Guild Wars 2

Hi guys, I’m learning ele. What is the ideal DPS rotation for staff ele?

http://youtu.be/-DE8It42yQI

dboylolz.3916:

http://youtu.be/-DE8It42yQI

I like miku’s comment on that video. A lot of people hate on ele staff, but its equally as involved and difficult as other ele rotations. Its just bad ele’s dont use the utilities, or easy content doesn’t require them.

dboylolz.3916:

http://youtu.be/-DE8It42yQI

Speaking as a random pug, the problem with that rotation is that most people demand you drop Ice Bow immediately for them to use in dungeons so as you can get a quick freeze and burst.

So for me, fights just start with dropping Ice Bow, Ice bow 5 (if boss isn’t frozen), cast Lightning Storm, Ice Bow 4, 3, then I do Earth 2 (Eruption), Fire 2 (Lava Font), Fire 3 (Flame Burst), Fire 5 (Meteor Shower) and then Fire 2 (Lava Font) again.

I also tend to stack might prior to a fight, if possible, but in some cases you can’t.

I know that isn’t the ideal DPS rotation as you asked for, but I was giving my opinion from a realistic stand point and obviously when you’re in a disorganised party as opposed to a solo scenario.

champ.7021:

dboylolz.3916:

http://youtu.be/-DE8It42yQI

I like miku’s comment on that video. A lot of people hate on ele staff, but its equally as involved and difficult as other ele rotations. Its just bad ele’s dont use the utilities, or easy content doesn’t require them.

Glad you like it. While it’s true that I feel more involved while using D/F it’s only because of the attunement swapping… other than that it’s nothing special really, you’re autoattacking more with dagger mainhand than you are with staff that’s for sure. The number of different skills used is [supposed to be] the same on average though and it’s silly for people to refer to staff ele rotations as just 12121212 like so many do.

My general rule for D/F is that it’s most of the time never worth it unless you have problems with projectiles (belka, bugged Lupicus autoattack without arcane energy build, etc).

To me it’s just that D/F is more fun. Staff has a nice initial burst that takes timing and leaves you vulnerable at times which is a concern, but once you run through your initial burst (which honestly is more than enough for many dungeon encounters) it falls into that 1212121 rotation, which is a bit boring. Staff’s simplicity is certainly over-exaggerated, but the tools you have and the rotation as a whole simply isn’t as fun as D/F to me. And, that’s especially true pugging where more and more encounters last long enough that you’re in the 121212 phase.

To me one of the big “difficulties” of staff is managing attuenement timers, such that you’re in earth to start with fire and air off cooldown to execute the burst properly. Air is great for between fights, and burning retreat can be used as well, then the whole swapping for mighting up, timers become an issue. So to me that’s the more intricate part of staff, at least as far as PUGing goes where I’m responsible for might because I can’t trust people to blast my fire field, or a warrior to be PS if we even have one.

Point being, Miku’s totally right, but I still find D/F and S+LH to be more interesting, and a pity they are so inferior in damage output, especially with the proposed trait changes.

Hi, thx for the video. I don’t have any dedicated group atm. So if the fight is long, am I going to 121212 while waiting for the glyph of storm and ice bow/fgs? Is the earth skill 2 also worth the attunement switching?

Air auto is actually strong against 2 or 3 enemies at the same time. The bouncing attack has some good dps. I actually prefer staff more recently in fractals for its excellent utilities and crowd control. For example, it’s very courageous to Burning Speed straight into a group of Ascalon Vets at level 50 and pull out a perfect rotation. But staff feels very natural there.

gin.7158:

Hi, thx for the video. I don’t have any dedicated group atm. So if the fight is long, am I going to 121212 while waiting for the glyph of storm and ice bow/fgs? Is the earth skill 2 also worth the attunement switching?

Swapping attunements with staff is a tricky thing. In fact it’s the tricky thing about staff. Earth2 is pretty fast recast so you’re not really looking to regularly cast it, it’s too big of a damage loss for too long of a time. However if you find yourself wanting the other skills (like Sandstorm for instance) it’s a nice option to reuse the 2 skill. Generally you just do your initial burst of earth-air-fire like in the video then ride fire for the duration, however some skills like the chill field or sandstorm or even the rockwall can come in handy. And that’s where you get to see some more intricate attunement swapping to eat up the fire attunement recharge.

For example say you want the blind from sandstorm, you can swap earth, lay that down, drop your eruption and maybe the rockwall or even the CC, then swap Water for the Icicle (sorry I don’t remember all the names of skills), then rotate air to do some autos, and then swap fire when it’s up. Though again you’re mainly going to be just sticking to fire after the initial rotation, unless you need something from another attunement (water fields, sandstorm, chill field, etc).

I see. Thx for the explanation.

So I watched that vid, read this thread and I see few things missing.
1: Flame Burst is a dps loss with a guard in group, never use it unless your guard can’t use his F1.
2. Few bosses and encounters reflect your auto attack, thing that might seem bad to you. Easy fix is to detarget and hit the ground around your target. Examples are Belka and Aldus Stormbringer in hotw p1.
3. While I see most people saying rotation is Eruption -> Air -> Lightning Storm -> Fire -> Lava Font -> Ice Bow. It’s not always the case.
This is a good rotation for solos and most 5 man fights but you’ll notice that sometimes a big part your lightning storm is wasted before boss triggers.
Lightning Storm is around half of an Ice storm so it’s nothing to joke about.
Lets take Sure-Shot Seamus in CM p3 as example.
You want to freeze that guy as soon as possible. You can either do your usual rotation before he triggers then freeze but then half of your Lightning Storm is wasted or if you do it later then your freeze will be too late.
My point is, skipping earth in your rotation helps sometimes, so just Lightning Storm then Lava font and blast it with Arcane wave.
4. Obviously prestacking before few encounters helps. What I wanna point out about this is that it’s not worth it if you’ll start fight in Air, at least not in a 5 man where you want Internal Fire to proc.
Again I’ll use Sure-Shot Seamus as example. No matter how fast you are, you won’t get fire off cd for your Ice Storm on him so despite what most do, prestacking on that guy with a PS war is a waste.
But, encounters like Vallog are perfect for prestacking or Fyonna in TA, or cart in SE p3, there’s tons of example but you get my point.

You can start air > lightning storm > eruption > lava font as an alternative. Theres not really any reason to miss out on eruption unless you dont need the might and fury (speedrun). Of course flame burst is a dps loss. But most groups tend to lack burn uptime especially in pugs. Im guessing the OP is more concerned about the general rotation and what works in pugs.

spoj.9672:

Theres not really any reason to miss out on eruption unless you dont need the might and fury (speedrun)

Might comes from PS War not running kitten Warbanner instead of SoR.
Fury comes from either FGJ or you blasting your lava font with arcane wave while doing ice bow.
Instantly freezing a boss and getting 90%+ of your Lightning Storm off is worth more than a kittenty Eruption.

In regards of D/F vs staff “complexity.”

Staff requires you to do a lot of actions right at the start of a fight. D/F the actions are less frenetic at the beginning of a fight but are sustained more throughout whereas with staff the action settles down once you get to the fire camp stage. So basically, staff ele front loads all its fun.

Amicable Pugs.4503:

So I watched that vid, read this thread and I see few things missing.
1: Flame Burst is a dps loss with a guard in group, never use it unless your guard can’t use his F1.
2. Few bosses and encounters reflect your auto attack, thing that might seem bad to you. Easy fix is to detarget and hit the ground around your target. Examples are Belka and Aldus Stormbringer in hotw p1.
3. While I see most people saying rotation is Eruption -> Air -> Lightning Storm -> Fire -> Lava Font -> Ice Bow. It’s not always the case.
This is a good rotation for solos and most 5 man fights but you’ll notice that sometimes a big part your lightning storm is wasted before boss triggers.
Lightning Storm is around half of an Ice storm so it’s nothing to joke about.
Lets take Sure-Shot Seamus in CM p3 as example.
You want to freeze that guy as soon as possible. You can either do your usual rotation before he triggers then freeze but then half of your Lightning Storm is wasted or if you do it later then your freeze will be too late.
My point is, skipping earth in your rotation helps sometimes, so just Lightning Storm then Lava font and blast it with Arcane wave.
4. Obviously prestacking before few encounters helps. What I wanna point out about this is that it’s not worth it if you’ll start fight in Air, at least not in a 5 man where you want Internal Fire to proc.
Again I’ll use Sure-Shot Seamus as example. No matter how fast you are, you won’t get fire off cd for your Ice Storm on him so despite what most do, prestacking on that guy with a PS war is a waste.
But, encounters like Vallog are perfect for prestacking or Fyonna in TA, or cart in SE p3, there’s tons of example but you get my point.

I’m a little bit unclear about number 3. I see a lot of dungeon streamers, their ele usually use lightning storm while the boss’s color is not red yet. Is the damage wasted? If yes, why cast it early, for quick freeze and burst? Is it worth to use this on pug strategy?

So in that case, what attunement should I start or what rotation should I use? From my understanding, start with air, cast lightning storm while waiting boss, ice bow→ deep freeze and burst, switch to fire and use 121212?

sorry for a lot of questions, I appreciate for all input.

Amicable Pugs.4503:

spoj.9672:

Theres not really any reason to miss out on eruption unless you dont need the might and fury (speedrun)

Might comes from PS War not running kitten Warbanner instead of SoR.
Fury comes from either FGJ or you blasting your lava font with arcane wave while doing ice bow.
Instantly freezing a boss and getting 90%+ of your Lightning Storm off is worth more than a kittenty Eruption.

But you can use eruption and still get 100% of your lightning storm off. An instant freeze only matters if you are using tempest defence. But the OP is learning. I doubt he cares about such optimal situations. Tempest defence isnt that great in pugs.

@gin

The reason people cast lightning storm early is because the vuln is important for bursting with icebow and we want to be in fire attunement for our damage modifier traits. Which means we need to end our start rotation on fire. If we want to stack might and fury then we need lava font. This means lightning storm has to be cast before we switch to fire and we need to cast lava font before we summon icebow.

Its ideal to cast lightning storm just as the boss becomes hostile so you dont lose any damage. But it doesnt matter too much in general. If you can time it right you can eruption > lighting storm > lava font without missing any damage. But your freeze will be later (doesnt matter in pugs).

Situations demand flexibility.

The reason you see a lot of groups starting their rotation before the boss spawns is because they know even with a bit of loss on Lightning Storm and potentially even missing some IB4 or Lava Font/eruption damage the things still gonna blow up. But they still try to time it such that the boss is going red when your Eruption is going off he turns red, you’re poping your IB and freezing right then, but again, if that’s off, it’s often not a big deal because they die anyways. But, even waiting for a boss you might as well toss the eruption/lava font in for extra fury/might if you have the time.

Some encounters the extra few seconds of the rotation will leave you taking some damage if you don’t have aegis or something and you want to get the IB5 off asap so skipping some stuff and getting the IB5 in can be beneficial to save your scholar buff.

Point being, the rotation given is generally what you want to do, not necessarily the only way you’re going to do it, if you notice benefits to tweaking it, just tweak it

NikeEU.7690:

In regards of D/F vs staff “complexity.”

D/F requires you to land comet
Sorry couldn’t help myself
Don’t hit me
Love you <3

You shouldn’t start casting Lightning Storm when boss is red either, with experience you memorize boss trigger times and know exactly when to cast.
Npc dialogues can help with memorizing times too, so I suggest having game sound on.
As for pugs, optimizing doesn’t matter much. Just insta freeze no matter what so you can actually get a burst off with whatever builds and gear the’yre running.
As for rotation, I said up there, it depends on encounter and group.
But tbh, in pugs optimizing isn’t worth much. Just get a lava font before freezing and blast with something(earth 2 or an Arcane) then freeze and you did your job just fine.
After that spam 1 and 2, maybe 3 if guard has down syndrome.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

NikeEU.7690:

In regards of D/F vs staff “complexity.”

D/F requires you to land comet
Sorry couldn’t help myself
Don’t hit me
Love you <3

Pfft….

#y-do-u-do-dis

What about having the lh ele instafreeze if needed? :<
No more worries gg.

And lose out on scepter burst, gg

From what everyone is saying, Ele dps is too valuable to sacrifice by wasting time Deep Freezing.

Clearly the solution is to start fights with Bane Signet active.

You want ti might stack anyways and be either on air or water depending on the build tho just have your staff ele bring some blasts for fury

I just want to say that if you prestack,the might lasts for the whole fight and you start on a conjure, you don’t need to play a scepter ele. Of course it has its uses with its high burst etc. but that situation is not one of them

And you don’t really lose that much by going DF → glyph → fire, but going earth after glyph is pretty meh, losing most of the tempest defense uptime

Idk its not about the might its the build that makes it worth to play especially in short fights, btw i wasnt talking about seamus cuz freezing him instant sucks anyway i was speaking just in general

Yea df is just fine for cm anyways

With DF i meant deep freeze, not d/f :S and 55220 and 66200 are pretty much indifferent because tempest defense is so good for short fights and you get 50 power, precision and ferocity on top of that.

But I have not calculated that myself so feel free to check yourself

This cracks me up.

Mb sorry yea tempest is pretty good there no doubts but yea overall i like the 55 better and even in “short” fights deepfreeze doesnt last forever. Just my personal thoughts i dont have any calculations