3 replies to this topic

[Nonlinear]

I haven't messed around a lot with condition builds (I made one as my first build but was doing it all wrong, still have the gear though) and so I decided to give it a try.  I got a lot of info from Aetou's posts on the build.  Been using it for the past few days in PUGs and am enjoying it.  It has good survival through high vitality (all carrion gear), toughness through earth, high blees stacks, 100% uptime on burning and a blast finisher every 5 seconds via Eruption spam.

Can find the current build I am using here:

Link to Build



Base skills:

Glyph of Elemental Harmony (Heal)

Glyph of Storms (Earth)
Signet of Fire
Situational - Mist Form, Elemental Power, Armor of Earth, etc.

Glyph of Elementals (Elite)

Base Traits (some different options are below in the write up):

10 Fire for Burning Fire (3 seconds of Burning on Signet of Fire) and 10% condition durationg

10 Air for Quick Glyphs (these ten points are optional and can be put wherever, e.g. Fire for Fire IX - Fire's Embrace coupled with Earth XI - Written in Stone)

30 Earth for II - Signet Mastery (-20% Signet CD), VII - Serrated Stones (+20% bleed duration) and X - Geomancer's Alacrity (-20% Earth CD).  Can swap X for XII - Written in Stone (if you run a lot of signets) and swap VII with X.  

20 Arcane for V - Elemental Attunement (utility) and VIII - Blasting Staff (bigger aoes):

Gear:

All Carrion.  Sigil of Agony for Increased Bleed duration, Runes of Balthazar x2 for 25 power and 15% increased Burn duration, Krait x2 for 28 condition damage and Bleed duration, and currently Lich x2 for 25 vitality and 4% condition duration (plan on replacing them with Mad King x2 for 10% condition duration in the next day or two).

Bleed duration increase:  59% with Lich x2, 65% with Mad King x2
Burning duration increase: 29% with Lich x2, 35% with Mad King x2

Write up:

Condition Damage Build for Dungeons

Overview:  Uses traited Earth 2 (Eruption) coupled with increased bleeding duration for large bleed stacks and field finishing, Signet of Fire (Skill) is used to keep up burning.  AOE with Glyph of Storms in Earth for damage and bleeds.

20% CD reduction on signets, 3 seconds of burning and ~30% burn duration will let you keep burning up on a target continuously with Signet of Fire.  Groupmates have lots of time to plant combo fields on the Eruption animation and should do so since the delay on the blast will finish the field for them.

Traits:  10 Fire and 30 Earth are the core.  
10 in Fire for 3 seconds to add three seconds of burning to Signet of Fire and gain 10% condition duration.  

30 in Earth for 20% CD reduction on signet, 20% longer bleeds and 20% CD reduction on Earth spells.  Can take Written in Stone if you plan on using a signet heavy build but I usually only use Signet of Fire.  Since you will be wearing carrion gear you will have 4% crit without talents so losing the passive on Signet of Fire while it is on CD is not that big of a deal to me.  If you do take Written in Stone then you should take the 20% CD reduction on Earth spells as your master trait instead of bleed duration increase since bleed duration can easily be obtained through runes if you want it.

20 points in Arcane for the utility of Elemental Attunement and Blasting Staff for larger AOEs.

That leaves 10 points that you can put wherever you'd like, I prefer Guick Glyphs for the reduced CD on the healing glyph, glyph of storms, etc. (whatever other glyphs you are using) but you can put them in Water for some condition removal, Fire for 100 power and 10% burn duration and whichever trait you'd like, Fire's Embrace would be good for signet heavy build with Written in Stone but you won't be able to share it.

Skills: Signet of Fire for Burning, Glyph of Storms in Earth for AOE and more bleeds.  Third slot is situational.  Frost Bow for things like AC exp, Mist Form or Armor of Earth if you need an Oh Sh!t button, Glyph of Elemental Power and Lesser Elementals can be useful, Signet of Earth/Water/etc.  Whatever the situation calls for, it's a dungeon so it's the same everytime and you can determine which skills gel with your playstyle.  

For Elite skill I default to Elemental.  Fiery Greatsword and Tornado benefit from Power/Crit which this build lacks.

Gear:  100% Carrior Gear.  @80 I have a little over 18k health and a little less than 1300 condition damage.  For Sigil and Runes I went with things that will increase the duration on my burns and bleeds.  For sigil I went with Sigil of Agony for 10% increased Bleed duration.  For runes I decided on 2x Krait for 15% Bleed duration and 28 condition damage, 2x Balthazar for 25 power and 15% Burn duration, and 2x Lich for 25 vitality and 4% Condition duration (or Mad King x2 for 10% if you think it's worth an extra 1g15s per rune for that extra 6%).  Can use whatever you feel is the best combo of duration increases, e.g. get rid of Lich x2 and use either Centaur x2 for 15% more Bleed or Flame Legion/Baelfire x2 for 15% More Burn.

Stats:

• Power: 1,748
  
• Precision: 1,016 (Base + 100 from 10 points in Air, 9% crit)
  
• Toughness: 1,244 (2,164 Armor)
  
• Vitality: 1,636 (18,005 Health)
  
• 35%/29% Increased Burning Duration (10% from 10 Fire and 20%/14% from Mad King/Lich runes)
  
• 65%/59% Increased Bleeding duration (10% from 10 Fire, 20% from Earth and 35%/29% from Mad King/Lich runes)

Can probably juggle the duration increases to suit your playstyle or party composition, e.g. more than one bleeder in the party.

Edited by Nonlinear, 05 December 2012 - 10:08 PM.

[Silvercat18]

I am a WvW artillery elementalist, based around slapping large amounts of aoe, bleed and burn on groups and on area denial.

Looking at the above i would strongly recommend that you dont have arcane at all. Crank it all into fire. The idea of wider AOE with the arcane bonus sounds great, but seeing as it can only affect 5 targets anyway, its just not worth it.

As to glyph of storms, i dont use it at all.

[Nonlinear]

I don't know about this build in WvW because I use it in Dungeons and this is the PvE forum but I would definitely switch some things up if I were to take it into WvW, e.g. more condition removal, stun break, etc. would probably not put the 10 points in Air and go for Water/cantrips or something like that.

I could remove the points from Arcane but I like at least 10 for the attunement recharge and the utility of Elemental Attunement, I find it is really good when running from trash, rotating between earth/water/air to give the party AOE protection/regen/swiftness is helpful, even moreso when holding something like a boulder that ties up your weapon skills.  Earth elemental is the only really useful dungeon skill for this build (imo and not counting racials, FGS and nado are based on power/crit), I like being able to go to Fire to use elemental (for DPS/blast finishers) and the arcane helps me get back to Earth and reapply bleed stacks that much quicker (i usually cycle through fields while waiting, lava font then either frozen ground or static field then Earth is back up).  I also just prefer the bigger AOE field and blast in PvE and like to assume the increased staff range increases the range on the blast finisher too (haven't tested).  

Like the writeup says, the core of the build is 10 fire for 3 seconds of burning on the signet and 10% duration and the 30 earth for bleed/earth/condition bonuses (with flexibilty for running signets and Written and Stone) and the rest are basically playstyle/optional.  20 fire would make Written in Stone variations even more flexible by adding the option to trait Fire's Embrace.  I really don't know what else you would take with 20 in fire besides 3s of burning and signet shield, crit is poor so burn on crit trait is not an option, % damage increases don't apply to condition damage, our "on down" traits are to keep enemies at bay in PvP (imo, and if someone is traiting their downed state they're probably going down too much and should focus more on avoiding what is getting them to that state in the first place) and you won't use fire enough to warrant CD reduction or increased damage (the only thing I use fire for is object destruction and elemental).

I switched the two Lich runes to Mad King runes and don't have a problem with condition duration but if changed them up with something else I could see the extra points in fire being useful for the duration increase.  With my current condition duration and 20% CD reduction on Eruption I hover around 18 stacks of bleed and can get 24-25 stacks up by myself (easily with Sandstorm).  If there is more than one heavy bleeder in the group it will cap which kind of sucks.

As far as Glyph of Storms I use it whenever it is off CD and I am fighting a boss or more than one mob, but only in Earth (unless there is am object that needs to go down then I use fire).  Sandstorm applies bleed stacks in Earth every second AND blinds every three seconds.  One of the reasons I was looking forward to this build was to get the most out of sandstorm because it is just so wicked awesome even as GC spec.  I could see the bleed and blind being useful in WvW situations.

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I've played with the build more and run with different group makeups (I enjoy pugging) and it has pluses and minuses like any other build.  My skills are usually Fire Signet, Storms and Mist Form for emergencies/rezzing.  I think it is the most fun with a group that understands how to combo due to the Eruption blast finisher every ~5 seconds and obviously in groups where nobody else is stacking bleed to the ceiling.  Party members have enough time to react to the Eruption animation and put field(s) down on top for blast combos, the Eruption finisher reminds me a little of blast part of old EA except someone else has to lay the fields and you aren't dodging every 5 seconds.  

It has good survival ability with all the vitality which lessens the pain of burning/bleeding compared to a GC build, as GC burning is/was my bane because I run pretty light on condition removal as glass.  Most spike damage can be cheesed or dodged, reduced with Armor of Earth (while breaking stun and adding stability), blocked with arcane shield, completely 100% mitigated with Mist Form while breaking stun, etc. while on the other hand we really only have Cleansing Flame and Healing Rain for condition removal without speccing into water.

Weakness on the boss from Earth 1 provides a little support and being able to use Earth 3,4,5 on demand (without swapping first) with decreased CDs help survival/support as well.  If there is a boss I usually just Earth 1 on the champ/boss and AOE the adds (and hopefully boss too).  On some encounters I like to use my radiation field (Asaru skill), the poisons is increased by condition damage and I can combo my Eruption into it for area weakness.

Build is not so good at destroying objects and even worse when time is a factor (SE path 1 turrets), doing most of your DPS in Earth means poor single target direct damage and no access to fields unless you swap to one of the other three attunements.  Crit is base and power is secondary so you just don't hit things very hard directly.

The build is a lot of fun and IMO has a lot of potential with the right synergy.  If you go staff/fire/GC in a dungeon you are a field generator with Lava Font spam and if you go condition you are a field finisher with Eruption spam.

It's fun watching all the bleeds burns tick while kiting around or spamming Eruption.  It makes it easier to rally from down state (some mob you dotted up croaked somewhere).  It's fun and satisfying to hit groups with Eruption and it's fun when GS guardians pull the mobs into Eruption and put down symbol of Wrath for AOE retaliation off the blast, or might from an elementalist's lava font, hearing that chaos armor sheen sound when grouped with a mesmer, etc.  I don't know... it's just fun and satisfying for me to see/hear the synergy like it's fun seeing big crits with FGS as GC after the Guardian loads you up with might.

I would love to run this build alongside a fire/GC/staff elementalist that has 20% CD on fire spells.  I spam Eruption/Boulder and it spams Lava Font/Fireball (same CD).  If timed right every Eruption/Lava Font combo will grant three stacks AOE might that currently lasts 20 seconds without duration runes or traits.  Coupled with Water/Monk runes (and maybe even fire or major water) and arcane points you could get very high might stacks.  Assuming you can get 70% boon duration from traits/runes (30% waterx2/monkx2 and 20% from arcane) and food (20%), that's 34 second might stacks, even moreso if might duration from fire runes is included, can probably get at least 15 stacks (am going to test it in the mists sans food).  All while both of you cast your most damaging spells, DPS/support at the same time.  The obvious downside being you need a lava font laying elementalist and runes/food that cater to it in order to get the might your runes benefit.  I also imagine that timing, positioning and correctly placing the field/blast in practice could be difficult, especially in chaotic fights with lots of movement and no voice com.

The principle is the same in other groups too.  As condition/Eruption spam you can blast finish a field every 5 seconds but don't expect to be putting down many (if any) fields.

Edited by Nonlinear, 30 November 2012 - 06:27 PM.

[Nonlinear]

Here's a video of the build on golems.  Oops, need to redo it, forgot to add the last te points, heh.

EDIT:  Moved vid to OP.

Edited by Nonlinear, 05 December 2012 - 10:08 PM.