Guild Wars 2

Hey all so I just came back to GW2 since release and I rolled up an elementalist and I am having a blast (pun intended) playing fire staff with him. Although I had a couple questions if anyone could help me out!

- I consider myself a PvE player more than pvp, is staff viable/best for PvE group situations.

- someone in my guild was saying that staff does need to constantly switch between attunements, is this true?

-is there a certain best attunements for leveling or is fire best?

Staff surly is a viable wapon for group PVE. you’ll be such good support, yet extreme good in damaging the foe’s.

Your friend is correct, change attuement is a blessing. not only for staff, all wapon choice, you need change attuement.

Thank you for the reply! Although I’m not sure how I feel about attunements switching constantly, I guess that’s just the lazy me complaining about it hmm.

I can confirm you at the begin is was for me also confusing. And I also stick at fire, due the higher damage output. Even when I hit lvl80 on green + rare gear.

But afterward, when I realy start going in depth (also more PVP) I realise how much “more” output you can get by switching from attuement to attuement.

a simple exmaple why switching is a surplus: cooldowns:
if you stick on 1 attuement you’ll end up with at least 2-3sec (or more) on your autoattack, which is not your strongest attack.

as staff your job is also supporting your team. and fire isn’t the best way to support them.

example:
eart 2 (= blast finisher) can conbine with water 2 (extra healing), fire 2 (might stacking)

personaly, I kept my attuement on the f1-f4
but if it’s because the button are too far away, so it make you feel the laziness, then you always can keybind them. I know people use alt+1 – 4, shift+ 1-4, e,r,y,u (direction buttoen are tfgh), etc etc

Fire will always do the most damage, but switching attunements gives you added benefits, like those said above.

You can also start in Earth or Water magic, and use the cripple, immobilize, and chill to keep foes slowed to stay in stuff like your Lava Font and and Meteor Shower longer.

Also you get some decent survivability tools from your other attunements, like Static Field, Magnetic Aura, Geyser, and Healing Rain

As everyone has said, switching attunements is a big part of playing an Ele. It does take some getting used to. The only time I stay in one attunement is if the mob is super easy, otherwise I am cycling through them constantly. Along with avoiding CD waits, there are boons associated with attunement changes, as well as Sigils that proc on weapon swaps (attunement change for us).

While for the most part I can agree with everyone that attunement switching can be very useful, it is possible to trait an elementalist so that optimum DPS is achieved simply by never leaving either fire or earth attunement.

Less so for water and air attunement, though a water-specific build could work for underwater combat… which is so little of the game that it’s more or less worthless, but as a thought experiment it seems like it could be interesting.

However, you should take care to at least learn what every attunement on your weapon is capable of – even if you build your ele so staying in fire is the best option for DPS, the other attunements all offer unique utility and survival abilities.

I had a difficult time remembering to switch attunments at first too, only used fire for a long time. But I learned which were combo fields/finishers and tested them level mobs slowly got the hang of it, now it comes as second nature. Personally (and I’m sure many other ele’s) use ‘Arcane Wave’ (combo finisher) as a utility. Four mobs run to lay down ‘Lava Font’ (combo field) when all mobs are inside, I hit ‘Arcane Wave’ and does a very nice amount of aoe damage, plus give me several stacks of might. If you time it right, earth 2 is also a blast finisher, and takes time to channel, before it bursts. Best advice just practice!

Dingle.2743:

Less so for water and air attunement, though a water-specific build could work for underwater combat… which is so little of the game that it’s more or less worthless, but as a thought experiment it seems like it could be interesting.

I’m a bit confused, you mean watter trait is specialized in underwater fight? O_o If that’s the case what you said, then if quit wrong. Water trait is more for healing, remove cond, more vit, cantrip empowerment, …

And tbh, I know some build for air and water only ;-)

example the epic hammer build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhMmMbsRAxjDA0DoEUIwASGWgBA-e
reason why you stay in water here: you can’t cast much skill except the hammer skill. So staying in water gives you that little extra healing (and to teams).

Turkashi.4502:

Dingle.2743:

Less so for water and air attunement, though a water-specific build could work for underwater combat… which is so little of the game that it’s more or less worthless, but as a thought experiment it seems like it could be interesting.

I’m a bit confused, you mean watter trait is specialized in underwater fight? O_o If that’s the case what you said, then if quit wrong. Water trait is more for healing, remove cond, more vit, cantrip empowerment, …

And tbh, I know some build for air and water only ;-)

example the epic hammer build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhMmMbsRAxjDA0DoEUIwASGWgBA-e
reason why you stay in water here: you can’t cast much skill except the hammer skill. So staying in water gives you that little extra healing (and to teams).

I’m talking very, very specifically about underwater combat, where water is actually the highest DPS attunement for elementalists (ever landed a full Tidal Wave by trapping an enemy against a wall/floor with the sink skill on 4?), and some of the better traits used in 0/x/x/30/30 builds simply don’t work (no evasive arcana underwater, healing on trident is very limited, no water fields for blast finishers so healing power ends up being neutered).

The problem is optimising it requires a completely different build to anything most eles use on land, which is why I made mention of it being worthless – generally we spend so little time underwater that changing entire trait set-ups just to make our lives easier there is a waste of time. We’re talking maybe a build like this , which would be very good DPS underwater but be terrible in most land-based combat without conjures.

…ok, so I made that before looking at the build you linked. Conjure builds don’t meet most newbies’ preconceptions of being able to stay in a single element, as they tend to revolve around the water element while using the lightning hammer. Heh.

my build is idd not so newbies friendly. But it does some big numbers

I usually stick solely with fire, but switch to earth when fire is in cool down, and flick to water for some quick heals. I never use air, don’t really see the point of it except for that speed boost.

Underwater I only ever use fire and am practically untouchable. Two of us took down a champion underwater fairly easily, and I got it down to about quarter health before the second person showed up.

emeraldeye.4038:

I usually stick solely with fire, but switch to earth when fire is in cool down, and flick to water for some quick heals. I never use air, don’t really see the point of it except for that speed boost.

I switch to air for 2nd skill, it does have a long cast time, but it also do a high dmg amount, plus you give swiftness around you.
Not realy a big support, but sometimes it helps