Guild Wars 2

Do you guys know of any comprehensive builds centered around this trait? I recently switched up from D/D as my main to Staff and ran across this trait and thought I give it a go.

Im having a BLAST (literally) with this trait taking advantage of all the combo fields the staff.

I normally use Arcane shield for one of my uti’s, so it kinda made sense to take arcane wave and the trait arcane energy. I also swap between between signet of restoration which takes advantage of arcane energy and ether renewal because of the cleanse, cant decide between these two.

I’ve only ran this build in PvE and WvW and i find Im near impossible to kill (triple AoE blast heals/might staking/frost armor etc). Tons of swiftness for kiting. Probably will try out some sPvP this weekend as I get more comfortable with my staff play.

Provided you have enough crit, Renewing Stamina (33% chance for vigor on crit) will give you more endurance than arcane energy. RS’s vigor buff lasts for 5 seconds and has no ICD so it stacks its duration very fast, it’s not uncommon for me to end a fight with 40 seconds of vigor running. The vigor will let you dodge twice as often fueling your Evasive Arcana.

Evasive Arcana bugged with earth attunement dodge roll.

Tooltip says it should cast churning earth but instead it casts an earthwuake with no knockdown for 300~ damage.

It does apply one stack of bleeding (and some cripple? Can’t remember).

Evasive Arcana bugged with earth attunement dodge roll.

Tooltip says it should cast churning earth but instead it casts an earthwuake with no knockdown for 300~ damage.

no, it casts a weaker version of churning earth. It does some damage, and puts up a single bleed stack (whereas the real CE skill puts up 8 stacks). The animation looks identical to CE except the spikes from the ground are slightly smaller, so I’m not quite sure how you could confuse it with earthquake (the two skill animations look nothing alike).

Personally I think they could buff the roll in earth to at least put up 2 or 3 stacks, but such is life…

It does apply one stack of bleeding (and some cripple? Can’t remember).

regular CE puts up multiple stacks of 1s cripple while it’s channeling. The rocks that pull inwards towards you while you channel do this. The closer the target is to you while you channel, the more cripple stacks they get (cripple stacks in duration). I think the max is 4seconds if the target is right on top of you when you start the channel, but don’t quote me on that

Also, the 4s of cripple isn’t that great all-in-all cause you easily waste 2-3 seconds of it while channeling the kitten skill. It’s only good if they’re trying to escape away from you (as it slows their escape), but often they’ll dodge roll out and then the cripple doesn’t matter. Lastly, I do not know off hand if the cripple effect occurs with the evasive arcana churning earth, although I imagine it does not as it does not have the channeling step.

Bsquared.3421:

no, it casts a weaker version of churning earth. It does some damage, and puts up a single bleed stack (whereas the real CE skill puts up. The animation looks identical to CE except the spikes from the ground are slightly smaller, so I’m not quite sure how you could confuse it with earthquake (the two skill animations look nothing alike).

No.

It casts Shockwave (you can even see it in the combat log – go test it on a dummy) which hits for about the damage that Shockwave hits for, and applies one stack of bleed (like Shockwave), but no immobilize. It doesn’t cast churning earth. The rockburst graphic is that of Churning Earth, but the spell that fires is not anything close.

Stating that it casts Earthquake was wrong, but no less wrong than claiming it casts Churning Earth, when it very clearly doesn’t, and takes 2 minutes to verify.

Additionally, the Air blind didn’t work on dummies when I tested it. I don’t know if that’s because they can’t attack (and are therefore effectively immune) or because it too is bugged. I never really noticed when I was pvp’ing and didn’t think to check ‘til I was testing to see if the earth dodge was really doing what it was supposed to do. Either way, I dropped the trait when I found that it wasn’t proccing Churning Earth, and possibly wasn’t proccing the blind from an Air dodge.

No.

It casts Shockwave (you can even see it in the combat log – go test it on a dummy) which hits for about the damage that Shockwave hits for, and applies one stack of bleed (like Shockwave), but no immobilize. It doesn’t cast churning earth. The rockburst graphic is that of Churning Earth, but the spell that fires is not anything close.

Fine, the combat log says “Shockwave.” But it’s AOE (like CE, not shockwave), does both direct damage and bleeding (both skills do this), and does not immobilize (like CE, not shockwave). I think the evasive arcana bleed duration IS 20s however, which is shockwaves duration (while CE is 8 seconds).

Effectively, it behaves like a small churning earth. Additionally, it looks exactly like a small churning earth.

Stating that it casts Earthquake was wrong, but no less wrong than claiming it casts Churning Earth, when it very clearly doesn’t, and takes 2 minutes to verify.

Again, my bad for not studying the combat log, but it behaves and looks exactly like Churning earth with fewer bleed stacks (and no cripple, due to no channeling effect as I explained). The tooltip for Evasive Arcana says “casts churning earth on dodgeroll” which it effectively does. In this sense, the tooltip is not wrong. If anything, the combat log is bugged, it responds far more like churning earth than shockwave (and it definitely responds more like CE than earthquake, which was the post I originally was correcting).

Outside of that, is there anything else I stated incorrectly in my post other than referring to the skill by something other than what the combat log references it as?

Also, I was disappointed like you Arc when I found out that Evasive Arcana didn’t use the full power CE when you roll. I figure Anet thought it would be overpowered to be able to chain two full power CE’s back-to-back via dodge-rolling, and I somewhat agree with them.

I still use it in the PvP build I’m playing around with, however, cause I also run 3 cantrips (mist, lightning flash, and cleansing fire) with 30 pts in water (with cantrips give regen/vigor, regen give condition clear, and cantrips 20% cooldown reduction, which is VERY disappointing cause the CD reduction doesn’t work with mist form). I also use the sigil of superior energy (50% endurance regen on attunement swap) on one of my daggers.

That means that between the endurance regen on attunement swap, and vigor on cantrips, I have a ridiculous amount of endurance at nearly all times and therefore have a seemingly endless supply of dodge-rolls. Because my damage isn’t that great, I rely on the extra damage and blast finishers from Evasive Arcana to pump out a couple extra bleeds/burns and even condition clear while in water. I don’t pump out a ton of damage, but I’m also very hard to catch/kill (I put 10 pts in Earth for toughness and Earth Shield at 50% health, and my master arcane trait is arcane shield at 25% health).

With near constant regen, 3 cantrips, lots of dodge rolls, and shields at 50 and 25% health, you’re tough to down, but you can’t really burst people either

It is shockwave with the animation of churning earth.

Its bugged, or the tooltip info is wrong.

From the tooltip you expect to get the final aoe from churning earth (not the cripple while channelling), with the full amount of bleeds.

If this was changed that would open up new condition damage builds for Ele.

It is shockwave with the animation of churning earth.

Its bugged, or the tooltip info is wrong.

It still hits AOE however, correct?

I’ll admit I haven’t tested it fully in a controlled environment, i’ll have to play around later with it, but my impression is that it did.

If it does hit AOE, then I don’t see a problem, it’s just a mini-CE and I wouldn’t consider it a bug. They should just change the tooltip to say a “smaller version of CE”. Being able to chain two full power Churning earths back-to-back would be tremendously overpowered (and/or getting one without the channel time every 10 seconds provided you have enough endurance). That thing hits like a truck and puts up 8 bleed stacks, there’s a reason it carries such a long cooldown on it’s own.

OP: it really depends which utilities you use and how offensive or defensive you want to be. For example, if running cantrips, put 30 points in water and pick cantrip traits (optionally also 10 points in fire for the cantrip might trait). If you like signets, 30 in earth works well. If you want to go more offensive, glyphs work well with Air, or you can go 30 fire and get pyro’s puissance for might stacking.

i’m running the 25% endurance gain on arcane / signet activation along with the vigor on crits and increased endurance while channeling with dagger/dagger. I pop my combo fields out, dodge roll once in fire, swap to water/air and doge roll, swap to earth and pop arcane wave + blast and then earthquake + churning earth.

Its a relatively complex combo but i can get 21 stacks of might in about 5 seconds to everyone around me when i do it. i havent used it much in PVP though so no comment there ):

Sigil of Energy on your weapon is actually really powerful if you roll a lot. Changing attunements counts as a weapon swap for sigils, yay. 9 sec internal cooldown though.

I love this build as a staff elementalist, but I’m a bit unsure what traits and gear to use with it for PvE (and I guess WvW).

My build is currently 30/10/0/0/30. The 30 into fire gets me Internal Fire (for more damage), Pyromancer’s Aclarity (which seems to allow my combos to line up better), and Pyromancer’s Puissance (which allows maintaining 20+ stacks of might even easier). The 10 into air gets me Zephyr’s Focus (which enables dodging more frequently, although I’m currently wondering if a Sigil of Energy would let me put 10 into water instead for Cleansing Wave.) . In arcane, I take Arcane Mastery (to allow more frequent use of Arcane Wave), Blasting Staff (for obvious reasons), and, of course, Evasive Arcana.

Utilities are currently Arcane Wave (as an additional combo finisher), and then Lightning Strike and Mist Form (as a sort of overkill survival strategy). Perhaps taking Arcane Shield instead of one of those two is smarter given that I have Arcane Mastery.

For gear though, I’m a bit unsure. My current thinking is that going straight Carrion for primary condition damage and secondary vitality and power is a good way to go. The rationale is that I already have +300 power from the 30 points into fire and lack condition damage as I have 0 points into earth. Condition damage seems to account for quite a lot of my damage output as I constantly cast Flame Blast and Churning Earth, plus I also cast these via dodging due to Evasive Arcana. (Maybe I actually cast Shockwave in earth as others have said above. It’s condition damage either way.)

As a final justification for Carrion gear, my thinking is that it’ll be useful if I do ever swap out the staff for S/D or D/D as I’ll be able to do good condition damage. I’ve completely given up crit though—I’m sitting at 8% as my only source is the 10 points into air—and I’m unsure if this is appropriate assuming the use of a staff. I also have nothing in terms of toughness, but maybe I don’t need it if every piece of gear + trinkets is giving me vitality.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated!

I am running 0/20/10/10/30 right now and it feels a bit overpowered.
My Traits are I and either III or X in Air, V in Earth, I in Water and V, either II, VI or VII and of course XI in Arcana.
With this setup and healing power gear, you are insanely sustainable through the permanent protection and massive amount of healing you get. At the same time, though, you have permanent swiftness, permanent fury and some might stacks, so both damage and mobility are pretty good, too.

All you have to do is open with the earth blast finisher, then switch to water to lay down an ice field. Now roll into that field, cast Arcane Wave inside it, move a bit, switch attunement and roll again. That will blast-finish the ice field 4 times, giving you and allies inside the blast Frost Aura, Fury, Swiftness and Protection for a pretty long time. In fact, you are able to permanently sustain Fury and Swiftness just by doing this. If you just remember to swap attunements, Arcana V will allow you to permanently keep Protection up, too. Remember, as if this wasn’t good enough just for you already, it also affects up to 5 dudes around you.

If you are running a dungeon, you can pick Glyph of Renewal and go with Arcana II instead of VI or VII. That will allow you to rez 3 people in moments where someone dropped the ball, also adding Protection, Fury, Swiftness and the projectile-reflecting Magnetic Aura upon their Revival.

If you are having a particularly easy time with a dungeon, you can take Blasting Staff for your middle Arcana trait, then use the 4 finisher combo on your Fire field. This will grant 12 stacks of might to your whole party – for 20 seconds. 3 out of your 4 finishers have a lower cool down than that, as does your fire field. Stacking might up this way will see your party just destroying anything that doesn’t kill them too fast.

In my opinion, an Evasive Arcana focused blast finisher build is about as good as you can get both in terms of versatility and strength if you want to support a team. On top of that, I find it hard to believe that any other build will prove better as a solo PvE solution. There might be better builds for filling a more offensive role in groups, though.