Guild Wars 2

Hey I haven’t been around much because the icebow 4 nerf and fireball visual nerf made me quit gw2 for several months. Ele is my favorite class but the fact my warrior was somehow outdpsing her after the ibow nerf disappointed me.

What are people running and has anet made a statement on the fireball turning into a tennis ball yet? I’m talking pve with the staff mostly. Does tempest help us at all? When I glanced at it prior to taking a break the overloads seemed to have to put you into melee range so it seemed like more of a D/D thing. Thanks.

Fireballs are still small and look really bad, but I guess I got used to it.
I believe they gave the fact that it reduces visual clutter as a reason for decreasing the size.

Tempest is a decent DPS buff due to overloads, but it really depends on the situation if its better than arcane/water or not.
Builds are still pretty much the same except for the fact that you can run tempest instead of arcane.

However, with the recent fresh air buff, dagger/warhorn and dagger/focus builds became a lot more viable and in some scenarios even more DPS than staff, and condi tempest isn’t that bad either.

staff dps is nothing compared to fresh air tempest. way lower

reikken.4961:

staff dps is nothing compared to fresh air tempest. way lower

Staff performs better on still targets with large hitboxes (Gorseval).

Mostly I just use staff. Fire/Air/Tempest build, specced for maximum damage. Against targets with large hitboxes I use glyph of storms, ice bow, and fiery greatsword. The damage buffs from holding FGS really help out with the damage output overall, so generally the starting rotation goes something like this:

FGS -> Firestorm -> Lightning Storm -> Lightning overload -> Ice Bow -> Ice Storm -> switch and camp fire for 60 seconds or so. This doesn’t work well on every target, but if the enemy is stationary and/or big, then this releases an utterly satisfying torrent of unmatched damage.

For more defensive or buff based builds, I use arcane wave, aftershock, and a filler place. Both are blast finishers, but the AoE magnetic aura of aftershock is highly underrated. Sometimes I use glyph of storms to lay down a blind field, should my team be lacking one.

There’s an alternate build I use for Mai Trin: Air/Arcane/Tempest with Dagger/Focus. It doesn’t have the raw damage of D/D, but the off-hand focus provides several invulnerability skills for the more defensive minded elementalist. The lack of fury on blast finishers is missed, but thankfully other teammates can take care of that now. Fresh Air build, where spamming overloads as much as possible is the preferred damage rotation. This build isn’t really set in stone, as it exists specifically to fight Mai Trin in high level fractals, but with minor modifications it should go well with anything.

I’m hesitant to use the warhorn myself. I’m sure it is valuable in certain circumstances, though. I also am hesitant to use the scepter. Everything is full berserker, and currently I use Runes of Strength for greater might stacking.

I don’t go into raids. So far, the most difficult thing I’ve done on my ele is 90+ fractals.

Guys, is there a way of testing pve build efficiency, cause i cant decide on my build. Staff in fire/lightning/tempest is doing a lot of dmg. Tried D/d build with same traits, seems fair enough too, but i want to see some facts.

Btw thy does every staff build use GM trait in fire for lava front instead of might buffing on fire cast? I can easily maintain 12-15 might stack by myself with that trait. Are those 2 sec of lava front more efficient than 12-15 stacks of might?

-it gets you fury also
-in a party, you have other people giving you might too

soulknight.9620:

Guys, is there a way of testing pve build efficiency, cause i cant decide on my build. Staff in fire/lightning/tempest is doing a lot of dmg. Tried D/d build with same traits, seems fair enough too, but i want to see some facts.

Btw thy does every staff build use GM trait in fire for lava front instead of might buffing on fire cast? I can easily maintain 12-15 might stack by myself with that trait. Are those 2 sec of lava front more efficient than 12-15 stacks of might?

Over a long fight those 2 sec of lava font are indeed more efficient than 12-15 might, but the main reason for the trait is that you can prestack fury with it.

Perma fury and perma lava font is better. Plus you can stack more burns.

soulknight.9620:

Guys, is there a way of testing pve build efficiency, cause i cant decide on my build. Staff in fire/lightning/tempest is doing a lot of dmg. Tried D/d build with same traits, seems fair enough too, but i want to see some facts.

Btw thy does every staff build use GM trait in fire for lava front instead of might buffing on fire cast? I can easily maintain 12-15 might stack by myself with that trait. Are those 2 sec of lava front more efficient than 12-15 stacks of might?

If you’re playing solo on staff there is nothing wrong with taking Pyromancer’s Puissance (+might on fire cast trait). Losing fury sucks a lot but might is extremely valuable in solo play and maybe you’re feeling lazy today and don’t want to blast a bunch. People showing their builds with Persisting Flames generally intend to use them in groups, at least in theory. In a group you want everyone to be at 25 might stacks, which will be obtained through either fire field blasting or various might sharing skills/traits. Everyone is going to be given 25 might stacks anyway, so why bother taking a trait that gives you personally 12 more might stacks? You might as well take a trait that increases the damage of what were already some of your best skills. In addition, the extra fire field duration assists your entire team in stacking might. Don’t forget, a single blast finisher on a fire field is 15 might split over 5 people! That’s the same bonus you get from your +might trait, but with a lot less effort.

Fury is icing on the cake.

Understood, but as far as i know, staff ele has only 3 blast finishers, earth 2, arcane blast, arcane briliance(heal), how can u perma fury urself? Or teamplay what makes that so good?

soulknight.9620:

Understood, but as far as i know, staff ele has only 3 blast finishers, earth 2, arcane blast, arcane briliance(heal), how can u perma fury urself? Or teamplay what makes that so good?

When playing staff yes, you are more or less reliant in your team for might. It’s also worth noting that two extra seconds on lava font without might probably outperforms a shorter lava font with might, and lava font is your highest dps skill as staff ele.

In open world I would take persisting flames no matter what because you often interact with other players even when not partied. But if you’re doing the story or something then +might on cast is OK I think.

Dinosaurs.8674:

soulknight.9620:

Understood, but as far as i know, staff ele has only 3 blast finishers, earth 2, arcane blast, arcane briliance(heal), how can u perma fury urself? Or teamplay what makes that so good?

When playing staff yes, you are more or less reliant in your team for might. It’s also worth noting that two extra seconds on lava font without might probably outperforms a shorter lava font with might, and lava font is your highest dps skill as staff ele.

In open world I would take persisting flames no matter what because you often interact with other players even when not partied. But if you’re doing the story or something then +might on cast is OK I think.

I’ve actually tested Persisting Flames versus Pyromancer’s Puissance a while ago when going for arah solo/duo records on ele.
The problem with staff ele is that after the initial “burst” (meteor shower, glyph, icebow in some cases), you end up just autoattacking and placing lava fonts.
If during that time your lava font ticks 2 times less for every cast, that’s a about a 10k damage loss (assuming that lava font ticks for 5k, which is realistic in a solo scenario).

Lets assume you prestack might, the first 20 seconds of the fight Pyromancer;s Puissance will be a waste anyways since you are already capping might, after those 20 seconds it will start self sustaining might, but after those 20 seconds your meteor shower is also pretty much off cooldown, and that meteor shower with a 3 second cast only counts as 1 skill channel, thus giving you only 1 might, but at the same time you lose 2 seconds of lava font ticking at the same time as that meteor shower.

Overall I calculated that over a 2 minute fight you lose out on about 500-600 dps, but 500×120 is a lot.
Also take in mind that this was before overloads were released, and overload fire already gives you 10 might during your meteor shower and other high damaging skills if played right, so Pyromancer’s Puissance is even more useless now.

In open world or personal story scenarios its also pretty useless, since by the time your might starts to ramp up to a point where you actually notice the difference, things will already be dead.
If you want self sustained might stacking, get golden dumplings or a strength sigil, because they actually give a decent amount of might without really sacrificing anything

Regarding the permafury thing, ideally you want to prestack might/fury with scepter/focus/dagger, but if a fight is short just your heal + arcane wave will do fine I guess

Might also want to add that if you play a dagger/anything build that isn’t condi based, Pyromancer’s Puissance is actually pretty viable.
But this is only true if you prestack might/fury with Persisting Flames, and then swap to Pyromancer’s Puissance before entering combat