New to Ele - Hybrid builds?

[TheAgedGnome.7520]

After playing necro and Guardian (mostly FB) for years, I thought I'd try to learn to play the piano, so I boosted a new ele to 80. It's been interesting so far, but the damage seems underwhelming and the squishiness is real.

I only care about open-world PVE, and have been trying her out in Dragon Stand, both in the meta and just wandering around. I can survive in the meta ok, but I can't really take on a 3-pack of a vet mordrem and 2 other mordrem the way I could with FB or necro. So, that comes to build. Being the stubborn person I am, I looked at the ele skills and thought that hybrid power/condi was maybe the way to go, despite the metabattle preference for pure power. So, I cobbled together the build below just to try things out, suing what was fairly cheap and what came with the 80 boost. So I know it is not optimal....but are hybrids really not a thing w/ele? Any comments on build or hybrid in general is appreciated:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFUQJArYhcMoxhlNwpB8RMIAYRAYCcAkL5FoGSdhtQmE-jhiDQB4Z/hPoFQo6AYq6PAw0kAMz8DlZV4EAkAlg9QpBA-e

[Draconious.2751]

Let me preface this with Im primarily a PvP/WvW ele main who dabbles in PvE for legendaries. I am currently working on Shining Blade so Ive been in HoT a lot lately. My armor setups are for WvW roaming so they might be consider suboptimal for PvE but I have no issues with them. With that out of the way lets see if I can help you.

So from the build you have linked you are running a Scepter/Dagger with fire/air/water. This is kinda an odd build because its trying to be too many things at once.

Traditionally, when you go fresh air (middle grandmaster trait in air) you go full power build with water 2/3/x and arcane 2/2 or 3/2. Scepter/focus for survivability, invul on earth 5. Run glyph for heal, glyph of elemental power, lighting hammer, arcane blast, and conjure fiery sword. Glyph increases damage and inflict vulnerability when used in air which helps with dmg and synergies with the water traits. You cycle from air to other elements while air auto attacking to reset air's cooldown. I throw lightning hammer in there cuz its really cool and also hammer 4 is a high damage aoe centered on you. Thats kinda the basic concept of fresh air. High single target dps, fast rotation.

Now, for your build. If you wanted to wanted to stay with hybrid damage with sceptor/dagger my first thought is something like this http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFUQJArYhUMoohlNwpB8RMIAYRAoAcAq3QTMNIXyLQKA-jRhMQBAY/B2p8LfKBZp6PiUPApAWUZE-e

Warning, its not optimal but itll prob get the job done. You will mostly be using fire and air with this. Maybe some earth cuz earth dagger off hand skils are alot of fun. Fire 2 and 3 are blast finishers so you can put down a fire field with fire 4 then blast it with 2 and 3 to give yourself fury and might from persisting flames. Due to air, fury gives you more ferocity.

Fire 2 takes a while to animate so either open with that or predict where the mobs are going. Fire 3 can hit mobs alot by casting it just behind the mob. It will hit them going through them and returning. Bonus points if you are near them so they get hit by both blasts as well. Remember to blast fire 4 for that juicy fury leading up to fire 5. Make sure the target is on fore for fire 5 cuz it does more damage against things which are aflame.

Air 2 is instant damage, air 3 is an instant blind, air 4 is mobility, air 5 is a cc and evade (use for breaking bars or if you have no endurance).

Earth 1 and 2 are kinda useless, earth 3 is an aoe blind, earth 4 is a cc, earth 5 is a massive aoe with great power and condi damage but long cast time.

Water 1, 2 and 3 are meh. 2 is good if tou want vulnerability but its like fire 2 with a massive delay. 3 heals and does mediocre damage. 4 is good cuz it gives frost aura and can be detonated to heal. 5 is great cuz it heals and removes condis.

Use glyph of elemental power in fire or air. Fire to stack burns, air for vulnerability. Pop it when you are about to combo for fire 5. Fire grab is prob the hardest hitting ability in your arsenal besides earth 5. Spam signet of fire off cooldown, its an aoe burn btw. Firestorm will have different cooldowns based on which element you use it in. For the most part use it in fire.

I hope this helps.

[TheAgedGnome.7520]

Thanks! That definitely looks like a better build, and Balthazar runes make sense. And appreciate the rotation info. It's definitely hard to wrap my mind around the ele mindset, as compared to guardian/necro. :)

[Noodle Ant.1605]

This probably won’t help you survive in PvE, but if anyone’s interested I’ll just leave this here:

Because I don’t find performing well on already BiS/well-known builds fun, I actually went out and tried testing some hybrid (power/condi) ele builds at high-end PvE level - especially concerning the use of grieving stats and burning duration increasing gimmicks. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the money to invest in possibly non-functional builds, so I only roughly tested two possible options - campfire hybrid temp and FA ‘griever’ (a.k.a grieving weaver).

I tried to test both builds using full grieving gear, sigils of smoldering and accuracy, flame legion runes, toxic focusing crystals and bowls of fire meat chili. I could have used force/malice instead of accuracy, and tried different variations of food but didn’t want to spend gold doing so.

Campfire hybrid temp (fire 1-1-1, arcane 1-?-2, temp ?-3-?) is an interesting build that not only uses hybrid stats, but it also practically deletes the obligatory complexity that commonly is attached to every other ele dps build. Every skill is on the same one bar - as the name suggests, you only camp fire attunement and never switch out of it. It also has a surprising knack of generating large amounts of might (and fury) by itself. The build uses sc/f and has a priority list rather than a solid rotation, and a proper bench for the build could probably land at ~30-32k (dps reaper numbers) or potentially higher (with allies, for arcane power?). However, ~70% of the dmg is from burning, so this build may have been more optimised taking more condi options.

FA ‘griever’ is a pre-existing build (now fire 1-1-1, air 3-2-2, weaver 1-1-1) that integrates aspects from both pure power and condi sword weaver, but was/is ultimately inferior to both in their respective areas (burst and/or overall dmg). I still believe that griever is still completely outperformed by viper weaver (burst, overall dps, even sustain and tankiness :tongue:), trailing behind by maybe 1-2k (~36-38k, might be higher but I can’t bench properly). The dmg split is ~50% burning, so optimisation can go both ways, but may favor power more.

In conclusion, hybrid ele builds definitely exist and are actually in the viable realm, but are still unfortunately outperformed by pure builds and lack specific aspects of pure builds (burst/pure condi dmg) to be considered worthwhile by many.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

Fire spec got a up last patch + he overcap burning duration with Weaver's Prowess, the sigil and the food. There is still room for some optimisation.

[TheAgedGnome.7520]

All good info. I just ran with some HP trains yesterday and got enough HPs to train both Weaver & Tempest, so that gives me a lot more flexibility (and at the same time, a lot more to consider!).