Staff is really only good for defending from walls and attacking people on walls. People are getting better and WvW and realising it pointless to autoattack the gate making the whole wall-to-ground (where staff excels) combat kind of obsolete. People are placing trebs and catas far away, forcing the defenders to leave the safety of their keeps/towers and fight them on them on level ground to prevent their walls/gate from falling. D/D excels at facediving into large groups and wreaking havoc.
Skills such a tornado, fire ring, earthquake, churning earth, ring of earth, burning speed combined with other skills such as rangers entangle and theives daggerstorm are capable of killing large groups of people. Small organised groups can decimate entire zergs if they coordinate their AOES properly.
Have a quick think about how many kills you get these days from spamming spells from on top of a wall or at defenders on a wall. Its significantly less then what it used to be earlier. That being said, if there is still a lot of mindless World VS Gate happening and zerg/pug style stupidity on your server, staff will work well.
But the battle doesn’t end when the gate goes down.
It also happens to be the time staff starts to becomes kinda useless and D/D becomes useful. Id rather have a D/D than a staff on me, when the gate goes down. much more powerful weapon in majority of situations where you dont have a wall to the enemy away from you.
Last I check I can rack up the kills with my staff in open field…
Don’t need that wall you are talking about.
Plus I find it more useful to tank many people in a support/tank build to allow the less tanky people kill people smashing on you or siege weapons to clean the stuff.
Staff is way more powerful in close quarter then D/D. Sadly.
+ there is nothing funnier then a Power crit damage precision staff elem that use fire storm with glyph of storm and glyph of elemental power combined with sigil of fire (AoE fire blast on crit) and 33% burning on crit trait.
Funny as hell.
Staff is way more powerful in close quarter then D/D. Sadly.
wut?
staff is terrible in close quarters. its so cumbersome and unresponsive.
just give D/D a try. it harder to use than staff imo but it is much better in open fights. you need to play very aggressively and you will need mistform+lightning flash minimum to make sure you have a way to get out once you get in. it works really well if you coordinate with a partner who also has good aoes.
WvW is a teambased game. There are lots of classes better at killing than an elementalist, but few classes can match our area denial potential.
D/D may be better if you’re zerging with a bunch of puggies, but if you’re in an organized guild, they’d prefer you to focus on doing the one thing Elementalists are really good at. Laying down lots of combo/control/area denial fields. And that means you’ll be using a staff.
Two ele’s working in tandem could be interesting, don’t get me wrong I’m not saying D/D doesn’t have a place in WvW it’s just that personally I get more mileage out of Staff but roll D/D for solo work.
YOU KNOW THERE AIN’T NO REST FOR THE WICKED, TILL WE CLOSE OUR EYES FOR GOOD.
Once proud member of Extraordinary Gentlemen [EXG]{DESO4LIFE}
WvW is a teambased game. There are lots of classes better at killing than an elementalist, but few classes can match our area denial potential.
D/D may be better if you’re zerging with a bunch of puggies, but if you’re in an organized guild, they’d prefer you to focus on doing the one thing Elementalists are really good at. Laying down lots of combo/control/area denial fields. And that means you’ll be using a staff.
rangers entangle+churning earth = very good at killing
I prefer D/D over staff any day in WvW. I do switch when apllicable, such as taking care of defenders on a keep wall but D/D is by far superior imo. You need a solid group for it though, using D/D with a group of pugs will only get you killed & extremely frustrated.
Flank around the side of a large group of enemies, pop Arcane Shield or that Stoneform(cant remember the name but makes you immune to most CC for 8 secs & you take 33% less dmg), target a backline enemy & use Ride The Lightning to attack them, then use Arcane Blast & Arcane Wave then Updraft. At this point you’re likely taking damage so pop Mist Form & gtfo. If you’re really ballsy you can use you invulnerable state to go deeper into their back lines where you’ll hit either Earthquake & then Churning Earth(providing your team is right alongside you) or Ring Of Fire & basically every other fire ability.
You’re likely to kill several enemies or at least severely damage a lot of them. The main reason I do this though is to crush their morale. Once you get to the backlines of an enemy force most of them scatter like headless chickens & basically get disoriented & that’s really where the power of WvW lies, pyscological warfare.
Krooks that’s seriously fun to do and all (with the right group XD) but the same can be accomplished with Blasting Staff traited going Glyph of Storms > Meteor Shower > Lava Font > Arcane Power > Earth > Eruption > Water > Frozen Ground (basically throwing all CC into the area after fire) and in most cases use Mist Form to gtfo when any survivors get a bead on you. It’s not as in your face as a D/D rotation but just as fun seeing a zerg ball scatter like rats.
YOU KNOW THERE AIN’T NO REST FOR THE WICKED, TILL WE CLOSE OUR EYES FOR GOOD.
Once proud member of Extraordinary Gentlemen [EXG]{DESO4LIFE}
Staff is best weapon when defending/attacking points. Plus staff provides more useful combo fileds for your team (dont forget, WvW is team based game) and good CC. D/D can be good if we get weapon swap or Anet remove annoying charge system for conjured weapons.
D/D seems like it would be good for intercepting reinforcements or roaming around the secondary objectives. This build is really tough and damaging in small fights. No two people are not on fire. Just pretend that the amulet is actually W3 gear of a similar focus.
D/D seems like it would be good for intercepting reinforcements or roaming around the secondary objectives. This build is really tough and damaging in small fights. No two people are not on fire. Just pretend that the amulet is actually W3 gear of a similar focus.
Also considering using Water II over Water V and switching to D/F. The additional condition would make it harder to cure the bleeding/burning, and the focus would offer a MUCH better curing option (Earth weapon skill 4) that might make up for the difference over the loss of Water V and Water weapon skill 5.
I thought all AoE abilities could only hit 5 targets at once. If this is not the case, then I could see me switching back to staff. Until then, my Great sword fills the gap when I need AoE damage for a minute.
Staff is a great weapon for any setting, including sPvP. D/D and S/D are situational. D/F and S/F is much more useful in just about any environment, so for Wv3 if your just going to roll with one weapon set I think Staff is the way to go, but Focus is not far behind.
i think a lot of you guys are not appreciating how disruptive melee is in WvW fights. It makes the enemy zerg fragment into smaller and weaker groups that are easily killed by your own zerg.
everyone has tried staff. i recommend giving D/D a try. you will need play very aggresively and use your mobility skills to survive. D/D is also far superior to staff when it comes to chasing.
i think a lot of you guys are not appreciating how disruptive melee is in WvW fights. It makes the enemy zerg fragment into smaller and weaker groups that are easily killed by your own zerg.
everyone has tried staff. i recommend giving D/D a try. you will need play very aggresively and use your mobility skills to survive. D/D is also far superior to staff when it comes to chasing.
I agree that melee is disrupting but ele just doesn’t do melee in WvW very well. We are much more useful letting the warriors and guardians run in while we AoE on top of them.
