2 button 19k dps

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

Greetings,

I've just created an Elementalist build, that can achieve ~ 19k dps at the golem and requires only pressing two buttons. Sounds stupid? Here we go:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGwAwijlZwuYRMNGJWWX/vMA-DSRYiJSwsSI1TD+QqVCEsQoCFgMPLwiwLbQFA-e

1.) You start with fire/x attunement, does not really matter which one.
2.) Start auto-attacking.
3.) Switch to air and again to air when it is ready to trigger Elements of Rage.
4.) Then you switch back to fire once it is ready.
5.) Then you wait for Fresh Air to run out, then switch back to air 2x.

From now on, cycle through 4.) and 5.) rinse and repeat until the target is dead.

It is just auto-attack while conveniently swapping attunements. Neither the relic nor the offhand weapon really matter. Originally I had other plans for this build, but unfortunately anything but sticking to auto-attack lowers the dps (for me). I'm still not sure if this is more scary or entertaining. I know 19k is a joke for a true Elementalist main. Your high APM builds can reach beyond 45k. But again, this one requires pressing two buttons only. 

Anyway. Thanks for reading. Have fun trying it out and spamming me with confused-reactions.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Glad to see somebody is doing some LI work now that I'm retired.  A few notes/questions:

#1: The arcane line isn't the best for an LI build.  It gets its damage bonus from having all of the boons, but when doing the random overworld stuff that you'd take an LI build for you won't be boon capped.  Aside from that, the other bonuses it gives are small amounts of might and swiftness, reduction on attunement recharge (fresh air makes that largely useless), and the arcane shield from spamming the elemental elite skill.

It's cliche, but there are reasons why we tend to go with fire.  It has a lot of offensive modifiers, gives flat power in fire, and adds extra burning.  It can be customized to automatically cleanse conditions, hand out random blinds, or do more burning damage if you don't see yourself maintaining more than 10 might for long periods.  

#2:  It is... odd that you are getting damage losses while using the other skills.  Quantum Strike, Pyro Vortex, Cauterizing Strike, and Fire Grab are no slouches when it comes to damage output.  I can understand Ring of Fire and Flame Uprising not doing as much with an arcane build, but those others should still be heavy hitters.

#3: Though it is an LI build, using Pyro Vortex is highly recommended.  For one, its damage is quite insane and upscales very high, being the strongest move that Sword natively has in it's arsenal.  Second, Pyro Vortex will be the build's only source of weakness, which both reduces incoming damage while also increasing personal damage.  

[Jobber.6348]

The sad part here is that there are plenty of ele players who can't achieve 19k even after pressing 10 buttons. 

Very grateful for the LI build idea, might dust off my musty old Ele to try it! 

[Noodle Ant.1605]

sword can frankly already build for 17-18k dps air autoattacks. if attuning to fire and air = 2 separate buttons, then this would be “0 button 17k dps” (minus the button to initiate autoattack)

i feel like this build attempts to achieve some other goal other than dps, because its fairly easy to ditch the random attunement swapping and include some weapon skill to do “1 button 20k dps”. at 2 buttons, id probably be expecting something around 22k (or higher)

 

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

15 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Glad to see somebody is doing some LI work now that I'm retired. 

That is sad. I really appreciated your constructive feedback on various topics.

15 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

#1: The arcane line isn't the best for an LI build.  It gets its damage bonus from having all of the boons, but when doing the random overworld stuff that you'd take an LI build for you won't be boon capped.  Aside from that, the other bonuses it gives are small amounts of might and swiftness, reduction on attunement recharge (fresh air makes that largely useless), and the arcane shield from spamming the elemental elite skill.

It's cliche, but there are reasons why we tend to go with fire.  It has a lot of offensive modifiers, gives flat power in fire, and adds extra burning.  It can be customized to automatically cleanse conditions, hand out random blinds, or do more burning damage if you don't see yourself maintaining more than 10 might for long periods.  

The arcane line is a relic of my countless previous approaches. When I realized that I cannot prevent switching attunements, I decided to squeeze the most out of it while doing so. I know most Elementalist builds use fire, because it is FIRE and drastically enhances damage. But I did not feel like using it. 

15 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

#2:  It is... odd that you are getting damage losses while using the other skills.  Quantum Strike, Pyro Vortex, Cauterizing Strike, and Fire Grab are no slouches when it comes to damage output.  I can understand Ring of Fire and Flame Uprising not doing as much with an arcane build, but those others should still be heavy hitters.

If I was somewhat experienced with Elementalist, I would probably manage to use the correct skills to increase the dps. But all my approaches over the past 11 years have been mostly try and error with multiple months in between. I know how the traits work and I've done enough build-crafting and testing to figure out synergies, but rotations? Nope.

15 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

#3: Though it is an LI build, using Pyro Vortex is highly recommended.  For one, its damage is quite insane and upscales very high, being the strongest move that Sword natively has in it's arsenal.  Second, Pyro Vortex will be the build's only source of weakness, which both reduces incoming damage while also increasing personal damage.  

That is a good hint. Tested, works good. Ty.
-

15 hours ago, Yasai.3549 said:

The sad part here is that there are plenty of ele players who can't achieve 19k even after pressing 10 buttons. 

Very grateful for the LI build idea, might dust off my musty old Ele to try it! 

The motivation behind this build was Mukluk's video about the Power Quickness Catalyst. I was thinking: There must be an easy way for an Elementalist to deal damage, maybe only damage? Without breaking their fingers and wrecking their keyboard.
-

2 hours ago, Noodle Ant.1605 said:

sword can frankly already build for 17-18k dps air autoattacks. if attuning to fire and air = 2 separate buttons, then this would be “0 button 17k dps”

As far as my understanding about Elementalist goes, you cannot achieve anything noticeable without breaking your fingers. If that is outdated and Elementalist is now one of the easiest classes to play in GW2, I'm totally fine with it. I was just very shocked when I saw that my build somewhat delivers acceptable results. After a countless list of miserable failures of builds which played nice, but were not able to get beyond 6k at all. 

2 hours ago, Noodle Ant.1605 said:

i feel like this build attempts to achieve some other goal other than dps, because its fairly easy to ditch the random attunement swapping and include some weapon skill to do “1 button 20k dps”. at 2 buttons, id probably be expecting something around 22k (or higher)

As I wrote above, the inspiration for this build came from Mukluk's video. In the original version, I tried the catalyst and stumbled upon the same hilarious mechanic with the jade-spheres. I went with more boon-duration and picked a weapon (sword & dagger), I expected to deal multiple hits in short time. Originally focused on earth and wind with bleed-stacking (power + condi) approach. Getting the hits worked, getting enough energy for the jade spheres also worked. But it felt ... clunky. Swapping through 3-4 attunements for the sake of just deploying the kitten sphere. And the problem that you cannot build energy while the sphere is active ... :S.

Frustrated by yet another failed Elementalist build, I was going like: "Ok, let's just screw everything and go full DPS. Maybe we can figure out a setup that delivers anything around 14k?" I still had the traits in my mind and knew which ones promised the best results. Took a look at the other e-specs and stumbled upon Elements of Rage. Found the synergy with Fresh Air, did a few minor tests and decided to get the stats for a real test.

To keep fresh-air, I needed to swap out to at least one other attunement. Did another test, FIRE, obviously. Got the gear, got the food, got the runes & sigils. Realized the relic does not matter. Went for a final session at the golem and ... 17-19k after a while consistently 19k. That is it. No higher purpose in mind.

[Noodle Ant.1605]

7 hours ago, HnRkLnXqZ.1870 said:

As far as my understanding about Elementalist goes, you cannot achieve anything noticeable without breaking your fingers. If that is outdated and Elementalist is now one of the easiest classes to play in GW2, I'm totally fine with it. I was just very shocked when I saw that my build somewhat delivers acceptable results.

this is a bit of an exaggeration likely caused by the fact how raiding guilds set the standards for rotations (they squeeze out whatever dps they can). for a time, ele was THE dps class that everyone wanted to play, and the standard rotations often included gimmicks like conjures, fresh air piano frenzy and pressing a myriad of buttons that were all only slightly better than just autoattacking and using #2 off cd

lately however, ele has been pushed a lot into the "it has to be complicated/hard because its ele" corner (catalyst, hammer, pistol and quick/alac builds), which is disappointing because eles are supposed to be "versatile" and hardly any of that seems to be coming through with the options foisted on us

7 hours ago, HnRkLnXqZ.1870 said:

To keep fresh-air, I needed to swap out to at least one other attunement. Did another test, FIRE, obviously. Got the gear, got the food, got the runes & sigils. Realized the relic does not matter. Went for a final session at the golem and ... 17-19k after a while consistently 19k. That is it. No higher purpose in mind.

i commented because i saw that your build uses arcane, and the trait choices in it seemed to lean more towards extra sustain/defences. using arcane as a (power) dps traitline is dodgy because its hard to guarantee having all 12 boons in the game for a 24% dmg increase. when i test using arcane, i only use 8 boons (16% increase) and this is usually compared to water which provides 10% + 10%

[DanAlcedo.3281]

What's crazy is that you would do roughly same dps as the vast majority of the players in IBS5 + DS. Strike runs. 

Add a third button and you might even start overperforming. 

Edited May 21 by DanAlcedo.3281

[soulknight.9620]

On 5/21/2024 at 12:01 AM, HnRkLnXqZ.1870 said:

The motivation behind this build was Mukluk's video about the Power Quickness Catalyst. I was thinking: There must be an easy way for an Elementalist to deal damage, maybe only damage? Without breaking their fingers and wrecking their keyboard.

He just "felt on his own skin" the core problems of most ele specs/build that were introduced a couple of years ago and hadnt been addressed by anet to this day. Ele mains were "screaming in agony" for years now. And yet the only time people actually noticed this was when Teapot said "ele is bad" (yeah, after years of telling his audience that ele was GOOD, lmao), and now even Muk (one of the most chill streamers there is, that actually does his research before making a video) says "qcata is bad". Imagine his reaction if he would play dps power sword weaver/cata for a few days. 

Its not just a quick cata build problem. Many people stated multiple times that most of ele builds suffer from "doing more, to get less" (aheal tempest, qcata, WEAVER etc). Like a lot of us ele main stated the problem is not the sheer number of "buttons" that you have to push to get some sort of results, but rather that even if you do manage to put the extra effort into it you will still get LESS than other classes. 

As for your build... like other people have stated, you can do more dps by just camping fire and mashing buttons at random. Mr.Magic even made a series of videos about "buttonmashing LI ele builds". But the problem is still there, why should you pick a gimicky low dps build over other classes that do more dps, provide more support and have more utility and sustain than ele. 

[zeyeti.8347]

It's nice if you are happy with such result , play the game how you want as long as it doesn't make others fail.

but for the two button 19k dps , i did 23-24k with mech pew pew literally afk (some normal strike mission ...) , i heal myself automatically for 600 hp a sec ang give myself boons like quickness auto trough mech , all of that afk , and again i have more hp and more armor than ele , and also end up having auto cc skills.

I know it's out of context and i am sorry bout that, you just wanna have fun with your ele , but 19k dps with two buttons is nothing , a lot of classes just doing auto attacks do better than that , and as say by soulknight they have more armor and more hp. I say this 20 times a day , but there is a reason ele whole class is the lowest played in pve.

[AliamRationem.5172]

On 5/20/2024 at 3:01 PM, HnRkLnXqZ.1870 said:

As far as my understanding about Elementalist goes, you cannot achieve anything noticeable without breaking your fingers. If that is outdated and Elementalist is now one of the easiest classes to play in GW2, I'm totally fine with it. I was just very shocked when I saw that my build somewhat delivers acceptable results. After a countless list of miserable failures of builds which played nice, but were not able to get beyond 6k at all. 

If we're setting the bar at <20k DPS (I assume that's on self-boons?), a fire-camping tempest build should capable of that in trailblazer gear.  Scepter/warhorn, fire/earth, signets and glyphs.  You just sit in fire pushing buttons as they come off cooldown.  No AA chain to worry about interrupting.  No timing anything.  And you have a ton of health and armor from trailblazer to make you tanky. 

These kinds of builds have existed for years.  For example, this build which I used to facetank a champion and deal 20.6k DPS.  I think hammer has since been nerfed, so like I said just use scepter/warhorn.  It'll probably produce somewhere close to the damage of your two-button DPS build, but it'll be much tankier, ranged, and probably just as easy to play.