Guild Wars 2

Hi folks!

I’m trying to figure a way to use all of those little arcane abilities we get with the idea of being able to not need to put any points into precision or crit chance, but instead invest heavily in crit damage.

I was playing around with builds and came up with this:

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/elementalist#6|3|1052|3986|3975|3983|1027|10|917|0|0|20|1887|2249|0|0|0|0|0|10|1673|0|0|30|1838|1627|2250|0|0|3|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

Has an Arcane build like this already been used and dismissed? Is there any way to get something like this to work?

I’d love some input as I’m pretty clueless whhen it comes to build creations.

Thanks for your opinions!

Arcane abilities are.. alright. Their synergy with fields is decent and the auto crits are nice for proccing other effects, but they just don’t have the oopmh factor that cantrips do, and cantrips have even more potential for synergy imo. Arcane skills need improvement. You can certainly use them, but you won’t get results that are as good as an ele who uses at least mostly cantrips.

the biggest poop design is that EVERY stun break is a cantrip… so that kinda forces specific utility setups for pvp

I gravitated toward an arcane build as well, but more so for their combo finishing than auto-crits, although that is very nice. I also focus mainly on critical damage, having only about a 30% crit chance before fury (from Arcane Fury).

My gear is mainly P/V/T armor with Berserker’s and Valkyrie’s trinkets and a Valkyrie’s weapon, although I will probably replace a lot of it with Berserker’s as I get the chance. This was my first character and I opted for available armor with more defense until I got more comfortable with what I was doing.

I use a boon duration rune scheme (2 water, 2 monk, 2 hoelbrak/fire) and a Sigil of Battle in my staff (although I leveled at first using scepter/dagger and dagger/dagger).

I hit 25 stacks of might pretty quickly in any decent fight, but I am more of a support build than DPS.

My advice:

I don’t like Arcane Shielding or Arcane Retribution because they have long cooldowns. I also use Arcane Mastery and Elemental Attunement for traits though, although with Elemental Surge as my final major trait.

I chose Bolt to the Heart and Arcane Lightning as my Air traits. I feel that Zephyr’s Boon isn’t very useful with limited aura creation and without Powerful Auras. I also took Air to 25 points for Weak Spot, but I am still evaluating this choice. Even though I didn’t focus exclusively on critical chance, I still have a 50% crit chance most of the time, and 100% on arcane spells.

My build is more about attunement switching and combo fields than arcane spells, so I ignored the fire tree, but I at one time considered burning precision as well.

I use Arcane Wave and Blast, but I have tried other spells too. From my experience and reading on the wiki, Arcane Power is very erratic. For any number of reasons, it may apply to more or less than 5 spell casts. However, it works very well with Elemental Surge (Arcane XII) for DPS. I chose to not use it because it doesn’t add combo finishers in my build.

I also save one utility slot for a cantrip as I don’t like getting stunned and being helpless. I opted for Cleansing Fire because it has one of the shorter cooldowns, doubles as a condition cure, and doesn’t require targetting like Lightning Flash.

Even if you don’t want to specifically dump points in precision, I think it’s almost mandatory to get the critical damage bonus that air has to offer. You can avoid precision on your gear if you want, but I’d recommend at least 25 in Air traits and all berserker’s, cavalier’s or valkyrie’s jewelry. Same for armor, although since crit damage is pretty low on armor you could use other stats instead like PVT (soldier’s) or something.

You have no stun breakers in your build. If you did, that leaves at max 2 utility slots available for an arcane utility, which have longish cooldowns of 20, 30, 45 and 75 seconds. One could argue that stun breakers are not needed “as much” in Pve, but they are everywhere else.

You have zero condition removals. If you took Water 5 you would at least have one condition removal, but only once every 9 seconds. Condition removal is needed everywhere.

Crit damage can be really nice, especially on a Churning Earth. Seeing that skill crit in the middle of a group of mobs or players is pretty nice. I can see why this interests you so much. It does me too.

Arcane Blast is the only one I use as a staff ele. Very short CD,
and ideal at getting instant damage for kill credit, or that last
needed burst on a fleeing enemy.

I have that build and have been running it for 2 days now. You can actually run it with any weapon and if you equip some glyphs and spec the air traits into glyph traits you’ll be able to get perma regen and swiftness, 15 stacks of might if using glyphs and combo finishers.
I’m speccing into prec + condition dmg as a S/F since bleeds and burns are good even on toughness built monsters and peoples.
Beat normal monsters without even completing my full rotation.
I use arcane wave, glyph of storms, glyph of healing, glyph of elemental and one optional depending on situation. sometimes signet of air for a third blinding skill.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Moving-Staff-D-D-S-D-some-questions/first#post1422867

I have no comments for or against this build, but looking at your thread name it seems you might be interested in this video.

I think some of the arcane skills are extremely useful. I love arcane wave and arcane blast for the quick access to two different combo finishers. They also do some pretty decent damage, and can inflict vulnerability if traited.

I did a build that focuses on having arcane wave and arcane blast here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/S-F-WvW-PvE-Build

Now, I am obviously not going full arcane, but as was mentioned, cantrips are where the stun breaks are. I like mist form, as it allows me to cast some long spells and switch attunements without retreating.

I think arcane wave and arcane blast are two of the most useful skills eles have access to. It doesnt hurt to have something with 1500 range on it either. Your mileage may vary, like always.

That build in that video was pretty close to what I had started out in the game with a long while back. I think the main angle was “no percision, lots of crit damage, forced crits”. This was before ascended gear though, and I believe Sigil of Intelligence was broken (when did that get fixed?)…I even think Arcane Power was exceptionally bugged too.

I rehashed my character and has since swapped to glyphs. While not optimal, they’re still pretty handy. The arcane abilities are too but cantrips feel like they’re holding all the stun breaks hostage. I’d like a build that didn’t need any cantrips at all and while you can manage to dodge well enough in PvE to not need them, it’s annoying when crap does happen and you don’t have one. I almost wish Arcane Wave was a stun break but that might infringe on its “press it and get lots of instant damage NOW” mentality…I tend to always want my arcane skills to be on cooldown. On the other hand, cantrips and glyphs you want to save for the proper occasion.

Arcane skills were viable in the first and second beta weekend,since then they have been nerfed to the ground (and i mean deep down to the9th circle of hell-cooldown increase by 50% and dmg reduced by roughly the same)now they are just bad,bad utillities.
The only one use is arcane shield since its the only true dmg negation uty besides mist form and can be used while chaneling without interrupting it.

Windwalker.2047:

Arcane skills were viable in the first and second beta weekend,since then they have been nerfed to the ground (and i mean deep down to the9th circle of hell-cooldown increase by 50% and dmg reduced by roughly the same)now they are just bad,bad utillities.
The only one use is arcane shield since its the only true dmg negation uty besides mist form and can be used while chaneling without interrupting it.

i do not fully agree – they are very viable but you have to center your build around them and even then its mostly a decent pve spec.

i think the bigest problem is that cantrips are too good not to have them on your skillbar. they are basically 3x panic button due to stun breaker and are powerful.

also nearly any build an ele can make, suffers because you wil want at least one cantrip.

traits and skill setup as it is screams cantrips if you want a well rounded build for pve and pvp that does not depend on teamplay…

Thunderbrew.7034:

Arcane Blast is the only one I use as a staff ele. Very short CD,
and ideal at getting instant damage for kill credit, or that last
needed burst on a fleeing enemy.

Yep. Blast is kittening amazing IMO. I have Fire on my staff and while it isn’t a guaranteed crit(30% AFAIR), it procs often enough with the crit of AB to equal 2x ~4k hits back to back. Useful for kittening up near death people in WvW or GC thieves trying to backstab you(drop lava font, pop your shield, they will wail on you until the shield explodes, then they get hit for usually ~10-12k combined dmg from all the above).

Are they somewhat situational? Sure, but for the build I use in WvW/PvE(mostly GC staff), it ends up working wonders. I wouldn’t recommend them for full PVT D/D builds though, as you’re better off going for cantrips or something else.

Arcane blast with staff is straight up awesome. edit: I would even go so far to say that without it, a staff ele is not utilizing their combos to the best of their ability.

With the amount of fields the staff can lay down, having access to a reliable finisher on such a short CD is very, very useful.

I also find the loss of cantrips on my own s/f build to be mitigated easily by the defensive skills. Of course, there is the issue of convincing pretty much anyone that s/f is useful at all! At any given time though, through all of my attunements, I still have access to 7 finishers that have 100% chance, and then auto attack in earth with has a 20% chance of proccing a physical projectile finisher. The drawback is that all of these are either blast or physical projectile, but its still quite useful.

Traited, the arcane skills turn pretty deadly. With a decreased CD and stacking vulnerability on each activation (3 stacks for each arcane skill used), in combination with the minor trait “60% chance to inflict vuln on crits” I find it increases my damage substantially. I am also traited for +3% crit damage on each arcane skill use. I find that when someone (including myself) has more than 10 stacks of vulnerability, they tend to find a safe place to cleanse. Where they are then promptly hunted down! Usually..