Guild Wars 2

Altough i’ve been inactive for the last two months, and only just checked the latest updates, I have been playing gw2 for about 3 years now and basically played nothing else but STAFF ele for like 75% of that time (yeah, i looove the staff elementalist).

The following text is actually a comment of mine in another topic, where i tried helping a fellow staffie out, but i decided to open a new topic because i’d really want to discuss the build diversity for elementalists, propose an alternative for the cleric playstyle (and get feedback) and also maybe help some other staffies out and discuss how hard the weapon is to master.

if you want to see the original post on the original page (which you should check out), it’s here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Non-HoT-Staff-Ele-for-PvP/first#post6313866

Now, without further ado:

I’ve read the changes, and it seemed they removed the cleric amulet. I’ll be honest, at first I was kinda in panic, because that’s kind of a bummer, and that change could overall make being an elementalist a lot harder for the following months, harder than it should be.

But then i realised, when running cleric, i barely used my water overload, and my actual healing skill, because of the amount of healing my staff skills could do for me. another thing i was able to do with the cleric amulet was holding off a 1v3 situation, and potentially winning 1v2’s. So I guess in that extent, the cleric amulet was a bit OP. BUT yet again, i specced to be hard to kill and i was and should be, the only reason i could still put out as mutch damage needed was because staff ele fields stack up on damage and are individually virtually longlasting, so as long as i could keep them inside, it was just a matter of time before they died. But non expert staffies couldn’t do this so the cleric was well in it’s place, and i think the ability to controle where you want your oponent should be rewarded by being able to kill them with cleric on.

I feel that the devs are narrowing the build diversity by forcing players to spec mostly for power or condition damage (they’ve got like 10 variations of power amulets 5 for condi but only maximum 2 for the rest -.-’)
so now i’ve been theorycrafting and designed two builds that should be cleric-like but will requiere more gameplay mechanics, they could potentially be even better than the cleric build, but i have yet to test (and variate) them:

Build 1:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWn0XCFOg9XCmOAcYilNAb4BEAugErgUwIwdv+XPsA-TJRDABA8AAmZ/BsLDQxFAAA
Build 2:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWn0XCFOg9XCmOAcYilNAb4BEAugErgUwIwdv+XPsA-TJRDABus/AAPAAtLDQxFAAA

explanation

build 1

This build’s a bit selfish in the manner that you don’t have much healing power and so you can’t really give decent heal support. But it’ll be incredibly hard for your opponent to get your health down. Also notice the sigil of life, when this gets to max stack, your healing power should be anough to keep yourself up.

also another thing to notice is that you use conjure flame axe, the reason you should choose this above flash-freeze is because it has an additional fire field and most importantly a leap and blast finisher, and a second underrated burning retreat. I urge you to experiment with these (and your other) finishers on your fields. Keep in mind that getting an aura is beneficial, so leaping and blasting your ice field is almost twice as good as flash-freeze. i’d prefer the conjure earth shield in more organised play tough, because you could really do some crazy coordinated “kitten” with your fields combined with this weapon.

For the elite, on second toughts, don’t use rebound, use the water elemental in glyph of elemental instead. it’s healing power isn’t scaled like yours. So just spam the secondary skill (=“crashing waves”, control your opponent yourself so your elemental doesn’t have to first chase him/her around before actually beginning the skill that heals for more than 6k)

use diamond skin for condi, stone heart for anything else.

build 2:

this build focuses on heavy team healing so you’ll want to be on every team fight, rebound is now more fitting and you could also use powerfull aura master trait. A maximum stacked sigil of life makes up for the lowered toughness, because your healing is consistent. one of all the glyphs (except of lesser elementals) could be also very usefull. you could also use flash freeze (or anything else, really) instead of flame axe.
I still have to test al these and see if they work, they’re the best tank builds i can come up with for now, (maybe i could also check with the arcane line and replace earth with it, looks promising).

But if all of these don’t work as well as i think it should, then the bunker elementalist is momentarily dead.

What do youguys think?

Your best bunker has 300 less toughness, and 3000 less health than Druid and none of the damage. Why would I use either in ranked matches?

Daniel Handler.4816:

Your best bunker has 300 less toughness, and 3000 less health than Druid and none of the damage. Why would I use either in ranked matches?

1:
that’s not the bunker build, that’s the healer build that should mimic (and is even stronger than) the healing support of the cleric in big brawls.

2:
Health points are, for an elementalist not really that big of a deal, as it is for other classes. Especially because the ele has the lowest hp base in the game we make up for it in mechanics. I never really pay attention to the health when making a build. Most of my builds are around the base (11k), just like with cleric or when i go full berzerk. The way i see it, the 9k increase in health complements the decrease in tougness and that’s all i need really. while the overall healing power is even better now. so, if i had 3k more health, it would be kinda OP.

3:
the toughness is less important in the healer build than in the tank one because the role you aim for is not to tank 3 players but to keep your team up during team fights. or to be able to win 1v1’s which is quiet possible, notice that i have way more critical chance, so i hit just as hard as the cleric, which is al that’s needed really. again, not with specs but with mechanics.

4:
I think the healer build has more heal support than the druid, it’s more consistent, and it’s also in it’s real element when in organised teams where others could help blast your fields.

My best bunker is the first build where i have over 3k toughness and way more damage than i wished for. I’d rather have just 250 healing instead though, than those 900 points in power. I don’t know the druid this well but i think it’s in the very core mechanic of the staff ele to be able to stay on point and potentially hold out a 3v1.

Also, i’m not comparing these builds to other classes, i’m comparing it to the cleric build, which worked so well. And i’m sure that even when running cleric, there’s always another class that has more in a certain set of stats. If you would choose cleric on you druid over cleric on elementalist, why would you use either of my proposed builds now? My point is: i’m gonna take a guess and say that you would’nt run the staff elementalist even when cleric was still available.

That second is the bunker build. No one ever heard of a bunker build with 11k health that didn’t have huge amounts of toughness AND healing power. The EHP of the first build is half the cleric build. Pick 2: healing power/toughness/vitality if you want to make a bunker.

I did use cleric staff because cleric elementalist did more damage than cleric druid. Now Druid successfully uses menders and maintains high power/high healing power.

For both builds you either lose healing or you lose damage.

Your best bet it to design a build with mender stats that works.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAodn0XCdOgNOA+XCcYilNAz9u+XPsDPgAQBkYFkBGBA-TJRIABzeCAA4BAAfZAm3fAA

This is what I use lately – build that appeared at last ESL-PRO thing…it works ok

Mr Godlike.6098:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAodn0XCdOgNOA+XCcYilNAz9u+XPsDPgAQBkYFkBGBA-TJRIABzeCAA4BAAfZAm3fAA

This is what I use lately – build that appeared at last ESL-PRO thing…it works ok

Seems like an alright build for the purpose of maintaining high power/healing power. However I believe OP wanted a staff build.

Focus isn’t used because of minstrel (LOL), under pressure staff isn’t great life saver…focus offers condi clear, few seconds of immortality and 3 auras (fire, leap combo fire, static)