Guild Wars 2

So, the new patch has landed. Aside from the lightning flash change, Elementalists (especially staff) saw a huge buff! Below is the build I intend to run in organized WvW groups. It focuses on area control: stun/weaken/blind enemies and prevent the same being done to your own group.

20 Earth:
10 points — earth’s embrace; 50% hp = armor of earth
15 points — cripple on attune
20 points — rock solid; AoE stability on earth attune

20 Water:
5 points — AoE healing over time
10 points — Cleansing Wave; AoE condition removal on water attune
15 points — AoE heal on water attune
20 points — Aquamancer’s Alacrity; 20% faster water field recharge

30 Arcane:
5 points — fury on attune
10 points — Elemental Attunement; might/regen/swift/prot on attune
20 points — Blasting Staff; staff AoE is larger
30 points — Evasive Arcana; dodge to blast, blind, or remove conditions

Skills:
Ether Renewal; cleanse conditions (esp immobilize), cover with earth attune stability
Armor of Earth; break stun
Radiation Field; weakness and poison
Glyph of Storms; AoE chill or blind+bleed
Fiery Greatsword; move fast and PvD

Gear:
Power/vitality/toughness on every item
Sigil of Battle
Rune for +40% boon duration (2 sup water, 2 sup monk, 2 major water)

Food:
+20% boon duration
+power from vitality/toughness

The build pumps boon duration to +90% for nearly 4s of stability and 10s of protection on attunement swap. In this build, you want to rotate attunements as often as possible.

Engage with air. Use the new improved gust on anyone between you and the kill zone. Pop static field to prevent escape from the target area. Plant radiation field (totally OP post patch IMO) and lightning surge in the kill zone. Swap to fire to drop damage on the kill zone. Swap to earth to cripple as you pass through the kill zone and refresh stability (the guardians buffs are probably now ending). Throw a shockwave and unsteady ground to hold people in the kill zone AoE. Put a #2 blast at the gather/regroup area. Swap to water, plant water fields.

If you’re not an Asura, you have my sympathies. Radiation field weakness and poison are just incredible now. Half damage and -33% healing in the kill zone where your dps team mates go to town is … really good.

I actually /do/ have an asura ele… this could be a lot of fun. Now all I have to do is get them to 80! (he is only 34 atm)

Sam.4728:

Engage with air. Use the new improved gust on anyone between you and the kill zone. Pop static field to prevent escape from the target area. Plant radiation field (totally OP post patch IMO) and lightning surge in the kill zone. Swap to fire to drop damage on the kill zone.

At this point would it not be better to swap to Water and drop Freezing Ground for aoe chill and Ice Spike to get some vulnerability on your targets before dropping your harder hitting fire skills?

Humans get Prayer to Kormir! It is worse than Cleansing Fire in every single way, AND you have to pray to the god of thievery and trolling!

darkace, I will need to try that. It’s important that water attunement be available for the water fields after the push, though. That is our main job in groups after all. I was planning to use it on the second pass through the enemy now that static field is on cooldown.

Keep in mind that I don’t really play my staff ele for the damage. I am in a team and my goal is to shutdown enemy damage to my team, keep them from escaping, and provide a location for blast finisher heals and condition removal after the push. I’m not sure that popping water mid push for a bit of vulnerability is a good idea. Most times the push is less than 15s long, so I wouldn’t have enough time to use water twice.

cheshirefox, If you don’t take arcane, where do you put those points? Personally, I can’t live without blasting staff. I could probably do without evasive arcana these days, though. I mostly take it because I don’t see much better and it’s +10% more boon duration.

The boon duration, faster attune swapping, and boons/procs from attunes synergizes so well…

For me, Geomancers Freedom is a must have. I have soldier/knight gear with Superior Melandru.

My damage build 0/10/30/10/20:
Air: Bolt to the heart (20% dmg opponent less then 33%)
Earth (25); Enduring Damage (10% dmg endurance 100%), Serrated Stones (5% dmg foe bleeding)
Water: Vital Striking (10% dmg health > 90%)
Arcane: Blasting Staff (increase aoe size)

• i can see dropping 20 from Arcane and adding to Air and going more crit chance/dmg with trinkets. bolt to the heart, arcane lightning, Fresh Air.
  • I have no clue why the underlines appear above

My CC build 0/0/30/10/30:
Earth: Earths embrace, Geomancers Freedom, Geomancers Alacrity
Water: Aquamancers Alacrity
Arcane: Ele attune, blasting staff, evasive arcane.

I did this last night and having access to Frozen Ground and Unsteady ground quicker was a great benefit. Also, Ice Spike and Eruption. I rarely used evasive arcane but I can see no benefit in adding 10 points in another location.

30/20/0/0/20

fully zerker gear with ascended zerker trinkets, MF runes and power/presc/MF infusions.

AoE the zerg, AoE loot.

I support my team by killing the enemy team.

Sam.4728:

If you’re not an Asura, you have my sympathies. Radiation field weakness and poison are just incredible now. Half damage and -33% healing in the kill zone where your dps team mates go to town is … really good.

Sylvari have Take Root, which can mess with the other server’s targetting plus its an immobile invulnerability for a few seconds that sometimes gets a spike to switch targets if you precede/follow it up with mist form.

Its not as good as radiation field but radiation field isn’t worth having to play asura, IMO.

Fortus.6175:

30/20/0/0/20

fully zerker gear with ascended zerker trinkets, MF runes and power/presc/MF infusions.

AoE the zerg, AoE loot.

I support my team by killing the enemy team.

And when you die, you rally everyone who hit you….gg!

Jae.9682:

Fortus.6175:

30/20/0/0/20

fully zerker gear with ascended zerker trinkets, MF runes and power/presc/MF infusions.

AoE the zerg, AoE loot.

I support my team by killing the enemy team.

And when you die, you rally everyone who hit you….gg!

I ran this build for a while last night through several zerg vs zerg fights. When I went down I rallied near instantly from someone dying from Meteor Shower or an ally after my AoE tagged them.

It really just takes some more awareness of your positioning to avoid going down entirely though.

Though my runes were different. Infiltrators because I’m really, really poor. I’ll be replacing that soon.

Ehecatl.9172:

I ran this build for a while last night through several zerg vs zerg fights. When I went down I rallied near instantly from someone dying from Meteor Shower or an ally after my AoE tagged them.

It really just takes some more awareness of your positioning to avoid going down entirely though.

Though my runes were different. Infiltrators because I’m really, really poor. I’ll be replacing that soon.

Out of curiosity, what runes are you wanting to run? I’m using Runes of the Elementalist to keep burning up (+10% damage to burning targets) and to prolong the CC inflicted by my chills. And I’m praying we one day get condition duration/precision food to further this end.

darkace.8925:

Ehecatl.9172:

I ran this build for a while last night through several zerg vs zerg fights. When I went down I rallied near instantly from someone dying from Meteor Shower or an ally after my AoE tagged them.

It really just takes some more awareness of your positioning to avoid going down entirely though.

Though my runes were different. Infiltrators because I’m really, really poor. I’ll be replacing that soon.

Out of curiosity, what runes are you wanting to run? I’m using Runes of the Elementalist to keep burning up (+10% damage to burning targets) and to prolong the CC inflicted by my chills. And I’m praying we one day get condition duration/precision food to further this end.

I tested out 2 Rage, 2 Citadel, and 2 Fire in the Mists and found it made my uptime on might and fury ridiculous. I do more than enough damage without damage specific runes, and as the grandmaster trait I went for was the new Persisting Flames I want to give my zerg a larger advantage in offense. Close to 20 seconds of Fury on blast finishers on lava font is pretty great. Plus the Might I’d normally be spreading about.

I have noticed the trait is a bit finnicky though. I don’t always get the fury when I should have, and it’s not an internal cooldown because I’ve often gotten double fury on double blasting my font. Spreading 40 seconds of Fury to my group. It’s odd.

I won’t get into the details of the build tonight, but I just wanted to mention I started running a 0-20-0-30-20 cantrip staff build for WvW today and I’m really enjoying it and the tweaks that were made with the recent patch.

I think it’s a good start all around, but I think more work needs to be done on all the professions to increase the number of high end, viable builds. I see two or three builds now I like that I wouldn’t have touched before the changes, but it still feels like our choices are too limited.

0/30/0/20/20 healing+zerker, so I kill enemy and I heal allies. Who said you can’t do both was wrong! (larger aoe+ vigor on crit + air recharge on crit+ lightning strike upon swapping to air + lost of aoe always critting means that you do some actual damage (gotta hit an awefull lot of buttons for it but its worth it.)

You guys are making me jealous. All I do is stack Chill/Cripple/Burning on loads of people so my zerg can have lots of easy kills.

I can’t solo well at all, but I bring a lot of control effects. Shout Guardians shut me down hard to the point that I might as well not be there, but otherwise it’s working out very well. The patch was a pretty significant buff for me, as half my traits, all my weapon skills, and Arcane Shield got buffed with no real drawbacks.