Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone !

I’ve started playing GW2 this month and I’m leveling an Elementalist.
I’ve tested the weapons and the best combinations (FOR ME) are the Staff or S/F (Scepter/Focus), but Staff >>>> S/F by far. My humble opinion.

I know S/F is rising up and people are saying wonderful things about the “S/F Fresh Air”, but, again, FOR ME, Staff’s gameplay is way more fluid, so I’m giving it a try.

I’m using this guide as a reference for my build:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUsOU9Gj6-s

I’m not using it 100%, because I’ve made some Trait changes, so you can check my actual sPvP build here:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAGhMMqcW4gOaACAhY1jhDEZQx3rB-TZQaAAQZAA

The original build is focused on dealing damage on sPvP, but I actually like to be useful to my team. Not a full support, but a Damage Dealer with support skills. Until now, this build feels that is focused on damage AND can support nicely.

Can you give me some advice, please?

1) What do you think of my Healing spell? Ether Renewal is good, but can be interrupted. Should i focus on some other Healing Utility that heal instantly?
2) What do you think of my Utility spells? I’m focusing more on survivability, so I value 2 Break Stun spells. Also, they are cantrips, that value my Water traits.
3) Can you suggest me another Utility? I left a blank space there, but I actually enjoy Arcane Shield (another Break Stun and damage mitigation) and Glyph of Air (Passive Move Speed), but I’m open to suggestions.
4) Is Lightning Flash a good Utility option? I’ve seen a video where the guy used it to capture points faster, but I’m having a hell of a trouble actually using it on sPvP, because the range seems SO SHORT.
5) For the Elite Skill, I’m using Glyph of Elementals, but I’ve heard good things about Cyclone too. I’m actually favoring Elementals over Cyclone, because i can “cast and forget” the elementals, while the Cyclone will stop me from casting spells. I think I’m more valuable dealing damage, healing and CCs (Slows, stuns, etc…) than making myself immune more time (remember that I already have Mist Form, Armor of Earth and I’m considering Arcane Shield, so I already have a lot of survivability Utilities).

Ah… one more thing: I’ve seen builds using Arcane Spells, but I’m not sure it is necessary. With Fire Traits you can have Fire spells and attunement almost available all the time, and, for me, Fire is my main source of damage. Therefore, I can’t see the benefit of wasting a Utility spell (and another Break Stun escape cantrip) to a simple damage spell. Maybe I just don’t understand Arcane spells?

Any advices are more than welcome and I thank you all that have read this far!
Thanks again !

I don’t have much experience with staffs in sPvP, but here are my two cents, from what i’ve personally experienced.

1. Ether renewal is very situational, long channel time, the healing isn’t that great – most of the time, when you are trying to heal in the middle of combat, you will just get poked for the same amount it is healing you, or even more, ending up with no healing at all.
For staff i’d probably use Harmony, or Brilliance, depending if you want to stack some might for your team.
2. You are running zerker but focusing on survivability cantrips, see the contradiction?
Staff is not a damage dealing weapon, sure you will get some huge damage in every now and then, but its inconsistent because it depends whenether your opponent is smart enough to stand in your aoe circles long enough or not.
I would suggest running Celestial and changing your build up to 6/6 water/arcane and earth in general if you want to run staff effeciently.
3. For zerker staff? ice bow.
4. Yes, limited use on staff, aka just a move around spell or escape out of focus card.
5. Cyclone…i’ve used it twice and i’ve never seen anyone use it, so yeah , i dont think so.

Alright, now that i’ve answered your questions here is what you really need to know.

Staff, dont use it if you are a beginner.
Yeah, sucks to hear but its true, staff is hard to use, and it will take you a while before you actually make a difference with staff in real sPvP.
You need a good knack for it, have to predict what the enemy will do to put your lava font on the right spot, or all your other aoe’s, with Meteor its another story since the area is so huge, but with your other spells, you will be missing them a lot.

Zerker staff is very squishy, and it doesn’t do as much damage as you think it does, Scepter is way more potent if you want to just play a burst class.
With staff, you’d want to run 6water6arcana and stay with another person ALL the time until you get better and focus on supporting them and your team, because your ability to 1v1 or hold a point is very, and i mean very limited and skill based. I would probably assume that with staff, you are losing most of your 1v1 fights, if not all of them.
Yeah it takes time to get better at it, let alone be capable to win against someone in 1v1 with staff.

Generally, what i would suggest for starting elementalists, is to run D/D celestial meta build at first, because its the easiest build to run and it is very forgiving to mistakes, with its high sustain.
You goofed up and took too much damage? Go into water and heal up to full hp, try again.

Anyways yeah, because staff was fun and easy-peasy in PvE, doesn’t mean it’ll be like that in PvP, but you should have realized that by now. In fact, staff is the most difficult weapon to use in PvP.

First of all, thanks for replying! And sorry I wasn’t able to reply sooner!

Lawful.5314:

Staff, dont use it if you are a beginner.
Yeah, sucks to hear but its true, staff is hard to use, and it will take you a while before you actually make a difference with staff in real sPvP.
You need a good knack for it, have to predict what the enemy will do to put your lava font on the right spot, or all your other aoe’s (…)
Yeah it takes time to get better at it, let alone be capable to win against someone in 1v1 with staff. Anyways yeah, because staff was fun and easy-peasy in PvE, doesn’t mean it’ll be like that in PvP, but you should have realized that by now. In fact, staff is the most difficult weapon to use in PvP.

Yes, I know Staff is a hard weapon to PvP. Maybe in WvW It is easier, since all you spells are AoE and you can “free cast” a lot, but I’ve learned the hard way the Pros and Cons of the profession and the weapon.

Also, I’ve tried D/D and i hated it. I know it’s good. I know people will say “it is just BETTER” and I don’t care. I feel like I’m playing an Arcane Trickster. A “magical thief”, or anything like it.
I’ve tried S/F and S/D too. Is it as clunky as D/D ? No, but Staff spells FEEL right, to me.

Lawful.5314:

2. You are running zerker but focusing on survivability cantrips, see the contradiction?
Staff is not a damage dealing weapon, sure you will get some huge damage in every now and then, but its inconsistent because it depends whenether your opponent is smart enough to stand in your aoe circles long enough or not.
I would suggest running Celestial and changing your build up to 6/6 water/arcane and earth in general if you want to run staff effeciently.

I don’t actually see the contradiction, sorry
If you create a zerker build and die in the first 10 seconds, I won’t be usefull at all. Those spells are “reset buttons” that I can press, re-position myself and try again. Of course real life is not so bright and shiny, but that is the concept.

Lawful.5314:

With staff, you’d want to run 6water6arcana and stay with another person ALL the time until you get better and focus on supporting them and your team, because your ability to 1v1 or hold a point is very, and i mean very limited and skill based. I would probably assume that with staff, you are losing most of your 1v1 fights, if not all of them.

Yes, I’ve felt really weak and squishy with this build. Maybe the guy playing it was just way better than me and could do it anyway. A was sticking with the team, but i was like… a enemy magnet. =)

I don’t really like playing “full support”. I do like to help the team, but i don’t like feeling absolutely useless when I’m alone, but I’ll try that celestial build anyway.

Thanks for the advices, btw !

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWhMMqcW4wxBd0AOAGxgQNQcEIA8CLuFuCA-TJBFwACuAA12foaZAAPAAA

You are better off running something like this. Regen on cantrip use is a waste for 2 reasons. The first is that that trait is used for sustain builds where high regen uptime is beneficial. The 2nd is it is paired with the grandmaster water trait that cures a condition when ever regen is applied. Your build has neither of those. Ice bow is a good weapon to use if you are playing staff dps, but not mandatory.

Hi there,

Playing a squishy Staff ele in pvp is more than fun plus super risky. If you still wanna give it a go, I have a video to show which would give you an idea how does it work:

However, if you wanna be a balanced/ team supportive staff ele in spvp, at least go for celestial trinket with 4 in arcana and 4 in water (boon sharing, condi cleanse are key support to your party members) .

First of all… thank you all for replying !
And sorry I’ve took so long to reply… busy week =/

Yes, I’ve noticed (the hard way hehe) that Elementalists aren’t for newbs. Staff even more.
Staff FEELS LIKE it is more related to my game style. Being valuable to my team while, but not being a “support-only” profession. I can do some damage, CC someone with Air 5 -> Air 3 and then Fire 5 for some extra damage, but It is not easy to use it on PvP.

Yes, Diva, i know that video. I know it really well, since I have it in my smartphone LOL
Love the video (Y)

I’ve heard people saying about S/X on the foruns and apparently it have less utility, more burst, and I’m not sure that is what I want to play, but I’ll give it a try some day.

Now I want to try out that “Celestial Staff Build”. I’m not sure how i can play this “supportive role” as a Staff Elem (other than stunning someone here and there and healing fields), but I guess I’ll figure it out.

Thanks for the help and any advices on the Cele Staff is more than welcome !
I’ll give Diva’s build a try, too! I just feel I’m way too noob to make it work hehehe =)

So I play a 0/0/2/6/6 staff build with Celestial/Beserkers gear mix in WvW, Silverwastes and dungeons/fractals with non-expert players.

The thing about staff it is basically designed for dealing damage to large groups and supporting your team with an abundance of combo fields, healing abilities and CC.

As such, you get it broken down into one of two builds…

- Some variation of X/X/X/6/6 for a team support role with celestials.
- Some variation of 6/6/X/X/X for dealing massive amounts of damage by camping fire with beserkers.

The reason the dmg dealing version of staff doesn’t get used in sPvP is, because 5v5 is too small of a scale to capitalize on your AoE and most of your abilities are easy to dodge out of or even walk out of. You also have to camp fire to really do heavy damage with staff and if you get pressured, you will have to swap out.

sPvP isn’t like PvE where you can just can camp fire, dodge properly and deal heavy aoe dmg to mobs too stupid to dodge out. It’s also not like a WvW zerg where you have a target rich environment to hit stuff with your AoEs and plenty of teammates around you with blast finishers to capitalize on your all your combo fields.

So when staff does get used in sPvP, it’s typically the X/X/X/6/6 variation and serves one main purpose: controlling points via bombarding the point with all your AoEs to keep enemies off them and staying alive via your powerful sustain abilities until your teammates can arrive to support you. The nature of fighting over a small point and thus, being constrained to a small area, actually makes your AoEs effective.

Now with all that said, you can do all that with X/X/X/6/6 D/D and still actually brawl in 1v1, which is why it ends up being the most popular sPvP choice.

MadRabbit.3179:

The reason the dmg dealing version of staff doesn’t get used in sPvP is, because 5v5 is too small of a scale to capitalize on your AoE and most of your abilities are easy to dodge out of or even walk out of. You also have to camp fire to really do heavy damage with staff and if you get pressured, you will have to swap out.

sPvP isn’t like PvE where you can just can camp fire, dodge properly and deal heavy aoe dmg to mobs too stupid to dodge out. It’s also not like a WvW zerg where you have a target rich environment to hit stuff with your AoEs and plenty of teammates around you with blast finishers to capitalize on your all your combo fields.

I’m actually running this build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWnMISlDW4AeOAdEGIEIIu1MMoocd5KA

It’s an adaptation of a build I’ve found on YouTube. This build is both supportive and give a little survivability.

You could say:
“But in WvW you AoE would be more effective”. Ok, It’s true, because hitting 1 or 50 is the same thing, but it doesn’t mean it is not effective.

I THINK Staff Ele works great on 2 things: helping to capture a point and defend a point.
Since you can stack fields (and the Blasting Staff Arcane Trait makes your AoE awesome), it’s really good to force people out of a point, or keeping them outside.
Of course, the whole purpose of this build is to support someone else (stunning, healing, buffing), but when you main support-spells are on CD, i aways try to cast damage AoE spells, to add something more.

You have recomended 0/0/0/2/6/6, but Rock Solid is just AMAZING. Being able to add stability to everyone just by entering the Earth Attunement makes a difference. It’s really useful when you are with 2 or 3 other characters on a choke point.

What Trait would you choose as the 3rd major Trait, if i decided to use 2/6/6, instead of 4/4/6? Aquamancer’s Alacrity?

Thanks again!

4/4/6 and 2/6/6 is kind of a trade off.

In 4/4/6, you get the cripple on earth attunement which is useful for putting distance between yourself and an opponent. The stability is also potentially powerful, since its on a 9 second cd technically, but the 2.5 second duration means you have a small window to anticipate when you will need it and use it.

Main reason to go 2/6/6 is Cleansing Water which strips a condition when regen is applied. This combined with cantrip traits gives you a lot of condition cleansing in staff.

You remove a condition for each use of a cantrip (except for Mist Form. Something with the invul nullifies the condition removal when the regen is applied). You cleanse one condition off 5 people on swapping into water from Elemental Attunement. Your healing rain cures an additional condition on the initial pulse when it applies regen, in addition, to the condition removal build into the AoE. And (I am pretty sure this is true, but haven’t verified it) team mates get a condition removed when they shoot a projectile thru your water field and get regen applied to them. And you also have an AoE conditional removal on the end of your dodge in water from evasive arcana.

The other advantage is Bountiful Power which is pretty much a static 3-4% dmg increase since you are almost always going to have 3-4 boons on you with this trait setup.

So the question is do you want to provide a brief AoE stability to your teammates every 9 seconds or do you want large condition cleansing potential?

I personally leave group stability to warriors and guardians, use Earth Armor and Earth’s Embrace to provide it to myself and bring condition cleansing to the table.

That’s why I keep to a more traditional 0/0/2/6/6 support setup.

This is my personal setup MOST of the time in WvW, open world and dungeons. I probably won’t take this into PvP if I started to play again.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWnMISLDW9AGOAdEGIEII/0cNKocd5KA-TFSGABA8AAAZ/hHV/RKlgDp0LKlBkpjwgLAAA-w

I take vital striking, because I only run one cantrip, but soothing disruption is still worth it, because of earth’s embrace.