Guild Wars 2

Hey all,

I’ve recently returned to gw2 after a ~1.5 year hiatus. I used to play a staff elementalist with 30 arcana and a full PVT set… I really like the concept of placing fields for offensive/defensive combos as well as constant attunement swapping to control and support as well as possible. From what I remember, it was a solid build for wvw and doing the story quests / soloing tough enemies + enemy groups / being a useful participant in DEs.

Is staff still good for that kind of stuff — and if so, what’d be a good build to use? I’m open to trying other weapons/etc as well, as long as they work with 30 in arcana and 500+ ping. NB: I’m really looking for a build that’s good for catching up with the living story and doing well in dynamic events. I have no interest in running dungeons (the aforementioned 500+ ping being one of the main reasons).

Thanks in advance!

30 in arcana (or rather, 6 points these days) is not useful in PvE for general purposes but it’s really good for PvP and WvW because there the extra cleansing wave from dodging in water is actually needed.

For staff in PvE you should by default go no more than 2 points (10 in the old system) in for blasting staff because it
a) makes your lava fonts larger so that it’s easier for you to make sure the mobs are hit
b) makes the radius of a meteor larger, so that when you cast meteor shower it’s more likely that for each meteor impact that lands it will hit, making it a significant DPS increase

I posted this on another thread that asked for a good solo staff build for PvE, and I’ll post it here for you too. You can choose to use it or ignore it.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQFAWnMISLD20AWPAfEIgAQCHIygRzEWKTp3A-ThBBABYt/o8DgLAQe6AC4BAUp6PnpEkMA6bB-e

Despite the fact that you don’t plan to do dungeons, this will be much more effective than 30 in arcana with PTV ever has the chance of being (provided you’re fighting against mobs and not structures, like world bosses).

Basically anything that’s possible to crit, you want to use this.

I however suggest you substitute glyph of storms for fire signet in most cases. Begin an encounter on earth and use eruption then swap to fire to place a lava font over it. It’ll deal damage and blast your lava font giving you fury and 3 stacks of might.

Periodically blast your lava fonts with arcane brilliance and arcane wave, making sure not to use both at the same time because you want to maintain the 150 ferocity bonus from arcane lightning.

Anywho, hope this helps you.

6 points instead of 30, eh? Goes to show how much has changed… I guess 5-point increments make sense, though. :p

That looks like a good build, thanks — though I’ll need to get some berserker pieces and such. How is it on survivability and control (e.g. fighting multiple veterans, recovering after missing a dodge, etc)?

Well, it all depends on the player and what you’re fighting of course :P

It may help if I show you some videos demonstrating it in action, and I’ll definitely get around to it and upload some but basically with a staff build like this you deal such an immense amount of damage that you simply won’t go down against things like veterans unless you let yourself. Your personal damage will be high enough for you to not worry about defensive strategy other than positioning and dodging when needed, provided you stay in fire attunement.

If in the case you wanted to take down a champion, use the glyph elemental elite in earth attunement to summon Rocky, aka #1 tank EU. He’ll last long enough for you to get in your initial burst at the very least, and will most of the time get focused first because of his high toughness.

Keep in mind that ideally you want to use ice bow’s #4 skill pretty much as soon as it’s off cooldown so you’ll have to get used to knowing when it’s time to pick up your second one/use it again. By the way, deep freeze (ice bow #5) is pretty much one of the overall most useful cc moves in the game in both parties and by yourself.

Give it a try, I promise you that if you learn this will yield very very satisfying results. Do note that utilities and traits occasionally should/could change depending on the situation, hence why I suggested fire signet ^^

Glyph of storms used in air will yield in temporarily giving a boss 25 stacks of vulnerability which will make ice bow’s ice storm hit a lot higher, and if you use it in earth it can basically perma-blind all mobs that don’t have ‘Unshakable’ (aka champs/legendaries) for its duration. It’s a very powerful utility to take into consideration but it’s not always needed.

Here is an example of me using glyph of storms in earth, and the rock elemental to tank for me: http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/5704946

In this video, I’m soloing a boss in Arah P4. Every few minutes those 3 elite gorillas will respawn and they’re very dangerous as they can basically keep you knocked down forever (6-8 seconds of cc at a time, and their knockdown ability has a shorter cooldown than its duration). I’m also using a slightly different staff build in this video, as I mentioned just previously you should change traits depending on the situation.

For this boss I have the trait point allocation 66002, and the reason for it is because since I’m damaging the boss at range, I won’t ever be within 600 range of the boss so the stone splinters (earth VI) trait is essentially useless there. 6 points in air also allows me to take the “quick glyphs” trait which shortens the cooldown for both glyph of storms AND my glyph of elementals elite, making sure I have Rocky ready to tank for me when the gorillas respawn and that I can throw down a sandstorm when needed.

Here’s another video of me demonstrating staff ele in action, but it’s mostly just showing what I do for opening burst: http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/5595191

In this video I have the exact same traits that I linked in my first post, except I temporarily changed the stone splinters (earth VI) trait to serrated stones (earth IV) which instead of giving 10% damage within 600 range, gives 5% damage to targets that are bleeding. The reason for this is because that I’m beginning my attack at a distance and because each impact of ice bow’s ice storm applies bleeding, so it is an easier damage modifier to maintain in an encounter like this.

I hope these two video demonstrations help you – though they may be more on the advanced side I did my best to try to explain what my justifications were when picking the traits/skills that I use.

If something isn’t clear then let me know and I’d be happy to point it out for ya.

Wow, thanks, I’ll definitely give it a whirl, those damage numbers look pretty crazy! Though I may use things like arcane shield and/or mist form for a while… practice makes perfect and whatnot.

I agree that signet of storms is op… or at least, I have vague memories of using signet of storms in earth for some amazing shenanigans (e.g. capping reinforced supply camps) way-back-when in wvw.

Thanks again!