Guild Wars 2

So I just got finished reading the guide to PvE up at the top of this forum. For the most part its an excellent guide aimed at those who would be reading a guide to learn how to play. I was reading it to see what my peers have concluded about the class after I have self taught myself how to play this class.

I’ve played full zerker ele since release simply because high risk high reward is my general play style. After a bumpy leveling experience and a nightmarish trek in Orr with its state right after release, I managed to start getting the hang of it.

Today I have the most powerful DPS staff ele I know of, and I’d like to share it with you guys because I am always trying to find ways to increase my damage. I also always love to show up the meta game.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.3|6.1g.h2|0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e|2s.0.3s.0.2s.0.3s.0.2s.0.2s.0|u67c.u67c.0.a6.0|69.1|1l.26.1o.1r.28|e

UPDATED BUILD 9/17
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.3|6.5g.h3.d13.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e|2s.d1e.3s.d19.2s.d13.3s.d1e.2s.d13.2s.d13|u67c.u67b.0.a6.0|69.1|1l.26.1o.1r.28|e

This build is the most un-newb friendly build in the game! (probably)

Unfortunately this site seems outdated with air traits. I use the combined 20% damage to knocked down foes and aura when stunned trait, as well as arcane lightning which is 10% critical damage, not 3. This puts the total self sustained critical damage at 127%.

To any experienced Ele, the first thing you’ll notice is it’s the extreme for damage. This of course means extremely low survivability. However because it’s staff, this means you don’t need to put yourself into harms way nearly as often as you might with a hammer or dagger build. Staff also has enough control skills to keep you alive with excellent battlefield awareness. I cannot stress this point enough! One mistake can cause you to be downed, or lose a significant portion of your health! The reflection and root/cripple with earth allows you to maintain distance. Combine these with frozen ground and entire groups of enemies are all but defenseless against you and your party. (this also goes well with sandstorm)

Most of the time you’ll be attuned to fire as it’s the obvious choice for raw damage output for staff. Not only does fireball hit as hard as hammer auto attack 1 and 2(even with the same stats), but Lava Font hits for identical damage. This means you’re hitting for the equivalent of the hammer 3 all the time. But this is just the beginning! Meteor shower was significantly buffed recently, and hits reliable vs any target, and the dodge #4 skill is a highly underestimated asset for survivability. It moves you extremely far from the action, and even leaves a fire field behind to blast if you desire.

Unfortunately with such fantastic damage output comes probably the most significant drawback of this build, which is the majority of this damage is reliant on fields. Moving targets provide great difficulty despite fireball hitting very hard. Fortunatly staff has the previously mentioned snares which helps offset this, however this drawback makes this build all but useless when roaming solo or in small groups in WvW. This aside, I do extremely well in large groups in WvW and all PvE content with this build.

Using this build, I’ve hit knocked down targets under 33% hp for over 12k with my auto attack alone. A normal hit was roughly 9-10k on the same target not knocked down. I hope some of you can realize the awesome potential of this understated weapon like I have, and point out ways I might be able to increase damage output.

I actually run exactly the same build (except for grounded since staff doesn’t really have reliable CC on it’s own and varying slot skills depending on bossfights).
As you mentioned in your last sentence I also don’t get why people keep saying that S/D oder D/D does so much more damage than staff and that they laugh at poeple using staff. It might not be as much damage as a GS-warrior can do but compared to other ele-weapon-sets staff might even be the best when it comes to raw damage output.
Only thing is that the offensive support isn’t that good as with S/D (might/fury-stacking) – group heal seems to be better though (2 water fields that heal on their own and 2 explo-finishers outheal any D/D oder S/D)

Neko’s guide states pretty clearly that scepter is not the best choice in terms of damage (PvE) unless you use the Lightning Hammer, and he is right about this.

The most perfect staff rotation has a coefficient of power per second of about 1.51, which is indeed very high (calculation compensated for weapon damage).
The lightning hammer build does way more damage than this build.

The issue is that it requires you to stay in the fire attunement, because if you start to switch out then your damage drops drastically. It requires your target to be immobile, it has long cast times (meteor shower) and requires you to take 30 points in fire.
So yes, it hits hard in the right situation, but that’s pretty much all it does.

If you are going to try and only focus on doing damage then you are going to be as useless as a zerker warrior. We are elementalists, we know better! We know that damage is not the only priority, and that it is most important to be able to harm, support and control at the same time. With 0 points in arcane and no Fresh Air, you are locking yourself out of attunements for 15s, a lot can happen during this time. So the cost of providing control and support with your build is very high in terms of damage. In the end, you will find that your playstyle is a bit clunky (yet powerful).

This build may work for you, in which case I encourage you to keep using it. But you need to be aware that it is possible to do almost the same damage while providing group utility, control, heals, etc.

In terms of control (in PvE) I think staff might also be the weapon of choice. Just did this “defend the treasure-thing” from the latest living-world event and I for myself after playing ele since release was astonished once again how well the CC works in PvE – and all that at 1200 range. Also when it comes to kiting such as the event in Citadel of Flame staff is the best choice.
In addition it’s ridiculous how a single ele with blasting staff can slow down a whole zerg in WvW.

I don’t know about WvW, but I had someone using just this build in SPvP the other day, and she literally killed the entire team with AoE during the first team fight.

But that only worked once, I told my team in chat to target her first, and from that point on she was melee’d down at the start of every fight. She pretty much contributed nothing to the team for most of the game.

I also use a heavy fire build geared for damage. I keep a mix of knight/soldier with zerker trinkets so I can survive more easily however, so my damage isn’t even in the same ballpark as you.

My build uses 30 fire and 30 arcane for triple blasting my lava font every 9 seconds to mass produce might and fury to my team and myself. My personal damage can hit pretty hard, between 1.5K and 2.2K fireballs and lava font ticks that match. 2.2K to 2.6K eruptions. Some 3K meteors. While also giving my team a dramatic damage increase in a very short amount of time.

I’ve even ran this in spvp to decent effect. Still do fairly poor in duels, only managing to beat the odd warrior now and again. But I can generally last long enough in a 1v1 for help to arrive. Only classes that give me a really hard time are necromancers and rangers. Rangers mostly because they hit from a distance and I can’t get them in my AoEs at all. Necromancers because well… 10K vitality.

I find that a lot of thieves, zerker warriors, and pretty much any melee zerker build will either rip through me like tissue paper or kill themselves trying. Kinda fun to see a warrior use the old, cheesey 100B build and rush in, stand on top of my lava font, eat my eruption, take an arcane wave to the face, and then pop my arcane shield all in the span of a second and go under half health, if not go down.

It’s an interesting argument to buff your team with Might and Fury, as I find generally most pugs I run with simply don’t make use of the extra DPS because they themselves are also tank builds. This means when they pop the support for me instead of vise verse, it’s the equivalent of the entire group gaining buffs from my DPS output increase alone. An unfortunate reality with puging dungeons.

I’m not sure how you’re achieving 9-10k crits with Staff auto-attack… Could you perhaps show a screenshot of this happening? Or better yet, a video.

How do you play this without Blasting Staff?

I’ll try it out, but I don’t know that I can get used to the teeny tiny Lava Fonts again.

spalt.6938:

I’m not sure how you’re achieving 9-10k crits with Staff auto-attack… Could you perhaps show a screenshot of this happening? Or better yet, a video.

People make these sort of exaggerated claims all the time. While it’s technically possible when the stars align, it’s nowhere near the kind of damage you would see in the real world. To hit a 0 toughness scholar class for over 10k with fireball, you would need 3500 power, 120% crit damage, scholar, piercing shards, vital striking, bolt to the heart, tempest defense, and a big stack of vulnerability against a stunned target below 33% health, while you’re above 90% health and attuned to water.

Pretty much spot on with that…. stars aligning on another player. Not in full zerker gear as I still have around 20k health with guard stacks, but umm yeah.

covenn.7165:

Pretty much spot on with that…. stars aligning on another player. Not in full zerker gear as I still have around 20k health with guard stacks, but umm yeah.

Meteor shower does over 50% more damage than fireball. WvW is full of uplevels.

The most staff eles i see in SPvP are really bad.

Caffynated.5713:

covenn.7165:

Pretty much spot on with that…. stars aligning on another player. Not in full zerker gear as I still have around 20k health with guard stacks, but umm yeah.

Meteor shower does over 50% more damage than fireball. WvW is full of uplevels.

Point missed ? Unsure

Caffynated.5713:

covenn.7165:

Pretty much spot on with that…. stars aligning on another player. Not in full zerker gear as I still have around 20k health with guard stacks, but umm yeah.

Meteor shower does over 50% more damage than fireball. WvW is full of uplevels.

Which is why he said this was an example of when the stars align.

When playing in WvWvW you can use Tornado to massively up your damage because of the buff that Tornado gives you. You don’t even have to move in the tornado. Just find a semi safe spot, cast meteor shower and then immediately cast tornado so your meteors are buffed like crazy. >:)

covenn.7165:

Caffynated.5713:

covenn.7165:

Pretty much spot on with that…. stars aligning on another player. Not in full zerker gear as I still have around 20k health with guard stacks, but umm yeah.

Meteor shower does over 50% more damage than fireball. WvW is full of uplevels.

Point missed ? Unsure

Just pointing out that a skill that hits 50% harder than the one being discussed still didn’t hit for 10k, even though it was likely against an upleveled player.

Thank you covenn for attempting to provide a screenshot. However, Caffynated is right. I know Meteor Shower can hit for that hard. However, the OP’s claim was that auto-attacks were hitting for 9-10k on a target that’s not even knocked down.

Bluefox.9580:

Using this build, I’ve hit knocked down targets under 33% hp for over 12k with my auto attack alone. A normal hit was roughly 9-10k on the same target not knocked down.

I don’t believe it – unless maybe he’s a level one running around attacking rats.

Perhaps upleveled or a glass cannon…

2651 power with power stack + 200 power on kill (i was running that at the time) / 112% crit damage. (unsure of might stacks at the time)

Roughly 50% higher damage on meteor shower over fireball… and it could have potentially been a hit much harder from base due to the gimmick build I have been playing with 0/30/10/10/20 and the % increasers.

Star alignment

spalt.6938:

Thank you covenn for attempting to provide a screenshot. However, Caffynated is right.

I wasn’t disagreeing with him. I just wanted to make sure he got the point of my post and it looked like he did from his response.

Edit: Is it possible with 25 might stacks and the gimmick build I mentioned to hit 10k on a fireball with all the conditions met for all the damage increases? maybe…. but its not something to mention outside of laughing at an amazing one off hit on something.

JuniorSB.7089:

When playing in WvWvW you can use Tornado to massively up your damage because of the buff that Tornado gives you. You don’t even have to move in the tornado. Just find a semi safe spot, cast meteor shower and then immediately cast tornado so your meteors are buffed like crazy. >:)

Wow, thanks for posting this. I can’t believe I hadn’t realized you could use it like this before, even though I knew this works with might.

Navzar.2938:

JuniorSB.7089:

When playing in WvWvW you can use Tornado to massively up your damage because of the buff that Tornado gives you. You don’t even have to move in the tornado. Just find a semi safe spot, cast meteor shower and then immediately cast tornado so your meteors are buffed like crazy. >:)

Wow, thanks for posting this. I can’t believe I hadn’t realized you could use it like this before, even though I knew this works with might.

Elite transforms all act as stat bonuses. They’re especially powerful on well necros with lich form. Drop wells, hop into lich form for triple base power, and double base precision/vitality. Watch 6k damage ticks fly all over your screen every second while you do your best maniacally evil laugh. So much fun.

Bluefox.9580:

It’s an interesting argument to buff your team with Might and Fury, as I find generally most pugs I run with simply don’t make use of the extra DPS because they themselves are also tank builds. This means when they pop the support for me instead of vise verse, it’s the equivalent of the entire group gaining buffs from my DPS output increase alone. An unfortunate reality with puging dungeons.

Actually I’ve found a lot of PUGs I’ve ran with are mostly high damage builds that benefit a great deal from suddenly getting 15+ stacks of Might and 30+ seconds of Fury at the start of a fight. And even if we do have bunkers, it’s not like they DON’T benefit from an increase in damage and 20% higher crit chance.

It’s also pretty strong in spvp group fights, as I said. That’s a considerable damage boost for anyone on my team fighting on point, and I can sit there keeping up my Might rotation on point with Blasting Staff and punish any enemies that try to cap it with decent damage, burns, bleeds, and any crowd control I feel like throwing down.

If you are happy with this build stick with it but personally I think when it comes to high damage you may as well go with Scepter because it can stack up to 24 Area Might and 55 seconds of Fury (trait dependent).

Also I think you should move 30 from Air Magic into 30 Arcana for Elemental Surge. Simply put, you can pop Arcane Power, Lava Font a target, switch to earth and it will apply 1 second of Immobilize every time Lava Font pulses. With full berserker gear this is going to hit hard.

I guess most/all of you just sort of skipped over the very first thing I said in my post.

Bluefox

So I just got finished reading the guide to PvE up at the top of this forum.

The majority of the numbers used were intended to be taken in a PvE context, however I know for a fact that I routinely hit over 11k with meteor shower on light classes in zerg fights. This is, however, usually with 25 bloodlust stacks and the 5-10 self granted might stacks from spamming other skills and the full 127% critical damage I have. The entire intention of this post was to demonstrate the strength’s of staff for the PvE ele beyond control and support.

As it stands many of the arguments here hold merit, with exception to the “stars align” term being tossed about. I find these instances not very rare to be frank. CC is thrown around like candy in this game, with the exception of bosses with Defiant. Why not take advantage of it to burst this foe in PvE or even PvP with 20% more damage? All foes you end up killing drop below 33% health at least once anyway, so you can hardly claim that these circumstances are rare. The rest of my setup is not situational, it only varies in the power you output. The numbers provided are indeed at the high end of possibility, but you cannot deny the devastating numbers that are possible. As it stands the highest meteor shower I’ve ever seen was 17k, and I recently had a 14k fireball. Now these were stars aligning numbers, AND they were in PvE. ( I always hit up in this area on the frenzy mobs in CoE in path 2 and 3, go try it )

All that said, I would actually recommend against zerker + this trait combo in general WvW as retaliation alone can down you easily. Best situation to use this kind of build in is in a qued zerg. I myself have switched to 0/30/0/20/20 with complete (almost) celestial gear for my staff WvW needs.

2651 power & 112% crit damage I would not see ‘routine’ meteor showers at 11k. That is running both air traits, the water trait, and the earth trait.

So what is your power at before might? I don’t think is can be higher by much. The extra 15% crit damage from running your zerker gear isn’t going to make 11k routine regardless.

I do agree with you that full zerker is foolish because retail will own you. You can dish out high damage and still keep your health around the 20k mark to help you deal with that. I also don’t recommend even my current gimmick build to anyone not good at staying out of trouble because with the low toughness. I only switch to it because I was going days/weeks at a time without dying in my old build and felt like I could bump up my damage.

Also, the celestial gear is garbage for an ele imo, so I wouldn’t recommend that for anyone.

14k on a fireball? I want to see a picture of that. I would LOVE to see a picture of that. Hell, even a firebal of 8k on a PVE boss I want a picture of that. Ive got 112% crit damage and 3k power I don’t even see that kind of numbers. I might see a rare 11k on a meteor shower on some poor sap who was knocked down with vulnerability on but a fireball?

And Covenn, I disagree. I run around SoR with 16.5k health and survive the retal just fine. I do however agree that full zerker is foolish (at least in WvW).

As far as celestial being crap this build has everything I need in it using celestial gear:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fgw2skills.net%2Feditor%2F%3FfEAQJArIGQIPAAAoEEPAAAgDLFmBA-jkyAo%2BASQAIRgJ%2FioxW1Cb1Nal3gotxUuAq4FVLDg%2BYA-w

And has 2.8k power, 107% crit damage and 1600 armor with 16.2k health. I find this perfect for me in WvW. Both when zerging and when doing my small man with my guild. My current build has less crit damage and more armor, but the rest is the same. I don’t have those celestial pieces right now, but it can be useful.

But that being said, I’d love to see a breakdown of your gear for WvW. Your build interests me. I can never catch you on the SoR TS ever as I think were in different time zones. I’ll still try though.

Raif you are confusing power and attack power…..

With Sharpening stone, blood lust (removing food cause we use different.. mine adds 200 after first kill, yours is a static 100):

Power/Attack Power
You: 1977 / 2987
Me: 2451 / 3562

This is why most ele’s say celestial gear sucks for us… because the drop off in damage from it is astronomical.

Also keep in mind with staff, your bigger problem is going to be things like retaliation if you use your range and escape tools effectively. You can afford to drop armor for damage as long as you keep your vitality up.

Edit: I was referring to 20kish health with guard stacks. You only have 10 less vitality than me, so we are comparable. I realize I shouldn’t factor them in, but quite honestly it is not uncommon for me to get stacks and never lose them once for my entire play period unless gravity sneaks up on me and owns me…. kitten in game physics.

Can you test this on the veteran giant in Orr? This build does look like great dps on paper, but I’m curious about sustain damage. What I mean is, sure it’s great to see huge hits, but if you cannot keep it up it may as well be useless.

covenn.7165:

Raif you are confusing power and attack power…..

With Sharpening stone, blood lust (removing food cause we use different.. mine adds 200 after first kill, yours is a static 100):

Power/Attack Power
You: 1977 / 2987
Me: 2451 / 3562

This is why most ele’s say celestial gear sucks for us… because the drop off in damage from it is astronomical.

Ah my mistake, I thought you were talking attack power. Well yes, in that case yes the drop for you is large. I still see 10k DT’s and firegrabs and 5k lightning strikes with my build using scepter as the stats for the build I linked and what I use currently is just the added 20% crit damage. I’d love to find a way to squeeze in more power into my build as I know that I’d highly benefit from it but I can’t seem to find a way without sacrificing health or toughness.

My guess is to get that much crit damage and vitality and power you have pretty low armor since you’re also playing staff. How in the world do you command like that lol. Or do you switch to a different gear set when you command? I’ve yet to follow you guys in WvW, I normally just run havoc with Nyx Syke and PD (my guild on SoR).

And if were counting guard stacks then yea. I don’t have those quite yet, I’m not that high in WvW ranks to get that but I will soon.

I don’t command Raif.

I do have different gear sets depending on what I am doing though But yeah, my toughness is low. That is what I am sacrificing to hit harder because I seldom find myself in trouble.

When I am running havoc or doing GvG’s I run something different.

And yeah, I was counting guard stacks for the total health. I dont have the power stacks too at the moment unless we get get a point reset again.

Edit: Keep in mind that you can still maximize power along with toughness and vitality as the trade-off of crit/crit damage. You can come in around 65% crit damage, 50% crit with fury and still have extremely high pvt if you do something like slot beryls in the accessorys’ slots.

Personally, I would rather lose some crit damage to have several hundred more power. The difference it makes is pretty big.

covenn.7165:

I don’t command Raif.

I do have different gear sets depending on what I am doing though But yeah, my toughness is low. That is what I am sacrificing to hit harder because I seldom find myself in trouble.

When I am running havoc or doing GvG’s I run something different.

And yeah, I was counting guard stacks for the total health. I dont have the power stacks too at the moment unless we get get a point reset again.

Edit: Keep in mind that you can still maximize power along with toughness and vitality as the trade-off of crit/crit damage. You can come in around 65% crit damage, 50% crit with fury and still have extremely high pvt if you do something like slot beryls in the accessorys’ slots.

Personally, I would rather lose some crit damage to have several hundred more power. The difference it makes is pretty big.

Yea ive been thinking of losing some crit damage and get around 100 or maybe 95% and see how much power i can squeeze out.

InFluEnZa.6908:

Can you test this on the veteran giant in Orr? This build does look like great dps on paper, but I’m curious about sustain damage. What I mean is, sure it’s great to see huge hits, but if you cannot keep it up it may as well be useless.

I’ve got a 11.7s conjure+staff kill on utube. Can be pushed to 10s with full berserker and say 3 more might blasts with scepter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDGCJMODdEM

You need something like 500k HP to test out sustained dps :P.

I’m considering a change in my build, I had swapped from Staff to S/D when I began doing more dungeons and more DPS was required.

However, my weakness is my poor dodge skills, as I instinctively use the mouse for movement. So a staff provides a better range for me and allows more time to dodge.

So I’m wondering how staff is shaping now, some weeks after the patch and if it’s more viable?

I think staff is viable in PvE. I’m a staff ele myself, and I did a dungeon run today and I did fine. Although, I am in a casual guild that isn’t too concerned with doing speed runs.

I used to run scepter/focus. With the staff, I feel that I can time my dodges better, and the CC skills do help with that as well.

It’s high time we dispel the confusion about staff: it deals very good damage.
Let’s look at three scenarios:
-normal staff rotation: spam lava font and meteor shower on cooldown, fill in with fireballs
-rotation with cd reduction
-rotation with cd reduction and persisting flames

The coefficient per second figures I have calculated are as follows (single target, human size):
-normal: 1.17
-cd: 1.23
-cd & PF: 1.36

As a matter of comparison, the lightning hammer also deals 1.36 c/s

However the staff has much more weapon damage: about 10% more, so if we take weapon damage into account the modified coefficients should be as follows:

-normal: 1.29
-cd: 1.36
-cd & PF: 1.50

So yes technically staff can do more damage than the lightning hammer if you land all your skills.

However, this calculation is done before the effect of traits and hammer attributes. In fact LH is stonger because you can combo traits to gain a huge damage boost.

Still, the staff deals high damage. The problem is that you have to remain in fire for this and if ever you have to swap out then you will deal very low damage for 15s.

Both very encouraging replies I’m now using the OP’s build, in full Berserker gear, yet to get any Celestial stuff and probably won’t, as life is too short and we stick to guild groups.

I’m still working out the rotations/finishers, but it’s better to be standing and hitting stuff than waiting for a revive and doing no damage at all!

Zelyhn.8069:

Still, the staff deals high damage. The problem is that you have to remain in fire for this and if ever you have to swap out then you will deal very low damage for 15s.

This is unfortunately true. However, the air auto attack can deal some damage under specific circumstances. The other 2 attunements offer some utility.

The water auto attack healing is actually very potent. According to the wiki, you attack a little more than 7 times every 10 seconds. At 0 healing power, that’s

370×7=2590 every 10 seconds

which is more than healing ripple with 1000 healing power.

With the coming changes to water blast you can almost become a healer in the trinity. Assuming 1000 healing power,
(370+1000x0.25)x7 = 4340 every 10 seconds

Add another 2.3k every 10 seconds from evasive arcana
4340+2300 = 6640 AoE

Edit* You can also add geyser into the equation with its 20 second cooldown and soothing mist if traited.

So as long as you’re auto attacking, you’re not “wasting” healing by staying in water attunement. If you take water IV and VI traits, you can nuke your targets with ice spike every ~5 seconds with some decent damage and 5 stacks of vulnerability. There are cases where I actually do this, for example, against half-baked komali so my party doesn’t have to worry about the perma burn on them and just dps. Below, you can see 2 screenshots comparing water blast radius with and without blasting staff that I made a few months back. This also applies to fireball.

Of course, this point is moot as long as perception of difficulty from Anet continues to be all ohko.

The earth auto is useful for keeping perma weakness on any boss. In many cases, this is the difference between ohko and a dead person.

So basically, swapping out of fire will put you into 90% support mode for 10-15 seconds.

This is all from a PvE perspective of course. PvP and WvW are 2 separate beasts to deal with. It can be fun to wreck hotjoins with a gc staff build. Take signet of earth and any glass cannon without condition removal or invulnerability will take a full lava font and die, or be very close to it.

@JSharp
Hopefully you’ve read these posts or someone directed these to you. We stay in fire attunement because that’s where all the damage comes from, not because we all have the mental capacity of a 5 year-old or the manual dexterity of a 70 year-old. The dps is pathetic once you leave fire attunement for staff. Fire in staff is the best way to tag mobs and swapping out is hardly ever needed in a PvE zerg encounter.

So I’ve updated the build to conform to what I’m currently using and to use the updated traits now that the site has them. I’d also like to add that lately I’ve managed to dramatically increase my damage output again. Between the Ascended additions and a full set of power infusions (+30 power) I’m fairly confident I’ve increased my minimum damage by roughly 500. This number seems to scale slightly the harder I hit. Nowadays I get average hits of 7-9k in dungeon groups on my auto attack, with Meteor Shower hitting over 11k on the same target.

With 25 bloodlust and the +200 power from food after a kill, I maintain 3,030 power without might. One of these days I might actually upload a fight somewhere where you can all see the numbers without having to take my word for it.

I don’t have to take your word for it amigo, I have a super powerful calculator and I can check all this in a matter of seconds

My issue with staff: no source of fury, unless you swap but then no source of damage.
The best full rotation I can find for staff (fresh air) has a c/s of 1,18 (modified for weapon strength), which is low, but provides fury and a number of offensive conditions.

Until they fix lingering elements I don’t see how people would want to switch attunements in staff that much.

It’s true ideally you don’t want to switch attunements, but when I do it’s usually for water skills. This tends to be frozen ground + both water fields followed immediately by earth, also using every skill 2-5 whether or not it might simply miss… cause earth. Then if Fire is still on CD I cook off Air 2,4 and 5. By this time fire should be up and all of your support skills have been used. The result tends to be a locked down group of mobs after a large burst of healing on your team. If done right it helps with your next fire fields fairly significantly. At least you’re still being somewhat useful when out of fire, but it still equates to all 3 other elements combined being almost worth it in this build.

As far as the lack of Fury, it’s true it’d be nice to have, but I’ve found that 60% does pretty well for reliable criticals. I’d try not to go lower than that though.

Staff does good damage if you manage to hit

without blasting staff you are relying completely on the mob standing still, and in almost all situations your dmg will suffer heavily from lava front not getting its full potential dmg of due to the mob taking 1 step in the wrong direction.

arcane wave will do almost nothing for you, since you should never be on top of an enemy where consistant high dps is needed and the 15second 10% more crit is too little to be worth it.
something as simply as glyph of storm will give you a higher dps then the arcane (and much more relaible), even lesser element if it doesnt instantly die can ramp up a good amount of dps, or glyph of elemental power, which is around 250 extra constant dps. all of these will add up a higher overall dps then arcane wave.

arcane blast, is single target and only ok against stuff standing still on a firefield, but even here it won’t get close to the dps of elemental power overall.

in general the arcane dps skills fall short of the glyphs. arcane+ the trait could maybe be a nice addition to the dps due to the 10% more crit dmg but even here its very low compared to what you sacrifice. the issue is you will lose the blasting staff and attunement recharge on doing so, and for consistant dps the blasting staff and attunement recharge is a most or too much dps is wasted from mobs moving out of the aoe range.

having 30 in lightning i don’t find usefull. you need 10 in water for the 15% dmg increase over 90%hp. you need 30 in fire due to using either persisting flames/pyro (personally i go for flames and think that is the superior option becouse of the almost close to perm 4stacks of might and 50% uptime fury. which goes pretty nicely into the rotation).
so you got 30 points left and blasting staff is a most for everything except very few bosses, so thats 20 points unless you wanna lose that (which you could but the dps from lava front gets extremely unreliable. not to forget your attunement cd’s which is very importent for a consistant skill rotation of ice spike and eruption+shockwave(which will give you blast finisher that gives fury 10sec and might *4 20sec)) and last 10 in air for 20% dmg under 33% hp.

sacrificing blasting staff is an option, i think its a bad choice but with the right team and enough immob it could be ok, but you kill your ability to effectively switch attunement for utility/dps/boons, and you lose 5seconds dps every time you switch, compared to what you would by having arcana points. you do get the 20% crit dmg, but lose 4stack might, 50% uptime fury(20% crit rate) which can be team boon, and lost blasting staff aoe range which is primarily used for lava font.

when all that is said, i think its extremely arrogant and wrong to say this is the ultimate staff dps build. although it is extremely simple and easy to use but extremely lacking of any team support, flaxibility, having unreliable dps output and still falling short on consistant dps.

as answer on why people say the dps of other weapons are better then staff, its simply becouse other weapons can land their dmg garenteed, while staff have a very unreliable dps when mobs actually move around, especially high mobility targets makes the staff dps drop insanely… if the aoe dps lands fully on all skills the staffs dps can become very high, and makes up for the low survivability zerk staff provide (sadly the cases where this happens is very rare and long between)

edit: maybe for massive zerg wvw if you are going pure burst it can be a fine build.

Considering how melee oriented dungeons are with stacking and what not, I think you’d get more damage out of 10 points in Earth and taking the 10% damage while within 600 range of your target than the 10 points in Water

Grok Krog.9581:

Considering how melee oriented dungeons are with stacking and what not, I think you’d get more damage out of 10 points in Earth and taking the 10% damage while within 600 range of your target than the 10 points in Water

this is true in most dungeon runs as people run them right now, since you will rarely be over 90%hp when stacking… kitten i hate the noobish stacking just do the boss normally stupid people :P

What needs to be considered is that using staff means that I am not as frequently in need of reviving, as I am with s/d and I know this is entirely due to my weak dodge skills.

For others like me, staff is a very good option re damage, when comparing ’up’ time as opposed to ’down’ time. The data may show that s/d is better for overall DPS, But staff actually means that I personally provide more DPS for my team than s/d does

I am very glad I checked ’bump a thread that’s more than 7 days old’, all the input has been very helpful.

I play a very similar build to this for wvw roaming (just replacing the XII in fire for VI in earth). I generally play S/D for open field, but use staff for tower siege/defense. The amount of damage you can put out can melt most siege and discourage small groups of defenders. In my experience, staff has higher sustained damage due to the high damage auto attacks, while S/D has more burst damage.