Guild Wars 2

I’m not sure if I’m the only one, but Blasting Staff irks me.

It feels so necessary for staff PVP, but it feels more like it takes away than gives you something.

Vigorous Scepter and Windborne Dagger both give something that can be desired, but does not change the weapons inherent function, I find these acceptable.

Blasting Staff may be part of the reason that staff is considered not a good 1v1 weapon.

@Dahir, this build looks good, thanks!

Kodiak.3281:

The real question is what can you do for a SPvP build which doesn’t have access to most of the stuff you use?

I’ve been running this in SPVP hot joins and it feels totally faceroll, which is the first time I’ve felt like that with my elementalist.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArYhcM6bW2wuBf0AfABxunxDBLFvTB-TJRHwAQLDUZ/hAnAAAPAAA

This setup is a little weak on condition clears, but I haven’t been having too much trouble.

Written in stone is to keep our movement speed and regen up, while making it possible to use the heal on Signet of Healing for extra boost and rune of Balth activation.

Shards of ice is to help cover your conditions / wear down people’s condi clearing.

I’m sure there are better setups, I’m just showing what I’m having success with.

One more thing, the Elixir gun fits better into the theme of bringing healing because super elixir heals a bunch.

robertul.3679:

@CallousEye: Experimental turrets for a much lower vigor uptime than invigorating speed?Basically a grandmaster trait just for your heal? Strength over hoelbrak? I will assume you are trolling.

Invigorating speed is nice, but stabilized armor does not make up for protection injection, maybe if you’re running settlers amulet.

Yes strength over hoelbrak, this build is starved for damage output and not for condition clearing, so that +5% is important.

Because we take elixer gun over flame thrower we have 2 addition condition clears built into the spec. The rifle also gives an additional removal of immobilize on #4.

You’re also overlooking energy conversion matrix, which can provide extra damage.

Also maybe actually check my build since I also have energized armor so it isn’t “better power” unless you assume rune/amulet choices which I already stated are optional/preference.

Ok so if you took the same equipment as my build it would have the same power, but you don’t have rifle. The pistol doesn’t work that will with power but the rifle does well.

robertul.3679:

How is battle sigil more might stack than a spammable blast finisher on flamethrower while having 2 fire fields?

Because it has 10% more boon duration and is built to use strength runes, it has +75% duration to might.

There is basically a specific combo to use with this build that enhances might stacking and does very good damage.

Glue bomb > Big Ole Bomb > Fire Bomb > Jump shot.

When you’ ve set this up, you’ll pretty significant damage to just about anything while gaining some might and a fire shield (which is key).

Anyway, you can try the build instead of calling me a troll.

Celestial bomb build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpPrlcxdLseNiaBF6ouxAI6Qmlb/pIA-TJRHwAFuAAc2fAwDA4YZAA

Key differences:
+ Better power, a key for dropping bombs
- Lower armor
+ Protection Injection helps with this
+ Might stacking
+ Has a stun break
- Limited vigor

Notes:

This build was better before the battle sigil and might nerfs.

It won’t matter much, so take whichever you think looks better.

I think the Sylvari racial elites are a bit more useful than the Asura fwiw.

VitalSuit.1980:

Block duration is already 2s, the CD is at that if you get the reinforced shield trait, and the stun doesn’t need to be 1s.

Show me a good WVW / PVP build that has Reinforced Shield and I’ll show you my surprise. In fact a good build that picks up that trait would be a big surprise.

I think the wiki is wrong on the block duration, skills tool tip says 1.5 of holding up the shield, but then again tooltips are often not accurate.

VitalSuit.1980:

People choose Elixir S because not only is it a stunbreak, it’s also an invuln and gives you 5 seconds of stealth.
People choose Tool Kit because of the pull, prybar, and gear shield. Box of nails is also useful for condi masking and getting rid of pesky blinds in melee.

Yes I am familiar, I’m just comparing their uses as a method of damage avoidance. I feel that static shield is a bit lacking.

In general engineers do not have much to complain about. That said I’ve spent several hours trying to come up with builds and I keep coming across this issue.

What this causes is a tendency to need to select either Elixir S or Tool Kit in most PVP / WVW builds.

Static shield could help remedy this if it were just a bit better.

I think it needs a twofold improvement, better block duration (eg 2s), and shorter cool down (eg 32s). With that though I think the stun affect could be toned down just a bit (eg 1s static aura).

I’m not following, which part couldn’t you use the kits?

If you enjoy what you’re playing and are having success with it, then go with it.

You may be expected to play meta if you’re joining a tPVP team, but if you’re not, don’t worry about it.

I play celestial elixir bombs, and it just suits me.

I just finished the main story on my engineer with my healing elixir bomb build, which is not any sort of accomplishment. I actually took away a few points…

- Pick up groups are likely to be disorganized, so you can’t expect 25 might stack or fury to be guaranteed.
- The elixir gun brings a good amount of support on it’s own.
- Stacking vulnerability, which my build did not do is hugely important. It’s actually very big on support as it brings up the dps of the whole group.

To that end I’ve spent some time on it and here is what I’ve come up with:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqelUUvpKxmc3n9zyd72Fr317IqFUoj6GDAoaxnn4BaKA-TRSBwA3VVhuJoIKBvqE72+jaFlVegSPQ+TAAgHAQAgDAuOIKAxC-e

Gear I would really like to have and I think you can do basically anything with:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpEr9ZxdLseBA-TBSBAB0s/QjKBHV9nrU6VmyA80BAwDAIvLAQAgDAuOAA-e

That HGH rifle build has some crazy burst .

Do you find that you need the range improvement?

Are there any good engi builds that bring stability?

I’ve been playing in Spvp hot joins with decent success with the following:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpkrVXxdLseRilxMyHyIU5L6jTOgPtLA-T5QHwAc2fAwHA4YZAA

Translating that to WvW with easily acquired gear (I have the weapon and trinkets) I come up with:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpkrtbx6KseRilxMyHyIU5L6jTOgPtLA-TlSBwAw2fYnaF4UVhuJorKx6cBAKr8AvOAJKBB8AAAA-w

Arantheal.7396:

1k hp regen for allies per sec

I see another person espousing this number, according to the wiki the bomb actually takes .74 seconds to cast, do your bombs heal for ~750 each?

guildabd.6529:

Regenerating Mist: Increased water field duration from 1s to 3s.

Adding 1-2 seconds would be good, currently it’s nearly impossible for anyone but the engi to combo off of.

Depths.4051:

Bomb heals aren’t an immediate heal, with the right rune and sigil combination with high healing power, you can get around 450~500 heals from bombs for your party every half second. 1k hp per second is a powerful heal…

According to the wiki, the bombs actually takes .74 seconds to lay and .74 seconds to go off, but you could probably just figure that you’ll have one going off every .74 or seconds.

If you were getting 475 healing per bomb, you’d be doing roughly 640 hp/s, which is definitely nothing to sneer at.

Here is my general purpose elixir bomb build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpkr9ZxdLseNiaBF6ouxAI6Qmlb/pIA-ThSBwAXViBUVlbqV05CAUW5BedA/3fwhJIJKBB8AACAcAw1BA-e

I recommend the rifle over the pistol / shield in this case because the rifle does better damage in a power build and there are times when you can’t be in melee range. Also the pierce is quite nice, if there are 5 mobs lined up.

There is a fairly major problem with runes of altruism, the fury is apparently not affected by boon duration, should it be?

vincecontix.1264:

CallousEye.5018:

Frenk.5917:

Elementalist -> Excellent in SPVP, PvE and WvW. Everybody wants an Elementalist on their team.
Warrior -> same as above
Guardian -> same as above

I mostly play spvp hotjoins, butI don’t want an elementalist on my team. Only a few players can play them well and I guess I’m not one of them.

I’m doing much better as engineer.

Unfortunately turret engi exists and can carry players so much in soloq. I dont seem many engi playing multi kit well in sq.

Most engis run grenade kit, from what I’ve seen. I tried to do a solo queue but gave up after 8 minute wait.

Frenk.5917:

Elementalist -> Excellent in SPVP, PvE and WvW. Everybody wants an Elementalist on their team.
Warrior -> same as above
Guardian -> same as above

I mostly play spvp hotjoins, butI don’t want an elementalist on my team. Only a few players can play them well and I guess I’m not one of them.

I’m doing much better as engineer.

I don’t like playing ele in SPVP much, but when I do I don’t like going full zerker. Ele is squishy to begin with, full zerker doesn’t help with that, so I run:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmYbzR5gjEAEFoYSQBBMIKYRRxOzA-TkAA0CsIqRVjrGTNyas1M+A

I use signet of fire to boost the crit chance and generally don’t activate it.

Just be warned, you’re still pretty squishy with that build.

ArthurDent.9538:

False, warrior healing is insane as well. With heal sig, adrenal health, and all those shout heals if they trait for them. They probably can heal even better than eles not sure exactly what the numbers are over time though.

Warrior healing is pretty good, but here are the numbers:

Healing Signet is ~400hp/s with relatively low +heal scaling.

Adrenal Health ticks every 3 seconds and isn’t affected by +heal, so 120hp/s at max.

Shout heals are a grandmaster trait in a tree that doesn’t provide much offensive capability and shouts are also not the most desirable utilities.

Warrior self-healing is quite good, but eles can provide healing to a team.

The class needs an HP/eHP bump at the least.

It would be nice if we could also have an effective condition damage spec.

I think I have to take back my post. I had been considering a watered down variation of the full zerker staff ele build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhEmYbzR5gjEAEFoYSQBBMIKYRRxOzA-TkAA0CsIqRVjrGTNyas1M+A

You get mediocre stats overall, but the toughness is reasonable as is the power.

In contrast I find that the attacks on staff are significantly better, as is the control, and healing ability.

I’ve found scepter fresh air to be the most reasonable build in SPVP. Why? because lightning strike, blinding flash, and frost aura can all be cast when you’re doing something else (channeling something, knocked down, stomping a guardian).

This is the build I run, when I care to play elementalist:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmebzR5gjDIEFAgJIeAANAHWUkDzAA-ToAA0CsIqRVjrGTNyas1MsYSA

The celestial jewel actually gives 50 all stats, not 45 and so the crit % is actually 29%.

With 20 in water, attuning to water gives a small burst heal and some regen over time, so when your health is down a little make sure to pop into water.

I try to keep rock barrier up and never use signet of earth (it’s just there for the toughness).

*As a side note, I find playing other classes (warrior, engineer) much easier.

Hi All,

I’m looking for a build that provides good all around performance.

Something with decent armor, healing, and damage.

What are thoughts on this?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqiY3zyuF1LJSoCFGoC1nIF5nl95xb1WQIA-jkCBYjChEEIUGgkIAJqFRjtMsIasqaER1qkY2bMa1WdASBExuK-w

Please note that armor drops to 2633 when a kit is equipped.

ellesee.8297:

your condi setup runs grenadier but not grenade kit.

you can be a condi bunker as an engi. just go 10/0/30/30/0 and run settler’s amulet. bomb/ft/tool kit/eg are all good kits for that build.

Thanks I fixed the link, it’s the standard grenade, bomb, and egun setup, but with settlers amulet.

NevirSayDie.6235:

CallousEye.5018:

I tried the bomb healing build since my last post, but found it not too my liking and went right back to the condition damage setup.

Just out of curiousity, how many attacks do you have that inflict a damaging condition?

There is a spread of skills that provide burning, poison, bleeding, and typically a small amount of confusion. I think the most notable skill is grenade kit #2, but with shrapnel the grenade auto has a decent chance to proc a 15s bleed.

I tried the bomb healing build since my last post, but found it not too my liking and went right back to the condition damage setup.

I was reviewing a bomb healing build last night and came up with this for SPVP:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-V70;0B-cP-9-l6gTFx0;9;6TJJ;440A08-57-b;5sV2DsV2D4JC

It’s got toughness, power, some healing power, and strangely relatively high crit damage. In addition cool down on the block skill is reduced to 16s which is really good.

On a similar note, I’ve been running a bunkerish condition damage spec which seems to be pretty effective:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-VRw;0B-cP-9-m5gTFx0;9;4T9-J918A3;308-5;0ao0;0o0-jwmAjwmA9VF

I was wondering if this might work ok?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqiY3zyuF1LJyoCdGoC6lIF5nl95xbxWQIA-j0CBYhCh0CgkIBJ9kIjNRFqaqIasqaER1qkYmbKrmcR2qDQKAYmGB-w

It seems to me what would be appropriate is to have each attunement be a weapon set.

So out of combat you could choose the weapon combo for each attunment and finally get rid of the range lock problem I guess?

I think I would use staff for Fire, Water, and Earth and then d/d for air, so maybe not that useful?

I gave my elementalist a bit of a go in some SPVP (hotjoin) yesterday. Things had not improved much.

After playing an engineer for some time, I could not justify trying to play 30 earth as an ele so I opted for a fresh air build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmKbzR5gjDIEFogJIeYBNAHWUkDzAA-ToAA0CsIqRVjrGTNyas1MsYKC

The damage was ok, nothing amazing, but the survival capability was very poor.

ThiBash.5634:

You’re missing the point here. What I’m trying to show is that unlike other professions, our main source of damage isn’t our auto attacks: it’s at best a mix of both auto attacks and other skills. Staff eles for example can use Lava Font/other skill in addition to our auto attacks (unlike the warrior, that has to choose between 100b or his auto attack). Naturally, to balance that the auto attack is somewhat weaker. When it comes to sets like dagger/dagger, the auto attack is actually a filler used when everything else is on cooldown. The bulk of the damage comes from skills like fire breath, and because we have extra skills, we can cycle through quite a few of them before we end up at our auto attacks. Typically, I’ll use auto attacks about 20% of the time. With all my other attacks doing much more damage (and when you’re a bit more skilled, you’ll hit a lot more often with them), my dps is quite a bit higher than my auto attacks suggest. Even a single meteor shower would raise it substantially. So just focusing on the auto attacks seems a bit short-sighted imho.

Are you thinking only PVE?

Anyhow, I’ve been playing a warrior sword + shield / longbow warrior in pvp lately and I very much feel the power inequality between the elementalist and the warrior.

ThiBash.5634:

What I don’t understand is the fascination with auto-attacks that many people seem to have.

It’s an obvious major weakness, one of many the class faces.

We have poor auto-attacks and then our other skills are typically difficult to land in pvp.

ThiBash.5634:

Yes, they’re weaker in general, but on the other hand, most of the time you’ll be using other attacks. For example, fireball may have weak dps but there’s often a lava font active too. Or you can be cycling through your attunments, say a d/d using dragon’s breath then fire graps then switching to water for frost breath healing then to air for a ride the lightning etc.

Lava font is good against static enemies, but otherwise not very effective.

As far as I can tell, most attacks we have either do marginal damage or are easily avoided.

ThiBash.5634:

Also, we have the option to bolster our dps by summoning elementals. So it’d be fair to have slightly weaker auto attacks.

I’m not sure what the point of this is. What class does not have a summon of some sort?

If you consider summons to something to bolster your dps, even warrior banners fit this category.

There is some control in most ele weapon setups, although some of them are on very long CDs.

One of the major sources of inequity for our class is our auto-attacks (non-LH) are poorer than most classes. Typically they’re slower to activate while doing lower damaged.

Top that off with with a class that has the lowest base HP and is in the lowest armor class.

The upside of the class is that with 20 points into water and 10 points into arcana you can heal for ~3k (water 15 + water 5 + elemental attunement) and clear a condition.

Adastra.9821:

CallousEye.5018:

It would be nice if churning earth crippled while it was churning so that we could land it more reliably.

It already does that. That’s why it’s considered a channeled skill in the context of gw2.

Ah my bad, I meant eruption…

It would be nice if eruption crippled while it was churning so that we could land it more reliably.

Stoning is a bit lackluster, maybe a chain skill?

Edit: wrong skill

Diamond skin will only protect you for 1100 HP in that build and with the otherwise lack of condition removal, you’re unlikely to get your HP back up.

Durzlla.6295:

i’m almost positive that he’s running Rabid amuletwith a carrion gem in it, it gives the exact health he has…

Based on the ticks of his heals I really think he’s running settlers.

Swagg.9236:

I stand by saying that scepter burst is face-roll. While there is more than one button to it, it’s still as brainless as mashing a single one over and over. There’s a clear rotation that isn’t that long, not complex at all, auto-aims most of it for you from range and it does stupid amounts of damage compared to how long it takes to activate. It’s pretty bogus.

Scepter burst isn’t even that bursty compared to other classes.

What skill is it that you think is bursty from scepter?

I tried playing it the way above, but it didn’t turn out to my liking.

I made some modifications however and I’m really liking it:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhMmabvR3gjDAEFvYy4BIeQSRxM7A-ToAAyCrIaS1krJTTymsNNW4IC

That amulet and rune setup would be very glassy.

I tried to put the build together:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhMmabsR5gjDAEFvYy4BIeQSRxM7A-TkAg2CuIMSZkzIjRSjsGNWA

HP matches what’s displayed in the video, runes I’m not so sure about, they don’t appear to be anything that gives VIT or Con Dmg…

I’ve been using doylaks and crying myself to sleep.

Scepter fire 1 needs changed badly, it’s so bad.

Staff Air 2 is also very poor, I feel like it should be turned into a leap to help with staffs low mobility.

Elemental Atunement…

What to say, it’s one of the few things that actually gives us f1-f4 skills, but in the long run of things it’s not really good enough to be a master trait.

It probably should be baseline.

Treborlavok.3504:

actually the build calculator was off a lot with hp but close with toughness.

http://imgur.com/a/ufQWF

all images show no buffs/food/oil

top image, in earth no buffs

second image, in earth 2 cast

third image, in earth 2 cast while casting

last image, in air while casting, buff from earth 2 still up.

With my build im casting constantly to make good on earth 1 trait, with food and oil power/attack jumps up significantly.

Thanks for sharing, however it appears your are getting 2700 ATTACK, but only 1790 power.

I was wondering if I was doing something wrong.

Conncept.7638:

A channeled skill is one whose affect happens over it’s cast time – as opposed to normal skills whose affects happen at the resolution of its cast time.

This is pretty important as this is not what a channeled skill means in most games.

Bummer, yeah I’m used to a different definition.

Usually channeled skills are ones that require channeling, aka not instant.

Blasting staff really ruins things, but I guess that could be useful for a scepter bunker build.

Treborlavok.3504:

Every build I run I use the same gear. Only things that change are my runes and traits.

- full celestial armor
- valk, celestial or zerk weps
- zerk/valk, cavalier, pvt trinkets.

It’s not all about min max stats it’s about out playing your opponent. Predict their movements, win the fight.

I still shoot for the base stats of around 2700/3k power, 1600+ toughness, 16k hp, 35% CC, 75+% CD.

Can you link that build? Those stats seem pretty high, trying to figure out if you’re traiting fire and/or using signet of earth.

I tried to figure out how to use Zephyr’s Focus and Obsidian Focus, but things that seemed channeled didn’t work.

Is the whole channeling concept broken?

It seems like access to Vigor is a major problem for any staff build using blasting staff.

This guy needs more props! Thanks for all the vids, it was good to see that play style work well.

Scrambles.2604:

CallousEye.5018:

It’s good because offhand dagger is good.

Scepter on it’s own isn’t compelling.

With scepter you get:

2 more blast finishers (fire 2 & 3)
2 blinds (earth 3 air 3)
1 defensive sklll (earth 2)
1 vulnerability debuffer (water 2,—4 stacks for each hit)

Personally, i think scepter has a lot to offer as a middle-grounds weapon. It doesn’t have the group support that staff does, but it has more support skills than d/d. It works great offensively when paired with dagger, not quite the offensive power of d/d, but where it lacks in offense it makes it up in defensive utility.

D/d has pretty good support, frequent chill, cripple, water 2 heal does damage, aoe fury with aura share, all while having better auto attacks.

I am however running s/d for the range, because I wvw mostly and dungeon where being out of melee range is more helpful.

It’s good because offhand dagger is good.

Scepter on it’s own isn’t compelling.