Guild Wars 2

Hello, I’m Sheva Alamarr

This is a new support/tank staff Elementalist build I came up with called “Diamond Resistance”. This build utilizes Diamond Skin AND -70% condi reduction and -103% cripple, immobilize and chill making it anti-condition and immune to crowd control. The high armor and healing power makes it effective even against physical attacks, making staying at full health quite easy.

This is a VERY “open” build, meaning you can run nearly any gear or trait setup as long as you have Diamond Skin, Geomancer’s Embrace and the Resistance/Melandru Runes with Bowl of Lemongrass Poultry Soup(or whatever it’s called). The only mandatory traits is the 30 in Earth and the above mentioned traits. 20 in arcana in water is not written in stone and can be tweaked to your style of play. You don’t even have to run staff. Run whatever weapon setup you won’t and your good to go.

Also, if I’ve learned anything from running this build it’s that the majority of players are running some sort of condition reliant build. Even the smallest things like immobilizing a target, setting them on fire, chills from Hydromancy etc. Either you are not effected by these perks or they don’t last long enough for them to be utilized.

The ability to run around and be immune to Immobilize, chill and cripple(sometimes it glitches and you might get one of these for a split second but it rarely happens) is not to be taken for granted. You can do things that others cannot without the use of stables. So be daring.
Video(will post more later):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pem4LdmFykE

Food:
Bowl of LemonGrass Poultry Soup: -40% condition Duration

Runes:
4 Sup. Runes of Resistance: -20% condition duration
2 Sup. Runes of Melandru: -10% condition duration
Geomancer’s Freedom: -33% Chill, Cripple and Immobilize duration

Armor:
Full Cleric’s Armor or Apothecary(if you want to try a condi build with D/D or S/D)
OR
Head, Gloves, Boots: Cleric’s
Shoulders, Chest, Legs: Settler’s

Weapons: Clerics, Settler’s or Apothecary

Trinkets:
Full Sapphire Orichalcum Trinkets with Magi back piece.

Sigils:
Stacking sigil: Life(Healing Power) or Momentum(Toughness) – depends on if you go for more toughness or if you like healing power.

Roaming sigil Hydromancy, Leeching, Energy or Renewal

Build Link:

Healing Power Build- http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQFAWhEmgbuxywjDIEFwgJMeECbQHWUsDzAA-jECBoNAUDAZRFRjtAfIalRhV1ATpiIq2loIa1SBwkyI-w

Toughness Build- http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQFAWhEmebuxywjDIEFwgJMeECbQHWUsDzAA-jUCBodA03A5dKiZRCrF4DRrMKsKGYKVER1uEFRrWKAmUGB-w

Healing/Toughness Hybrid- just use toughness build with “Sigil of Life” for stacking.

If I made any mistakes between the build in the editor and here on the forum let me know and I’ll fix it. If you like the build make a video and post it here.

Another build proving that Diamond Skin is either redundant or just bad. Still, reducing conditions by that much must be frustrating for all the necros/mesmers.

Nice to see ele doing something solo.

however, I only feel more sadness after watching… because it remind me of a warrior zerker doing the same thing, with minimal amount of defensive investment.

Good job on the video it was fun to watch

I would recommend full 6 melandru since it forces the condition to round down. 10 bleed should tick only 7 times instead of 7.5.

I am no pro by any means, but it feels like you lack to do enough dmg in 1vs1s…. am I wrong?

Fun video to watch. You play the class well. You are definitely hard to kill but you don’t kill others that much either. Must be frustrating to play against.

I have a problem with staffs DMG in general. Attacks are hard to land, trigger long and fly slow. What are your specific dmg-combos?
What I use: static field + earth #2,#5 or water #4 + fire #2.
But as already said, our “hard-hitters” trigger way too long and people tend to dodge EVERY red circle on the ground.

It’s a waste to use diamond skin with that much condi reduction. The stronger you are against conditions, the less bang you actually get out of diamond skin. Preventing a 10s long bleed is a whole lot more useful than preventing a 3s one after all.

First of all: thanks a lot for sharing this video. I always like to see how a build perfoms instead of a theroretical discussion. I really appreciate your efforts to bring up a new build, equip your character and make a good video to show it.

I do have several concerns about you build though:

1. You run diamond skin but still have a lot of cleanses (ether renewal, cleansing wave, healing rain from staff, others that I might have overlooked).
2. You run diamond skin but have a ton of condition duration reduced (30% from runes, 40% from food, geomancers freedom trait)
3. Your damage does not seem to be a serious threat for anyone. I just fully geared up my healway guardian and i feel like i could outheal your damage on 5 players of my team so they don’t need any heal at all (granted: they literally have to stand on my feet to get that heal, but still…). I also doubt you could bring up the sustained damage to overburdon a warriors healing signet.
4. You hitpoints are rather low, making you vulnerable to burst damage. I do admit that 3200 toughness + ~50% protection uptime does take very specialized builds and a lot of setup beforehand to get this much burst in 1v1.
5. In my personal opinion: staff with its combo fields, 1200 range, AoE that needs setup, CC and utility skills has a “zerg only” badge on top of it. You might be better off using a weapon set with shorter range but more damage (S/F has even more condition remove on your weapon skills if that is your thing…). Also note that 7 out of 20 skills of a staff don’t do any damage at all.
6. I personally prefer builds that give me some serious damage. I know I spewing a lot of negativity around (please don’t take it personal), but if you compare your numbers to Xunleashed’s recent video you will see that his damage numbers are several magnitudes higher than yours.

Please don’t get me wrong on my comments. It’s just my personal opinion. To me, staff is zerg weapon and in a zerg I like to gear up for damage because I do know where to stand and where not to stand (I have cantrips in case I was wrong). Your build makes a great bunker though.

Maybe instead of the melandru+resistance setup just go full hoelbrak to get some much needed power. I’ve ran this trait setup on staff in GvG’s it is awesome I just run boon duration on my clerics armor with celestial trinkets.

My particular gear setup that I posted was focused on tanking and survival but if you wanted damage you can just change the gear and still run these trait lines.

hmmm doesn’t have to be this gear setup but maybe something like this?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmgbsxywjEIkCww4RIsBdooAGUUsDzAA-jkCB4hAUDApqCRJPasF4DRrMKsqZCR6kYKXp2euIa1SBwkwI-w

I think oZii hit the nail on the head. This is a SUPPORT build, granted it does seem to lack significant damage output but paired with a good synergised group that shouldn’t be a problem.

A build like this would shine for GvG and heavily outnumbered fights where your primary purpose is cleansing, cc and healing output. As fun as zerker staff zerging is you’re only there as a selfish participant, good luck when the odds are against you.

So thank you OP for the build and video, much appreciated.

I think this build could be very effective in a 5 man group. Small scale fights where you have someone else to drop people for you. You just CC, support, survive, with a bit of extra damage thrown in =p

Still give credit to you for posting video of something different.

First off, kudos for a nicely done video, and secondly kudos for doing something many people aren’t doing — trying.

I echo some of the concerns here, but realize they’re just my own opinion.

You seem to like solo roaming, but your build can’t do it. You can solo troll, but not much else. The damage isn’t there. Even with several people, your tankiness doesn’t help a group out. The only group utility you offer is CC.

At that, it is still entertaining to see people focus an ele and not have the ele fall down.

I’ll end on a very positive note — you seem to have made a good build for a zerg commander, or a GvG commander.

Thank You for taking the time to watch the video and leave comments. As you can see I like tanking people more than anything. lol
Next time I’ll make sure to add some dps into my next build.

Forzani.2584:

You are definitely hard to kill but you don’t kill others that much either. Must be frustrating to play against.

Pretty much this.