Guild Wars 2

Have any of you soloed Orr with Staff ? All of my other classes are 80 now so I’m jumping back on my Elementalist. From what I’ve been told Elementalist are very hard to level so this brings me to the Orr question.

Just wondering what to expect. I like Staff and would like it to be my main weapon for this class so if Orr can be soloed with it, that would be cool in my opinion. If not, what other weapon or weapons would you suggest to solo Orr with, if soloing Orr can even be done with this class.

Thanks for any replies and help.

You’d have to spec to be relatively defensive or be really really good at avoiding getting hit if you want to go glass. Some things in Orr hit really hard. I’ve never tried it with staff myself, but I can solo most of the champion monsters that wander around, like that golem thing relatively easy with D/D. it should be possible though. AI isn’t that bright so as long as you avoid getting hit with any of the really bad stuff, you should be fine. I’m actually tempted to try it now with staff to see if I can take out that golem or maybe the risen giant champion. I’d imagine the giant would be easy with staff since you wont need to get close to all of his grub throwing crap and can just nuke him from a distance.

Nikkinella.8254:

You’d have to spec to be relatively defensive or be really really good at avoiding getting hit if you want to go glass. Some things in Orr hit really hard. I’ve never tried it with staff myself, but I can solo most of the champion monsters that wander around, like that golem thing relatively easy with D/D. it should be possible though. AI isn’t that bright so as long as you avoid getting hit with any of the really bad stuff, you should be fine. I’m actually tempted to try it now with staff to see if I can take out that golem or maybe the risen giant champion. I’d imagine the giant would be easy with staff since you wont need to get close to all of his grub throwing crap and can just nuke him from a distance.

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. If I spec to at least 20 with vitality, health, and toughness along with gear that has toughness, power and condition damage, I should do pretty good soloing with staff.

I’m looking for a challenge and don’t mine dying. That’s the fun of a game in my opinion.

Thanks for the reply.

you could always try 0/0/20/20/30. that works really well for a defensive setup with any weapon. for earth traits take protection on auras, and either geomancer’s freedom or rock solid. Creatures in Orr will try to knock you down and swarm you. The stability and extra reduction from damage from the protection is nice. you have the magnetic aura plus casting eruption then frozen ground on top of it to give you frost aura if you’re standing on it. frost aura will reduce the damage by another 10%. take cleansing water so when you switch to water it will cure status effects, since everything in Orr will poison you or worse. And whatever other trait you want in water after that, doesn’t matter for PvE. and the standard traits in arcana, elemental attunement, blasting staff, evasive arcana. i’d suggest a zerker staff and maybe knights armor and some soldiers if you feel the need for more hp. You can get some cavalier accessories from Balthazar temple which gives power, tough and crit damage. So you’ll be able to put out a little pain despite being tanky. maybe some clerics stuff too if you feel you lack healing. That’s just what I’ve found effective for me so far. But you have alot of options and should experiment with different things till you find something that suits your playstyle. What works for one person may not work for someone else or be as fun for them, so experiment.

I find Staff really difficult to solo-roam with. It seems very much a team oriented weapon to me. If I’m running around in Orr, I much prefer to go Dagger Dagger. In fact whenever I’m roaming over large distances anywhere, Dagger Dagger seems to be the way to go.

Yeah, the staff has really bad single-target damage. You can run with it while roaming in Orr if you’re decent at dodging and ok with things taking forever but S/D and D/D are better for small fights.

Thank you ALL for this feedback. I will go as far as I can with Staff and when I can no longer survive with it I will switch to D/D and S/D as suggested.

What I like about this class is it seems that it takes time to get good at. Also thanks for the trait build, weapon and gear selection.

For sure, look at the D/D Classic Auramancer build in my guide. It’s the best way to get started with the class.

You really will need to carry all types of weapons with you and switch depending on the situation. Only reason I didn’t suggest another weapon is because you said you wanted to use staff. You can do decent with it in most situations if you really want to keep using staff, but there are a lot of situations where other weapons are more optimal. Not saying you can’t try to use staff constantly, it will just make your life alot easier if you have the other weapons as well. I’m kinda the same way when it comes to staff. I prefer it over the other weapons and try to use it primarily, but its not easy. It was possible in beta to do everything just using staff, but they nerfed it so badly that can’t be done anymore.

Apparently we’re going to be getting different weapons soon. so we’re going to have to carry even more crap with us and all of us are going to have to learn new ways of playing.

I had no real issues with Staff in Orr and preferred it for event tagging back when the event farms used to go on and got used to using it everywhere. A lot of it is learning how to kite through your ground based fields when in Fire avoiding the target while also keeping them in your Lava Font. Knowing when to use Chain (Air) or Targeted AOE (Fire) is important as well.

Otherwise it’s PvE. Isn’t much that’s impossible to pull off in PvE. Just depends on how obsessed you are with marginal gains in performance.

I run staff in Orr and do pretty good overall. The first kill takes the longest but is usually quite dead after a couple fireballs after my Eruption + Lava Font + Arcane Wave all going off in it’s face at once.

After that I just keep accumulating Might and Fury, killing things faster and faster as I go. And since everything I do is AoE groups of melee go down very easy. Only real snag is fighting groups of ranged. But at least Magnetic Aura helps with that.

I can solo most veterans easily enough, along with a few extra mobs that usually die on accident from my AoEs. And I have soloed Orrian champions before, though it’s usually a long, drawn out process where one mistake means I lose.

I solo’d Orr with 0/10/0/30/30, staff with cleric stats/boon duration runes. May be taking it a little to the extreme to go full bunker in PvE, though it definitely worked. For a couple communes near champs I switched to /f for obsidian flesh.

As a basic hint for the Champion Risen Baron guarding a skill point in Cursed Shore – carefully work your way to the back corner of the area it patrols, take out mobs from there until only the champ is left (can be done without aggroing it) and then go for the commune when his patrol takes him down the stairs. Carrying a focus purely for obsidian flesh in case he comes back before you’re done can help.

Most of the other champs guarding skill points tend to be spawned by events, so there’s a chance it’ll just be open for the taking.

If you mean outer Orr, then yes, I played staff ele for a long time near the beginning of the game, even before I learned the secret of always speccing into water for every build (although EA was a blast finish on all rolls back then, so I guess it evened out) and played 20/20/0/0/30.

Things like Risen giants weren’t a problem since staff was good for grubs and hit multiple times with meteor shower, and really you could just keep dodging for all enemies.

Movement was kind of slow though since staff can’t do much for speed besides swiftness, but otherwise there were no problems save the few smaller champion mobs from group events. They would take ages with a staff and can be kind of unforgiving to solo against because of their hard hits.

For skill points, just kite around a bit, then use frozen ground to stack chill and then use schockwave so you have time to channel the point while using magnetic aura for the ranged attacks, or pop and earth ele.

In Orr, healing and condition removal are important. For that reason, the Water trait line is very strong in Orr since you get so many condition removals from it. With 30 points in Water I can just leisurely stroll around Orr with a huge train of zombies in tow, removing the conditions as they come and keeping myself healed up. Your weapon choice shouldn’t matter as much as how well you can remove conditions and heal.

You can facetank 5 mobs in orr with green/blue gear using staff ele.

Or if you are even half competent at kiting you could take any amount of mobs you can find bunched up close enough together.

Also, glyph of storms…just sayin.

I can solo any zone with a glass build -_- stop talking like pve is any challenge at all.

Solo champs even…

I am pretty sure you could even solo Arah with staff

By Solo Orr, you mean solo Champ, Vet Mobs? As a 0/10/0/30/30 with full berserker Set Staff Eles, I have no problem solo Vet, but when it comes to Champ, I wonder if anyone can do solo it o_O?

Stealth.9324:

By Solo Orr, you mean solo Champ, Vet Mobs? As a 0/10/0/30/30 with full berserker Set Staff Eles, I have no problem solo Vet, but when it comes to Champ, I wonder if anyone can do solo it o_O?

It´s doable if it doesn´t have too much ranged damage, but it´s boring as kitten, and takes ages, so generaly not worth it.

Fool proof way is to run ahead in a circle leaving fields at your feet, dps after each chill/cripple.

Zelyhn.8069:

I am pretty sure you could even solo Arah with staff

You can solo few bosses with staff while being afk.

haviz.1340:

Zelyhn.8069:

I am pretty sure you could even solo Arah with staff

You can solo few bosses with staff while being afk.

Yes, but I mean without using exploits

Zelyhn.8069:

Yes, but I mean without using exploits

No exploits, some bosses have strange aggro mechanics and range.

haviz.1340:

Zelyhn.8069:

Yes, but I mean without using exploits

No exploits, some bosses have strange aggro mechanics and range.

Right. What I mean by “no exploits” is fighting the boss the way it is intended to be. This implies being potentially exposed to its attacks.
I think we can all agree that out-ranging the Asura in arah p2 is not intended, for example.

Zelyhn.8069:

Right. What I mean by “no exploits” is fighting the boss the way it is intended to be. This implies being potentially exposed to its attacks.
I think we can all agree that out-ranging the Asura in arah p2 is not intended, for example.

There are more bosses you can outrange, even lupi has its own safe spot. Anyway, I did solo p2 until alphard and except lupi I don’t think weapon choice matters that much.