Guild Wars 2

I have some noob issues w/ eles:

So, my understanding of elementalist is that they offer a lot of utility, healing and support WHILE doing respectable DPS in their own right. So I rolled an ele and I’m on my way to lvl 80-ing it. I can kind of see the damage and utility aspects of staff ele which I enjoy but I’m not really seeing the healing. I understand it might have to do with the water field + blast finishers but how do I activate that myself? I’m probably blind but I’m not really seeing a lot of blast finishers on the staff…

Also, I do have a gaming mouse with multiple keys but even still switching elements is really a pain in the kitten , if people have any suggestions on optimal key bindings I would really appreciate that. And by optimal I mean whatever works lol. My fingers aren’t long enough to consistently hit the F keys in the middle of a battle to pull off complicated DPS rotations, for sure.

Hey Tiggers. Welcome to Ele!

You are absolutely right about healing via blast finishers, and that staff only has one: Eruption (earth 2). You can get 2 more pretty easily through skills: Arcane Brilliance, and Arcane Wave. Both Geyser (water 3) and Healing Rain (water 5) provide water fields. Healing Rain is easier for others in your party to blast since it has a longer duration. In fact, Healing Rain’s duration is long enough that you can cast it then switch to earth and cast Eruption and still get the blast before the water field runs out.

As for keybinds I recommend using ZXCV for your attunement swaps. They are fairly easy to reach so they shouldn’t give you hand cramps.

Happy blasting!

You can get one more blast finisher with evasive arcana in earth. But I agree one more blast finisher and one more aura on staff wouldn’t hurt.

MyPuppy.8970:

You can get one more blast finisher with evasive arcana in earth. But I agree one more blast finisher and one more aura on staff wouldn’t hurt.

Good point, cuz devs seems to make 1aura per weapon, but in case of 2hand weapon there would be welcome one additional for staff. Imo in addition to making fire3 ground target, reworking air2 for huge aoe around you or ground target and cone gust maybe some tweaks for every aa.

Alright that makes a lot more sense. I have that blast finisher healing skill just so I can activate it on healing rain and get some decent healing and that has been ehh. I guess now if i need some emergency burst healing I can do water 5 swap to earth 2 and THEN do the water blast heal.

zxcv is a great idea for attunement swapping! Only problem is what do you rebind v for dodge? I’ve grown fairly used to v=dodge but I’m willing to try something else that works!

I’m not even lvl 30 yet on my ele so I’ve been throwing out whatever skill at random and it seems to be working, in fact I just mostly stay in staff fire attunement and with the cooldown of lavafont to 4s I seem to do fine. But any advice on good damage rotations for times when I actually need to be precise?

Try double tapp for evade there is a option for that in options>general options.

Tiggers.3890:

zxcv is a great idea for attunement swapping! Only problem is what do you rebind v for dodge? I’ve grown fairly used to v=dodge but I’m willing to try something else that works!

I like the middle mouse button for dodge. This keeps the keystroke count at 1 for dodging (whereas double-tapping adds a slight delay) and the button is readily available at all times.

Tiggers.3890:

I’m not even lvl 30 yet on my ele so I’ve been throwing out whatever skill at random and it seems to be working, in fact I just mostly stay in staff fire attunement and with the cooldown of lavafont to 4s I seem to do fine. But any advice on good damage rotations for times when I actually need to be precise?

The Fire auto + Lava Font is already really strong damage. You can switch to Earth right after for a 2-5 combo, then Water for some Healing, then back to Fire without losing too much DPS.

While in Fire, one high-risk/high-reward trick I’m enjoying against enemies that don’t move around too much is dodging through them to proc Evasive Arcana, then immediately popping Burning Retreat to drop a fire field under them. The burns stack up very nicely, and you can even switch to Earth and pop Earth 5 to pin them there if you’re quick enough (though I don’t think Burning Retreat lasts long enough to proc AoE Might from Earth 2 unless maaaaybe if you trait for it). Only do this if you’re confident with your micro skills and the foe’s animation. There’s some Evasion frames on Burning Retreat, but there are still a few places in the trick where you can be stunned in place or hit for heavy damage, and that’s bad.

One more trick, useful for any Ele while leveling but especially useful for Staff-users: Glyph of Elementals and Glyph of Lesser Elementals! Our Elite skills all kinda suck at improving us directly, but Glyph of Elementals is really good at helping to relieve pressure in small-group situations, since the Elementals tend to draw a lot of aggro and have pretty high uptime. The Fire Elemental hits pretty hard, the Water Elemental is reasonably tanky and can hand out a bit more healing, the Air Elemental has a stun (which will be particularly useful in HoT to help deal with break bars), and the Earth Elemental is borderline unkillable in open-world PvE, and even in many Dungeon and Fractal situations.

Earth Elemental is a baws. :p

Shift+1,2,3,4 for attuments works like a charm for me you don’t have to change v (don’t double tap to dodge for the love of god it makes jumping puzzles hell :P)
Zerker staff is one of the highest dps specs in PvE and healing staff eles are a must have in
WvW zergs.

The staff healing comes more from the way your trait as well as water attunement auto-attack and geyser.

Traiting in the water line, gives you a heal on attunement to water, regen, soothing mist which gives a lot of passive healing with the grandmaster trait “Soothing Power”.

In the arcane line, elemental attunement minor as well as the “Evasive Arcana” grandmaster trait gives you increased regen/protection uptime as well as a heal + condi clear when dodge rolling while attuned to water.

Couple those with also being able to blast finish water fields, at the staff ele has enormous healing potential. Just remember to swap attunements regularly in order to maximize the healing benefit.

Ahh alright cool its good to know once I’m lvl 80 I wont have so much trouble with healing. It’s the GETTING to lvl 80 that’s a little troublesome as I don’t have all these traits unlocked yet. Maybe if I have that earth elemental to tank it might make things a bit easier. Granted it’s not terribly difficult as it is right now but I’m just concerned at how little healing I currently have, when I do dungeons and such I was worried I’d get erased in 1 hit with no way of getting back into the fight.

I didn’t know you could shift + key bind, that’s a terrific idea I’ll defn try that right now! My fingers are so used to V being my dodge that I don’t want to zxcv my F skills, thanks guys!