Whats everyone doing for SoO Open World Ele builds?

[Dapinchi.7920]

This is what I use. I like Catalyst because I can be a boon bot but I can't stand the hammer. Also daggers make me feel like I'm playing core with some extra juice.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGABgitjlJwuYKsNGJOKX/RfA-DyIY1ovvQyMF6tKSPQ08WAAA-e

 

[Lonewolf Kai.3682]

On 8/29/2023 at 1:02 PM, Infinity.2876 said:

Condi Tempest

 

Um, why the weapon swap relic?

[Infinity.2876]

6 hours ago, Lonewolf Kai.3682 said:

Um, why the weapon swap relic?

It helps with attunement cooldowns.

[AliamRationem.5172]

2 hours ago, Infinity.2876 said:

It helps with attunement cooldowns.

The rune version didn't work on attunement swaps as I recall?  This relic does? 

[dascott.6078]

1 hour ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

The rune version didn't work on attunement swaps as I recall?  This relic does? 

It doesn’t.  😞

[AliamRationem.5172]

17 minutes ago, dascott.6078 said:

It doesn’t.  😞

Too bad. That would have been some kind of fun on weaver!

[Redfeather.6401]

I am playing tempest with sword and dagger. I play asura so I like the animations. Lots of somersaults in those weapons. 😂

[Lonewolf Kai.3682]

8 hours ago, Infinity.2876 said:

It helps with attunement cooldowns.

Did you test that or just assume it works?

[TheGrimoire.4039]

9 hours ago, Lonewolf Kai.3682 said:

Did you test that or just assume it works?

It doesn't work on attunements.

[Infinity.2876]

When I tried taking the relic off the cooldowns were slightly longer,

Definitely not 25% more like 5 or 7 but I could swear it worked.

Why would it not work? The sigils for weapon swap work for ele.

Edited September 7, 2023 by Infinity.2876

[dascott.6078]

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Relic_of_the_Warrior

 

According to the wiki notes, it doesn’t.  ☹️  which is lame.  

Edited September 7, 2023 by dascott.6078

[Lonewolf Kai.3682]

1 minute ago, dascott.6078 said:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Relic_of_the_Warrior

 

According to the wiki notes, it doesn’t.  ☹️  which is lame.  

The old rune set didn’t work that way either. 

[dascott.6078]

4 hours ago, Infinity.2876 said:

Why would it not work? 

Great question!

[oCynder.5136]

Sword/Warhorn Power Temp. Mainly overload Fire and Air. This is pretty much how I roll around and it's a lot of fun.

[Shaman.2034]

Here's the five builds I've developed and used the most often in SotO open world:

_____________________________________

Power Boons:

These two Power builds share most equipment, only differing slightly in the trinkets due to needing different amounts of Precision and Concentration.

Power Quickness Catalyst: Sword/Warhorn's rapid attacks in Air Attunement generate more than enough Energy to sustain a 3-Sphere (Air, Earth, Fire) rotation, and is easier to use and more boon-resilient than Hammer due to having access to Warhorn's support skills. Spends the vast majority of its time in Air, only using Earth and Fire to quickly cast the Sphere and Warhorn 4 before returning to Air to autoattack. A typical loop is shorter than the Warhorn skill cooldowns, so every second loop casts Sword 2 in Earth and Fire instead. Scepter is significantly worse than Sword here due to having a much weaker autoattack, but it's the next-best option for a ranged backup weapon. Perhaps this will be a good spot to experiment with Pistol next year.

Power Alacrity Tempest: A typical Fresh Air Tempest build. Overload Fire is important as the only significant source of Might generation, so this build does a full Fire rotation every time it's available. Raging Storm is technically barely enough to maintain 100% Fury uptime on allies while attacking enemies, but Zephyr's Boon stacking Fury to share through Fire Warhorn 4 is a dramatic increase in consistency. This build passively sheds conditions through Smothering Auras, which procs regularly and often due to the varied sources of auras present across traits, skills, and naturally occurring combos. Sword and Scepter do similar DPS here since it spends very little time autoattacking on its own, but having externally-supplied Quickness makes Sword slightly better. Scepter is notable for having more blast finishers for higher Might stacking.

_____________________________________

Heal Boons:

These two Heal builds share the same set of equipment.

Heal Quickness Catalyst: This build uses the same Air, Earth, and Fire Spheres as the Power variant, but camps Water Attunement afterward. Has lower healing than Heal Alacrity Tempest, but makes up for it with a much stronger boon. All five Water Sword/Warhorn weapon skills heal allies, but don't generate much Energy due to the slow single hits. The build must swap to Air to recharge Energy with Sword 3, Warhorn 5, and an autoattack chain if needed, before dropping the three Spheres. This is convenient for the build because there is no "Fresh Water" trait, so time spent in Air recharging Energy is time spent allowing Water to come off cooldown. Staff is noticeably worse here and struggles to build enough Energy for three Spheres, but it is possible, and is still usable for its unique utility.

Heal Alacrity Tempest: With Regeneration and doubled Soothing Mist, allies near this build passively regenerate almost 900 health per second. Combined with superior burst healing capabilities, it's more than enough to keep allies alive through arena hazards that are meant to be deadly, such as the stacking cold damage at both Claws of Jormag fights. Overloading Water is usually best reserved for dire emergencies, as it puts Water Attunement on a long cooldown; the usual best practice is to visit Water for a few seconds in between Overloading Fire and Earth. Staff is at its best performance here, and I prefer to use it over Sword/Warhorn for its unique utility, but both weapon sets are very strong.

_____________________________________

Condition DPS:

Campfire Tempest: A surprisingly high amount of damage can come from specializing entirely into Burning. This build spends all of its time in Fire Attunement and just uses all of the skills that apply Burning on cooldown. Some boon duration is taken to extend Protection from Elemental Shielding for more passive damage resistance, as well as benefitting the build's Might stacking. Scepter/Focus already made this build great before SotO, but having access to Hammer is a further improvement, leaving Scepter/Focus as a very reliable ranged option for even more safety.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

Is it really worth it hammer on condi tempest ?
I'll give a try,  but I mean you have a nice fire field on warhorn, and scepter is still pretty good at least in Pve against unmoving mobs. Hammer is made for "weaving" between elements, which is difficult with tempest overloads (but is quite fun with weaver so)

[Shaman.2034]

3 hours ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

Is it really worth it hammer on condi tempest ?
I'll give a try,  but I mean you have a nice fire field on warhorn, and scepter is still pretty good at least in Pve against unmoving mobs. Hammer is made for "weaving" between elements, which is difficult with tempest overloads (but is quite fun with weaver so)

Hammer does higher DPS than Scepter/Focus in this specific type of Condition Tempest build that only camps Fire Attunement and only focuses on Burning as its source of DPS. Regardless of what Hammer is made for, the numbers don't lie. Hammer is just so OP it turns out you can just camp one attunement and it's still stronger than core weapons.

[AliamRationem.5172]

This build works best with celestial or trailblazer stats.  You can also use arcane in place of earth traits.  Utilities are flexible as well, if you wanted to use elemental glyphs, for example.  Good sigil options are strength, frailty, earth, geomancy, bursting, agony (if arcane).  I was able to produce sub-40 second times on this chak lobber champion with various combinations of these traits, stats, and sigils.  Earth produced a bit better damage, but the difference is within 10% and arcane has stronger sustain.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

I tried Hammer "Burning" tempest, it's quite nice actually.

I adapted the build to my playstyle, more "bursty" against random mobs etc : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGQAIjZYLGFcUW2aQA-DSRYVBzGFswIqA6SAn/By0jAA-e
It's a bit random gear and sigils. At first I tried Grieving/vipere but without attuning to water/earth etc it is impossible to stay alive more than 5sec against some elites or in some events;  So i've put celestial almost everywhere to earn bulkiness, but also perma fury.
Mabon relic is so good on tempest + pyromancer's puissance I don't tjhink there is a better choice (on contrary to my gear or template). The DPS is okai in OW and yes it is more convenient than scepter/X or Dagger/x (for Fire tempest). Nice catch, easy to play.

A bit sad we can't have quickness like Cata; and Lucid Singularity is totally useless if you mean to camp fire.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[CETheLucid.3964]

Been playing sword catalyst for a min and had a blast. Literally. So much blast finishing. It's really good. Playing around with scepter/warhorn weaver now. Also good! Finally found a niche for unravel. Warhorn is a great offhand weapon and it's nice to be able to use it on other elite specs.

I'll probably try out hammer tempest next. Figure out some kind of might build up (and share) thing I can do with Mabon's Strength. Tempest (and ele in general) is constantly gaining and shedding might anyway due to flame expulsion. Seems like fun. A good power boost + supporty thing.

I'm eager for news on the next weapons beta test. Want to see how pistol plays. Already have a skin picked out and the new vault rewards made getting ready a breeze. 👍

[Curennos.9307]

On 9/12/2023 at 4:03 PM, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

I tried Hammer "Burning" tempest, it's quite nice actually.

I adapted the build to my playstyle, more "bursty" against random mobs etc : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGQAIjZYLGFcUW2aQA-DSRYVBzGFswIqA6SAn/By0jAA-e
It's a bit random gear and sigils. At first I tried Grieving/vipere but without attuning to water/earth etc it is impossible to stay alive more than 5sec against some elites or in some events;  So i've put celestial almost everywhere to earn bulkiness, but also perma fury.
Mabon relic is so good on tempest + pyromancer's puissance I don't tjhink there is a better choice (on contrary to my gear or template). The DPS is okai in OW and yes it is more convenient than scepter/X or Dagger/x (for Fire tempest). Nice catch, easy to play.

A bit sad we can't have quickness like Cata; and Lucid Singularity is totally useless if you mean to camp fire.

How is Mabon's working out? I looked at it and it seemed like it takes ages to charge up, then a relatively short duration for the buff before you lose all might stacks and have to build them up again. I run catalyst, though I imagine tempest has an even easier time building up might, but I'm curious if the damage bonus is noticeable at all.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

Well my bad, I hurried up and mix differents set-up.
The relic is a little buggy right now. When you start the fight > overloading + casting shouts, elite elemental etc you'll already earn 3-4 stacks, then warhorn 5-4, combos... you can reach 10 stacks relatively fast.

But I've take a look, and for solo gameplay I can't really understand how it works; I can't reach 10 stacks 🙂 I was a bit misled by some test in strikes where you could just focus on generating mights with fire/arcane/lucid singularity.

Yet, I don't really know what could replace it with this build : Fire hammer have no CC, no bleeding ... Relic of the Wizard's Tower or Isgareen could be fun, or something to cleanse condition to make it more LI.

Edited September 17, 2023 by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[Bernisroy.3596]

Hi all! Is hammer power cata still a good option for pve in general? I like that weapon and had fun with the build before soto. Or is there a Better option tempest with hammer? I Only have a power stat hammer and i supose for tempest it must be condi?

 

thanks!

[draxynnic.3719]

2 hours ago, Bernisroy.3596 said:

Hi all! Is hammer power cata still a good option for pve in general? I like that weapon and had fun with the build before soto. Or is there a Better option tempest with hammer? I Only have a power stat hammer and i supose for tempest it must be condi?

 

thanks!

Hammer cata is about as good as it was pre-SotO. I've heard someone saying that hammer tempest is good but I haven't tried it myself.

[Curennos.9307]

2 hours ago, Bernisroy.3596 said:

Hi all! Is hammer power cata still a good option for pve in general? I like that weapon and had fun with the build before soto. Or is there a Better option tempest with hammer? I Only have a power stat hammer and i supose for tempest it must be condi?

 

thanks!

It works. If you want ez mode I would use scepter instead of hammer, but that's just me. I think tempest overloads requiring melee to do damage combined with hammer's melee/range hybrid style can work, but IMO it's a little clunky. Ofc this doesn't really matter for the majority of content, but SOTO seems to continue a trend where melee have a lot more to deal with than ranged. Hammer has some long CD skills tho, which pairs nicely with alac and overloads cause you can spam skills, use overload (long cast, generates alac so things CD faster during long cast) and then long CD skills will be available - as opposed to short CD skills where they come off cooldown very quickly and you're 'missing' them during long overloads.

As with p much all things ele though, you can throw on cele gear and some sensible runes/sigils for whatever you want to focus on with whatever weapon and be set for life. Power hammer also still does decent damage.