Ephurum.2965

First off, OP, you've done a really great job and takin' the info people put forth and actually listening to it and questioning it, which is something that's lacking on a lot of MMO forums. There's a thin line of "meta" builds and their importance. But we also, as players, need to remember that having fun is important when you're spending time on a video game. I used a hammer on guardian since the game launched, cause I really kittening love hammers in games. But I also needed to make sure that my damage stayed within' a threshold that I wasn't dragging down "high - end" content and make someone else's job harder. I've been "maining" ele for about 2 and a half years now and have had a wonderful time. I think your choice of reading, understanding, and experimenting is important, as there are a lot of people who grab meta builds without understanding why. There are a couple of things in your opening paragraph that others have addressed, and I may hit them in this as well, so sorry in advance :P People have pointed out that in terms of open world (OW) your build will be fine. And that's 100% true. You kill things, you don't die. You also play the game how you want to play it, which is very important. When you get to that "high-end" content is where this comes into question. People have pointed out that toughness can drag aggro from certain mechanics (especially in raids) and that can be hard to fight against. Also, the question that occurs is what does that extra toughness bring? We're eles. We're squishy as kitten. So the extra vitality and tough can be very helpful in openworld to survive a little longer, I get it. And I strongly believe in the model of you do more damage alive than in the downed/defeated stated, lol.. I run full Mara/dragons in my open world build because it's just more enjoyable to me. When you have that full group/squad, that toughness drops off. It doesn't bring enough extra to the table over everything else. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAgilZwuYLsGGJOqOmtLA-DSRYLB5ZGNchnRCSgOUAK8YAL8+bBVA-e is a build I threw together that, is close to "meta" but also brings some more survivability to the playing field to be more enjoyable in high-end content. The difference between your previous build and this one is about 100 condi damage, which you get from the toughness trait, but a drop of almost 1100 power. Almost every ability that applies conditions does power damage of some sort. So having extra damage (even if you're not critting hard) still adds more to the end game. You've also brough up the crit chance. Crit chance doesn nothing for flat condi damage. BUT, there are many traits/sigils that work off of criting to apply something. Burning Precision works like this in the fire tree. The condi duration is also super important. Case in point, in the build you originally linked, and the build above, even though you have more condi damage, the burning from the build I linked above will end up doing more burning damage because it lasts longer. The burning causes blind trait (Blinding Ashes) can work in OW, it just adds more survivability. But anything with a defiance bar won't be affected by blinding. So any high-end combat will find that trait worthless. Persisting Flame's Damage increase is only strike damage, but the longer lasting burning fields increases burning ticks, as well as the extra strike damage is, no matter what, an extra damage increase. Pyromancer's Puissance is a fine trait as well, because stacking might as a tempest isn't hard, and the explosions from switching out of fire does apply some burning. Also, if you have the ritualist gear, you can some pieces of that on for a solid condi-alac build from tempest that can also be super enjoyable. I want you to have fun. The way you want to do it. We're not gonna talk about "just Dodge" and there does need to be a justification for people playing the weapons/items they want as long as they're competent with them. I think that's the hard part that a lot of people forget when playing this game. It is a fluffin' game, lol. I hope you find your fun and enjoy the game how you want to!

My personal viewpoint on this is that Gorrik does care. But you're The Commander. They've delved once before into your memories and relived the hardships. In Gorrik's eyes, you're unstoppable. You've done this before. You've been hurt before. And everytime something goes outwardly terrible (like the end of EoD) you're still there to pick up the pieces. I think this is an odd establishment of... let's say its belief from the G-man. He recognizes that this will be tough for you, but the thought of failure doesn't really come into his hypothesis because, at the end of the day, you're always on top. Yes, Gorrik is/was Inquest. Yes, the push for science is a big drive for Gorrik, but he's not the same as he was when we met him. There has been growth. His arc in EoD was about all about faith in a person (Ankka) . And at the end of the day, this faith in that person and who he thought they were didn't line up. This led to his growth. It seems, to me, that the big notion of this story will be the inner workings of the Commander's trauma, this is pretty obvious lol. But I don't think the Commander will have processed these traumas as well as others think they have. I find it fascinating and am really excited to see the aspect of failure in a way we've never seen before. There's no world ending mission, the world won't explode. Its just... you. And the consequences that have led you here.

Couple of things to point out. Superspeed - Not sure how much the Staff 4 will give. But you could have about 7ish seconds of Superspeed if you use them back to back. (Which you probably wouldn't.) Stability - EoTS doesn't give stability in WvW. It's a stun break, but no Stability. Transmute earth aura will give it. (Losing the protection, but the stability is better.) Not sure if it'll be one stack or more, yet. The overloads give a single stack to the Tempest. I've not played Tempest as Zerg support healer. But I'm assuming the 1 stack (Or 3 if you Overload earth) may go sooner than later, the offset of that is the stun break that also occurs on Overload. Cleansing - Overload Water cleansing will be as is. Cleansing fire will only work for the tempest and the staff cleanses stay the same. The buff comes from the healing that's coming when you cleanse. Healing rain works at range and will cleanse one more condi than the purge gyro would. It doesn't switch to boons like the old PoP build for scrapper. But with med kit/elixir gun, you've got more prominent condi cleanse for the Engi. But the healing rain does have the range on it. Consistent healing - Aura spam does indeed get a buff. This will provide more protection if you're running an aura build in with Earth trait line (but that does lose Arcane/water for healing/boon support.) Water blast is nice, its long range projectile that could get destroyed through the projectile hate vs. a cone that is short range. This can be 50/50 for the engineer. Revives - Geyser will rez for 4% (8% if you double up!) over the duration. Function could fully rez up to 3 people (if the gyro doesn't die or get CC'd.) Damage - Def a win for Ele. With the range of staff and the ability to tag. You could run a mortar kit, but then you're running into the same amount of projectile hate. Crowd Control - Its zerg play, here. Stability or bust. BUT. The ele will have more access than the Scrapper does. (Running 'traditional' support build blah blah.)

So, I don't normally post on the forums but there's a lot of stuff to unpack here. 1.) The weapon being good at lockdown and a slower paced weapon/control isn't bad, in fact it's what brings people into the weapon in the first place. You're 100% correct there. What is off is that the focus on the hammer's auto attack and the symbol upkeep. The permanents only truly come into play during open world PvE content, where the trait lines become less in focus, and it's more about just not being stupid. BUT, in any sense of Fractal/Raid/WvW/SPvP. The hammer falls of heavily because these "permanents" don't exist. No one will truly grab Writ of Persistence for the hammer, they'll grab it for the other weapons who's symbols are more controllable. If they cannot control it, i.E. The autos don't go out then the symbol, for hammer, is completely useless (this is alas, PvP oriented only). For PvE, in high level content, the damage the hammer puts out isn't quick enough and those "Permas" fall off. You'll never drop radiant if you're looking at high level power damage play, and you'll focus on Zeal to keep the vuln/damage increase. In all, the weapon is great on paper if it is 1 target, and you, not moving. It's not going to work in any high level play. You're 100% correct in it having everything tied to the symbol, but that's the issue that needs to be addressed. The symbol needs to be moved to a key press, the attack sped up, and not have a weapon like a hammer tied to having so many single target CC's. I love hammer, I've literally used it for every game mode I can. I use it for roaming/zerg fights wvw, SPvP, and for open world/raids when I could. But it always fell off, and that's the biggest issue. It needs to be cleaned up, focused on the CC' and allowing for a user to CONTROL the damage you output, when you need it. Not just when you can get 3 auto's off and you've got a symbol to rotate through.