Punch.4231

Many have done a great job covering the weaknesses of the spec as is. IMO Catalyst would be fine if you could use Sword or Warhorn with it. Or Sword AND Warhorn. Fields and blasts and leaps for days. Instead it's clunky, inconsistently ranged Hammer... Here is my suggestion for Hammer: Make all of the Hammer 3 orb skills combo fields that travel with you. To have no fields with hammer (and with Cat utilities) outside of Jade sphere is ridiculous. Limit it to one at a time if you need to, just give us a chance to actually enjoy the Catalyst mechanic (combos=auras). I'm not counting the sphere as the catalyst mechanic because in its current state it's trash. Catalyst is close to the spec I wanted, but it needs some kitten help.

I don't love superior elements but I agree with swapping out some condi for more precision. I'll give this a go, thanks.

You're still way better off playing thief or revenant but this build is pretty fun and thought I'd share. It does deal really well with Rangers and condi classes, of which there are many, as you are aware. You have no protection, but barrier doesn't consider protection anyway, and let's be fair, while it's more dangerous it just feels better without it... I don't play much anymore but I think the build deserves more testing - I haven't seen anyone else playing this. I'm liking Sigil of Vision - Sword doesn't have big hits but it hits often, and you can get a lot of hits in a 3s window, especially with air/air sword 3 (and with tons of vuln from primordial stance and electric discharge). You have a lot of mobility, perma regen, perma fury, and condi clear galore. If you're with a group you offer some group utility from water line but mostly your best contribution is that you won't annoy your friends by dying all the time, because you have strong kiting potential. Anyway, hope someone else finds some fun out if it. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAw2lVwiYPMJmJW0TdvXA-zVxYBBBWFGYQBsRCCxNIC4oAJdGNKB6VBo4V53A-w [ ]

Well played. I like the quick immob after lightning orb. Do you miss not having regen? Or you find sustain ok as it is? Fury and Protection on auras is nice. I usually find in order to not get ER interrupted I need more mobility or stability (via rock solid)

I would add that Bolt To the Heart does not seem to apply to Elementals. Would be nice if it did.

I guess it comes down to what constitutes a "build". Initially I meant what is the worst/most underpowered damage type and weapon combination and I wanted to see if I could make it work, at least as far as a montage goes, but the literal "what is the worst" is yeah, not really a build at all. I think the more interesting things are facts like scepter autos apply condis, but scepter is a trash condi weapon. Why? Poor design? Underutilized by the community? Gotta test it. Is there hidden power there? Can a ele be a budget scepter necro? Today I tried minstrel/nomad (I don't have full minstrel gear) core staff as suggested by MegaMetzler and it turns out it is actually possible to kill someone with it, thanks to elementals. Is it suboptimal? Yeah. Terrible? Probably. Kinda fun? Yup. But I think the point of trying weird stuff is that we may find something viable where we least expected it. I have a super weird build in mind that I think will work because of this exercise. So for those asking WHY and saying WTF there is both an element of challenge in attempting something way off meta and also some small hope that you might discover something you hadn't previously considered. That's kinda what theorycrafting is all about, I think. Anyway, much love to my fellow ele mains.

condi or power?

lol I love that you even put in terrible consumables. Thank you for raising (lowering?) the bar. I feel like any kill with your build would be basically beating the game.

Thanks for the feedback. I don't play much anymore but I spent a couple afternoons playing tempest and core condi with scepter and staff. They're awful, you guys were right. Zeesh you were also right in that TB stats and signet of fire are enough to get kills at times. It was actually pretty rewarding though, to get kills on a build this bad. I was curious to see how bad these setups would be, and yeah, they suck. But basically anything can look ok in a montage.

I'm thinking condi scepter. Thoughts? We all rag on elementalist but what's the absolute worst iteration of the profession?

It was overperforming and got overnerfed. What we need is some tuning. Desperately.

I agree with Broski that that power level is pointless and trying to get crits out of it doesn't make sense unless your crits are tied to condi application. You'd be better off dropping power for precision and running fire and arcane for burning precision and arcane precision (plus condi cover blinding ashes). That's what I prefer but to each his own. Also, unless you're running "one with air" in air trait line you pretty much need speed runes as an ele in wvw IMO. You can get away with something else if you're just dueling or running in a group or if you only fight somewhere where you can lightning flash out of trouble. But in general just about every other profession can outrun you (or catch you) as a roamer and that's not a good thing. In your build running speed runes would allow you to swap out the long cooldown of eye of the storm (since you no longer need the mobility) for something better. With fire line traited "feel the burn" will blind, do decent burning damage, give 3 stacks of might, clear a condi with fire aura, and is on a 15s shorter cooldown, so that would be a good option but there are a few. GLHF