lLobo.7960

I've been looking into some different builds and doing some myself, and was wondering how important is to reach 100% crit chance on builds. While I can easily get there with my dps weaver (due to the 15% bonus against targets with weakness), and on catalyst (with the hammer orb bonus and elemental empowerment), condi (and alac) tempest builds are not really there. What is the consensus (if there is one)? Is it better to swap some viper for rampage and get relic of aristocracy to cover the condi duration? Is 7% crit signet worth over bursting? Or maybe getting signet of agony to get 100% condi duration alongside the burning? Runes of Lyssa for precision with the condi duration?

For openword pve, mostly this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGQAIlZwuYbMN2LOqOmxfA-zxIY1og/MiQBUzEQpLTPCA-e with fireworks 100% crit, 100% burn and bleed, self boons, lots of defense and cleave.

Fireworks works great on ele, as you can keep the buff permanently rotating attunement skills (and overloads). Aristocracy is also easy to keep up with hammer or weaver duals. For open word, you can now keep a celestial build (with bday cake food) on 100% crit chance and 100% burn and bleed duration. No need for smoldering or agony sigils, leaving those open for more dmg. Similarly, for condi builds, using viper gear.

Signet Catalyst (fire/earth/cata) with scepter/focus is still a very solid build. A similar approach with hammer tempest also works well (fire/earth/tempest), supper durable and with nice aoe pressure. Staff support tempest (water/x/tempest - x earth for more defense, x fire for more condi removal, x arcane for revives) is also a nice one to have on the team. The zerker FA catalyst build, or a d/d duelist are all still viable in some way.

Now that we have a CMC on charge there is hope for a better future for Ele!

If you want to run with zergs, Id say go tempest. Fire/Earth/Tempest with dagger/warhorn will be a good start for you to stay stacked and keep up with your zerg while being able to tag a lot and actually help your group some. Overload earth (while having stoneheart) when engaging with the enemy zerg, follow up to overload air/fire to tag as much as possible and clear downs. And water when your zerg needs a heal. This setup is not the best support or dmg, but will help keep you alive (fire aura traits to remove condis, earth for protection and crit immunity) and relevant in a fight. When you see that you are able to stack and help your group you can upgrade to a more dmg (with fire/air or arcane) or support (with water/arcane or water/earth) and take a more relevant role. Staff weaver is nice, but needs you to be more mindful of positioning (not just stacking) and is better with more aggressive stats than celestial. D/D celestial catalyst is great for roaming, but not sure if it would be as good in a zerg fight, you get a lot more tagging power from overloads as you can cast them while moving into the enemy zerg. Hammer might be better, but it lacks the mobility of daggers to make sure you stay with your tag.

Its not that scepter is only good for FA, but that on a PvP mode, if you want to be a burst ele, you most likely need range and fast casting. Dagger has some burst but no range, Staff has range but no burst. So scepter is the go-to weapon for a burst ele. FA is taken so you can rely on superspeed to keep the range, while using all the crit bonuses of air attunement on your burst combos. Scepter is also used for condi builds (there is a 39k dps condi weaver build with scepter, and a condi tempest build also with scepter) but those are mostly used in PvE, as they lack the mobility of FA to disengage and reset fights in a PvP mode. That being said, I've seen the occasional scepter condi tempest in PvP.

Because its a burst skill, and burst is scepter domain? I think flame burst should work like a burn-only epi. It applies some burn to the target and copies all burn stacks on that target to 5 nearby targets. And while we are at it, give fireball, magma font, and meteor showers some burns...

Tempest is not just support, and weavers is not just dps. Tempest can be a dps or bruiser and weaver can also be a support or healer (yes, there is a nice weaver healing build out there) Ele elite specs are not about roles, but about how you do whatever you do (heal, support, dps). Catalyst is about combos and the Jade sphere. Using combos to get auras, elemental empowerment, and energy to deploy the sphere (for dmg, combos, or boons). You can play catalyst as a bruiser spec (like old cele d/d ele, but better), you can play as support with lots of boons for your group, you can play as dps...

This is true only for some high-end PvE builds. For others it can help a lot as they do not have means (like in pvp or open world / wvw builds) to achieve 100% stats. For precision in air, it can help fresh-air builds have 100% crit for their burst (when casting slow cast spells from fire and swapping to air before they land to get the precision and ferocity bonuses. For expertise it can help achieve higher bleeds/weakness durations when going into earth. Furthermore, having lingering elements in arcane also helps keeping those bonuses while rotating other attunements. For those overcaping, it would be no different from what they do now (since they don't have the bonuses). So it is not a buff to min/max builds (mostly pve dps builds) but a nice bonus to other builds.

I think there is a lot of work that could be done on traits and traitlines for ele to bring it up to par with current game mechanics. I've done a post a while back (a bit outdated now) with ideas: A few things: - Each minor adept trait in elemental traitlines should give a bonus to a major and minor attribute (when in that attunement): Fire: Power and condition dmg Air: Precision and ferocity Earth: Toughness and expertise Water: soothing mist and healing power Water not giving vitality (and instead giving soothing mist) is an issue with HP changing due to lower vitality. - Each elemental traitline should have 2 aura traits, one that gives boons to all auras on aura application, one that makes specific auras of that element to pulse boons. This makes not only providing auras beneficial, but managing aura application to maximize duration (and therefore improving use of traits and runes that extend aura duration). I think here we need to look at fire removing conditions. Cleansing should stay in water, fire should provide resolution on aura application (and fire auras pulsing might), so that fire has a way to deal with conditions, but it does not fully substitute water as a source of cleansing. It becomes a different way to deal with conditions. - Arcane traitline should make arcane shield an aura, in this way it would proc aura traits and could even be shared with tempest, providing tempest a great group defensive tool. - Arcane should have a minor trait that gives "leaser arcane power" (next 2 hits are critical and provide higher ferocity). It should also bring back the lingering attunements trait that extend the attunement bonuses for 5 secs after leaving an attunement. This is very useful to keep those "on attunement" traits going while you rotate. - Aura share should be a tempest trait, and aura heal should be a water trait. This would let other specs use auras for sustain (on the above item, it could be that frost auras pulse healing while active), while it would let tempest use other traitlines and be an offensive or defensive support spec depending on what aura traits and traitlines it focus (with the new aura traits). - A lot of traits that provide flat bonuses, in arcane, tempest, weaver, and now Catalyst, should be more flexible and attunement driven. So, bountiful power in arcane, should give a %bonus depending on attunement (air - crit dmg, fire - condi dmg, earth - dmg reduction, water - healing). This would allow more varied gameplay and different roles.

D/D Cat is like the old D/D ele pre-HoT but better (more auras, more boons, more mobility). Give it a go.

The hybrid part is still there, but much more based on weapon choice and combining that with attunement. Basically now if you use your Dagger skill 4 and 5 in water attunement to heal yourself, you can swap to air, use dagger skill 4 and 5 again to close a cab and cc the target, swap to fire and use dagger skill 4 and 5 again to burst it. They are all individual skills with different CDs. With the proposed skills and attunement system for the Disciple, you could use dagger skill 4 and 5 in water to heal yourself, but then you wouldn't be able to just swap to fire and burst as the skill would be on CD... You'd have to swap weapons (maybe staff) and attunements to get the real burst. In this way you'll need to specialize a lot more or manage your skills more efficiently (not so spammy). Weapons would get a more defined role too, so you could use scepter/focus for defense and daggers for offense.

There are lots of ways this could be implemented. Like glyphs is one way, but it might be slightly different as the idea is that you have a base skill and depending on the active attunement, some complementary effects. The main thing is that, depending on traits or use of the elite skill, you could have multiple attunements active simultaneously, so the effects on the weapon skills would compound. While glyphs (the utility skills) would only give a single version, using the last attunement to be activated. I think its a basic skill, with a check to see what attunements are active and adding effects to it. No changes in animation, maybe some added particle effects.

I think the arcane attunement idea is great, but would much rather see it with pistols in a spell slinger style. Pistols would be a cool weapon to combine with all the attunements, and the mechanic to unleash raw arcane force could work similarly to Harbinger or Bladesworn (both also use pistols). I just hope the pistol would be dual wield (so we can have p/p) or at least main hand. Off hand only pistol would be a bit lame, IMO.

I think you misunderstood me. I don't like the idea of an "Arcane Archer" spec, but I like the idea of a spec that can be played (among other styles) as an arcane archer. My suggestion of the disciple can work as an arcane archer, as a monk, as an elemental martial artist... depends on how you build it. The key thing is the synergies beyond the new weapon, but with core weapons and traits... I disagree. You'd loose the unique attunement skills, but not the attunement swapping. Therefore, core traitlines still work (both on attunement and on swap). The loss of the core elemental weapon skills drastically reduce mobility, healing, and control, which is partially recovered by the new weapon skills and weapon swap. The whole idea is to give the option of being a 1 dimensional glass canon if desired. But in a way that it can also be played in a more versatile way. If you want to be a full glass canon, camp fire/air and shoot arrows from afar, great (just as you can now play fire/arcane/tempest and camp fire to play a pyromancer... it was even meta for raids for a while). But without attunement unique skills, you won't have your earth/water skills waiting for you when you need them. You can swap attunements, but your skills are still on CD as you used them for a burst in fire/air. At the same time, you can trait more versatility (like arcane) and try to manage your weapon skills along with your attunement changes to improve effects (with combos) for sustain or support. The idea is that the attunements are still there (they have to be, for traits, glyphs, etc), and they still impact your skills, just in a lesser extend (added effects, not new unique skills per attunements). The idea of the Disciple is that it has a higher focus on the martial side using elemental magic to imbue its skills, not using elemental magic skills itself. I feel like longbow is a better option at this stage. Rifle are slow cast most of the time, and our other long range weapon (staff) is already slow... We could use a long range fast casting weapon. There used to be a air/water core ele using auto attacks with Lightening Hammer in water attunement that was top dps back in the days... I think you can almost get the same of a grieving condi weaver auto-attacking with earth shield and rotating fire/air (for sunspot and electric discharge)... If conjures were a bit better to use (as using charges to conjure instead of having on the ground, or as kits) it could be a fun option for some. Yea, redesigning a single set of skills for core weapons and a new 2hander weapon is the same amount (well, nearly if you count trident) of skills than a 2hander with individual elemental skills. Catalyst has the same amount of skills actually, if you count the 6 utilities, 4 from the orb, and 21 from hammer with the skill 3 having the follow-up. My proposal for the Disciple has access to stealth with a smoke field in scepter (with earth) and tons of blasts. A good way to play an elemental magic powered ninja...

Very well done video. Although not my favorite character style, the work on the opening scene is very nicely done! Nice selection of fights too. I haven't seen a good scepter/dagger player in ages. The lack of defenses makes it really hard to pull off consistently.

Physical utilities skills have very short CD. The idea is to give the Disciple a lot of mobility (air and fire utilities) and control (earth and water) and a strong heal to keep in combat (removing conditions and giving endurance). All is nothing is not attunement related, as the skill is only available when you activate the elite and have all attunements active. The idea is that the disciple is a scholar monk and the skill is a moment of achieving illumination (through physical prowess of combining all the elemental fight stiles into one) making the world struggles (stuns, conditions) irrelevant. Scepter, staff, and focus get blocks. There are quite a bit of CC in the weapon skills, and with only 1sICD is a good pve skill for increasing dps on exposed enemies (after breakbar). Its a cloth wearing martial artist, dodging and timing all the blocks and evades in weapons will be essential, it will need endurance regen (and low cd on the mobility and control utilities) to be efficient in PvP or soloing hard PvE encounters. There are lots of sources of swiftness (arcane, auras in air, sigils) and one good source of superspeed (air attunement). With fresh air, this would give you permanent quickness and about 60% superspeed using the right setup (air/arcane/disciple maybe)... There are tons of cripple and imob on the weapon skills with the right attunement. You'd have to time your attunement swap right (going from earth to fire) to do a condi burst, or use the elite skill to apply both at the same time for a short period doing lots of torment for 10s. This could be borderline OP. Imagine a healing tank disciple (like a monk) going riverstone (Water+earth). Sets a water field with scepter 2, weapon swap to staff and use staff 5. Thats 6 blasts on the water field for a lot of group healing! With attunement swap extended to 10s, I feel it needs to be there. So you can camp attunements and still have a source of boons or you can combine with arcane (and elemental attunment) and have a good rotation for self boons. The idea is to focus on dmg (condi and power) or support (heals and debuffs). Providing an opening to a playstyle of camping 2 attunements simultaneously. Alternatively you can go with universal balance to help bypass the higher attunement CD (if you swap quickly enough). Yes, but keep in mind that swapping attunements does not give you new skills, so you need to swap quickly while getting the weapon effects you want to keep you buffs, etc.

You don't need to use the bow though... You could be a healer/support with the staff and scepter/focus, using the blasts and water fields to heal your group while protecting them from projectiles and debufing opponents (like a monk)... Or you could be a "elemental ninja" with the daggers, being quick and agile (lots of swiftness, quickness, dodges) and doing good dmg with power and burn... With the grandmaster trait choice, you could combine attunements and focus more on offense (fire/air) or defense (earth/water) or you can use all attunements in quick order (by reseting attunement CD when they are all in CD) to bypass the longer attunement CDs of the spec and combine it well with arcane, getting a lot of boons to you and your team (from both attunement and weapon swaps)... Of course, changing attunments quick will not give you new skills, so you need to build your rotation based on combining the effects of each attunement to what you need (conditions, heals, combos, etc) while saving the weapon skills to be used at the right time and attunment... The idea is to build up on the core elementalist versatility while providing a new playstyle.

The thing people need to understand is that an elite spec goes beyond the weapon. You can't have "Arcane Archer" elite spec that doesn't work well in some way with core weapons. The other thing is that the way ele works, elite specs are less about what you do (condi/power dmg, support, etc) and more how you do it. Tempest stay longer in attunements to use overloads and does most things in large AoE (shouts, overloads, warhorn), weaver moves attunements quickly to combine them and maintain unique buffs, Catalyst is about continuously using energy and combos to get boons and unique buffs... THIS! I think having an elite spec that uses attunements in a different way, to provide unique effects to its weapon skills, instead of new weapon skills, is a good way to change things for a new elite spec. It would also open the spec for weapon swap (since you have less skills) AND since it get new skills for all core weapons, balancing it would not effect other specs balancing. Also, if ele gets a 2hander (5 skills) and new skills for all core weapons (15 skills) it would be the same number of new skills than a new 2 hander with 4 attunement skill sets. What I would like to see is this: You get your longbow and weapon swap. And attunements become fighting styles, providing the skills with unique effects. Longbow is your "arcane archer" style, with arrows imbued with elemental magic. Earth arrows pierce, fire explode, air double hit (static discharge), water provides a heal, etc... Staff is your PbAoE weapon with some blocks and mobility. Daggers are mobile and fast attacks with evasion. Scepter becomes like a mace, with slow powerful attacks, some block and counter mechanic. Focus becomes like a shield. Utility skills are focused on martial arts training, physical skills, they provide mobility and control to help the ele control the fight range (staying away or chasing)... The unique thing in both the elite and the grandmaster trait choice, is that you can maintain attunements simultaneously (all for a little bit with the elite skill, or 2 with the grandmaster trait) which provides you not only the benefits of both attunements to your weapon attacks (combining the fighting styles) but also the traitlines. So a disciple that traited fire/air and can keep fire and air attunements simultaneously would benefit from the power and ferocity bonus of those traitlines and the effects on its weapon attacks (so exploding arrows with a static discharge for the longbow auto). Although at moving to another attunment, both of those would be on CD...

Why not make it a new field type: Dust field. When you blast it provides AoE barrier. When you leap it provides barrier to you. Projectiles and whirls cause cripple.

The thing is Ele is very versatile (in terms of defense, condi dmg, power dmg, heal) due to the 4 attunements and 4 elemental traitlines. If elite specs just focus on one aspect (this is the power dmg spec, that is the condi spec, etc) it just becomes "mandatory" instead of a different way to play it. We usually have this problem when specs are new and overtuned (why play power dps-weaver or core-dps-staff if catalyst does so much more dmg?). IMO, Ele elites need to be kept versatile, and just change the way you do things. Tempest focus on larger AoE (shouts, overloads) and staying longer in attunements to overload them. Weaver focus on fast constant rotations to maintain buffs, boons, barrier, and using dual elemental skills. Catalyst focus on combos, using the sphere to provide extra fields, with each combo improving the catalyst through unique buffs (elemental empower, auras, boons/heals from blasts). For example: If you want to focus on condi dmg, particularly burn, you can play fire/arcane/tempest, camp fire attunement (swapping only for utility/heal/defense) and use scepter/warhorn along with overloads to build a lot of might and lots of burns in an area around you. Or you can play fire/arcane/weaver and focus on swapping attunements constantly ("weaving fire with the other 3) to maintain condi dmg buffs and maximize sunspot while using all fire dual skills to maximize burn application. I've suggested a new elite spec concept based on loosing elemental skills while gaining in combat weapon swap, making a mobile martial artist fighter that uses elements to imbue its attacks. The Disciple

As for aura share with healing, this is a whole other topic, but... There is an issue (or pet peeve) with auras providing boons/effects on application versus pulsing boons/effects. I've posted before saying that ele should have traits for boons/effects on aura application (which lets you spam auras to build up the effect) and should have effects that pulse while you have an aura (which does not benefit from spamming auras, but benefits from traits and runes that extend aura duration). I'd like to see: - Fire traits providing might on any aura application and fire auras pulsing resolution (instead of cleansing) - Air traits providing fury and swiftness on any aura application and static aura pulsing quickness - Earth traits providing protection on any aura application and magnectic aura pulsing stability and resistance - Water traits providing regeneration on any aura application and frost aura pulsing heal In terms of the loss of the jade sphere boons to give yourself fields to combo (when not traited for the active sphere to provide boons), this would be a trade off. If you are going for a dps spot in a group, it should not be an issue as you'd have boons covered by someone else, so you just need to make sure you have a field when you need it. If you are soloing, then it might be better to get sphere specialist to make the boons last longer (so you are covered when deploying the sphere for combos) at the cost of elemental empowerment. With the lower CD and no energy cost to activate, it should be easier to quickly deploy the sphere for a combo and call it back with just 4s of boon lost (2 boon applications).

I don't like the idea much, mostly because I think aurashare should be a tempest trait, and heal on auras should be a water trait. This makes more sense and would let other ele specs use auras for healing, while letting tempest be an offensive boon support (with air/fire or fire/earth). I do agree however, that the orb providing group wide boons by default it a bit too much, and allows for stacking dps catalyst for dps and boons without any drawbacks. IMO, have the Jade sphere have two states: active and passive. In passive state, it floats near the catalyst (as the scraper function gyro) and provides 1 boon every time it gains 2 energy (2 seconds ICD). Boon is to the catalyst only and based on attunement. The sphere passive boon changes with the catalyst attunment. This way, catalyst can have some sustain and boons on its own. As the boons are tied to the attunement and with a 2s ICD a catalyst solo cannot maintain perma quickness without 100% boon duration, camping air, and/or further trait investment. In Passive state, the catalyst is always at the sphere range for augments. When activated (ground target AoE) the sphere drains 2 energy per second (no energy cost to activate), provides a combo field in the area, based on attunment, so no aoe boons. The base sphere is a way for the catalyst to get an easy field to do combos and get the benefits of it at the cost of its self boon generation. When active, the sphere does not change attunements when the catalyst changes, and cannot gain energy. The sphere becomes passive when energy is completely depleted or recalled (F5). When active, using the F5 again will recall the sphere to the passive state. Have a 4s CD on it to avoid double tapping. In this way you can easily reposition the sphere or use it just for the quick combo. No energy cost on sphere activation. The sphere can be activated whenever it has at least 2 energy. Energy management becomes important only to how long you want to keep the sphere active. Now make the AoE boons go into the Spectacular Sphere (competing with the aura dps trait and making a full boon support). While the sphere specialist increase boon duration from the sphere (passive and active) becoming a good option for solo catalyst too. In this way, catalyst can use the sphere for combos at the cost of its own boon generation, or it can trait the sphere to provide boons to the group at the cost of its own boons and a dps trait. It allows the catalyst to focus on a single boon (letting the sphere drain out in a single attunement) or many (by recalling and redeploying the sphere in a different attunement). This also lets the balance be done in another way. The passive sphere can provide other buffs (similar to the hammer skill 3) while in passive state. In this way, boon support not only have to trait out of the aura dps trait, but also looses the passive benefits of the sphere while its deployed to provide boons.

IMO, have the Jade sphere have two states: active and passive. In passive state, it floats near the catalyst (as the scraper function gyro) and provides 1 boom every time it gains 2 energy (2 seconds ICD). Boom is to the catalyst only and based on attunement. The sphere passive boom changes with the catalyst attunment. When activated (ground target AoE) the sphere drains 2 energy per second, provides a combo field in the area, based on attunment, so no aoe boons. Its a way for the catalyst to get an easy field to do combos and get the benefits of it at the cost of its self boon generation. When active, the sphere does not change attunements when the catalyst changes, and cannot gain energy. The sphere becomes passive when energy is completely depleted or recalled (F5). When active, using the F5 again will recall the sphere to the passive state. Have a 4s CD on it. In this way you can easily reposition the sphere or use it just for the combo. Now make the AoE boons go into the Spectacular Sphere (competing with the aura dps trait and making a full boon support). In this way, catalyst can use the sphere for combos at the cost of its own boon generation, or it can trait the sphere to provide boons to the group at the cost of its own boons and a dps trait. It allows the catalyst to focus on a single boon (letting the sphere drain out in a single attunement) or many (by recalling and redeploying the sphere in a different attunement).