Guild Wars 2

I want to stay away from glass cannon builds, but still make good use of mostly fire. Suggestions?

If want to support other players at risk of your own life, because you will be easy kill, good luck to you.
But tbh, staff is crap, stability negates the cc, damage is pitiful if you don`t want to go gc & at best, some like meteor shower is random chance of hitting anything & a cast time so long, anyone & their gran could`ve killed you by the time you`ve even half cast it.
If you want a really good staff build, go necro

Fishbait.6723:

If want to support other players at risk of your own life, because you will be easy kill, good luck to you.
But tbh, staff is crap, stability negates the cc, damage is pitiful if you don`t want to go gc & at best, some like meteor shower is random chance of hitting anything & a cast time so long, anyone & their gran could`ve killed you by the time you`ve even half cast it.
If you want a really good staff build, go necro

Yep, stability totally negates chill and cripple fields, static field is a crappy ability (who needs to catch strays and back-line casters?) and multiple water fields are totally useless in zerg combat. Your skills take time to cast, and obviously all eles are too dumb to position themselves to use all of their aoes. What, you mean I can’t just click on the enemy and tag all of them for bags??

Or, maybe you don’t know a thing about WvW staff eles and need to stop posting in this thread.

@OP: Play with trinkets to get your offenses up. 20 Arcana is mandatory and water is just a really good trait line, so you sacrifice a lot of group support if you stray too far from the usual heavy water/arcana styles. What you can do is stop at 20 Arcana and play with points in Air if you don’t mind losing evasive arcana, and then mix and match crit damage trinkets and some knights armor (still mostly PTV armor wise) for some offense while still staying survivable.

Gee, if only I knew the slightest about staff ele.
Or WvWs.
Oh wait, I levelled nearly purely in wvws as a staff ele.

Next fail attempt?

As another primary WvW player your critique of WvW Staff Elementalist doesn’t make much sense.

Fishbait.6723:

If want to support other players at risk of your own life, because you will be easy kill, good luck to you.

Anyone doing Zerg WvW needs to go defensive due to how Zerg game play is done (basically each Zerg runs through each other, separates to recover, then repeats). However there a variety of ways to build for self survivability and support for others while maintaining decent offense. The most common method these days is PVT with Divinity/Scholar/Ruby/Boon Duration with Emerald/Soldier/Celestial Acessories and Weapons. Very easy to hit 1600 Toughness, 15000+ HP, and around 2000 Power (with varying Crit and Crit Dmg) which is more than enough to survive.

Fishbait.6723:

But tbh, staff is crap, stability negates the cc, damage is pitiful if you don`t want to go gc & at best, some like meteor shower is random chance of hitting anything & a cast time so long, anyone & their gran could`ve killed you by the time you`ve even half cast it.

Making that an argument something is useless because Stability exists is silly. Not everyone brings stability (they should) and you will catch a lot of people who didn’t want to blow their stability cool down so soon (if they brought it at all). This certainly doesn’t make Hammer Jammer warriors, Necro Fear, Guardian Walls or anything else not worth bringing.

Meteor Shower is a stationary spell for stationary targets (such as defending a choke point in StoneMist Lord) and certainly isn’t something you’re going to use majority of the time. However Fireball is a targeted AOE blast that will guaranteed hit a large chunk of bunched up people. Chain Lightning is amazing for tagging multiple targets. Even Ice Spike might not hit the front of the enemy AOE Zerg but it will hit the “tail” of their zerg as they pass through. Most of the moves can be done on the run.

That said S/D and D/D also have tons of merits, especially D/D in this setting but they lack any kind of stopping power. I’ve disrupted whole zergs countless times with a well placed Static Field and Frozen Ground skills to really make it great.

Fishbait.6723:

If you want a really good staff build, go necro

No misinformation here. Necros are pretty beast in WvW and completely a viable alternative to Elementalists.

Is this any good as a primarily healer based Ele with some crit offense?

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.3|6.1a.9a|0.0.0.0.0.0|1a.71d.1a.71d.1a.71d.1a.71d.1a.71d.1a.71d|31l.0.1n.64.1n.64.1n.64.1n.64.8i.64|k67.a5.0.k19.k58|0.0|1n.1s.27.1t.0|e

Crit is kinda a waste if you aren’t also going Crit Power. The advantage of going 30 points into Air instead of Power is you get 30% Critical Damage from the passive stat boosts. With the build listed you’d want to go more Clerics gear than Magi and then go for more Soldier/Invader (Power-Vitality-Toughness) jewelry (karma or wvw badges) slotted with Celestial Quartz. That’ll give you a really strong Power base and still give you decent +Healing plus a good chunk of Toughness. That also makes the 10 points in Air kinda pointless and you’re probably better off investing it more into the Support side of things.

Also Signets are largely regarded as terrible without significant advantages placed for them (such as Condition Duration to make their effects strong or Earth Traits to further augment them). You’re better off going with another Cantrip (such as Lightning Flash, which can be very handy in WvW if you get caught in a bad situation) or Arcane Wave (which can be used as another blast finisher for an AOE heal, AOE Might, AOE Swiftness, etc). The heal can be replaced with GOEH or the Dwayna heal. I prefer GOEH because it’s another source of Swiftness when running around mostly as well as other boons (Protection and Regen).

Therefore you’d end up with something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImKbxR5QlDAkHvcCLBFEwQRxM7A-jEyAoNASEQWsIas1tioxqew0lER1eeioaXAmQAyGDA-w

Over 2000 Power (with Sharpening Stone)
Over 1600 Toughness (with Food, without 1577)
Over 18000 HP (this gives you massive EHP with that much Toughness)
Over 1000 Healing (which is more than enough to support with)

You also have absurd Condition management with the ability for all of your Cantrips to remove a condition as well as provide massive AOE condition removal with AOE regeneration (from just swapping to Water) as well as Healing Rain for recovery after.

Kodiak.3281:

Crit is kinda a waste if you aren’t also going Crit Power. The advantage of going 30 points into Air instead of Power is you get 30% Critical Damage from the passive stat boosts. With the build listed you’d want to go more Clerics gear than Magi and then go for more Soldier/Invader (Power-Vitality-Toughness) jewelry (karma or wvw badges) slotted with Celestial Quartz. That’ll give you a really strong Power base and still give you decent +Healing plus a good chunk of Toughness. That also makes the 10 points in Air kinda pointless and you’re probably better off investing it more into the Support side of things.

Also Signets are largely regarded as terrible without significant advantages placed for them (such as Condition Duration to make their effects strong or Earth Traits to further augment them). You’re better off going with another Cantrip (such as Lightning Flash, which can be very handy in WvW if you get caught in a bad situation) or Arcane Wave (which can be used as another blast finisher for an AOE heal, AOE Might, AOE Swiftness, etc). The heal can be replaced with GOEH or the Dwayna heal. I prefer GOEH because it’s another source of Swiftness when running around mostly as well as other boons (Protection and Regen).

Therefore you’d end up with something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImKbxR5QlDAkHvcCLBFEwQRxM7A-jEyAoNASEQWsIas1tioxqew0lER1eeioaXAmQAyGDA-w

Over 2000 Power (with Sharpening Stone)
Over 1600 Toughness (with Food, without 1577)
Over 18000 HP (this gives you massive EHP with that much Toughness)
Over 1000 Healing (which is more than enough to support with)

You also have absurd Condition management with the ability for all of your Cantrips to remove a condition as well as provide massive AOE condition removal with AOE regeneration (from just swapping to Water) as well as Healing Rain for recovery after.

Thanks a lot

Fishbait.6723:

Gee, if only I knew the slightest about staff ele.
Or WvWs.
Oh wait, I levelled nearly purely in wvws as a staff ele.

Next fail attempt?

Because leveling on a character automatically makes you knowledgeable at it. No, don’t address your terrible arguments that direct showcase your lack of understanding, bring up barely relevant things instead.

@ OP, I personally don’t like the healing power route. You become more “supportive”, yes, but the majority of zerg healing is not provided by your own healing but by those who blast inside your fields. There’s regen ticks to consider as well of course but I know some prefer to go PTV/knights and offensive trinkets (completely forgoing healing power other than any celestial trinkets). Personally I think the cleric build hits like a wet noodle because you have basically no crit and no crit damage.

ykyk.2740:

Fishbait.6723:

Gee, if only I knew the slightest about staff ele.
Or WvWs.
Oh wait, I levelled nearly purely in wvws as a staff ele.

Next fail attempt?

Because leveling on a character automatically makes you knowledgeable at it. No, don’t address your terrible arguments that direct showcase your lack of understanding, bring up barely relevant things instead.

@ OP, I personally don’t like the healing power route. You become more “supportive”, yes, but the majority of zerg healing is not provided by your own healing but by those who blast inside your fields. There’s regen ticks to consider as well of course but I know some prefer to go PTV/knights and offensive trinkets (completely forgoing healing power other than any celestial trinkets). Personally I think the cleric build hits like a wet noodle because you have basically no crit and no crit damage.

Put your money where your mouth is.
Show everybody this amazing staff that helps the player when in a tight situation, aka a thief or someone else toe to toe with them.
Then look at every necro & cringe at your lies.

Fishbait.6723:

ykyk.2740:

Fishbait.6723:

Gee, if only I knew the slightest about staff ele.
Or WvWs.
Oh wait, I levelled nearly purely in wvws as a staff ele.

Next fail attempt?

Because leveling on a character automatically makes you knowledgeable at it. No, don’t address your terrible arguments that direct showcase your lack of understanding, bring up barely relevant things instead.

@ OP, I personally don’t like the healing power route. You become more “supportive”, yes, but the majority of zerg healing is not provided by your own healing but by those who blast inside your fields. There’s regen ticks to consider as well of course but I know some prefer to go PTV/knights and offensive trinkets (completely forgoing healing power other than any celestial trinkets). Personally I think the cleric build hits like a wet noodle because you have basically no crit and no crit damage.

Put your money where your mouth is.
Show everybody this amazing staff that helps the player when in a tight situation, aka a thief or someone else toe to toe with them.
Then look at every necro & cringe at your lies.

Can’t tell if serious. You just pin-pointed the one thing EVERYONE knows a staff ele is bad at, 1v1. Is this a terrible troll? Or did you level to 80 trying to 1v1 on a staff ele, died two thousand times and concluded that staff ele is bad? Every guild group runs staff eles, I’m not even going to dignify your request by showing you a video because you can youtube “gw2 wvw” and click EVERY SINGLE VIDEO and probably find a staff ele there somewhere.

Just…stop. You are making yourself look bad, and you can help by just stopping

So, kitten we`ve both agreed upon, staff 1v1 is kittene.
When some ele is running with a zerg & is targetted, you`re lucky for anyone to notice as they`re all too busy farming wxp, running for their own lives etc.
This is why staff is kitten.
Necro on the other hand stands a very good chance of getting out of that alive.
Next?

I’m in the staff ele is great in zerg warfare camp. It really sucks in 1v1 but even then I was still able to escape a thief and a ranger by running from speldan to Anz while laying down CC fields behind me. I usually run 0-10-0-30-30 but lately I’ve been trying this build out, http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImgbxR5QlDAkHvcCLBFEwQRxM7A-j0yAYLA6DQyTZNNKIW7Cb1Nal3gotx0uJV9GZ9LgIAmxA-w has a less toughness then what you usually see but it focuses more around boon duration, protection/regen which makes up for it and lets me hit a little harder..

Here’s the build I run
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImmbwR5wjDIkHnQGyCCFVAFUUMD7AA-jEyAoLA6TQyeDZNBGxGRR0Y11Ya3kqhFkBA-w
Here’s the build chemsorly runs, one of the ele’s from Red Guard (famous WvW guild).
http://intothemists.com/guides/guide.php?id=107#weapons_and_skills