Guild Wars 2

Hi guys, long time PvE’er here deciding to give PvP a shot. Been searching around for a staff build with, but i’ve only managed to find ones which are outdated, all the latest ones seem to be D/D or S/D. Any good staff builds out there?

You can try a Cleric’s bunker with Cleansing Water, if you don’t mind your only purpose being to remove conditions.

Wait, lol, they nerfed Cleansing Water in sPvP, never mind.

I got nothin’.

While its not a build, I would suggest trying to take the approach of controlling the field, denying area, and staying alive. You won’t be able to be a damage-dealer as it is nearly impossible for 90% of staff skills to land (they are so telegraphed), and few of them hit for enough. However, if you can survive long enough, you might be able to support someone else doing damage by setting up their targets and keeping them alive. It will be very hard to find a working build with how hard staff attacks are to hit.

sadly, staff is not as viable as other weapon sets in pvp.

Id recommend SD or DD

You shouldnt be looking for staff pvp build since there isnt any. Sadly, staff is not for pvp. It is just sneaky weapon that you need people stand at least 5 second to make them damage.

its funny that staff was very good or at least viable in PvP back in beta… then they considered it is too fast and too usefull because people cryied that ele kill them just by standing on the point and using AOEs around himself… so they made it a crap… they nerfed a lot of thing in that time just because people were noobs who cant counter something and played in glass cannon builds… i remember even staff condition ele build, it was quite popular in beta, not sure what was nerfed or what changed, except that bleed earth aoe, that was nerfed for sure…

Its not that i didnt put my mind into work before posting this but i dont think there are ways to be usefull with staff atm..
You cant defend yourself when focused and your damage output even though aoe is very small and you btter roll s/d or d/d for that.
Even the autoattacks miss and the rest gtaoe skills unlike engie grenades or necro marks have super long animations and super small impact upon landing.
You can go full bunker 0/0/10/30/30 but the only advantage you had over s/d was the super cond aoe cleansing with water 5 which died with the latest patch..You ll lack the mobility ,you ll lack the defence and the damage of an s/d bunker..plus it will be harder to heal your teammates since staff has only 1 pure heal and that is over 2 sec in a small area…i dont count the autoattack heal ..
And btw you ll need to drop an arcane trait for blasting staff

Actually water 4 and air 5 are nice skills but they are on super long cd and still doesnt make the weapon overall worth it imo even for control

@Maxi in beta they slapped a 2 sec casting time on eruption when it was 1 or less (maybe 3/4) if im correct.Truth is that you could cancel it and still go off so basically it had 0 casting time and could be somewhat spammed if you had earth cd trait plus people didnt know about the concept of cleansing or fighting off point so you could destroy whole groups by using this ability spreading dozens of long lasting bleeds and burning plus the other aoes
Apparently someone dev thought that having the spell firing minutes after pressing the button was giving the option for huge play with combos if i remember correctly..

If we’re discussing sPvP, you can certainly use staff and be very effective with it—you just need to know when and where to use what. In sPvP, players have a tendency to zerg down each point, these group fights are treasure troves of glory for a staff ele. You need good positioning. Your AoEs can tag 5 players and with the amount of pressure/CC you can throw down, your team will rarely lose these encounters. Perma swiftness is easy with staff, so you can also capture points quickly.

Staff gets a bad rap because it’s very difficult to 1v1—this is true but you don’t always have to 1v1 roam to win an sPvP match. Also, the skills aren’t usually harmonious enough to develop a rotation that uses everything off CD. From my experience, staff is all about knowing where you can be effective—not all weapons are designed for dueling or bunkering a 1vX.

As for builds, I outlined the setup that I run for almost everything (PvE, sPvP, WvW) here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/PVE-Dugeon-Staff/first#post1972678

Hope this helps!