Worst Elite Skill

Cos when I was posting it his reply hadn't registered yet. But even if it is highly spammable, that would make it similar to just having an attack stance like Tiger's Fury and without Expertise you won't have much energy.

Quickshot is actually rather good in the right build.

For consideration:
Life Barrier-Life Bond is infinitely more useful, the only reason to ever carry life barrier is to stack it with life bond. If both cost the same amount and were non elite, I'd still take bond. Maybe this should go under most overrated and not worst.

Defy Pain-Take endure pain and a better elite if you are considering defy pain.

Practiced Stance-Stances don't stack, preperations don't stack. Oath shot is going to be more useful in all but the most silly builds. If you really want to spam choking gas, go have fun. Mimicry+Practiced stance+Incidendiary arrows=a mediocre interrupt build with a stance that needs to be up.

If you can pull of proper use of amity and unyielding, they are formidable skills. Life Barrier remains fairly mediocre even when used optimally.

Quick double post:
PaH isn't good, but it is a long way from worst. It is really the only monk energy management option.
Ether Prodigy is the opposite of horrible; maybe you meant Ether Renewal. Heal Party+Ether Prodigy=death to pressure builds.
Incendiary Arrows, an 8 second shut down with 8 seconds of fire damage for 5 energy. Too bad this isn't an elementalist elite. Rangers suffer from too many good elites, otherwise this would be an option.
100 Blades=Barrage; a skill like this can become increasingly more powerful as weapon buffs increase.

What's wrong with Ether Prodigy..?

Edit: Eh, Thom beat me to posting. =\

Skull Crack: Not only requires a lot of adrenaline to charge but also has to hit while a spell is casting for its effect. Totally worthless.

Spiteful Spirit :P
Nah, love my SS.

Probably Unyielding Aura gets my vote. Good to have fun with people, but if you're a jackass monk, the twenty-fifth time you've rez'd someone and let them die, sRED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing, it's not funny anymore. Just leave our FoW run.

Marksmans Wager has no use as far as I can see.

Illusionary weaponry. It's much too risky for a mesmer to be at the front of battle. (as the zaishen challange shows, that team is easiest to beat) On warriors it's useless cause a normal strike already does more damage when Illusion magic is at 16 with illusionary weaponry

Although situational, Illusionary Weaponry can be really useful. A character attacking in melee while enchanted with Illusionary Weaponry will deal constant, armor-ignoring damage regardless of any attack impairments such as blindness, evasion, blocking, or misses.

Shield of Regeneration is one i dont get. healing breeze costs less energy and recharges faster, and is not elite. I know the difference is that its a protection attribute, and it adds some armor, but i have never met a protection monk who uses it. One of the least used elite i can think of.

You mean Renewal, right?

Ah, but you see Apply Poison works on swords if your a W/R, which gives me bleed & poison & makes it an incredible skill.

Worst Elite...gotta be Lightning Surge...I mean, seriously, this is no use in pve & pointless in pvp, please kill it.

FW + Conjure Flame + Ignite Arrows + QS = Death to softies.

There is no worst elite skill.

Every elite skill has a good use in PvE and PvP, but when and where to use each one is situational.

Ahem,... hold it for a bit.
More dmg with a warrior ?? u must never has seen this build in action.

i have a Me/W build and it outdamages every warrior in the game. the downside is ofcourse the armourdrop for mesmer but the role of an IWmesmer is different. ( soz for that offtopic buildtalk) so IW = usefull as hell imho.

my call would be signet of judgement.. totally useless imho for it's long cast time/recharge and better counterpart Shield of Judgement.
now if it were in area instead of adjacent foes knocked down it would have been nice to use maybe.

please explain to me the use of keystone signet?

you loose all your non sigged skills for 17-7 seconds.

hell this would be uber if it was an attack skill. as is its like a more powerful version of blackout... that only affects the user.

Combo with Shielding Hands for temporary invulnerability. Really, give it a try... should you be in a non-enchantment-ripping-environment.

If you only have signets, then you won't care. The problem is that there aren't any good signet builds, but expansions might change that. Until it does, we really don't know how effective Keystone Signet might be.

They consider the delay a bonus feature, which is why it's elite. If you play it in random arena, you'll see why - it's a newbie killer. The skill is great against people who don't know how to deal with it and useless against people who do. It's a flaw in the skill design.


Worst elite is definitely Glimmering Mark. The skill isn't even good in PvE where the monsters make it easy for you, let alone PvP where you get to stupidly attack a Warrior or Ranger instead of doing something useful.

I'm rerfering to usefulness in PvE. I despise PvP in Guild Wars and could care less how effective somethng maybe in it. In PvE the skills I listed are effectively useless. IA doesn't last near long enough to be effective. Monks have much beeter energy management solutions that P&H. 100 Blades isn't worth the elite slot.

In no particular order...

Keystone Sig
Peace and Harmony(wasted because it is weak Monk skill so no monk is going to carry it)
Marksman wager
Melandru's Resiliance(relies on negatives to be useful)
Glyph of enegry (recast too long for one shot eite spell)
Water Trident(very weak for an offensive elite)
Glimmering Mark
Honorbale mention Thundeclap

If I had to pick one I would think Melandru's Resiliance, benefits of it are no where near enough to outwiegh the negatives against you.

Keystone Sig is a close second.

Only commenting on Primary classes I have played.

BTW Quick Shot isn't that bad, not as good at is used to be, but still practical in some cases, but simply gets replaced by something that works better in combination with something else.

Quick shot! I just can't see why it is good.. It's called QUICK shot, not A little bit faster shot.

I think Thunderclap is very nice, exspecially when i could use my ranger and make a mass knockdown that instant KD'd for 20sec ;D

Water Trident. Sucks.

P&H isnt so bad in PVE (playing one myself) monks dont have to work very hard in PVE, (unless the team are idiots) , its a pretty nice fire and forget energy management

marksmans wager is god to any ranger who uses significant amounts of spells,

An earthquake/Barrage combo is vastly superior to TC in terms of damage causing. Since a TC/barrage combo isn't possible,then I would opt for method 1.

Most ranger builds do not require spells. Try a Zealous bow switch with barrage if you want energy.

ranger:
FeroStrike - God of BM builds.
Escape - God of Ranger running.
Marks. Wager - Pretty bad - I have NEVER found a use for even thinking fo this skill
Oath Shot - God of Trapping
Practiced Stance - its only usefulness is Choking Gas, but thats enough
Barrage - AoE Dmg, low cost, recharge? Ok.
Crippling Shot - Got a whole build based around it.
Punishing Shot - One of best interupts.
Greater Conflag - has uses with winter, or to screw orders.
Inced arrows - Its duration is its killer, but its 'ok'
Mel Arrows - Acutally decently good in pvp.
Mel resil - Just for the energy regen...thats about it.
Poison Arrow - good starter elite for rangers
Spike trap - Other god of Trapping
QuickShot - Acutally a good elite. faster arrows can take your preps to the next lvl this, and its fun :\

None of the ranger elites are the worst

Warrior:
Cleave - Good DPS if you dont factorin Deep Wound from Evis or soemthing else is wounding them
Evis - Better DPS than Cleave if tis Deep Wound is factored in
backbreaker - good hammer elite
Dev hammer - not as good as backbreaker tome, but cuases weakness
Earth Shaker - can get some heat off you
Battle Rage - has its own build
Bull's Charge - newest balance update FTW!
Defy pain - Adrenline is good cost
Dwarven - not the best..but gets better.
Flourish - Decent in some builds, including ranger ones.
Endurance - Warriors dont need much energy, but it can help in some builds.
100blades - Only sword elite, and its decent for some builds
Charge - Duh...running faster...area effect..
ViM - Trappers also use it
Glad Def - Good Def Stance
Crack - Good if you have timing.

Warriors dont own the worst...

Monk:
Aura of faith - Ok for other monks or a stance tank (they dont need dmg anyway)
Peace - Not that great either...but..not the worst
SB - whole build about it
Unyielding Aura - gets points for FUN...PvE God skill
Hands - Like a better seed..ok.
Word - healing spell is good
amity - fun RA build..thats about it
Life barrier - Great
Mark - Good for many builds.
Restore - good condition fixer
Shield of refl.- Is great version of Gaurdian
Shield of Regen - decent, not that great though
Shield of Judg - great Smite skill
Signet - Good for monk spike
Martyr - Good for 1 on a team.

Worst isnt on monk..

Necro:
Blood - BiP battery..
Life - Decent for a degen hex
Offering - Got Nerfed, but still the best minus the health thing...
Order - Order necros..
Soul leech - good anticaster
Well - Good well
Feast - decent damage
Lingering - Underused....great to me..overpriced though
Plague - Ok
Spiteful - builds around it
Wither - some e-drians use it
Aura - some fun builds with it
Tainted - Has its own builds also. tainted necro
Viru - Good condition spread.
Balance - not too hot under current enviroment..but not the worst

necro has some weak ones...but not worst.

To be continued.

-Flourish - Cant see the use
-Escape - Lameness ftw
-Keystone Signet - There arent that many signets...

OK, so a touch-range mesmer elite that, when combined with a necro spell, can accomplish the same thing as a basic ranger skill? Yep, sounds leet to me.

My monk uses Shield of Regen.
With Blessed Aura and a +20% ench staff my Shield of Regen lasts 18 seconds.
18 seconds of +9 health and +40 armor beats out Healing Breeze anyday

Keystone Sig gets my vote on the useless Elite.

I think you should try using it..

marksman's wager gets my vote, unless you have zero expertise or this is your first and only elite I don't think anyone would want this.

A touch range mesmer skill that can lay down two 15s blinds, every 7.5 seconds and costs 5 or 10 energy to use. I'd say it's insane. Oh and if it gets removed, you've got another one landing straight away. You can't say that about throw dirt.

Combines extremely well with spirit/price of failure.

What the hell are you talking about, lol? Use it in an FoW chest run on a dead person and if they get an unided Req. 8 Chaos Axe, take it off of them. Then wait for it to become yours!

No, just kidding. I also say Quick Shot.

Did you even try it try it out it's perfect for staying alive while suffering from degen conditions + you get better energy regen, GOD skill for warriors.

How are you figuring "every 7.5 seconds"?

Recharge 45 seconds.

With sig of mid you can keep someone nearly permenantly blind, just try that with throw dirt (I'm not saying Sig of mid is hyper effective, however it does have a use). Keystone sig however is 100% tripe. So far the only defence is it might become useful if factions gains some decent signets to allow a signet build. Translation = tripe

double post but meh...

He's using plague touch (5 energy)

Or plague sending (10 energy)

Actually Quickshot is more useful in PvE than PvP. In the old days you used Quickshot for ranger spike to get 4 arrows out in one volley (Dual + 2 QS). With Orders you could do 800-1000 damage per spike. Unstoppable.

In PvE, 2 rangers with high expertise using QS is a great damage dealer when Orders are added and/or Spirits. You often end up doing more damage than warriors at the same time span.
Tiger Fury is not the same because it cost attribute points.


Defy Pain is garbage. No need to bring such Elite in PvE or PvP. Endure Pain is good enough.

Mantra of inscriptions

So now you've got 2 skill slots devoted to the elite. (3 counting the elite itself)


If it requires that much support, it just doesn't seem all that elite, to me anyway.

Except that it can lock down four warriors permanently. If that's not elite then I don't know what is.

Sure condition removal is annoying. But a monk can't keep up with the conditions that this can put out.