Guild Wars 2

(I apologize for adding this thread, as I’m sure there are other threads requesting this information. However, everytime I try to use the search function after I press enter it doesn’t search. I tried to skim a few pages, but I’m sure I may have missed some useful threads. I’ve also tried google, but I’ve had little luck with any build thus far.)

Hello!

I just recently made an elementalist, and I’ve hit a brick wall of sorts with creating a nice staff build.

I’m not concerned with the best damage in the group. Really what I’m after is a staff build that can provide moderate damage, moderate – high survivability, and moderate – high support. I do not PvP, and this build will mainly be for PvE / Dungeons.

Currently I’m using: 0 / 0 / 30 (earth) / 30 (water) / 10 (arcana).
Earth: II, VIII, X. Water: I, V, XI. Arcana: V. Skills: Fire Sig, Earth Sig, Mist Form.

I really enjoy the toughness with this build, but I feel very limited with just earth and water. I’m also not a huge fan with all the condition removal in the water tree, but I’m not experienced enough to know what other skill traits are good.

Thanks!

I run 30/0/20/0/20.

You should definitely put 20 into arcana for the aoe boost.

Hey,

To note: I do not spvp just pve (little wvw)

I personally run 0/0/20/20/30 – @ time of post I am running these majors
http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/elementalist#5|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|20|1645|1640|0|20|1675|1684|0|30|2250|1630|965|0|0|0|28044|0|49988|49988|49988|49988|49988|0|0|0|0|0|0|

My gear is Carrion runed with undead then extra’s is currently knight.

This build for me has a lot of synergy in it which is key and I can be hit like a truck while still giving out good dmg. Also near unlimited dodge

Dang it, I can’t edit my OP.

I should have said this, but this is mainly for PvE / Dungeons. I do not PvP. Thanks

Cirion that build looks like a ton of fun! Thank you! Thanks for the outline Cyanide, could you explain your trait choices, and your 6-7 skills?

EDIT: Oh nevermind. Edit just popped up. I’ll edit my original post as well

Cirion’s build is nice, though I use 10 Air/10 Earth for faster Glyphs so you can use Glyph of Storms and Glyph of Elementals more often; Sandstorm is an AoE blind, and Ice Elemental can heal a lot.
The main points of the build is 15 Water for the AoE heal and 30 Arcane Power for the blast finisher at the end of a dodge roll. The rest is pretty much just bonus.

If you´re not into condition damage and can do with bit less survivability, go with 20/0/0/20/30 and gear wise mix of clerics and then something that gives power as major.

As for utilities, i personaly like arcane wave, glyph of storms, arcane shield, for solo play.
Also i ususaly take water trait that causes vulnerability with arcane skills if soloing, as you don´t often sit too long in water to justify 20%cd reduction.

0/0/20/30/20 here.

Put 30 into water so I could get powerful auras which is invaluable in dungeons for reflect projectiles. In many dungeons it gives you 5 seconds of immunity and was arguably the turning point for the fire golem in SE. Def worth trying out.

Thanks everyone for all of these wonderful builds! Please be sure to add which traits (ex: Earth I, V XI) you use since I have no clue what’s really great and what’s meh not so good lol!

10 Earth – Trait #3
30 Water – Trait #3, 5, 11
30 Arcana – Trait #5, 8, 11
Cleric’s Amor + Weapon + Accessories, Chrysocola Amulet + Rings, Superior Sigil of Energy, Superior Runes of Speed

Attuning to water grants regeneration to nearby allies, heals them for ~2.1k, and removes 2 conditions, Geyser heals anyone in it for ~2.1k and if you dodge roll into it heals via Evasive Arcana another 2.2k (rolling into Healing Rain does this as well). Anybody shooting thru Geyser or Healing Rain removes a condition for each trigger of the combo field.

Use Cleansing Flame, Armor of Earth, and Mist Form as your utilities as each one grants you powerful defensive effects on top of Vigor for more rolling into healing fields as well as removing a condition from granting regeneration upon use (can also drop Armor for Lightning Hammer if you have Rangers using Healing Spring (the blast finisher with an AoE blind in a Spring is ridiculously overpowered in regards to group survivability).

This also gives you the option of Powerful Auras, not that it’s particularly useful because you only have 1 with a staff and dodge rolling into Healing Rain 3 times is enough to negate any effects that a swarm of projectiles directed at your party would have done anyway. So you trade free condition removal for being able to do a bit more damage to the mobs shooting you.

I’m not clear why anyone would choose GW2 for the pve.. It’s like wanting to fly commerical airlines because you like peanuts.

Kellhus.8071:

I’m not clear why anyone would choose GW2 for the pve.. It’s like wanting to fly commerical airlines because you like peanuts.

really? And just why does gw2 not have good enough pve content?

I am playing for PvE and play all my MMO’s PvE. I very rarely ever PvP as I just don’t think I am skilled enough to be competitive with others. I might try WvW sometime though but not just yet.

I have played EQ1 and EQ2, WoW, TSW this obviously and SWTOR so a good mix. Some people like PvP and some don’t.

I’m with Kodo. Have zero interest in PvP. I love to play solo, get on, get off (when wife needs me), play every class … I just wish I had henchmen like GW1 so I could do dungeons alone

• Elemental Attunement. Any build that doesn’t have this trait is either a 20/10/10/30 group aura build or a garbage can build.
• Cleansing Wave, Vital Striking or Hydromancer’s Alacrity. Pretty much all builds should have 15 points in water. And depending on the encounter, one of the above three traits will tend to be very useful.
• Blasting Staff is really good for staff users as it allows you to hit things easier/more.

So that leaves 35 points that can be put in various places.

• 20-25 Fire if you want to gear power/crit/precision and get Internal Fire+Pyromancer’s Alacrity
• 20-30 points in earth for Serrated Stones and/or Geomancer’s Alacrity for an Eruption focused build.
• 10 points in arcane for Evasive Arcana to provide more blast finishers and healing.
• 10 points in air for Quick Glyphs
• 15 points in water which allows you to pick up one more of the above mentioned traits (or perhaps Soothing Disruption), as well as either Powerful Auras or Cleansing Water depending on the encounter.

There also exists a couple of other possibilities, but the above listed ones are really the most generic ones for staff in dungeons.

@Kellhus,
But those are some pretty kitten good peanuts

@Everyone’s post,
Thanks so much for this wonderful amount of information! I’m really liking the Earth / Water / Arcane build, and am excited to play though dungeons (could you believe it? :O) with my Ele.

If anyone else has tips on how to make a nice support / will not be killed by a wet napkin staff Ele build please share!

I’m also headed down the staff/support build path – I’m currently level 58 and have my points allocated as follows: 0/8/0/20/20 and will probably end up being 0/10/0/30/30 when I’m all done.

I’m finally starting to get into the tier of gear that have 3 stats on each piece and really wasn’t sure what was best for my build or the Ele in general.

Should I use a mix of Carrion and Clerics or should I used all Carrion and get my +healing from accessories, etc.?

Has anyone found a good mix?

TheUndefined.1720:

…If anyone else has tips on how to make a nice support / will not be killed by a wet napkin staff Ele build please share!

What I’ve found so far is that you really have got to use ALL your attunements and learn to kite. Learn to get mobs into your area-of-effects by slowing them with frozen ground and then dropping erruption and lava font, and keeping them in these effects for as long as possible.

I am definitely squishy, but practicing killing multiple mobs while kiting and slowing, etc. has helped me a lot.

Also, figuring out my blast finishers with geyser for some extra regen has helped me as well.

Anyways, those have been my lessons learned over the first 50+ levels.

So far I’ve leveled up a Guardian and a Mesmer and I’m looking into leveling up my Ele next.

With the support I’ve been doing so far, I just want to play a Staff Ele and just run around PvE wrecking stuff. I was planning on starting with 0/10/0/10/10 for up until level 40. At level 60 I was hoping to go 10/10/0/10/20 and eventually work my way up to 30/10/0/10/20. I’ve been seeing a lot of focus on Water, Earth & Arcane though. Can you get away with going heavy into Fire for Wrecking stuff or are we pretty much forced to play defensive?

10/10/10/10/30 Evasive Arcana

The rest of the traits you can pick to suit your playstle, but Fire +10% damage, Air +20% dmg to low health enemies, and Earth shield at 50% health are good solid traits. Learn your combo fields and finishers by heart, add Evasive Arcana and Arcane wave for more finishers, put a sigil of energy on your staff (it works with attunement swapping) and go to town dodging and combo’ing your way accross the battlefield and into demigodhood.

Don’t forget to gear for toughness then power, or you’ll be squished. That goes for any build ever though.

ShadowbaneX.6273:

So far I’ve leveled up a Guardian and a Mesmer and I’m looking into leveling up my Ele next.

With the support I’ve been doing so far, I just want to play a Staff Ele and just run around PvE wrecking stuff. I was planning on starting with 0/10/0/10/10 for up until level 40. At level 60 I was hoping to go 10/10/0/10/20 and eventually work my way up to 30/10/0/10/20. I’ve been seeing a lot of focus on Water, Earth & Arcane though. Can you get away with going heavy into Fire for Wrecking stuff or are we pretty much forced to play defensive?

When i levelled i just dumped all i had in to fire and water 50/50 split(last 10 in air) and had absolutely no problems even in orr.
All the dungeon runs i´ve done with that have gone smoothly too.

ShadowbaneX.6273:

Can you get away with going heavy into Fire for Wrecking stuff or are we pretty much forced to play defensive?

Not really. Because of the cooldowns in each attunement, you really can’t stay sitting in one and do maximum damage. This is one of the class design issues (IMO, it should be fixed by reducing a 30 pt attunement to 5 sec cooldown in that attunement, so you can dance to that powerful utility and then hop back to your specialization), so Arcane is pretty much required ATM.

If you’re going to go staff, you don’t to go that route anyway. The power of staff is in it’s many possible self-combo fields, not in it’s direct attacks, so if you stay in one attunement you’ll just feel like a tissue paper ranger that hits like a wet noodle.

Rhyse.8176:

10/10/10/10/30 Evasive Arcana

The rest of the traits you can pick to suit your playstle, but Fire +10% damage, Air +20% dmg to low health enemies, and Earth shield at 50% health are good solid traits. Learn your combo fields and finishers by heart, add Evasive Arcana and Arcane wave for more finishers, put a sigil of energy on your staff (it works with attunement swapping) and go to town dodging and combo’ing your way accross the battlefield and into demigodhood.

Don’t forget to gear for toughness then power, or you’ll be squished. That goes for any build ever though.

Yeah, I was looking to make up for the stats with lots of precision, toughness & vitality gear…I’d kill for some gear with those three stats…there’s far too much gear with +power.

Also, I really want Persisting Flames & Pyromancer’s Alacrity. I’ve had enough support, I just want to wreck stuff (for instance, this character is going to be joining the Vigil). I suppose I could do something like 30/0/0/10/30…I dunno, I’ll look at it.

Rhyse.8176:

Not really. Because of the cooldowns in each attunement, you really can’t stay sitting in one and do maximum damage. This is one of the class design issues (IMO, it should be fixed by reducing a 30 pt attunement to 5 sec cooldown in that attunement, so you can dance to that powerful utility and then hop back to your specialization), so Arcane is pretty much required ATM.

If you’re going to go staff, you don’t to go that route anyway. The power of staff is in it’s many possible self-combo fields, not in it’s direct attacks, so if you stay in one attunement you’ll just feel like a tissue paper ranger that hits like a wet noodle.

Yeah, so far I’ve learned that you do need to keep swapping attunements and I think there’s enough in there, to lay down a lot of firepower. There’s also the possibility of running with two sets of weapons, Scepter/Dagger for instance for just general PvE and then switching to the Staff for DE’s.

Rhyse.8176:

ShadowbaneX.6273:

Can you get away with going heavy into Fire for Wrecking stuff or are we pretty much forced to play defensive?

Not really. Because of the cooldowns in each attunement, you really can’t stay sitting in one and do maximum damage. This is one of the class design issues (IMO, it should be fixed by reducing a 30 pt attunement to 5 sec cooldown in that attunement, so you can dance to that powerful utility and then hop back to your specialization), so Arcane is pretty much required ATM.

If you’re going to go staff, you don’t to go that route anyway. The power of staff is in it’s many possible self-combo fields, not in it’s direct attacks, so if you stay in one attunement you’ll just feel like a tissue paper ranger that hits like a wet noodle.

I´m pretty sure that with right traits you can sit in fore while doing maximum damage, though not much else.
+fire dmg, reduced cd and longer fields traits in fire line give you near constant lavafont, near constant burning (more than that if there´s ally firing trhough it), and on top of that meteor shower for big targets.
That´s ofcourse for stationary targets, but in normal pve you can make them stationary by facetanking with arcane shield and glyph of storms earth version ofcourse.

Naturaly in most cases it´s better to swap time to time(for cc, heals, condition damage), but if all you want is pure damage, then you can definately sit in fire if you have traits for it.

Strang.8170:

Naturaly in most cases it´s better to swap time to time(for cc, heals, condition damage), but if all you want is pure damage, then you can definately sit in fire if you have traits for it.

True enough, but that will probably mean you’re dead, and dead is a very low DPS spec :P

If you’re running staff ele I would strongly suggest investing at least 20 points into arcana for the larger aoe and boons on attunement (don’t forget they apply to allies as well). After that it’s really up to your personal preference. Decide if you like glyphs, signets, or cantrips best. Each trait line can give significant bonuses to anyone of those skill types. I personally like 20 in air for the higher cc, cd, and for the quick glyphs and INscription traits (glyphs give you boons). If you’re going to be doing a lot of dungeons I would strongly suggest putting at least 15 in water for the aoe heal/condition removal. Gl and hf!
P.S. Feel free to p.m. me in-game if you have more questions. I have been playing ele since beta