Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

New to building characters. Though I love building characters and ideas. Recently my elementalist reached level 80. I’m quite handy as a D/D, but when I found out how much fun staff really is it got me thinking. And ofcourse my skill points are being put into the tempest tree-line.

Well the general idea is to do support damage as well as a decent amount of healing. The idea for this build is to be supportive for other players as well as being a decent damage-dealer. The idea is not to reach the top at doing damage, but being an effective tool in group-events and world PvE with a good amount of survivability and being versatile.

Maybe I’m a fool to say world PvE and dungeons. Though … didn’t look into any other content that deeply. My connection gets f*d up when i’m doing WvW and PvP is not really my thing.

Anyways here’s the build I’m thinking about, I want to know what you guys think

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFMQFAWnMIC9XiVYCOYC0RglGAToAEA+guT2N7olIHUEGkA-TRCBABaoEMFdAAu/QFXAAAeAAJY+xBTQBp+jRK/IFwATtA-e

As staff camping water is pretty meh, usually you just go on water to cast 5, then 3 and overload it for a nice burst heal overall. The extreme loss of damage doesn’t really make up for the Soothing Mist heal.

Going for healing power in PvE is usually pretty meh, too, because of the awful scaling. You’ll help your team more by going for more damage, the base aura heal is pretty decent. As such I’d just stay Berserker’s, use Rune of the Monk and chug food that gives +outgoing healing.
Also, if you play an aura healer, spec Powerful Aura, not Soothing Power, and Stop, Drop and Roll instead of Piercing Shards, since Water doesn’t do any damage anyway. Fresh Air with staff is also really suboptimal, I’d just swap Air with Fire and go the usual Burning Precision, Pyromancer’s Training and Persisting Flames. I’d also swap Aftershock with Signet of Fire when there’s nothing to reflect, the cooldown is just too long.

Auramancer is usually a Dagger/Warhorn – Dagger/Focus thing because of the weapon skills. If you want to go on staff, I’d suggest Unstable Conduit to gain a few more auras from Overloads.

So, yeah, bottomline is Healing Power is bad in PvE, +outgoing healing effectiveness is miles better, you help your team more by doing damage (and the damage loss in that build is rather huge) and throwing in the heals along the way. If you personally need more survivability, Marauder’s armor is awesome on Ele and helps a lot with that.

Just my 2 cents.

//edit: And Wash The Pain Away is along the best heals in the game, way better than Arcane Brilliance. If you really need that blast, use staff earth 2.

Hey! Thanks for tje superb advice. My lovely ele can finally fully build as a tempest. I switched Clerics for Zerk and switched my staff for S/W. The suport is great and the damage is amazing. Also switched air for fire.

I tested it in PvE group events etc. The differenve in damage compared to staff is huge and still the supportive skills are great. I love dealing great damage while still being supportive.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFMQJBLhdSfJ0fJWhJY2AQHBWEAsgAQB4AQ0F2CHB3WbsN3C-TBSDABJoEsHlfgoHQ+HAwLq/Ag5vo2fghTAAA-e

Sourde Noire.5286:

Going for healing power in PvE is usually pretty meh, too, because of the awful scaling.

what awful scaling?
healing power scales as well as power, if not better

If healing power is meh in pve it’s because of overhealing. People simply don’t need 1100 regen per second with 12k every 13 seconds and another 15k every 25 seconds, with an additional 2k here and there.

reikken.4961:

Sourde Noire.5286:

Going for healing power in PvE is usually pretty meh, too, because of the awful scaling.

what awful scaling?
healing power scales as well as power, if not better

If healing power is meh in pve it’s because of overhealing. People simply don’t need 1100 regen per second with 12k every 13 seconds and another 15k every 25 seconds, with an additional 2k here and there.

Because of overhealing, yes, and because there’s always opportunity cost and increasing Healing Power by an amount that makes a noticable difference sucks tons of damage out of your build, and in PvE damage is simply the best tool you have. Even raids where you usually want a dedicated healer for a change, are DPS checks.

It’s far more effective and easier to simply stack +outgoing healing effectiveness, simple as that.

Well I noticed the difference when going full zerk. And outgoing healing is nice I supose. Though going healingpower indeed is quite meh.

Still new to everything.

But the second build I posted is what works perfectly with how I like to play. I just like the water tree line with the support it already gives. Though I guess I can always switch water for air for max damage.

But still, running around alone in the maguma area’s alone can already be quite tough for example.

Anyways, give out some ideas if you guys have some.

Sourde Noire.5286:

Because of overhealing, yes, and because there’s always opportunity cost and increasing Healing Power by an amount that makes a noticable difference sucks tons of damage out of your build, and in PvE damage is simply the best tool you have. Even raids where you usually want a dedicated healer for a change, are DPS checks.

It’s far more effective and easier to simply stack +outgoing healing effectiveness, simple as that.

thanks to zealot’s gear, adding healing power does not cut damage by that much. especially when running air, which grants a lot of ferocity. And healing power does scale quite well. As a demonstration of this, running scholar runes and zealot’s trinkets is more damage and heals than running full zerker with monk runes

calculations done before making this claim:
http://bit.ly/1WyMBdU
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBIhBY2wSDgJEIDAfQ3L7md0ScEKCxAA-TxRBAB4pHwMlg6fCAya/hrU+BwDAgS1fIFgf7tA-e
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBIhBY2wSDg5eZ3sjWhAZA4DScEKCxAA-TxRBABA8AAWV5n+nAAKV/BP9AXt/gZKBJFgf7tA-e
(added 150 ferocity to simulate partial fresh air uptime)

Fresh Air is pretty awful in Staff, because Air in staff has awful DPS. Just take Bolt to the Heart and camp Fire when you need damage. Your overall net DPS will be better. (This is a opinion that’s in contention based on other threads and I would have to do some math at some point to make sure it’s valid.)(Edited to Add: Did the math and I’m convinced camping fire wins out over fresh air in any scenario where you aren’t maintaining 25 stacks of might independently of fire.)

The swiftness in Zephyr’s Boon is nice for traveling, but the shortness of the duration of Fury combined with your limitations in cycling shouts make the trait a bad choice over Ferocious Winds. In terms of group support, if you have a Revenant running the staple PvE build, they will provide 100% group fury uptime, negating the usefulness of the entire trait.

Soothing Power doesn’t have much use outside of raids where you are a dedicated healer. In all other PvE scenarios, you are only going to be swapping briefly into water to pop your heals. Camping it is a bad idea. Taking Cleansing Water to augment your shouts with group condi cleanse is way more valuable.

Soothing Ice is a better choice over Piercing Shards, because water doesn’t do enough damage to justify camping it to do damage. Stop Drop and Roll is situational outside of PvP where as Soothing Ice procs an aura, which by your trait choices, heals you, removes a condi and applies vigor and more regen uptime.

The long CD on Aftershock makes it impractical for cycling auras for their bonuses. Unless you need a reflect in a fight, it’s better to run with something more DPS oriented like Gylph of Storms. Keep Feel the Burn and Flash Freeze those; their short CDs make it so you can cycle them easily.

Arcane Brilliance only has value as a blast finisher and that additional blast finisher only has value if you are building for the fury on group might in Fire, which you aren’t. Wash the Pain Away is an insane group heal on a low CD and you are going to be better served in a larger range of scenarios if you take it. Eruption has a delayed blast finisher built into that you can combo with your other fields when you need it; learn how to do that.

Even if WvW when having a second blast finisher had a lot of value, most of us just still ran Wash the Pain Away or Ethereal Renewal, becuase of how awesome they are.

I always recommend Soldiers for your armor over Clerics. Vitality is more valuable in more situations. Healing power has limited scaling, because it only influences a small percentage of skills. In addition, the healing from your water abilities, shouts and Wash the Pain away are more than enough for all casual PvE. The reason for this is, because everyone runs glassy zerker builds still with low health pools. Thus, in casual PvE, building for healing power just results in overhealing in most situations. A focused Wash the Pain Away will fill most health bars with no healing power.

Healing power is great in raids, because you are building to be only a healer and thus, spending most of your time in water and soothing mist scales really well with. In casual PvE, you just don’t spend enough time in water to get must value from it and if you are spending a lot of time in water, you probably aren’t providing as much value as you could be.

Outside of those suggestions, everything else is the same as what I run in my general PvE build.

MadRabbit.3179:

Soothing Power doesn’t have much use outside of raids where you are a dedicated healer. In all other PvE scenarios, you are only going to be swapping briefly into water to pop your heals. Camping it is a bad idea. Taking Cleansing Water to augment your shouts with group condi cleanse is way more valuable.

[…]

Healing power is great in raids, because you are building to be only a healer and thus, spending most of your time in water and soothing mist scales really well with. In casual PvE, you just don’t spend enough time in water to get must value from it and if you are spending a lot of time in water, you probably aren’t providing as much value as you could be.

Actually, the very act of swapping into water is my main heal. In raids or otherwise. Soothing mist lasts 10 seconds, so there is absolutely no need to camp water for it to be excellent. (In fact, a bug makes it slightly weaker if you camp water) I swap into water, use a skill or two if I need to, and then swap out. My d/w air/water/tempest rotation typically consists of overload air → swap to water and then immediately back to air spending less than half a second in water. This keeps soothing mist up all the time (and lets me do tons of damage).

That said, I do still rarely take soothing power. I take cleansing water if condition cleanse is needed, or powerful aura if it’s not. 1.8 shocking auras per 10 seconds is slightly more ally healing than doubling soothing mist, and can have the benefit of applying extra regen etc. Typically, only if I’m in a raid running dedicated healer do I use soothing power. but not because I camp water. Rather, I still don’t camp water. The reason is that I’m not spamming overloads. At least for Vale Guardian, since I go ranged and hit green circles. So I don’t have as many auras, so powerful aura isn’t as effective. And the reason for not camping water was already mentioned. I’d rather get healing ripple every 10-13s than overload water. Overload water scales poorly with healing power, and either prevents me from doing damage for a while or locks me out of water. Not to say that it isn’t useful at times, but I don’t like it as a primary source of healing.

Okay, fair enough. I’ll concede to that.

But ultimately, you still have to invest healing power to get a lot of value out soothing mist and I don’t feel the need to do that when the elementalist has base healing abilities that do the job just fine with no additional healing power, allowing you to invest your limited stat points on your gear into something else that is universally useful.

And if you run a build that augments auras or cantrips with regen, then taking Soothing Power over Cleansing Water is a loss of a powerful source of condi cleanse that can be used in any attunement.

It’s not that healing power and soothing mist and stuff don’t have the potential to provide value; it’s more that when you look at our tools as a whole and the difficulty of casual PvE, those options become just unnecessary.