Guild Wars 2

TL;DR at bottom

Basically, I’m trying to get an idea of how individual players feel about their staff. I think the community has established its strengths in WvW and its downfalls in 1v1. Try and be specific. For example, if you are exclusively a staff Ele then share your experience! PvE, sPvP, WvW, tPvP; all is welcome. Also, if you played staff and found it underwhelming (oh boy) then tell us what you didn’t like about it. Talk about your success with staff.

As tempting as it is, let’s try not to turn this thread into a suggestion box for ANet—there’s already enough of that around and more of it would be redundant.

Personally, I’ve found staff successful in dungeons and unorganized PvP. My experience is that you have to know the map and establish vantage points. I feel that staff gives you a form of “third party control” over fights, that is, your team could be outplayed on the ground but still win the fight because of your influence on multiple targets with large AoE.

I haven’t yet learned how to solo PvE effectively with staff, so advice is helpful. Also, I believe staff encourages retreat from a 1v1 or 1vX situation because of the amount of AoE CC we have. My technique involves trying to anticipate what I’m getting into and finding locations that work to my advantage. I haven’t done much with S/D, but I run D/D and I find that it is more APM intensive but requires less pre-planning and more rhythm.

TL;DR
Where and how do you use staff? Even if it just decorates your inventory, tell me. What’s your technique? Are you successful or not? I’m interested in all of this because I resist the idea that an entire weapon set was developed for a singular role.

I primarily use a staff in WvW.

As you noted, in open field zerg vs zerg fights it’s fields and AoEs are usefull for denying areas and controlling the “flow” of the fight. A couple of staff ele’s can putting big red circles on the ground can be remarkably affective in controlling an enemy zergball.

When taking a keep our water fields are indispensable in keeping rams/golems alive long enough to get a door down. traited for larger circles I’m also excellent at getting those arrow carts at the back of the wall, or trebs way up there “almost” out of reach.

in PVE, it’s a little bit different and I can’t faceroll mobs they way certain other classes, but I feel I am effective. But, and this is a key But, each and every fight is slightly different. There is no “rotation” you can use for every fight. sometimes it’s Earth5, water 3 for area healing, then fire 2, fire3 to dps, fire4 to get some range, water4 to keep them in fire2 that’s up again. Maybe I need to earth elemental to “tank” a veteran while while I DPS down using fire, etc. It’s why ele became my main, every encounter is different. Am I as effective or easy as other classes? /shrug, I dunno, I have fun, and that’s all I care about.

My elementalist is a 99.99999% staff user as I always play ranged casters (mostly healers, but also mages – or sometimes atleast AoE ranged classes), AoE killing and big heals being my fave. I sometimes try to use either d/d, s/d or s/f but switch back to staff within ten minutes. I especially dislike d/d, if I wanted that playstyle I’d have rolled a thief. Staff just fits my playstyle best, I don’t care if it’s not the popular build or not. I’m rather a happy staff user and not 100% efficient than a sad d/d user and being “OP”.

So, I use my staff for everything; open world PvE, dungeons and WvW. I never tried Fractals or sPvP and to be honest I never understand why people say staff is not viable in PvE. Run among the lines of your AoE circle and place earth 2, water 2, water 4, fire 2 and watch how the mob dies a slow painful death while it’s moving too slow to get out of the AoE circle/and/or to you. I have to admit, I have zero PvP skills so I always run with zergs in WvW and just drop AoE’s from a save distance and watch loot bangs spawn. This is probably also the reason why I like WvW (I dislike PvP in other games), since I can actually kill things here. xD

My build is 0/0/10/30/30, My armor is PVT with the exeption of the legs, trinkets and staff are kinda all over the place as I still need to switch those out (they’re blue and green now) and I aim for a minimum of 500 healing power, but I’d rather have 700+ just because I love seeing my health bar fill back up to full when I dodge or throw a water field. xD I’ll see when I decide on my trinkets.

So yeah, pretty different than the usual Elementalist I guess. XP

Edit: ah yes I agree with the poster above me. I put an example of a rotation I like to use, but it’s just one of the many I use since you have so many skills you can pick and choose the best ones for each fight. This is such a big difference with my (lowbie) necro. I love staff on Necro also (and mainly use this weapon), but it’s a lot more of a fixed rotation I tend to use compared to ele, where I use different rotations depending on the situation.

I have two eles, one d/d bunker and one (semi-pure) glass cannon staff.

For my staff ele, I do not have the traditional 30 in water. There is very little room for error with it. You will rely on your allies a lot. I basically don’t do anything solo (except some open world PvE). I spend nearly all my time in fire attune, except in limited healing situations, out of combat (air for swiftness), and very very rare other circumstances.

In WvW (where I use this character the most) the obvious use is tower defense or wall clearing. You can hit many things on the wall that appear to be out of range for other classes as an attacker. The aoe nature of your fire attacks means you’ll force enemies off of any siege well before that siege is destroyed. Those are pretty much the obvious sorts of things. The overlooked behaviors are healings (water autoattacks against a tower door will heal the ram operators and others stacking on them), area denial, and anti-thief burst.

Area denial is a pretty big thing that’s often overlooked. Provided you’re able to position yourself to stay alive (easier said than done, but it’s an art) your goal isn’t necessarily to down players, but often you’ll herd them. Players either need to move out of your attacks or suffer from a lot of damage. Use this to your advantage as much as possible. Drop aoes behind an enemy to try force them up into a choke point. Place them to put a little separation between a player and his group. Drop them on downed players (allied or enemy) to make a spike/revive more dangerous. Don’t be upset because you only landed 2 hits with that Meteor Shower. If you backed someone off from spiking your ally, you’ve more than won that skirmish (especially if the spike would have rallied other enemies). Dropping a couple aoes at your own feet when you see a burst thief sneaking in often ends with either a dead thief or them finding a new target (or in other words, a living ele).

I use staff bunker ele, both sPvp and WvW; sPvp I mostly kit away ppl from the points, And I speak 3-4 player at time, so the others have time to conquerer and kill the remaining enemys, and when I can’t do that, I can use AoE on capture point to inrease the allys dps, and I can make a lot of Water field and blast them 2 times by myself :P.

WvW I use staff mainly to get down siege weapon from the wall, and for super healing in front of the gate.

Mostly in WvW where I use it for combo fields, taking down siege and interdiction/condtions. Also for farming in Cursed Shore.

I will 1v1 anyone with a staff #COMEATMEBRO!!!!!!!

xbaunx.6438:

Where and how do you use staff? Even if it just decorates your inventory, tell me. What’s your technique? Are you successful or not? I’m interested in all of this because I resist the idea that an entire weapon set was developed for a singular role.

It rests peacefully on the lower left side of my invisible bag, awaiting the attention of developers.