Elemental and Crushing Weapon: Which classes actually benefit?

SmellyUnlimited

A new skill of the Psijic line, I’ve seen a lot of ppl starting to use it, but I can’t tell if it’s superior to most classes spammable. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

Magicka - Elemental Weapon

Sorc: Elemental Weapon superior.

* Unless using a perfected Asylum staff, Elemental Weapon appears to be superior. With perfected, damage appears superior using 5 body, 3 will power, Maelstrom destro backbar/ perfected asylum front bar. While you lose destro staff passives on the spammable over Force pulse, you gain reduced cost, and every cast will apply a status effect. Asylum staff regular requires 3 casts to apply the effects, as does Elemental. However, Elemental costs 800 less per cast (with reduced cost passive unlocked), apply same status effects, proc Spell Orb passive, and increased damage mitigation (psijic passives).

Templar: Elemental Weapon superior

*same as above. Asylum staff perfected is the only better option, but you lose out on a set bonus since the you’ll likely be using a Maelstrom destro backbar, so will have to adopt a similar build as a Sorc.

Dragonknight: Situatuonal

*If needing to fight at range, Elemental is superior, as Flame Lash is a melee ability. If melee range is acceptable, lash is superior. It’s fire damage, Engulfing Flames will up it by 10%, (dark elf +7%).

Magblade: Elemental superior, unless support from Funnel Health is required (as say in Cloudrest shadow realm with healing debuff).

*Otherwise, if you can keep another siphoning ability on bar for +Magicka passive, Elemental has consistently provided higher dps parses.

Stamina: Crushing Weapon.

Sorc / DK: Crushing superior.

*Both classes lack a reliable spammable (shrouded is okay, in trash mob situations), so the reduced cost of Crushing + self-heal is a more value-added spammable and easier to weave than with rapid strikes. Have not yet tested using newly fixed Maelstrom 1handers though. Would have to adopt Sorc build as above, as you’ll have a Maelstrom bow slotted, so more testing required. DPS parse for shrouded vs flurry vs Crushing weapon, though, Crushing reliably produces higher dps parse, as well as more value added additional effects.

Stamblade: Surprise attack superior, except when solo.

*This skill is too good, and gives valuable passives from Shadow Tree. Easier to weave, and reliably provides better parses. However. If you find yourself in situations that require more healing, Crushing is preferred (ex. VMA). Stamblade doesn’t have many options for self-healing outside of Blood Craze, Leeching Strikes, and whether you want to use a slot for Dark Cloak. All of their skill slots are mostly firm, however, so replacing Surprise with Crushing is the only reasonable option.

Stamplar: Biting Jabs superior.

*This one is the closest contest. Biting Jabs hitbox is still a little jerky, so Crushing can potentially provide more reliable damage. However, in the majority of situations, Jabs has provided higher parsing. I have noticed, though, that while Jabs provides higher parse in a raid test situation, it isn’t as reliable on a solo parse.

Outliers: Wardens. Can’t speak definitively to either class as to what’s superior or not.

I welcome any comments, or if I’ve mispoken or you disagree please share your opinion!

Xuhora

okay, so it makes sense what you say, its written nicely and its plausible.
but...
..i find it pretty hard and clunky to weave elemental/crushing weapon. the animation seems to be longer than swallow soul/ whip/shrouded daggers/suprise attack and so on...
am i doing something wrong? do i have to blockcancle the animation of crushing/elemental weapon in order to weave it better?

Vapirko

I was hugely disappointed by these abilities which were supposed to give classes without a spammable, access to one. At least that’s what I took from their introduction. From a PvP standpoint they’re both useless. The animation is clunky and disrupts the flow of rotation too much on my mag sorc. On my stam sorc it’s not worth switching out shrouded daggers with its snare and bounce damage or steel tornado, and I don’t need the crappy heal from the stamina morph. Stamina Warden doesn’t need it and neither does Stamina Templar. If you use a 2H it’s also not worth it. In PvE it doesn’t seem to be worth slotting on magicka toons, I know some people use it as a stamina spammable but is it really better than shrouded daggers? Idk.

ajcorbell

Why bother with class balance when you can just force them in to all using the same skills? Winning.

SmellyUnlimited

Xuhora wrote: »

okay, so it makes sense what you say, its written nicely and its plausible.
but...
..i find it pretty hard and clunky to weave elemental/crushing weapon. the animation seems to be longer than swallow soul/ whip/shrouded daggers/suprise attack and so on...
am i doing something wrong? do i have to blockcancle the animation of crushing/elemental weapon in order to weave it better?

@Xuhora completely agree. The animation on DW/Staves are both unwieldy. I tried switching from swallow soul, to elemental weapon, to force pulse.....it’s sad how much easier force pulse is to wield than almost any ability. Even swallow soul, which they reanimated to make it easier to weave, has a clunky factor to it. I don’t have fun using elemental or crushing weapon.

_Ahala_

Elemental weapon is superior on magden because it’s faster than bird, sneakier than bird, gives access to psijic passives, and does more damage (if you count to status procs)

SmellyUnlimited

ajcorbell wrote: »

Why bother with class balance when you can just force them in to all using the same skills? Winning.

They went from all classes using the same set (Mech Acuity), to all classes using the same ability. PvP used to be everyone running heavy armor. I wonder what’s next; all classes playing as the same race? I can already barely tell the difference between a Stamplar and a stam Sorc, or a Mag Sorc or Magplar.

SmellyUnlimited

_Ahala_ wrote: »

Elemental weapon is superior on magden because it’s faster than bird, sneakier than bird, gives access to psijic passives, and does more damage (if you count to status procs)

Ive seen Magdens hitting pretty damn hard lately. Guy in my guild parsed at over 40k, and that was without Psijic, so with it you could expect another bump.

md3788

ajcorbell wrote: »

Why bother with class balance when you can just force them in to all using the same skills? Winning.

This. I hate that I'm forced to run Elemental Weapon in order to get the most DPS from both my Magplar and Magblade. I'd rather use a spammable unique to my class like whip. Sorry for necro, had to get that out.

Adenoma

@Vapirko , crushing weapon is phenomenal in duels. You basically can set up silly burst with crushing weapon into dawnbreaker if there’s any other timed burst/pressure. Allows you to get folks into execute range far more easily. Same with things like magplar using elemental weapon from range to time with purifying light.

GreenHere

Similar to what others have said, my feelings are pretty much: It's a great skill, as long as you like carpal tunnel syndrome and trying to weave a clunky and unpleasant-feeling skill in between your light attacks. Seems good, in theory; but in practice I find the skill borderline unusable due to how bad it "feels". I weave in between all other skills in the game, so I'm not sure what rubs me so wrong about this one. But it does. I was disappointed.

Plus, the sound is just... wut? It's vaguely gross, imo.

Fur_like_snow

In PvE my magblade sees the most benefit although I will admit the weave is a bit clunky and I miss fire from time to time. In terms of weave ability force pulse > elemental weapon. But since my parse is higher with elemental I feel obligated to use it.

In PvP I don’t see a reason to run either morph.

Kanar

GreenHere wrote: »

Plus, the sound is just... wut? It's vaguely gross, imo.

Yeah the feel is bad and that sound. Haha man they were on crack when they made that. "Vaguely gross" is a great way to describe it.

BuddyAces

ajcorbell wrote: »

Why bother with class balance when you can just force them in to all using the same skills? Winning.

I love you. Great post. Been satin it for a while now.

This is the worse thing EVER put in the game.

Sparr0w

Elemental is better on all classes bar MagDK.

Crushing better on all classes bar StamNB and StamWarden.

MashmalloMan

Sparr0w wrote: »

Elemental is better on all classes bar MagDK.

Crushing better on all classes bar StamNB and StamWarden.

That statement doesn't seem true anymore, Stam DK is better off using venomous claw as a spammable for sustain with the 25% poison skill cost reduction and stamplar gets better sustain and dps via burning light + biting jabs.

It's really only useful for stam sorc's in pve and that's because we don't have a spammable and shrouded daggers costs a lot, our stamina management is the worst of all the stam classes so we are almost forced to use it.

Edit: Stamina toon perspective, might be true about Elemental Weapon, but even then, Mag Warden's cliff racer is great especially with the dmg changes.