Relic Thoughts on Ele?

[Chyro.1462]

Heya.

Just wondering what Relics everyone is using for which ele builds / specs and perhaps thoughts on what may be strong or even best in slot for meta builds.

I'm currently just having fun with relic of speed cause I love the extra movement speed in combat, now without having to have the bad rune stats along with the effect ^^

Really clueless about what relic to use for condi dps (tempest) cause I'm already maxing burning duration with runes of balthazar. Support seems quite obvious to still go with Monk (10% all healing when fully stacked). Dwayna may be interesting for more passive healing through regen (+20% regen effectiveness).

Some relic effects I saw on the wiki page for relics that sounded really interesting to me as an ele player:

- Upon applying might while in combat, gain Mabon's Strength for 8 seconds. At 10 stacks, your might stacks become 25% stronger for 8 seconds, after which you lose all might and Mabon's Strength. (Cooldown: 3 Seconds)

I could imagine this being very strong on tempest, cause it can generate an excess of might. Though I guess any ele spec can do that now with warhorn usable on all. With might giving both power and condi dmg increase and ele often doing decent amounts of both types of damage, I could imagine this ending up best in slot though harder to play to match the timing of the might loss with generating might right away again.

- Upon healing an ally, shield up to four allies for 5 seconds, redirecting half of any strike damage they take to yourself. Allies may be shielded again 10 seconds after a prior shield expires, and they may only be protected by one shield at a time.

This could be a really cool support option for celestial tempest support builds. You're very tank with celestial + the increased dmg reduction that tempest gets from protection. Absorbing dmg for your shielded allies sounds very powerful if you can survive it and sustain through it, as an alternative to simply increasing healing effectiveness. And the shielding may prevent one-shot deaths of squishy dps alliles.

(both are non-core relics)

 

[RazieL.5684]

for condi dps i use fractal, don't think there is anything better than that one they all just give 1 stack of torment/poison on 30 sec cd on elite use or a bit of condi duration which is meh... with sigil of earth you can solo keep up enough bleeding stacks to proc fractal on cd reliably and the cd is 20 sec compared to the rest

for power either fireworks or thief... thief is passive just more damage and to keep it up you just need to do more than auto attack once every 5 sec... for fireworks i haven't tried it enough and idk how it works with alac

for healer i use monk and played around a bit with the one that cleanses allies on signet use but since arc is down i am not sure what my cleanses look like

mabon is trash, if my math is correct it translates to roughly 2 stacks of might increase if you have perfect or close to perfect uptime

[Comus.7365]

i use afflicted when running around in OW content.

then probably thief for bosses

and antitoxin in wvw as usual.

i play cele exclusively. haven't settled on any rune sets yet other than traveler.

Edited August 25, 2023 by Comus.7365

[Chyro.1462]

28 minutes ago, RazieL.5684 said:

for condi dps i use fractal, don't think there is anything better than that one they all just give 1 stack of torment/poison on 30 sec cd on elite use or a bit of condi duration which is meh... with sigil of earth you can solo keep up enough bleeding stacks to proc fractal on cd reliably and the cd is 20 sec compared to the rest

for power either fireworks or thief... thief is passive just more damage and to keep it up you just need to do more than auto attack once every 5 sec... for fireworks i haven't tried it enough and idk how it works with alac

for healer i use monk and played around a bit with the one that cleanses allies on signet use but since arc is down i am not sure what my cleanses look like

mabon is trash, if my math is correct it translates to roughly 2 stacks of might increase if you have perfect or close to perfect uptime

Doesn't the math for mabon go like .. full might stacks is 750 power & condition damage. Mabon makes them 25% more effective, so 937.5 power & condition damage. While keeping it up that means you gain 187.5 power + condi stat. One stack of might is 30 power & condi so that's almost like 6 extra stacks.

[Jonas.2079]

It should be possible to maintain full uptime on Relic of the Scourge on Weaver, dunno if it would be optimal for condi weaver though but 15% condi duration is kinda nice? 

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

1 hour ago, Chyro.1462 said:

Doesn't the math for mabon go like .. full might stacks is 750 power & condition damage. Mabon makes them 25% more effective, so 937.5 power & condition damage. While keeping it up that means you gain 187.5 power + condi stat. One stack of might is 30 power & condi so that's almost like 6 extra stacks.

but it takes at least 30 seconds (1 stack every 3 seconds at best, requires 10 stacks for the buff) to stack Mabon's Strength to gain 8 seconds of the +25%, and then you lose all might. (not a problem for Elementalist, with all the ways to stack might) So it's only good for long fights. (like PvE world Bosses or raids or strikes.)

Thief Relic would give a consistent 5% strike-damage boost.

Fireworks gives a +10% strike bonus after every 20 second cd weapon skill (good for staff ele with 6 skills that qualify)

Trooper Relic for shout support tempest (or Reaper Relic if you prefer chill Tempest), paired with rune of Snowfall (Healing power + toughness + 25% runspeed) actually sounds nice.

there are a couple relics that proc conditions based on stacks of conditions (bleeding or torment)

lots of AoE condis on elite skill usage.

then there's the Afflicted Relic (enemy explodes with Death Nova when it dies... giving out poison +)

the choices have actually gone up exponentially for elementalist. (no more crappy scholar rune 6 set bonus. YAY!)

[RazieL.5684]

1 hour ago, Chyro.1462 said:

Doesn't the math for mabon go like .. full might stacks is 750 power & condition damage. Mabon makes them 25% more effective, so 937.5 power & condition damage. While keeping it up that means you gain 187.5 power + condi stat. One stack of might is 30 power & condi so that's almost like 6 extra stacks.

yeah but it only lasts 8 seconds and then you lose all your stacks and gotta get to 25 again which is downtime, granted in instanced content not a lot of downtime but it is there... and then you have another 30 sec of stacking the buff again so you get that 187.5 for 8 sec out of 30 IE: 

you spend 30 seconds of stacking which doesn't have the bonus

you only have it for 8

30 / 8 = 3.75

187.5 power / 3.75 = 50 power constantly as a bonus form the relic i am not even sure if that's how i'm supposed to calculate it but that's less than 2% bonus damage not including the possibility that you get the 10th stack in a phase where you can't actually damage the boss so it is wasted and you lost all your might after that too... it's just a horrible horrible relic...

[RazieL.5684]

11 minutes ago, Forgotten Legend.9281 said:

the choices have actually gone up exponentially for elementalist. (no more crappy scholar rune 6 set bonus. YAY!)

eeeh i wouldn't go that far... for power the choice being between thief and fireworks is not much different than having scholar as optimal... for condi i find only fractal being semi-useful, the rest are just horrible... 30 sec cd on elite use (1.5 min cd weave self) you get a nova that blasts from you giving 1 stack of torment, 1 stack bleed and 1 stack poison... i mean... yeah it's there but i personally do not call that a choice...

[Lonewolf Kai.3682]

For Mabons, What do you get at say 5 stacks of might?  Is it just normal night at that time until you hit 10 might stacks?

[RazieL.5684]

12 minutes ago, Lonewolf Kai.3682 said:

For Mabons, What do you get at say 5 stacks of might?  Is it just normal night at that time until you hit 10 might stacks?

to get a stack of mabons you need to have 10 stacks of might, if you don't get 10 might at all you will never get a mabons stack... you need 10 mabon stacks to actually activate the "empowered might" so if you never get to 10 stacks OR you get to 10 stacks 9 times but then kitten it up on the 10th time and lose all your mabons stacks it's like you don't even have a relic on

[Jski.6180]

Seems like about the same most runes where elite or healing skill base so not the best for the ele class but now at least you can chose the combo of your rune set to make up for lower hp / def for being an ele and still get the "rune" now relic effect. I image over time they will add in more i am looking forward to an relic of the ele tempest and maybe even catalyet.

[Chyro.1462]

Oh, somehow I didn't realize that Mabon's internal cd would be per stack. I was assuming that you get stacks very quickly, then it procs, then you can't get stacks of Mabon for 3 seconds after the effect ended. Yeah it's a lot worse if it always takes at least 30 seconds to even reach full stacks. May still be strong though if you can get a fixed rotation down where you always do your high dmg burst during the window where Mabon is active.

[dascott.6078]

Does Mabon’s Strength have any effect?  Or is it just a placeholder so the system will “know” when you have 10 stacks?  If that’s all it is, that’s just plain dumb, Dumb, DUUUUMB!

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

14 hours ago, RazieL.5684 said:

eeeh i wouldn't go that far... for power the choice being between thief and fireworks is not much different than having scholar as optimal... for condi i find only fractal being semi-useful, the rest are just horrible... 30 sec cd on elite use (1.5 min cd weave self) you get a nova that blasts from you giving 1 stack of torment, 1 stack bleed and 1 stack poison... i mean... yeah it's there but i personally do not call that a choice...

to be fair... i never said any of them were GOOD... imo, they're equally blah... you have a choice of colours, but they all taste like cardboard... not even chocolate covered carboard... not even carboard topped with tomato sauce and cheese... just carboard: red carboard, blue carboard, yellow carboard, etc..

as a personal aside: i hated scholar because i never raided, and scholar was a raider / strike rune, where the healers could keep you above 90% health... there were other runes that provided more than 5% damage buff ALL THE TIME in the NON-raider / strike content, so sorry, but scholar runes  6 bonus sucked outside of a group

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

1 hour ago, dascott.6078 said:

Does Mabon’s Strength have any effect?  Or is it just a placeholder so the system will “know” when you have 10 stacks?  If that’s all it is, that’s just plain dumb, Dumb, DUUUUMB!

you described Mabon's Strength perfectly: it's a placeholder for the system... Pyromancers Puissance is 1000X better than Mabon relic... and raiders HATE Pyromancer's Puissance as much as they hate wiping on 8-year-old wing 1,

Edited August 25, 2023 by Forgotten Legend.9281

[Horus.9685]

21 hours ago, Chyro.1462 said:

Doesn't the math for mabon go like .. full might stacks is 750 power & condition damage. Mabon makes them 25% more effective, so 937.5 power & condition damage. While keeping it up that means you gain 187.5 power + condi stat. One stack of might is 30 power & condi so that's almost like 6 extra stacks.

Mabon effects the might you give, on allies as well, so that wil only be used on healers with decent might acceee. on those that can make use of it it is definetly beter then some healing bonus provided by monk or water tho

[Horus.9685]

even with 0% uptime scholar was still the best rune dps wise in many cases, since it gave the best stats. now dragonhunter rune might be better on some classes.... so yay variety?

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

5 hours ago, Horus.9685 said:

Mabon effects the might you give, on allies as well, so that wil only be used on healers with decent might acceee. on those that can make use of it it is definetly beter then some healing bonus provided by monk or water tho

I didn't even think of this, I had the suspicion that Mabon's effect was more interesting past surface level inspection and i just couldn't put my finger on why. So thanks for putting that into prespective. 

Edited August 25, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Chyro.1462]

Did anyone really test if Mabon's also makes the might stacks you give to others strongers? If so it's super strong on healer if you want the whole group to do more dps at the cost of 10% healing. The text says 'your stacks of might' but that could either mean those on you, or those generated by you. Though I feel doubtful that it can affect your might stacks on others, then the game would need the ability to constantly track which stacks on everyone were given by you as well as increase the effectiveness on only -those- stacks - and even if it did that, could end up rather inconsistent with other classes also dishing out might and possibly overwriting your mabon-enhanced stacks.

[Jski.6180]

On 8/25/2023 at 2:14 PM, Chyro.1462 said:

Did anyone really test if Mabon's also makes the might stacks you give to others strongers? If so it's super strong on healer if you want the whole group to do more dps at the cost of 10% healing. The text says 'your stacks of might' but that could either mean those on you, or those generated by you. Though I feel doubtful that it can affect your might stacks on others, then the game would need the ability to constantly track which stacks on everyone were given by you as well as increase the effectiveness on only -those- stacks - and even if it did that, could end up rather inconsistent with other classes also dishing out might and possibly overwriting your mabon-enhanced stacks.

If it dose it takes 30 sec to trigger it at minmule and you must trigger it ever 3 sec or you will have to start over. In wvw or spvp is worthless to use it and in pve loseing your stacks at the end of the 10 stack effect makes it realy bad.

Raw dmg boons seems best for dmg and condi clears seems best for support. The mnk icd of 1 sec kill it for the most part.

[Utnapishtim.4021]

I like nightmare on my condi cata

[lLobo.7960]

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.