Guild Wars 2

2 skilled players fighting each other in 1v1 the D/D would have an advantage of course.

Staff is awesome because it has many ground-targeted AoEs and everything is AoE by definition.
D/D is better for 1v1s because it has plenty of mobility (you play it as if you were melee) so a Staff Elementalist would have a hard time getting a Lava Font/Meteor Shower/Eruption/Ice Shard/etc on them.

D/D has a bunch of Point Blank AoEs, which makes them work wonders against other melees and they have a slight advantage of playing at 600 range compared to the 130~150 usual melee range.

Staff has very decent escapes as well, but the damage against a high mobility opponent is lacking (try fighting a Thief with a Staff – aside from autoattacks and instants, I doubt you’ll hit him with anything else).

But like people said, different playstyles.
If you’re fighting a group x group for example, being at 1200 range with tons of AoE and controls works awesome too.

I used to be a Staff user 100% of the time, after losing some pretty annoying 1v1s or 1v3~ in WvW, I got myself a Scepter and Daggers just to walk around and sometimes even defend with it.
Now, I roll and laugh against most professions played by average players… but I still couldn’t get to fight a great Thief or Mesmer with my Elementalist though.

Having experienced several scenarios with both D/D and staff in WvW I can say the following:
Staff has it’s niche. It’s good in PvE (dungeons) and in zergs in WvW when you have a large group of allies making sure you won’t be focused easily so you can practically do what you want at safe range of 1200. With berserker-gear it might even be awesome in that scenario.
Everywhere else it fails. You will never ever win a 1v1 against any class (played by a mediocre skilled player). Also saying you win 8 out of 10 fights against D/D Eles … can’t be true (unless all of those were lvl10 or something) – D/D will always deal more damage than staff and at the same time easily outheal staff-damage. Best scenario for staff might be that you can outheal D/D damage too, resulting in a draw. But you will never be able to actually kill a D/D with staff (first because of the fact that he can run away anytime he wants with rtl, and second because you won’t do enough damage with your autohits to kill him (your other AoE’s will never hit because of D/Ds great mobility)).
So for soloing in WvW (in order to kill single enemies or groups of 2-3 people) i always run D/D. Every time i get caught by enemies whilst wielding a staff i find myself either dead or instantly running away, trying to kite as long as possible in order to find some allies to help me. Therefore I’d never join WvW alone wielding a staff…

I would say staff has more than a niche. The only time D/D is significantly better than staff is when soloing.

Let it be known that Razor rightfully handed my kitten to me 3x in a row…

Saying that I won would be an understatement. The staff vs D/D matches were completely one sided and I didn’t even need to use my heal glyph (yes I use the glyph) because my HP was above 75% the entire time.

Then he switched D/D and it became a more even matchup but in the end it finished 2:1

good games.

Staff is inferior to D/D in 1v1. I argued for it, tested it in a true isolated environment, and was proven wrong.

We dueled after D/D vs. D/D and I won 1 out of 3 matches, so while I have to admit Razor is better than me toe-to-toe, I wouldn’t say it was wildly imbalanced skill-wise.

I love staff in WvW, PvE and sPvP where I can avoid focus-fire like that, but it’s crystal clear to me now that it can’t compete 1v1 against a D/D. Time to start reading the 1000x D/D theorycraft posts :-P

This thread can die now. I am shamed.

Michael.3279:

Staff is inferior to D/D in 1v1. I argued for it, tested it in a true isolated environment, and was proven wrong.

We dueled after D/D vs. D/D and I won 1 out of 3 matches, so while I have to admit Razor is better than me toe-to-toe, I wouldn’t say it was wildly imbalanced skill-wise.

I love staff in WvW, PvE and sPvP where I can avoid focus-fire like that, but it’s crystal clear to me now that it can’t compete 1v1 against a D/D. Time to start reading the 1000x D/D theorycraft posts :-P

This thread can die now. I am shamed.

Don’t be ashamed, there’s still room for staff in team settings.

Interesting reading. You get a +1 from me for manning up and agreeing in a public setting that you were wrong. Bravo!

That said, I’m only interested in PvE and WvW zergs and small team stuff, and don’t care about duels, so I’m still going to go staff instead of D/D.

Was the loss anything that could be remedied with more experience? Different build? Etc? Anything outrageously one sided to the point where it’s not even worth considering different builds?

It’s true that the bar in WvW is fairly low so winning 8/10 times isn’t too far fetched, so knowing that Ele has a higher skill ceiling is fine.

Yea, staff all the way in team setting. Awesome support and team utility.

But 1v1 with staff? No. Just no.

The strategy with staff is to let enemies walk into your aoe not trying to hit them with aoes, strifing enemies can be hit safely with lightning surge and then place a lava font in the direction they’re walking, this type of tactics allow a staff user to deal with single targets in 1vs1 situation while 1vs2 situations definetely a staff user would fare better than a d/d.

Finally against strong anti mele build users you may want to switch to staff when possible, too funny to watch all those trap rangers-shatter mesmer-necro wells spammer having no clue on what to do next when you’re actually not trying to hit them upclose

It’s possible to spike with a staff too and the huge bleed dmg from eruption+flame burst guarantee a constant pressure on the enemy…still I wish unsteady ground and gust would be changed a little, while the first is barely usable the latter really need some serious changes, the arc of range is smaller than shockwave so you need to be facing the enemy at 90 degree to hit them..quite bad

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Yea, staff all the way in team setting. Awesome support and team utility.

But 1v1 with staff? No. Just no.

I only had problems with well players staff necros as the wells activate way too fast, other than that I have beaten consistently every other profession with the staff in 1 sv1, as I stated before the way to play staff is not to try to hit the enemy directly but rather force him to walk into you aoes, that’s why I can hit people with eruptio-lava font-ice spike quite easily

Arheundel.6451:

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Yea, staff all the way in team setting. Awesome support and team utility.

But 1v1 with staff? No. Just no.

I only had problems with well players staff necros as the wells activate way too fast, other than that I have beaten consistently every other profession with the staff in 1 sv1, as I stated before the way to play staff is not to try to hit the enemy directly but rather force him to walk into you aoes, that’s why I can hit people with eruptio-lava font-ice spike quite easily

Yeah, perhaps Staff has a higher skill ceiling than d/d. landing those AOEs are a tad difficult with 1v1 in an open field esepcially on extremely mobile classes/specs XD

Yay, a staff Elementalist thread.

I run one with 30/20/0/0/20. In fire, I put Lava font as one of the skills so that when I get downed, the person trying to kill me gets hurt. It’s how I win 1 vs. 1 a lot. I play a completely glass cannon build that stays mostly in fire. In 1 vs. 1, my idea is to get them near team mates, though. It’s not to beat them by myself because any competent player can dodge my damage dealing attacks. They can’t dodge my CC skills as easily, so those help. I don’t have any chance against a d/d elementalist, or any mesmer or ranger unless they are just absolutely horrid. All I can do for those is CC them for others to kill, which works quite well. If I get caught in the process, I lay down every aoe I can in hopes I can kill them first.

Kirbyprime.2645:

Was the loss anything that could be remedied with more experience? Different build? Etc? Anything outrageously one sided to the point where it’s not even worth considering different builds?

It’s true that the bar in WvW is fairly low so winning 8/10 times isn’t too far fetched, so knowing that Ele has a higher skill ceiling is fine.

I’m not discouraged. Staff still kicks major kitten in group situations and I’ll pretty much always run it in organized WvW and Dungeons.

But isolated 1v1… no. No amount of practice in the world would make it a fair fight vs. a D/D Ele. If I built a bit differently and was on my A-game, I’d still say I could survive forever… but there’s just not enough damage output to actually win. MAYBE with a full Berserker build and Fiery Greatsword you could get lucky, but I doubt it… you’d be sacrificing survivability and I needed every bit I had just to last as long as I did. If I was glassy staff I think I’d have been pretty much ripped apart.

Staff loses from D/D?
you don t say?

Staff got 3 mayor nerfs……..

Do you wonder why so many D/D around?
Well those are staff ele that didn t want to reroll after “balancing”……

There was a time were threads said the opposite…..

But instead of focusing on D/D tell me how do you do VS thieves……or even mesmers.

Don t fear they will probably “balance” even D/D so you won t lose against ANY elementalist…….with any profession…..

The fact of the matter is that 1v1 encounters are seriously rare in this game. I started this post because I was actually doing very awesome with my staff ele. I won many, many fights that I called 1v1 but can’t REALLY be called that because I either got the jump on them, they were bad, or a teammate came in at the end to help finish off… so my perception of 1v1 was messed up really. Many of the 1v1 fights in WvW may have also been just me being a better player with better skills…

Staff Ele is still amazing though, they just don’t do the 1v1 thing. Maybe an offensive spec can, but I doubt it.

After being humbled by Razor, I ran a few sPvP matches in D/D spec and wiped the floor with pretty much everyone I ran into. I had the hardest time with Guardian to be honest.

Still… even sPvP mentality is different than an intentional, isolated 1v1 match where both parties agree to fight it out. I really wish they’d bring a more proper form of dueling to this game… it really helps a person evaluate their strengths and weaknesses better.

Staff is still my favorite playstyle… But I’m for sure going to be polishing my D/D build as well now that I have seen the light.

Michael.3279:

Staff is inferior to D/D in 1v1. I argued for it, tested it in a true isolated environment, and was proven wrong.

We dueled after D/D vs. D/D and I won 1 out of 3 matches, so while I have to admit Razor is better than me toe-to-toe, I wouldn’t say it was wildly imbalanced skill-wise.

I love staff in WvW, PvE and sPvP where I can avoid focus-fire like that, but it’s crystal clear to me now that it can’t compete 1v1 against a D/D. Time to start reading the 1000x D/D theorycraft posts :-P

This thread can die now. I am shamed.

Nah, nothing to be shamed for, at least you had the guts to admit it and discuss it. To address your early question about why so few staff threads as compared with d/d threads, here’s my throry: staff is the typical mage style we’ve all played so many times before in other games. Stand back and fire away while the tanks holds aggro. d/d turns the mage’s world upside down. It is completely counter-intuitive. Deliberate melee range for a mage? Constant, blurring movement by a mage? Daggers? So it takes more thought and strategy for someone with the typical mage mindset. This playstyle is really more of a mage assassin then the typical mage. To make it work you have to gear up right, trait right, learn and practrice the skills until they are second nature, and adopt unfamiliar strategies. So all the threads are both proclaiming the unexpected greatness of this style, but also teaching other mage enthusiats how to do it.

Honestly I can’t believe anet camne up with this. I’m a mage charater in every game I play. This is by far the most fun I’ve ever had with the class. I gotta believe this is the product of some very late night brainstorming in Seattle, by some very tired devs looking to blow of some steam. “Hey, how bout an ele with daggrers. Yeah, that would be hilarious, he’d last 2 seconds….wait!”

Yeah, the dual-dagger assassin mage is definitely an awesome concept. Well played Anet.

I would only say that a staff Ele who hangs from the action back isn’t being as effective as they should be. To me, the biggest asset a staff Ele brings to the table is the ability to set up multiple fields and blast finish them without assistance… however, in order to do so with maximum effect, you’ll be utilizing Arcane Wave and Evasive Arcana (Earth) which both require you to get into your field to finish it. So in reality, I’m staying back to drop my damage… but in order to best assist the group I am constantly dodging INTO the battle to blast finish combo fields.

So even the Staff Elementalist plays much different than the traditional MMO mage class in my opinion. Throw in attunement dancing and you have the reasons why I just can’t plat other professions in this game… they all seem so slow and boring in comparison to properly played Elementalist.

My new goal with Staff Ele is to even further increase my healing power and survivability. My duels with Razor taught me that if I truly get focused on, I’m not as hearty as I thought I was… I think I have some room to improve my tankiness and still increase my healing power… Sure, I won’t be killing anything by myself, but the team I’m rolling with will be nigh unstoppable.

You guys should give the staff a chance, it does great in 1vs1 situations, sure a couple of skills need balancing( unsteady ground and gust) but other than that, the staff offer more support and damage than d/d..as long as you land the hits.

It’s better to train yourself in using different weapon sets and make them in different situations, don’t try to play staff ele as a necro would given its fast activation wells..but rather play a staff ele as you would with a trapper profession, with timing you can literally hit people with a 100% accuracy regardless of their build, mobile or not

Arheundel.6451:

You guys should give the staff a chance, it does great in 1vs1 situations, sure a couple of skills need balancing( unsteady ground and gust) but other than that, the staff offer more support and damage than d/d..as long as you land the hits.

It’s better to train yourself in using different weapon sets and make them in different situations, don’t try to play staff ele as a necro would given its fast activation wells..but rather play a staff ele as you would with a trapper profession, with timing you can literally hit people with a 100% accuracy regardless of their build, mobile or not

I’m pretty kitten good at landing my staff shots. But the fact is that a competent D/D Ele is just TOO mobile and there’s just not enough burst in staff… I could probably get some more out of it if I build offensively, but again… my survivability would have to take a helluva hit to do so.

I don’t think staff Ele offers anywhere near as much single-target damage as D/D can dish out… the only scenario in which I can see that happening is if your opponent literally stood still for you, which doesn’t happen.

Staff Ele can rock in certain 1v1 scenarios… just not against a D/D who knows how to play. I’m sure of it now. If you think you can challenge that with something more than theory and non-isolated experience (which is the basis on which I started this thread), I would love to see it/hear about it… I’m also game to duel you in-game (after work 5pm EST) and I’ll run my D/D build against your staff build and vice versa. Yesterday’s fight got me to thinking about starting a group of Ele duels so people could test out builds etc. in comparison to other Eles and fine-tune their play a bit. My head is swimming with new build tweaks now that I’ve had my cute little kitten handed to me.

I lol’d at the new thread title

Razor.6392:

I lol’d at the new thread title

A title change felt appropriate :-P

I have played D/D ele since early beta, I have never, never, never EVER lost a 1v1 (or 2v1) against a Staff Ele in either WvW or sPvP, never. I regard them as free kills, probably yourself included. This is not an insult to your abilities, I am sure you do very well as a staff Ele, I just know you would never be able to beat a competent D/D Ele in a 1v1, from experience.

If you caught me by myself yes… I’ll no longer even pretend to argue that.

The whole game changes with a teammate by my side though… a 2v2 (even better with 3v3 and higher tbh) of pretty much any class combo (okay maybe not 2 staff Eles) will probably have the team with the staff Ele at an advantage just due to the heals/regen/might/frost armor I can keep up on us. I’ve got a good deal of CC too… but without that extra labor by my side, yeah… I’m either going down or getting the kitty cat out of Dodge.

Quite frankly, even if chuck norris is at the keyboard, no elementalist of ANY build, any gear setup, or any weapon is going to kill a D/D full bunker 0/10/0/30/30 ele with clerics and soldiers gear and boon duration runes unless they’re prone to serious lag. Put the #1 ele player in the world against me 1 on 1, don’t even tell me their build or gear, and I’d be just fine with putting down $1000 that says “They aren’t going to kill me, ever”.

Sadly, it’s not even because D/D is that survivable, eles just don’t put out any kind of real damage. Even berserker gear with the D/D not hitting you back, they’d have to sit there and facetank to die. I’m actually pretty sure I could just circle strafe around an elementalist healing myself indefinitely and they’d be unable to kill me.

This goes both ways too. I could play as a staff ele bunker build, and no D/D could kill me either.

Hell here’s a sad one, I could play ANY profession’s bunker build and an elementalist of any kind couldn’t kill me. I’m not even claiming some super pro play here, just normal competent stuff. Any other experienced player could do all of this.

Btw I used 0/20/0/20/30, completely different than the common 0/10/0/30/30

I want to just add into this real quick. Power Staff/Conjure build is strong in team team fights and you can wipe a whole group out on the node if you play it like a thief.

Staff > D/D against zergs.

It isn’t effective for 1v1 or small scale stuff.

The change to the earth projectile may have given the staff a small boost in 1v1. Just imagine combining it with Glyph of Elemental Power, and keep spamming cripples and weakness…

30/0/10/10/20
Knight’s Armor(PvE and WvW)
Pow/Vit/Tough/ trinket(sPvP)

After a long time of messing around with daggers to see if they worked, I tried out this combo and was quite dissapointed by the lack of survivability and damage. Then i tried out the staff.

It felt like something just clicked inside my head. I hit like a truck, going from about 600-800 dmg up to 1200-1400 dmg just from the fire attunement autoattack. Once I had built up a respectable amount of might(12-15 stacks) a single hit from a Meteor shower would crit for 4800 on enemies. I could actually stand a chance 1on1 in sPvP and I would actually avoid siege weapons because my meteors and lava fonts did so much more damage.

I shudder to think about what would happen if i went Berserker gear…

I actually have 2 elementalists. A staff and D/D ele. They are about equally geared and I think I prefer playing my staff ele only because it suits my play style. I like the range and utility in groups and it’s good in WvW. I don’t do well in 1v1 but my D/D does pretty well in that area.

The biggest problem I have with D/D is not really knowing when to charge in to enemy players because I seem to either get downed in 2 seconds, or barely get back out without hardly doing any damage to anyone. But with my staff ele I lay down AOE that forces them to either move back or take damage and that seems much more effective.

But I think my D/D ends up doing markedly more dps in PvE content and still has good survivability as long as you use lots of toughness. I have all Superior runes of the Earth on my d/d and that helps a lot.

Just checking back in with a personal opinion update…

After testing out numerous popular D/D builds in sPvP yesterday, I came away with mixed results.

Glass cannon builds proved nice in 1v1 encounters (as was so painfully pointed out to me by Razor :-P) but I found that in group battles I had to be very careful about choosing my fights and avoid focus else I would go down pretty quickly. For scoring purposes, it proved useful really only in instances where there was a single defender on a control point… as long as that defender wasn’t a bunker build, my success was almost guaranteed in taking the point.

Likewise, running the D/D bunker build… I found that I could HOLD a point pretty kitten well, but wasn’t very good at talking control of one from a defender. I also found the bunker build to be lacking in both 1v1 encounters and group fights. I didn’t die, but I didn’t kill. I helped stack some might and had some healing power… but nowhere near that of my staff build.

So I went back to staff for a few rounds…

Good god I dominated! Granted… 1v1 encounters were a no-go in terms of expecting to win, BUT jumping into a 1v1 I was easily able to survive and apply pressure long enough for reinforcements to arrive. And once reinforcements arrived it was pretty much GG… especially with the new change to Frost Armor (10% damage reduction). My heals are unrivaled, I can stack might like a champ, slow/stun/weaken/push with little reserve, and with Energy Sigil on the staff my endurance is nigh inexhaustible. I’d say my bunker ability is just shy of that of a dedicated build so holding a point was no problem. It was, in a word, glorious.

In conclusion, my ego was bit inflated going into this post assuming that I could go toe-to-toe with a D/D Elementalist… I can’t, no way, no how… But the fact is that 1v1 is pretty much non-existent in this game and in almost all other regards I prefer staff and feel it to be more of a game-changer than D/D… even in sPvP. What I lose in mobility (just RTL btw, otherwise I have perma-swiftness) and damage output, I more than make up for in utility… and in PvE, sPvP, and WvW… Utility will almost always bring more “win” to the table than being able to gank stragglers and solos. It is my opinion that staff is a better ALL-AROUND weapon choice than D/D.

But make no mistake… If a D/D comes at me and I’m all alone. I’m pretty much toast (until I can further improve my build survivability that is).

Cheers!
Moxie

d/d is far easier to apply damage without all the ground targeting, and a good portion of the attacks in any attunement are specifically designed to keep you moving around while using them.

I love staff, as long as crap isn’t on me. You can hit hard and take the time to place your effects where they are the most damaging. The moment they are on you the effectiveness starts to drop off because you lose that time. You can stay alive, but you aren’t fighting back with nearly the potency that d/d can at that point.

I find myself relying on air auto attack more than any other
skill when running zerg wvw. To elaborate, the majority of battles
are constantly moving in open field, thus reducing the effect of
many of your casting time AOEs. In addition, when you zerg camps
or keep lords in numbers, you wont even get AOE off before
everything is dead.

Yes, I use all of the AOEs I can, but at the end of the day, my air auto
is used probably the most since it hits 3 target for great damage. This
is one problem I have with Staff, even though this is the spec I like the most

We trade the ability to get fast AOE off (like Necros) for more abilities
at map movement and the removing of conditions.

I used to never D/D back on my Asura Ele. I was staff 100% of the time. When I rerolled human I thought to give D/D a try.

D/D was good, can see the strengths of it. Strong defense built into the character, lots of boons, lots of base damage depending on gear setup. A lot of synergy with swapping attunements. I’ve certainly won my fair share of 1v1s with D/D in WvW while I was unlocking the points on the new guy to the point it was almost laughably bad (never had to heal on many fights). Dungeons I had no real issues but there were a few fights I knew if I was staff would have just been way easier.

However I’m a staff guy. My natural play style is to avoid the 1v1 style duels and be opportunistic preferably from a distance. I have no problems just walking away from a fight or even just losing 1v1 because I don’t expect to be great at everything. I almost never do sPvP and focus more on group WvW and Dungeons both scenarios where Staff shines. I even do perfectly fine in PvE soloing as a staff and never had issues there. Eyeballing the numbers compared to my other 80s the damage ain’t that bad either.

The only problem I’ve ever had with the staff really is I wish there were more control in the DPS attunes (fire and air) instead of being packed away under the lower DPS attunes (water and earth). If you start out in water/earth to control then swap to fire/air to dps you’re stuck waiting to go back if you need water/earth’s support. If you’re in fire/air and swap to water/earth to CC by the time you get back to fire/air the CC is largely over. I mean it’s all very doable, but it’s also very disjointed. I’d much rather see something like with a trait Lava Font cripple for 1s on tick and something to improve Gale cause it’s super slow projectile misses and is worthless 9 times out of 10. Personally I think it’d be super cool to keep it’s slow projectile in but massively increase it’s size to a wall of air proportions and have it knock back up to 5 people who don’t dodge out of the way (like a wall…or gale…of air).

Can you folks recommend good trait selection for PvE solo and dungeon damage/support? I’m playing with staff traits, but even given tiers (e.g. 30/0/0/10/20) I’m not sure which staff traits are best. Thanks!

20/10/10/30/0 for auramancer support
or
x/x/x/x/30 for evasive arcana combo field popper

Ur choice on what you value more.

Staff skills are slow and much easier to avoid. There are not many options to do dmg when you are 1 vs 1. Many skills in D/D have decent scaling ratio and can be landed more reliably. Staff CC are soft and easily be cleansed by most D/D build. The stun and knock back from Air are nice but Staff doesn’t have a quick burst to follow the CC. If you run Glass Staff in PvP you will die when you get focused.

PvE and WvW are a different story. Range and AoE are much more valuable in these environments. In Spvp or 1vs1, it is hard to outplay opponents. Not that D/D is better than staff. It is just that each has its own usage in different situation. In small scale pvp, the Staff vs D/D match up is heavily on D/D favor.

International.7980:

20/10/10/30/0 for auramancer support
or
x/x/x/x/30 for evasive arcana combo field popper

Ur choice on what you value more.

Which trait choices, though?

Rovus.5428:

30/0/10/10/20
Knight’s Armor(PvE and WvW)
Pow/Vit/Tough/ trinket(sPvP)

After a long time of messing around with daggers to see if they worked, I tried out this combo and was quite dissapointed by the lack of survivability and damage. Then i tried out the staff.

It felt like something just clicked inside my head. I hit like a truck, going from about 600-800 dmg up to 1200-1400 dmg just from the fire attunement autoattack. Once I had built up a respectable amount of might(12-15 stacks) a single hit from a Meteor shower would crit for 4800 on enemies. I could actually stand a chance 1on1 in sPvP and I would actually avoid siege weapons because my meteors and lava fonts did so much more damage.

I shudder to think about what would happen if i went Berserker gear…

How are you doing damage with literally ZERO critical chance and damage lol…

International.7980:

20/10/10/30/0 for auramancer support
or
x/x/x/x/30 for evasive arcana combo field popper

Ur choice on what you value more.

support + 0 in arcana don’t fit well in the same sentence.

HappyHubris.1096:

Can you folks recommend good trait selection for PvE solo and dungeon damage/support? I’m playing with staff traits, but even given tiers (e.g. 30/0/0/10/20) I’m not sure which staff traits are best. Thanks!

I’ve been pretty keen on a 0/20/0/30/20 spec lately.

Bolt to the Heart is pretty self explanatory. I like inscription because it basically doubles the buffs you get from GOEH. It means on fights where I don’t need to heal I can use it as a might stacking buff (especially after the latest patch). There are alternatives, but really nothing all that impressive. I also started specing Air instead of Fire because the crit and crit damage ultimately increased my damage more than 200 power.

Water line is all about support and condition management. Cleansing Fire becomes a 4 condition removal stun breaker that adds Regen and Vigor on a reasonable cool down with Cantrip Mastery. Sometimes I replace Mistform with a different utility, depends on what I am doing. Cleansing Water is pretty amazing. You can take a place like CM where the rogues spread a ton of bleeds and just clear them off en masse as needed. If it isn’t needed (such as you have a shout cleansing Warrior or Guardian) then the fields are still pretty nice for healing as you do pick up a decent chunk of +Healing just from specing down this line. Personally I love being practically immune to conditions with the amount of condition removal I have.

Arcane you got Elemental Attunement which helps stacking might or Regen (which again with Cleansing Water removes another condition). Sometimes I replace this with Renewing Stamina as it’s pretty good as well. Blasting Staff I find pretty darned useful more often than not. For doing Dynamic Events it just increases your tagging radius and for support just increases heal field sizes. Also with 20 in Arcane you rarely notice cool downs between attunements and boons last a good duration. After the Evasive Arcana nerf I haven’t been a huge fan of it. Most of our fields don’t last long enough to drop, swap to Earth and do a roll especially if you have to use your dodge for something else using up the timer. Most of the time that combo can just be reversed with starting in Earth and then swapping to say Fire/Water/Air for the combo. I like it for D/D, but staff it’s just been pretty lackluster in my experience.

Arcane Wave works wonderfully with staff. You can provide AOE Might, AOE Frost Aura, AOE Heals, AOE Swiftness or use other people’s fields to do a finisher all without having to waste time in Earth.

Gear wise I mostly use Berserker. I have plenty of defense in the form of heals and condition removal from the Water tree to afford full Berserker gear for offense. This gives me a fairly balanced outcome where I can be defensive and offensive at the same time while still providing support. I also have Emerald Jewelry for those times I know I am going to just have to deal with the hits for the extra toughness it provides without completely leaving me devoid of offense.

Works for me pretty well and the base lineup isn’t that far off what most Dagger spec’s are so if I want to D/D I can usually pull it off (but not having 30 in Arcane is kinda yikes especially after the boon nerfs).

Kodiak.3281:

HappyHubris.1096:

Can you folks recommend good trait selection for PvE solo and dungeon damage/support? I’m playing with staff traits, but even given tiers (e.g. 30/0/0/10/20) I’m not sure which staff traits are best. Thanks!

I’ve been pretty keen on a 0/20/0/30/20 spec lately.

Bolt to the Heart is pretty self explanatory. I like inscription because it basically doubles the buffs you get from GOEH. It means on fights where I don’t need to heal I can use it as a might stacking buff (especially after the latest patch). There are alternatives, but really nothing all that impressive. I also started specing Air instead of Fire because the crit and crit damage ultimately increased my damage more than 200 power.

Water line is all about support and condition management. Cleansing Fire becomes a 4 condition removal stun breaker that adds Regen and Vigor on a reasonable cool down with Cantrip Mastery. Sometimes I replace Mistform with a different utility, depends on what I am doing. Cleansing Water is pretty amazing. You can take a place like CM where the rogues spread a ton of bleeds and just clear them off en masse as needed. If it isn’t needed (such as you have a shout cleansing Warrior or Guardian) then the fields are still pretty nice for healing as you do pick up a decent chunk of +Healing just from specing down this line. Personally I love being practically immune to conditions with the amount of condition removal I have.

Arcane you got Elemental Attunement which helps stacking might or Regen (which again with Cleansing Water removes another condition). Sometimes I replace this with Renewing Stamina as it’s pretty good as well. Blasting Staff I find pretty darned useful more often than not. For doing Dynamic Events it just increases your tagging radius and for support just increases heal field sizes. Also with 20 in Arcane you rarely notice cool downs between attunements and boons last a good duration. After the Evasive Arcana nerf I haven’t been a huge fan of it. Most of our fields don’t last long enough to drop, swap to Earth and do a roll especially if you have to use your dodge for something else using up the timer. Most of the time that combo can just be reversed with starting in Earth and then swapping to say Fire/Water/Air for the combo. I like it for D/D, but staff it’s just been pretty lackluster in my experience.

Arcane Wave works wonderfully with staff. You can provide AOE Might, AOE Frost Aura, AOE Heals, AOE Swiftness or use other people’s fields to do a finisher all without having to waste time in Earth.

Gear wise I mostly use Berserker. I have plenty of defense in the form of heals and condition removal from the Water tree to afford full Berserker gear for offense. This gives me a fairly balanced outcome where I can be defensive and offensive at the same time while still providing support. I also have Emerald Jewelry for those times I know I am going to just have to deal with the hits for the extra toughness it provides without completely leaving me devoid of offense.

Works for me pretty well and the base lineup isn’t that far off what most Dagger spec’s are so if I want to D/D I can usually pull it off (but not having 30 in Arcane is kinda yikes especially after the boon nerfs).

I’ve always really wanted to not need to use the boring cantrips and be able to run 20 air with inscription trait, 3 glyphs, and the glyph heal in a 0/20/0/20/30 or 0/20/0/30/20 bunker build. Would be so much fun.

Alas, cantrips are stun breakers and glyphs aren’t. I’d drop soothing disruption and run 3 glyphs and inscription in a heartbeat otherwise. With boon duration runes the boon stacking would be glorious.

Minion of Vey.4398:

I’ve always really wanted to not need to use the boring cantrips and be able to run 20 air with inscription trait, 3 glyphs, and the glyph heal in a 0/20/0/20/30 or 0/20/0/30/20 bunker build. Would be so much fun.

Alas, cantrips are stun breakers and glyphs aren’t. I’d drop soothing disruption and run 3 glyphs and inscription in a heartbeat otherwise. With boon duration runes the boon stacking would be glorious.

Yeap. On Dungeon Fights where I don’t need Mist Form I usually throw on Glyph of Storms instead. Funny throwing down a Lava Font, Meteor Shower and Glyph of Storms all at once. I am pretty loathe to give up Cleansing Fire in any build however. It’s just so amazing.

Michael.3279:

I run a 0/0/10/30/30 Staff build with mostly PVT gear/Divinity runes and a few +healing power accessories.

PvE, sPvP, WvW… I can outlast pretty much anyone/anything 1v1 as well as bringing amazing utility to a group. I’ve dueled D/D Eles and win 8/10 fights.

I fail to see where the benefit is in D/D over staff… it might just be a min/max numbers thing, but on the actual field I never see it play out that way. Ride the Lightning is pretty boss, but as far as I can tell it’s pretty much the only advantage over staff… but being that I can catch runners with static field, etc… I’m not even sure it’s a benefit other than making an awesome reference to Metallica.

Any other Staff Eles out there? What are your experiences in relation to the D/D bandwagon? Does it really just come down to winning slightly quicker than a staff Ele? Why would a group EVER choose a D/D Ele over a Staff Ele in PvP OR PvE? I’m just blown away by the massive posts about D/D Ele and seemingly non-existent post regarding Staff Eles.

Discuss!

I’m playing a DD ele since release (when there were very very few out there) and I can tell you it’s the best roamer around, with thieves.

The nerf to RTL is very unwelcome and poorly done, they could have doubled my damage taken and I would accepted it better.

To me RTL is a spec definition, that makes DD unique, they shouldn’t have touched that…

Not everyone around is a class jumper bunker build 0-10-0-30-30, but if this is thread is an attempt to stop DD nerfs.. you’re welcome I’ll agree on everything you say. :-)

I don’t really understand why they nerfed RTL. I never considered it even slightly OP. Okay, it’s a tad OP in the new Spirit Watch PvP map… but that’s it.

Michael.3279:

I don’t really understand why they nerfed RTL. I never considered it even slightly OP. Okay, it’s a tad OP in the new Spirit Watch PvP map… but that’s it.

0/20/0/20/30 s/d or d/d with aeromancer’s alacrity if you are playing sustain

Razor.6392:

Saying that I won would be an understatement. The staff vs D/D matches were completely one sided and I didn’t even need to use my heal glyph (yes I use the glyph) because my HP was above 75% the entire time.

No surprise on this from me. I would completely expect that to happen 100% of the time if the two were even remotely close to the same level of ability.

On a side note, in W3 it should never never never be Staff or D/D. It should always be Staff and D/D. A good W3 player will use both interchangeably depending on activity. Roaming with a staff is about as useful as siege with daggers.