Guild Wars 2

Staff has a few problems. Mainly it’s fire skills are better than the skills of other attunements to the point where it’s only beneficial to to use other attunements as either combat starters or for escape. It’s almost never a good idea to switch attunements mid combat, as you’ll lose most of your DPS.

There are of course Staff support builds which work excellent with attunement switching but consider this – the best abilities of both Water and Earth in those builds come from the Elemental Attunement trait in Arcana, rather than skills within the attunements themselves. A support build that can grant their team 7 seconds of regeneration, haste and protection every 9 seconds can just switch attunements about, using the actual skills of the attunements is the smaller bonus.

Another problem of Staff is that as an AoE centric weapon, all of it’s Ground Target AoEs (with the exception of Static Field) will not work immediately. At least a second will pass before their damage will tick. It would have been fine if at least one damaging AoE started working immediately, but with all of them delay actually doing AoE damage with this AoE weapon is quite uncommon in sPvP, where people can see the obvious tells of an incoming AoE and just move sideways. Necros and Rangers do not have that problem with their Marks and Traps.

There are problems with individual skills as well and how they work inside of their attunements, especially in Air and earth:

Air Attunement:

(Individual skills critique is offered in the spoiler tags.)

Air Attunement supposedly offers CC to the elementalist, but the cooldowns on all of the CC is very long, and only Gust is truely useful. Time spent in Air trying to CC players or mobs is time that you could have spent doing a lot more damage in fire attunement.

Earth Attunement

Overall Earth Attunement is the worst Staff has to offer. The AoE bleeds while none of the other skills do condition damage, making it work badly in any spec. There is no real attack skills in this attunement with the exception of the telegraphed AoE either.

(Continued. I ran out of text room, but figured it’s alright to post a lengthy message as I’ve put most of the text in spoiler tags.)

Water Attunement:

Water Attunement is mostly useful as a starter, or when you step out of combat boundaries to heal yourself quick and go back into the fight. Staying in this attunement mid combat is only useful for Support specs. However, support specs are mostly useful due to the Elemental Attunement trait granting powerful boons on a short cooldown, and those boons dwarf all the abilities in Staff’s Water Attunement.

Fire Attunement:

Every single skill in Fire Attunement is not only excellent, it works in unison with the other skills in Fire Attunement as well. The short cast times on Lava Font and Flame Burst makes this abilities very useful as you can cast them while kiting and dodging. Burning retreat gives you a small edge of survivability that frankly none of the Air Attunement CCs offers with their long cooldowns. Unless you are support specced, there is very little reason to attune out of Fire in the middle of combat, as it would mean losing at least 50% of your DPS for 10~15 seconds.

And this is a problem. The Elementalist’s profession mechanic is Attunements. Yet having double the skills of other classes means nothing if those skills have cooldowns which are twice as long (Gust vs. Ranger’s Point Blank Shot), and/or are badly synergizing with other skills in their attunement. This is a problem that mostly plagues Staff, other Elementalist weapons fair much better.

Ironically the weapon which I personally feel offers great skills that work well with one another and rewards you for switching attunements to make the most of all your skills is the Trident. I wish the Staff was more like it.

I just want to comment on Air.

Chain Lightning has huge range. It hits targets that aren’t even close to one another. It’s jumping nature makes it too difficult to bother avoiding and I’ve never seen groups even bother. It also hits the primary target twice if there is only one other target in range.

Lightning Surge is great for stopping multiple people from trying to do a finishing move on an ally. It blinds all of them from a huge distance. You just need to get it off fast as soon as you see an ally downed and enemy players run up to finish them.

Static Field doesn’t telegraph itself. It pops around a player with no warning. If that player is being focused fired on, then every projectile adds vulnerability to them. It’s essentially a nasty trap. It’s also a good way to stack swiftness when comboing with blast finishers.

I have to agree on Water Blast, that skill needs some fixing it’s useless in pvp and pve even as a support spec. I think I have only used it a maximum of 10 times Since I started playing GW2, I am now 80 and still find my self never needing to cast that lol.

I would have to firmly disagree as to your terms of uselessness. Perhaps your spec differs from mine. I should not I usually roll in a group, and I am all about the combo’s.
PvE
I will begin with saying “the rain dance” bwe eles know this.
Next I will say- Not everything is about the damage.

Blasting staff trait to make all staff aoe’s larger (i think its blasting staff)

Earth- hands down my fav skill. Free blast finisher with bleed yes thank you.

Follow with choice of water or fire, Combo field. Took evasive arcana? Have a sigil of energy in your weapon? Youre about to become a combo GOD. Have arcane blast?

Hard to land? AOE’s were only hard to land during that stress test where everything ran from you and even then it wasnt hard. You merely had to snare first.

I think the reason you have problems is how you are trying to play the class, though I will admit waters primary attack is near useless.

Also “It’s almost never a good idea to switch attunements mid combat, as you’ll lose most of your DPS.”

Did you just say that? You seem to be stuck on dps is the only way to do things.

I started with a staff build when i started my Ele, but after dyiing countless times, I switched to scepter/dagger, and I really enjoyed it, but right around 35 I started noticed that anytime I teamed up with other people who were heavy on condition damage I was lacking any real feeling of contributing. I have since then switched to Staff, and while I love it and enjoy the pure precision/crit/power style; I cant help but wonder about the other skills.

I know my water skills are lack luster, I use them for healing, pure and simple, I rarely use my earth skills either… In fact most of the time I am using JUST fire, but I switch out to the other 3 for situations where I need it.. typically if I am in a group (even or whatever) where a lot of adds come out where I dont want to aggro everything, but still want to contribute evenly, i switch out to air and chain lightning, then switch to water for healing support…

I cant say for sure if this is the “proper” way of doing it, but it works for me

Like 90% (made up number) of the skills on the staff combo. If I am playing and I dont see combo’s flying off near nonstop I am playing wrong. This is my playstyle.

If I am playing with another player and they arent darned well frost armoured, 6+ stacks of mighted, perma swifted, and have so many stacks of regen(time) on them they bleed water then I feel bad.

Couple comments.

Meteor shower: Don’t cancel it like that. You get more meteors the longer you channel it. It’s also very very good against bosses with multiple attack points, as it hits more than one.

Healing rain and Geyser: these are water combo fields, blast finish for massive healing

Everything else I agree with.

Note, meteor shower absolutely wrecks destroyable objects, like catapults, risen mouths, trebs in pvp and so on.

this post made me weep. Imo fire is the 3rd most “useful” attunement after earth and water which both re amazing as soon as you enter group play

Play like Don explained and you will see.

I feel like Staff is just not for pure dps ele’s. IMO staff is the most versital weapon. You have burning, cripple, chill, bleeding, vulnerability, stun, immobilize, and blind. As well as a ton of combo fields. Its really a super great support/dps weapon. You have AOE damage and 2 good AOE heals. IMO glass cannon ele’s right now don’t do great damage for how easy they die.

The only attunement I find lacking for staff is air. It’s still useful for its utility, but the first 2 attacks are very disappointing, and gust feels kinda meh for it’s cooldown and effect (it misses so easily, it just feels a lot less useful than the dagger and focus #5, which have relatively similar effects).

DonQuack.9025:

I would have to firmly disagree as to your terms of uselessness. Perhaps your spec differs from mine. I should not I usually roll in a group, and I am all about the combo’s.
PvE
I will begin with saying “the rain dance” bwe eles know this.
Next I will say- Not everything is about the damage.

Blasting staff trait to make all staff aoe’s larger (i think its blasting staff)

Earth- hands down my fav skill. Free blast finisher with bleed yes thank you.

Follow with choice of water or fire, Combo field. Took evasive arcana? Have a sigil of energy in your weapon? Youre about to become a combo GOD. Have arcane blast?

Hard to land? AOE’s were only hard to land during that stress test where everything ran from you and even then it wasnt hard. You merely had to snare first.

I think the reason you have problems is how you are trying to play the class, though I will admit waters primary attack is near useless.

Also “It’s almost never a good idea to switch attunements mid combat, as you’ll lose most of your DPS.”

Did you just say that? You seem to be stuck on dps is the only way to do things.

Please read what I said before posting, I said Water Blast is useless not the whole spec …..

Redfeather.6401:

I just want to comment on Air.

Chain Lightning has huge range. It hits targets that aren’t even close to one another. It’s jumping nature makes it too difficult to bother avoiding and I’ve never seen groups even bother. It also hits the primary target twice if there is only one other target in range.

I was also liking this ‘hitting primary target twice’, especially when hitting ranger->pet->ranger. However even if i hit the same target twice, I would only meet the amount of damage one Fireball does, while missing on the extra damage from Flame Burst. I at times use Air at the start of the fight, but once all the CC are on their long cooldowns it’s time to ditch it until I need a fourth immobilize break.

Static Field doesn’t telegraph itself. It pops around a player with no warning. If that player is being focused fired on, then every projectile adds vulnerability to them. It’s essentially a nasty trap. It’s also a good way to stack swiftness when comboing with blast finishers.

So let’s say that player was unable to dodge out of the Static Field and ends up with 10 stacks of vulnerability. That means he takes +10% more damage. It would still be better to just DPS him down with fire as you are at least 20% of your team’s DPS (in sPvP tournaments in this example). Unless you are a support build of course – Support do get a lot out of stance dancing as I mentioned above, it is a shame most of it comes from traits and not skills though.

DonQuack.9025:

Also “It’s almost never a good idea to switch attunements mid combat, as you’ll lose most of your DPS.”

Did you just say that? You seem to be stuck on dps is the only way to do things

Actaully I did mention support builds.

In my personal opinion Staff Elementalist can either go heavy DPS or Support. If you go Support, you offer a lot of amazing buffs to your party through the Elemental Attunement trait. You can also use combo fields as you switch attunements for their passive buffs anyway, and it is a nice addition.

However Elementalist’s combo fields aren’t that great, with the exception of Water Attunement’s. Yes, I am disrespecting the Blast, I haven’t found it as useful as people claim considering I’m locked 10~15 seconds out of my full DPS. And Water Attunement’s useful skill are on a 20 to 40 seconds cooldown.

I actually made the switch back to scepter/dagger (and got some prettykittensweet drops shortly after picking up some scrubs weapons) I have to say I friggin missed the immediate damage, while I was using a staff I didnt find myself switching as often, in fact I spent most of my time in fire/water, because honestly the other 2 just werent as good for me.

Now that im back to scepter/dagger after echecking out a new spec in the mists, I found that I am fully capable of doing a nice amount of damage, while still stacking crit,/precision, condition and power. Naturally end game may be different, but they really do pigeon hole you into condition damage as you are leveling.

So… this is the build I went with http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#MzsMz9colvaMoTvaMxxa9MoVbzRac

The original post made me cry. The idea that earth is the worst element and useless is crazy. Earth is one of the best elements in staff. Weakness on auto attack is great in a lot of situations. Eruption allows you to easily stack 14 stacks of bleed on a very large radius. Shockwave and the earth4 snare give you tremendous control.

To be honest Air staff skills are the very reason why I don’t use the staff

Staff is completely useless compared to the other weapons, which are what we SHOULD be comparing, as opposed to build vs. build. I use scepter/dagger and I feel most of the skills except water 1 (weak non-condition auto attack) and water 2 (weak aoe that takes too long and adds an insignificant amount of weakness) work just fine and all have uses. Every other skill from this combination of weapons has a good use, be it burn and dps, pure channel damage with a fast 1-5, or bleed/cc/blind. This is a fun class to play in pvp and pve, and I can honestly say I’ve never seen a staff do anything remotely useful in pvp or pve. They generally just cast meteor shower and healing rain, followed by a quick death. I understand the combo fields are nice, but they should be an addition, not the primary focus. Point is, there are just too many useless skills on a squishy weak class to even bother with staff. I’m not talking pure dps either, I play an earth 30 arcana 20 ele. Most of my damage comes from the conditions and combos. But staff does need help so glass cannoning can be possible if the player wants to.

Staff is great in WvW. As support one of it’s big selling points is reliable water fields that can be combo’s for AoE healing (something the other weapons don’t have).

How effective is the heal from the water combo fields if not traited into water tree? Is this a wise move?

I believe it depends on the person doing the blast, not the person that placed the field. Without any healing gear it’s about 1300 aoe heal per combo.

Yukishiro.8792:

The original post made me cry. The idea that earth is the worst element and useless is crazy. Earth is one of the best elements in staff. Weakness on auto attack is great in a lot of situations. Eruption allows you to easily stack 14 stacks of bleed on a very large radius. Shockwave and the earth4 snare give you tremendous control.

Repeating myself a bit but ah well.

Weakness is not very good when it only lasts 1 second and forces you to endlessly spam one ability. Also, who is it useful against? It’s not useful in PvP where most people have high crits and/or condition damage to easily counter it. It’s not useful against PvE mobs since it only hits one target. It doesn’t work at all against Champions. This leaves Veteran fights, which are usually best to burn down with fire quick anyway while your earth elemental is still alive to soak up the hits.

Erruption takes about two seconds to cast before it takes effect and it telegraphs itself quite visibly and loudly making getting out of the way immensly easy. You can’t hit well with it in PvP, and in PvE Lava Font is much easier to hit with, starts doing damage faster, and also does a lot more damage.

Unsteady Ground has a tiny AoE area that can easily be dodged. Mostly useable for bottleneck in PvE, yet I usually just use Static Field or Frozen Ground for those as they work better.

Shockwave is sort of nice, but has a long cooldown.

Does shockwave pierce targets?
I use it in WvW, but I honestly can’t tell if it hits more than one person.

I see myself constantly switching atunments with staff and that’s what you are supposed to with it, you talk like you should keep yourself in one attunment, that’s not the idea. Yeah fire gives the most dps, but believe me this game is not about just doing DPS.

The only skill that feels weak is Lightning Surge , casting time is too long. Other than that i see utility in every skill of staff.

Also you are heavily underestimating weakness, it’s a great condition in pve.

I see myself constantly switching atunments with staff and that’s what you are supposed to with it, you talk like you should keep yourself in one attunment, that’s not the idea.

Actually what I am trying to get at is that I also think a DPS specced Elementalist should be switching attunements during combat, or at least get some benefit out of switching attunements. Right now the situation is that a Staff elementalist that is already in fire will lose half their DPS (if not more) when they switch attunements and be locked out of most of their damage for 15 seconds for very little gain.

Also you are heavily underestimating weakness, it’s a great condition in pve.

I think Weakness can be a good debuff when it lasts more than 1 second. Lasting 1 second means you constantly need to maintain it with your auto-attack, which does very poor damage.

I’m not sure what use to it there is when it only affects a single target in PvE and doesn’t work on Champion. If there are some situations where people find it useful, I would like to know what they are.

Hmm, this is interesting. I don’t think I have played long enough yet, still only level 70 to say that the elementalist staff skills are underpowered, but I do actually feel that save for one or two, they are fine.

As a condition damage/critical elementalist, my main focus is on earth. Now, I understand that the first skill’s damage is noticeably low, stoning, and I do actually feel that something should be changed here. A slight damage increase or a better effect (Possibly even a change to weakness itself). Everything else about the earth attunement I really like.

Stoning – Just a note, this is the elementalist’s only staff combo projectile finisher, and it is a basic attack. This alone saves this skill, for me, from being useless and you can initiate your own combos but in team fighters give a lot of people extra healing, defence and the enemy more damage.

Eruption – This does a lot of damage over time, and in a really large area! It was worse in the first few days of the game as they actually increased the size of a lot of AOEs a few days after. I love this skill in PvE and WvW. in PvE, it is nice to be able to kill several enemies at the same time while doing nothing but dodging and placing more eruptions, but in WvW, this is where the ability really shines!

Yes, I do think it is quite easy to avoid, which perhaps a tiny adjustment could make it feel a little bit better, but when it does hit, especially defending forts, it does a lot of damage that the enemies don’t even notice.

When attacking however, it is still just as useful. You can place it on the walls of a fort, and have it hitting a large amount of unsuspecting attackers causing them to flee, and with the earth staff cooldown trait, you can literally spam the skill. It is really really awsome.

Just remember, that what this skill has in area and cooldown, it loses in eruption time. It feels mostly balanced.

Magnetic Shield, as you have said is a really good skill. It has saved me so many times in PvE and PvP. I only wish there was a way to increase its duration. Seeing the enemies projectiles bounce harmlessly off you is really fun to watch, especially magical projectiles.

Unsteady Ground is what it should be. A great slow in a rather large area. You can place it down infront of running enemies, both player and computer and find yourselves catching up faster than using windborne speed. In PvE, my earth elemental is usually tanking and I place it down under the enemy along with eruption and shockwave since it is effectively a damage over time then. (Its significance while low is better with critical chance)

Shockwave finally is an awesome skill. The shear length it travels to is amazing in WvW and PvE, not only does it apply a medium bleed, it has an amazing crowd control. Invaders chasing your team to the fort? Push 5 and stop a good line of them in their tracks.

The finish I should mention the importance of switching between earth and fire as a condition elementalist. The enemy goes down quite fast with your earth’s bleeds, but when you slap that burn from flame burst, which I stress is also an AOE, you’ll find that most enemies will drop extremely fast. Combine it with lava font and event meteor shower then your damage output for AOE and DOT is still really high even though you built condition damage.

The way I see it, is that criticals benefit this build for instant extra damage. If you ask me, power is not strong enough to make much of a difference as a condition elementalist, but being able to deal 50%+ extra damage of most of your skills helps immensely.