Guild Wars 2

Was messing around with my Elementalist in PvP today for the daily and I came up with this fun little build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWhMMolhlMwwBsSM8AY0QIGsDkAwBoFWBypQTA-TJRHwAFeAAc2fAwFA4YZAA

Sigils/Runes
—Sigil of Battle and Sigil of Doom allow you to ramp up your damage over time by giving you might and weakening any healing your target might attempt and they are a staple on many Elementalist builds
—Runes of Strength help you keep might up, give you a nice boost to power, and give you +5% increased damage when you have might which is practically permanently with this build.

Heal
—Ether Renewal is your main source of condition cleanse and survivability. Drop some soft cc’s or area negation aoe, then use it if you need to heal.

Utilities
—Arcane Wave can work as either Utility to blast water fields and frost fields or DPS to blast more might and increase your overall damage.
—Arcane Blast is REALLY good. 16cd with 1500 range that you can combine with a fire field to apply multiple stacks of burning plus guaranteed crit plus increased ferocity. Also with the Arcane CD reduction trait, you can even use it defensivly to apply blinds while in Air Attunement. Same with Arcane Wave.
—Armor of Earth gives you some much needed stability to allow you to get off all your skill combos that are necessary to play staff properly in the middle of a cc heavy fight. It may be your only stun break and be on a 60 second cooldown but the Air and Arcane lines have some nice ways to make up for that which I will explain below.

Elite
—Tornado is just for pvp. Drop a Meteor Shower, pop Tornado and you will punish anyone standing in a small point. Alternatively, you can run Fiery Greatsword or Glyph of Elementals. Fiery GS for WvW since Staff lacks mobility and Glyph of Elementals if you want more damage.

Traits
—Air works amazingly with Staff now. I chose to go with Zephyr’s Boon, Tempest Defense, and Lightning Rod as they have some really good synergy together. When you get cc’d you’ll automatically pop shock aura to stop non-stability enemies from further hurting you while you also apply weakness to them, damage them and gain fury and swiftness which helps maintain your movement speed up. Tempest Defense is a must have considering your only stun break is on such a long cooldown. Also Lightning Rod is a must have for staff considering you have 3 good ways of interrupting enemies. The damage really adds up over time especially combined with the Eletric Discharge minor trait that hits an enemy with lightning every time you attune to air.
—Water is absolutely necessary for survival with this build. Choosing Soothing Ice, Soothing Disruption, and Cleansing Water will grant you access to a second on hit aura which, again, helps with your movement speed and gives you Fury to up the DPS while also giving you some decent condition cleansing, sustain, and reduces your Heal and stunbreak cooldown.
—Arcane makes your Arcane skills really good. With Arcane Precision you get access to extra condition application when you crit allowing you to apply more cover conditions as well as burning and bleeding to keep pressuring foes. You also get access to your second stun break in the form of Final Shielding. If you already used Armor of Earth and are being stunlocked and bursted, Final Shielding will allow you a way to potentially escape death not to mention that it has reduced cd thanks to the Grandmaster. Lastly, Elemental Surge reduces cooldown on both of your damaging utilities and is what lets you spam Arcane Blast for extra damage and condition application.

How to play: Basics
Essentially what you wanna do is try to combo Eruption into either Lava Font, one of your water fields, or your frost field depending the situation that you’re finding yourself in. While doing so, you also want to try to immob your target into the Eruption with your skill 5 on staff and/or using the rock wall to keep them down.

You also want to frequently use your auto attack in between aoe attacks and bursts, particularly Fire 1, Air 1, or Earth 1. Water 1 isnt too good but if its all you got up, then its fine to use. You also want to lure enemies into your Water 2 as the damage is quite good and applies vulnerability. You can cast it, use Earth 5 to immob or Static Field and get some nice damage on your target. Also, you want to try and save your Air attunement for bursts unless necessary to use your static field.

Switching to Air Attunement will drop a lightning bolt on your target, then you can channel Air 2 at the same time for some decent burst and follow up with gust for another lightning strike. While doing all this, you can also use Arcane Blast to apply extra damage though I would suggest saving Arcane Wave for when you have a combo field up unless you see someone really weak and about to die.

Blasting Eruption+Arcane Wave will give you some good might stacks which will work really nicely with Runes of Strength to greatly increase your damage output. Alternatively, if you are getting weak, you can instead combo Eruption and Arcane Wave into a water field to heal for a considerable amount and damage anyone foolish enough to walk right into it.

And that’s about it for the basics! Not sure if this is a new concept but I hope you’ll enjoy it if you try it out!