Guild Wars 2

Since clarity was an issue before, and since I’ve gotten so many in-game whispers and private messages, I’ve rewritten my previous post on the subject into this three-post guide.

It’s no secret that this game is highly based on personal comfort and playstyle. That said, some builds are simply on a more advanced level than others. One of the things I’ve developed since BWE1 is my personal combo-based playstyle. It works much the same in solo and in groups, making the transition easy.

(Note: If you don’t know any of the skills or traits by name, we have an official wiki to help you out.)

I. Advantages
II. Combo Fields
III. Combo Finishers
IV. Skills I Use
V. Traits to Use
VI. How I Gear
VII. Frequent Combos and Opener
VIII. Miscellaneous

I. Advantages

The advantages of my combo-based playstyle are few, but incredibly significant. First, I can handle bigger situations with increased ease. Take all of the skills you’ve been using, even though some claim they’re “underpowered” (read: don’t know how to use them), and then add a multitude of optional effects onto many of them. Because of the ways combos work, you can easily adapt to many situations simply by changing how you pair the skills you use.

II. Combo Fields

Here I’ll list the combo field skills from each weapon and slot skill applicable, along with the number on the weapon bar and attunement (F4 for Fire 4) and the type of field generated (F for Fire, W for Water, I for Ice, L for Lightning).

Combo fields with the Staff:
Lava Font (F2, F)
Burning Retreat (F4, F)
Geyser (W3, W)
Frozen Ground (W4, I)
Healing Rain (W5, W)
Static Field (A5, L)

Combo fields with the Scepter:
None

Combo fields with the Focus:
Flamewall (F4, F)

Combo fields with the Dagger:
Burning Speed (F3, F)
Ring of Fire (F4, F)

Combo Fields using Slot Skills:
Conjure Lightning Hammer – Static Field (5, L)

III. Combo Fields

As above, I’ll list the combo finishers for each weapon and slot skills, annotated with the attunement and bar location, as well as the type of finisher (P for Projectile, B for Blast, L for Leap, and W for Whirl).

Combo finishers with the Staff:
Stoning (E1, P)
Eruption (E2,
Shockwave (E5, P)

Combo finishers with the Scepter:
Dragon’s Tooth (F2,
Phoenix (F3,
Stone Shards (E1, P – 20% x3)
Hurl (E2 toggle, P)

Combo finishers with the Focus:
Comet (W5,
Magnetic Wave (E4,

Combo finishers with the Dagger:
Earthquake (E4,
Churning Earth (E5,

Combo finishers using Slot Skills:
Arcane Blast (P)
Arcane Wave (B)
Conjure Flame – Flame Leap (5, L)
Conjure Frost Bow – Frost Volley (2, P x5)
Conjure Lightning Hammer – Thunderclap (1, B, every third auto), Lightning Leap (2, L)
Conjure Fiery Greatsword – Fiery Whirl (3, W)
Tornado (W)

IV. Skills I Use

It should seem obvious from above, but I use the staff for my build. It has the most number of combo fields, the most number of different combo field types, and a few finishers you can throw in there as well. I also use the following slot skills: Glyph of Elemental Harmony, Conjure Frost Bow, Arcane Wave, Glyph of Storms, and Conjure Fiery Greatsword. I’ll explain the GoS pick further down.

V. Traits to Use

One of the advantages to this type of play style is the freedom you can have in traits. However, I find the following to be the most effective for this style of play:

Conjurer (F8) – As much as I use CFB and CFG, adding 67% to their duration is too good to pass up (especially since that’s a huge increase on the elite skill). It’s also helpful to others in your party using the weapons.

Persisting Flames (F11) – While they have relatively short recharges, the fire fields last the least amount of time and provide the most amount of damage of our fields. It’s very helpful to get more shots through them and more recharges to line up with them.

Arcane Mastery (A1) – I use Arcane Wave almost on recharge, so taking six seconds off is huge. It’s my main finisher.

Blasting Staff (A8) – I don’t know how anyone can use the staff and not use this trait. Not only do you increase the number of targets affected by your skills, but you make it easier to get combos off by increasing the size of the field.

The other traits I personally like are the following:

Ember’s Might (F3) – This is big in group play when you can have perfect or near-perfect uptime on burning.

Salt Stone (E4) – This is similar to Ember’s Might, as in groups you can often have high uptime on bleeding.

Serrated Stones (E8) – Since Eruption is the biggest reason to switch to earth, and the main source of damage while in earth, you’re just adding that much more to the skill. Geomancer’s Alacrity would be nice, except that often I switch to earth for Eruption and switch back out. It’s better to improve the skill all the time than to make it more frequent every now and then.

So, my final build looks like this.

VI. How I Gear

Gearing is really dependent on what you’re doing. However, I tend to find that I like having a good balance of stats on my gear. My current PvE gear uses the Knight’s (Pow, Pre, Tou) prefix with either Superior Runes of Divinity (+60 all +12% Crit) or you can use Superior Runes of the Traveler (50% MF, 50 Vitality, +5% movement speed) if you’ve got the money and are farming more money. My accessories are all Pow/Vit/Con stats to cover some of the gap in everything. I gear myself offensive-heavy, because I know I can handle the kitten in my armor (read: wet cardboard).

VII. Frequent Combos and Opener

When I start a boss fight, I have a specific opening sequence I like to follow to help my group, and I try to get my group in with it when they’re cooperative. The goal is to load enough chill on the boss to maintain it permanently (requires the group’s help, but I can cause a LOT on my own anyway). With the group’s help, I need only ask them to use as many projectile finishers as they can in the first few seconds through my field. If someone doesn’t have a projectile finisher, they can always use the extra ice bow I drop. Otherwise, by myself, here is my opener against a boss/big mob:

Water Attunement > Glyph of Storms (chills while in water) > Frozen Ground on Boss > CFB > Frost Volley > Frost Fan > Lava Font on Me > Arcane Wave > Pick up second Ice Bow > Ice Storm on Boss > Deep Freeze (if not immune) > Frost Volley, through any other field if possible > Frost Fan once off Recharge
Using this opener, I’ve managed to last as much as 30 seconds of chill on my own with a boss, given decent RNG on each blast landing from Glyph of Storms or big boss with a big hitbox.

Otherwise, I tend to use the following combos frequently: Fire + Blast (AoE Might x3), Fire + Projectile (Burning), and Water + Blast (AoE heal), though I drop fields as much as possible for my group to use during group play. Even if I don’t have a finisher, some of them have finishers simply by auto-attacking (e.g., rangers with bows and warriors with rifles).

VIII. Miscellaneous

Always ask the people in your group what weapons they’re using. If you know enough about other professions, you can often tell what kind of finishers they’ll have. For example, a warrior and guardian using main hand swords have a leap and projectile, respectively. Similarly, you can tell which fields they’ll be generating. It’s important to know what everyone in your group is doing so you can coordinate and increase your overall effectiveness.

Pay attention to where everyone in your group is, and keep look at their health bars. While you may not do much without stacking +Healing on your gear and traits, you can still provide a significant amount of health in an AoE setting with proper use of your skills and combos.

Everyone loves damage, and you can certainly provide a lot of damage when fully utilizing the profession like this, but damage isn’t everything. You’re providing damage, but your main goal is to simply make the group more awesome. Think more about everyone than yourself. Buffs, minor healing, and conditions are more helpful to the group than simply pumping out damage.

Use air attunement when running around the world. Glyph of Elemental Harmony, Windborne Speed, and the Static Field/Arcane Wave combo provide permanent swiftness with only three points in Arcana. It’s not crucial, but if you ever have to run back mid-fight from a distant WP, the seconds can matter.

Great guide, thanks.

btw for people that are looking for more information about combo’s, there is this nice combo tool that shows what skills you need for any combo.
http://www.mastodonte.fr/outils/tool-combo#en

That tool is nice, but it needs a good bit of refinement.

while i agree with the overall point id like to discuss a few subtleties.

IV. Skills I Use
Personally, doing dungeons without a stun break/immunity skill is not so smart. Id advise for sth. like mistform, which not only breaks stun but is amazing for rezzing people out of sticky situations.

V. Traits to Use
here i disagree with almost everything, which might be cause my build is more supporty but still, i do not understand how you can run a combo based staff ele without evasive arcana. It adds a lot more blast finishers to your kit, which frankly is amazing. Another point: you take arcane mastery over elemental attunement. Im pretty sure that trait is superior when you are alone and only gets better the more people you have around you. I also spec 20 into water but id say that is preference (might be cause i run TA a lot and having cleansing wave for the billions of poisons is pretty good). Overall i fell 30 points in arcane with the traits I listed (and blasting staff ofc.) are more or less mandatory if you want to run such a build. The blasts also have decent utility, providing heal/condi removal, blind and cripple. This setup allows you to stack 12-15(if you are fast) stacks of might, amazing area healing (both optimal for melee heavy groups). It’s worse in applying chilled over lengthy periods of time, so possibly better in ranged only groups against single melee opponents.

Also i disagree vehemently with fiery greatsword (I run wave, GoS, Mistform, Elemental) as it locks you out of supporting your team for way too long and doesnt provide amazing dmg to make up for it.

I reckon I’ll do this in parts.

Eldrene Ay Ellan.9206:

IV. Skills I Use
Personally, doing dungeons without a stun break/immunity skill is not so smart. Id advise for sth. like mistform, which not only breaks stun but is amazing for rezzing people out of sticky situations.

I never find myself getting stunned in dungeons on a regular basis, or even a semi-regular basis. I don’t use it, because I don’t see the need for it at all. Also, it doesn’t rez anyone or break anyone else out of stuns.

V. Traits to Use
here i disagree with almost everything, which might be cause my build is more supporty but still, i do not understand how you can run a combo based staff ele without evasive arcana. It adds a lot more blast finishers to your kit, which frankly is amazing.

I do this very easily. I simply dislike Evasive Arcana. First, Flame Burst, Cleansing Wave, and Blinding Flash are not blast-causing skills. Only Churning Earth is. Secondly, dodging is something I prefer to use for actually dodging. That is, I don’t want to dodge to create a combo and then be out of energy when I actually need to avoid being hit by a spell. Wasting energy is unwise as far as I’m concerned.

Another point: you take arcane mastery over elemental attunement. Im pretty sure that trait is superior when you are alone and only gets better the more people you have around you.

This superiority that you’re “pretty sure” of is completely subjective. The combo effects I get from Arcane Wave are much stronger (e.g., 3 stacks of Might instead of 1, straight healing instead of Regeneration). I can also cause a greater variety of effects using Arcane Wave than Elemental Attunement lets me cause. Therefore, I’d rather have Arcane Mastery. There isn’t an absolute superiority here.

I also spec 20 into water but id say that is preference (might be cause i run TA a lot and having cleansing wave for the billions of poisons is pretty good).

This is something that you (not I) do for one specific dungeon. Thus, it has no place in my guide.

Overall i fell 30 points in arcane with the traits I listed (and blasting staff ofc.) are more or less mandatory if you want to run such a build. The blasts also have decent utility, providing heal/condi removal, blind and cripple. This setup allows you to stack 12-15(if you are fast) stacks of might, amazing area healing (both optimal for melee heavy groups). It’s worse in applying chilled over lengthy periods of time, so possibly better in ranged only groups against single melee opponents.

Again, this is all stuff you do that I don’t. It’s not that I don’t think your idea can work, because I’m sure it can. I simply find that some of your ideas are unwise and restricting.

Also i disagree vehemently with fiery greatsword (I run wave, GoS, Mistform, Elemental) as it locks you out of supporting your team for way too long and doesnt provide amazing dmg to make up for it.

That’s cool, and that’s again something you do. CFG can cause quite the bit of damage if you use it correctly. Yes, it takes away your other stuff for a while, but that’s also time I can use Arcane Wave and GoS and Fiery Whirl to still create combos using my group’s abilities. Elites aren’t an all-the-time thing, and should rarely be used on cooldown. Since you can’t prove any one is better than the others, it’s all up to personal preference. My personal preference is the CFG.

Eldrene Ay Ellan.9206:

Overall i fell 30 points in arcane with the traits I listed (and blasting staff ofc.) are more or less mandatory if you want to run such a build. The blasts also have decent utility, providing heal/condi removal, blind and cripple. This setup allows you to stack 12-15(if you are fast) stacks of might, amazing area healing (both optimal for melee heavy groups). It’s worse in applying chilled over lengthy periods of time, so possibly better in ranged only groups against single melee opponents.

I pretty much agree with your build, which is more rounded, but what do you put the other 20 points into? I personally like 20 pointsd in air for quick glyphs and inscription.

“I do this very easily. I simply dislike Evasive Arcana. First, Flame Burst, Cleansing Wave, and Blinding Flash are not blast-causing skills. Only Churning Earth is. Secondly, dodging is something I prefer to use for actually dodging. That is, I don’t want to dodge to create a combo and then be out of energy when I actually need to avoid being hit by a spell. Wasting energy is unwise as far as I’m concerned.”

you are either uninformed or flat out lying here. every single one is a blast finisher which you can test easily by investing 1 minute. Also, if you use superior sigil of energy you will have plenty endurance.

I still stand by my points on the rest.

@morrolan
Currently 10 in air and 10 in earth. I agree that glyphs are pretty nice and i currently take earth armor at 50% in earth but it’s slightly overkill with mistform

flame burst does act like a blast when you dodge with evasive arcana , I use it a lot.

That was removed in one of the betas. Probably added again before release. I also remember flame burst not being a blast finisher at some point in time.

Flame Burst is a blast finisher. Evasive Arcana does wonders for might stacking for Staff Eles. You’re basically stacking might every single time Lava Front is off CD while in fire. It’s also amazing with AOE healing with Geyser / Rain you can basically get like 4+ heals off in a row if you’re quick enough and Arcane Wave is off CD. This is amazing for WvWvW if you have a couple eles that everyone is stacking on for heals when doing keep rushing etc.

Yep I do that in WvWvW, in-between meteor storms. Heal up damage from those pesky ranger barrages.

Flame Burst isn’t listed as a finisher in its description. Energy Sigil only gives so much energy. I still dislike its use. That’s a personal preference, which is what this guide is written on: MY personal preference. Feel free to write your own, sir.

I’ve been transitioning to a similar-ish sort of playstyle on my new Elementalist, save with a different weapon set/focus. In my experience, finishers are more important to have than initiators – a single initiator can service as many finishers as folks can get off in its uptime, but any given finisher can only get off on one initiator no matter how many you stack up. Scepter/Dagger only has one field of its own, but I get five blasts to your one (counting Arcane Wave and discounting Evasive Arcana), and can typically offload four of them in a single Ring of Fire activation. That is a lot of Might, and also a lot of damage. It also works better for the frenetic attunement-dancing I enjoy running on the Elementalist.

That isn’t to say it’s a better idea than your Staff-based build. I deal significantly more damage than your Staff and can chain out combos a lot faster, more in line with the old E/A Starbursters or the gnarlier Assassin burst builds, but your Staff build has a great deal more flexibility built into it via different field types and additional support skills. All I’ve got are Fire and Lightning fields via dagger and Conjures (or Poison, if I decide to switch to Asura), and that can take a lot of wind out of a combo build’s sails. Still…I just can’t help but grimace when I see that the only blast finisher you’ve got is Arcane Wave, as awesome as Arcane Wave is.

Again, just from my own experience, I can typically count on random event allies a lot more for initiators than I can finishers, with the exception of Projectile. Staff may be a lot more versatile, but I wouldn’t discount the raw firepower of scepter/dagger, nor its ability to swiftly magnify your allies’ firepower. Heh, allies don’t need quite so much support if everything’s dead.

I’d also not be quite so quick to dismiss Elemental Attunement. Certainly Arcane Mastery is fantastic – I’ll take Arcane Wave as often as you want to give it to me, Earl – but while a single stack of Might for switching into Fire is indeed a little underwhelming, switching into PBAoE Protection right before a big boss smacker, or into AoE Regeneration in tougher fights, can be huge. That and just the mere act of switching into Air can help your team get from place to place faster, or give your guys the edge they need to get away from a bad fight, whether or not you’ve got Updraft up. Or if you’re running Staff.

It really comes down to want your emphasis is. There’s nothing better than a Staffmentalist for backing up your squad – I’d go so far as to say that a well-played Staff Elementalist is better team support than a Guardian – but there’s also nothing quite as satisfying for old Assassin players like me than Riding the Lightning into a group of enemies before pwnooblerating them in the spectacularly destructive style to which GW1 had accustomed me. Same concept at the core, though – abuse those combo effects like they’ve never been abused before.