Guild Wars 2

As I’m sure most of you are aware, staff Ele is very good at setting up combo fields. For the longest time I thought you needed another person to pull off a combo attack. But one day while I was blasting things away with my staff all alone, I noticed that area might kept showing up. So I did a little research. You can in fact combo with yourself, giving yourself a metaphorical high five.

I bring this up: one to educate those who are unaware of said fact, two give advice on self comboing, and three to hear about other peoples experiences with self comboing.
I play a sturdy support Ele (whom obviously uses a staff). With a staff you can set up 1 fire field (lava font), 1 lightning field (static field), 1 ice field (frozen ground), and 2 water fields (geyser, & healing rain); While also giving me 2 different combo finishers (2 projectiles (stoning & shockwave), 1 blast (eruption)). The combo finishers are all in earth attunement, so to pull off a self-combo one needs to switch in or out of earth. Switching into earth will let you pull of projectile finishers, and switching out (with a little finagling) gets you blast finishers.

Projectile Finishers:
These are the easier of the two to perform. Simply set up one that aforementioned fields from earlier then switch into earth attunement immediately and use stoning or shockwave; thus expanding your abilities to inflict status conditions on foes thus inflicting: burning from fire, chilled from ice, and vulnerability from lightning. Finishing through water will grant yourself 2 seconds of regeneration. Stoning is preferred as it is quicker to cast and as your auto attack it recharges instantly.

Blast Finishers:
Slightly more difficult to pull off than projectile but definitely worth it. To pull off a blast finisher you must use eruption. First begin casting eruption, then about half way through casting change you attunement (this won’t interrupt your casting). Immediately after eruption is done casting set down one of your other combo fields directly on top of it. If done correctly (fast enough) Eruption will blast through your combo field offering: Area might (x3 for 20 seconds) with fire, area frost armor with ice, area swiftness with lightning, and area healing with water.

Personally I’m a fan of the fire and water projectile finishing because the extra burning is nice, and my build is semi centered around health regenerations. Ice projectile finisher is nice against fast bosses to help stack on some extra chill duration. Lighting’s vulnerability doesn’t last too long so I don’t often go for that one, it’s really more useful only in a group. And for blast finishers again water and fire take the cake. Area haling is great and 3 stacks of might before/during the fight, I’m not complaining. I typically use lightning blast finisher to get extra swiftness while running somewhere. Ice is ok,whne alone frost armor isn’t a huge advantage.

I know you can also self-combo with the summoned weapons as well, but have only tired it with frost bow. If anyone else has experience self comboing with Ele summoned weapons I’d love to hear about it.

hammer
lay down a field, summon the hammer, and then either use the leap finisher immediately, or start the skill 1 chain to get the blast finisher at the end if the field lasts long enough. Or if it’s a really long duration field, you can both leap and get the blast, like that gigantic water field

Also evasive arcana (30 arcane trait) gives earth another blast finisher.

BLASPHEMY! Comboing with thyself or activating combos with same class directly violates the third and fourth segments of the Holy Code from The Holy Book.

" If thy shall land a field above the holy ground, one same to thy Mastery be forbidden to land their Finishing Acts amongst them. "
and
“Thy shall not Kombo with thyself as Kombo be the First Sacred Act only to be engaged with members of apart Mastery "

Violating the Holy Code will result your Soul to forever wander between the mists of Fractals in eternal Agony.
Although some liberals interpret the “Mastery” word in the Holy Code reffers to Mastery lines but I would not take that risk.

Just wanne share this tutorial

Anadur.4832:

Just wanne share this tutorial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3LMaEB9b-Y

Thank for the video, Being able to see it in action is much easier than just reading words. And It had completely slipped my mind that some of the other utilities involved combo’s as well.

Don’t forget all the utility skills. Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave are also good for comboing.

When I’m using staff, I like to drop Eruption (earth-2) on an area, swap to fire (fire-2) on top of it, jump into the field myself and also hit Arcane Wave. My current build has Elemental Attunement, which grants buffs based on Attunement swap. The two blast finishers + the swap to fire gives me and those near me 7 stacks of might and does a fair amount of AoE to enemies.

6 months later, you finally figured it out. gratz

Elementalist can do a lot of self-comboing, even more if you’re out of combat and have other weapon types to swap to (useful for stacking buffs, like fury, swiftness, or might, right before a fight).

Check out the wiki article on combos for more information:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

If you explore the pages for each type of combo field and finisher, you’ll see what skills the Elementalist has that can create them. I believe this is a mostly complete list (except for the re-introduced EA blast finisher), they even have a few that aren’t mentioned in the tool tips.

Elementalists can create all 4 finishers (Blast, projectile, leap, and whirl) and Fire, Water, Ice, and Lightning fields on land, depending on what skills/weapons you have slotted. If you’re an Asura, you also get access to poison fields in PvE and WvW.

It’s a lot of fun trying to figure out what order you have to lay the fields down and how much wiggle room there is. For example, Staff Eruption (earth2) > Summon Lightning Hammer > Hammer Static Field (5) requires near perfect timing to complete. If successful, you can drop the hammer, throw out another eruption, and switch to Air attument for another Lightning / Blast combo. Metaphorical high fives all around!

Don’t forget you can use Arcane Blast to Blast Combo any field, if you so desire.

And then, of course, there’s the d/d self-combo. Drop a ring of fire, swap to earth, earthquake (might!), magnetic grasp (fire field!), churning earth (more might!). And yeah, you could probably fit an arcane blast in the middle. Finish yourself four times.

Tarvok.4206:

And then, of course, there’s the d/d self-combo. Drop a ring of fire, swap to earth, earthquake (might!), magnetic grasp (fire field!), churning earth (more might!). And yeah, you could probably fit an arcane blast in the middle. Finish yourself four times.

I haven’t tried this because I thought it wasn’t true. According to the combo wiki (listed above),
“The finisher will trigger on the most recent initiator; a blast finisher will give Might instead of Healing if a fire field overlaps an existing water field. "
So I thought only one finisher triggered the combo? I just wasn’t sure if it was first (seems more likely) or last?

S

Each finisher can only trigger one combo through one field. For example, a projectile finisher that flies through a ring of fire will combo to add burning to the attack. If the projectile finisher later flies through a water field, it will not combo with that field because it already combo’d with the fire field.

However, a field can be used to trigger as many combos as players can create finishers. For example, if an elementalist put down healing rain, any player in the area could use their finishers on the field to pump out additional healing.

I thought that’s supposed to be pretty basic stuff lol.

D/D – Ring of Fire, roll while swapping to Earth and using Arcane Wave, Earthquake, Churning Earth = 12 AoE stacks of Might.
S/F – Dragon’s Tooth, Firewall, Phoenix, Arcane Wave, swap to Water, Comet + whatever the heck else you want (heal/chill/whatever, you got time), roll while swapping to Earth, Magnetic Wave = 18 AoE stacks of Might.

Assumes you have Evasive Arcana.

Also, I’m fairly certain the oldest combo field takes precedence for blast finishers, not the newest. Heck, I just tested it myself with my Thief. Choking Gas = Poison, Shadow Refuge = Dark, Smokescreen = Smoke, Clusterbomb = blast finisher. Choking Gas → Shadow Refuge → Clusterbomb = Weakness, Smokescreen → Choking Gas → Clusterbomb = Stealth.