share pls ty i wanna see how other people play staff ele
inb4 no 1 plays staff ele
how do you play a staff ele
PVE? WvW? PVP? You’ll need to specify.
For PVE, what I do is this:
#1: Start out in Earth Attunement. To start the battle, use Eruption at the enemy’s feet, and magnetic aura.
#2: Immediately switch to fire and use lava font at the location of eruption, so that eruption will blast and cause might.
#3: Use flame burst, fireball, and arcane wave, keeping the enemies in the lava font. Repeat until the enemy is dead.
If against a widespread group of enemies or a large enemy, use meteor shower after the first lava font. If fighting a champion, use drop an icebow then use the skills #5, #4, #3 in that order after using the first lava font.
I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.
For PvE you’ll want to mimic the following video as much as possible:
The might stacking technique isn’t mandatory if you can coordinate fire blasting amongst the team, but it’s a great tech to know. Otherwise, the strategy for staff is to make sure you cast a DoT spell while casting other spells in between to maximise damage. At the very least you want to make sure you’re dropping font and while casting other spells.
If you’re comfortable with running PvE meta (High DPS focused, low defensive capabilities) try out this staff build.
With the upcoming Specialization changes I anticipate the staff build looking something like this. Arcana Spec has a lot of variability and offers a few options to help keep you off the floor without a too much a loss in DPS. Keep in mind this build is un-tested, but it mimics the current meta Staff fairly close.
If you have ever played staff ele in wvw you will know they thrive off of supporting allies and doing decent damage while avoiding as much damage as possible. In pvp staff ele, imo, is best played sitting outside of the point and spamming your aoe. It is preferrable that you dont fight 1v1. You are best for mid point and coming to support home if needed. Just avoid 1v1 and take advantage of all your damage.
Bad Elementalist
PvE staff ele is basically spam your autos and 2 in fire off cooldown, and stack might when possible if nobody else is doing it.
WvW meteor shower zergs and godly tower defense.
In PvP you either pick damage or celestial and then roam semi-supportively. If you pick damage it’s sort of like an ADC in league if that makes sense, in that you nearly never 1v1 but if you have help you can be godly (self-heals + stupid damage).
I recommend Arcane Wave for all three (you have three different kinds of fields, and it’s instant damage), and all your other utilities are up to personal preference. I take Icebow in PvE and PvP, PvE because op damages on large targets and PvP because I find myself in 1v1 situations accidentally and like to be able to occasionally get off #5 and win by default rather than just accept my death (not to mention it’s pretty stupidly strong in a group setting).
Well, I’ll play build similar to the one I play now, zerker gear with fire/air with ether/arcane wave, lighting flash (or GoS) and arcane block (or ice bow). It sucks in 1 vs 1 but it’s really nice in team fights, and I don’t mean necessarily zerg fights. It does obscene dmg and has nice control.
What I am not sure about, I originally planned on using fire/air/arcane post patch but I currenly use ether renewal for condi removal andI really dislike it as it’s useless vs power builds. I can’t go fire/air/arcane without ether renew -_-
So I am thinking between water and arcane, I would like to drop ether renewal and have some decent condi removal too.
Underworld Vabbi 1.5yr
I’m currently running full berserk staff in PvP with fire arcane and air, and it’s hilarious.
Can’t decided whether to run fresh air or bolt to the heart though, or maybe even that interrupt one.
On a side note, now that lava tomb has been condensed into persisting flames, you can pretty much instagib stupid people by dropping a lava font on yourself then getting downed.
Fresh air is borderline viable because it has a pretty hard to avoid burst and quite a few defensive cooldowns with swirling, obsidian, magnetic wave and pretty spammable blind via air#2.
Jihad isn’t viable because it has no defensive cooldowns except utilities and avoiding the damage means “don’t stay in the fire circle”. Yes you can sometimes trap people in the static field and drop lava font on them but that’s literally all you can do.
Fresh air is borderline viable because it has a pretty hard to avoid burst and quite a few defensive cooldowns with swirling, obsidian, magnetic wave and pretty spammable blind via air#2.
Jihad isn’t viable because it has no defensive cooldowns except utilities and avoiding the damage means “don’t stay in the fire circle”. Yes you can sometimes trap people in the static field and drop lava font on them but that’s literally all you can do.
In a 1v1 situation sure, but I’m assuming that anyone playing staff in 1v1 should expect to lose regardless of build unless they massively outplay the other guy, and at that point your build is sort of irrelevant anyway.
In a multiplayer scenario you have massive amounts of baseline support regardless of your stats, and can take advantage of other people’s control and terrain to get your damage out.
I only pve with my ele so yea. Running 6 water, 6 arcane, and 6 earth with p/t/heals gear. I have 3 staffs with different sigils depending…usually run energy/+10 heal power per kill if in a zerg. Basically I just chain drop aoes and switch eles constantly while kiting/tanking tons of mobs since due to my high toughness…they are automatically attracted to me lol. Essentially trying my very best to do a bit of dps, survive, heal people, and drop as many boons as I can on people around me. Definetly not a normal way to play, that is for sure lol. I was worried that my boon duration would be quite nerfed and it is in a way but I can still maintain 1 minute and 40 second swiftness so that’s ok I guess lol. Might try this in wvw later.
On that note if I am in water, I can go afk with a mob or two beating on me; soothing mist will keep up. It’s a bit amusing how tanky I am now ha. Then again, my dps is just dismal so I find it rather difficult getting loot, exp, and credit to events. Boo dps heavy credit system!
(edited by fixit.7189)
Fresh air is borderline viable because it has a pretty hard to avoid burst and quite a few defensive cooldowns with swirling, obsidian, magnetic wave and pretty spammable blind via air#2.
Jihad isn’t viable because it has no defensive cooldowns except utilities and avoiding the damage means “don’t stay in the fire circle”. Yes you can sometimes trap people in the static field and drop lava font on them but that’s literally all you can do.
In a 1v1 situation sure, but I’m assuming that anyone playing staff in 1v1 should expect to lose regardless of build unless they massively outplay the other guy, and at that point your build is sort of irrelevant anyway.
In a multiplayer scenario you have massive amounts of baseline support regardless of your stats, and can take advantage of other people’s control and terrain to get your damage out.
It’s actually the other way around. In 1v1 you only have to pay attention to 1 person. In a team fight you are too easy to single out by the enemy team. Also the point of zerkers is not to duel but to +1 fights and when you do that you want to kill as fast as possible not try to trap people in your lava fonts.
When you +1 as fresh air you can blink phoenix(or burning speed for hipster d/f) and finish the job pretty quickly with some quick swaps. Meanwhile on staff you press 2 and hope for the best.
I stayed with my staff ele build for PvE :
- full zerk
- 2700+ power unbuffed
- low(er) hp pool
- went traits fire/water/arcane
Mainly used for pve roaming (map explore/ worldbosses /events /champ trains/SW) , i try to support by stacking might first, then use lava font, my Aoe’s, switch to water for cleansings (sigil of cleansing on staff for switching to other attunements) and heals, and just hammer down on the bosses/champs.
The low hp pool causes me to avoid soloing mobs in SW, although they go down fast if you time it right to increase burning stacks.
If needed i can use S/D for more might stacking before fights, but is usually not needed in bigger groups.
All in all, i’m pretty happy with the traits now and plan on staying staff for a long time to come. Oh, and i don’t PvP on ele, way to squishy as it is now. But hits like a ton.