Guild Wars 2

As a lvl 80 ele with decked out exotics inc full exotic wpn sets focusing on power precision crit % dmg I’m wandering why people bother with other weapon sets besides the staff.

Staff seems to have the highest aoe dmg, highest single target dmg, highest consistent dps, highest delay burst, most utility and most combo fields.

Now I’ll ignore utility and combo fields since it is obvious staff excels in those areas but what a lot of people seem disagree with is that staff has the highest dps as well.

I’m only taking about dungeons here, not soloing out in the world etc…

The reason why dps with the staff is so high is because staff is the only weapon that allows for multiple stack able attacks simultaneously i.e Meteor shower + Lava font up while auto attacking.

I’m going to leave burning and elemental storm aside because all weapons allows for them. However, as you can see staff greatly outperforms other weapons because with all other weapons you can really only use one skill at a time, there is no attacks that repeatedly occur while you are allowed to auto attack like you can with the staff.

Basically what I’m seeing on my screen with a staff in CoF or any other dungeon is something like,

4.5k Meteor shower ticks with 600 Elemental storm ticks with 3.8k Lava front with bursts with flame burst burning ticks with greater fire elemental attacks and my own auto attacks, added together gives roughly somewhat almost 12k dmg if everything crits (52% crit rate 82% crit dmg).

While the fire skills are on CD, switch to earth for eruption + shock wave and put up magnetic field then run into projectiles for added dps, switch over to air and put up static field for the combo field and shoot a lightning surge, switch to water to heal up then back to fire and repeat.

Or simply stay fire and continue Lava font, flame burst & auto attack until meteor shower etc… is off CD

From what I see staff is superior in all aspects and theres no need to use any other weapon combos in group PvE.

i think everybody knows that elementalists’ AOE is amazing. but you said so yourself: you’re only talking about dungeons. dungeons are a highly situational component of the game.

if you were soloing in cursed shore about 2.5 weeks ago, you would’ve known why nobody would solo with a staff. with a pure glass-cannon build like that, each fight against trash mobs would’ve been a struggle for life.

now let’s take, for example, earth element power/toughness/vitality 0/0/30/15/25 dual dagger elementalist instead. you can still crit churning earth for 4.5k damage + another 4.5k bleeding. your fire’s 5 ability is instant and can hit for almost 4k damage. your fire and earth autos still deal 900 damage a pop, you’ve got 3 range closers and 2 knockdowns as well as a snare, you have much more chances to inflict burning and bleeding on opponents…. and with a far less squishy build, i can oftentimes take 20 autoattack hits before i’m downed. how many can you take? 6? 7? i haven’t been killed by a non-champion mob for over week (when i don’t AFK in a stupid place, at least).

however, i agree with the intention of your post: full berserker’s staff elementalist is VERY dangerous when given the chance to shine… except the chance isn’t given in the majority of situations.

I’m only talking about group pve and dungeons since I don’t solo pve content, didn’t buy an mmo game to play alone.

I know staff isn’t good solo but in any group situation its far superior than any other weapon combinations aoe or not, in addition, the indirect survivability bonus of not needing to go close to an opponent greatly out favors all other weapon combinations.

Bleeding damage can be stacked by other members of the group, burning can be kept up 24/7 with a staff, thats pretty much all the conditional dmg an ele has so I greatly favor direct dmg over conditional.

to each his own, then i suppose. i personally find that working in groups severely limits my options.

actually, survivability as scepter/focus rivals that if not surpasses that of staff (but damage output vs. trash mobs is even worse), but i get your point. for the game’s inherently squishiest class, it’s not always a good idea to get in your opponent’s face.

Interesting break downs here, and I don’t disagree. But there is one reason I rarely use staff (unless I need the range for a boss or something): The auto attack is rather slow. Sure IF you land all your aoes then your damage is just crazy, but mobs don’t really stand still.

Sure you can make the areas bigger, which is really great actually, but again, most mobs come at you with melee attacks and move from the aoes. I find myself doing much less damage with staff in almost all pve situations.

I favor dagger/dagger for several reasons. 1) The auto attacks are pretty quick 2) Lots of condition damage from burning and bleeding and you can stack it fast 3) Really good melee range CC 4) non-target area skills.

For group things, as you’re only talking about that, I still favor d/d because I can dash in and instantly hit the mobs with an aoe and they can’t dodge or run out of it. With staff I could place Lava Front up but it only hits the mobs 1-2 times before they move out of it. Plus, most of the dagger skills are aoe anyway so you can be stacking bleed and burning as well as auto-attacking at a much faster rate than with staff.

I don’t disagree that staff can be good, but I just don’t prefer it. Though, each person plays differently and that’s very much part of our differences. I don’t think any one weapon can out perform another, it’s just the matter of how you use it.

Usually in group pve you kite a circle around the mob/boss rather than kiting back in a straight line so everyone’s aoe hits.

I find that with my arcane shield and evasive maneuvers + burning retreat is enough to keep my alive if I’ve done that particular boss before and remember all his/her skill animations.

Although there are some highly mobile bosses around which you may favor D/D, S/D however requires just as less movement from mob/bosses as staff. Also don’t forget that staff aoe radius (meteor shower in particular has enormous range) your allies or you can slow/root the mob/boss while in the radius of your aoe attacks and most of them will hit without much trouble.

Dragon’s tooth is your primary damage and that skill takes forever to land, burning touch is absolutely a pain in thekitten because there is no range indicator in this game and whether you are too far or not, pushing it will activate it regardless, your toon does not run into range to cast it. In addition, trying to cast that on a moving target is quite difficult as you’d have to predict the mob’s movement, run in front of it, then cast it for it to successfully hit.

D/D’s terrible range makes your dps insanely inconsistent as you are constantly having to be in minimal range of mobs/boss and whats worse is that when you are casting a channel skill, you cannot do anything else simultaneously thusly reducing your dps significantly.
I think it is important to remember that for every second you cannot be in range of the mob/boss you are losing out on dps using D/D which is actually quite a significant amount.
The staff’s auto attack is slower but it is aoe and it hits a lot harder than the auto attacks of dagger and sceptre which balances it out, in addition, staff has the most range.

With good level 80 year and magic find/power food, staff is optimal because:

A) All of the CD’s are low, so you never have any considerable downtime (like you do with Flame Grasp, Churning Earth, etc).

B) With good gear you’ll kill regular 80 mobs in CS very, very quickly.

C) Between Magnetic Aura, two slows, a snare, a KB, an AoE stun and blind and an extra dodge, you have more than enough survival skills in any attunement if you get a few extra mobs on you. Melee’s should never be a problem and you can burst ranged mobs way faster than they can kill you.

I’m not sure about dungeons, but there’s really no disadvantage to roaming with a staff outside of our professions general weakness in PvE.

Could somebody please explain to me why so many people seem to think that staff/fire is the way to go? Almost every ele I meet in dungeons uses that, eventhough staff/earth can sustain more than twice its DPS just by spamming Eruption. That’s more than 10k AoE per cast on a 4.75 second cooldown (traited). On top of that, staff/fire is only 1/3 condition damage, which is by far the lowest percentage among the weapon combinations I calculated (staff, D/D, S/D). If you want to go fire and actually get something out of your condition damage stat, use either D/D or S/D…

Really, do the math guys; Meteor Shower looks fancy but does very little damage on a really long cooldown; Fireball and Lava Font are both really low damage on a really small area. Burning retreat is not even worth mentioning. Flame Burst is the only staff/fire spell that does decent damage, and that’s less than half of what a single Eruption does, on an 8 second cooldown.

Disclaimer: this only applies to dungeons; I couldn’t care less about PvP, and mobs don’t remove conditions or move out of Eruption.

Oh, forgot to mention: sure you could go power / crit chance / crit damage to get more out of fire/staff like the OP suggests (which I still think provides way lower DPS than staff/earth, btw), but in most dungeons you would also need to survive in order to do damage. With a condition build, all you need is condition damage; you don’t even need power, since it only affects direct damage (as far as I understand it; please correct me if I’m wrong on this one).

Sadly there is no vitality / toughness / condition damage set in the game it seems, so I’m using power / vitality / condition damage, with runes that boost bleed duration (which seems to be broken btw, you only get one extra tick for every 15 “percentages” of bleed duration on Eruption, and even less on other bleeds). Oh well, I get 300 toughness from the earth trait line and vitality seems to give more survivability anyway. People say eles are squishy, but at least in my dungeon runs I’m usually the one who survives longest.

Staff earth can’t even get up to 25 stacks of bleed so I really don’t see how you are going to out dps any other class that can stack 25 stacks of bleed and sustain it.

I also fail to see how eruption can out dps Fireball + Lava Font + burning + Meteor Shower whenever its up, earth is just bleeding…

@Jaedenaar,
Maxing fire grants you 300 Power, you might want to retrait next time you’re trying out Fire.

Lava Font + Fireball + Flame Burst is definitely the highest sustained damage that a Staff Ele can bring if you’ve got the full trait/gear loadouts for each set (go check in the HotM)

traiting 30 into fire enables you to get Pyromancer Puissance (getting 5 secs of Might every time you use a fire skill)

and I think surviving longest in dungeons involves —not getting hit-- (i.e. dodge, shield) more than toughening up (with 300 extra toughness) so u can withstand more hits

But staff doesnt let me trigger 3 combo’s with myself in under 7 seconds ;__;
How am I meant to give my team 12 stacks of might with a staff?

wertyuio.8630:

now let’s take, for example, earth element power/toughness/vitality 0/0/30/15/25 dual dagger elementalist instead. you can still crit churning earth for 4.5k damage + another 4.5k bleeding. your fire’s 5 ability is instant and can hit for almost 4k damage. your fire and earth autos still deal 900 damage a pop, you’ve got 3 range closers and 2 knockdowns as well as a snare, you have much more chances to inflict burning and bleeding on opponents…. and with a far less squishy build, i can oftentimes take 20 autoattack hits before i’m downed. how many can you take? 6? 7? i haven’t been killed by a non-champion mob for over week (when i don’t AFK in a stupid place, at least).

I like your build. Can you link what kind of Major Traits you took?

Also, how do you afford to do the super slow churning earth? Don’t you stand still and get hit while you do that channeling move?

rias.6872:

wertyuio.8630:

now let’s take, for example, earth element power/toughness/vitality 0/0/30/15/25 dual dagger elementalist instead. you can still crit churning earth for 4.5k damage + another 4.5k bleeding. your fire’s 5 ability is instant and can hit for almost 4k damage. your fire and earth autos still deal 900 damage a pop, you’ve got 3 range closers and 2 knockdowns as well as a snare, you have much more chances to inflict burning and bleeding on opponents…. and with a far less squishy build, i can oftentimes take 20 autoattack hits before i’m downed. how many can you take? 6? 7? i haven’t been killed by a non-champion mob for over week (when i don’t AFK in a stupid place, at least).

I like your build. Can you link what kind of Major Traits you took?

Also, how do you afford to do the super slow churning earth? Don’t you stand still and get hit while you do that channeling move?

I use a similar, but more widespread build. However, I tried a D/D 30 earth build before, and in regardless to channeling churning.
1. learn its max range and try and stand far away
2. Arcane shield is your friend.
3. With the bonus 300 toughness, and if you get it, the toughness while channeling trait, you can tank long enough to drop the churning.

Zenyatoo.4059:

I use a similar, but more widespread build. However, I tried a D/D 30 earth build before, and in regardless to channeling churning.
1. learn its max range and try and stand far away
2. Arcane shield is your friend.
3. With the bonus 300 toughness, and if you get it, the toughness while channeling trait, you can tank long enough to drop the churning.

What kind of gear do you use for 30 Earth? Condition + ? + ?

Toughness, condition damage, vitality if you can find it. At least that’s what I used. It was heavily based around surviving and bleeding things out. It worked fine in PvE simply because churning was more than enough to wipe groups of monsters quickly without needing power/precision. But in dungeons I really wanted the toughness/vit to survive.

I ditched it in the end for something that actually turned out to have a bit more utility regarding survival and team effort.

> KOTOKO:
> Staff earth can’t even get up to 25 stacks of bleed

6 stacks per cast, 4.75 second cooldown, 5 second extended duration from traits and runes… I can hit 24 quite easily, and shockwave can add the missing one. Doesn’t make much difference anyway since damage should be calculated as “total damage per cast”; hitting maximum stacks just limits your dps.

> I also fail to see how eruption can out dps Fireball
> + Lava Font + burning + Meteor Shower whenever its
> up, earth is just bleeding…

My eruption does 15k damage; I can cast two of them in 10 seconds. In Orr, I only need to cast one, it’s enough to kill a level 80 mob without auto-attack. Takes a while, but that’s one spell, one cast. And I have base attack and Shockwave.

Your Meteor Shower has a 24 second cooldown and it hits like kitten; like 1000 damage per rock. I once used it on a mob and mob didn’t even agro cause none of the rocks hit. In WvW I don’t even move out of it because I know it doesn’t hurt.

Fireball has base damage of around 600-800; with generous precision and crit damage, I accept 10k over 10 seconds. Lava Font you can use twice in 10 seconds, maybe 3-4k each cast. Both spells have a hideously small 120 radius; mobs need to be stacked on top of each other for you to hit more than 1-2 at a time; while eruption has 240, or 300 (traited) radius.

> TannerMS:
> Maxing fire grants you 300 Power, you might want to retrait next time you’re trying out Fire.

I’m specced 30/5/30/5/0, so I am fully aware of that, and I also had this spec while testing a power / precision / crit damage item set today with staff/fire. I was not impressed. That said, apart from an exotic staff, all my gear is green so there might be scaling involved; however, difference between green and exotic gear is only about 20%, which does not seem like anywhere near enough to change the numbers in fire’s favor, especially considering it has no room for defence.

> pandaqueen:
> traiting 30 into fire enables you to get Pyromancer Puissance

I would like to see some numbers on how much dps this trait adds; so far it seems extremely low (considering I have it).

As for surviving in dungeons, I also have vitality in every piece of gear I have; an advantage which a crit build can’t have btw since they have to stack 3 dps stats instead of just one. Unfortunately the game does not have a set with just vitality / toughness / condition damage, so I’m forced to go with power / vitality / condition damage. Yes it annoys me.

The way I see it, fire should be doing nearly twice as much dps as earth for this reason alone: you can’t stack defence stats if you use a crit build, without seeing a massive drop in your dps. Earth loses maybe 5-10% overall dps for going full defence, depending on the weapon you use.

Um my meteor shower rock does 5k crits so 3 rocks and I already out dps your entire eruption including the full tick duration lol… Lava Font does 3k crits and ticks very quick, fireball does about 3.5k crits.

I think you are under geared or something if your meteor shower’s rocks are only doing 1k per rock.

Conditional dmg cannot crit thus renders precision useless, on top of that, I don’t think power adds any dps to conditional dmg either so you are trying to say that Conditional dmg alone can out dps Precision Crit dmg Power stacked glass cannon.

In addition to that, when you are soloing you can stack bleeds to 25 which maximizes your dps but in a group, any other class who also has bleeds is directly losing out on dps due to stacks already been at max (25) which is another reason why I don’t like conditional dmg.

I’m kinda confused why people are comparing earth and fire by themselves, as if they stand alone and can’t be combined.

My “typical” dungeon attack chain might be something like Fire: Lava Font, Flame Burst, Meteor Shower, Lava Font -> Air: Static (for vuln stacks if you have projectile finishers) -> Earth: Eruption, Glyph of Storms, Unsteady, Eruption -> Water: Geysyer or Healing rain combo the last eruption, Frozen Ground, Ice Spike -> Fire: repeat, meteor shower should be ready again (or a few seconds off).

If your group doesn’t need healing or mitigation from chill you can skip water and combo field with lava font instead for might.

> KOTOKO:
> so 3 rocks and I already out dps your entire eruption

It seems rare to hit the same target even twice per meteor storm, and the impact radius is fairly small. Also, since you still have that 24 second CD, I doubt this spell affects your overall dps all that much.

> Lava Font does 3k crits and ticks very quick, fireball does about 3.5k crits.

What about base damage? What are your crit chance / crit damage? You won’t crit every time. Still, with numbers like that, fire begins to look much better… it would be nice to know how you got such numbers.

> I think you are under geared or something if your
> meteor shower’s rocks are only doing 1k per rock.

It is from tooltip; but then again, so is my Eruption damage. In game, I see a constant stream of 105’s flowing from the mob’s head, perhaps as often as 3-4 per second (with one Eruption cast, that is); that would also mean much, much higher damage than what the tooltip actually says. How many fireballs do you need to kill a level 80 mob in Orr?

Like I said, I wear all-green gear, except for exotic staff. Considering how much damage I can do with this gear, I wonder what I could do with gear like yours.

I guess here you also have an answer to your own, original question: people might be using other weapon sets because at their gear level they out-perform staff/fire – like staff/earth clearly does at my gear level. I would imagine full exotic set is not common yet.

> in a group, any other class who also has bleeds is
> directly losing out on dps due to stacks already
> been at max (25)

That might be a valid argument; I don’t actually know how many classes stack bleeds, whether they stack them on single target or AoE, how much of their dps comes from bleeds, and how easily they can reach 25 stacks. Some classes might also use fire, but I suppose it’s less common than bleed.

> Morthis:
> I’m kinda confused why people are comparing earth and
> fire by themselves, as if they stand alone and can’t
> be combined.

I’m sure we all swap from time to time, as needed – but if one spec does a lot more dps than another, the cooldown for switching elements can also become a dps loss if you don’t have enough heavy-hitters in other elements (air, water… ouch).

Shhhhhh we don’t want them to nerf staff.

Might
0.375 * Level + 5 = Power/Condition Damage per stack
i.e. at level 80, Might gives 35 power and 35 cond damage per stack

with my current gear setup and Pyromancer Puissance, I can get up to 15 stacks of might solo using staff (I have sigil of battle -might on attunement swapping- and rune of fire -longer might duration-)

you keep saying how it is rare for meteor shower to hit on same mob several times, it is also rare for eruption to keep hitting same mob in a row without them moving out of it

I did some more testing with a full power/precision/crit set and the 30 fire/30 air spec; exact same item levels as my condition damage set, exotic staff and otherwise all-greens. Here are my findings, in case anyone is interested.

I got about 2100 power, 50% crit chance and 90% crit damage (+50% base) from the set. In testing, base damage from Fireball and one tick of Lava Font was about 1000, while crits were around 2400, so average damage was 1700 (including Pyromancer’s Puissance stacking). (Oh and, btw, meteor shower was also hitting for the same damage – 1000 base, 2500 crit.)

18 × 1700 = 30.600 over 10 seconds (10 x Fireball + 2 x Lava Font)

On the other hand, the drop in condition damage was massive with this set/spec; Eruption went from 9.5k, to something like 3.5k. Flame Burst also dropped somewhere around 2k. So not counting Meteor Shower, or Shockwave (both with long cooldowns), that’s about 32-33k, mostly single target (imo) because of the small impact radius. And you’ll be permanently tied to staff/fire, because all other weapons/elements are like 60%-80% condition damage.

I figured out how game shows DoT damage; one number per stack per second. So Eruption is doing, with my condition set/spec:

951 + (20s x 6 stacks x 105) = 13.551 (little less than my earlier estimate, yes I know)

Two of those and maybe 4-5k from Stoning adds up to about the same as fire, but AoE area is much larger. Then again, at higher gear levels fire will scale better (3 stats vs. 1).

Needless to say, my survivability dropped like a rock. But it wasn’t just about stats; I noticed in a large event that the mobs were sticking to me like glue. They obviously did not like the crits. With DoTs, they hardly even notice me since damage is applied slowly.

This concludes my theorycrafting session for now; my next project is to level a ranger and compare their damage output to ours, since people say our dps is low.

I mostly agree the staff is the kitten, theory crafting aside. Since hitting 80 and mostly running DE and dungeons, I find the higher base damage of the staff to be more useful.

I’ll usually start off a dungeon fight in earth to bring out my elemental, switch to fire to throw out some damage, and then to water to heal up the melee, then just switch between fire/water as I can. The staff’s #1 heal is pretty awesome, even if the damage is meaningless. If I find myself doing a lot of kiting, air’s speed boost and stun is very helpful.

For DE, I’ll switch between fire and air depending on whether I want single target or multi-target damage. I always had trouble getting golds with the scepter. It appears that bleeds (and even burns) do not stack across players, dramatically limiting DPS output of condition builds. With the higher base damage and power, I always get golds with the staff.

FYI, I run a 20/20/30/0/0 build with the cleric set.

But for solo leveling I preferred a S/D setup with condition damage gear. Stacking bleeds was trivially easy with a scepter, and mobs health just melted away.

First off I’d like to say I prefer starting in earth with Eruption, running in with magnetic aura to lava font and arcane wave before backing off to continue the other jazz it fires off 6 might stacks on your team which gives 20% more damage stat-wise (210 power and condi damage!)

It sucks, because you can’t use Superior Sigil of Battle for a free 6 extra might stack (yes it works on attunement-swap, inb4 battle sigils inflate more) AND stack luck at the same time or your choice of other sigil like bloodlust which gives 10%.

Also, scepter/focus combo can maintain 12 stacks of might on your whole party with just your own blast finishers (flamewall → tooth+phoenix → comet → magnetic wave not even including arcane wave!) if your team happens to lack in that department (bear in mind at 25 stacks, 875 power AND condi damage increases your team’s efficiency in killing by 50% if they only do damage with power or condi or 100% with both!). Sure a staff guardian can do it too but he needs to stop and channel it plus he’s better off doing whammoing on the mobs.

Scepter/focus also pretty much guarantuees you keep your 25 stacks with the invulnerability/swirling winds, not to meantion a 24 recharge on swirling winds when traited pretty much shuts down everything in the game since it seems EVERYTHING in gw2 is counted as projectile be it malronna’s kitten to giganticus lupicus’ splats. It’s so strong you can even solo kudu’s second golem in CoE SM since you have so much left-over dodge (okay it that will take ages but you get the picture).

It also puts out more defiant removal than gale (gale also sucks when it knocks things out of the way sometimes) alone if the boss tends to just sit there and not walk into static field.

Finally, scepter offers very short cast times especially which gives you so much sustain in combination with signet of resto and the focus off-hand you pretty much feel like a god even with MF gear in explorable modes.

So overall scepter/focus will carry the day in PuGs with massive defenses to bandage up mistakes but really, staff is as much the ‘optimal’ choice as saying a guardian is useless since all HE does is makes creates rooms for mistakes since an optimal team can just dodge everything themselves and do things perfectly etc, see what I did there?

Jaedenaar.4197:

This concludes my theorycrafting session for now; my next project is to level a ranger and compare their damage output to ours, since people say our dps is low.

On a single target, it doesn’t compare. My polar bear (just a quick hop to the Norn capital, southern shore of the western lake) holds aggro fine, allowing me to stack Bleed with shortbow’s auto-attack. If I get aggro, cripple (4) buys the bear time to regain threat. Then there’s always the quick stun/daze (5) on hand… and if they make it to your face, there’s always the dodge/swiftness attack (3).

Never was well geared, never had a problem, and usually didn’t even need to dodge before they’d die.

(…kind of amusing how simple the chain is, compared to all the talk about combos and different spells. Ranger just auto-attacks, and occasionally pushes a button.)

20/10/0/10/30

The best build for dungeons that I’ve used/seen and it is staff. Credit to Ephox on Guild Wars 2 guru. Staff also provides the longest range in dungeons which can be helpful sometimes (but it’s not helpful for this build because you need to dodge into your fire fields)

10 points in fire for 10% damage, another 10 for 20% CD.
10 points in air for quick glyphs
10 in water for either 20% CD or condition removal (I prefer the latter).
30 in arcane for 33% chance for vigor on crit, bigger staff aoe for easier dodging procs and evasive arcana for dodge procs.

Skills are Elemental (elite, dps + fire blast finishers for AOE might), heal glyph and arcane wave standard. Other two slots use either lesser elemental (fire, more blast finishers for more AOE might), storms (AOE damage), elemental power (single target dps) or Mist Form if you need an oh s*** button (at least I prefer Mist Form). If I am not in danger of dying and can go all out I use both fire elementals and either elemental power (single target/max range) or storms (large hitboxes/AOE), otherwise I use either storms or elemental power and Mist Form.

Here is a pic of my stats. I also have 49% crit damage (50% with d/d) and 396 healing (goal was ~400). I use berserker gear with berserker staff and soldier crests. defender backpack with soldier crest, berserker amulet and sapphire rings (cleric) with two ruby jewels. I think my stats are right where I want them to fulfill any role (i.e. staff dungeon as this or a D/D waterang/aura sharing/signet build).

Use a fire sigil, does a nice fire AOE that scales with your attack (which should be over 1850 for fire sigil). There’s a reason they are $$ compared to the other sigils.

http://i49.tinypic.com/2462anr.jpg

With this setup you can EASILY get 15 stacks of AOE might on your party and if your elementals are using their blasts and your team is blasting too then it is pretty routine to have 25 might stacks on the entire party throughout the encounter. On top of that you also have water/ice fields for some support (e.g. water 4 + Arcane Wave or dodge for AOE frost armor) but you’ll spend most of your time in fire stacking AOE might.

Air and Earth in this build are for kiting. The build provides a lot of buffs and group support (mostly group damage increase) while still being able to DPS. Fire Staff 1 also does splash, trash goes down really fast. 1 stack of might is 35 power and 35 condition damage, so 25 stacks adds 875 power and condition damage to each member, over five party members the it adds 4,375 power and condition damage to the party.

How it works:

The key to the build is borderline abusing evasive arcana because you get the blast finisher even if the blast itself is still on CD (i.e. if you dodge into a lava font as fire you’ll do a flame blast + AOE might, dodge again and you won’t do the blast but you still get the AOE might). Auto attack in fire with staff 1. Lay down lava font. Dodge into lava font fire field then trigger Arcane Wave for six stacks of AOE might and two AOEs (arcana flame blast + arcane wave AOE). Use either staff 4 or walk backwards while flinging fireballs to proc vigor. With a modest crit rate you’ll have vigor up almost all the time and coupled with 20% faster fire CD you’ll always have enough endurance to dodge when your font is off CD.

TLDR Version:
33% change to proc vigor on crit coupled with Evasive Arcana and 20% CD on fire spells and arcane wave will allow you to dodge into lava font fire fields for three stacks of might plus three more from arcane wave as soon as the lava font CD is up leads to group stacking might to the ceiling and easy winning. You can get 15 stacks of persistent AOE might on the group with little effort and should routinely have 25 stacks on the whole party for trash melting fun times.

Ephox 20/10/0/10/30 build also doesn’t require a lot of ridiculous stance dancing and an exacting skill chain to get like 12 stacks of might on yourself (i’m looking at you, S/D). You can get 15 stacks on EVERYONE NEAR YOU (including your fire elementals) with two weapon skills a utility skill and dodging, without ever having to leave fire. So much easier and so much more benefit to the party. IMO elementalist are bad at a lot of things compared to other classes (e.g. burst damage) and are the squishiest class so I prefer making up for that with AOE might and large ice/water fields, especially the epic Frozen Ground (plus Arcane Wave to buff allies with AOE frost armor).

I’ve tried different builds and weapons setups and for dungeons it’s staff + Ephox build for life (or until it gets changed/nerfed) for this Asaru!

Ego contest.

Anyways, S/D and D/D does fine, for scepter you just have to lead your targets a bit and it’s sometimes a bit trickier to aim. D/D does better single target damage than staff on moving targets (which most of the time this is the case). It’s just more risky, you have to know what you’re doing.

But use whatever you enjoy or gets the job done. Dungeons are easy enough it really doesn’t make a whole lot of difference what you use.

Fight a thief while using a staff and tell us how it goes.

Oh you mean PvE….uh…spam buttons…/win?

Still think that S/D and D/D are much better over all. Staff only really shines with AoE/group support. DPS wise, other weapons sets blow it out of the water if played/specced right.

fixit.7189:

Fight a thief while using a staff and tell us how it goes.

Oh you mean PvE….uh…spam buttons…/win?

Still think that S/D and D/D are much better over all. Staff only really shines with AoE/group support. DPS wise, other weapons sets blow it out of the water if played/specced right.

I fight thieves all the time on my Ele in sPVP as a staff. The only real problem so far I have is when they catch me off-guard and get a chance to unload their burst. Glass-cannon thieves are like premature ejaculators imo. Once they unload their burst, they’re not that hard.

Since we’re usually fighting on a cap point, I just spam fire font in the cap point once I dodge out of the way and it hits them even if they’re in stealth. I have so many AoEs, I dont care that I miss with one fire font.

I run a condition toughness build btw with staff.

You will get owned against any good thief with staff. If you’re not having troubles then you’re facing reaaaaally bad thieves. Staff is horrible at dueling.

Kuthos.9623:

You will get owned against any good thief with staff. If you’re not having troubles then you’re facing reaaaaally bad thieves. Staff is horrible at dueling.

I duel all the time with staff… I don’t know what you guys are talking about. But I guess I’m only like lvl 14 in sPVP.

Kuthos.9623:

You will get owned against any good thief with staff. If you’re not having troubles then you’re facing reaaaaally bad thieves. Staff is horrible at dueling.

Huh… What?

In PvP I mostly run Scepter/Dagger – but for giggles, I sometimes spec full bunker staff – let me tell you, it’s probably the most OP combo elementalists have at the moment.

Nothing at all will kill you in a 1v1 – and still difficult to die in a 1v2, unless your enemies really know what they are doing and prevent you from comboing your water fields.
And although your DPS will be crap – it can be quite sustained and will creep up on your enemies slowly but surely.

Burst classes/builds in particular (aka thieves) have absolutely no chance against a bunker staff ele.

KOTOKO.5107:

The staff’s auto attack is slower but it is aoe and it hits a lot harder than the auto attacks of dagger and sceptre which balances it out

Lightning Whip dps is approximately 75% higher than Fireball dps.

Sharpe.1485:

Kuthos.9623:

You will get owned against any good thief with staff. If you’re not having troubles then you’re facing reaaaaally bad thieves. Staff is horrible at dueling.

Huh… What?

In PvP I mostly run Scepter/Dagger – but for giggles, I sometimes spec full bunker staff – let me tell you, it’s probably the most OP combo elementalists have at the moment.

Nothing at all will kill you in a 1v1 – and still difficult to die in a 1v2, unless your enemies really know what they are doing and prevent you from comboing your water fields.
And although your DPS will be crap – it can be quite sustained and will creep up on your enemies slowly but surely.

Burst classes/builds in particular (aka thieves) have absolutely no chance against a bunker staff ele.

Yeah, I don’t know how Kuthos plays but I wouldn’t be PVPing as a Staff Ele if I got my kitten handed to me all the time. Frankly, the only real trouble I have is against shatter mesmers (kitten they hurt).

My condition/toughness Ele has done pretty well so far. Bunkers are great for holding cap points but I could never kill kitten in pvp with it. If I had an 1v1’s, it’d last forever. Felt more like a war of attrition.

I did say good thief. Not the face button mashing ones that slam their head on the 2 key.

Does it really matter?

I am a stance dancer by nature and D/D has yet to fail me. I have yet to feel squishy on ele in this weapon set. I melee whatever I want I rarely get downed. I respect any ele who uses a staff or S/D well but I don’t need to stroke my ego by saying D/D is better. It just so happens I play it better I can’t see what matters past that.

Elementalist is my only level 80 and the damage seems fine usually because I have nothing to compare it with. However, recently I did some testing, and the staff ele really does do poor damage compared to other classes.

I saw a videos of warrior/guardian and warrior/necro duoing AC so I went in and tried to solo it just to see. I could beat the big spider, could beat the big pack of gravelings in the hall only by splitting them up and having some de-agro so that I could fight only a couple at a time. Could beat kohler with great patience and care. Got to the burrows and of course by the time I finished the first burrow, the second had spawned a huge pile of guys on my npc.

I could see it wasn’t going to happen, so I bought full power/precision/crit dmg gear and tried again, but was completely underwhelmed by the damage; I was no closer to beating the burrows. The warriors in the previously mentioned vids did twice my dps. Not saying they could have soloed the burrows; just saying they had twice my berzerker gear dps; I stowed that gear in my bank.

Went to pvp battlegrounds with my baby warrior and elementalist to test and the warrior could beat chieftain utahein in 22 seconds with my warrior. I think my ele took about 40 seconds with both elementals up. And I suck really bad with the warrior as I’ve only played it to level 10. I’m super good with the ele: I can solo the group of 5 ghosty NPCs in the training ground, on their spawn point without pulling them; killing the adds as they respawn on me, until I very very slowly finish the lord.

Bottom line: ele good utility, bad damage. Bad damage, regardless of loot, traits, or might stacks, compared to a warrior or rogue.

Staff is good for WvW and if you want to have a few more combo fields, but once you learn to move around you’ll find it really is not that great unless you want range.

Even S/D seems somewhat underpowered to D/D. Sure, you have limited range, but tons of mobility if played right. Go 0/10/0/30/30 and take the right traits…add the right runes to armor and weapons and you would be amazed that you can almost indefintely sustain 10x+ might and swiftness. Add the fact that every 30 seconds you have 20 seconds of rage on top of that and almost indefinate regneration D/D is quite viable. The DPS is no less than the staff, it just comes in quicker intervals at smaller numbers.

If you switch to fire, Burning Speed, Arcane Blast, roll, Ring of Fire, swicth to earth, roll(evausive arcana), Earth Quake, Chruning Earth(using teleport at the last second to get the hit), go to Water, Frosy Aura, go back to Fire, Burning Speed and Ring of Fire, switch to Lighting, Shocking Aura, go back to Earth…you get my point. At any point you need to heal Cleansing Wave and Cone of Cold work nicely, and if you spec right you should have constant regen anyways and 3 ways to remove conditions without ever having to use a cantrip You can’t just get this array of quick DPS with a staff, although you can get close with slower but larger AoE. I find that AoE though, is not always the way to go, it really is situational.

Class is defintely OP though…

Doing that in any sequence as long as you keep swapping and rolling/arcane wave for blast finshers by yourself you can keep most of your boons up. Of course, you need specific runes in both weapons and armor and specific traits to make this work.