Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, haven’t spent too much time on my ele recently and was wanting to start showing him some more love. One thing I tend to do is run group support, so I was wondering if you guys had any opinions on gear setup. I don’t want to go glass clannon, and I was thinking something along the lines of clerics armor with berserkers trinkets, but wasn’t sure how well that would hold up.

Edit: What runes would you recommend as well?

i use soldier gear, cleric trinkets and staff, build i use 0/0/10/30/30, with ether renewal, arcane blast ( for the combo finisher), lightning flash, mist form..i swith my utility often, but this is my standard setup..rune 3 water, 3 monk..sigil of superior energy on a staff..

high survavibility, high support, low damage..i don’t suggest to go full glass cannon as a staff ele..we don’t have enough skill for escape from a bad situation..

This is what I use in WvW
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|6.1k.h6|0.0.0.0.0.0|1n.a7.1n.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7.1n.a7.1n.a7|1a.68.1k.68.1k.68.1k.68.1k.68.1a.68|0.k35.0.k56.u35b|4d.1|1m.1v.1r.1u.0|e

This is a hybrid build I use in conjunction with a scepter/dagger build which is more squishy, yet bursty. I simply change a few traits/switch out trinkets for berserker’s and go to town. It has great survive-ability, support and pretty decent dps with a coordinated zerg/group. Also, the gear is pretty easy to get.

Personaly i run cavaliers trinkets, knights(head, chest pants)/berserkers(0-3 pieces)/soldiers(0-3 pieces + weapon). Another good choice is what my guildie runs, celestial trinkets with knights/berserkers armor)
Good rule of thumb is to go as glass as you can while still being able to survive, and as surviving depends on enemy too, you should carry multiple sets of gear.

Also, healing power is worthless stat, healing from the actual staff skills is borderline non-existant, blasts are what bring out the healing, and more often than not its not you who´s blasting the field.

Strang.8170:

Also, healing power is worthless stat, healing from the actual staff skills is borderline non-existant, blasts are what bring out the healing, and more often than not its not you who´s blasting the field.

completely disagree..
healing power it’s useful in 2 kind of situations:
when u switch to water, and when u dodge roll in water, every 9 – 10 sec you can do 2 aoe heal for 2.5 k heal each one..than if u drop water3, which heal 1k per tick + blast finisher into hit, (blast your or not your) you can heal in 4 seconds 10 k..

i usually if me or my team mate are in a mess i come closer to him, switch to water, dodge roll in water, put gayser or healing rain, switch to heart, dodge roll in hearth + arcane blast..13-15 k heal in almost 5 seconds..for you and for any other ppl near to you..

titaniumm.2983:

Strang.8170:

Also, healing power is worthless stat, healing from the actual staff skills is borderline non-existant, blasts are what bring out the healing, and more often than not its not you who´s blasting the field.

completely disagree..
healing power it’s useful in 2 kind of situations:
when u switch to water, and when u dodge roll in water, every 9 – 10 sec you can do 2 aoe heal for 2.5 k heal each one..than if u drop water3, which heal 1k per tick + blast finisher into hit, (blast your or not your) you can heal in 4 seconds 10 k..

i usually if me or my team mate are in a mess i come closer to him, switch to water, dodge roll in water, put gayser or healing rain, switch to heart, dodge roll in hearth + arcane blast..13-15 k heal in almost 5 seconds..for you and for any other ppl near to you..

1560 healing power would be maximum amount of healing power achievable with 30 in water and full clerics (everything possible ascended) and healing power runes.
With that your cleansing wave does 2862 healing, geyser does 3×1198 and blasts do 1632. For full combo you described that would be 12 582 healing. Looks potent right?

Without any healing power apart from 300 from 30 in water that combo heals for 8613.
So basicly all that investment in healing power that makes your damage very low, toughness mediocre and vitality non-existant, has netted you 3969 more healing when you use all healing available, spend both your dodges, situate yourself near enemy and have put 2 of your attunements on cd.

No doubt it does work in small scale skirmishes, but even then its far from optimal.

I think we all know Staff Ele is the worst build in the game. Expect to die a lot and stay behind the heavies It’s unfortunate because it’s the play style and RP I like.

For me, I’m always switching mine around. Right now I’m in PTV Armor and Staff with Celestial accessories. Sigils are battle and I actually forget the runes.

DeWolfe.2174:

I think we all know Staff Ele is the worst build in the game. Expect to die a lot and stay behind the heavies It’s unfortunate because it’s the play style and RP I like.

I´ll have to disagree. Any wvw guild knows how powerful staff eles can be. It´s just that they are really bad at fighting solo and somewhy most people see that as a deal breaker.

I was thinking about going full clerics to help my team when zerging because the aoe blast are real powerful. Now some people say its not worthy :/

Clerics + Berserkers in some fasion is actually pretty fine for a Staff Ele in WvW.

It worked for this guy after all: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-919RMwyfnk

The real power of non-glass cannon Staff Eles in WvW (and by the way, I actually encourage glass cannon Staff Eles just because even a PUG group should keep you safe), however, comes from our CC than anything else. Stun Cage is your best zerg v zerg spell, and that isn’t effected by stats. So regardless of what you gear with (and yea,h gear does play a huge role), it’s more important to learn what good CCd you habe a staff Ele.

i have a mix of PTV with ruby orbs + Berserk

I am trying his build. There are a few things you can do for support : dwayna, monk, water. I may get the earth runes for more toughness.

cavalier/knight for wvw, PVT if you are super-paranoid

zerk if you enjoy waypointing often

I use this build since months and I’m very satisfied, I made it thinking about the best way to fight under/on the walls of towers and keeps while keeping a quite good resistence and support for zerg vs zerg fights
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mVsc9fGa0axokzVVoR

Armor: 6/6 Soldier (runes: 2 sup. of the monk, 2 sup. of the water, 2 major of the water)
back: Soldier with berserker upgrade
Staff: Berserker (superior sigil of Battle)
Trinkets: 5/5 Celestial (ascended)

n.b.: 70% boon duration!!!

For Group Ele Support I rock a 0/0/10/30/30 build.

Gear I use Vitality/Healing/Condition (from CM Explorable).
Jewelry I use Tough/Heal/Condition (Passiflora Jewelry).
Weapon I use Vitality/Healing/Condition (from CM Explorable).
Runes I use 2/2 Superior Water, 2/2 Superior Monk, 2/2 Major Monk

This gives me a good mix of Vitality, Toughness, a lot of +Healing and +Condition. This is good because often times you will be focused when they see you in the back. If anything I’d say it’s a bit light on Toughness but with the amount of Protection you should have going on in the group ball you should be fine (where as by comparison there’s no way to gain more HP via buffs).

Power vs Condition: Most of our damage when doing support will come from doing conditions such as spamming Eruption. I find many times in WvW I end up sitting in Earth waiting to blow up an Eruption -> Geyser style combo or other various combos from people around me so making our primary combo ability do even better is always good. Also if you end up sieging walls, placing an Eruption along the edges will put 6 stacks of a very strong bleed now on a lot of targets because the size of it is massive.

The only real use we have for Power is destroying Siege equipment with our Fire AOEs which is good but base attacks are sufficient for that. Power based attacks typically synergize much better with Crit/Crit Dmg which we just can’t bring enough of in this build to very be noticeable. If you’re really a stickler for having more Power you could go with Cleric (Tough/Power/Heal) Jewelry and Weaponry probably.

Healing Power: This is pretty self explanatory. You’ll be dishing out a lot of AOE regeneration which benefits greatly from healing power.

Arcane Wave vs Third Cantrip: Cantrips are certainly powerful in this build but in a group support play Blast Finishers are huge. They let you blow up anything from Static Field (AOE Swiftness) to the more standard Lava Font (AOE Might) or Geyser (AOE Heal). Being able to Blast Finish on demand is pretty great and worth the loss of a Cantrip.

Utilities: Mist form should be pretty obvious why we take it. Cleansing Fire is fantastic because of Soothing Disruption and Cleansing Water. It basically means one button you remove 4 Conditions, Break Stun, gain Regeneration and Vigor which makes it one hell of a cool down. It also lights nearby people on Fire which with our Condition damage actually deals respectable damage.

Ultimate: The ultimate you could swap out if you prefer. Tornado is a great alternative if people bunch up on you because you can drop a Water Field and then Tornado spewing out Healing Bolts. Avatar of Melandru is another great alternative if you’re a Human because you get an AOE condition removal, AOE Protection and AOE Healing abilities.

Kodiak.3281:

For Group Ele Support I rock a 0/0/10/30/30 build.

Gear I use Vitality/Healing/Condition (from CM Explorable).
Jewelry I use Tough/Heal/Condition (Passiflora Jewelry).
Weapon I use Vitality/Healing/Condition (from CM Explorable).
Runes I use 2/2 Superior Water, 2/2 Superior Monk, 2/2 Major Monk

This gives me a good mix of Vitality, Toughness, a lot of +Healing and +Condition. This is good because often times you will be focused when they see you in the back. If anything I’d say it’s a bit light on Toughness but with the amount of Protection you should have going on in the group ball you should be fine (where as by comparison there’s no way to gain more HP via buffs).

Power vs Condition: Most of our damage when doing support will come from doing conditions such as spamming Eruption. I find many times in WvW I end up sitting in Earth waiting to blow up an Eruption -> Geyser style combo or other various combos from people around me so making our primary combo ability do even better is always good. Also if you end up sieging walls, placing an Eruption along the edges will put 6 stacks of a very strong bleed now on a lot of targets because the size of it is massive.

The only real use we have for Power is destroying Siege equipment with our Fire AOEs which is good but base attacks are sufficient for that. Power based attacks typically synergize much better with Crit/Crit Dmg which we just can’t bring enough of in this build to very be noticeable. If you’re really a stickler for having more Power you could go with Cleric (Tough/Power/Heal) Jewelry and Weaponry probably.

Healing Power: This is pretty self explanatory. You’ll be dishing out a lot of AOE regeneration which benefits greatly from healing power.

Arcane Wave vs Third Cantrip: Cantrips are certainly powerful in this build but in a group support play Blast Finishers are huge. They let you blow up anything from Static Field (AOE Swiftness) to the more standard Lava Font (AOE Might) or Geyser (AOE Heal). Being able to Blast Finish on demand is pretty great and worth the loss of a Cantrip.

Utilities: Mist form should be pretty obvious why we take it. Cleansing Fire is fantastic because of Soothing Disruption and Cleansing Water. It basically means one button you remove 4 Conditions, Break Stun, gain Regeneration and Vigor which makes it one hell of a cool down. It also lights nearby people on Fire which with our Condition damage actually deals respectable damage.

Ultimate: The ultimate you could swap out if you prefer. Tornado is a great alternative if people bunch up on you because you can drop a Water Field and then Tornado spewing out Healing Bolts. Avatar of Melandru is another great alternative if you’re a Human because you get an AOE condition removal, AOE Protection and AOE Healing abilities.

woah woah woah

woah

never do this, everything you wrote here is completely wrong

a) healing power is awful for us. For guardians, sure, I can see it. We gain so little benefit from it, it’s a useless stat. It increases our healing by around 20% with maxing out healing power. Pointless. Never take it.

b) condition damage is awful on staff eles. Our big damage comes from direct damage, power is the best stat for that, stack it, in any build. We have 4 attunements, use them all.

c) get toughness. If you aren’t awful at playing an ele and specced right, your condi removal should make extra vitality past 15k or so unnecessary. Toughness will save you, over and over and over.

d) some people might mix valkyrie and celestial. This is because it gives up some specialisation for a mix of stats, but (and this is key) retains high crit damage %. The focus is on balance, but condition damage and healing? No.

xiv.7136:

woah woah woah

woah

never do this, everything you wrote here is completely wrong

a) healing power is awful for us. For guardians, sure, I can see it. We gain so little benefit from it, it’s a useless stat. It increases our healing by around 20% with maxing out healing power. Pointless. Never take it.

b) condition damage is awful on staff eles. Our big damage comes from direct damage, power is the best stat for that, stack it, in any build. We have 4 attunements, use them all.

c) get toughness. If you aren’t awful at playing an ele and specced right, your condi removal should make extra vitality past 15k or so unnecessary. Toughness will save you, over and over and over.

Let me bust out some numerology at you:

With this build I end up with 1117 Healing power with no food and no sigil buffs or anything of that nature (also only Rare Passiflora Jewelry and not the Exotic). Skill comparison = With 1117 Healing vs With Base 300 from 30 Water Trait:

Area Healing (Blast Finisher) = 1543 vs 1380 a 12% increase
Geyser (Skill) = 3262 vs 2649 a 23% increase
Soothing Mist (Trait) = 136 vs 95 a 43% increase
Healing Ripple (Trait) = 2419 vs 1602 a 51% increase
Regeneration (Boon) = 275/tick vs 166/tick a 65% increase

Healing Power is far from useless for us especially if you’re going for a support Role in WvW which is what the OP was talking about. We have numerous sources of Regeneration (Healing Rain, Elemental Attunement, GoEH, Cantrips) which take advantage of a huge increase in performance.

This is on top of having 1291 Toughness and 18235 HP which is plenty to survive in large Zerg fights (especially with the colossal amount of stun breaking and condition removal we have in this spec).

On to condition damage…Raw damage does alright if you stack enough Power but without Crit you aren’t ever going to be lethal to another player. Doing raw damage while using a staff is all about maximizing damage because of the little amount of time people will spend in your fields taking damage. You’re lucky if you get 2 ticks often times in WvW. This means you need Crit and Crit Damage to really maximize the damage they take for those few ticks. The problem there is without spec’ing deep into Air or rocking Berserker gear (low survivability) there’s no way to get enough. Both of these suggestions, while certainly viable, go against the idea of being Support.

This is where Conditions come into play. Most of our Condition based abilities are in Earth (Bleeds) which is what you will mostly end up being in to do combos for your Water fields (for example Earth → Eruption → Water → Geyser → Arcane Wave in Geyser → Healing Rain → Earth → Dodge Roll for Blast Finisher → Stoning Attacks for Regeneneration around Target). On top of this, our base condition durations are the things Necros and Engineers dream of. Eruption being a 12 second base bleed time is insane compared to any other class. Considering how close fighting gets (either small or large scale) it’ll be extremely hard for your enemy not to get tagged by Eruption constantly.

Finally, you could make the same argument either way. I could just as easily say any Toughness over 1200 is redundant in the hands of a skilled and competent player. More so I’d say that it’s redundant because of how often you’ll end up with Boons like Protection which already reduce the amount of damage taken but nothing can give you an extra 3000 HP.

The truth is that staff isnt a dps weapon. Thats why i have 2 sets: 1 with Power + tough + Healing Power with runes of Dwayna. Yes i know i should change the runes but im doing some tests in WvW. And the other set has PTV + runes of earth. Both Sets with Berserker Jewels.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|6.1g.h1h|0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.71g.1g.71g.1g.71h.1g.71h.1g.b1h.1g.b1h|4s.d1g.2s.d13.3s.0.2s.d13.3s.0.2s.d13|0.k16.0.k56.u56b|39.1|1m.1r.1u.1v.28|e

Use the WvW upgrades, not fine infusions.

I have no trouble staying alive in large scale fights and often push with the front line.

I use the glyph mostly for extra boons, and because staff has too many slow casts to be useful with signet.

Arcane wave is primarily there for utility. Blast water fields for ~1600 heals, fire for 3 stacks of might, light for retaliation, etc. It’s also good instant damage when fighting goes close quarters.

Lightning flash can be used to escape a bad situation or to close a gap and spike with arcane wave and electric discharge (6-8k instant damage is typical).

Mist form is your emergency escape/tower entrance and safe stomp/rez utility.

Be sure to carry a set of PVT armor/trinkets with ruby upgrade slots if you roam with D/D. S/D can get away with zerker most of the time, except spike thieves and mesmers.

Knox.3748:

The truth is that staff isnt a dps weapon. Thats why i have 2 sets: 1 with Power + tough + Healing Power with runes of Dwayna. Yes i know i should change the runes but im doing some tests in WvW. And the other set has PTV + runes of earth. Both Sets with Berserker Jewels.

I have:

Vit/Heal/Condi and Weapon with Tough/Heal/Condi Jewelry set
Power/Crit/Crit Dmg full set
Power/Vit/Tough with Power/Prec/Tough Jewelry and Weapon set
Power/Vit/Condi full set
Power/Prec/Magic Find full set

Made most of them Elemental colored. My bags are overflowing now. I need to really upgrade these 15 slot Invis into 20 slotters so I can fit everything haha…

i think i will get 6 runes of divinity for my PTV set.

If your a staff ele you go full berserker. Scholar runes and one divinity. Your gonna die. A lot. But at least you’ll be usefull.

I have a hard time running anything besides berserkers. I run staff or s/f because daggers feels wrong to me, but damage on staff is laughable without full berserkers. Even then, it barely breaks even with kitten thief and mesmer builds.

Xenon.4537:

I have a hard time running anything besides berserkers. I run staff or s/f because daggers feels wrong to me, but damage on staff is laughable without full berserkers. Even then, it barely breaks even with kitten thief and mesmer builds.

Yea I rarely go support build like he’s asking for unless I’m running in some sort of large group scenario and I’m the dedicated staff support. Normally I prefer a 0/20/0/30/20 build for PVP in Berserker gear. Plenty of crit/crit dmg to get kills with and lots of survivability.

DeWolfe.2174:

I think we all know Staff Ele is the worst build in the game.

LOL

You cannot be serious…

Kodiak.3281:

Area Healing (Blast Finisher) = 1543 vs 1380 a 12% increase
Geyser (Skill) = 3262 vs 2649 a 23% increase
Soothing Mist (Trait) = 136 vs 95 a 43% increase
Healing Ripple (Trait) = 2419 vs 1602 a 51% increase
Regeneration (Boon) = 275/tick vs 166/tick a 65% increase

I’m very aware of those numbers.

It’s obvious you lack actual combat experience in organised wvw if you think those numbers make any difference. You’re gonna be fighting at least 30 guys (and at most 60+) coming at you with tons of damage and cc, extra ticks of 100 aren’t going to change the outcome.

- Soothing mist is tiny. 95 vs 136 is not going to save you anyway. It’s ok for a minor, but in actual fights, your ether renewal is going to save you, not this.

- Regeneration. The melee get theirs mainly from the guardians. Everyone in your warband should have it running anyway. 166 vs 275 isn’t going to save you, or anyone else. 10 melee blasting water fields will.

- Healing ripple is once every 9 seconds. It only benefits you (if you’re positioned correctly and not running inside the melee ball) and it’s a difference of 800HP every 9 seconds. Again, it’s not going to save you.

- Condition damage. Really? Do I need to even explain why this is bad when earth staff is pretty much purely for the cripple, aura and blast finisher. When every decent enemy group has condition removal coming out of every orifice?

Damage? Fire. (no, not Air, Air is pretty much static field attunement) 25 stacks of might. Direct damage that can’t be cleansed off.

You want to support your team, support them with fields for them to finisher on. Support them with CC. And support them with your own survival.

Support them with actual damage; not half-condition damage that gets insta-cleansed, low power and no crit. Power is a crazy stat, there’s a reason why 25 stacks of might is de rigeur in organised fights.

Cavalier + Knights. Power/precision/critdamage and toughness like crazy.

Staff ele is easily one of the most powerful specs in wvw, possibly the most powerful aside from a blind-necro. It has teeth, support and survivability all at the same time.

You can watch the video in my sig. Well timed CC, high AOE damage, support fields, and survival.

I have been running staf ele in a zerg buster roaming group (5 or less of us) against huge numbers.

I made the tankiest staff ele I could and I’m really happy with out it turned out, unless there’s 5+ guys focusing me for a long time I’m not gonna go down. Meanwhile I’m doing alot of healing and support (all the fields, insta blast on earth dodge, aoe snare, aoe stun, perma boons up, cleansing, etc)

what I run is the typical 0/0/10/30/30 , ether renewal, mist form, armor of earth and lightning flash. Cleric armor, azurite jewels, sigile of energy and boon duration runes.
Im sitting at 20k hp, 1780 toughness and I just feel unkillable.

I don’t do any damage, nor do I bother with it much. I lay the fields, do the heals, give the boons so others in my group can kill and survive the zerg trains we unleash on us.

I might make a vid of it soon since it’s been so much fun playing a staff ele like this.

I agree that staff ele is one of the strongest things in a group. But i disagree for the full zerk. I learned that full zerk is a mistake. If you die in a zerg, you are giving an oppurtunity to your enemies to rally. There are more important things in WvW than damage.

btw as i asked in other posts, im running PTV with divinity runes + celestial jewels. For more tankiness in zerg vs zerk. Should i Switch for PTHP ? I know HP would help my team and my self more but switching my equip now would me make to buy Gems for Transmutation Crystal and a cleric set

xiv.7136:

I’m very aware of those numbers.

It’s obvious you lack actual combat experience in organised wvw if you think those numbers make any difference. You’re gonna be fighting at least 30 guys (and at most 60+) coming at you with tons of damage and cc, extra ticks of 100 aren’t going to change the outcome.

So basically your argument is “because it won’t save you, it’s not worth doing”. This is an absurd position to take. If you really want to break down the numbers 10 guys focusing you will kill you so what’s the point of even leaving your starting area since you know you’re going to just flop over dead? It says a lot when you try downplay a build the “best” top end WvW groups run for support. It says even more when you’re trying downplay something that even the Devs admit is ridiculously overpowered (all these little heals add up and make for some really insane healing to the point they had to nerf it all into the ground for SPvP).

- Condition damage. Really? Do I need to even explain why this is bad when earth staff is pretty much purely for the cripple, aura and blast finisher. When every decent enemy group has condition removal coming out of every orifice?

Damage? Fire. (no, not Air, Air is pretty much static field attunement) 25 stacks of might. Direct damage that can’t be cleansed off.

Again I think you’re pretty confused at the role you’ll be doing as support as this guy asked. As a staffer, you won’t ever see 25 stacks of Might. At most you’ll be able to stack around 9 on yourself and 6 on others at any given time (which you can do in any spec).

However when you’re actually fighting, people/players will be on you in a big ball of fighting and action. You’re going to drop that Eruption to blow up a heal, and you will end up throwing bleeds on people around them. It will happen. What won’t happen is you sitting there in Fire when trying to support your allies. Hence Power is worthless because you won’t use it in a Support role.

xiv.7136:

You want to support your team, support them with fields for them to finisher on. Support them with CC. And support them with your own survival.

Elementalists are one of the best sources (as well as Thieves) sources of Blast finishers. This means you need to be kicking out both Fields and Blast Finishers when you can.

xiv.7136:

Support them with actual damage; not half-condition damage that gets insta-cleansed, low power and no crit. Power is a crazy stat, there’s a reason why 25 stacks of might is de rigeur in organised fights.

Cavalier + Knights. Power/precision/critdamage and toughness like crazy.

You don’t do damage as support. That’s being damage, not support. If you go damage and support, you end up being kitten at either where you’re not enough damage to matter to a zerg kicking out those “worthless” small heals and at best case scenario you become a Condition cleansing bot which as you note is all over the place.

xiv.7136:

Staff ele is easily one of the most powerful specs in wvw, possibly the most powerful aside from a blind-necro. It has teeth, support and survivability all at the same time.

You can watch the video in my sig. Well timed CC, high AOE damage, support fields, and survival.

I think you have a bad notion of what Support actually is. You may be actually be a great Elementalist and bring a lot to the table (I don’t watch vids so I can’t say) but you really have some awful notions of how to play a pure Support Elementalist.

Maskaganda.2043:

I have been running staf ele in a zerg buster roaming group (5 or less of us) against huge numbers.

I made the tankiest staff ele I could and I’m really happy with out it turned out, unless there’s 5+ guys focusing me for a long time I’m not gonna go down. Meanwhile I’m doing alot of healing and support (all the fields, insta blast on earth dodge, aoe snare, aoe stun, perma boons up, cleansing, etc)

what I run is the typical 0/0/10/30/30 , ether renewal, mist form, armor of earth and lightning flash. Cleric armor, azurite jewels, sigile of energy and boon duration runes.
Im sitting at 20k hp, 1780 toughness and I just feel unkillable.

I don’t do any damage, nor do I bother with it much. I lay the fields, do the heals, give the boons so others in my group can kill and survive the zerg trains we unleash on us.

I might make a vid of it soon since it’s been so much fun playing a staff ele like this.

Yea it’s really, really strong when played this way. It’s basically leveraging the “it was so strong it got nerfed in SPvP” elements such as all our minor heals combined leading to crazy good survivability.

In fact found the old post on this style:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Cosmic-elementalist-guide-PVE-WvW/first#post1427290

While I wouldn’t say it’s “The Best Build,” I enjoy Carrion gear with Runes of the Elementalist, Celestial jewelry, and a Rampager staff w/ a Sigil of Doom. My build is 20/0/20/0/30, and attempts to leverage Elemental Surge as much as possible. Utilities are Arcane Power, Arcane Shield, and Arcane Blast (sometimes Arcane Wave).

You might say, “Condition Damage? That’s so bad!” Well, you’d be right most of the time. But I’ve gotten accustomed to Eruptions that proc 5 seconds of Burning. Arcane Blasts that proc Burning, Chill, and Poison all at the same time, or load someone up with 30+ seconds of Chill in one go (like, you know they just used their only cleanse.) Or how about Arcane Shields that double as an AoE Blind when they pop? That one’s great for getting away when you’re getting focused.

It isn’t so much the “Condition Damage” bit that makes it a cool build for me. It’s the combinations of conditions we can drop on someone very quickly, all while doing fairly ok damage and kiting like a champ.

I don’t really die all that much, and I have a great time in WvW and collect loads of bags. People that say that conditions are worthless because of all the AoE cleansing have a fair point, but I don’t find it to be that much of a problem. If my conditions are getting cleansed a lot, I just swap to shorter duration ones like Immobilize and Blind.

Also, really long Burn/Bleed allows you track people on the other side of keep walls by watching where the damage numbers go. It’s like having x-ray vision.

Support =/ healing and only healing

Staff ele supports best by controlling enemy, which in best case scenario negates 100% of damage, or when used offensively increases the damage 0% to 100% because the enemy couldn´t get away from your allies damage. Cleansing conditions is insanely powerful, one cleansed immobilize and somebody will have wasted lots of damage on spot your ally used to be in. One waterfield and your whole team is potentialy up to full health, no matter your own healing power.

Condition damage
This is just crappy in above 10v10 situations. Stacks are capped at 25, which fills up really really fast, when every other skill applies a condition. Damage is almost always completely negated with the amount of condition cleansing any decent guild runs. Damage can be ignored as it doesn´t kill you fast enough, so there´s lot´s of time to set up burst heal or cleansing to counter it.

Healing power
This requires huge investment, gives very little return and any return it give is dwarfed by simple act of your melee blasting in a waterfield. Let´s say within a 10 second period after two guildgroups have collided, your regeneration has had time to heal 1090 more hp, your soothing mist 410 more hp, healing ripple you maybe landed has healed 817 more hp, geyser somebody maybe stayed in full duration has healed 613 more hp and maybe you blasted it for 163 more hp, in total you have done 3093 more healing for the sacrifice of over 1,1k attributes. Meanwhile your friends who contributed actual damage, cc etc. to the fight, set up a watefield and blasted their health bars to full, without any attributes wasted to healing power.
Reason healing power is viable in small scale (spvp) is that there it negates far larger percentage of damage dealt. When there´s more people, the amount damage increases a lot faster than the amount of healing, which leads to above scenario where big investement in healing power negated a drop in a bucket.

Vitality and toughness
In my opinion you only need enough vitality to survive untill your team has time to heal up. In a prolonged fight you will be healing constantly, and therefore take more and more damage in total as the fight continues. More toughness means more damage negated and as the amount of damage you have taken increases, the amount of it negated will soon be far larger than any amount of vitality you could possibly get.
Short version, toughness is king, and vitality is only needed untill the point where you can survive the enemy burst.

Berserkers
It´s a viable choice, if you are a good player and your playstyle fits the gear.
When running glassy gear biggest contribution to your survival comes from positioning yourself properly, and being good at making people forget about your existence. Few of my guildies run nearly full berserkers time to time, and have no survivabilty issues, well apart from ranger pets since you can´t lose aggro from ai with kiting and positioning. If you´re here asking advice for gear i´d say go tankier though, nothing rallies enemies quite as fast as your averagely skilled berseker ele.

Sigh…

Strang.8170:

Support =/ healing and only healing

Everything you mentioned are basics of Elementalist. It’s like saying a Warrior contributes by doing damage. The sky is blue, too. Any Elementalist spec can CC like no tomorrow be it Staff, Scepter or Dagger. If you want to play a support role it means playing a support role. It means both spec’ing for and gearing for that support role.

Strang.8170:

Condition damage

Once you’ve accepted you’re going to gear for Support damage becomes basically pointless. There’s no part of any support spec that will deal decent damage. It doesn’t matter if it’s Power based or Condition based, your damage is shot. The only way to deal any kind of remotely noticeable damage is either go with a high damage spec (30/30/0/10/0) or a hybrid of such with Berserker style (Power/Crit/Crit Dmg) gear. The only difference here is you will be often times in Earth to blow up combo fields as opposed to being in Fire to drop down DPS in a support role.

Strang.8170:

Healing power

You’re really vastly overstating the amount of Blast Finishers there actually are in game that actually get used. They really aren’t that common outside of the Elementalist themselves doing them. While many GvG groups do run a D/D ele in addition to a Support Staff Ele this is only half the problem.

The other half of the problem is anyone with GvG experience will tell you that combo fields get dropped like MAD. In the murder ball (where both sides are clashing) you have no hope of planning a proper Combo field. You have Eles dropping Fire/Frost/Water/Air fields, Necros dropping Wells which are Dark Fields, Guardians dropping Light Fields only ONE of which will heal and it’s whatever field gets dropped first. This is why most high end PvP groups actually drop the water fields back so after engaging if you need a heal you back out of the murder ball where the Support Eles are keeping the Water fields to Blast heals (or Tornado to do Healing Bolts). All of this is where extra healing matters because if you heal up say 2000 HP more per Support Ele and you run 2-3 in your group you will heal 4000-6000 HP quicker than the enemy.

Strang.8170:

Vitality and toughness

I won’t argue against the value of Toughness, and it’s why my build I prop up definitely supports a decent amount of it, however it’s a combination of the two. In my setup I’ve taken the brunt of an enemy force and was able to walk away because of the extra hit points and pull back and recover without having to blow Mist Form. Again the question comes down to where you’re going to put those excess points. You really won’t have enough to focus on an particular area to make it matter.

Strang.8170:

Berserkers

This all comes down to again what he wants to do and accomplish. He already stated he doesn’t want to do Berserkers. If he wanted to do a hybrid style spec with Support and Damage I could see the argument for gear like Knights, Berserkers, etc. Fact is the OP only gave us “I want to do support” and since then we’ve had nothing but everyone come in and say, “Go deeps!”

I use all PTV armor and PTV accessories, and I see 5k hits with meteor shower all the time… sometimes 6k. Also see 8k with eruption, etc. I could do more damage, but never dying is worth far more than hitting a little harder.

Kodiak.3281:

The other half of the problem is anyone with GvG experience will tell you that combo fields get dropped like MAD. In the murder ball (where both sides are clashing) you have no hope of planning a proper Combo field.

I disagree. The good GvG groups coordinate combo fields in a planned and effective manner.

covenn.7165:

Kodiak.3281:

The other half of the problem is anyone with GvG experience will tell you that combo fields get dropped like MAD. In the murder ball (where both sides are clashing) you have no hope of planning a proper Combo field.

I disagree. The good GvG groups coordinate combo fields in a planned and effective manner.

I 100% agree. None of them are throwing down Water Fields in the murder ball to heal with compared to the more powerful utility like Necro Wells or Frost Fields. All that’s kept in the back. The other guy was making it sound like nothing but Water Fields get dropped on a big ball and everyone gets healed instantly so therefore any other kind of healing is pointless which just isn’t the case. Most GvG groups I run with or seen tend to do a Commander in the back that becomes the Support pile you back into if you need healing/support which is where most of the water fields and blast finishers are going off while the murder ball area (where your forces are engaging theirs) tend to be more along the lines of wells and other forms of large CC (frost field, static field, etc).

Kodiak.3281:

covenn.7165:

Kodiak.3281:

The other half of the problem is anyone with GvG experience will tell you that combo fields get dropped like MAD. In the murder ball (where both sides are clashing) you have no hope of planning a proper Combo field.

I disagree. The good GvG groups coordinate combo fields in a planned and effective manner.

I 100% agree. None of them are throwing down Water Fields in the murder ball to heal with compared to the more powerful utility like Necro Wells or Frost Fields. All that’s kept in the back. The other guy was making it sound like nothing but Water Fields get dropped on a big ball and everyone gets healed instantly so therefore any other kind of healing is pointless which just isn’t the case. Most GvG groups I run with or seen tend to do a Commander in the back that becomes the Support pile you back into if you need healing/support which is where most of the water fields and blast finishers are going off while the murder ball area (where your forces are engaging theirs) tend to be more along the lines of wells and other forms of large CC (frost field, static field, etc).

Kodiak, it’s obvious you lack experience of world vs world in organised groups. Do some, and then come back with build/gear suggestions.

xiv.7136:

Kodiak, it’s obvious you lack experience of world vs world in organised groups. Do some, and then come back with build/gear suggestions.

Feel free to watch ANY GvG video and you will see exactly what I am talking about. In fact, here’s a perfect example out of one of the top WvW guilds:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwJ34UecxNk

The “murder ball” (where the two parts are engaging) are slamming into each other and then each side disengages and drops Water fields separate from the huge amount of fire fields, necro wells/marks, static fields, Mesmer Fields, etc that go on each opponent after the moment they engage. The more you can lower that recovery time the better. All of this jives with my WvW experience for group engagements.

When viewed from the Staff Ele’s perspective it appears they went more of a PVT route which is another viable route that’s actually quite popular as well.

covenn.7165:

I use all PTV armor and PTV accessories, and I see 5k hits with meteor shower all the time… sometimes 6k. Also see 8k with eruption, etc. I could do more damage, but never dying is worth far more than hitting a little harder.

You’re hitting naked people and uplevels.

I have 2100 base power and 99% crit damage. The vast majority of Meteor shower, eruption and ice spike crits against 80s are 2-4k.

Caffynated.5713:

covenn.7165:

I use all PTV armor and PTV accessories, and I see 5k hits with meteor shower all the time… sometimes 6k. Also see 8k with eruption, etc. I could do more damage, but never dying is worth far more than hitting a little harder.

You’re hitting naked people and uplevels.

I have 2100 base power and 99% crit damage. The vast majority of Meteor shower, eruption and ice spike crits against 80s are 2-4k.

No. I. Am. Not.

Doing it in GvG fights as well, though granted, most of the Meteor hits are in the 4k range and the outliers being in the 5k. Only hit one 6k in a GvG on someone I know was a full glass ele.

Send me a pm and I will explain how and why.

PVT/Knights/Berserkers/cavaliers mix. 0/10/0/30/30. Dont bother with condition damage as any coordinated group will just wipe it out almost instantly in WvW (keyword, coordinated) as well as you cannot reliably stack any condition for elongated periods of time like other classes can (pistol engi/necro). By that I mean that unlike certain classes you can’t stack a condition highly and reliably as you should be swapping attunements to use ALL your abilities, which locks you out of getting a certain condition.

Your job as a support staff elementalist is to drop the water field when called for it, to drop the static field when asked, and to drop your ice field when needed. Thats it. You are a combo field bot/aoe denial and damager, other classes (hammer warrior/guardians for example) will be those who blast your fields more often than you.

You shouldn’t waste almost 1.1k traits on healing power for a minimal amount of increase in healing power when you can use it for more damage. You won’t be increasing anyone’s survivability with more healing power as your water fields need people to stand still in them which wont happen often in WvW to get the full impact of your increased healing power. The reason everyone likes the water fields we have is because they have a good cooldown and are large when specced for it meaning they can be blasted multiple times by a large group to heal a lot. The blast is what makes staff eles so needed, not your increase in healing power.

Your focus while running staff will be to drop on command:
Frozen Ground
Geyser
Healing rain
Static Field
Unsteady Ground

You will drop when you want to do damage:
Meteor Shower
Ice Spike (yes, it does great damage and can cause people to scatter)
Eruption (for either a blast finisher or just damage)
Lava Font

Don’t waste points on healing power in WvW unless you want to roam as a D/D tank where it will make much more of an impact. The bigger the number of people in an engagement, the less powerful healing power becomes, especially for staff eles as to get the most of the heals you need to stand still, which is a death sentence when zerg meets zerg. Again, the blast is what people want, not the heal of the field itself as you have to stand still to get the benefit of it.

As for whoever said Ice spike/eruption only crits for 2-4k… I don’t know what you are doing or hitting, but I hit for a thousand or 2 more than that quite often. My Ice spike hits generally between 3-6k, eruption is normally lower around the 4k.

Raif.9507:

As for whoever said Ice spike/eruption only crits for 2-4k… I don’t know what you are doing or hitting, but I hit for a thousand or 2 more than that quite often. My Ice spike hits generally between 3-6k, eruption is normally lower around the 4k.

I didn’t say it never hits higher, I said those are the numbers you’re generally going to see against 80s geared for WvW.

Damage coefficients:

Meteor Shower: 1.3
Ice Spike: 1.5
Eruption 1.25

2100 power + might (I average around 16 stacks) = 2660 power
Weapon damage on staff: 985 – 1111 (1048 average)

2660 * 1048 * 1.3 / 1836 (base light exotic armor) = 1,973.8 * 2.49 (99% crit damage) = 4,914 meteor shower against a complete glass canon light class with no protection (suicide).

Most of the people you’re going to be hitting in WvW will be wearing soldier armor with 2500-2800 armor.

2660 * 1048 * 1.3 / 2564 (soldier’s light armor) = 1,413.4 * 2.49 (99% crit damage) = 3,519 meteor shower against a soldier’s geared light class.

2660 * 1048 * 1.3 / 2855 (soldier’s heavy armor) = 1,269.3 * 2.49 (99% crit damage) = 3,160 meteor shower against a soldier’s geared heavy class.

Add protection (which any competent group is going to spread around liberally) and the damage is reduced even further.

Sure, under ideal circumstances where you can prefarm 25 bloodlust and stack 25 might, you can do more, but that’s not what happens in the reality of WvW where you’re getting downed, hopping BLs to defend, etc.

Caffynated.5713:

Raif.9507:

As for whoever said Ice spike/eruption only crits for 2-4k… I don’t know what you are doing or hitting, but I hit for a thousand or 2 more than that quite often. My Ice spike hits generally between 3-6k, eruption is normally lower around the 4k.

I didn’t say it never hits higher, I said those are the numbers you’re generally going to see against 80s geared for WvW.

Damage coefficients:

Meteor Shower: 1.3
Ice Spike: 1.5
Eruption 1.25

2100 power + might (I average around 16 stacks) = 2660 power
Weapon damage on staff: 985 – 1111 (1048 average)

2660 * 1048 * 1.3 / 1836 (base light exotic armor) = 1,973.8 * 2.49 (99% crit damage) = 4,914 meteor shower against a complete glass canon light class with no protection (suicide).

Most of the people you’re going to be hitting in WvW will be wearing soldier armor with 2500-2800 armor.

2660 * 1048 * 1.3 / 2564 (soldier’s light armor) = 1,413.4 * 2.49 (99% crit damage) = 3,519 meteor shower against a soldier’s geared light class.

2660 * 1048 * 1.3 / 2855 (soldier’s heavy armor) = 1,269.3 * 2.49 (99% crit damage) = 3,160 meteor shower against a soldier’s geared heavy class.

Add protection (which any competent group is going to spread around liberally) and the damage is reduced even further.

Sure, under ideal circumstances where you can prefarm 25 bloodlust and stack 25 might, you can do more, but that’s not what happens in the reality of WvW where you’re getting downed, hopping BLs to defend, etc.

Oh sure, yes that is true. Normally to hit harder one would need might stacks and bloodlust stacks and vulnerability. But it is possible and happens quite often in my experience.

Even when i was full zerker the best meteor shower i had was 3.5k, lol. Now with new build i do 2.5, still perfectly good. Meteor Shower isnt supposed to be the 1h Blades from Heaven, and its impossible to do so much dmg from MS.

Knox.3748:

Even when i was full zerker the best meteor shower i had was 3.5k, lol. Now with new build i do 2.5, still perfectly good. Meteor Shower isnt supposed to be the 1h Blades from Heaven, and its impossible to do so much dmg from MS.

After you’ve been around on these forums for a while you learn to tune a lot of that nonsense out.

Typically their arguments just don’t make sense from the get go and typically revolve around spewing out the same cookie cutter nonsense that’s been vomited all over these forums and then lapped up again. My favorite has always been “You need PVT gear to survive in group combat!!!” and then they talk about Berserker Gear/Spec level damage. An argument that makes the case more survivability means more DPS I totally understand but pretending you’re doing as much damage as a Berserker gear/spec with abilities is just absurd.

Worse, they’re never clear on the exact scenario and the way it unfolds. “I just hit for 6k with Ice Spike because my crew of 10 guys put 25 stacks of Might with me against a target who was raised up in levels and rocking zero toughness.” turns into “I hit for 6k with Ice Spike every time you must be doing something wrong!”

Or look at threads like this. Guy comes in looking for an Ele Support build that isn’t glass cannon and you got how many posts advocating Berserker gear? All he mentions is group support but never the scale. 5 man group support is going to be way different than guild on guild level action let alone huge zerg style support but here we have all kinds of responses. Then people are right for their advice based on what they are talking about, but wrong when talking about a different topic. All pretty comical when you think about it.

Thats true man. I actually have PTV because it was the first set in the game. Could change to PTP, but i want to put my elem now with fract upgrade and stuff.

Kodiak.3281:

Or look at threads like this. Guy comes in looking for an Ele Support build that isn’t glass cannon and you got how many posts advocating Berserker gear? All he mentions is group support but never the scale.

A huge part of the support an elementalist provides is AoE damage. We’re the 105s from Company of Heroes (long range damage that is only useful against large masses). The rest is all about abilities and traits, not his stats, so going for damage gear makes sense, especially with how easy it is to survive with mist form and lightning flash combined with smart play.

A properly played ele provides:
AoE damage
AoE swiftness
AoE protection
AoE regeneration
AoE might
AoE healing
AoE condition removal
AoE crowd control
Combo fields
Combo finishers

and more…

If you’re not doing all of that, you’re not playing elementalist to its potential.

Caffynated.5713:

If you’re not doing all of that, you’re not playing elementalist to its potential.

All you did was rattle off a list of things any Elementalist can bring. It is not helpful nor informative. It’s like saying a rogue should bring DPS. I mean honestly short of Water Fields I could bring everything you mentioned with a D/D Brawler style Elementalist. Maybe you seem to think “playing an Elementalist” and “playing a Support Elementalist” are the same thing. I contend they aren’t and that there are in fact numerous builds that can all function in a support role and potentially other roles.

You can read posts like this and many others that there are a variety of builds for when people think support. Some think you can go Berserker gear and just put points into 0/10/0/30/30 and that’s enough support. Others go to the other extreme and equip Cleric/Shaman healing gear and really crank out the heals. We’re all presenting options, it’s up to the person seeking advice to determine what they want.

The truth has been and always will be without a measured way to track performance (be it DPS performance or healing performance) there’s really no way to say one way is better than another. There’s no way to disprove that say two ticks of my Eruption bleed with my Condition gear is any more or less than say one tick of Lava font they get hit with. We can all theorize and assume based on anecdotal evidence (IE: “I saw it do more dmg!”) but without being able to measure it there’s no way to say for sure.

Kodiak, it’s obvious you don’t know how to play an elementalist, while there are others in this thread who do.

Your recommendations to go mainstats condi/heal/x are as poor as the people advocating full berzerker gear.

I stand by my simple, short first answer:

xiv.7136:

cavalier/knight for wvw, PVT if you are super-paranoid

zerk if you enjoy waypointing often

Kodiak.3281:

Once you’ve accepted you’re going to gear for Support damage becomes basically pointless.

What do you do after you´ve used all your support skills? Stay in earth spam 2?
If you don´t dish out damage while your support skills are on cd, you´re just a waste of space. You say support doesn´t deal any damage? Certainly won´t if you waste 1,1k attributes to give yourself 270 healing per second (if you keep water attunement and healing skills on cd, maintain perma regen and soothing mist and land all of the skills for their full durations), every second you´re not using healing makes that number smaller, and your huge investment in healing power even more of a waste.
Spend that amount of points on offense( 1,1k points gives you a lot of offense), you will have dished out respectable damage, you won´t have had to keep your water constantly on cd and are free to give waterfields whenever needed instead of whenever you happen to have them. You will still have huge healing potential, even with only the 300 healing power from water tree, but most importantly you haven´t kitten your other stats.
If you specced for both healing and condition damage, most of your already non-existant damage will have been cleansed.

Kodiak.3281:

You’re really vastly overstating the "amount of Blast Finishers there actually are in game that actually get used

Hammer guardians, stable of melee trains, mighty blow on 5s cd. Warriors with warhorn, call to arms on 20s cd, also stable of the melee trains. Thieves, cluster bomb on 0s cd, commonly seen in wvw, even more so in gvg. D/D eles like said above.
That would make 8-12 blasts for averagely sized melee train, with blasts from thieves/eles adding to that.

Kodiak.3281:

This is why most high end PvP groups actually drop the water fields back so after engaging if you need a heal you back out of the murder ball where the Support Eles are keeping the Water fields to Blast heals (or Tornado to do Healing Bolts).

They don´t keep waterfields anywhere, waters are called for when disengaging, and blasted as you regroup for another push, a process which shouldn´t take more than few seconds. In the current meta guilds have started to even do waters inside the enemy and if they´re good they do get water blasts there too. Video you linked is from old meta where nobody tried to interfere with this process, and as RG is rather good guild they do it fast(well, fast for when that video was shot) which makes it seem like there´s plenty of time, when nowadays you´ll have static field around you with meteors raining down within 5 seconds. In most cases casters (well, good ones anyway) aren´t even that near to the melee group (0 benefit from attune swap/dodge healing) and usualy don´t even need the healing from the fields if they know what they´re doing.
Oh, and having fought both of the guild in the mentioned video, i can assure you none of their eles run condition damage or think they´re healers.

Kodiak.3281:

Ayou will heal 4000-6000 HP quicker than the enemy.

If 2-3 persons of your group deal non-existant damage your enemy doesn´t even have any need to heal, and if they do they will certainly have retained far more than 4-6k more health due to lack of damage from your group

Kodiak.3281:

I won’t argue against the value of Toughness, and it’s why my build I prop up definitely supports a decent amount of it, however it’s a combination of the two.

Like i said, AFTER you can survive the initial burst, you´re better going for toughness, as it gives better results in prolonged fights.

Kodiak.3281:

This all comes down to again what he wants to do and accomplish. He already stated he doesn’t want to do Berserkers.

People brought up berserker, i will give my 2 cents on it.
As for the damage vs survivability debate.
Start tanky and begin dropping defensive stats for offense untill you can still reliably survive.

Full zerker armor and trinkets and staff. 20 Fire (VI and VII) 30 Water (V, VI and XI) 20 Arcana (V and VIII). Glymph of Elemental Harmony, Mist Form, Signet Of Air, Lightning Flash, Take Root (my ghetto Cantrip). Rune of the Scholar and Sigil of Battle.
This is the best I have come up with. It works very well for me. Truffle ravioli most of the time (sometimes butternut squash soup) and sharpening stones for consumables.