Guild Wars 2

An interesting build for Staff lovers crated by GuanglaiKangyi on Guru Forum:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/85568-lh-is-the-new-bearbow-the-real-staff-dps-build-for-manly-men/

Yes, he has a point, staff is interesting. But he keeps saying that staff out dps LH and it is wrong. I have proven this many times.

He is also not that accurate on figures, and he does not take rotation into account.

Finally:

Switch to Earth Attune when you aren’t in combat. You can lead with Eruption then switch to Fire and cast Lava Font in the same place for a furyblast. This works even if you cancel the Eruption with the attunement switch; you don’t get the damage from Eruption but you still get the blast finisher.

I hope I am reading this wrong.

Edit: What in Komir’s name is effective power?? What do people use it for??

Well crap. I avoided posting my build on the forums because I feared it would get a major nerf. Now a few weeks later, someone posts the exact same build I’m using. Crap. Prepare yourselves. The nerfs are coming.

Edit: Actually, I used some traits that are better than what he uses, but it’s still pretty dang close to what I’m using.

Zelyhn.8069:

Yes, he has a point, staff is interesting. But he keeps saying that staff out dps LH and it is wrong. I have proven this many times.

He is also not that accurate on figures, and he does not take rotation into account.

Finally:

Switch to Earth Attune when you aren’t in combat. You can lead with Eruption then switch to Fire and cast Lava Font in the same place for a furyblast. This works even if you cancel the Eruption with the attunement switch; you don’t get the damage from Eruption but you still get the blast finisher.

I hope I am reading this wrong.

Edit: What in Komir’s name is effective power?? What do people use it for??

Effective power is what you’re average power will be when you include critical hits and damage modifiers.
ex. 2000power with 100% crit chance and 0 crit damage with no damage modifiers would be 3000

I’m curious as to why you say staff doesn’t reduce LH damage though. As I understand it, the lightning hammer has it’s own weapon damage, so staff basically just takes away a sigil.

What rotations? Both LH and staff builds require you to camp in the same attunement all day.

Thanks for the effective power explanation. It is indeed useful and I used it under a different name in the past.

Yes but staff’s dps is dependent on a carefully executed rotation (of skills, not attunements) to have its dps be optimal. This imply that you will not have 100% lava font uptime.

As for the dps, as you can see in the latest version of my Zalcualtor, LH’s damage can reach 14k, while staff’s damage can only reach 12k (on a human size target).

Note however that a combination of both is very very good.

Can someone explain to me the paragraph he wrote on eruption?

Zelyhn.8069:

Thanks for the effective power explanation. It is indeed useful and I used it under a different name in the past.

Yes but staff’s dps is dependent on a carefully executed rotation (of skills, not attunements) to have its dps be optimal. This imply that you will not have 100% lava font uptime.

As for the dps, as you can see in the latest version of my Zalcualtor, LH’s damage can reach 14k, while staff’s damage can only reach 12k (on a human size target).

Note however that a combination of both is very very good.

Can someone explain to me the paragraph he wrote on eruption?

He probably thought switching attunes cancels skill cast like weapon swaps?

That’s also what I am afraid of!

Well I personally think casting DT on scepter then quickly switching to staff before it lands/the LoSed mobs hit you albeit tedious would be worth getting used to and better for moving between mob groups since massive cooldown for switching back to fire from earth means switching to earth for Eruption is not always an option.

I’d also get to show off both my legendaries

If you’re intense enough you can do Eruption -> DT -> Lava Font but my brain hurts too much to pull it off reliably

his dps build is based on not using dodge and being within 600 on a staff build -.- and having 25 in earth… i cant really see how that is a serious dps buid..

for kitten farming maybe, but kitten farming you can basicly take almost anything on any class… if its for the harder stuff, you NEED your dodge and your range, which strips this build for 20% of its dps. just by a fast look at it, its not a varible build compared to other classes in the same situation,. just saying

ofc. we need to try it to see, but number wise i think its a lacking, not to mention 0 in arcana which should show some trouble instantly.:)

It’s a build for speedkills, the build itself is valid, but the figures he computes are not.

does anyone has any gameplay vid of this build?
expecially dungeon runs….hoping its kitten ring than hammer build.

Dolan.3071:

What rotations? Both LH and staff builds require you to camp in the same attunement all day.

If your doing that you actualy loose a good chunk of your Dps, I play a 30/10/0/0/30 and I find my self switching a lot between Fire and Earth attunements. With Persistent Flames you can switch from Fire to Earth and blast your Lava Font and you won’t loose any Dps because you burn your target with each of your projectiles and you have extra burst wich compensate for the lower damage output from your auto attack. Your Lava Font or Meteor Showers are still capable to deal damage when you switch attunements and with a Sigil of Battle and Explosion Finishers you can get a lot of extra stacks of might and fury whenever you switch attunement or use a combo with a fire field, building your DPS over time.

Staff has a lot of synergy between each attunements and can deal outstanding damage against groups of ennemies and large creatures. So camping attunement isn’t an option when you play staff.

in the past when staff used less fire traits, was proved that sitting in fire did something like 90-95% of a perfect rotation.

Considering the dps boost in fire may be that roatation is detrimental to dps.
You have to deal with attunement recharges of 15 seconds after all.

Anything past 10 arcana is detrimental to dps in PvE.

Erebus.7568:

his dps build is based on not using dodge and being within 600 on a staff build -.- and having 25 in earth… i cant really see how that is a serious dps buid..

for kitten farming maybe, but kitten farming you can basicly take almost anything on any class… if its for the harder stuff, you NEED your dodge and your range, which strips this build for 20% of its dps. just by a fast look at it, its not a varible build compared to other classes in the same situation,. just saying

ofc. we need to try it to see, but number wise i think its a lacking, not to mention 0 in arcana which should show some trouble instantly.:)

I also disagree with the viability of 25 earth but:
1. If you’re not stacked close in PvE meleeing, you’re not being very efficient since Area Might and Area Fury have abysmally small aoe range. Max ranging staff is terrible for DPS
2. Arcana is irrelevant when you are not switching attunes, Anet can cry about PvErs not switching attunements all they want but as long as staying in Fire spamming 1 and 2 and occasionally 5 is the top DPS rotation, people are going to keep playing that way.

Again, you can retort with PvE doesn’t matter but do know that while you take an hour to do dungeons, there are people out there who want to do them quicker and actually get rich prefer to do things quickly.

Ambrecombe.4398:

Dolan.3071:

What rotations? Both LH and staff builds require you to camp in the same attunement all day.

If your doing that you actualy loose a good chunk of your Dps, I play a 30/10/0/0/30 and I find my self switching a lot between Fire and Earth attunements. With Persistent Flames you can switch from Fire to Earth and blast your Lava Font and you won’t loose any Dps because you burn your target with each of your projectiles and you have extra burst wich compensate for the lower damage output from your auto attack. Your Lava Font or Meteor Showers are still capable to deal damage when you switch attunements and with a Sigil of Battle and Explosion Finishers you can get a lot of extra stacks of might and fury whenever you switch attunement or use a combo with a fire field, building your DPS over time.

Staff has a lot of synergy between each attunements and can deal outstanding damage against groups of ennemies and large creatures. So camping attunement isn’t an option when you play staff.

In non-PuG teams, you don’t need to blast in your own field except for Arcane Wave since pre-fight cluster bombs and banners + FGJ can easily get your team 25 might and fury and the fight will be over before they run out.

In PuGs, it matter little what you run since 95% of people don’t run the optimal +damage trait steroid builds like yourself and will never be as efficient.

Zelyhn.8069:

Anything past 10 arcana is detrimental to dps in PvE.

inb4 ‘but you can’t do damage while you’re downed!’ baddies

30 in Arcana? What is this PvP? I bet you camp range so your boons hit no one.

@ Zelyhn, oh my bad, I’ve always thought rotations as a term that involved cycling weapons/attunements/kits/bundles etc etc. Not like, 1111112111115111112111111

Dolan.3071:

30 in Arcana? What is this PvP? I bet you camp range so your boons hit no one.

@ Zelyhn, oh my bad, I’ve always thought rotations as a term that involved cycling weapons/attunements/kits/bundles etc etc. Not like, 1111112111115111112111111

I think the title is too misleading/generous and them ‘support eles’ will get the wrong idea. S/F is so much better for that anyway.

Dolan.3071:

30 in Arcana? What is this PvP? I bet you camp range so your boons hit no one.

Sinds when does Arcana automaticaly means PvP builds only? I took Arcana because most of my skills are Arcane utilities and I use them with Elemental Surge to add a layer of versatility to my utilities. I also wanted to bring more than just Dps to my gameplay, so I went for a hybrid glasscanon Dps/buff/debuffer kind of build with my Elementalist.

A big reason also why I chose Arcana is because it increases the duration of boons and reduce the cooldown from attunements down to 9sec wich is perfect when you cycle between Fire and Earth attunements (and when you equip a Sigil of Battle). Not to mention, traits between those 2 traitlines synergise very well. I took for instance, Lava Tomb wich is an incredible trait when you play with Blasting Staff and Persisting Flames. Elemental Surge is pretty powerfull with the extra 30% condition duration. And the the 30% boon duration is even more beneficial for your team when you blast your firefields around with Persisting Flames.

To respond to your speculations, I can ensure you I don’t need the maximum range on my staff, I just stay close to my team, blast ennemies around while buffing my allies and debuffing my ennemies. The only downside of this build is its overall squishiness (only 14,5K health with Bers/Valk mix) wich is compensated by easy recoveries (with Lava Tomb. The healing capabilities are very limited too making it hard to survive prolongiated ranged pressure when Magnetic Aura is under cooldown.

But overall, my build allows me to do a lot of things better when you compare it to most of the other professions playing similar roles.

Is there a non-viable PvE weapon for any class in this game? O_o

Zelyhn.8069:

Yes, he has a point, staff is interesting. But he keeps saying that staff out dps LH and it is wrong. I have proven this many times.

He is also not that accurate on figures, and he does not take rotation into account.

Finally:

Switch to Earth Attune when you aren’t in combat. You can lead with Eruption then switch to Fire and cast Lava Font in the same place for a furyblast. This works even if you cancel the Eruption with the attunement switch; you don’t get the damage from Eruption but you still get the blast finisher.

I hope I am reading this wrong.

Edit: What in Komir’s name is effective power?? What do people use it for??

Back when I was leveling my ele I tested the cast-and-swap method and that was how it worked. If you cast a spell that animated immediately but with a cast time before activation (i.e. Eruption, Shatterstone, Ice Spike) the animation would play but it would not actually deal damage. However, you would still get any secondary effects such as fields or finishers that it would create. I just tested it now and it looks like that was fixed somewhere down the line. To be honest I never actually played my ele since I leveled him like 10 months ago until I discovered this build just recently so I don’t really know what was fixed and what wasn’t.

Also, you seem pretty adamant about LH being better numbers but the numbers I’m seeing on my own spreadsheet have them pretty much even, with staff slightly ahead. That’s not even accounting for the fact that you won’t have LH up all the time, and only looking at the time you do have it up. I do account for Fireball/Font rotation which gives me about 12900 for 30/20/10/10/0 and 13100 for 30/15/25/0/0. 25/10/25/10/0 LH with Force/Accuracy gives me 12900 as well while 0/20/25/25/0 gives me 13400 assuming 5 boons.

You’re only going to see a substantial damage advantage in favor of LH when you can use both Slaying and Night sigils at the same time. That’s not even considering the fact that LH isn’t going to be up all the time, either, or the fact that it takes up a spot on your utility bar so you’re potentially losing out on Signet of Fire or other DPS-boosting skills depending on the content you’re running. A staff ele with Signet of Fire, Arcane Wave, and Arcane Blast will outDPS an LH ele with only two of those utilities, clean.

Edit: @ Abrecombe (Guang snuck a comment in there)
Lava Tomb? Are you serious?
Zelyhn I take back all the nasty comments I’ve made about 10 in Arcana, this gem takes the cake, I should add it to the list of favourite "play how you want " builds.
The only downside to your build is the complete and utter lack of any noteworthy damage.
If you camp staff then I would have to recommend Guang’s build, if you like flicking through attunements to make it seem like you’re actually doing something then I’d recommend Zelyhn’s build.
To be honest I actually had to look up which traits you were referring to because they were all those ones that you instantly dismiss when putting a build together (granted at least you had Persisting Flames.) Also what blast finishers are you talking about? From memory you have Eruption in Earth and Arcane Wave? That’s a whopping 6 stacks of might + 1 from switching to Fire + 1 to yourself from Sigil of Battle. How long exactly are you making these encounters go to build up even a half decent amount of might by being a leech to your team?

Is there a non-viable PvE weapon for any class in this game? O_o

Shield+Hammer on Warrior, Shield+Scepter on Guardian, Scepter+Greatsword on Mesmer, Shortbow+Longbow on Ranger to name a few. Pretty much 90% of all ranged weapons.

Edit2: @ Guang, I’m actually pretty keen to test Staff, especially a combination of LH Ele and Staff Ele for the glorious perma Fury and what should be 25 Might.

Dolan.3071:

Edit: @ Abrecombe (Guang snuck a comment in there)
Lava Tomb? Are you serious?
Zelyhn I take back all the nasty comments I’ve made about 10 in Arcana, this gem takes the cake, I should add it to the list of favourite "play how you want " builds.
The only downside to your build is the complete and utter lack of any noteworthy damage.
If you camp staff then I would have to recommend Guang’s build, if you like flicking through attunements to make it seem like you’re actually doing something then I’d recommend Zelyhn’s build.
To be honest I actually had to look up which traits you were referring to because they were all those ones that you instantly dismiss when putting a build together (granted at least you had Persisting Flames.) Also what blast finishers are you talking about? From memory you have Eruption in Earth and Arcane Wave? That’s a whopping 6 stacks of might + 1 from switching to Fire + 1 to yourself from Sigil of Battle. How long exactly are you making these encounters go to build up even a half decent amount of might by being a leech to your team?

Is there a non-viable PvE weapon for any class in this game? O_o

Shield+Hammer on Warrior, Shield+Scepter on Guardian, Scepter+Greatsword on Mesmer, Shortbow+Longbow on Ranger to name a few. Pretty much 90% of all ranged weapons.

Edit2: @ Guang, I’m actually pretty keen to test Staff, especially a combination of LH Ele and Staff Ele for the glorious perma Fury and what should be 25 Might.

The Lava Tomb has to be a typo. No one in their right mind would use that trait unless it has some amazing hidden functionality that I don’t know about, like, I dunno, the Lava Font hurts your allies. That’d be good because if I’m going down it’s probably the pug’s fault and they deserve to be burned to death along with me.

Hey Guang, obviously one of us is making a mistake, or both.
It could very well be me, and you can check all my calculations since you have access to my rotation and to my calculator.

Could you share with me your spreadsheet so I can check for myself?

Thanks

@Dolan: dealing 95% of the damage of a warrior (while running some support traits) is lacking damage?

I highly doubt this build out shines my staff build for raw hits or dps.

Zelyhn, one of these days we need to actually find a way to test LH and Staff side by side, because I’m 90% sure my current staff build will blow LH out of the water in DPS. Despite whatever figures you have. Every time I pick up some other ele’s LH I look on the numbers with sadness.

Bear in my that I am talking about speedkills. You have to take the situation into account

What is your build?

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.3|6.5g.h3.d13.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e|2s.d1e.3s.d19.2s.d13.3s.d1e.2s.d13.2s.d13|u67c.u67b.0.a6.0|69.1|1l.26.1o.1r.28|e

This still isn’t fully accurate due to infusions, but it’s close enough. It’s especially effective when your party is fielding any kind of CC.

This build can get up to 3,030 power in a fight with food + bloodlust stacks, before might. It also self sustains roughly 9-15 stacks of might and maintains a crit rate just high enough that Fury isn’t required. Granted you may see better results doing a few fancy tricks here and there, but this build is incredibly reliable DPS in a usually not so ideal world.

So basically you just take away the 10 earth points in Guang’s build to put them in air.

This makes you deal slightly less damage on average.

Am I missing something with tempest defense?

Lava tomb is actually useful for when you’ve lost hope in pug(anity?) and just wanna rez off the novices at the 2nd sealbreaking stackathon.

All that with a zerker build of course.

Zelyhn.8069:

So basically you just take away the 10 earth points in Guang’s build to put them in air.

This makes you deal slightly less damage on average.

Am I missing something with tempest defense?

25 points came out of earth. 15 go into air and 10 go into water (vital striking). The 15 points in air outright = 15% more critical damage just from having them in the trait line. So instead of having 10% damage while closer than you should be, and a useless bleed trait (since you should be in fire anyway) you get vulnerability stacking, 25 more critical damage + precision and 10% more damage over 90%, which is what scholar users want to aim for anyway.

Tempest defense = 20% more damage to stunned and knockdown foes. Admittedly I wish there was something better, but there it is.

Edit: Oops. I looked at the second build he posted. Argument stands for that one, but yea pretty much what you said for the first one, except arcane blast > signet of air. Also some trait differences.

I missed an ‘m’, chill out man.
Literally any other trait would be better than Lava Tomb, if you plan on being downed a lot maybe you should take +downed damage nourishment.
You are correct on that one Sigil of Battle does give 3 stacks of might, not sure where I pulled 1 from :/
I must be missing something, I already said Eruption to blast your own Fire Field, you’ve got Arcane Wave and you said you have Elemental Surging so there’s no Evasive Arcana blast finisher, where’s the 3rd blast finisher coming from? Also trying to make heads or tails of people’s obscure builds is harder than it looks.
This thread is completely about min/maxing, considering the opening post is the best possible damage build you can have with a staff.
And finally my build can consistently stack 12 party-wide might in just over a second, 15 with some fancy footwork, with all the accompanying Fury from Persistent Flames. Don’t start a stationery war with me I can assure my pencil case is bigger

@Dolan: dealing 95% of the damage of a warrior (while running some support traits) is lacking damage?

I’m referring to Ambe’s build. Unless we’re on the same page and Warrior damage halved when I wasn’t looking.

Careful now Dolan, you missed an ‘r’ this time, and we french don’t take spelling mistakes lightly!

Dolan.3071:

I missed an ‘m’, chill out man.
Literally any other trait would be better than Lava Tomb, if you plan on being downed a lot maybe you should take +downed damage nourishment.

And yeah I sacrifice a bit of my potential DPS when i’m up, but see it more like an insurance, Lava Tomb deals very good damage over a long period and makes you dangerous even when you get downed, not to mention, it can even be reactivated with Vapour Form should your allies be unable/unwilling to get you back on your feet. While yes a lot of people don’t like downed traits overall, this one has saved me a couple of times when I did mistakes and has earned his rightfull place in my build, its just my oppinion about it beeing a viable trait.

Dolan.3071:

I must be missing something, I already said Eruption to blast your own Fire Field, you’ve got Arcane Wave and you said you have Elemental Surging so there’s no Evasive Arcana blast finisher, where’s the 3rd blast finisher coming from? Also trying to make heads or tails of people’s obscure builds is harder than it looks.

Don’t search for a third blast finisher I only have 2, but with the following rotation Flame Burst -> Lava Font -> Eruption + Arcane Blast -> Auto-attack -> Eruption -> Lava Font -> Flame Burst -> Auto-attack I can build my might with optimal frequency. When I play solo I usualy get between 21-24 stacks of might over a 20sec period of time while my team stays between 9-12 stacks of might, not perfect, but not negligeable either.

Dolan.3071:

This thread is completely about min/maxing, considering the opening post is the best possible damage build you can have with a staff.

It shows a build taking advantage of most dmg traits and it speaks about its viability in PvE, so I am very sorry if I find the topic and some of the answers misleading…

Dolan.3071:

And finally my build can consistently stack 12 party-wide might in just over a second, 15 with some fancy footwork, with all the accompanying Fury from Persistent Flames.

Off topic again, yes I could generate a lot more stacks of might and fury for my team if I went with a Scepter and a Dagger offhand but you would give up a lot of DPS doing that. Scepter DPS is far from the best option and isn’t very suited for Power damage builds either unless you like to camp in Air attunement and Burst damage abilities like Dragon Tooth and Phoenix, so this argument takes no places in this discussion sinds we were speaking about staves.

Dolan.3071:

Don’t start a stationery war with me I can assure my pencil case is bigger

Unless I break your Pencils one by one… Yes, I can, because I’m evil!

Bluefox.9580:

I highly doubt this build out shines my staff build for raw hits or dps.

Zelyhn, one of these days we need to actually find a way to test LH and Staff side by side, because I’m 90% sure my current staff build will blow LH out of the water in DPS. Despite whatever figures you have. Every time I pick up some other ele’s LH I look on the numbers with sadness.

Staff has higher base damage due to higher weapon damage range and better skill coefficients. LH has worse base damage but you can stack up more damage-boosting traits, particularly Piercing Shards, so it evens out. Using LH on a staff build means you’re basically gimping yourself by taking the lower damage weapon with fewer damage boosts, i.e. the worst of both worlds.

Zelyhn.8069:

Careful now Dolan, you missed an ‘r’ this time, and we french don’t take spelling mistakes lightly!

Jesus Christ I did too, and I thought I was playing it safe by shortening it

@ AMBRECOMBE (I’m at least 90% sure I got it right this time.)
Don’t get me wrong even I used Lava Tomb when levelling, but I just don’t see it in dungeons. The Fire line has some brilliant traits in there it’s silly to waste a slot on the chance of getting downed, which all in all only serves to encourage bad gameplay at the loss of bloodlust/perception stacks.
I refer to Scepter/x because it stacks might so much better without gimping your damage, the rapid speed and number of blast finishers you can get off is pretty impressive. Though Scepter damage is agreeably terrible (and using it on targets with retal is almost suicide), so running Lightning Hammer would be a must ~ seeeee not easy to guess other people’s builds

Fortus.6175:

Is there a non-viable PvE weapon for any class in this game? O_o

pp qq that staff hasnt damage. Probably they run 30 arcane in clerics gear.

So i tested this build, it works but i missed the blast finishers from scepter. I would love run it with a LHammer Elem. Anyone wanna party up? cheers