Guild Wars 2

I saw this staff ele today do something that I was sooooo envious of. He was dueling 1v1 and 1v2 and even fought a 1v3 (2 were adds that didn’t know it was a duel) all of this while being staff. Watched him take d/p thieves and zerker rangers… even a scrapper which shocked me.

No doubt I was pretty shocked by the whole thing and wondering if anyone knows what kind of build this was or simply the basics to roaming as a staff ele. Always wanted to but never found a decent balance of damage and defense for me.

First of all, did he have the tempest specialization?

Greetings Dajman! It’s good to see Elementalist players understanding since the changes and HoT release Staff can be played offensive. Many still cling to what is still considered Meta stating that the “numbers,” don’t lie, but most of the time they forget the game has checks and balances. Everytime Karl and the rest of those who work on elementalist improve things to make Ele more viable outside of fire I cheer and watch the naysayers come out and try to defend the only way to play/meta style. Since the release of HoT it has been even more reason to enjoy elementalist, because you can really experiment and really customize it to your desired focus attunement(s).

So lets talk about this staff ele you witnessed! Did you see certain spells more often than some? Did you see skills such as cantrips used defensively? What about shouts? Was the elementalist using the AoE’s as crowd control? Was the Thief and Ranger using traditional traits or were they the new ones such as Daredevil and Druid? Answering those things could lead you to your answers. My suggestions would be to start looking in some type of condition build. Second note that the elementalist who was playing against the two players was already at a disadvantage because it was 2 against 1, so do not assume that any build is the answer to your questions.

Condition builds that evolve around earth magic would probably be ideal because you stated they played against a ranger. In my experience Earth is always great at handling rangers with long bows because of magnetic aura, cripple and bleed damage it inflicts. Fighting against a thief is a great deal about area denial, if the thief is sneaky melee type and if they are using pistol(s), earth, fire and air magic have skills that work to even up the fight. Below I have linked what is a viable build that should fulfill your general information.

My best advice is to experiment with different condition, power, and vitality set-ups until you create the play style you saw in WvW against the ranger, and thief. Sites like meta-battle are great for certain things, but they will not explain how and what each skill use has depending on your build. There isn’t such a thing as a wrong build, just matters on what you want your build to do and knowing what works for it, so play with different things and have fun!

Build Editor

Thanks for the responces. So I noticed a ton of air spells cast and cantrips with air elementals. Most of the ground aoe was used for zoning purposes and everytime the theif would stealth there would be a field it would have to cross into to get to him. (Air 5 caught it one time to many and the kill was secured through that) also a huge amount of earth. I was thinking after I posted this before bed that he probably was air and earth. The damage was still there but just about every time the thief went stealth again he would swap back to earth. He was tempest and would use overloads when the theif would be near as well. Just a ton of punishing aoe everytime the thief went stealth.
With all of that I assume cantrips (I know I saw the air one more than once) and tempest earth and air. It wasn’t huge burst and he didn’t take massive amounts of damage so probably. Anyway I was pretty awestruck. Definitely gonna play around with Staff ele again to see if I can make it work.

This is it. Earth tempest is hard for thiefs. When thief incoming is iminent swap earth (traited of course).
The staff has nice AE and the lighnign field is great CC. I use scepter + focus. The thief is warded of by tempest + earth so he can´t kill the ele fast and can´t stay close long. the ele also wont kill fast but might break the thiefs morale.
And against longbows magnetic aura is a heavy counter. I kill dragon hunters an rangers regulary (focus has magnetic wave which also reflects instantly). See them pull the string and reflect.

Yeah I started playing with this some this morning and am starting to regret some life decisions. I threw together something that just relies heavily on auras and it is turning out to be pretty fun counter to the very bursty and squishy specs people are running with right now. The only thing I am lacking hard is condi clear.

the rough rough draft I threw together was this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWn0XCdOg9XCOYCcYilHAb4EkBehuT2L7nVIAcAahA-TZQ7AAw+DAA

Was thinking about sigil of intelligence for the spike of damage that attuning to air could cause. And of course with this the only line I would have to really change would be air to water if I wanted to become full support with the amount of auras this build can pump out. The runes I honestly just grabbed cause what harm can another aura do but that is easily up for a change if its truly terrible. As for stats I wont have enough time to really play with that until later.

Any thoughts would be welcome. I always wanted to be able to make staff work and just getting back from a years long break this was the first I had seen staff used at all let alone in pvp.

Staff Air Build

For staff PvP, I prefer to use Air, Arcane, and Tempest.