luigrein.8514

I feel like they don't actually have that many conditions, what they do have is an abundance of boon corruption. I won't swear my non scientific impression is accurate though. That said as far as cleansing goes, it's not a great heal from a dps standpoint since it's channeled, but ether renewal is really good at cleansing conditions if that's the thing typically getting you. Bonus it's a core heal so you can use it on any spec. I've been running a very similar fresh air build (I miss my boon cata lol) but I did swap to scepter/warhorn because in bigger fights it felt like the etching was just getting filled with "don't stand here" zones. Utility wise I've been running aftershock (aegis), eye of the storm (stun break) and arcane wave (CC) but I wouldn't say any of those locked in slots if others suit you more. I've also been running the new relic of zakiros (lifesteal on crits while you have fury) and it does pretty well for healing back incidental damage but it won't replace your heal skill when you're under real pressure. As a final suggestion the summon elemental elite in water is a decent heal and CC while it's out if you find yourself needing it.

If I had to guess it's because with repeated usage you could cap the duration out and not get full value from subsequent castings. Basically if you were casting fulgor before the previous one had finished ticking (which I imagine would happen frequently on FA builds) once the excess duration hit 30 seconds (I think? May be off on the number) further casts would only get you back to 30 seconds rather than adding their whole tick time.

Hammer remains the best at energy generation in my experience (admittedly not high end focused) but scepter or sword paired with warhorn gives you enough energy to do your thing, just with a bit less breathing room. With a good amount of boon duration you can probably upkeep quickness with any weapon but you would be unlikely to keep up with other boondps on damage at that point. (staff would be incredibly reliant on lava font for energy so staff qheal cata is still in not a great place, which is a shame because I could see it being a good off stack capable healer with energy requirements removed)

Specifically for hammer catalyst: Your 2 skills (except fire) are your standout energy generators. They are also your best DPS skills so it's hard to say hold them, but as you get used to the flow of hammer combat try to make sure you're using some of them more than 5 seconds after dropping a sphere. (You can't generate energy while a sphere is active.) If you're running berserker stats or something ignore this, but if you're running celestial or something else with good boon duration I'd reccomend giving a quickness build a try. The rotation is basically: Fire >grand finale (after first loop) > 3 > press lit up hammer buttons > jade sphere > air > jade sphere > 3 > press lit up hammer buttons > water > 3 > press lit up hammer buttons > jade sphere > earth > jade sphere > 3 > press lit up hammer buttons > back to start. Tl:dr version: pair your jade spheres with every other attunement swap, one as you leave an element paired with one just after entering a new one. Remember to hit 3 for each element amd grand finale when you restart your loop. The order you cycle through the elements isn't super important, fire and air orbs are offensive boosts so getting them up early is good but if for example you need to heal it's better to go water and not get downed then to stick to a hard fire/air first rule.

Was trying out power alac tempest and ended up on: Air 3-3-1 Arcane 1-1-3 Tempest 3-1-2 I'm not sure if it's the best performance wise, but arcane made the rotation feel better to me. Rotation was basically Fire > 5,2,4,3,5,2> overload > air > 5,2,4,3,5,2 > overload > fire with a couple autos/utilities thrown in as needed.

Right but finishers prioritize your field then oldest field. As long as your fire field is still up you'll blast that even though you just made an ice field. If you're blasting in someone elses field then yeah you'll get the ice blast.

Not saying I wouldn't appreciate some love to the spec because I absolutely would. However unless I'm mixing up my bugs I believe sphere specialist does boost quick duration, just the tooltip is bugged. Also cata does have the rare but not unique ability to boon the group from off the stack. Sure it's not generally a big deal since you usually want to be in the stack too, but it's nice to be able to run out for a mechanic or kite and still boon the group. You know, assuming that doesn't destroy your energy regen.

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.