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.