16 replies to this topic

[evilandrex]

Please note that this was written for my guild to share a build I created and to show how I personally create and play Elementalist builds

Hello everyone, this is a build I recently created with a goal of supporting in dungeons in mind. I use the supporting ability of Guadians and Warriors (shouts) as benchmarks to judge the overall strength and usefulness of the build. Of course, the goal is to bring a unique twist to the supporting role as a Elementalist - to do something the other classes simply cannot do.

Goal:
This build was created to fill an extremely useful role within dungeon groups. Although the "support" role can often be skipped in most dungeon runs, a strong support can allow a group to get through a dungeon with less deaths, faster clear-times, and ultimately more profit from dungeons.

Looking at the the overall "support" role, we can divide the role into 3 categories: Healing, Defense, Offense. Healing is the main goal of this support build, a strong support can heal multiple allies effectively - aiding the survival of allies by giving another source of health gain outside of personal healing skills. Defense can be provided by a support in many different ways, it can vary from preventing enemies from hitting allies to preventing damage on an ally - overall, the idea is the prevention of damage instead of healing after damage being done. A support's goal to aid allies, this often includes increasing the damage output of allies - supports should look for ways to either buff his/her allies or debuff of the enemies in order to kill them faster.

In attempts to abuse the Elementalist's versatility, we will look for ways to fulfill each category. Although an Elementalist can do something in each aspect, a priority should be set on which aspect is more importantly - for this build the priority will be the following (from highest priority to lowest): healing, offensive support, defensive support.

As an Elementalist attempting to fill the support role, a unique factor should be found in order to give  special edge to a support Elementalist over the other classes as support. This edge should allow the build to stand out above others and provide a powerful boost to a team that may not be possible without the Elementalist.


Weapon and Utility Skills:
In this build, a versatile support weapon set is required in order to fulfill our goal. Utilities should be seen as changeable whenever needed but a rough outline for the utility skills is needed.


Scepter is chosen for mainhand because of the strong utility available to it.

• In fire, the skills contains two blast finishers with, Dragon's Tooth and Phoenix, in order to complete combos - the main method of offensive support.
  
• In water, there once again is another option in offensive support with the vulnerability from Shatterstone but more importantly there is a powerful ranged AoE heal from Water Trident.
  
• In air, Blinding Flash helps our defensive support role with the blind preventing enemies from hitting.
  
• In earth, another blind is found with Dust Devil, this time it is a line AoE blind.

The scepter includes a multitude of different fully offensive spells but because of our build, these spells can be considered extremely weak but casting these spells is still important in order help with damage in a group.

A dagger is in the offhand because of its superior synergy and utility when used with scepter mainhand.

• In fire, Ring of Fire is used as a combo field along with the many combo blast finisher, together they can provide 10+ stacks of might if the combo is properly executed.
  
• In water, there is Frost Armor which, although we will not be invested in auras, can be very helpful to the Elementalist for defense - look to this skill when being chased by monsters such as when the team is skipping monsters. Cleansing Wave is the second weapon based heal, not only does it heal in an area, it also cures a condition - take note of this skill as its effects provide the main healing potential in this build.
  
• In air, Ride The Lightning provides a positional utility which can be used to shift from defensive support position to offensive support position. Updraft also provides a strong knockdown/knockback - although it will likely be blocked by most dungeon bosses, a hard interrupt skill is available in this build if needed.
  
• In earth, both Earthquake and Churning Earth are blast finishers, these two skills are part of the offensive support combo to provide many stacks of might quickly. It should be noted that Churning Earth's blast finisher takes place at the start of the channeling, the whole spell does not need to be cast in order to get the desired effect.

The dagger offhand makes for a versatile offhand when paired with scepter with strong spell synergy. There are very few spells in offhand that cannot be used for support or utility. Although most of the spells of dagger offhand are close range, the Elementalist should still take note of their general weakness in passive defense (health and armor) - use the spells quickly and move back into a safer position right after.

Healing skills, utility, and elite skills are largely changeable, the build shown above is an example of a possible combination for a sylvari Elementalist. When choosing utilities skills, determining what is needed on the bar is important; in this build we want: bonus party healing, bonus offensive support, bonus defensive support, and self-defense. It is unlikely that all of these aspects can be fulfilled at once but the choice of which to fulfill is largely based on self-preference and the specific dungeon.

For a healing skill there is a choice of:

• Ether Renewal - a low cooldown strong self heal; take this if runes that run off of the usage of healing skills is equipped.
  
• Signet of Restoration - consistent self healing because of constant spell usage; take this if the Elementalist cannot effectively sustain himself or herself.
  
• Healing Seed - a sylvari racial healing skill that not only heals the caster but gives the boon Regeneration to those around the summon; extremely useful in this build because of the regeneration, this skill is highly recommonded if available.

For offensive support the following skills are available:

• Arcane Wave - highly commended as it works very will into the offensive support combo as another blast finisher.
  
• Conjure Lightning Hammer - although possibly dangerous to stay in melee position, the crowd control potential (knockback or dazing leap combo). It can also provide a blast finisher every 3 auto attack.
  
• Battle Roar - this skill can be used after the offensive boon combo to give a significant boost in overall damage for the team

For defensive support:

• Conjure Frost Bow - this skill's bonus in Healing Power may be worth using in times where healing is required, equipping the bow then dodging for a heal can be an effective way to use this. One should also note the ice ability for the bow, it is a strong disable available to the Elementalist.
  
• Glyph of Elemental Power - if this is casted in air attunement can allow the Elementalist to maintain weakness on a target for the entire duration of this spell. Although the spell says otherwise, after casted the effect remains (fire spells can trigger the weakness if this spell was casted in air).
  
• Glyph of Renewal - although the cast time is high, there are situations where this spell can resurrect downed allies. It is recommended that this is used with a strong self defense spell to allow the Elementalist to safely cast.
  
• Glyph of Storms - the earth version of this spell can provide a recurring AoE spell that applies blind every tick. This is very useful for rooms with many additional mobs.

For self-defense (note that all of these skills are stun breaks):

• Armor of Earth - the protection and stability provided by this skill allows the Elementalist to survive certain difficult encounters that involve heavy damage and/or forced movement.
  
• Lightning Flash - an experienced user can use this skill to get out of most situation. It is an instant cast to teleport anywhere. This can be used to get out of sticky situations or quickly into a new, more favorable position.
  
• Mist Form - the ultimate self-defense skill, useful in almost all dungeons to mitigate heavy damage while giving the Elementalist freedom of movement. There are two unique properties of this skill that should be noted: even while in Mist Form, utility skills can be used and this skill can be used mid-resurrection to protect the Elementalist while saving an ally. This skill is almost a staple.

For elite skills we have the choice of:

• Glyph of Elementals - the elite Elementals summoned through this skill provide a strong companion that can fit many situations. Fire can provide damage, water can provide an ice field and healing, air can provide reliable ranged damage, and earth can provide another body for enemies to hit.
  
• Summon D-Series Golem - an extra NPC on the field can allow monster dps to be more spread out and easier to manage
  
• Summon Druid Spirit - this summon can be extremely useful in aiding damage and support. The regeneration and the condition removal can be useful at times.
  
• Take Root - the momentary invulnerability from this skill makes it a useful survivability skill. The summoned turrets are also capable of pulling monster aggro to them immediately.

Traits:
Although the utilities in this build is largely left to the player to decide what they want, the traits are specifically designed to fulfill the role desired.


Air Magic (10):
The 100 bonus precision from this trait line helps with what this build does in order to maximize Healing Power.

• Zephyr's Speed (Minor): The slight movement speed never hurt anyone, it allows for the Elementalist to move slightly faster which can be useful in times where the team is skipping monsters.
  
• Soothing Winds (Major): This choice of a major trait and largely the 10 point investment into the Air Magic line is based off of a very specific type of gear this build works with - more on this in the gear section.

Water Magic (30):
The bonus of 300 Vitality and Healing Power makes this trait line a must to max.

• Soothing Mist (Minor): Just a slight bit of self-healing, it is a noticeable amount due to Healing Power.
  
• Aquamancer's Alacrity (Major): Because this build's main support style is through healing, making spells in the water attunement recharge quicker is a nice bonus.
  
• Healing Ripple (Minor): The passive healing given to allies while attuned to Water gives strong consistent health regeneration because of the large Healing Power this build has.
  
• Cleansing Wave (Major): This immediate condition removal is a method of removing many conditions from allies quickly and effectively - some conditions are very deadly and can be detrimental if not removed quickly.
  
• Bountiful Power (Minor): Although this build does not focus on damage output, this slight bonus can help in some situations where extra damage is required.
  
• Cleansing Water (Major): Regeneration is an easily applied boon, this trait allows the build to abuse this factor to continually remove all conditions from allies.

Arcana (30):
Both the bonus stats from this trait line can be useful for any Elementalist. By increasing the length of boons, boons like regeneration can be much stronger. By allowing the Elementalist to swtich through elements quicker, more combos and switches in a certain area of support can be done in a shorter amount of time.

• Arcane Fury (Minor): The fury can be useful in certain situations, specifically in attempting to use sigils based off of critical hits - this bonus is a welcomed one.
  
• Elemental Attunement (Major): This skill allows us to provide useful boons even with normal and common actions of an Elementalist.
  
• Lingering Elements (Minor): This trait is extremely useful, especially because of the passive bonuses in water - this allows for more leeway in terms of switching between elements while not losing important bonuses from a specific element.
  
• Vigorous Scepter (Major): As dodging is one of the ways this build produces the spells required to fulfill its role, allowing for more dodges is extremely important.
  
• Arcane Precision (Minor): Because this build includes precision as one of its valued stats, this skill can be useful - it should be noted that the chance of this passive working is low (about 7.5% chance on crit).
  
• Evasive Arcana (Major): This is the keystone to this build - almost all of the spells that occur after a dodge can be used very effectively. For example, Cleansing Wave gives its full healing potential with one dodge.

Gear:
This build focuses on a very specific set of stats to get the most Healing Power possible whilst being able to stay alive for as long as possible.

The focus of stats are as follows:

• Healing Power (Main)
  
• Precision (Secondary)
  
• Vitality (Secondary)

This group of stats are focuses on giving high amount of Healing Power. By using Precision in conjunction with the Soothing Wind trait gives bonus healing power. Precision allows this build to use sigils are that based off of critical hits which opens the door for more options. Vitality gives the necessary survivability for this build (generally, armor should be 1/10 of a character's health for the most effective health).

This set of unique stats can be obtained through a few methods, please note that this set of stats cannot be found on exotic accessories and jewels. For those slots, either use Sapphires or keep the rare set.

Rare:

• Magi's- accessory
  
• Durmand Priory Armor

Exotic:

• Temple Karma Armor
  
• Dungeon (AC, TA, Arah) Weapon and Armor

Sigil of Water and Sigil of Energy are used with this build. The Sigil of Water can provide bonus healing on critical hits which are steadily available with the precision. The Sigil of Energy can be triggered with an element swap - which allows for more consistent dodge-rolling to trigger more spells.

Runes can be one of two choices: Rune of the Water or Rune of the Monk. Water provides bonus healing on the use of healing skill and the Monk gives Aegis on elite use, which can be useful if the elite chosen is a quick survival skill.


Usage:
A good way to organize skills and goals while playing this build is by looking at what of three aspects of the support role and transitioning between each smoothly.

Defensive Support: This aspect is fulfilled through the usage of the air and earth attunement. For this build, this aspect will require the player to focus on staying in air form for blindness and possible weakness. The focus here is to limit the monster's ability to deal damage through consistent blind. Blind can be applied through the skill usage or dodging while in air, a line aoe blind is also available in earth but it pulls the player out of air form (when leaving air form, think about transitioning into another aspect of support. This defensive support aspect should be focused on if the team is just beginning to fight a new set of monsters or largely undamaged.

Healing: This whole aspect uses the water attunement. Even by simply staying in the water form consistent healing due to the traits. The healing of this build comes in two ways, steady healing and spike healing, all of which are AoE. Steady healing will be provided slowly when the player is in water attunement. Spike AoE healing is done through three main abilities. Water Trident, Cleansing Wave, and dodge Cleansing Wave - all of these skills can be used in any order when needed. If only a small amount of healing is ever needed, switching into water then quickly out into another attunement can a small burst of healing. This aspect of support can easily be transitioned into and out as it is only in the Water Attunement.

Offensive Support: This aspect is only a chain of spells that provides a large amount of might in a short time. This combo begins in any element other than fire and earth. The combo is as follows:

• Swap into Fire Attunement (F1) [1 Might]
  
• Ring of Fire (4)
  
• Dragon's Tooth (2) [3 Might]
  
• Phoenix (3) [3 Might]
  
• Swap into Earth Attunement (F4)
  
• Earthquake (4) [3 Might]
  
• Churning Earth (5) [3 Might]
  
• Arcane Wave (if equipped) [3 Might]

If this combo is done correctly, there is a potential of 16 stacks of might in an area. After doing this combo, immediately transition into another support aspect.

Overall, a good player should be moving in between the elements smoothly in order to fulfill each aspect of the support role depending on situation and what the team currently needs.


Thank you for reading this build analysis/sharing - please give any feedback that you may have, I appreciate all of it.

Edited by evilandrex, 28 November 2012 - 10:41 PM.

[Nonlinear]

I've used/have a similar build (Healing gear from Orr using Karma but I don't use S/D, ~1,400 healing) and found the lack of power/DPS off-putting, especially when coupled with poorly scaling heals and heals that scale well but have long CDs.  Once EA was nerfed that was it for me, glass cannon time.

As a glass cannon build my regular attacks did more damage than my crits as a healing heavy support build.

You can test in the mists, healing builds take like 35%-40% more time to kill a golem than a power build (27-28 sec vs 16-17 sec) and my personal conclusion was that poorly scaling heals were not enough to make up that time differential.  Stuff dies 40% faster that is 40% less time you have to spend dodging red circles, fewer CDs, etc.  

I just don't see the healing or benefits provided by full support specs as worth losing 50% of your damage in PvE in a group of five people.  I also find high endurance and condition removal superior to stacking tough/vit and heal because you can still get endurance and condition removal through traits/skills without sacrificing power.

Edited by Nonlinear, 28 November 2012 - 10:54 PM.

[evilandrex]

Nonlinear, on 28 November 2012 - 10:52 PM, said:

I've used/have a similar build (Healing gear from Orr using Karma but I don't use S/D, ~1,400 healing) and found the lack of power/DPS off-putting, especially when coupled with poorly scaling heals and heals that scale well but have long CDs.  Once EA was nerfed that was it for me, glass cannon time.

As a glass cannon build my regular attacks did more damage than my crits as a healing heavy support build.

You can test in the mists, healing builds take like 35%-40% more time to kill a golem than a power build (27-28 sec vs 16-17 sec) and my personal conclusion was that poorly scaling heals were not enough to make up that time differential.  Stuff dies 40% faster that is 40% less time you have to spend dodging red circles, fewer CDs, etc.  

I just don't see the healing or benefits provided by full support specs as worth losing 50% of your damage in PvE in a group of five people.  I also find high endurance and condition removal superior to stacking tough/vit and heal because you can still get endurance and condition removal through traits/skills without sacrificing power.

Thanks for the input.

There are three sources of spike healing: Water Trident, Cleansing Wave, and dodge Cleansing Wave - their cooldowns are 16 seconds, 32 seconds, and 10 seconds respectively. These heals are easily 2k+ if not more (cleansing wave in sPvP calls for a 2.7k heal). I find this extremely useful as it is all area effect. It should also be noted that every time this build swaps into water, it provides regeneration, healing mist, and another aoe heal (though smaller amount). All of this while removing conditions because of cleansing wave and removal on regeneration trait.

I speak to the offensive role of this build within the write-up. The key is to not do the damage myself but to aid others to deal more damage. 16 Might (576 power and condition power) is easily available for the whole team and vulnerability (4 vulnerability 15+seconds= 4% bonus damage per cast )can be spammed in an AoE. This build definitely does not do much damage on its own but it increases the potential damage of all outgoing damage.

The ideas and concepts are there, please re-check your numbers.

Edit1: Fixing information and added quote
Edit2: More numbers, with just RARES, in PvE each heal is 2.5k. Regeneration is 283 heal per second.

Edited by evilandrex, 28 November 2012 - 11:27 PM.

[Bloggi]

Thanks for the guide, well-written and good information. I agree in general with what is said about a 'support' role. They are undoubtedly very helpful in small groups but sometimes get neglected because of the impression that 'support' can be omitted in some cases. That said, I run a support staff build myself and have hardly run anything else besides that. Allies that actually know what you're doing will actually love you in their group. However I fear a trend where elementalists are eventually pigeon holed into builds focused more on DPS, and we understand why. Support is important, but so is damage/ DPS. So going for one over the other is not a bad thing in itself. But pigeon-holing is. We should be encouraging diversity of builds, not just looking at less than a handful of cookie cutter builds which work vastly better than hundreds of others.

It's very interesting to see you running for precision in a support build although I see where that comes into the picture with Soothing Winds. How much precision are you achieving in this build? Is 5% of that bonus to healing power actually significant? Healing power does scale quite poorly with healing unfortunately, unless we have a boat-load of it. Before I started to gear in exotics I did consider a build focused on healing as well, using a full Cleric's set but ditched that idea because getting an awful lot of healing power usually meant significant compromises in other stats and hence also to damage.

Personally I think the elementalist has great potential in a support role, not necessarily for the healing (which IMO would be more like a side-role for a support ele), but for useful boons, various means of CC and in particular, the provision of loads of combo fields that we can either blast ourselves (much crippled since the changes to EA, which some contend to be unintendedly powerful in its earlier form) or be used to good effect by allies. In personal experience with another player, support ele + support guardian = amazing. We love this pair.

In that regard I guess, a change in gear to having a secondary focus on healing power may be considered. Alternatively, use more aggressive stat combinations for your armor set (eg. soldier's for Power/Toughness/Vit) and use Cleric's weapons and trinklets. Again, I think we need to assess to what degree is precision helpful in your build versus gearing more into power and changing Soothing Winds for something else.

Runes-wise, instead of a complete set of Rune of the Monk or Rune of Water, we can also consider 3 of each. We lose only 10 healing power overall but gain +15% boon duration. Alternatively the other possibility is the one I run which would be 2X Rune of Monk (superior), 2X Rune of Water (superior) and 2X Rune of Sanctuary (major) which in combination gives +40% boon duration. Add that to your 30 points in Arcana and that's +70% boon duration to your build, perfect for booning with Elemental Attunement and for your might stacking. Naturally this compromises healing power, but only you can decide what compromises are worth taking in your build.

[Nonlinear]

Oops, edit, for some reason I thought you had 30 points in Air but I see it is only ten, derp.  You need 40% crit damage instead of 20%, which can be gotten by including other accessories and maybe a weapon, assuming your heal doesn't dip too low for your taste.

---

I like that you use heals that get 100% of your healing I just think you should add a little power/crit damage or condition damage for the scepter's burning or something because I imagine your fireball hits for about 650 and crits for about 1.3k (if you were to pick up a staff).  You have a ton of precision from gear and traits and aren't getting as much benefit as you could for a relatively small tradeoff in healing/vitality.

Long Run Damage = Power * (1 + crit % * ( 0.5 + crit damage %)

At 50% crit damage you get 200% damage crits (base is 150%), meaning you get a 1% increase in your overall direct damage for each % of crit you have (I don't know if you played wow but when I played magic had 150% crits and mages had a 50% bonus crit damage talent to get them to this threshold as compared to critical damage being uncapped in GW2, the principle is the same, 200% damage crits).  At less than 50% crit damage (base still being 150%) you get less than 1% increase in damage for every % of crit.  

Adding [40%] crit damage to the [10%] you are getting from Air to get to 50%  will increase your overall damage by at least 1% for each % of crit and your long run damage will be increased by your crit %, you will do more damage for every point of power and get more benefit from your might.  

If you trade 346 healing and vitality for 346 power and 24% crit damage through trinkets you'll lose 3,460 health and your burst heals will heal for ~2.3k -2.4k instead of ~2.7k.  In the meantime you'll be doing more relative damage and getting double damage crits to go with the [100] precision you get from air as well as having it on every piece of gear.

Edited by Nonlinear, 29 November 2012 - 01:25 AM.

[evilandrex]

The choice of precision opens up the use of "on critical" sigils, of course, tweaking the build is very much recommended for each player. Good feedback on shifting some offensive into this build. I think the use of apothecary or clerics could be viable if accessories are more vitality based (toughness can largely be wasted without health). Definitely worth taking a look at there.

Thank you for the feedback.

(Another thing with this build, the idea came to me when I was talking to guildies comparing the healing capabilities of other classes - mainly saying the strongest two being Guardian and Warrior. I wanted to see how well Elementalist could compare to those).

[Cedoc]

I honestly hate full supporter in my team (guardian with staff, staff ele stick with water attunement 100% time, etc) Very low dmg and it`s not worth it to sacrifice substantial dps for slightly high healing.

[Bloggi]

evilandrex, on 29 November 2012 - 01:03 AM, said:

(Another thing with this build, the idea came to me when I was talking to guildies comparing the healing capabilities of other classes - mainly saying the strongest two being Guardian and Warrior. I wanted to see how well Elementalist could compare to those).

Good point. I think there will be substantial debate as to what's 'best', and where and when those things will come into play. There will definitely be those who are looking to run dungeons for example in the shortest possible time and hence will be looking for teams comprised of specific professions and even very choice builds within those professions. Again, not wrong because time is always the limiting factor. It does run the danger of becoming very elitist, which I don't think is good at all. But ultimately, where is the fun without experimentation? Where is the fun in rushing all the time (when most of us IRL are already rushing literally every minute of the day), or playing to the tune of a build that we didn't specifically want to play?

When we reach a point of real balance in this game (which we can debate if it will ever occur), then any of the 8 professions should be desirable in a 5-person team. Naturally in some cases, the very best of players with an average build will still carry the team better than a know-nothing copying a template off a 'meta' build.

I might have missed it but I'm just curious, what is your chance to crit in this build?

Cedoc, on 29 November 2012 - 01:16 AM, said:

I honestly hate full supporter in my team (guardian with staff, staff ele stick with water attunement 100% time, etc) Very low dmg and it`s not worth it to sacrifice substantial dps for slightly high healing.

Frankly speaking, if you see an elementalist sticking to ONE attunement 100% of the time, that's probably not a very good elementalist, regardless of the choice of attunement or choice of weapons. It's like having the option to swap between two weapons, both of which are usable in a given situation, and yet not taking advantage of that to put out consistent pressure. Even a 'support' elementalist would arguably be smoothly transitioning between all 4 attunements most of the time. I personally burn through all the appropriate skills in one attunement before switching to the next and then burning through all of those again before going to the next attunement. Obviously the choice of which attunement to use and what skills in that attunement to burn depends on the situation, but fast fingers are a nice thing when using the elementalist...and we can also then take advantage of the 'on swap' sigils when that is done, plus the side-booning from Elemental Attunement.

[Valkaire]

Honestly, with the changes to Dragon's Tooth blast finisher effect (on landing, not on cast) since the last patch I think S/D lost a lot of it's ability as a supportive set. Staff can do a lot that S/D can't, including an aoe chill, larger water circles (water trident is insanely hard to hit properly if your team is very mobile) as well as keeping you out of range of a lot of the damage. Oh yeah, and staff has projectile reflection (especially useful for Kholer fight in AC).

I play a support based ele with traits into earth, water, arcana and 5 into fire. I run carrion armor with a shaman's staff and cleric's jewelery. This way I can still help my team with damage (in the form of conditions) while focusing on cc, putting down combo fields (static field is a much more reliable form of vulnerability if you have a few projectile using classes in your group) and healing when it's needed.

[evilandrex]

Within the usage, I detail how this build rolls between the attunements, this build definitely does not just stay in water.

My current crit chance with just rares is 30%.

On Dragon Tooth, it often doesn't matter, usually there are at least 2 players in melee range or the monsters running right up to our group. Its very likely Dragon Tooth will still be able to land inside the large circle of Ring of Fire.

[Bloggi]

On the topic of Dragon's Tooth, I've been baffled since day one as to why this isn't a ground targeted skill. For me anyway, it would make more sense and be more usable.

[Nonlinear]

I leveled as S/D and would use fire signet to bind them so the tooth hit.

[MisfitAndy]

Nonlinear, on 29 November 2012 - 05:40 AM, said:

I leveled as S/D and would use fire signet to bind them so the tooth hit.

I think you mean the earth signet :-p

[Nonlinear]

yeah, oops.  earth. derp.

[Stellarthief]

I am always in melee range when I have s/d out (only 24 and levelling but regardless), so the tooth always hits unless my target dies and it finishes before I select a new target.

But what is annoying me is that it never gives burst finisher anymore.  

Currently I am thinking of s/d spec more, similar to yours but with aura sharing because of aura in water attunement is a nice one.  Adding fury and swiftness to a chill shield is very useful as chill affects all mobs (havnt found any immune yet, have you?).  And I find that with the added blinds from lightning and earth, 1 extra AoE might finisher (phoenix), and the ability to attack single target from range for rather ok damage is a bit more suited to me than lightning whip spam from d/d. Thought lightning whip is nice

[Cebbar]

I've been using a similar build for some time while I've been trying to get used to playing Elementalist in dungeons.  I obtained the Precision/Vitality/Healing Power Honor of the Waves set for the skin originally, but decided to roll with those stats for some time to see how well they played before I blindly reskinned onto other stats.  Gotta say, I really quite liked it.  Seems to me an Elementalist does much of it's damage on Crits,so you're wanting to keep precision as high as you can, healing power in dungeons does seem to be a nice support feature, and the vitality  helps me to survive better at close quarters with mobs.  I am also using a sigil which stacks precision which ends up adding 10-15% more crit chance to my build.

It's a nice post,and has given me some alternative trait choices to consider in my own build, as I kinda felt I was stagnating a bit.

Stellarthief, on 29 November 2012 - 02:59 PM, said:

and the ability to attack single target from range for rather ok damage

This is why I ended up settling oin Scepter-Dagger as a favourite weapon set.  You can stay in melee range most of the time but if you're feeling a bit too under pressure you can dodge out and recover whilst setting off some Dragon's Teeth and Phoenix.  I carry Lightning Flash so when I'm ready to get back in I can pre-cast Churning Earth in relative safety beforehand.

[Nonlinear]

I sadface when I see high crit with a crit modifier below 100% (i.e. crits for < 200% damage, i.e. crit damage % from gear/traits < 50%) because in the long term a low crit modifier scales down precision which scales down power which scales down damage

This is a pretty brutal tradeoff that doesn't exist in other MMOs I've played where DPS automatically crit for 200% or there is a talent to get you to the threshold without having to trade stats to get there.  100% crit modifier was either handed to you or a mandatory talent for your spec, in Mists I guess it is just handed to you with the new talent system, you don't even have to think about it. 100% crit modifier, 200% damage crits.  You just have it.

The crit modifier makes the other two stats that use it for damage calculations scale better, 200% damage crits in WoW were mandatory for any DPS build because of this compounded scaling effect.

Edited by Nonlinear, 30 November 2012 - 06:41 PM.