Looking for core ele armor rune suggestions

[Tukaram.8256]

My first avatar was an elementalist. My ele was my main in GW, so my first in GW2.  I have never liked him.  I got him up to 80 but still never warmed up to him.  I just dusted him off this week and he is not as bad as I remember... but his armor/weapons are pretty wimpy.

 

I play solo PVE. He is just core as I have not played him enough to get whatever elites he has.  I am looking for better armor, but nothing too crazy. Maybe 2 gold per piece. I cannot spend too much on a character that has not been played in like 8 years.  His main weapon is a staff, secondary is sceptre/dagger. I am just using what he picked up along the way (same with armor). I will probably buy some better weapons as well. 

 

Mostly I want to know what runes are good for a solo, open world, PVE elementalist. Currently every piece has a different rune, because that is what they happen to have...   😎

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

It depends of your build, but I like for OW or wvw roaming runes of pack, runes of Firework, runes of the traveler, runes of elementalist ... 
 

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

Runes of Fire are rarely used by players, although they are really good for Open World PVE and meta-events. They reward engaging into short fights. Whenever you enter combat, you are granted with a Fire Aura that:

- causes enemies which hit you to get burning stacks (1 sec cooldown per enemy)

- grants you might when enemies hit you (1 second cooldown per enemy)

The rune enhances power and strike damage by 10 % while the Fire Aura is active. If you run Focus, you can get an extra Fire Aura while attuned to fire. And a few more executing leap-finishers in fire fields. In my opinion the best thing about this rune is the non-existent internal cooldown for the fire-aura upon entering combat. You can stomp trash mobs over and over, while having the 10 % damage boost XD.

-

Runes of Vampirism are also kind of funny to use. They boost your power and your HP pool significantly. In addition you heal for 10 % of your maximum HP on kill. That does not sound much, but works great of situations where you are dealing with trash-mobs and smaller mob-groups. 

If you use it well enough, you can use the signet heal-skill and neglect the skill all together. You do not even have to kill the mobs yourself. Just make sure you have tagged them (with a few hits) before they die. 

 

Both Runes are cheap.

 

[Downstate.4697]

Any rune that increases burn duration. Glyphs are prob good on core, but I dont pve. 

[Noodle Ant.1605]

i feel like core ele just copies either what temp/weaver does. im no longer familiar with eles *best* solo open world builds, but i think core ele would attempt to use the same trailblazer/whatever-it-is kit (including sigils and runes)… with a few changes due to not actually having the espec

 

i have a f2p ele that frankly relies on fire elementals to kill things, but i heard mounting does weird stuff to elementals which is sad

[Tukaram.8256]

Both the Fire and Vamp are very inexpensive.  They must not be in very high demand.  I tend to start (and stay as long as I can) in fire, so burning additions look good.  I was unsure if there was a particular rune that most Elementals ran with. 

 

Even stupider question - some of the runes are for condition, boon etc.  I have never known which skills use any of that. Is it on the skill popup box?  

[Brian.5324]

Yep, if you hover over a skill icon, it will show everything it does, including condition/boon application and their durations, automatically reflecting your stats and traits. 

[Tukaram.8256]

22 hours ago, Brian.5324 said:

Yep, if you hover over a skill icon, it will show everything it does, including condition/boon application and their durations, automatically reflecting your stats and traits. 

I have moused over most of mine and have seen 'glyph', 'mark', but have never seen any say condition or boon.  I have never known specifically what people meant. 

[TheAgedGnome.7520]

On 10/1/2021 at 7:54 AM, Tukaram.8256 said:

Both the Fire and Vamp are very inexpensive.  They must not be in very high demand.  I tend to start (and stay as long as I can) in fire, so burning additions look good.  I was unsure if there was a particular rune that most Elementals ran with. 

 

Even stupider question - some of the runes are for condition, boon etc.  I have never known which skills use any of that. Is it on the skill popup box?  

The wiki can give you some more detail than the tooltips. See:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_elementalist_skills

As you will see, of the 5 staff skills, surprisingly, only skill3 has Burning damage when in Fire attunement! The other skills only have direct damage (aka strike damage). So, condi stats and runes that enhance burning damage have limited value there.

However, the scepter/dagger skills in Fire Attunement have Burning on skills 2-5.

So, condi stats and runes that enhance burning damage are useful for this set!

Likewise, Signet of Fire can be a powerful utility skill, but really needs condi damage and condi duration to make it worthwhile.

Ideally, then you might want armor, trinkets, weapons, sigils and runes that enhance both direct damage and condi damage. The issue is one of cost and availability. Celestial stats and Traveler or Divinity runes could be nice, but celestial armor is probably outside of your budget. Carrion armor is cheap and has both power and condi damage, as well as vitality to increase your health, but it lacks precision & ferocity to really make power truly effective, and it lacks anything to enhance condi duration.

Or, you can go full condi, like Dire, which also has toughness and vitality, but then your staff damage suffers; likewise, full power/precision/ferocity like Berzerker, which reduces your scepter/dagger damage, and also makes you very, very squishy since it has no toughness or vitality.

In my case, I use celestial trinkets and berzerker armor/weapons with Traveler runes, which fits my needs in WvW where I almost always am in Fire.

Finally, whatever rune choice you make, be sure to get all 6 of the runes the same; otherwise, you will not be getting the full benefit of the runes.

So, I'm not trying to tell you which way to go, but just to explain some of the ways to think about it. 

 

Edited October 6, 2021 by TheAgedGnome.7520

[TheAgedGnome.7520]

36 minutes ago, Tukaram.8256 said:

I have moused over most of mine and have seen 'glyph', 'mark', but have never seen any say condition or boon.  I have never known specifically what people meant. 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boon

If you hover over staff3 in Fire attunement (Flame Burst), you will see it says:

Damage: xx                       <----this is direct damage (aka strike damage); enhanced by Power/Precision/Ferocity stats

Burning (zs): xxxx          <----this is condition damage; enhanced by Condition Damage and Expertise stats;

On the Burning the "(zs)" means that the total condi damage xxxx shown is spread out over those z seconds. It is often phrased as something like: "the burning damage 'ticks' for z seconds".  Adding more Condition Damage will increase the damage per tick, whereas adding Expertise will make the the number of seconds longer (i.e.,  more ticks). 

 

 

Edited October 6, 2021 by TheAgedGnome.7520

[Brian.5324]

Conditions are negative effects with red backgrounds, such as Burning, Bleeding, and Chill.

 

Boons are positive buffs with gold backgrounds, such as Might, Fury, and Swiftness.

 

Unlike unique buffs, such as the ferocity boost when you attune to air using the Fresh Air trait, boons are shared across classes. Same for conditions.

[Aedil.1296]

On 10/1/2021 at 12:54 PM, Tukaram.8256 said:

 I tend to start (and stay as long as I can) in fire, so burning additions look good. 

I do understand where you coming from, but I believe if you want to maximize damage you need to do what we are forced to do by the class design: keep swapping elements non stop and use all your cooldown to maximize damage.

This is just how the ele is nowadays.

Especially a core ele I cannot really imagine which kind of damage can it do? Like just enough to kill mosquitoes? 

 

Unfortunately Ele was born to swap elements to adapt to situations, and it became all about swapping elements no matter what as all skills that does some damage are spread between different elements.

[Noodle Ant.1605]

4 hours ago, Aedil.1296 said:

I do understand where you coming from, but I believe if you want to maximize damage you need to do what we are forced to do by the class design: keep swapping elements non stop and use all your cooldown to maximize damage.

This is just how the ele is nowadays.

Especially a core ele I cannot really imagine which kind of damage can it do? Like just enough to kill mosquitoes? 

 

Unfortunately Ele was born to swap elements to adapt to situations, and it became all about swapping elements no matter what as all skills that does some damage are spread between different elements.

dont

 

assuming wvw/pvp hasnt secretly slipped into the discussion, core ele has no reason to switch out of fire for raw dmg output unless the player is willing to put in far more effort for rather unimpressive gain (i.e. triple conjure build)

 

a decent portion of condi temp/weavers condi output comes from core; cores condi output is actually fairly solid for a core spec (particularly burning). thats why id recommend mimicking whatever openworld condi temp/weaver does, ofc dont use staff tho

 

Edited October 7, 2021 by Noodle Ant.1605

[Tukaram.8256]

8 hours ago, Noodle Ant.1605 said:

dont

 

assuming wvw/pvp hasnt secretly slipped into the discussion, core ele has no reason to switch out of fire for raw dmg output unless the player is willing to put in far more effort for rather unimpressive gain (i.e. triple conjure build)

 

a decent portion of condi temp/weavers condi output comes from core; cores condi output is actually fairly solid for a core spec (particularly burning). thats why id recommend mimicking whatever openworld condi temp/weaver does, ofc dont use staff tho

 

For me it depends on the length of fight. Shorter fights, I can just stay in fire. For longer fights I have to switch, or stand around waiting for skills to refresh. But I like the fire skills best. 😎