Guild Wars 2

Hi. I’m playing with S/D, but I want to change my weapon into staff and I don’t have a clue on how to use it. I will realy appreciate if someone can explain to me how to use the staff in pve. (how the skills work and how to use them + pve build). If you already posted a pve build then may you post it here? Thanks in advance. ^^

Level?

What are you doing in PvE (events, farming, dungeons, fractals)?

Is it viable for you to switch your gear or are you cash poor?

I’m lvl 57. mainly doing exploration+ little bit of dungeons. I can afford more than one gear set. I’m looking for balanced build with above avarage of damage.

If you’re married to the idea of having staff (personally I rocked Conjure Lightning Hammer from 30 → 80) I’d probably end up with a build like this

From there finish out 20 Air, then put rest into Water.

Your Arcane is setup as much as you need for Staff giving you the bigger areas. This is important as you sit in Fire and have bigger Lava Fonts to kite around in. With Renewing Stamina you should have enough Stamina to dodge around. Many cases I will just pull the mob(s) in Fire Attunement and when the mob is close just kite them in melee range around Lava Font with Renewing Stamina providing lots of dodges. Also remember you can use Burning Retreat for a 3rd dodge. You can also pre-combo up encounters such as starting in Earth, dropping an Eruption as mobs come in then switch to Fire and throw down a Lava Font and use Arcane Wave for a double Might Stack. Unfortunately Staff doesn’t offer nearly as many self combos as S/D or D/D.

Air can be tricky to use when leveling because of the Chain attack. You can pull a lot more mobs than you originally intended to. I typically use it mostly for Event farming if the mobs are spread out too much to tag them with Lava Font.

Water defensively becomes better as you gain more ranks to put more points into Water traits. If you’re having trouble surviving in higher level areas, you can take points from Air and put them into Water and then finish out last points into Air. Once it’s at 30 you will gain a ton of defense in forms of Cantrips (providing Regen and Vigor) as well as many passive heals (such as just swapping to Water is a heal). You can always leverage Arcane Wave for another Blast Finisher heal as well on a Geyser or Healing Rain.

Gear you will want to focus mostly on Power/Vitality at first. At 60 you open up the “end game” style attributes (Berserker, Knight, Clerics, Carrion, etc) and while leveling I recommend Knights. You can craft a set of yellow Knight gear at 60 which will carry you all the way to 80 or get a Tailor to do it for you if you don’t have a Tailor. Sigils are usually Bloodlust or Precision.