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This build is not favored by the
GuildWiki community.
The general consensus among users of GuildWiki is that this
build is not viable.
This build was voted unfavored for the following reasons:
- just a variation of the normal touch build
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The basic idea of this build is to create a strong defense
against most kinds of damage and a near-infinite supply of energy
by combining Ranger elemental armor, a high maximum energy, and the
skills Greater Conflagration/Storm Chaser. The
energy is then used to constantly use Vampiric Bite/Vampiric Touch
to kill the target while ignoring the target's armor and healing
oneself at the same time. Several secondary skills, like Winter,
Plague Touch, or Throw Dirt/Dryder's Defense, increase the defense.
The primary targets for this build are all mobs that deal only
physical or elemental damage, i.e. all Warrior, Assassin,
Elementalist, or Ranger mobs.
[edit] Attributes and skills
[edit] Equipment
- Drakescale Armor or Frostbound
Armor should be your first choice for this build, as they will
give you a base armor of 105 against all damage, if the farming
area was chosen accordingly. Druid's Armor could be used for the extra
energy. For maximum flexibility, take any or all of these armor
sets into an area and change between fights.
- Only few weapons/item mods are really good for this build. The
most preferable mods, in order of importance:
- More Energy: The most important mod by far. Always prefer the
+15/-1 mod over +5 (while ??), and the +5 over anything else.
Go to great lengths to get a good +energy gear; it will
significantly improve this build.
- +Armor: After even a few hits, +5 armor will be more useful
than a +30 or even +45 Health mod, because it reduces damage with
every strike against you.
- +Health: Having more Health is nearly always good, but with
this build, you should never drop below 50% at any time, not even
if you run out of energy.
- +1 Blood Magic 20%: Stealing +3 Health 20% of the time is nice,
but hardly earth-shattering or decisive for this build.
- Halve skill recharge/casting time: Don't even bother. In the
base config you don't carry spells, so you don't even theoretically
gain anything from these mods. Of course, if you take any Blood
Magic spells for your optional skills, this mod might be more
useful and greatly broaden your choice of weapons/items.
- You can do tremendous amount of damage and tremendous amount of
healing every time youi tpu0h
- Obviously, don't attack more mobs than you think you can
handle, and only attack when you are at full health/energy and all
relevant skills are fully charged.
- The key to winning is to optimize the Storm Chaser usage:
- Don't activate Storm Chaser all the time, or you will waste
energy. You cannot prevent excess energy, but minimising waste is
important. For that, trigger Storm Chaser only when you are low on energy,
i.e. 20% or less.
- Do make your maximum energy as large as possible. Again, you
will waste Energy while Storm Chaser is active, but when the stance
ends, you have to get along with what you have. The more energy you
have stored, the longer can you keep touching until Storm Chaser is ready
for another round.
- Don't build your Nature Rituals too close to the group you're
about to attack. If you see a mob attacking your rituals, either
try to distract that mob or run away, because unconverted physical
damage will not give you energy and kill you fast. In my
experience, recasting a ritual with enemies attacking you is
useless because they immediately switch to attack the ritual.
- On a related note, don't fight several groups with the same
ritual unless you are sure the ritual has enough lifespan left.
There's nothing worse than a ritual running out while you need it,
see above.
- If for some reason you see that you will run out of energy for
a longer time and health might become an issue because of energy
shortage, stop spamming the touches. Instead wait for the mobs to
hurt you, then use a touch for the full healing effect. This way,
you save on energy until Storm Chaser can go back online.
- Quickly decimate the enemy group down to 1 or 2 mobs. Bring
these last survivors to the brink of death, then let them beat you
back to full energy before finishing them off. This will reduce the
time you need before you can attack the next group.
[edit]
Selecting the right skills
- As a rule of thumb, every additional type of mob (ele1, ele2,
melee, ranger) requires an additional skill to handle it, starting
from an absolute minimum of 3 non-Elite skills for fire Eles. Even
in the worst case scenario of melee and ranger attackers grouped
with two or more different elementalist mobs, the build has at
least one optional skill slot.
- The less often a certain kind of mob deals physical/elemental
damage, the weaker this build is against it. In its base config, it
lacks spike damage and interrupt, making it weak against groups
that contain monks. It's sometimes possible to overcome a single
monk mob, but two monks in a group will give you a very hard time.
Anything above 2 monks, counting Restoration Ritualists as well, is
probably out of this build's reach. However, I have not thoroughly
tested this, so there might be a skill config to do it.
- Illusion Mesmers and Curses Necromancers are about the worst
matchup for this build. They can have strong life degen and debuffs
through curses, against which this build has no defense. They
seldom attack with their weapons, and if they do, they often deal
Chaos or Dark damage, which is not convertible with Winter, thus denying you the
energy this build needs. Again, one or two mobs of this profession
in a certain group can possibly be overwhelmed, but if a group
contains any more, you best ignore that group or farm another
area.
[edit] Places to farm
I first tested the build in Waijun Bazaar, on Brotherhood
Knights & Mages, which worked perfectly. In the Southern
Shiverpeaks, it works pretty good against Stone Summits, Pinesouls,
Griffins, Trolls, Siege Ice Golems, Ice Imps, Grawls, and Avicaras
(in groups of about 6-7 max); Jades have not yet been tested. In
the Crystal Desert, you can take on Sand Wurms (if you know where
they spawn to set up Greater Conflagration), Minotaurs, Sand
Griffons, Sand Elementals, Sand Drakes, and Rockshot Devourers.
[edit] Variations
The build can be varied in many ways.
- The attribute point distribution can be tuned to make the build
more or less aggressive, depending on your experience with the
build, your gear, and the mobs you're going to farm. The base build
above is a more cautious one, makign sure you have energy all the
time to kill your opponents slowly but steadily. Putting more
points into Blood Magic will increase the DPS and your HPS, but might lead to energy management problems because
of lower Expertise and Wilderness Survival.
- As a rule of thumb: If you have many small mobs that attack
often but with low damage per hit, you might want to take a more
aggressive stance, because Storm Chaser will trigger a lot more often,
giving you more energy per second. Be more defensive and more
conscious of your energy reserves against slow and heavy-hitting
mobs, because you will gain less energy from them and you don't
want to run out of energy against them for more than a few
seconds.
- The skill selection is highly dependent on the mobs you're
going to farm. If you're going to farm only one sort of
Elementalists, put on the appropriate armor, take the two vampiric
touch skills and Storm Chaser, and you will have very little
problems. You have as many as 5 optional slots, and you can choose
your own Elite skill.
- When farming only Ele mobs with 2 or more different damage
types, bring Winter and Frostbound Armor. 4 optional slots, elite
of your choice.
- If you go against ranger type mobs, you can go with the
Factions skill Conflagration and Drakescale Armor, again
saving you the elite but getting the same effect as with Greater
Conflagration. In any case, you should take Plague Touch to
defend against Bleeding and Poisoned conditions (or at least make
them suffer as well), which are often spread by ranger mobs. 3
optional slots, elite of your choice.
- Against melee mobs, Greater Conflagration it will
have to be. Plague Touch might not be necessary, but a defensive
stance or skill like Throw Dirt or Whirling Defense is strongly
recommended to bridge the time between Storm Chaser end and recharge. 3 optional
slots.
- If you want to take on monks, take any combination of Strip
Enchantment, Defile Flesh, Malaise, and whatever else you could take against
casters/monks. Take away some Blood magic points and put them into
the appropriate attribute if necessary. For example, take
anti-caster Curses skills and bring Awaken the
Blood to buff both attribute lines.
- Note that the above hints about Mesmers don't count if they are
pure caster/physical shutdown, since you neither cast nor attack.
The things you have to fear most are, in this order:
- Active/passive energy denial
- Active energy denial is skills like Energy Drain. They
won't hurt you while Storm Chaser is active, but in the critical
phase between end of stance and reactivation, having no energy can
mean the end of you. Even worse are stance-ending skills like Wild Blow.
- Passive Energy denial would be mobs using non-physical,
non-elemental damage like Dark Damage, or life degen through curses
and conditions. You lose life, but do not gain energy from it,
making it impossible for you to constantly touch the mobs to
compensate.
- Healer monks. Don't technically kill you, but might make it
impossible for you to kill anything.
- Heavy skill interruption/knockdown
- Debuff curses. Snare is not as dangerous as in PvP because mobs
don't run away from non-AoE damage. Can be problematic though if
you are low on health and you need to reach the next mob.
Ranger / Necromancer 
