Guild Wars 2

I’m relatively new to Ele. I main Thief, but when I roam on Ele, I usually run cele D/D or zerker S/F. However, I’ve recently gotten into using the staff in PvE, and I was wondering if it could be viably used for solo roaming. If so, what kind of gear/traits/utilities would I want to use?

You can adapt the celestial staff build from spvp to wvw. Just change the elite skill to FGS and run the -40% condi food. It is basically immortal in 1v1 like the celestial d/d. Even if you can’t win you can at least stale most fights forever. The problem is that you offensive pressure is not very high, you can only kill people that decide to fight you. If they are just running away you can’t do much. In wvw it is also very rare to see a decent fearmancer or any other pvp build that is a good counter to your build.

The main way you can chip off HP is when they decide to fight you and you kite them into your circles (yes, using your body).
Your burst would mainly depend on Arcane utilities, and combos involving your Earth wall and Air stun circle along with the Fire ring.
As the above has already said, condition builds would be a fair counter to your build.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936 has a few posts in the Ele forum concerning some specialised staff builds and playstyles, which you can take ideas from.

yea, i think cele staff would be viable. Personally, ive been getting my jollies playing dire/apoth staff with perplexity runes when roaming on my ele.

Staff is difficult to do for solo roaming, just because of the nature of the abilities. I’ve seen a few good staff ele dueling videos in which they made very good use of their attunement swaps, so you could try looking up some of those for tips/builds (I don’t have any links offhand).

I do some solo roaming on my full-zerker full-glyph build, but that’s just because I’m crazy. It dies against anyone playing at least a little bit seriously.

Can a staff ele 1v1. Sure.

Should a staff ele 1v1. No.

Can a staff ele assist a 5v5. Yes

Should a staff ele 5v5. No.

Can a staff ele assist a GvG or ZvZ. 100% yes

Should a staff ele assist a GvG or ZvZ. 100% yes

Fuzzion.2504:

Can a staff ele 1v1. Sure.

Should a staff ele 1v1. No.

Can a staff ele assist a 5v5. Yes

Should a staff ele 5v5. No.

Can a staff ele assist a GvG or ZvZ. 100% yes

Should a staff ele assist a GvG or ZvZ. 100% yes

Great post from someone who has absolutely no idea how to play staff.

You have 3 options for small scale staff really.

1 – Cele tpvp staff (00266)

This one is going to be difficult to roam with because the kill time is long, and you will have trouble killing anyone that can disengage and reset, or who can readily cleanse your fire 3 / fire dodges. It is a very strong direct 1v1 build, and is one of the few builds I’ve played that has zero builds that hard counter it (you can stalemate anything).

This build is also extremely solid in 4-5 man roaming as a support role for heal and cleanse. If you have a shoutbow warrior with you, your group sustain is ridiculously high.

2 – Zerk lightning rod (06044)

This is one of the few builds that has enough kill power to roam 1v1, but you have a lot of ugly fights. Good thieves should completely destroy you (but a lot won’t because most in WvW aren’t good), classes with high condition pressure or ready access to interrupts are very ugly fights. However, static, gust, and earth wall are now high damage attacks that apply weakness, so you’ve gained enough kill power to quickly dispatch glassy targets. I typically run this with earth signet to set up lava fonts or gusts to get the necessary kill power. Combos like air swap, air 2, lightning flash, gust can full kill glassy targets if you get a sigil proc.

3 – Dire Signet (60620 blinding ashes + written in stone)
Signet ele is ridiculously strong with air + fire + earth signet. Perplexity runes completely take it over the top. This is one of the strongest 1v1 builds I’ve played in game. If you play it as sylvari with take root it’s borderline broken due to the bleed stacking. However, this build has low disengage since it has lower mobility without lightning flash, and it lacks the arcana / water line sustain the other builds have, so it can be bursted in group fights.

Personally, I prefer builds 1 or 2. Roaming solo as staff ele is pretty rough because dealing with 1vX fights against competent players is very ugly, but it really shines in small groups.

As an example, our guild typically runs a 5 man with 1 thief, 2 zerk lightning rod staff eles, 1 engi, and 1 condi necro. The eles add good condi pressure for the condi necro, and the ele + engi CC can turn single downs into stacks of downs when they try to rez. On top of this, the thief can set up great burst on ele lockdown, and eles can use eruptions to make it easy for a d/p thief to permastealth a group.

Pichichi.1975:

Fuzzion.2504:

Can a staff ele 1v1. Sure.

Should a staff ele 1v1. No.

Can a staff ele assist a 5v5. Yes

Should a staff ele 5v5. No.

Can a staff ele assist a GvG or ZvZ. 100% yes

Should a staff ele assist a GvG or ZvZ. 100% yes

Great post from someone who has absolutely no idea how to play staff.

You have 3 options for small scale staff really.

You fail to read my posts. I said you could. I just think small groups should run with the easy dnd or snf builds. Large scale, and im 100% staff.