Guild Wars 2

Staff is getting some nice buffs in the patch on the 25th. That, with hopefully better build diversity due to tweaks and additions to the trait lines, will give Staff Eles the bit of love they’ve been needing.

That said, I’ve been enjoying Staff Elementalist as my main for several weeks now. First in PvE, then in WvW. I also have been able to solo holos in high level zones. So, I’m really looking forward to the changes inbound.

10-0-10-30-20 currently. Gear is a mix of Berzerker’s (PP%), Soldier’s(PVT) and Knight’s (PPT).

Lets hope the changes in 6/25 is what we need, until then lets keep our finger crossed, and I agree with you, ele being my main since beta and I have exclusively played only staff ele, I agree that it is incredibly underpowered, at least in sPvP and some PvE content

I use staff a lot and have found reasonable success with it. It has it’s weaknesses and strengths like most other specs and classes I’ve played in the game. Needs work, but isn’t useless (unlike anything /Focus related).

I’ve been staff ele since pre-release. I love it and don’t see myself changing. I’ve tried d/d, s/d, etc, but I can’t keep away from the diversity allowed with a staff.

I get asked to change over to d/d when running around with havoc sometimes and I just laugh. Remember as a staff ele, you have static to hold, ice to slow, lava font to burn under while also shooting in their face at the same time and a nice reflect and blast in your earth line.

You can also change to the scepter for dragon tooth to help take out those nasty arrow carts in wvw that many can’t touch without siege.

Ele can do a lot of support as my build gives speed when I switch to air, regen when I switch to water, might when I switch to fire and protection when I switch to earth. I give this to the group surrounding me whenever I switch so it’s usually air for speed, speed, speed until you get close, then to earth to reflect shots as you’re probably close to the front line, then fire to might your group and then air to static them in place. Given this is what I usually do when we charge into a zerg.

Keep in mind you have a lot of combos you can help with too. You can blast everyone’s fields with a projectile or a blast finisher. You can blast or projectile finish your own fields:

Need more might? Earth #2 followed with lava font on top
Need more speed? Earth #2 followed by static on top
Need area healing, more healing? Earth #2 followed by Water 3 and water 5 (use 5 first).

Stuck in a lagfest in SM or in a keep and can’t heal? What are you trying to do? Are you auto-attacking with fire and trying to switch to water to cast heals? Wrong:

Auto-attack with water #1: Every attack fires and heals multiple teammates at the same time.

Want to get away from a thief? Start running, boost your speed, throw a static at your feet or right behind you (use look behind key = invaluable) to hold, throw a slow under the thief, boost your speed again, hit reflect to stay out of attacks and keep your speed up, use rock armor to prevent stuns, use the two dodges from your stamina bar and use the backward fire roll to get away too.

I can keep going and going.

There’s a lot you can do in every situation. Play it long enough and it will become second nature for not only your skills but learning to blast and work with others’ skills as you see them go down.

Get in chat! Get in your guild or groups TS, Mumble or whatever. Stick with your group when outnumbered. The amount of help you can do with holds, slows, blast fields and straight up damage is extremely helpful to any group.

I can go on and on and on, but I already did, lol.

Go play and learn.

Good luck!

The only real issue of staff is that animations are so looong…and aftercast too.

/check leaked patch notes
/check calendar

Oh wait.

If the leaked notes are true, gale will be an aoe-line knockback, eruption and lava font will have shorter casting times (not animation times), meteor shower’s individual radius for each hit is going to be bigger, and most of the skill’s aftercast durations are going to be reduced – sometimes up to half. That should make staff’s playstyle smoother and faster.

Also, the possibly reworked fire grandmaster trait should allow you to get fury out of lava font for each blast finisher. How cool is that?

DiogoSilva.7089:

Also, the possibly reworked fire grandmaster trait should allow you to get fury out of lava font for each blast finisher. How cool is that?

The issue is that the rest of the line looks still garbage. :p

The staff gonna be terrific starting from next week…mark my words…. and prepare to practice on staff, you’ll be soon seen as a primary target rather than free kill XD

Staff is great for wvw; it’s actually quite rewarding if you can position well and land your spells while avoiding the ball of heavies diving your group. If the leaked notes are true, then staff will be getting a buff as well.

I don’t like staff for PvE because s/d is just so much better. Constant 25 might stacks, and soon 25 might stacks + perma fury after patch. If your teammates are near you, they will get those as well.

AndrewSX.3794:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Also, the possibly reworked fire grandmaster trait should allow you to get fury out of lava font for each blast finisher. How cool is that?

The issue is that the rest of the line looks still garbage. :p

Unfortunately, but for a staff ele that stays at range in wvw or even in pve, Ember’s Might, Spell Slinger and Fire’s Embrace might be decent fillers to put in. The OP will just have to trade in the signet for a second cantrip, or lightning flash for a second signet and pick some aura traits.

The new grandmaster air traits won’t find much use for a staff wielder, so that’s not the best option if someone wants to go offensive.

30 fire, Ember’s Might, Fire’s Embrace, Persisting Flames.
20 air, Zephyr’s Boon, Bolt to the Heart.
20 arcana, Elemental Attunement, Blasting Staff.

Here you have it, a good offensive staff build after the patch. Aoe fury from fields, and self-fury (and swiftness) from signets, frost aura fields and magnetic aura.

If zephyr’s boon is too redudant with fury on fields and with signet of air, you can keep 10 in air for bolt, and go 10 in earth for signet mastery or protection per aura, or go 10 in water or 30 in arcane.

I’m having a pretty great time with my staff ele in W3. You can offset your squishyness pretty easily, but it doesn’t mean you can solo every player in W3.

Sentinel’s Exalted Gear (+Backpiece, Ring, Earring)
Knight’s Staff
Knight’s Trident
Commisar’s Manifesto
Dwayna’s Embrace
Ascended Triforge Pendant

Exquisite azurite jewels on all accessories, and the following runes:

2 Superior Rune of Strength
2 Superior Rune of Fire
2 Superior Rune of Hoelbrak

30/0/0/20/20 – Fire 6, 7, 12; Water 1 & 5, Arcana 4 & 8

Utility Skills – Prayer to Dwayna, Signets of Earth, Water, Air, Conjure Fiery Greatsword

I’m missing two sentinel pieces, but I’m at 18,575 HP and nearing 2k toughness. The runes grant a +100% to might duration and might stacks very easily. The result is an elementalist that takes a few hits to drop, and works extremely well in zerg situations where AoE is key. It’s a support, but a greater support than what would be expected.

My WvW build
0/10/30/10/20
air: bolt of heart
earth: Stone splinters(if new patch notes correct – otherwise earths embrace), Geomancers Freedom, rock solid
Water: vital Striking
Arcane: elemental attunement, blasting staff

Armor (helm,coat,leg) soldier – superior Meandru
Armor (shoulders, gloves, boots) knight – superior meandru
Trinkets Soldier/knight (2pieces) – Beryl and ruby
Staff – beserker of accuracy

Utilities
Ether Renewal
Open (signet of air, lightning flash, arcane wave, mistform)
Pain Inverter (asura racial – retailation and confusion)
Armor of Earth – prot/stability plus stun break
Elite: Tornado/Fiery Greatsword (depends on conditions)

condition damage = duration reduced by 61-64%
chilled, cripple and immobilized = duration reduced by 94-98%
Stun = Duration reduced by 25%

CC: we have 4 Crowd Control with frozen ground being the best (some will say static field but stability ignores it)

Survival: 1900 toughness, Armor 2700ish, 17k health, pain inverter, magnetic aura, CC, armor of earth

Damage:
+10% health above 90 (we are range fighters)
+10% endurance at 100 (we are range fighters)
+20% opponents health <33%
+5% damage if opponent is bleeding (if new patch is true)

Crit chance/crit damage = 34/39%

If the patch notes are accurate, you will see a lot more staff eles out there. They are already one of the best builds for WvW zerg fighting, and if cast times are shortened, staff eles will be the undisputed leaders in AoE dps (which they may be already). Who knows, we may even be able to win 1v1 situations

Staff ele lover here. I enjoyed my staff ele more when I finally decided to ditch Blasting Staff over Renewing Stamina. sPVP perspective. It’s still the evade here support there build, but I noticed I survived a lot longer and killing some more compared to while traited for Blasting Staff (standard 0/10/0/30/30 build).

I only use staff in wvwvw and dungeons because if you have people that distract the mobs you can rain lots and lots of fire on them from afar.
Switched to all zerker gear recently and standard build: 0/20/0/30/20
That way your water skills don’t become totally useless.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

I only use staff in wvwvw and dungeons because if you have people that distract the mobs you can rain lots and lots of fire on them from afar.
Switched to all zerker gear recently and standard build: 0/20/0/30/20
That way your water skills don’t become totally useless.

To chime in this is the build I use 99% of the time as well because it also opens up D/D play as well if I want it or staff play.

Still doubt I will be able to solo other players with a staff so D/D still for that but these changes might mean I can tag a few mobs in large PvE zerg events finally.

Staff wil probalby never be a reliable 1vs1 weapon but its seems its getting lots of love.
Most notably the meteor shower,geyser and gust buff.
Plus if you add all those aftercasts and cast times reduces..you ll get why playing staff was so clunky.You were essentially spending seconds upon seconds doing..nothing

I miss old unnerfed Evasive Arcana….that made staff frickin awesome. I still had to go d/d for 1v1s or small encounters but EA made staff ele so dang fun. Sigh, nerfed into the ground ftl.

p.s. <- staff ele since bwe 2; I have leveled all other classes at some point but I don’t like any of them since most are super easy (and OP). Ele until I don’t play no more. Infact I have 3 eles on same server lol.

Kodiak.3281:

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

I only use staff in wvwvw and dungeons because if you have people that distract the mobs you can rain lots and lots of fire on them from afar.
Switched to all zerker gear recently and standard build: 0/20/0/30/20
That way your water skills don’t become totally useless.

To chime in this is the build I use 99% of the time as well because it also opens up D/D play as well if I want it or staff play.

Same reason why I use this build as well but with the upcoming trait changes I’ll probably move out of water and into air or something.
0/30/0/20/20 maybe.
10% more crit dmg+trait that gives +10% crit damage plus food that gives +10% crit damage…. already running around with 50% crit chance so that’d be an instant 15% damage boost. Similar to the 30 in water.

also the 20th in water I use for the regen on mistform, signet of water and icebow. The downed mist form does damage that way too which is a pretty neat trick. Otherwise there’s the 20% damage to vulnerable foes, vulnerability on signet/arcane, equip signet of air (new stunbreaker and perma speedboost+blind) I wonder if that’d work with lingering elements and then swapping to air making the lightning strikes hit for 20% more too….?

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Same reason why I use this build as well but with the upcoming trait changes I’ll probably move out of water and into air or something.
0/30/0/20/20 maybe.
10% more crit dmg+trait that gives +10% crit damage plus food that gives +10% crit damage…. already running around with 50% crit chance so that’d be an instant 15% damage boost. Similar to the 30 in water.

also the 20th in water I use for the regen on mistform, signet of water and icebow. The downed mist form does damage that way too which is a pretty neat trick. Otherwise there’s the 20% damage to vulnerable foes, vulnerability on signet/arcane, equip signet of air (new stunbreaker and perma speedboost+blind) I wonder if that’d work with lingering elements and then swapping to air making the lightning strikes hit for 20% more too….?

After the changes I’m going to do something completely different from everyone else:

Conditimentalist

I’ve been testing it lately, it’s pretty insane. If they give me a Stun Breaker on signets (they said they will regardless of the leaked notes) it’ll become pretty great. If the leaked notes are accurate, it’ll become fantastic.

Kodiak.3281:

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Same reason why I use this build as well but with the upcoming trait changes I’ll probably move out of water and into air or something.
0/30/0/20/20 maybe.
10% more crit dmg+trait that gives +10% crit damage plus food that gives +10% crit damage…. already running around with 50% crit chance so that’d be an instant 15% damage boost. Similar to the 30 in water.

also the 20th in water I use for the regen on mistform, signet of water and icebow. The downed mist form does damage that way too which is a pretty neat trick. Otherwise there’s the 20% damage to vulnerable foes, vulnerability on signet/arcane, equip signet of air (new stunbreaker and perma speedboost+blind) I wonder if that’d work with lingering elements and then swapping to air making the lightning strikes hit for 20% more too….?

After the changes I’m going to do something completely different from everyone else:

Conditimentalist

I’ve been testing it lately, it’s pretty insane. If they give me a Stun Breaker on signets (they said they will regardless of the leaked notes) it’ll become pretty great. If the leaked notes are accurate, it’ll become fantastic.

^ Not a staff elem. Interesting build just not sure why you have ignored signet of Fire as part of you utilities. With such high condition damage you could hit for alot per sec and only hope they are unable to remove the condition.

Jarek.2430:

^ Not a staff elem. Interesting build just not sure why you have ignored signet of Fire as part of you utilities. With such high condition damage you could hit for alot per sec and only hope they are unable to remove the condition.

The build works surprisingly well with a Staff as well but you notice the lack of Blasting Staff. It has the Power Fire Attunement needs to make it hit hard enough plus the Burn is pretty fantastic on Flame Burst (AOE Burn) with a 9.5 second duration but a 8 second cool down. Also Eruption and Shockwave both are mega bleeds that can catch people unaware on walls.

I originally ran with Signet of Fire and admittedly it was pretty funny to put on a 17 second Burn on people. There was this one Elementalist during a Tower Defense I was picking on and kept forcing him to blow all his cool downs to counter the Burn or he’d end up in a downed state.

However what I noticed was that a 1200 range 5.75 second immobilize was pretty insane. In S/D it lets me easily land my Dragon’s Tooth → Ring of Fire → Phoenix → Fire Grab → Earth Quake → Stone Splinters Auto. In Staff it opened up Eruption → Signet of Earth → Shockwave → Fire → Lava Font → Flame Burst. Both of these weapons have plenty of Spammable burn to not need Signet of Fire while the Immobilize and Toughness are always useful (as are Speed/Blind and Condition Removal/Chill). Really when you think about it and look at our Attunements Fire and Air have little to no stopping power (Chill, Cripple, Immobilize) but Water and Earth do. Signets give us that stopping power and as Condition spec we’re able to fully utilize and maximize that stopping power and damage.

You might think that there’s a problem with condition removal but if you are able to keep sustained contact and able to fight there’s simply not enough condition removal to keep up. If they remove the damage initially they might miss the CC and if they catch the CC they might miss the damage. It’s literally a deluge of Conditions that are all absurdly huge duration compared to other traditional classes (such as necros and Engies who all have very short duration bleeds).

Been having a blast in WvW lately like this and it breaks every norm that’s accepted as “required” for Elementalist. If the leaked notes are true at all it’s only going to get better.

I just play towards healing power so my heals can do more, honestly I can’t wait for new patch to hopefully polish up staff a little so I can actually do something other than heal. The Meteor shower fix will be the big one though, I’ve been complaining about those meteors missing since way back when. Biggest problem facing elementalists is the lack of a strong healthpool or any resemblance of armor, hey should bump the health pool by about 2-3k, and make the earth traits actually defensive, there’s currently only 3 defensive traits in the whole earth line, 4 if you count the first sub-trait. We have next to no damage mitigation and rely heavily on our ability to heal and stack boons, which really leaves us lacking. I would kill to be able to have condi build though, closest thing now would be a S/F fire aura signet build, but that build is gimmicky as all hell.

Jarek.2430:

Kodiak.3281:

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Same reason why I use this build as well but with the upcoming trait changes I’ll probably move out of water and into air or something.
0/30/0/20/20 maybe.
10% more crit dmg+trait that gives +10% crit damage plus food that gives +10% crit damage…. already running around with 50% crit chance so that’d be an instant 15% damage boost. Similar to the 30 in water.

also the 20th in water I use for the regen on mistform, signet of water and icebow. The downed mist form does damage that way too which is a pretty neat trick. Otherwise there’s the 20% damage to vulnerable foes, vulnerability on signet/arcane, equip signet of air (new stunbreaker and perma speedboost+blind) I wonder if that’d work with lingering elements and then swapping to air making the lightning strikes hit for 20% more too….?

After the changes I’m going to do something completely different from everyone else:

Conditimentalist

I’ve been testing it lately, it’s pretty insane. If they give me a Stun Breaker on signets (they said they will regardless of the leaked notes) it’ll become pretty great. If the leaked notes are accurate, it’ll become fantastic.

^ Not a staff elem. Interesting build just not sure why you have ignored signet of Fire as part of you utilities. With such high condition damage you could hit for alot per sec and only hope they are unable to remove the condition.

XD that’s insane, barely any toughness or healing power.
Wouldn’t rabid gear with its toughness work better +runes of the undead for even more cond. damage? But yea condition duration is also an interesting spec. Haven’t tried that one yet.

I’ll also be changing over a bit. Not a huge change but I’m going 0/30/0/20/20 full zerker armor+rampager/cleric trinkets. even worse survivability but you hit like a truck while still being able to swap weapons with minor trait changes (so no complete rework of your traits).

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|6.1g.h1|0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7|3z.0.1o.64.1o.64.1j.68.1g.67.1a.9a|0.u6a9.0.k4a.k58|54.0|1m.1v.26.1y.2a|e

That is awesome Kodiak. Innovation is a great thing !

i dont’ know how cond damage works in spvp or pve, but it works awfully in wv3, especially while using staff. roaming with s/d and cond damge is funny and effective in wv3, but we’re talking of stakitten here

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

XD that’s insane, barely any toughness or healing power.

Survivability isn’t a problem. If you’d like I’ll show you a video of me diving into a full on Zerg and surviving plenty of times I made last night (currently encoding for upload). The most dangerous part was when I got stunned which next patch I will have a stun breaker. 1500 Toughness is more than enough when you are also rocking 19000 HP.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Wouldn’t rabid gear with its toughness work better +runes of the undead for even more cond. damage? But yea condition duration is also an interesting spec. Haven’t tried that one yet.

Rabid is Precision/Toughness/Condition damage. While it certainly would be a lot of Toughness, the precision is basically a dead stat because we don’t have the spare stat allocation to put into Crit damage to make any Crit we do gain meaningful. It also detracts from our Power stat which is something actually very useful.

Runes of the undead are alright, but 5% of our Toughness is a very small number even if it was 2000 (100). That little amount of Condition Damage isn’t going to really be a game Changer unlike being able to add +20% condition duration of 2 Superior Mad King and 2 Superior Lyssa. Since all of our Conditions already have long durations, any +Duration% is extremely effective. For example at +90% my Staff Eruption Bleed is over 25 seconds.

idorian.2859:

i dont’ know how cond damage works in spvp or pve, but it works awfully in wv3, especially while using staff. roaming with s/d and cond damge is funny and effective in wv3, but we’re talking of stakitten here

Actually it works pretty darned well. The big thing when using the staff is to remember with my build you have Condition Damage AND Power. You gain a lot of power from Might Stacks, 30 points in Fire and Carrion Gear. What you don’t have is Crit and Crit damage because instead you’re focusing on Condition Damage and Condition Duration instead.

Staff has been my choice of weapon since day one, and Ele my fav class. Lately I have largely focused my Ele on Dragon Events; but otherwise worked on Leveling a War. I like the War for soloing, but in a group I still much prefer the casters role. Definately looking forward to the new specs. C.

I pretty much ONLY used the staff (even in PvP) and I gotta say, the only thing I’m not a fan of is how lacking Air Attunement is, I mean the 3 is ok, the 2 is kinda meh, auto attack is “decent” only saving grace is that static field and the 4 has saved me, and my allies, a few time due to the snare/root cleanse.

I can not wait for these supposed staff buffs though! I will be EXTREMELY happy if/when they arise!

…sigh…are we really at this point?

I feel like one of those unfortunate women who’s boyfriend beats the crap out of her all the time, and the one time he brings her some wilted flowers she’s over the moon and thinks everything is wonderful.

have you actually looked at the buff’s to staff?
they are relatively insignificant, even when not compared to the massive nerf’s of the last many months, and on top of that arcane wave got another nerf, if the notes I read were accurate.

and people are all ecstatic about it?
when thieves, necros and mesmers are getting yet another massively overpowered ability?
have you looked at the ele bugs thread?
there are so many things that need to be fixed so that they actually work the way they were supposedly intended to work, before they start mucking around with adding new conditions to their favorite professions and nerfing the crap out of ele’s again.

really?

mesmer get a rtl like nerf actually…..
and that condition is useless (for mesmers) unless a new build appears.

they got a 20% nerf on everything that isn t a shatter build

solarisnox.8521:

have you actually looked at the buff’s to staff?
they are relatively insignificant, even when not compared to the massive nerf’s of the last many months, and on top of that arcane wave got another nerf, if the notes I read were accurate.

well, i didn’t even noticed arcane wave wakittenting 6 foes instead of 5, so it’s not a nerf for me at all. anyway i’m a staff user for wv3, i prefer s/d for pve, and i must admit this is the patch i was waiting for.

idorian.2859:

i dont’ know how cond damage works in spvp or pve, but it works awfully in wv3, especially while using staff. roaming with s/d and cond damge is funny and effective in wv3, but we’re talking of stakitten here

Actually it works pretty darned well. The big thing when using the staff is to remember with my build you have Condition Damage AND Power. You gain a lot of power from Might Stacks, 30 points in Fire and Carrion Gear. What you don’t have is Crit and Crit damage because instead you’re focusing on Condition Damage and Condition Duration instead.

half true. while in wv3 i barely have conditions on me, even against zergs, same for my teammates. repleacing crit dmg for cond damage halves my dps imo, because the resulting damage from condition damage it’s easy to counter, while crit damage is instant, and hardly to counter. I will stick to cond damage for a while and see what it will comes out, put i’m a bit pessimistic about it.

idorian.2859:

idorian.2859:

i dont’ know how cond damage works in spvp or pve, but it works awfully in wv3, especially while using staff. roaming with s/d and cond damge is funny and effective in wv3, but we’re talking of stakitten here

Actually it works pretty darned well. The big thing when using the staff is to remember with my build you have Condition Damage AND Power. You gain a lot of power from Might Stacks, 30 points in Fire and Carrion Gear. What you don’t have is Crit and Crit damage because instead you’re focusing on Condition Damage and Condition Duration instead.

half true. while in wv3 i barely have conditions on me, even against zergs, same for my teammates. repleacing crit dmg for cond damage halves my dps imo, because the resulting damage from condition damage it’s easy to counter, while crit damage is instant, and hardly to counter. I will stick to cond damage for a while and see what it will comes out, put i’m a bit pessimistic about it.

Do you not have conditions on you because they don’t do damage/removed all the time or do you not have them on you because everyone assumes Conditions are pointless and doesn’t use them? Condition Removal and benefits like that are every bit as capped on maximum targets as any other offensive ability and when you got a giant pile of bodies fighting there are more than a few who won’t get them. I mean make no mistake, conditions will get removed. That’s a reality. I think of it more along these lines: Everything you do will end up causing conditions. Fire will burn, Earth will Bleed, Water has Chills/Vuln. This is on top of damage.

Now you can ignore them and focus entirely on Crit and Crit Damage. That’s a totally viable route. What I contend is that not ignoring them is also another perfectly viable route and in my experiences so far that’s worked out.

Here’s a vid showing my survivability when diving into the enemy. I had a video of me doing some 1v1s against various classes but upon inspection I notice I was weapon swap bugged and my auto attacks were perma hasted so it would have been a bit skewed to show haha. @6:34 you can see me go back for DEM BAGS right into the enemy force and even mess up and RTL back to the enemy (haha). @9:52 the real fun starts as we attack StoneMist. I really should have swapped to staff but I didn’t think about it till I was too late and inside and stuck engaging.

I wear Melandru armor, geo freedom and use lemongrass soup for buff giving me Condition duration -64% (chill, cripple and immobilize -98%).. Warriors can do the same. How do fair against folks who can just ignore conditions?

I am going to test a more CC build with the up and coming patch:
0/0/30/10/30
Earth: Embrace Earth, Geomancers Freedom, Geormancers Alacrity
Water: Aquamancers Alacrity
Arcane: Elemental Attunement, Blasting staff, Evasive Arcana

Etheral Renewal
Open (Signet of air ‘travel’, Armor of Earth, Arcane Wave)
Mistform
Radiation Field
tornado

Jarek.2430:

I wear Melandru armor, geo freedom and use lemongrass soup for buff giving me Condition duration -64% (chill, cripple and immobilize -98%).. Warriors can do the same. How do fair against folks who can just ignore conditions?

This is actually a very good point. However I want to point out that I have 90% Condition Duration on top of Conditions that already have arguably the highest base time in the game. I mean Eruption alone has 6 stacks of bleed that last over 25 seconds and the in game tool tip lists that as 15,000 damage. Even halving the durations on those timers is going to leave huge duration conditions that will stack high if not outright removed.

Really a much bigger challenge are classes like Shout Guardians who remove a condition on each Shout because their shout timers usually line up with our more deadly CC (such as Signet of Earth or Water) meanwhile they’re also pretty tanky to eat a majority of the damage we’re kicking out. It’s not impossible to kill, but definitely takes a lot longer than other classes.

I expect alot of fun and interesting times with the 6/25 changes to the staff.

Gotta say, I’m LOVING these new staff changes,my staff ele is easily taking over as my main!

Kodiak.3281:

idorian.2859:

idorian.2859:

i dont’ know how cond damage works in spvp or pve, but it works awfully in wv3, especially while using staff. roaming with s/d and cond damge is funny and effective in wv3, but we’re talking of stakitten here

Actually it works pretty darned well. The big thing when using the staff is to remember with my build you have Condition Damage AND Power. You gain a lot of power from Might Stacks, 30 points in Fire and Carrion Gear. What you don’t have is Crit and Crit damage because instead you’re focusing on Condition Damage and Condition Duration instead.

half true. while in wv3 i barely have conditions on me, even against zergs, same for my teammates. repleacing crit dmg for cond damage halves my dps imo, because the resulting damage from condition damage it’s easy to counter, while crit damage is instant, and hardly to counter. I will stick to cond damage for a while and see what it will comes out, put i’m a bit pessimistic about it.

Do you not have conditions on you because they don’t do damage/removed all the time or do you not have them on you because everyone assumes Conditions are pointless and doesn’t use them? Condition Removal and benefits like that are every bit as capped on maximum targets as any other offensive ability and when you got a giant pile of bodies fighting there are more than a few who won’t get them. I mean make no mistake, conditions will get removed. That’s a reality. I think of it more along these lines: Everything you do will end up causing conditions. Fire will burn, Earth will Bleed, Water has Chills/Vuln. This is on top of damage.

Now you can ignore them and focus entirely on Crit and Crit Damage. That’s a totally viable route. What I contend is that not ignoring them is also another perfectly viable route and in my experiences so far that’s worked out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7CPUDiENV4

Here’s a vid showing my survivability when diving into the enemy. I had a video of me doing some 1v1s against various classes but upon inspection I notice I was weapon swap bugged and my auto attacks were perma hasted so it would have been a bit skewed to show haha. @6:34 you can see me go back for DEM BAGS right into the enemy force and even mess up and RTL back to the enemy (haha). @9:52 the real fun starts as we attack StoneMist. I really should have swapped to staff but I didn’t think about it till I was too late and inside and stuck engaging.

great, but i was talking about staff….s/d works well with cond damage, nothing to say…this is a bit off topic. anyway, talking about wv3 and condition damage, i think staff eles don’t benefit a lot from it like necro or ranger do. still talking about wv3 and zerg battles, i think d/d or s/d benefit more than staff users from cond damage, but d/d are more aoe than d/d, so imo d/d cond damage rocks in wv3 against 20+.

I love staff Ele, and I’m super pleased with all the changes, but the changes just aren’t enough for sPvP.

There are some good powers. Air 4 is super useful. Air 5 is amazing CC. Earth 5 is great for CC. Air 3 is… kinda nice? Water 3/5 isn’t bad but not nearly enough healing, and requires an ally to notice it and stay still for you to help them.

The damaging powers though, the autoattacks, Fire 2, Earth 2, Fire 5, they all fail at connecting compared to any other class. A ranger can do more swinging his sword than an Ele can. Great in WvW for casting from invulnerability of the walls, useless in situations where a fight might break out.

A Staff Ele is basically a mobile arrow cart or turret. Super useful, but you wouldn’t take it into a 2v2.