luigrein.8514

Also of potential note: sure the ele in full dps gear isn't going to generate many of their own boons. However fire 4 lets them copy select boons their support gave them to the rest of the party and earth 4 extends all boons on the party. Neither effect cares about the ele's stats. Sure ideally neither matters but outside of high end groups they are helping patch up any boon duration issues.

I thought energy made a lot of sense day 1, when the orb was essentially a toggle that drained energy over time. The energy system (and UI) just never got updated with the fairly major changes the jade sphere went through, with the exception of the energy bar starting instanced PvE content at full. But yeah at this point I could see just tossing it, it could at least use some UI updates.

The weapon/timing of your skills can also be important. If you have any multihit skills save them for when you can build energy. Ex: I run hammer generally, earth 2, air 2, and to a lesser extent water 2 are all great energy builders. I'll try to adjust my element order as needed to make sure at least one of those will be in the energy building phase. (Open world and some mechanics are a lot of breaks partway in to your rotation) Hammer is I believe our best weapon for energy generation, but keep an eye out for multihits on whatever weapon you are using. Off the top of my head, pistol 2 in water and earth 3 in sword should be good generators, the dagger cone attacks in fire and water should be decent as well.

Yeah most of the weapons being hybrid along attunement lines means that most pve build really only care about 2 attunements. (ie: condi uses earth and fire, only dipping in to air because thats where our CC lives.) I'd be all for the older weapons being refocused in a purpose so that builds have a reason to use their other attunements. Having said that, ele weapons being hybrid is possibly good in pvp modes. (I don't play pvp/wvw enough to really speak on them, but pvp in general I believe is more favorable to jack of all trade builds.)

To be fair, they did extend the hammer 3 orb timer, they used to only last 5 seconds. It felt MORE frantic than weaver trying to keep the orbs up (and EE stacks, and aura stacks if you took those traits.) Re: hammer tempest. Don't see why it wouldn't work and pretty sure I've heard of people running it before. Haven't really tried it though, I do quick hammer catalyst in OW lately so usually if I'm on tempest it's to provide the team healing which... hammer doesn't really do.

For whatever it's worth, I've been quick-tank cata for a lot of our guilds fights against Deimos and it's worked pretty well for us. If I'd git gud I could probably swing heal-quick-tank but I wasn't confident in my ability to generate enough energy on staff. A nice plus is that it can apply boons from off stack, as long as you can generate enough energy from there (and don't mind that meaning you personally don't get them.)

Celestial tempest is absolutely what I would reccomended for a new ele player. Play around with the traitlines and find a playstyle that works for you. As far as taking it into instances go, should work fine as a support build but you'll want more specialized stats for a damage build. Just be aware that if you raid in cele gear you may end up being the tank.

I think the regen is on there mostly for pve reasons. I can def see it being superfluous in WvW but in PvE there's generally only 1 person you want providing regen to their group. 2 in 10 person content but given the 5 person target cap same concept.

I do appreciate being able to boon the group while off stack if needed. I'll cata quicktank for my guild sometimes and sure ideally I can drop the sphere on top of the boss to get everyone (centered on self would be too small on some bosses) if things get too spread out I can throw boons at the group.

I generally explain ele as: Each attunement is good at two things. Fire= power damage and condi damage, air = power damage and cc, earth = condi damage and defensive utility, water = healing and utility. Depending on what your build is trying to do, your probably going to be leaning heavy on 2 elements and the others will sorta just be there. With the caveat that this is a trend rather than an ironclad rule.

Catalyst specifically has stacking damage dealt boost, damage recieved reduction, and stability on aura through their top line traits, it's one of those things that's fine in pve but apparently really obnoxious in pvp when they can frequently get auras. (Tempest can also grant regen and vigor with auras, but I don't think anyone had issues with that one?)

An upkeep cost of more than 2 doesn't actually change anything for any legend but glint. A cost of 2 lets you upkeep quickness by keeping facet of nature active. The only other upkeep option for non-glint legends is a 6 cost upkeep ability.

In PvE at 50% BD you can upkeep quickness by using rocket charge and throw mine off cooldown, without alac. Non hammer builds might need to devote another utility slot to relevant finisher and/or get some extra boon duration, but overall I'm ok with this. I wanted to keep function gyro as a revive, and my engi is not legendaried out so didn't play around to see how much duration was needed using function gyro for quick. I also rule of thumb my quickness uptime as "if I can keep it 100% without alac in ideal conditions I can probably manage in an actual fight."

Admittedly most of the change requests I remember off hand about that weren't necessarily specificly about scrapper, but more the broad issue of '[spec] must use its utilities on CD to provide [boon] regardless of wether the utilities have core functions that are applicable.' For scrapper specifically, shredder gyro on CD no one cares, you want to do that anyway. But blast gyro (breakbar), heal gyro (healing), bypass coating (stunbreak), function gyro (revive) and to a lesser extent since they are less commonly used, purge gyro (cleanse) and bulwark gyro (barrier and potential accidental self nuke) all have useful effects that you may want to save for a situation that calls for them rather than using on CD for quickness. How many gyros you take and how much boon duration you gear for can affect how many of those you can hold as needed, but you're pretty much always going to be using something inefficiently in the name of quickness. If all specs had to do similar things for their quick/alac it wouldn't be an issue but when some specs get boons and utility and some get boons or utility it's going to be a point of contention.

Not trying to say it will ever be meta but did get a warrior build to sustain indefinitely through the moderate damage field while maintaining boons and not using the actual heal skill. Additional healing past that point was lacking though, second charge of the 2 shouts in utility slots and the heal shout isn't a ton of backup/reactive heals. (Yes, I am aware I have a meme build problem. This was concepting an alachealtank bladesworn, assuming they still get it with the next balance patch)

Tactics can add aoe healing to your shouts and burst skills?

It's at least partly just the meta. There's no reason non-heal tanks can't work, but the meta is generally "condense as much support as possible onto the fewest people so everyone else can go full damage." And to be fair, more casual groups might have more issues with beating timers with an extra support, high end groups would slow down sure but I doubt enough to really cause a problem. Of course, an extra support in more casual groups might also translate to less downstate so who knows. I have cata boon tanked deimos for my guild before? (We're definitely on the casual side.) Definitely was geared like a healer though, just didn't really contribute more than regen and soothing mist healwise to members of the group that weren't me.

I think a decent chunk of how the sphere works is leftover from the initial implementation. A seperate button with a non-marked small energy meter is a pretty reasonable choice for what is essentially a toggle that drains energy while active. The UI just hasn't been updated with the changes made.

Yeah it's essentially an auto rally. It's not the best at cheeseing mechanics because some of them hit hard enough to skip you past downstate but there are some it works for. Off the top of my head it can save someone from getting chomped in HT, although if they weren't close to getting out of it the damage field left behind might get them anyway. Should also work for VG greens if the squad is already lowish.

Seconding celestial with traveler as a good cheap generalist option. Taking it in to raids will probably mean you are tanking, which you may or may not want, but is doable.

To be fair, mechanists have traits to share their stats with the mech. This lets them make the mech good at supporting the mechanist's build/role without that having to mean they are good at everything at once. Other pets tend to have narrower focuses on their role. I'm not saying I couldn't see an elemental redesign that incorporated some aspect of that (probably further specializing the elementals and giving them related stat inheritances), but as it stands now I believe mechanist is the only spec that has a way to manipulate stat sharing.

"Scepter isn't really a support weapon" and "Scepter was the best main hand support weapon ele had" can both be true statements. I agree scepter isn't really a support weapon but it's competition for eles that want to use warhorn (which is definitely a support weapon) is just dagger, which is generally even worse at support. If ele HAD a main hand weapon with good support capabilities I'm pretty sure everyone would be all for the change.

I can see how the disengage could be useful in pvp, but as a pve player I would really rather it not shove me out of the effective range of most of my kit. Even ignoring it's tendency to launch you through terrain. Or less glitchily but also annoying, into hazards and out of boon share radius in instanced content.

I know from an optimization standpoint I'm doing it wrong but I like getting enough quickness going that I can use function gyro as a ranged revive instead of a quickness source. I'm at work so can't double check my gear, but believe I'm running berserker armor and weapon with scholar runes, rest diviners. If I rifle instead of hammer I also have a boon duration sigil instead of impact, but thats more for gear sharing reasons with power alac mech than anything else.

I've been enjoying playing catalyst, but it's really mostly hammer I've been enjoying. The jade sphere is ok but not great (and less great on weapons with lower energy generation) and the traits aren't really doing it for me. Tempest felt like it interacted more with the other skill trees.