Guild Wars 2

I don’t think I’ve ever posted on here, but I’ve played casually since the beginning. PVP’s about all I play any game for, so my primary goal is to 1.) have fun and 2.) be viable. Sadly, that makes playing as an Ele a sad life. As you can imagine, I often switch over to my necro or my warrior.

BUT, I found a staff build that’s finally fun. It’s similar to the Bright Wizard in WAR. There are gigantic holes in this build, but it kills people like a thief would at 1200 range.

It’s 10 (VI) – 30 (VI VII XI) – 0 – 0 – 30 (I VIII XII). Utilities are Arcane Blast, Signet of Fire, and Arcane Shield. Divinity runes and Bers Amulet (w/ Valkyrie). Fire Blast on Staff.

Basic strategy is to keep distance and find a nice sniper spot. I start in Air so I can position and hold people off if I get caught too early. When I’m ready to destroy, I go Fire, drop a Fire 2 under the target, hit Fire 3 for the burn, then Utility 1 and Fire 1 a bit. You can then proceed to Utility 2, but typically the person is blowing all CDs to stop the sudden deathstream, so I like to go Air or Earth depending on what sort of CC they need. Or you can Fire 5 if it’s a group and go back to Fire 2 / 3 until everything stops moving.

Escapes are interesting and depend on your speed. If you blow’em and can’t get away, you real dead.

Mesmers are total jerks for this build. Regen Wars can be annoying, but it depends on their build. Everyone else seems to be game.

Staff ele for president. Just put a frostbow in there and im with u And tornado elite for double damage on meteorshower!!

For anyone trying it, I thought I’d drop some more info. about how it works if it’s not readily apparent. It’s all about burning and big crits.

I’m not a big fan of the Arcane utilities, but you pick up the 10% crit dmg boost from Air after using Arcane. On top of that, your Arcane spells have an effect when dmg is done to opponents, i.e. burning. So Arc Blast is on a 16 timer, you throw it out and get a +10% crit dmg boost on top of the 32% from gear and the 30% from traiting in Air. Do it while attuned to Fire and you also apply burning. And your Fire spells do 10% more damage, with a +20% dmg bonus when they’re stunned or incapacitated.

Normally w/ an Arc Blast opener, Fire1 is doing ~1,800 dmg a pop w/ splash and the 30% chance to do a fire blast. Fire2 forces movement and is more for passive / AOE dmg as opponents don’t always avoid areas well. Sometimes you can pull off an Air5 to Fire2 to force them into the area. It’s also great to pre-empt someone getting w/in melee range. Fire3 adds more burning w/ big crits and splash. For another big burn, you have Utility2, Signet of Fire, which is nice when they clear your first burn. Fire5 is better for stunned / chilled groups and petting zoos.

So if you’re like me and you’re used to re-attuning all the time, you have to re-adjust. This is primarily a fire build, where the other attunements add quick utility when needed. Water especially sucks. The rest of the time you’re in fire and keeping continuous, nasty area burns and crits on your opponents from a good distance.

So you are not abusing scholar runes + vital striking while you are pewpewing at max range?

sorrychief.2563:

So you are not abusing scholar runes + vital striking while you are pewpewing at max range?

I think he wanted Arc Blast to have the extra umph with crit damage bonuses from Divinity Runes since arcane skills are guaranteed crits. I’m not sure if it’s a higher deeps than scholar runes and vital striking though.

Also to the OP. I’m interested in knowing more nice sniping locations in the maps that I am not aware of yet since being spotted by almost anyone save a bunker guardian almost always means byebye to a glass staff ele.

I made my own zerk staff build now and won a 3o1 by meteorshower+tornadoing xD

Blimm.5028:

I made my own zerk staff build now and won a 3o1 by meteorshower+tornadoing xD

How on earth were you able to cast Meteor Shower heck even a single Fireball wearing zerker if you’re being attacked by 3 players? o.o

It was soloque, and I used arcane shield to cover the shower + blinked at them to avoid a stun from the warrior while casting tornado.
The impact was just ridiculous. Even the warrior got 2 shot by meteors

Nice, Blimm! Is your build different than mine?

I tried Vital Striking w/ Scholar runes, and I did get bigger hits. They seemed quite a bit bigger, actually. But I felt like I was much less successful. My only explanation is the loss of instant burns since I had to pull the 10 pts from XII in Arcane. That would seem counter-intuitive, but that extra 20% dmg requires a.) I be above 90%, which is hard with such a small health pool, and b.) that I do more direct hits. The burns allow me to fire and forget, which is a large part of my survivability. I tried to maximize that aspect of the build by adding +45% to burning duration, but they’re too short to gain much effect. And picking up any +cnd dmg or duration was all detrimental.

Meteor shower can be awesome if it works properly. I’ve killed several thieves by arcane shielding and dropping a lava font / shower on top of me once I see the steal-blind coming. And that works best with my initial build, because Arcane shield does the 25pt burn plus the bigger burn from XII on top of the chance to burn from Fire traits and the fire blast on the staff rune.

Anyone have any improvements or suggestions on the build? It’s the most fun I’ve had playing elementalist, and much more effective than previous D/D or S/F builds I’ve tried. Only other staff build variation I’ve liked has been 20-20-0-0-30 to get the 20% decrease on Fire recharge.

Also, our health pool is stupid. I have to really work to beat someone 1v1 if they’re not just kitten ing. With this build, it’s possible for me to do, but I’m always at a disadvantage (with any build… just having rolled Elementalist). The idea that increasing our health pool might throw off balance is COMPLETELY ridiculous. Especially if they think War regen and 30k necro health polls are “fine.” I play both regularly, and I can tell it’s unfair while I’m laughing and killing people.

I just gave this a shot! Why go for a bunker/balanced build with no damage that dies in 5 seconds? With this I can wipe a whole capture point but I die in 2 seconds. I’ll take that any day. It is actually a ton of fun.

I know I am superglass so I’m not even mad when I die, compared to dying with a bunker build.

I´m running:
0/30/0/20/20
Air: VI VII XI
Water: VI IV
Arcana: V VIII

Scholar runes, sigill of energy.
Note: I am used to surviving a lot with out any defensive or mobile skills so I pretty much dodge everything. If I don´t I´m sushi, but if I do I have fun

Meteorshower -> Water attunement -> Arcane blast -> Tornado -> Lightningflash in to action.
Sometimes I use frostbow 4 to put some crits (→ vulnerability) on to the enemie team be4 tornadoing to get more of the 20% dmg boost.