12 replies to this topic

[WickedEve]

Hi Fellow GW2 Fans! I would like to get some feedback from you'all for a scepter/dagger build in PVP situations. It's a condition and speed based build where i try to balance survivability w/ DPS in a WvW environment running with 1 or 2 friends.  I'm planning a staff build separately but I'd like to give each weapon set a shot.  Let me know what you think of my utility + trait skill picks. Thanks.

Newest adjustments: http://gw2skills.net... y l7L5XDROLM7A

Currently need advice on a pick 2 out of 3:  given that we get the sigil benefits when we attunement swap now.
Sigil of Superior Hydromancy and/or Sigil of Superior Battle and/or Sigil of Minor Corruption

Edited by WickedEve, 21 August 2012 - 09:53 AM.

[MaximumSquid]

WicketEve:

It will be more advantageous to drop Windborne Dagger and One with Air and then find a way to keep Swiftness up for duration

I've also been told that the passive on Signet of Air does not stack with Zephar's Speed making your combo unintentionally worse

You also didn't bother to pick out any Runes, Sigils, and Amulets/Jewels
Nobody is going to really be able to give you any credible feedback until you fill in everything

[Dirichlet]

Three Signets means you want to be taking Written in Stone. Like MaxSquid I've also heard some of the movement speed increases don't stack, so you can easily drop the 10 Air points to get 30 Earth for WiS. On the other hand, Signet of Air isn't very good. There are other ways to get speed increases, and the Blind is awful compared to Blinding Flash and Dust Devil, because it has an annoyingly long cast time. I'd try for a more condition damage orientated build and take Signet of Fire. Keep Windborne Dagger as your sole movement speed increase.

[WickedEve]

MaximumSquid, on 13 August 2012 - 05:26 PM, said:

WicketEve:

It will be more advantageous to drop Windborne Dagger and One with Air and then find a way to keep Swiftness up for duration

I've also been told that the passive on Signet of Air does not stack with Zephar's Speed making your combo unintentionally worse

You also didn't bother to pick out any Runes, Sigils, and Amulets/Jewels
Nobody is going to really be able to give you any credible feedback until you fill in everything

http://gw2skills.net...MfJ y l7L5XnFA

ok updated the build, ty for the suggestions.  i'm not sure wuh runes sigils amulets? didn't have much experience w/ those in the betas.

[Cinnamonfox]

Others above suggested Written in Stone to support the sigil build, which I see as a good advice, but you can live without that too (especially as the heal sigil cd will be shorter, see upcoming changes). Seems that you don't mind missing out the passive benefits when sigils are recharging, but I would at least take the Sigil mastery for the first major earth slot, since that means more aura uptime (and the associated boons uptime). Also, how about Elemental Shielding for more benefit from the auras?

As for the fire traits, you've got Spell slinger, but only one long cd cantgrip in the utilities. As an alternative to that I suggest Ember's Might to create more synergy ie. to support your sigil->aura->burn play.

How would you like Carrion Amulet? Also, take a look at the Superior rune of the Forge if you feel squishy with what you have, it's got nice synergy to aura builds.

[Glavius]

BTW Windborne Dagger does not work with offhand dagger.

[WickedEve]

ok new build update

Cinnamonfox, on 13 August 2012 - 08:33 PM, said:

Others above suggested Written in Stone to support the sigil build, which I see as a good advice, but you can live without that too (especially as the heal sigil cd will be shorter, see upcoming changes). Seems that you don't mind missing out the passive benefits when sigils are recharging, but I would at least take the Sigil mastery for the first major earth slot, since that means more aura uptime (and the associated boons uptime). Also, how about Elemental Shielding for more benefit from the auras?

As for the fire traits, you've got Spell slinger, but only one long cd cantgrip in the utilities. As an alternative to that I suggest Ember's Might to create more synergy ie. to support your sigil->aura->burn play.

How would you like Carrion Amulet? Also, take a look at the Superior rune of the Forge if you feel squishy with what you have, it's got nice synergy to aura builds.

Ty for the suggestions, I took sigil mastery and ember's might, and elemental shielding.  I looked at carrion amulet, I like the increased condition damage, but i'm concerned about giving up the precision since I don't have much precision anywhere else. I don't want to be the nub that can't land anything ><

Glavius, on 13 August 2012 - 08:38 PM, said:

BTW Windborne Dagger does not work with offhand dagger.

Yeah I had given up windborn dagger, but if it doesnt work offhand then that's a def no no for me. Alternatively I took Zephyr's Boon to give me that movement speed.

Edited by WickedEve, 13 August 2012 - 11:11 PM.

[MaximumSquid]

Glavius:

That probably explains why two of them don't stack

---

WickedEve:

Ok. . . Crit/Condition
S/D can work with that; lets see about improving the rest of your traits first:

Spell Slinger isn't probably going to do anything for you with only 1 cantrip and the one with the highest cooldown

I've been told that Vigorous Scepter is very underwhelming as it only increases Endurance Regeneration by 33%
This pales in comparison to just applying Vigor which you already have easy access to with Scepter Fire #3
(also, bug or not, I was told that VS doesn't stack with Vigor so it's even more pointless)

More than likely what you'll want to do, if someone else hasn't mentioned it, is to drop Arcane by 10 to finish Earth line for Written in Stone

At that point you can probably drop Armor of Earth for the Water Signet as you are lacking in condition removal
(Armor of Earth has actually been nerfed recently to only last 6 seconds and I didn't recommend it before the change)

For Runes Nightmare is good against a foe who can remove your conditions quickly, but most people are willing to take the risk and go for higher DPS with their condition builds by taking offset runes that up duration instead

Rune of the Krait, Rune of the Afflicted, and Rune of the Centaur all up your bleed duration by 15% if you use 2 runes of each
(This combined with the 20 points in the Fire Trait and Serrated Stones would give you 85% longer bleed)

Lastly you could load up two Sigils of Earth to keep your bleed stacks going when you're not attuned to earth
(Sigil of Blood also gets honorable mention as they have been improved recently and now steal 453 health when they trigger)

Oh. . . I guess one final thing. . .
If you decide to go with Written in Stone be sure to finish the trait Synergy by swapping Earth's Embrace for Elemental Shielding
(having Protection up all the time along with Rock Barrier will really make make people take a long time to finish you off)

-

Edited by MaximumSquid, 13 August 2012 - 11:33 PM.

[WickedEve]

Updated build

Ok i swapped in signet of water, although i'm kinda conflicted between that and cleansing firebecause cleansing fire also breaks me out of stuns. What do you guys think?  also, i decided take off 10 points from fire in order to get written in stone. I kept the air because of zephyr's boon and i feel like the swiftness helps w/ chasing and escaping maybe? ><

ok in light of the new skill updates allowing signils to be applied to attunement swaps.
so what you guys think of Sigil of Superior Hydromancy and Sigil of Superior Battle.

Edited by WickedEve, 14 August 2012 - 03:15 AM.

[dragbot]

WickedEve, on 14 August 2012 - 02:44 AM, said:

Updated build

Ok i swapped in signet of water, although i'm kinda conflicted between that and cleansing firebecause cleansing fire also breaks me out of stuns. What do you guys think?  also, i decided take off 10 points from fire in order to get written in stone. I kept the air because of zephyr's boon and i feel like the swiftness helps w/ chasing and escaping maybe? ><

ok in light of the new skill updates allowing signils to be applied to attunement swaps.
so what you guys think of Sigil of Superior Hydromancy and Sigil of Superior Battle.

Hi, I see you invested heavily in signets and some aura traits, yet you didnt trait for fire's embrace which gives you an fiery AURA every time you use a signet! Your build basically is an unfinished signet/aura build, you could just lose 10 points in arcane and put it in Fire to get the t2 trait. Which gives you a fair amount of fury/swiftness/protection during fights, maybe you could get +fury duration runes if you like to prolong the effect.
Furthermore you could swap the 5% dmg to burning foes for burning fire which gives your fiery signet +3 sec. of burning, which is huge on a 16 sec. CD but I can see Ember's Might would work as well.
For sigils I'd recommend Sigil of Superior Doom which gives you access to a poison (possibly) every 9 sec. which again is huge, ecspecially in combination with strong burns. As for the sec. weapon I dont really know yet, maybe Sigil of Superior Leeching but I'm not a huge fan of bleed stacking on elementalist since spamming 1 in earth really makes you miss out on all the other good stuff in your arsenal.
Mabye you could get Sigil of Superior Energy to compensate for the endurance loss from your 20 arcane trait.

Edit: hmm maybe Sigil of Superior Geomancy isn't a bad idea to put on your weapon, in combination with the poison one, to act as a cleansing protection for burn&poison.

Edited by dragbot, 14 August 2012 - 06:45 AM.

[Cinnamonfox]

Back to the drawing board mate... After lots of many good suggestions the point of what you (we) are aiming for has gone a bit lost. So more questions and clarifications on this post of mine now. Removing the Fire's Embrace in fire you lost most of your auras making 2 of your major traits pretty useless. Did you realize you only have one aura (Frost Aura) on 40sec recharge now? (Not counting blast combos.) Therefore you won't have that much benefit from the Zephyr's Boon/Elemental Shielding now. If you had that fire talent you'd have an aura every time you activate one of your 4 signets and Frost aura, ie. quite high uptime of auras and the 3 associated boons. Of course you didn't say you wanted an aura build, you said a condition and movement one...

Now I've got to ask if you actually want to
1) go back to focus on bleeds (& burn?) and forget the aura traits?
2) focus on signets but not auras (30earth+20arcane as the base, change lots)?
3) use auras and signets (move 10 from arcane to fire)?
4) something else?

You seem to like swiftness, so if you decide to go for something else than auras, the choises for speed boosts are:
* trait Elemental attunement (10arcane): swiftness when attuning TO air -> although the more points you put in arcane the more often you can swap and gain it
* swiftness from Glyph of Elemental Harmony cast when IN air attunement (20sec recharge, but it's also heal)
* swiftness from lesser Air Elemental ie. cast Glyph of Lesser Elementals IN air attunement (45sec recharge)
* swiftness from Updraft (offhand dagger air skill, 40sec recharge)
* trait Inscription (20air): swiftness when casting any glyph IN air attunement
* trait One with Air (10air): You move 5% faster every 10 seconds you are attuned to air. Maximum of 25% bonus movement speed. (doesn't go with condition build of course)
* trait Zephyr's Speed (5air): Move 10% faster while attuned to air.
* passive Signet of Air: 10% movement increase when signet is available (or always with WiS trait).
* Superior Rune of the Air, Pack, Speed or Centaur

Quote

i'm concerned about giving up the precision since I don't have much precision anywhere else. I don't want to be the nub that can't land anything ><

Above you sound like you were thinking of hit rating of some sort, or am I mistaken? However, precision = crit chance in GW2.

Best wishes.

Edited by Cinnamonfox, 14 August 2012 - 09:15 PM.

[Anlyon Spellrage]

You got alot of good feedback there mate.

Ill give you a chance to respond and sort through those before i jump in and tell you what i think.

[WickedEve]

I finally finished adjusting this build. xD  I gave up 10 more arcane trait points >.< unwillingly due to slower attunement switch. However, yeah Cinnamonfox was right, w/o fire's embrace alot of my trait skills would fall apart.  I picked increased might and apply poison for my weapon sigils to complement the conditional dmg build.     Still not sure if i should take the Sigil of Superior Battleor something else, but i do like the extra dps.