Guild Wars 2

So I made an elementalist recently, and I’ve started to theorycraft what my end-goal should be. I want something different from my other characters: Condi-Engi, Toughness-Mesmer, Backstab Thief, and Condi Necro. My current goal is to create a fairly-support oriented Staff build.

Based on the guides I can find, support-focused staff builds seem to be quite diverse. Having healing power definitely interests me as I’m more interested in out-lasting someone and supporting my allies than I am in killing people quickly in a 1v1.
Their are two builds I’ve seen that interest me:
A build based on Healing Power/Power/Toughness gear and Condition damage/healing power/toughness
A build based on Cleric’s and Soldier’s gear.

Trait-wise I’m thinking 0/15/10/15/30 or 0/0/10/30/30.

So – knowing little about the elementalist – what can you tell me about these?

Does having less healing power – cleric’s and soldiers – rather than a build focused on cleric’s and apothecary, cost me a lot of healing?

Is mixing power and condition damage better consistent dps than only power?

Does this new trend of 0/15/10/15/30 give much less healing than the old fashioned 0/0/10/30/30?

Does 0/15/10/15/30 give any noticeable damage increase over 0/0/10/30/30?

Would condition duration substantially increase my crowd control – chill/cripple – or would it not be worth the stat loss?

After MF change, is celestial worth it now?

Am I insane and might be better just hanging my ele now?

Thanks

EDIT: It would be nice to able to use the same gear for a tanky roaming build with S/F or S/D…. but staff is first priotity… Thanks guys

If you mean wvw staff support, I think healing power is a waste. The vast majority of healing comes from blast finishers and does not factor the healing power of whoever dropped the water field. Healing power will definitely help your own survival though.

If you want to specialize as support 0/0/10/30/30 is stronger due to condition removal. 30 in water seems to the current standard support build and will probably be that way until conditions are brought under control.

Again: this wvw advice only.

For straight up staff support, you dont want tons of healing power, as said before, the blasts are more important. You are better off traiting for things like CD reduction in water and remove a condi on water swap.

You can take cleansing water (remove condi on applying regen), although that is not very effective anymore. I would probably suggest taking either 20 in fire so you can also dish out some damage, 20 in air so you can lay down static field more often and activiate glyph of elemental power more often, or 20 in earth so you can hand out more stability.

Also, I mention GoEP b/c I think it should be in every staff build. Providing lots of control/weakness/cover condis to the opponent team is a huge buff to yours, and you do it in aoe with all your attacks.

Thanks for the great advice, I sense a trend here about Healing Power lol

Mice.8921:

Thanks for the great advice, I sense a trend here about Healing Power lol

It’s definitely a good idea to have at least some Healing Power what with our really low base health and being a light armor profession, but overloading it won’t help in the long run; the amount you get from speccing into Water Magic with a very modest amount of equipment help is more than enough.

For staff, I’d recommend against condition damage because it only has 2 major sources of condition damage, with 1 having a huge casting delay (Eruption). For PvE it could work but in PvP or WvW most of your targets will avoid it easily (and if they don’t, you’ll likely beat them easily anyway).

Furthermore, I recommend getting at least enough vitality to get your health up to 12k, preferably 15k. This will save you from a lot of otherwise instant kills in dungeons and fractals.

Leuca.5732:

Mice.8921:

Thanks for the great advice, I sense a trend here about Healing Power lol

It’s definitely a good idea to have at least some Healing Power what with our really low base health and being a light armor profession, but overloading it won’t help in the long run; the amount you get from speccing into Water Magic with a very modest amount of equipment help is more than enough.

What do you mean by modest equipment help? Cleric’s trinkets?