Guild Wars 2

I’m using a 20/20/0/20/10 build because I enjoy the Fire’s extra damage and reduced cooldowns, and it works great since I switch D/D for Staff and S/D pretty often depending on what I’m doing.

I’m not a big fan of going 30 in Arcane because I think it’s a bunch of points I didn’t get, that could be either 15% Critical Chance, or 300 Power, etc…

I don’t think it’s Majors/Minors to be that much more awesome than other lines except for Evasive Arcana and it’s instant Churning Earth’s 8 bleed stacks (but the damage sucks).

Can someone argue with me the advantages/disadvantages between going 10 or 30 in Arcana?

This isn’t complex. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attunement_Recharge_Rate and EA’s http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Wave

EA on earth does 1 stack of bleeding plus cripple. Not 8 stacks.

The major flavor why EA is good is not for damage but for the varying utility depending on which attunement you dodge into especially for the blast finisher on earth EA which is quite useful for self-comboing since eles produce a lot of fields especially when using staff. And also the EA in water which heals quite a lot and is recently nerfed in PVP but unchanged in PVE.

And yes, as TheGuy has stated (or seemed to state) the attunement recharge reduction is really really good since ele is quite more effective in frequent attunement switching (attunement dancing) rather than sticking only with one attunement. Maybe it’s playstyle but from my experience, faster attunement CDs is a very good thing for an ele.

The attunement recharge rate I find it useful, but I don’t switch alot unless I’m D/D. When WvWing with the Staff, I stay mostly in Fire switching occasionally to Earth -> Water -> Fire when I want AoE badly, or Air for a single target burst (with Electrical Discharge).

I’m not saying it’s better to stay in one attunement, but the difference between 13~9 seconds and 1.3 to 0.9 doesn’t seem too much, it’s manageable pretty well even with 20 in Arcana if you’re using D/D.

I think it’s awesome having faster swaps if you have the Master minors.
Sunspot kinda sucks, but it’s another AoE and sorta helps for tagging mobs in crowded events.
Electrical Discharge does nice damage and is instant, so you can combo with a bunch of other stuff…
Earthen Blast I don’t use often, so I can’t comment.
Healing Ripple is another awesome one. For me it’s a 1600 heal every 13 seconds, 9 if I went 30 in Arcana.

EA on earth does 1 stack of bleeding plus cripple. Not 8 stacks.

Most of the time I fight a D/D ele and I get hit by it I see my bleed stacks at 8 so I thought it was just like a real Churning Earth… so it’s even less useful than I had thought, just Cleansing Wave that it seems really good.

Sorry if I seems overly critical about it, but I really want to understand it’s appeal. I played a while with it (the 0/10/0/30/30 build and some variations) and then without it, and I’m trying to see if I’m missing something or if I overlooked something.

Thanks for the arguments!

Well, sadly attunement recharge rate lies there, so if you plan on PvP’ing you want at the very least 10 points in arcane. And sadly you need 20 in arcane for blasting staff, which I think shouldn’t exist, but be part of the staff at all times as you will feel much weaker without it, and that doesn’t help with build diversity at all.

Malcastus.6240:

Well, sadly attunement recharge rate lies there, so if you plan on PvP’ing you want at the very least 10 points in arcane. And sadly you need 20 in arcane for blasting staff, which I think shouldn’t exist, but be part of the staff at all times as you will feel much weaker without it, and that doesn’t help with build diversity at all.

I couldn’t agree more about Blasting Staff.

I’m currently running a raw damage Staff build with 30 fire, 25 air, 15 water, but it REALLY hurts to not have the increased area on the skills, but the points in water, fire, and air really are needed for my build to function.

The defaults simply feel way too small (except for Meteor Shower), and to make matters worse, Fireball’s AOE damage does NOT benefit from Blasting Staff anyway, which sucks.

I’d love to see Blasting Staff replaced with something that interacts with Field spells, like increased Field duration or reduced recharge for Field spells. Useful but not game-changing like the increased radius is.

I’d love to see Fireball bumped up to a 150 radius, and Blasting Staff’s radius increases made standard, then staff would be in a good place, once Air is “fixed” to be useful that is.

Arcana 30 is not that mandatory for staff users.

For every other weapon combo however, I would take boon duration + attunement switch rate over 10, 20 or 30 points in fire. That train line is just useless.

with just 8 stacks of might you already have over 250 power (iirc), so why not focus on getting them, and increasing their duration?

Really wish the base attunement cooldown was lowered from 15 to 12, with 30 in arcane still taking it to 9.

Playing without a bunch of points in it feels ridiculous.

Razor.6392:

Arcana is not that mandatory for staff users.

For every other weapon combo however, I would take boon duration + attunement switch rate over 10, 20 or 30 points in fire. That train line is just useless.

with just 8 stacks of might you already have over 250 power (iirc), so why not focus on getting them, and increasing their duration?

Might is a boon which increases power and condition damage and can stack in intensity up to 25 times. The effect of might is determined by the following formula:

0.375 * Level + 5 = Power and Condition Damage per stack (e.g. 35 at level 80).

35 × 8 = 280

So even more. And I agree its a good path going for might stacks.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blasting_Staff

I won’t play staff without it, as it makes quite a few skills meaningless in PvP, in certain circumstances. People are always moving.

Here’s one question i always had. Does it decrease the density of your meteors in fire 5 or do they simply give you more metors that scale with the area and the density is the same?

Malcastus.6240:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blasting_Staff

I won’t play staff without it, as it makes quite a few skills meaningless in PvP, in certain circumstances. People are always moving.

I’ve played without it A LOT, and have had no issues with it, but with my current, and favorite build i take it because it makes wrecking things on a point a lot easier (less room for them to hide without getting hurt), and just causes more chaos with all the red overlapping circles my enemies see…

Without it i just had to be a bit more tactical with my staff, more manipulative if you will, had to essentially lure my enemy into one of the fields, lock him into one, or make him choose between one or another (ice spike or eruption, pick quickly or you’ll eat both!) sort of things, where as with blasting staff… well i don’t need to do that as much, still do, but don’t -need- to.

PERSONALLY, i’m not a huge fan of the whole faster attunement swapping with staff because frankly, the skill recharges are long and me swapping in faster doesn’t really help me because of how long the are =(. That being said if i’m using a scepter, focus, or dagger then it becomes A LOT more useful because all those weps have much shorter recharges so dancing around actually gives me more options.

I’m not questioning the Arcana 30 for Staff only, but as the overall choice for build.

Blasting Staff is indeed quite a loss, but I don’t take it exactly because I want my Staff skills to be incredibly strong.
Fire 20 is 200 extra Power, and even if you say that 6 stacks of Might compensate for it, what about having Fire 20 and 6 stacks of Might?

I like to see crits of 4k+ with my Meteor Shower and people panicking when hit.

@Raptured
From what I’ve tested, Blasting Staff has no effect whatsoever with Meteor Shower. You can go to the mists, equip a Staff, and pick/unpick the Trait and you’ll see your skill bar changing only for the spells it affects.

Raptured.9307:

Here’s one question i always had. Does it decrease the density of your meteors in fire 5 or do they simply give you more metors that scale with the area and the density is the same?

Neither. Blasting staff has no effect on Meteor Shower.

You can find the list of spells effected here.

Danicco.3568:

…..

I’m not saying it’s better to stay in one attunement, but the difference between 13~9 seconds and 1.3 to 0.9 doesn’t seem too much, it’s manageable pretty well even with 20 in Arcana if you’re using D/D.

…….

Essentially it means almost never having to use an auto-attack. If I am using an auto-atttack it means I fk’d up somewhere, usually.

9 seconds is the cooldown in an attunement before I can proc Evasive Arcana in that attunement.

I can proc Elemental Attunment effects every 9 seconds instead of 13. One example, I can proc Protection for 5 seconds every 9 seconds, but also the 5 seconds can be extended, so it is really up most of the time.

Danicco.3568:

I’m not questioning the Arcana 30 for Staff only, but as the overall choice for build.

Blasting Staff is indeed quite a loss, but I don’t take it exactly because I want my Staff skills to be incredibly strong.
Fire 20 is 200 extra Power, and even if you say that 6 stacks of Might compensate for it, what about having Fire 20 and 6 stacks of Might?

I like to see crits of 4k+ with my Meteor Shower and people panicking when hit.

@Raptured
From what I’ve tested, Blasting Staff has no effect whatsoever with Meteor Shower. You can go to the mists, equip a Staff, and pick/unpick the Trait and you’ll see your skill bar changing only for the spells it affects.

Well having Fire 20 AND 6 stacks of might is obviously better than 6 stacks of might. The question is, where are you going to get them from, and how long are they going to last for? With 30 Arcana, 3 stacks of (area) might come from a dodge roll (EA) — they also last 30% longer, as do they other stacks of might you accumulate.

I’m not saying you need Arcana 30 (or any Arcana) or that your build is bad or anything, just that there’s a LOT of benefit from the Arcane trait line that some people miss at first glance. For instance, faster attunement swap means more frequent heals/regen for people around you, not to mention the more frequent might, condition removal, etc. from combo fields.

For me, i never run a spec without 30 in arcana. not always because of Evasive arcana (although this is a game-changing reason as discussed above)

mainly because of the boon duration. for the most part every class in this game is constantly chasing boons: i find myself looking to get maximum uptime out of might, fury, regeneration, protection, swiftness and vigor at different times.. alot of these can be the difference between life and death for either me or my target. saying no to a longer duration by default is just a massive nerf for me.

throwing a few extra points into a single stat or a single trait when compared to a buff to ALL boons is a no brainer as far as im concerned – as all our playstyles, trait lines, weapon sets, armour sets, sigils, runes, skills etc benafit from a longer duration on the boons we are creating and seeking. (i tend to have this perspective on all my level 80 characters)

Blasting staff is remarkable as discussed.
Elemental atunement is remarkable too.

theres alot of amazing stuff in that tree.

and as an aside, as mentioned above, i agree that fire is pretty pointless unless you never intend to move out of fire during gameplay… which is silly.

Might stacking is superior to fire magic traitline in pretty much every way. Evasive arcana is just too good to pass up for most builds right now, and will continue to be so until other traits are improved or until it’s nerfed some more.