Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing an AoE DPS with Support using a Staff in level <40 areas with no problems and in fact I love playing it. Now I’m in level 50+ areas and I find myself alone 98% of the time. Support really doesn’t cut it at this point and single target damage is not very good either. Also, if I do find people, it seems like I’m always the focus of enemy attack and get killed too quickly despite running and dodging like crazy. Sure, I take aggro off other people, but why is it always me?

Anyways, I’m level 80 with level 80 armor, weapons, and most of the six accessory slots. I hear S/D is great, but I really don’t see any trait builds or tips on attunement combos or anything, just a bunch of people complaining about this class. Any useful builds, ideas, tips, or even a guide for people in Level 50+ zones who are level 80? Thanks all.

Steve Olson.5613:

Sure, I take aggro off other people, but why is it always me?

Because end game mobs know eles are free kills with a fairly low risk.

To answer your other question, experiment with Dagger-based builds, whether as MH or OH.

I carry a staff as well as my daggers, and just equip the staff if I end up going to a dungeon or something. No reason not to use both.

Scepter/Dagger has alot of CC in Air and Earth, use it. Also learn how to stack your might. Put at least 20 points into Arcane with Elemental Attunement and Vigor on Crit. Learn all your CDs and know when they will be recharged even when not in that attunement (mostly only applies to cds over 10-15seconds). Abuse the crap out of Ride the Lightning as a travel and escape tool. Glyph heal+Inscription+Quick Glyphs is really good, but not particular to S/D (can be used in any spec). Being a mid range set know when to be in close and when to keep your distance and how to keep distance while dpsing. Don’t overuse your “1” skills. Air 1 is good for tagging mobs, but Fire1/Water1 are both pretty terrible, Stone Shards is the only 1 with decent dps.

Fire 4-3-2 Earth 4-5 is the might stacker Shinobi is referring to. Arcane Wave can be added in there as well. Might increases both regular and condition damage, so it’s great to have. +Condition Damage in general is good as the might stack combo includes burning and bleeding.

I don’t have a lot of experience yet (only lvl 59) but I agree with the Shinobi. Fire 1 is only really good to apply burning, but you will get that from the other skills in Fire, so not a lot of reason to use it. Only Water 5 has condition removal built in (unless Phoenix, Fire 3 does to? can’t remember if it does or only applies Vigor) so you may want a utility like Cleansing Fire to help with condition removal if you don’t trait for it.

Wait, was staff for support? Gee, I’ve been using it for damage like an idiot. :P

No, seriously. I’ve been playing from 1 to 78 with staff. I only die 1-2 times while clearing a map. And I rarely see other people around. What do you mean “support”?
In PvE, you can kill an melee NPC before they even get close.
If there are more melee NPC’s, I tend to aggro a bunch and kill them all at the same time for extra copper/faster renowns/whatever. If there are ranged NPCs, well, earth → reflect works nicely. And ofcourse you can group them together by positioning yourself correctly. (E.g. “go behind a rock and have them all come stand at the corner. Then kill them with AoE”)

As a near-permanent staff wielder, I’ll admit that it can be tough to use a staff in non-group play.

The real trick behind it though, is to make use of the staff’s strenghts. And those are attunment switching and combo fields. When I finally got that trick (and it took me a while, I’ll admit), I suddenly got a lot better at beating foes.

For example, when opening combat, I cast an Eruption at my target’s feet while I run towards it. I then switch to Fire and cast a Lava Burst. This creates a combo field that gives me a stack of Might, and it deals a bucketload of damage to my target.

There are other examples, like Burning Retreat->Shockwave, or Frozen Ground->Stoning, but I think you get the picture.

The staff is all about combo fields and while it’s much easier to make such combo’s in group play, you can still pull off quite a few by yourself.

Steve Olson.5613:

it seems like I’m always the focus of enemy attack and get killed too quickly despite running and dodging like crazy. Sure, I take aggro off other people, but why is it always me?

I had that problem too, but I solved it by switching to defensive gear. While you deal less damage, you’re also less likely to pull aggro, and if you do, you can handle it better.

Another solution is Glyph of (Lesser) Elemental. The Earth version creates a pretty decent tank.

This is how I leveled up to 80. It works nicely up to ~65-70, but when you get to Orr, the mobs are just everywhere and they hurt. The earth elemental(s) are pretty good tanks tho. Anyways, Im still using this, going to change for S/D anytime soon tho.

The funny thing is, it looks like staff is designed to be the best aoe weapon, but D/D has better close range aoe damage and better heal than staff.
I tried to level with staff two times, made a few levels each time, but I felt so weak and fighting felt so boring, that I almost gave up on the Elementalist altogether. It feels to me, as if the weapon is only good when targeting max amount of people from as far away as possible, i.e. WvW combat.

I’m a personal fan of d/d with a staff on hand in case I really need the range or projectile reflection. Using the following combo I’ve seen up to 11 stacks of might solo: I’ll rush in with Ride the Lightning and then use Updraft to CC. Next, you’re in just about perfect distance for Burning Speed, follow it up with an instant Ring of Fire. At this point use Arcane Wave for some extra might (only if you want to use this utility). As fast as you can switch to earth and use Earthquake (which is a great CC) and follow that up with a Churning Earth. You can end the combo with a Ring of Earth for more aoe damage and another stack of bleed. At this point you can have 9-11 stacks of might (average is 9 and have seen 10-11 sometimes) and the mobs might be almost dead. (I spec 20/20/30 water/earth/arcane)

Imo, staff is for bosses that require range and don’t move very often which means a lot of aoe damage. Other than that, I find the animation speeds of the auto-attacks and such are far too long. This makes it a great weapon for WvW when attacking/defending a keep.