Guild Wars 2

So, I had this one Ele on my account sitting arround lvl 51 for months now. I thought I’ll get him to 80. And I wanted to do that via PvP to get familiar with the profession for his future WvW operations^^

However, I don’t envy Eles in PvP. I found the common D/D or S/D boring and wanted to use a Staff. That was propably the biggest mistake ever. I can not get my Ele running in a satisfying way in PvP with staff. Granted I still need to adept my play with all the attunment switching.

The most sucessfull build in hot joint matches was the following:
Click me
That is propably not the most efective setup, but it kinda worked best for me.

But besides some satisfying fights, where I actually managed to down several players with my Ele or push them over the edge, I got mostly smashed into the dirt.

So, is fighting with staff in PvP viable? Or should I get on the D/D or S/D train? And how is it in WvW in roaming.

you can’t really level via pvp

also valkyrie amulet strikes me as a bad choice
15 crit damage is already weak compared to 285 stat points, but then you don’t even have any crit chance

also, staff is bad at applying damaging conditions, so I’d drop the condition stuff too. you have only one burn, and only one chill

other than that, idk. I’m not too great at the tanky build thing. when I play staff I build for damage. 30 in fire, rune of divinity, berserker amulet, sigil of fire. arcane shield and arcane wave utilities

Staff generally doesn’t work too well as a tank, because of low stats and long defensive cooldowns. In fact, I would venture that pretty much all of our defense works better if you just don’t worry about tanking, and concentrate on offensive stats, because we don’t have any sustained control/healing with our extreme cooldowns.
What I run is almost what Krazy runs (there’s a couple of threads by him below tutorialing a PvP staff ele, on the second page for now), 30/10/0/0/30 with divinity runes, but I still have blasting staff and zerk ammy/jewel.
I highly recommend his guides and a damage/control setup.

Oh, also brilliance, wave, shield, and then your favorite utility (I like frost bow, most other people want cantrips). Elite is usually tornado for the tornado+meteor, but I find myself never needing the extra damage so I’ve been experimenting with the other two.

Also drop the scepter trait for blasting staff, I assume this was a mistake in the editor though.

reikken.4961:

you can’t really level via pvp

You can by earning glory for the tome of knowledge^^ Don’t wanna do stupid PvE stuff.

The valkyrie was just for the toughness and power. The condition dmg was actually not that bad for such a low CondDmg build (I am used to necro CondDmg, so I know it’s nothing compared to that). But the bleeds from eruption and the burning from flame burst and burning retreat worked actually not that bad. But I will try to go more zerker dmg as you gyus suggested. My setup was indeed supoptimal (to use nice terms^^).

@P Fun Daddy.1208:
That was a misclick, I actually have the trait for bigger Staff attacks^^

Thanks for your quick replies. I’ll try that out.

I don’t like playing ele in SPVP much, but when I do I don’t like going full zerker. Ele is squishy to begin with, full zerker doesn’t help with that, so I run:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmYbzR5gjEAEFoYSQBBMIKYRRxOzA-TkAA0CsIqRVjrGTNyas1M+A

I use signet of fire to boost the crit chance and generally don’t activate it.

Just be warned, you’re still pretty squishy with that build.

if I don’t want to run full glass, I’ll run something like this:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmYbzR5gjEAEFoYSQBBMIKYRRxOzA-TkAA0CsIqRVjrGTNyas1M+A
but generally I’ll go head and use the zerker amulet. more fun that way
swapping out burning fire for lava tomb is also a lot of fun

If you need something a bit sturdy, fair against conditions etc. then you can try this build out. It is tricky to have sustain and good damage (burst), so I made a build that lets you do fair non-crit damage and good condition damage.

Since you are getting into melee range sooner or later, it is nice to put pressure on people with EA dodge burning and hopefully have them eat several Eruptions. You basically have to CC them into eating Eruptions whenever possible, otherwise your main damage will be from Flame Burst and EA fire dodges. Quite funny to play.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmmbwR5gjDAEFuYyQRIjUeszM2A-TkAgyCrIaS1krJTTymsNN+A

Uh, thanks guys, didn’t expect so many builds to beeing thrown at me. I like it.

Okay I zerkered a bit now with this build. It was quite fun, especially if one can Meteorshower an unexpecting group during a fight over a cap point. With my first shower I downed three people and capped the point.

However, there are two professions I can not deal with at all in a 1v1 scenario. That is guardian and those healing signet warriors. They just trample over me. Is this common, or do I just need to practice and adept my playstyle?

EDIT: For healing I actually wanne use arcane brilliance, but I don’t have enough skillpoints yet.

TyPin.9860:

Okay I zerkered a bit now with this build. It was quite fun, especially if one can Meteorshower an unexpecting group during a fight over a cap point. With my first shower I downed three people and capped the point.

However, there are two professions I can not deal with at all in a 1v1 scenario. That is guardian and those healing signet warriors. They just trample over me. Is this common, or do I just need to practice and adept my playstyle?

EDIT: For healing I actually wanne use arcane brilliance, but I don’t have enough skillpoints yet.

Both are just practice. I used to have a good bit of trouble with Warriors, but after a bit the only real thing they can do to me is run away haha. If they are smart enough to run, they can always get away, but I usually don’t have much trouble with them in 1v1s.
DPS guardians can get me if they get the jump on me, but otherwise I have zero trouble with guardians of any flavor.
Really, the best remedy for either of these is to use static, earth 4, frozen ground and burning retreat to kite (also keep swiftness up), while tapping away at their health with lava font and eruption.
If either of them switch to projectiles, use magnetic aura. If you use arcane shield or some distracting control spell before it, they will often not even notice magnetic aura for the full duration and deal massive amounts of damage to themselves.

Edit: I would drop fire III for fire V (combos nicely with fire 25pt minor) and I would grab Evasive Arcana in place of Elemental attunement. Also, I would try to fit arcane wave in place of mist form or lightning flash eventually, especially when you get brilliance. This is my current build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWnEEleYnBWGQlYAI8QACMQUwiyjY2xGA-TkAg0CnIqRVjrGTNyas1M+A

You don’t have to follow any of this stuff, by the way, but it is a good starting point.
One of the great things about the staff is that you can do whatever you want with it.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

TyPin.9860:

Okay I zerkered a bit now with this build. It was quite fun, especially if one can Meteorshower an unexpecting group during a fight over a cap point. With my first shower I downed three people and capped the point.

However, there are two professions I can not deal with at all in a 1v1 scenario. That is guardian and those healing signet warriors. They just trample over me. Is this common, or do I just need to practice and adept my playstyle?

EDIT: For healing I actually wanne use arcane brilliance, but I don’t have enough skillpoints yet.

Both are just practice. I used to have a good bit of trouble with Warriors, but after a bit the only real thing they can do to me is run away haha. If they are smart enough to run, they can always get away, but I usually don’t have much trouble with them in 1v1s.
DPS guardians can get me if they get the jump on me, but otherwise I have zero trouble with guardians of any flavor.
Really, the best remedy for either of these is to use static, earth 4, frozen ground and burning retreat to kite (also keep swiftness up), while tapping away at their health with lava font and eruption.
If either of them switch to projectiles, use magnetic aura. If you use arcane shield or some distracting control spell before it, they will often not even notice magnetic aura for the full duration and deal massive amounts of damage to themselves.

Edit: I would drop fire III for fire V (combos nicely with fire 25pt minor) and I would grab Evasive Arcana in place of Elemental attunement. Also, I would try to fit arcane wave in place of mist form or lightning flash eventually, especially when you get brilliance. This is my current build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWnEEleYnBWGQlYAI8QACMQUwiyjY2xGA-TkAg0CnIqRVjrGTNyas1M+A

You don’t have to follow any of this stuff, by the way, but it is a good starting point.
One of the great things about the staff is that you can do whatever you want with it.

Let me get this straight, are you saying you can reliably 1v1 warriors and guardians? As in kill them or at hold a node against them?

Because that sounds like 100 percent nonsense to me. Staff in my experience cannot duel any class, no matter what build they are running. That’s just not what it was meant to do. I would start taking staff players a bit more seriously if they accepted that and told me how they can make up for that shortcoming.

Gokil.2543:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

TyPin.9860:

Okay I zerkered a bit now with this build. It was quite fun, especially if one can Meteorshower an unexpecting group during a fight over a cap point. With my first shower I downed three people and capped the point.

However, there are two professions I can not deal with at all in a 1v1 scenario. That is guardian and those healing signet warriors. They just trample over me. Is this common, or do I just need to practice and adept my playstyle?

EDIT: For healing I actually wanne use arcane brilliance, but I don’t have enough skillpoints yet.

Both are just practice. I used to have a good bit of trouble with Warriors, but after a bit the only real thing they can do to me is run away haha. If they are smart enough to run, they can always get away, but I usually don’t have much trouble with them in 1v1s.
DPS guardians can get me if they get the jump on me, but otherwise I have zero trouble with guardians of any flavor.
Really, the best remedy for either of these is to use static, earth 4, frozen ground and burning retreat to kite (also keep swiftness up), while tapping away at their health with lava font and eruption.
If either of them switch to projectiles, use magnetic aura. If you use arcane shield or some distracting control spell before it, they will often not even notice magnetic aura for the full duration and deal massive amounts of damage to themselves.

Edit: I would drop fire III for fire V (combos nicely with fire 25pt minor) and I would grab Evasive Arcana in place of Elemental attunement. Also, I would try to fit arcane wave in place of mist form or lightning flash eventually, especially when you get brilliance. This is my current build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWnEEleYnBWGQlYAI8QACMQUwiyjY2xGA-TkAg0CnIqRVjrGTNyas1M+A

You don’t have to follow any of this stuff, by the way, but it is a good starting point.
One of the great things about the staff is that you can do whatever you want with it.

Let me get this straight, are you saying you can reliably 1v1 warriors and guardians? As in kill them or at hold a node against them?

Because that sounds like 100 percent nonsense to me. Staff in my experience cannot duel any class, no matter what build they are running. That’s just not what it was meant to do. I would start taking staff players a bit more seriously if they accepted that and told me how they can make up for that shortcoming.

Looking back on that post, I did exaggerate a bit, but I have no more trouble with them than other classes.
I can’t get away with it with people who are actually good, but average players from most classes can be taken down fairly easily with a number of tricks. For example, most players can be caught in a lava font + earth 4 for several ticks.
I’m not really sure why you’re surprised about me being able to kill guardians using a staff. It’s a pretty fair matchup honestly, even on a point, as long as you’re briefly willing to step outside of the point to kite more effectively.
DPS warriors can give you trouble if you’re not careful, but you can either kite or reflect all of their attacks pretty well with the tools you have available.

The real trouble in my opinion is and always will be thieves and mesmers. Both of them have strong innate defense, can surprise really well, and can attack better than you can defend for the most part.

Can any other staff player back this up? Can staff really perform anywhere near decent in 1v1s in sPvP (stay on the point or kill opponent). Because from my experience in PvP and WvW roaming, a staff ele in open terrain is a non-factor, or even a negative contribution due to being a free rally.

Gokil.2543:

Can any other staff player back this up? Can staff really perform anywhere near decent in 1v1s in sPvP (stay on the point or kill opponent). Because from my experience in PvP and WvW roaming, a staff ele in open terrain is a non-factor, or even a negative contribution due to being a free rally.

Hey there,

Warriors and Guardians are actually among the easiest classes for a staff ele to beat (in my opinion). Granted, you won’t win with 100% reliability, but you can definitely give them a run for their money in any instance. And being a support class/build, that’s pretty good. The reason I prefer to fight them over any other class is because they are the most predictable. You know which way they are coming to engage you, and so you know how to place your fields/CC.

Here are the videos he was referring to. It’s a step-by-step instructional guide to playing staff ele. There’s some stuff referring to the build itself, but the combos will remain the same across all builds.

Guide Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDX7lo1xtak

Guide Part 2 [6:25 for thief content]:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roANj4g0Skc&feature=youtu.be

I watched the videos before, and held my silence waiting for more staff content because I wasn’t very impressed. When you showed your 48 percent win rate and 1000 ranking(I applaud you for trying staff though), I had even more doubts. I’ve been rank 250 and on a 57 percent win rate atm with D/D. I would love to believe staff has a place in PvP but to this day I’m waiting for convincing videos against competent players. Not hating on you in the slightest, I just can’t see what all the fuss is about. When people start claiming staff is useable as a 1v1 set, I just can’t take that seriously.

Gokil.2543:

I watched the videos before, and held my silence waiting for more staff content because I wasn’t very impressed. When you showed your 48 percent win rate and 1000 ranking(I applaud you for trying staff though), I had even more doubts. I’ve been rank 250 and on a 57 percent win rate atm with D/D. I would love to believe staff has a place in PvP but to this day I’m waiting for convincing videos against competent players. Not hating on you in the slightest, I just can’t see what all the fuss is about. When people start claiming staff is useable as a 1v1 set, I just can’t take that seriously.

Absolutely agree. If you’re looking to perform at the top level, then when you get down to brass tax there’s really only 1 or 2 builds you’re allowed to use per weapon set to perform adequately in sPvP.

Narrowing that further, if you only want to perform well in a dueling environment, there’s usually only 1 build per metagame (Condition build/power build etc).

So:

If the question is: “Does staff work in sPvP” the answer is Yes.
If the question is: “is staff useable in 1v1” the short answer is It Depends.
If the question is: “Is a staff going to replace the best dueling build as a 1v1 weapon” the answer is No.

I would argue that staff is better than most D/D and S/D builds in a 3v3 to 5v5 situations. (I would also argue 2v2, but let’s not get too hasty!) and of course it greatly depends on your team and your opponent. And having an uninterrupted staff elementalist on the edge of a team fight will almost always win that fight for your team. With that said, staff definitely has a place in sPvP.

So again, if what you’re saying is: “Can a staff beat a warrior/guardian in 1v1” the answer is yes.
If you want to know: “Is a staff better than D/D in beating a warrior/Guardian in 1v1” the answer is no.

And I’m not saying staff is good, either. We definitely need a buff But it’s not all bad.

FWIW, of all my time in hotjoins the only classes that really smash me 1v1 are condition necros with Signet of Spite, good Mesmers with greatsword, good thieves, and rangers that kite. Anything else I can put up a fight and if I end up losing I can usually just run away and heal up.

Remember staff is a support weapon, and you’ll have issues finishing/killing anyone even as full zerker (hell, you risk getting downed if you try stomping since you’re so squishy in all zerker gear). So you do best by staying in a group. You can really screw up an opponent by way of CC’s and fields, and don’t underestimate how frightening it is to nubs to lay down all your AOE’s lol.

I’d drop 10 points from Earth for Evasive Arcana, or keep 20 in earth and get Rock Solid. Forget about condition damage with staff.
My “balanced” build is http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWnEE1cYwBWGQlYAgowFTCKIwgyjdmxGA-TkAAyCsIQShkDJDSSksIN+A

Gokil.2543:

Can any other staff player back this up? Can staff really perform anywhere near decent in 1v1s in sPvP (stay on the point or kill opponent). Because from my experience in PvP and WvW roaming, a staff ele in open terrain is a non-factor, or even a negative contribution due to being a free rally.

idk, but for what it’s worth, I win most of my 1v1s in hotjoin, using full glass staff

@KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:
I watched your videos. Gave me some ideas, but basicly I am using all those combos already. I also like to use static field and gust to push my opponents on the forcefields on Skyhammer.

However, fighting thieves is not a problem for me. My main is mesmer and I have spend a fair ammount of time fighting thieves roaming in WvW and the ones in sPvP don’t seem to be much different. They are very predictable and usually suicide in my AoEs, cuz they think I’m an easy pick.

I will practice more with staff. I could use dagger or scepter, but I find the staff the most stylish, so I wanna make it work. I remember staff eles in WvW, who I just eat in seconds with my mesmer. But playing Ele myself I can’t ger rid of the feeling that with the right ammount of practice and experience it is possible to make Staff Ele work in 1v1 and even 1vX. When I get to this point, I will put up some videos myself

TyPin.9860:

@KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:
I watched your videos. Gave me some ideas, but basicly I am using all those combos already. I also like to use static field and gust to push my opponents on the forcefields on Skyhammer.

However, fighting thieves is not a problem for me. My main is mesmer and I have spend a fair ammount of time fighting thieves roaming in WvW and the ones in sPvP don’t seem to be much different. They are very predictable and usually suicide in my AoEs, cuz they think I’m an easy pick.

I will practice more with staff. I could use dagger or scepter, but I find the staff the most stylish, so I wanna make it work. I remember staff eles in WvW, who I just eat in seconds with my mesmer. But playing Ele myself I can’t ger rid of the feeling that with the right ammount of practice and experience it is possible to make Staff Ele work in 1v1 and even 1vX. When I get to this point, I will put up some videos myself

Please do! I look forward to watching more videos of staff eles out there performing.

But come on now, guys… let’s not get too hasty. Staff could use some buffs. Don’t want to let arenanet think they can get away with nerfing us again

I agree, I allways like buffs^^

I was actually thinking, the first time I played Staff Ele, that the trait, which increases AoE with staff, could also decrease cooldowns of utilities. I’d like that. Those insanely long utilitiecooldowns are really bad, if the fight takes more than a few seconds, because where I can pop my utilities with mesmer 2 times, I can pop them only one time with Ele (and honestly, the mesmer decoy for example has more to it that any ele defensive utility imho). However, I am not really qualified atm to judge that, because I still alg the experience.

reikken.4961:

Gokil.2543:

Can any other staff player back this up? Can staff really perform anywhere near decent in 1v1s in sPvP (stay on the point or kill opponent). Because from my experience in PvP and WvW roaming, a staff ele in open terrain is a non-factor, or even a negative contribution due to being a free rally.

idk, but for what it’s worth, I win most of my 1v1s in hotjoin, using full glass staff

Hotjoin… Yeah. I know staff can be useful there due to the sheer size of the battles, and the lack of skill of almost all players in there.

So do you feel you could beat anyone on any build of equal skill with a glass staff?

I play quite a bit of PvP lately with my staff ele. I’ve been playing staff ele since launch, so I have a lot of experience.

My build is kinda half way between zerker and soldier, giving me a fairly good balance between damage and health/armor.

Nice thing about staff ele is that with so many AoE attacks, you can do about the same in 1v1 or 1v5 when it comes to damage and even control. Tricky part is staying alive, which comes down to controlling the enemy a lot (static field, gust, unsteady ground, etc.) and timing your heals, condition removal, and dodges well.

We can also do pretty good spike damage too though, with fire fields and blasts and all.