Guild Wars 2

My Ele alt is approaching lvl 80 and my plan is run him in WvW using a staff, with a primary focus on ranged AE and single target damage but with a bit more durability and diversity than a full glass cannon staff user.

I was thinking of a build along these lines: (copy and paste into new browser window) http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=VlZ;3R0VV0w4cN-Z0;9;4J9-JJ56-5;345-47u

For gear I was thinking of going P/V/T for armor and staff with Zerker’s accessories. I’m also not certain on the best general utility skills to use with this build, but my thought with the link above was to have a stun breaker, an easy blast finisher and an additional AE/Bleed using the Glyph mostly in Earth.

Is something like this viable and useful in WvW, or am I hurting my potential by spreading trait points out so much with no 30 point traits? Thanks in advance.

That’s a pretty good build, you picked the right traits and all, but when it comes down to it, Fire is a pretty bad trait line. The traits are lacking and ‘pigeon-holing’ you into staying in Fire which is never a good idea for an Elementalist.

“But 10% more damage on Meteor Shower” doesn’t really work as an argument when the majority of time that your Meteor Shower deals damage you are not even attuned to Fire.

Your build has the necessities (20+ Arcana/Water and correct traits) so it will work, but I would still say that a heavier Water/Arcana investment makes for a stronger Elementalist overall. If you are only playing solo in the zerg then the lower Meteor Shower cooldown is great and I think the build is fine.

Food for thought though, think about how many Boons you apply to yourself and realize how strong the 25 Minor Water trait is.

with lingering element does the 10% extra dmg in fire stick with u for the extra 5 sec after swapping? if so the 10% extra dmg for meteor argument defintely works:-p

while arcane wave is a blast finisher and is a great skill by itself, its not that useful on a staff ele considering u should almost always be 900+ range. unless u plan to use it mainly just for the blast finisher as support in which case, go for it.

the current setup ur leaning more towards the support role then the dmg part. so do not be surprised if u feel ur dmg is lacking.

I suspect that you would still get the 10% bonus because all of the skills
Ive seen seem to only check the attunement when the spell goes off. In other
words, once its cast, its counted as being in the fire attunement.

Wow, Liquid, that is almost exactly my build. I have 20 in air instead of water so I can run Quick Glyphs. It speeds up my heal (which provides a boon), my 10-slot elemental, and I’m playing with Glyph of Elemental Power because I like conditions (esp chill and cripple) in small-scale fights. Thunderbrew pointed out in another thread that Glyph of Storms -earth distributes some nice conditions with good damage.

I may yet abandon the glyph angle, but I just hit 80 and need more experience in WvW at that level to see what’s working and what’s not.

Intigo.1653:

Food for thought though, think about how many Boons you apply to yourself and realize how strong the 25 Minor Water trait is.

Hmmm this peaked my interest. I do have a rather stupid question about this though. Is a boon defined as a separate category for each boon type such as Might, Protection, Regen, etc., or does it count stacks as well? I’d have to think it doesn’t count stacks as that’d have to be OP right?

Boon management seems like it would be kind of a pain, although I guess it just happens in normal Ele play as you work combo fields, use the GoEH heal and switch attunements. Still it seems like over time, I’d only reliably have an average of 3 boons on, which would be a 6% damage increase over that average.

Are there other tricks to get more boons on reliably?

Based on the above, here’s another idea I came up with that maximizes Glyph, Cantrip and Attunement swap boon additions to maximize the 25 pt Water trait.

(Copy and paste into new browser window)
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=VlZ;3R0VV0y4cN-Z0;9;5J-TJ;157;225A47K

I’m picking up 100 more Precision and 10% Crit Damage with 10 more points in Air, but losing 200 Power. Also, I guess you really have to plan out what attunement you’re in when you use Glyphs to maximize the number of boons up at any given time.

Heh … for wanting a build that has a primary objective of damage I sure seem to be going the long way around to get it. I guess the question is, how much of the passive bonuses of the Fire line are offset by these other tricks.

alot of people says that fire trait sucks because ur forced to remain in fire for most of the effect. while that is true, however from a purely dd point of view, u should be remain in fire most of the time. use the passive fire might gain per spellcast for grandmaster trait u can keep up a stack of ~7-8 might constant for staying in fire and thats without any boon duration increase. for a full gc staff ele, staying in fire allows u to keep up a 3.6k atk stat.

while u have plenty of good spells in other attunement, the delay time for eruption and ice spike to drop makes it useless for aoeing downed player because group resser get there, res them up in 1-2sec. not to mention the outside of those 2 spells, earth and water dd ability is pretty sucky.
air auto is decent if ur fighting 2 people since the bounce will go back to ur primary target for a double hit, allowing for possibly the best single target dps. or, use air for fighting a small squad of spread out players though usually i find fire auto’s splash atk works better fire simply offers more dmg option regardless.

By the way, I just noticed the power of Static Field last night versus a keep lord.
You dump it on the target, and everyone utilizing the combo field stacks
vulnerability on the target. In a zerg of 20+, it literally only took 3 seconds to
get 25 stacks (the max) of vulnerability on the keep lord.

Doesnt work nearly as well on camp bosses who have the buff on, since the stacks
are falling off as fast as they are applied.