Guild Wars 2

Just thought I’d start a conversation about an alternative to D/D for leveling. I personally enjoy D/D, but thought I’d give some consideration to staffs. I’ll start with a few aspects I think are important for leveling. The spells for each attunement are seemingly transparent, however improving their effectiveness in leveling, I think, makes for a nice discussion.

With a staff as your main weapon what stats, traits, utilities and item upgrades would you roll with? I personally like to level with three things in mind:

• High capability for handling multiple mobs
• Survivability
• Adaptability

With D/D I preferred a tanky build, going PVT, with utilities that contribute to survivability. With a staff however, I feel like I can probably sacrifice either vitality or toughness for precision, contributing more to damage. Opinions?

Cheers!

I would think you’d want to use 20% reduced glyph cooldown trait (10 in Air) with both glyphs of elementals, so you have maybe 80% uptime on an earth ele to tank for you and keep mobs in place for your ground aoe. Other than that, curious to see what else helps. Haven’t played with staff much since it seems harder to level with than scepter or dagger.

I’m finding staff is more about the setup/plan approach vs. d/d. Not so much pulling mobs in close to hit with PBAoE, but setting up. I didn’t consider using an elemental for tanking purposes. Are their health pools sufficient?

Leveling I went 10 in Water for Soothing Disruption first but I’m a Cantrip focused player, then Air then Arcana. At 40 I respeced to do 20 Water for Soothing Disruption and Cantrip Mastery with 10 in Air for Bolt to the Heart. After that 10 more in Air to grab Inscription and final 10 in Arcana again. At 60 I respeced again and do 30 Water with Soothing Disruption/Cantrip Mastery/Cleansing Water with 20 in Air for Bolt to the Heart/Inscription. Finally last 20 points in Arcana for Renewing Vigor/Blasting Staff.

Leveled entirely in Power → Power/Prec → Power/Prec/Crit Dmg gear.

This gave me a decent amount of crit and crit damage as I leveled while maintaining a decent level of survivability through the water line and cantrips. If you’re into the elemental tanking thing, could always swap out Inscription for reduced cool down as well. Most of the time I just kited around a Lava Font I’d create and run back and forth over it dragging mobs onto it and had no issues. Long as you constantly stay moving in that small area I found melee mobs missed me 9 times out of 10 cause of the terrible AI.

Only the earth ones. The other 3 will die pretty quick IMO. Air will stay ranged and CC a little bit but I barely notice what it is doing. I would prefer to have an earth ele out because yes, they are hard for mobs to kill. I use this ele setup when leveling with a scepter for much the same reason. Mobs group up together around it and stand still, letting you cast whatever you like without taking damage.

Personaly i levelled ele from 0 to 80 with staff, and only thing i ever needed was glyph of storms in earth attunement.

Do your cc and jumpping around to gather mobs in a nice little pack, glyph of storms it in earth and you´ll have about 10 seconds of near invulnerability to nuke them down. If they´re still up after that, even slight kiting should keep you alive untill they die.

(gear doesn´t matter, works with both glass cannon and support setups atleast)

I am assuming a player is soloing with a staff because he wants to learn all the nuances of the class and game play. If a player has already learned the mechanics of movement and dodging, staff will go alot easier. If solo leveling was the only goal, why use staff at all for that I guess is my point.

Kiting gives good training to be successful with the class later on. Kiting requires continuous movement, dodging, and use of the crowd control skills and these are needed with d/d or any other weapon set in PvP, Wvw, and Pve. Standing still is not effective in this game for long. Moving well takes practice.

I dislike soloing with the staff because most of the skills have a significant casting time and kiting mobs, or rather maintaining distance from mobs, can be alot of keyboard work. The elemental works very well to draw agro and lessens the kiting a bit. I have always carried one. I guess my point is that there are other better ways to level. If you are going to use a staff, might as well make it as challenging as possible.

If you start out with a frozen ground, followed by a few stonings to build up the chilled duration, you can then pretty much defeat them with fireballs and meteor shower before they can do much to you (some may not even reach you).

ThiBash.5634:

If you start out with a frozen ground, followed by a few stonings to build up the chilled duration, you can then pretty much defeat them with fireballs and meteor shower before they can do much to you (some may not even reach you).

Oh wow. I never tried or even thought of that. So, if I cast Frozen Ground and then cast Arcane Blast, a projectile finisher, I get an aoe Chill effect on every mob in a 1500 radius! Is the duration of the finisher 2 seconds, the same as the original chill from Frozen Ground?

Stoning is nice, though I like shockwave followed by stoning. It’s fewer stacks of weakness (reduced damage and endurance regen), but is another projectile finisher and immobilizes them in the Ice Field for more chill (or they’re forced to use a cleanse).

What’s 1500 radius, Baladir? That doesn’t happen.

Baladir.2736:

Oh wow. I never tried or even thought of that. So, if I cast Frozen Ground and then cast Arcane Blast, a projectile finisher, I get an aoe Chill effect on every mob in a 1500 radius! Is the duration of the finisher 2 seconds, the same as the original chill from Frozen Ground?

Sadly, it will only work on the mob you’re targetting. You could try Arcane Wave though, and get that neat Frost Aura on yourself.

Stoning is nice, though I like shockwave followed by stoning. It’s fewer stacks of weakness (reduced damage and endurance regen), but is another projectile finisher and immobilizes them in the Ice Field for more chill (or they’re forced to use a cleanse).

You’re correct. I’m not sure why I missed that. Good one.