Guild Wars 2

Hello. I run with The Frenzied Few [RAGE] as an elementalist maintaining Staff for raiding and GvGs. I started adding to this guide as people asked me about how I do things.

Solo and organised [RAGE] videos

Role

Primarily a Staff ele is there for a water field. If you are not in position and under cooldown duress then you are not fulfilling your foremost duty.

Secondary, your CC is of utmost importance. Surrounding an unexpected enemy within a Static Field, blanketing an escape route with Frozen Ground, and splitting their backline with a well timed Shockwave can be battle changing. Your melee ball will love the advantage.

Supplementary, staff eles excel at finishing a downed group. The meteor shower that follows your melee train sees the push is not in vain.

• Build

Firstly, don’t be anywhere near the first to go down in your group. It can be a dangerous playing field for staffies and you’ll be wanting to build to escape damage as opposed to mitigate it – toughness brings you a much smaller return over that important Blink skill.

Power is the way to go with staff; there’s little condi damage. + Healing is a poor attribute in organised events due to blast finishing numbers being the primary heal, and the compromise in damage output.

Use PVT gear until you survive playing ‘one-handed’, and switch in berserker(whatever) as skill at your game increases; finding that thin line where balance lays. Keeping this in mind, a full glass build doesn’t suit myself, as I enjoy getting stuck in, initiating fights, drawing attention and reviving the downed.

Do not be afraid to change-up your bar. When meeting your team at a held, sieged tower, swap in Mist Form to get inside; perhaps use FGS elite for mobility when escaping and positioning in large fights; Tornado for conflicts on walls / bridges, and the elemental summon for open field GvG. Swap out the the situation that fits.

• Positioning

Arguably the most important thing on your mind, and ‘1200’ is something to take full advantage of; get in behind and to the flanks of the heavies, and hold off groups with CC as you heal teammates at up to 2200 range between the two. Look for escapes, and find them. A dead ranged profession brings nothing but a rally for the opposition.

Practice scanning health bars using the mouse hover to help predict fallen allies and opportunities to stomp. At times I move ahead of our front line to avoid the opposition’s focus damage; they don’t want to waste damage on the solo ele.

• Calling blasting fields

Give your team enough time to hear your call after VoIP latency so they can switch weapons for blasting. Tell them where the field is being placed. Place Static Fields ahead of your group when on the move. A lead may call for something out of the blue when you think you are doing just fine, if you are on cooldown – say so.

• Water fields

Geyser is perfect for rolling across your melee ball as they push through. If pushing through siege damage or heavy PUG numbers, call the field and pull it in front for blasting.

The water field of choice for placing into a scrum that your team is advancing into is Healing Rain, whereas for regroups, is Geyser. However for WvW (not GvG), due to team numbers it’s not uncommon for me to place Healing Rain for it’s ease over Geyser’s constraints; namely duration and size.

When meeting a guild on the field / with low staff ele team mates, consider Geyser only for regroups. If hesitant of a lead calling for a water field, understand that Ice Spike is good AoE damage on a low cooldown, and you have Frozen Ground available; switching attunements to see pearly white numbers from a meteor shower may be the down bringing of a battle as your team suffers healing loss.

I prefer to be in a group with the other water-fielders. I can see if they are defeated / downed and their location in regard to where the heavies are. Remembering who has called water fields, I can predict when mine are wanted.

• Dealing Damage

Adding DPS to a push through is one of the trickier areas, as skills that do DPS take time to cast or take effect, leaving them hitting nothing as the opposition moves. Just like the melee ball, your number one, the auto attack, is the best sustainable damage in these situations. Chain Lightning, or Fireball + Lava Font are reliable and add the numbers that the team are looking for. On a push, select a warrior (or guardian) in their front line and click to attack. Concentrate on keeping them selected (impossible without ground targeting). It’s not easy as the click-movement system in the game is iffy and lacking returnable targets (function is broken), but there you will have the group aimed upon. If you can find their raid leader, then perfect.

• Enemy Buff Awareness

Stability! Recall that target you selected right before a push? Well they are going to aid in telling you when the enemy melee ball have stability up or not. They don’t? Static Field joy could be had. They do? Frozen Ground as they attempt retreat. Note that a Shockwave can be blocked by the first target it hits, and consequently not activate the immobilisation on anything else thereafter.

• Rotations

Every guild, zerg, location, team group composition and advantage/disadvantage etc are so diverse that a genuine rotation (think circle) is a ridiculous practice – everything dynamically alters. However there can be frequent use of combinations (think line). There are quite a few skill chains and they should be easy enough to figure out for yourselves. Here’s a healing one that is very powerful (taken from my time holding nodes in sPVP – break it down for WvW groups):

Earth > E2 > Water (cleanse) > W3 covering the E2 > Arcane Wave (blast) > Heal-6 > dodge (EA cleanse) > Healing Rain > Earth > E2 > dodge (EA blast) > (wait or longer wait) > E2 > Water (cleanse) > W3 covering the E2 > (Arcane Wave if used longer wait) dodge (EA cleanse) > Heal-6.

A fighting retreat one:

(place in retreating line) Air > A5 > Fire > F5 > Earth > E5 > E4 > Water > W2 > W4 > W2

• Slow down and be useful

Elementalist are notorious for speedily activating abilities and switching attunements. Getting the most out of cool-downs is an efficient way to support; spamming them without reaction is not. Don’t pile every AoE in one place all of the time (although certainly do some of the time as quite often these are the most fun times). Attempt to be mindful, actively predicting group movements and blocking their exits or drive.

The Water Attunement is an excellent one to linger in. With soothing mists ticking, options available to heals and the big beauty of Ice Spike. Ice Spike’s cool-down is so low, the damage high and the radius large, that helping to finish the downed is comfortable in this attunement.

• Mobility

Mobility is essential in battles, which is why Frozen Ground is often favourable. You can forfeit lots of solo damage and increase the damage of the team by denying the opposition mobility. Frozen Ground last longer than Static Field, has a wider area, refreshes each second, adds 10% damage reduction to allies through blasting, chilled through projectiles, affects (potentially much) larger numbers, and ignores STABILITY. It also helps to alleviate attunement swapping CDs from bringing forward water in a ‘rotation’.

Static Fields are devastating versus the disorganized, but versus good groups, stability will be abundant at the start of battle. You may find Frozen Ground, Unsteady Ground, and Shockwave to be more reliable openers. Static Field is then available later. Remember variables – TAB-target a handful of the opposition’s blob to seek a stability boon is present or not.

For alternatives to team use of stability, think about your good condition removal that can be applied throughout movement in a battle – Windbourne Speed for the impediment removal; switch to water for Cleansing Wave followed by a dodge roll (evasive arcana) for another Cleansing Wave. A fun rolling strategy. You want to keep the leader driving the group. If you can heal / free them from bonds etc., do so.

• Retaliation

Watch out for Retaliation and Confusion. It is easy to deal too much damage and sustain the repercussions.

• Nelly the Ele (things I do)

I’m twitchy, liking to move a lot to stay frosty and guildies can expect to see me cast randomly as I warm up (bit odd, eh?). Nothing beats going into a controlled environment like the Mist’s practice area to shoot at golems and practice, practice, practice. Excellent to help develop cool-down time ‘mind-counting’. I often work on one thing at a time, which could be DPS or CC or scouting etc. For example, perhaps with an addition of elementalists in your guild recently, you can call fields less often to concentrate on other areas to practice, such as map and chat watching.

I use simple party portraits, a small UI and map to remove clutter from the viewing area. An FPS monitor indicates to me large, yet unseen groups.

The inventory is setup to stack the common loot bags and salvage scraps (I open and salvage them with magic find boons after hundreds of stacks). Blueprints, kits and tools, weapons and nourishments are grouped for easy access, and hidden from the sell window. At the seller NPC I hit ‘sell trash’ and can spam-click the rest comfortably, quickly, meaning I’m spending more time ready for my team.

The ‘run’ key helps me check the map, my inventory or type messages whilst continuing to move forward with the group. This and the ‘flip-view’ camera are mapped to easy to hit keys, along with the video record function.

I have a mute button assigned to the mouse, and use voice activated comms. I don’t want to press a button to talk whilst micromanaging everything else – this can lead to intervals between an event happening and myself voicing it (as I fend off an adversary for example) and cause choppiness when things are heated.

All functions are mapped, using a Wolkitteng keypad.

Surround sound headphones give positional awareness for things happening that are not in view.

Learnt this one from an AN developer: I have a potion to disguise my avatar with the intention of fooling enemies. Quite nice to enter a door or retreat. Unfortunately as an elementalist, our attunement ‘boon’ shows (among others).

I use Magnetic Aura to reflect projectiles incoming on allies by positioning myself between them and the opposition. The best way in using this is to stand directly in front of the enemy as your defended player will likely move too much.

Blink away from the enemy when casting Meteor Shower; blink into them when casting Tornado. Learn the variety of blink spots around the WvW maps.

I often swap out for Ride the Lightning and Rock Barrier. I use the Bloodlust sigil to stack power and switch out to another staff that has the Battle sigil (or Fire). It’s worth knowing that the Battle sigil trumps Bloodlust every time you are presented with an important (GvG) fight, and if I have the presence of mind to switch over, I will.

I like to charge Lightning Surge as my group veils in. Lovely damage and blind. Holding a second for a triple damage number from Air 1 before switching out when desired.

MS >> Tornado. Perfect timing = best damage output. Throw in Lava Font before transforming and leave Tornado early as Meteor Showers ends, for maximum DPS as you return to the Fire attunement.

Hope this is useful to people and that others can add advice below. I certainly have loads to learn and look forward to doing so.

Thank you so much for this. I have had a difficult time finding such a well written piece on Staff Ele’s, so this is very much appreciated. Love the actual combat tips.

What are you using for food and wrenches?

Misschevious.2140:

What are you using for food and wrenches?

Thank-you, I’m happy the post helps.

I use Mango Pie and the +power Sharpening Stone. I’m often thinking of what food to best use, and come to Mango Pie each time.

My build is less regular, and you can find it (pretty much) here