Guild Wars 2

So I am fond of playing staff ele in dungeons or fractals with my guildies. We usually end up with one guardian who is most of the time whacking the boss with his hammer, 2 rangers with longbows, a thief who likes to stay at range and me who tries to buff up the guardian because the poor guy usually ends up soaking a lot of damage, so I started taking arcane wave to blast a heal if he is getting hit too much, which has lead me to stand at a closer range too. Because we have a split in our party, I feel that the guardians hammer, and my combo field synergies are sort of wasted because they can only really buff us two, leaving the ranged classes out

My question is, do you think it is reasonable to ask them to stand closer to us, so our combos can affect the entire party, even if they do less dps at close range (longbow #1 -.-), and if it means they might take some more damage?

If yes, how should you ask? If no, are there any clever ways to buff up the whole team scattered around?

if they’re guildies then absolutely, you guys want to work as a team or why build a guild in the first place… if they’re pugs, then a simple, “I’m stacking might” or “I’m an aurashare build” in party chat before you start is helpful. It’s easier to just tell them what you can bring to the table, if they want to take advantage, good for them, if not, not your problem

My guild is always talking on TS or Mumble on dungeon runs or WvW so we can keep organized.

My opinion is that no class should full time a ranged weapon if they can help it. There isn’t much synergy and they don’t do as much damage as melee alternatives. Rangers do have melee weapons.

It is absolutely reasonable of you to ask your friends to stand closer together for higher synergy but I’m not sure that what you’re currently doing is necessarily worthwhile. Ranged attacks still combo off of the fields and although some of the melee-oriented combos are useful, I’m not sure that it’s worth moving up just for that. Definitely worth it for the extra damage they would do, though. Especially if you have a guardian giving constant protect.

If you want to buff your team you can try some auramancer (30 water for giving auras to team, 20 in fire so you can use signets to give additional auras) and go for protect (10 earth) fury+swiftness (10 air).

When I’m using a staff in PVE, I tend to be pretty mobile and try to roam around and time it so I switch attunements near them so they get the boons. You don’t have to hang out in melee range, but if you’re about to drop a water field on someone’s head that is in melee range and haven’t switched to water yet, you might as well do your attunement switch to water near them so they’re healed and get regen (or earth for protection). If you have evasive arcana, roll into people in water attunement regularly as well for another heal. Or if you dropped a water field and switched to earth to give them protection, you can roll into the water field while in earth (blast finisher) to trigger healing also.

If you’re in a situation where it’s dangerous even approaching temporarily, such as in the midst of vet warriors in the urban fractal at high levels before NPCs have caught up or something, your group will be best served by you using the various CC fields directly on the mobs.

I wouldn’t say it’s worth instructing other groupmates to play unnaturally to take advantage of combo fields though. They’re good. They aren’t THAT good.

You may already know all this, but:

Blasting Staff trait to increase AOE circle size.
Auto-attacking in water attunement will lend some heals to your Guardian from distance while allowing you to reserve AOEs for ranged.
Save Arcane Wave for emergencies or quick double-blasts, start off laying down Eruption (Earth 2) and quick-switching attunements to lay your combo field on top of it. Eruption will blast finish it.
You can also blast-finish with Evasive Arcana trait while in Earth attunement.

Ideally, you can auto-attack and eruption/geyser to keep your Guardian up an save Healing Rain from your ranged teammates, Using Arcane Wave or Evasive Arcana to pump up the heals.

“If you want to buff your team you can try some auramancer (30 water for giving auras to team, 20 in fire so you can use signets to give additional auras) and go for protect (10 earth) fury+swiftness (10 air)”.

I’ve played with this a bit with staff and it’s just not worth the Evasive Arcana tradeoff. For staff Ele I’d say 30 Arcane is almost necessary.