What is the Best PvE Ele Build?
ArKaiN
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Originally Posted by Celestial Beaver
Of course if the team is not bad enough to die...you shouldn't need it anyway 
I LOL'd
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I LOL'd123456789
Ensign
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Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove
Quote: Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove Also, I'm not really sure why you'd bother with ward v. melee when you already have eruption and UG on your bar, which fulfill the same melee hate role. Honestly, it's because Ward v Melee is better than both Eruption and UG in that role, and because Eruption + UG leave significant gaps in coverage where your character is powerless to do anything without the Ward. You end up going from like 70% defensive coverage (with some damage) with just UG + Eruption to 170% defensive coverage with the Ward, which is awesome, and lets you spread the defense around. I.E., you can drop Eruption on Ranger/Paragons without sacrificing too much melee defense, or, after mobs start taking damage and start to refuse to clump up for a single AoE, you can 'ward' two places at once (locally with Melee, at ranged with UG/E).
I guess you could say that power levels are sufficiently disproportionate that I'd rather take the best skills than fill my bar with weaker skills to give more breadth...I'll put skills for those roles on other characters.
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I get why things like eruption are good enough to have the giant recharge, but dragon's breath on a 30s recharge? Come on.
Yeah, I don't understand it either. A big recharge works on a skill that has a big effect on the game. If it doesn't have a big effect, people won't waste the skill slot, no matter how cheap it is. Even on compact / busy bars that have excess slots, the skills that slip into the last slots are very high utility or fill critical roles. Goofy little things like Breath of Fire, or a lot of the offensive signets, don't ever matter.
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Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove
As for death pact signet, if someone dies twice quickly, your party was probably wiping anyway, and so you just avoided DP.
Exactly. The whole point of Ressigs, Glyph/Reschant, and Death Pact Signet is to recover from the odd deaths during combat to win the fight without having to partial/full wipe and recover. The times when Death Pact has a drawback are usually when the team is going to partial/full wipe anyway, so, as you said, all you're doing is avoiding DP by dying to Death Pact.
Peace, -CxE
Perfected Shadow
I like:
[card]Elemental Attunement[/card][card]Air Attunement[/card][card]Lightning Orb[/card][card]Lightning Hammer[/card][card]Blinding Flash[/card][card]Enervating Charge[/card][card]Epidemic[/card][card]Sunspear Rebirth Signet[/card] [card]Elemental Attunement[/card][card]Earth Attunement[/card][card]Ebon Hawk[/card][card]Stoning[/card][card]Armor of Earth[/card][card]Ward Against Melee[/card][card]Ward Against Elements[/card][card]Aura of Restoration[/card]
Sophitia Leafblade
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Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove
It feels like Anet meant the ebon hawk/stoning combo to be the staple earth skills, but sadly, they just suck too much to get good use out of. Also, I'm not really sure why you'd bother with ward v. melee when you already have eruption and UG on your bar, which fulfill the same melee hate role. Obsidian flame does *ok* in that slot, as does churning earth. Earth really has too many useless tanking or niche utility skills to have much variety in bars.
The problem isnt the skills its the fact unlike the element there is nothing that is weak Armored to Earth. Eg. ice golems and plant creatures are weak to Fire, Fire Creatures like Titans are weak to Water (although Water suffers from the same lack of creatures weak to it at least its not as bad as Earth), Most high Al creatures are weaker to Airs AL penetration. So where the Earth weak creatures?
Alot of earth skills would do very good damage if they actually did the damage there supposed to. from all the many occassions ive played as Earth Ele i find most creatures have high Earth AL. So whats the solution? Well More Anet could make Creatures weaker to Earth, Anet could increase the damage of Earth in general, Anet could make AL boost skills more party wide rather than self targeted, Anet could make more Earth damage Armour ignoring like an AL ignoring Stone Daggers etc. ofc several of these would be overpowered but something needs to be done to balance the elements more.
tmakinen
Staying on the general level, there isn't, and can't be a 'best build' for everything, but there can be a best build for something.
Talking about the 'everything' aspect, most people don't seem to put a lot of thought to the fact that in most situations we are not talking about a set of 8 skills but 32, 48 or 64, i.e., a full 4, 6 or 8 member party. Talking about the 'best' build for a single player in isolation from the rest of the party makes little sense, because it usually represents only 1/8 of the total number of skills in the build. It would be just as pointless to discuss the best skill for your skill slot #1 while staying completely oblivious to what the rest of the skills in the bar are. Second, there isn't even any single build that works reasonably well in every possible situation the game has to offer. You have to know whether there will be interrupts, enchantment stripping, conditions, hexes, energy denial, anti-casting measures like Spell Breaker, KDs, environmental effects, ... the list is almost endless. Your best bet might be a build that works 90% of the time and fails miserably for the rest 10%. Know your enemy and prepare accordingly and you won't ever be caught pants down. Then, there are best builds for something, and that something is solo farming. You can consider the build in isolation from other players because you are going solo. You know the exact, very narrow target that your build should counter. And most importantly, there is a measure for the relative goodness of the build, which is simply the average number of targets killed per a unit of time. One of the great things in GW is the flexibility in making builds. I have a library of highly specific solo builds for the occasional farming frenzy and a couple of generic builds for the 90% situations where everything goes, but especially with the introduction of Hard Mode I find myself often making a specific build just for this particular HM mission or vanquishing run with just this party.
phool
I probably wouldn't have posted but noticed no-one had mentioned one of my personal favourite pve comboes.
[skill]Assassin's Promise[/skill][skill]Glyph of Sacrifice[/skill][skill]Meteor Shower[/skill] but while I'm at it, I sometimes turn up the heat a notch playing with heroes and this combo... EA's one of the only skills in the game which is worth the mimicry. [skill]Arcane Echo[/skill][skill]Searing Flames[/skill][skill]Arcane Mimicry[/skill][skill]Elemental Attunement[/skill] In Urgoz or occasionally FoW when you're there to take out and shutdown the casters, particularly monks/rts, while the b/ps worry about the very high AL (and plentiful) rangers and warriors I used to go for [skill]Glyph of Renewal[/skill][skill]Meteor Shower[/skill][skill]Auspicious Incantation[/skill] As for eruption, sweet skill, but it sees more use from me as a utility when I play mesmer, cast every ~22 second under mantra of recovery+auspicious incantation. I consider the earthline a wasteland and eruption and ward against melee (sometimes foes) are the only skills I take from it, both at less than 10 earth magic. I'm also more inclined to use Savannah Heat on an mesmer where fast casting helps snare before they run, and drop the copy. More fun than SF but only at all effective against lower AL enemies. And as a PS, I consider rodgort's invocation a waste of a skillslot on an SF's bar. If you're running SF, there are several other players with SF, or a mark of rodgort, or both, which really minimises the advantage from an initial burning. In terms of energy efficiency for damage compared to an SF on a burning, marked target RI is pretty dismal.
Yichi
Just ask Ensign, EVERYTHING NEEDS MORE SEARING FLAMES!!!
sadly its quite fun to just go steamroll a hard mission with 4 searing flames, 1 mm, and monks.... We did unwaking waters in 5 minutes 
Stormlord Alex
^^^^ Agree... Between my brother, myself, and a whole lot of Heroes, we steamrolled FoW just pressing the 1 button...
 (5 SFs and 3 monks, though we could have easily dropped a monk or two for more SF... The Abyssals blew up before they even got to us!)Simply put, packs of SF eles are the fastest way to beat PvE. Or maybe Splinter barragers...
Ensign
The MM is key though. He takes all the aggro so that Zhed and Sousuke don't blow up.
I think that's more of a Normal mode thing though. In Hard Mode you can't afford to be so fragile...DP just destroys you too thoroughly, and you don't get a chance to recover. Peace, -CxE
Silly Warrior
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Originally Posted by ArKaiN
way to point out the obvious ca_aok.
OP:there's no such thing as a "best build". I agree, there is no "Best Build". Perhaps there is a best Earth, Water, Fire, or Air build, but this thread just isn't specific enough to have any purpose. Look around for threads that have alot of posts, builds that are more popular typically have more people posting. Happy hunting, and remember there is no "Best Build". Closed. 
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