Some people go deep in earth and water and some in arcana, with soldier amulet meaning no crit at all, neither fury, or barely 2 seconds on attunement switch which leads to really low damage(to the already weak, slow and easy to avoid staff skills). Leaving behind condition damage which is also weak and we dont have many.
I have myself tried going for 20 air, 30 water, 20 arcana, soldier amulet, and cantrips, i gotta say thats not really that bad, you can still do some damage to non bunker specs while surviving some burst as well but still damage output and survivability isnt nearly as good as D/D is. With the same traits/utility/amulet as d/d i can tear down bunker specs while surviving a lot of burst damage and great mobility (which staff lacks greatly).
Fire trait lines is left, havent found any good there.
I’ve been using a build that doesn’t go deep in anything and uses staff + glyphs, it’s been proving to be very useful, very tanky, and very lethal in team fights, nothing says “Get the kitten off my point!” like Glyph of Storms + Meteor Shower + 2 fire elementals + eruption + ice spike (not in that order of course).
They sing dark, delicious notes about power and family.
As their mother, I have to grant them their wish. – Forever Fyonna
Earth: III
Water: III, V, XI
Arcana: V, VIII, XI
Amulet: Cleric’s
Jewel: Soldier’s
Runes: Superior Rune of the Fighter x 5, Superior Rune of the Soldier
Heal: Glyph of Elemental Harmony
Utilities: Cleansing Fire, Lightning Flash, Mist Form
Elite: Conjure Fiery Greatsword (Useful for escaping, though I really take it because I want a melee weapon.)
I do kittentastic damage, but at least I don’t die.
If anyone’s got something more offensive that works in a 1v1 scenario, I’d love to know about it. (Builds that rely on perma-fury don’t really seem work for the staff, as there are many times when it is wiser to remain in a given attunement. Plus, Magnetic Aura is situational but powerful, and activating it whenever possible seems wasteful.)
When I play, I prefer 20 air (III, VI), 30 water (III, IX, XI), 20 arcane (V, VIII), cantrip focus, with celestial amulet and berserkers jewel, with divinity runes and energy sigil. The build that works best for me. Mind you, I hate playing bunker builds with a fiery passion, and this offers some damage I barely can live with.
1. Standard bunker stats, but put a shaman amulet on instead of cleric, and change your runes to nightmare.
2. Learn how to stack conditions with different rotations/evasive arcana.
3. Profit. A lot of people don’t expect condi damage from eles and they’re half dead by the time they remember to cleanse conditions. Rangers (with empathic bond) and other eles are going to be your only main problem. This kind of setup is great for holding points because the damage is relatively well hidden until they’ve taken a lot of it. When facing necros simply hold out on your big burn stack until they’ve used their heal slot.
1. Standard bunker stats, but put a shaman amulet on instead of cleric, and change your runes to nightmare.
2. Learn how to stack conditions with different rotations/evasive arcana.
3. Profit. A lot of people don’t expect condi damage from eles and they’re half dead by the time they remember to cleanse conditions. Rangers (with empathic bond) and other eles are going to be your only main problem. This kind of setup is great for holding points because the damage is relatively well hidden until they’ve taken a lot of it. When facing necros simply hold out on your big burn stack until they’ve used their heal slot.
Eh, Eruption is pretty easy to dodge when you have the timing down, and burning isn’t terribly dangerous on its own. This spec’s great for point defense if no one dodges, sure, but otherwise the damage is less reliable than it would be with direct damage – and that’s saying something for staff eles.
1. Standard bunker stats, but put a shaman amulet on instead of cleric, and change your runes to nightmare.
2. Learn how to stack conditions with different rotations/evasive arcana.
3. Profit. A lot of people don’t expect condi damage from eles and they’re half dead by the time they remember to cleanse conditions. Rangers (with empathic bond) and other eles are going to be your only main problem. This kind of setup is great for holding points because the damage is relatively well hidden until they’ve taken a lot of it. When facing necros simply hold out on your big burn stack until they’ve used their heal slot.
Eh, Eruption is pretty easy to dodge when you have the timing down, and burning isn’t terribly dangerous on its own. This spec’s great for point defense if no one dodges, sure, but otherwise the damage is less reliable than it would be with direct damage – and that’s saying something for staff eles.
You know what happens when they dodge all your eruptions? They can’t dodge after that… And you can always pin em down with shockwave and/or frost field/rock line. Eruption has a REALLY short CD, dodging does not.
They sing dark, delicious notes about power and family.
As their mother, I have to grant them their wish. – Forever Fyonna
1. Standard bunker stats, but put a shaman amulet on instead of cleric, and change your runes to nightmare.
2. Learn how to stack conditions with different rotations/evasive arcana.
3. Profit. A lot of people don’t expect condi damage from eles and they’re half dead by the time they remember to cleanse conditions. Rangers (with empathic bond) and other eles are going to be your only main problem. This kind of setup is great for holding points because the damage is relatively well hidden until they’ve taken a lot of it. When facing necros simply hold out on your big burn stack until they’ve used their heal slot.
Eh, Eruption is pretty easy to dodge when you have the timing down, and burning isn’t terribly dangerous on its own. This spec’s great for point defense if no one dodges, sure, but otherwise the damage is less reliable than it would be with direct damage – and that’s saying something for staff eles.
You know what happens when they dodge all your eruptions? They can’t dodge after that… And you can always pin em down with shockwave and/or frost field/rock line. Eruption has a REALLY short CD, dodging does not.
Eruption has a 6 second recharge and takes 1.75 seconds to activate (longer to actually “erupt”), so you can dodge it more often than not. I’ll concede to your point regarding Shockwave, though.
1. Standard bunker stats, but put a shaman amulet on instead of cleric, and change your runes to nightmare.
2. Learn how to stack conditions with different rotations/evasive arcana.
3. Profit. A lot of people don’t expect condi damage from eles and they’re half dead by the time they remember to cleanse conditions. Rangers (with empathic bond) and other eles are going to be your only main problem. This kind of setup is great for holding points because the damage is relatively well hidden until they’ve taken a lot of it. When facing necros simply hold out on your big burn stack until they’ve used their heal slot.
Eh, Eruption is pretty easy to dodge when you have the timing down, and burning isn’t terribly dangerous on its own. This spec’s great for point defense if no one dodges, sure, but otherwise the damage is less reliable than it would be with direct damage – and that’s saying something for staff eles.
You know what happens when they dodge all your eruptions? They can’t dodge after that… And you can always pin em down with shockwave and/or frost field/rock line. Eruption has a REALLY short CD, dodging does not.
Eruption has a 6 second recharge and takes 1.75 seconds to activate (longer to actually “erupt”), so you can dodge it more often than not. I’ll concede to your point regarding Shockwave, though.
Oh i’m not saying you’ll be landing a ton of eruptions, but when you launch a ton of AoEs at once (eruption being one of them), they tend to get overwhelmed and over dodge/eat other AoEs instead, another favorite of mine is to drop eruption down and then put a static field around them so when they go to dodge through it they end up getting stunned and eat it, AND waste their dodge, and end up stunned for 2s which is great for dropping a lava font below them.
They sing dark, delicious notes about power and family.
As their mother, I have to grant them their wish. – Forever Fyonna
…another favorite of mine is to drop eruption down and then put a static field around them so when they go to dodge through it they end up getting stunned and eat it, AND waste their dodge, and end up stunned for 2s which is great for dropping a lava font below them.
Excuse me how do u really apply conditions as a staff ele? I dont really see a lot of options here rather than fire 3 and earth 2. After that all the other skills are wasted since without power and crit meteor storm and eruption will do low damage.
Eh, Eruption is pretty easy to dodge when you have the timing down, and burning isn’t terribly dangerous on its own. This spec’s great for point defense if no one dodges, sure, but otherwise the damage is less reliable than it would be with direct damage – and that’s saying something for staff eles.
To reiterate a tad, when you’re throwing down lots of AoE and defending a point, it becomes much harder to reliably dodge Eruption and stay on the point, and it only takes one hit from the skill to do more than 8k worth of bleeding. The fact that you can stack about 10 might constantly on the set means that even if burning is your only condition you’ll still be ticking for 600 something per second along with all your ambient aoe hits, which is not friendly for somebody who cannot remove it reliably, and eles can apply burning very frequently. Your Evasive Arcana will put 5 free seconds of burning on everything adjacent to you, just to give an example.
Excuse me how do u really apply conditions as a staff ele? I dont really see a lot of options here rather than fire 3 and earth 2. After that all the other skills are wasted since without power and crit meteor storm and eruption will do low damage.
Actually everything the staff does is dangerously high damage, however to compensate this they are fairly easy to get out of the way of, i know on builds i don’t use power all my raw damage skills really hurt, and same with the conditions in a condition dmgless build.
However, i prefer to use Carrion Armor because i get the best of both words, but yes the main way you deal condi damage is through burning via fire 3 & 4, earth via earth 2 & 5 (and anything you reflect with 3), and then anything you can proc via traits.
Don’t forget that air also has blind on 2, and water has chill on 4 and vuln on 2, as well as earth having cripple on 4 and immob on 5.
They sing dark, delicious notes about power and family.
As their mother, I have to grant them their wish. – Forever Fyonna
I don’t know about sPvP, but I did notice that Glyph of Elemental Power (if cast in water or earth) does a lot for my duelling ability in WvW. The fact that you can ‘spam’ snares, which then cause more of your AoEs to hit, which in turn create more snares, is pretty useful. Maybe it can be of some use to you?
If you can read this then it is proof that ArenaNet’s moderators just, kind and fair.
Im running a full power build with 30 in fire 20 water 20 arcana not gonna tell it all but its doing wonders in sPvP. However dont expect to win 1v1s against skilled players yet you might give them some fighting.
Stance corrected: you can be very heavy support in tPvP with glass canon staff build, provided it’s the rest of the team that’s fighting in the circle and you keep yourself well out of harm’s way. But yes expect 100% death in 1v1 situations.
