a character like that would work on an asura, especially considering I mixed some bookah in there as well. Literally.

You’ll never make progress without taking risks. If you think Oola grew the limbs she used herself you are not just stupid, you are stupid AND mistaken!

Seriously speaking, it’s a race of mad scientists. A power hungry necromancer going a little bit mad would probably be a norm rather than an exception

Your bookah “necromancers” are little more than poorly designed flesh golems with hardly any power to speak of, and the same goes for most of our own species. I always knew I was meant for something greater. But did they listen to me? Of course they didn’t.

“Too dangerous!”, they said. “The energies will drive you mad!”, they told me. Fools. I am more powerful than they ever imagined!

I am Yski Deathleaf, master of Soul Reaping. I was born in Ascalon before the Searing, and after leaving my inferior peers in college of Synergetics behind I moved my research away from the cowardly fools at Rata Sum. They never grasped even a fraction of what I now know!

Walk the path of power, but learn quickly. When I find you in the Mists, I’ll consume you and the tiny scraps of power you call your magical might. They may have returned, but I will not lose control!

Thanks for the links, at least we’ve had developers notice this, even if no immediate fixes are to be expected.

AlbertoUlkesh.4517:

What? Which of the new Grandmaster traits do you find necessary, to be “even remotely viable”?

I don’t think any of them are currently mandatory, but it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had traits entire builds are based around.

Care to link me to some of them? I couldn’t find any of them, hence my confusion.

Trying to force PvPers to do PvE like that is the worst possible way to get PvPers interested in PvE. If I was a new player, I’d hate every second of it until I had all the traits I needed.

One of the things I’ve always liked about PvP is the fact that everyone is on an even ground. Unfortunately, with the latest updates that is no longer completely true – we now have direct power upgrades in PvP, and ones gained primarily through PvE at that.

I’m talking about the trait unlocks. In order to unlock a Grandmaster Major trait, you either have to win a PvE boss battle, or pay 3 gold and 20 skill points, or smaller sums for lesser traits. This is a problem: not for me, since being an old player I have most of the traits unlocked and the resources to buy my way through the few remaining ones, but for new players who have a massive amount of traits to grind through and no gold to make it easy.

As far as I’m concerned that is a MASSIVE problem: new players have to do PvE in order to be effective in PvP.

What really confuses me is the fact that I haven’t seen any threads about this anywhere. Have I missed something important? From what I can tell, there should be angry mobs demanding justive everywhere. Is everyone really okay with this?

Don’t take away my one shot kills

It took me around 10 attempts, but you can indeed burst with golem suit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onzIWX-AQV8
That being said, the cooldown is ridiculous. Why is it even there, considering that thing is practically useless?

Once upon a time I went 1v4 in WvW as a glass cannon. They simply iqnored me and revived each other every time I killed one.

Unless we’re talking about a pistol mainhand thief here, I’m fairly sure Whirling Axe does less damage than the thief’s auto attack.

Rather than trying to run from it, laugh and punch the thief in the face. You’ll hurt the thief worse than he’ll hurt you. Alternatively, step out of the blind field and THEN punch him in the face. He’ll either follow you or not deal any damage.

There are no sides as far as the game is concerned. There’s only front and behind, 180 degrees each

If it’s just the look you’re after, there’s a tonic that turns you into a golem suit. I think it was this one: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hazmat_Suit_Transformation_Tonic

Still, I’d prefer the real thing. Not only is the suit ridiculously weak, most of the time when using it in WvW your victim simply walks away, leaving you with the gigantic cooldown :P

Slap in a piercing trait and you can instadown half a zerg with one bullet <3

I don’t like having auto attacks force me wait for animations to finish when I need to do something quickly, so I prefer to keep it off. The more control you have, the better.