Guild Wars 2

Lots of people talk about a “rotation” of skills they use, but I just kind of use the skills I think would be useful at the time (e.g. immobilise enemy with shock wave and then lava font them if they are melee and want to get into close quarters combat, healing rain if low on health, Magnetic Aura if enemy is shooting at me etc.) Is this the right thing to do or do I need a proper “rotation” of skills I need to use to play effectively. I’ve been playing for more than a year now so I tend to do ok gameplay right. I just wanted to see if I’m fully utilising the elementalists potential (ele is my favourite profession)

You are not playing it wrong, but you are not playing it as effectively as you could. For PvE, a good rotation will optimize your damage. Look at it as the best way to play when everything go perfectly. Of course, not everything go as planned. When you solo, or you play with bad to decent party you can’t always use to optimal rotation. Sometime you gonna need to use that healing rain, magnetic aura, immobilize, etc even if they are not part of the rotation.

Should you learn a rotation? Probably. It’s not like you need to stick to it 100%. But it doesn’t hurt to know the most optimal way to do damage when everything go according to plan. It also push you to notice when and why sometime you need to deviate from the rotation. That way you can try to change how you approach stuff so you don’t need to deviate from it.

Should I make up my own rotation then? Or look up a rotation?

Are you talking about PvE or PvP (or WvW) ?

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Are you talking about PvE or PvP (or WvW) ?

PVE

Well you can come up with a rotation of your own if you want, but the community worked on that for a fairly long time so the chance is that we come up with better rotation already just by the time and number of people that already worked on it.

Ideally, you could check for a tested rotation and then adapt it to your gameplay, skills, trait, etc

Thaddeus.4891:

Well you can come up with a rotation of your own if you want, but the community worked on that for a fairly long time so the chance is that we come up with better rotation already just by the time and number of people that already worked on it.

Ideally, you could check for a tested rotation and then adapt it to your gameplay, skills, trait, etc

Thanks

You can come up with your own but you might like mine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DE8It42yQI
This rotation does a ton of damage in dungeons and boss fights. Generally you want to stay in fire for as long as you can unless you need the support from the other elements like water fields or immobilize. And make sure you take advantage of glyph of storms whenever you can. Used in earth it gives a large aoe blind that pulses for 10 seconds. Used in air it gives 25 vuln and a lot of aoe damage. Hope this helps. ^^

My 2-cents:
Keep in mind that you’ll need to learn rotation and skill timing if you want to take advantage of combo-ing your own fields (e.g., E2 + A5).

Also, maximizing snares with other players laying down damage requires rotation. Here’s a favorite of mine when slowly giving ground in a controlled retreat against sub-zerg groups:
E5 > E4 > A5 (just in front of E4) > A3 (to push anyone I can into the field — really irritating (LOL)) > W4 (if I have time, again, just to be irritating).

After that sequence, I might go F2 (insult more than anything) > F4+E3 (since by this point, enough enemies have shrugged off conditions and are pretty set on killing you!) Of course, this presumes you’re pretty quick and accurate on ground targeting. Just some thoughts

There you go.
Add Glyph of Storms in air after Eruption for 25 vuln, then after lava font use ice bow for freezing and Ice Storm burst.
Weapon swapping is optional but I encourage you to prestack might wherever you can unless you’ll be stuck on air when fight starts.
And yes, flame burst timing matters and its not a dps loss if you use it as I do in my vid with a guard.

You DO need to know what the proper rotation of skills for staff are. It helps alot & becomes 2nd nature. Earth2→ fire2 – for might | Air static/gust – stuns/KB’s | Water = healing, Ice = chills | Earth = immobilize

Of course there are proper times to use X skills, but what sounds better to you? Winging it just bc you think so VS. Actually knowing & why

Staff ele in PvE=2222222222222222 in fire with some 1s and 5s occasionally mixed in.

My suggestion would be….dont stick to a rotation…but try to find fitting comboes…and then make the neccessery combo for the situation.
Forexample..u can stack like 9 might on the party with staff (starting with erth then go to fire) combo nr1 and then u make some skills to burst..like nr5 fire and 2 again..then check if a healing combo is needed of stack up for might^^ best is so act according to the situation (healing combo is earth2 and water 3 or 5 )
also what is nice on staff build..is that aoe glyph…on earth for perma blind and vetran trash monster..and on air for bossmonster and adding vuln.