Guild Wars 2

As a fire elementalist, is it a noob move to run around and just cast fire spells with my staff? I know that if I switch certain elements/weapons in combat I can gain more from my class, but I’m not sure what to mix & match….any advice??? I feel that it will help me more in end game content, and I want to break this spell of repetitiveness before I get bored. Thanks for checking out my post. – Kespo of Tarnished Coast US

The staff is a combo field weapon and by switching atonements you can do a lot of good with just your own spells, try for example: Earth 2 skill Eruption + Fire 2 skill Lava Font, this casts aoe might +3 on all friendly’s in the area.

There are many more useful combos with just one elementalist and a staff and mastering them in any given situation can make you a very powerful addition to any group.

Staying in fire attunement isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you’re heavily fire specced (you get +10% damage, 20% less cooldown on your skills, etc) and fighting few / easy mobs, but you’ll still want to switch for a few skills:
- earth to activate the magnetic aura skill (3) if you’re fighting a ranged or caster mob -- it’ll both significantly boost your survivability and do a decent amount of ’free’ damage. While you’re there, you can cast eruption (2) under the mob, it’s a heavy damage AOE skill that goes off in a few seconds. Finally use shockwave (5) to root the mob in place so it won’t run away from eruption (though most don’t try to run away anyway)
- air for runspeed (4) and a good stun in static field (5) that you can place between you and the mob so it’ll run through it and get stunned. Also the blind (2) and the knockback (3) are very helpful against single tough (veteran+) mobs.
- water is not very useful in typical solo combat, but if you pull extra adds or get in trouble you can use the two heals (3) and (5) to stay alive. Water (2) is kind of bad, but if you’re stuck in water attunement you can use it as extra damage.
- if you’re trying to get away from multiple mobs, use water(4), earth(4) and air(5) to put down fields that’ll slow / stun them while you can run away by using swiftness in air(4) (cast it before you cast air(5)). Also use earth(3) here to avoid damage from ranged mobs.

The staff is great for CC and variety, but you probably won’t be hitting anything with any insane punches. I prefer S/D for a lot of PvE stuff as you can get something like 18 stacks of might with a VERY strong fire/earth rotation.

You really should get into the habit of switching attunements often. It becomes absolute necessity later in the game when mobs are faster than you, come in great numbers every time, and ALWAYS attack and DESTROY you first above all other players.

Say what you want about damage but as a sideline fighter in big events having heavy fire spec with 20%cd reduction, 10% dmg and 30% longer fire fields, that constant lava font does count towards something, if nothing else, atleast there´s neverending burning going on.

Also, when i outlevel content i usualy can´t be bothered to swap because i don´t need to.

Thanks everyone! Great advice, it all helps.