Guild Wars 2

So i’m rank 16 and have been dabbling in about 4 professions but have spent the majority of the time as an elementalist. And yes Elementalist sucks! Well kinda.

Before I learned to spec for defense, before I learned to attunement switch, I couldn’t understand why my soldier amulet all fire and air and some arcana spec kept getting blown up. Oh wait, you mean there are other amulets besides soldiers? That took about 4 days to realise. Berzerker’s, omg I can finally kill people. But wait I’m still dieing in seconds.

Rewind to a few weeks ago, running interesting dagger focus builds for a nice combination of damage and defense, I thought I’d try out staff. Yep still sucks.

What’s this blast finisher stuff all about. Looks like staff has alot of these fields as well. Anyway back to daggers and scepter. I’l try some water, earth and arcana builds with a shaman amulet to spec support and nice heals. Hey look, I can live through heartseeker! Wow this build really has some nice survivability and heals, but those heals still don’t seem quite adequate.

Attunment dancing mastered, check. Knowing how to spec, check. Understand how to heal (without fields and finishers), check. What are these finishers and fields and how to they really work (always felt like people could randomly make things happen by shooting through them only). Read a few forum posts and spent an hour on the golems testing out staff with combo fields and finishers.

Demigod status enabled. Holy god, staff in incredible. Eruption switch to water, geyser, arcane wave, healing rain, evasive arcana roll, switch to fire evasive arcana roll, the whole team is now healed up conditions removed all over the place, regen for 20 seconds stacked (or however long it is). I no longer ever fear a 1 on 1, ever. 2 on1’s? If their both pretty hardcore melee’s, I have to be on my toes but I can usually waste at least 30 seconds of their time, if their ranged I can last a minute or longer. 3 on 1’s are a breaking point but I can usually drag them for a few thousand yards away from their node if their stupid enough to follow.

Anyway, after understanding staff, I can never go back to daggers or scepter. In the beginning without knowing how to spec expecting to lob fireballs from 1200 yards, without healing and understanding fields and combos, staff sucks hard. Obviously I have travelled the long road towards enlightenment. Quick question to other hardcore staff enthusiasts, what do you prefer amulet wise? Shaman’s or cleric’s. I find shaman’s with a carrion jewel, while running undead runes and a superior battle rune on my staff provides a nice mix of healing, defense and condition damage output through eruption, evasive arcana, flame burst etc. Do you find the lower healing is an issue? I’m not running Tpvp right now so keep in mind this is solo queues in spvp.

I would like to congratulate you sir on becoming one of the enlightened and not mentally handicapped people still trying to convince themselves the mid-range/melee weapons are better. Did you go my 10/30/30 Earth/Water/Arcana Splish Splash build?

In my sPvP build, which you can find at the top of the “Post Your Build Thread” I have 584 healing and Geyser only does ~100 less per tick compared to my PvE build which has 1k healing (the dodge roll blasts from Evasive Arcana heal for about 2k each – down from 2.2k)

Such a great post:) nice to read!:)

The traits for that build are Earth #3, Water #3, 5, 11, and Arcana #5, 8, 11 with 6 Superior Rune of Speed and a Valkyrie’s Amulet slotted with a Knight’s Jewel.

My setup is earth 3 as well, water 1, 3, and 5, and arcana 4, 5, 11. I’m suspect of valkyries because I really don’t need 15 percent crit multipler since my crit will be crap anyway, and frankly, I don’t have alot of time for direct damage as opposed to conditions. One of my main concerns is that 598 toughness may not be enough. Even with cleric’s amulet, I can still feel squishy. It might be that it takes longer to kill people without the condition builds. If one eruption hits with 10+ might stacks and my setup it does about 8k in bleeds. Like you i’m tempted to tone down the healing as it doesn’t seem to lose too much and stick with the shaman’s amulet.

I go with Earth 3 (still working on this one, but that’s where I’m headed), Water 3, 10, 11, and Arcana 5, 8, 11. I see that both of you have Water 5 – does this mean when you attune to Water you remove 2 conditions from yourself and allies? Water 5 removes one, and the Arcana 5 + Water 11 removes another?

I’m loving the staff build. I don’t solo much in PVE, so the combo-heavy staff really pays off for me. Not only do I get my soloable combos, but my duo / party / allies build on them, too.

Wait…

There are people that play an elementalist without building some healing in?

OMG! No wonder everyone thinks the class is awful! I thought it was unplayable until I toyed around with a water spec. Now, even if I respec for other things, I always stick 15-20 points in Water and 10 in Arcane. Heal/Regen/Cleanse every 10 seconds is just too good to pass up!

‘Hai, I’m a staff elementalist. I can call down a meteor shower! (don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt.) I can also make lava erupt from the ground! You should take a couple steps to the left so it doesn’t keep tickling you. I can lobs fireballs at you, and make you burst into flame! But you can cleanse that, and just avoid the fireballs. I can also shoot lightning at you, but it doesn’t hurt much either… I can blind you! Well, for one attack anyhow. I could push you back, but I suck at aiming that skill. I can make my allies run a little faster! That works, right? Ooo, I know. I’ll throw ROCKS at you! Big rocks, the size of bowling balls! But they don’t hurt either, but move away from that pile of bulging rocks on the ground, coz its gonna blow up! Its okay if you don’t move though, coz it doesn’t hardly hurt either. I can make the ground TREMBLE beneath your feet, crippling or immobilizing you! Well, when it hits… Oh, but I CAN heal everyone. I can slow you down with a chill field, or give my buddies frost armor, or cleanse their conditions…………… so, wait… why do I have these other 3 attunements? Hm…"

/Click Esc
/Click Character Select
/click “Create New Character”
/Click Thief
/Profit

TL;DR: Why do we have 4 attunements if three of them are useless? Why is staff pigeonholed into “support” when we’re supposed to do great damage with Fire and Air attunements? I’m glad you found happiness with tanky staff build, but I want a damaging staff build. Please fix our atrocious damage!

they shouldnt have nerfed scepters then

also can someone post the numbers for combos; im too lazy to test them.

I am very happy I have embraced the staff playstyle. Running 10/0/10/30/20 semi-offensive cantrip build, gearing Toughness/Power/Precision.

The important thing on the Valkyrie’s is the Toughness and Healing. I don’t know why you’re focused on condition damage, especially in a staff build, you have 3 spells that do it, 5 if you count Evasive Arcana (which you aren’t using it seems). Those 3 spells are:

1) a 10 second CD which gives burning…a generally crappy condition as stacking in duration really does nothing except hurt you in the long run against someone with ample condition removal (more importantly, you can’t even keep it up permanently anyway because our physical projectiles fire so kitten slow – and you would be attunement locked into your two weakest attunements)

2) a 30 second CD that is a straight shot to your target that does a whopping 1 stack of bleed (insert Neil de Grasse Tyson meme here)

3) a 2 second cast (which can be interrupted and cancel the whole bloody effect) with another 2-3 second (hard to gauge) delay before exploding which puts on a fair amount of bleeds (6 stacks) but is so well animated and delayed on doing its actual damage and effect, even Helen Keller would have no problems avoiding it

Guess what, that Warrior who just bullrushed and hit 100 blades probably has 6 stacks of bleed on you already, especially if he ran in shooting his rifle. That Ranger you just turned your back/side to for 2 seconds, he has 6 stacks of bleed on you too via that ridiculously overpowered short bow (that’s without quickness mind you). The fact that you’re not using staff blaster either is a serious DUBYA-TEE-EFF, seeing as even a doubly large Eruption is easy to dodge; it makes me wonder how bad the player’s you are fighting are if they are getting hit by the base radius one.

And yes, the 5th Water trait does remove 2 conditions upon attunement to water. It’s a glorious one button counter to Pistol Whip. Also, The 3rd water trait is infinitely better than the 10th trait; why only have one of utilities give you regeneration only, using Signet or Frost Bow or /shudder….both next to Mist Form is a bad idea. Especially when you could have utilities like Cleansing Flame and Armor of Earth alongside it; never mind the fact that with the 3rd trait those grant you regeneration AND vigor upon use.

I must admit, I lol’d a little Westley.

The important thing on the Valkyrie’s is the Toughness and Healing.

Wouldn’t Cleric’s be more useful then? At least it has power (which works for all your skills) instead of condition damage.

I currently use Cleric’s. Really enjoy it.

Current built is 10 Air (for Glyphs), 30 Water, 30 Arcane.

Wanted to resurrect this thread because I’ve become a convert as well. I’ll keep my S/D weapons up, but I haven’t switched back in weeks. It’s all combos and finishers now.

Story mode has become a cakewalk. And no matter the level nor zone, I only get worried if a ranged mob shows up to my 1 on 3 fight, and then only if both my pet slots are on countdown.

Quite sure PvP and WvWvW is different. But I only just recently hit 80, so I’m a long way from even being properly geared much less practiced against other players…

Thanks for the post OP!

I’ve been doing D/D thus far and I been tearing it up…but I’ve fallen flat everytime I try to go staff. Your post gives me a great idea of how I can be effective with staff, so thanks for that!

lol. yes, nice resurrect, very entertaining. I couldn’t help but realize the OP never actually claimed to kill anything in PvP, just how long he lived before he died. yes, PvP and WvW opponents are quite a bit more intellegent than mobs in PvE, usually anyway.

I will add this, healing rain is a water field as well and lasts longer then geyser. And if you didn’t want to change out of water, just roll again for the free blast finisher. Look at regen removes conditions and dwayna gear (double Regen on heal 5% change to gain regen I think as well).