Guild Wars 2

Nikkinella.8254:

going full ascended is bad. really bad. Your power and armor will be stupidly low. I’d recommend either going full celestial armor and using cavalier accessories or something else, or a mixture of celestial and cavalier accessories and some celestial armor and knight’s or soldier gear. So far I’ve used celestial amulet, 1 ring, 1 earring, and the rest cavalier with knight’s armor and soldier daggers. It seems pretty decently balanced. I may eventually try full armor when we get ascended armor. I don’t see a point in wasting charged quartz on the exotics when we’ll need it for the ascended as well considering how much time it takes to get enough for a whole set.

Why wouldn’t you go full ascended trinkets? Unless you need to mix stats (in a combination not available in ascended) doing something like soldiers with ruby jewels, ascended is better. Going full ascended will get you more power than going full exotic assuming equivalent stat distributions.

I assume you meant don’t go full celestial.

Polly Worrell because uhhhh pokemon pun (I also chose water on the biography thing).

Kodiak.3281:

kirtar.8453:

Falling damage traits work every time take falling damage. Again, it gives you additional route options in WvW that you could not otherwise have access to. Without arcane abatement certain drops will kill you every time. The falling damage trait is useful in many scenarios in WvW, especially given that one of the spells is static field (and another is earthquake). While things like cantrip mastery improve your effectiveness, they don’t necessarily make things possible that weren’t previously impossible. If anything I could say that it’s even more situational since its effect on the stunbreaking cantrips doesn’t really matter except in prolonged battles. Also this build has zero stunbreaks.

The shield throw ability on Earth Shield is like so amazing cause when you engage in a big zerg vs zerg fight you can throw it and like cripples everyone in a big line. Can imagine if it hits like 10 people? That’s a lot of cripple. And then there’s the charge, which is crazy good cause it’s a 12 second cool down charge ability for 600 which means it’s even better than RTL. Eat your heart out warriors. Then there’s of course the AOE pull which is great and even an immunity ability so if you really get into trouble you can just hunker down and go immune!

QFT if you’re not going to even try to be productive. You’re basically doing the same thing you did in PvE build thread.

Kodiak.3281:

kirtar.8453:

I somewhat disagree on getting rid of arcane abatement in (when taken in the absolute sense). Arcane abatement is a somewhat situational trait that can be incredibly useful while roaming. It makes certain shortcuts possible to take without dying and allows you to do fall traps on people that don’t have the trait. Alternatively, in some scenarios you can cast static field then switch to earth and jump into it to blast (or use the fall for static field). If you’re in a group that does a lot of drop down shortcuts, Arcane Abatement may be indispensable. Mostly it lets you do certain things without dying.

Situationally speaking everything is great. Hell, situationally Shield of Earth is fantastic.

Personally I’m a fan of the stuff that works at all times like a 20% reduction to 2 out of 3 of our utility slots.

Falling damage traits work every time take falling damage. Again, it gives you additional route options in WvW that you could not otherwise have access to. Without arcane abatement certain drops will kill you every time. The falling damage trait is useful in many scenarios in WvW, especially given that one of the spells is static field (and another is earthquake). While things like cantrip mastery improve your effectiveness, they don’t necessarily make things possible that weren’t previously impossible. If anything I could say that it’s even more situational since its effect on the stunbreaking cantrips doesn’t really matter except in prolonged battles. Also this build has zero stunbreaks.

Kodiak.3281:

Looks fine for WvW.

May want to swap Arcane Abatement for Cantrip Mastery as a 20% cool down is pretty nice and brings your Lightning Flash and Cleansing Fire to 32s.

I would sometimes swap in Armor of Earth (Utility) too cause when you run into another Zerg that Stability is pretty clutch during the first few seconds of initial contact and still lets you act unlike Mist Form.

Rune wise the only other real option is Divinity Runes (more Defense at thee cost of Offense) and Rubies (which would fill some of your missing Crit at the cost of 10% dmg at above 90%). Scholars are solid and will work fine in your setup though. Boon Duration is less important when in the WvW Zerg as you’ll easily maintain perma Swiftness with even 30% and staff doesn’t have many boons beyond that. You will feel it slightly when doing D/D play though as it’s usually more reliant on Boon stacking.

If you don’t got the Celestial Ascended gear the new Charged Quartz gear is pretty competitive with it (just a few points off) but would take 25 days to make.

Otherwise I run something very similar (PVT Armor with Divinity Runes, Knight Jewelry with Celestial Jewls, Zerker weapons on a 0/30/0/20/20 build) and I do pretty great in WvW in all things using Staff or S/D.

I somewhat disagree on getting rid of arcane abatement in (when taken in the absolute sense). Arcane abatement is a somewhat situational trait that can be incredibly useful while roaming. It makes certain shortcuts possible to take without dying and allows you to do fall traps on people that don’t have the trait. Alternatively, in some scenarios you can cast static field then switch to earth and jump into it to blast (or use the fall for static field). If you’re in a group that does a lot of drop down shortcuts, Arcane Abatement may be indispensable. Mostly it lets you do certain things without dying.

Xirin.8593:

glennyrd.1308:

Maybe next matchup will actually be exciting. Yawn.
Sincerely,
Fort Aspenwood

Spoken like a true zergling.

Clearly they need more overlords to keep them motivated.

Baladir.2736:

Zelyhn.8069:

…….I would not say that precision is more important than critical damage. To an extent you are right, but there is no direct link in the allocation of stats between the two, so the ratio may vary and it makes comparison more likely to be inaccurate. Also their effectiveness is interdependent.

……..

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit

The table clearly details the direct link between critical chance and critical damage. In many cases the difference is negligible to be sure.

I’m pretty sure he meant the fact that the ratio of critical damage percent to raw stat numbers isn’t a constant. For example, jewels have the tightest ratio at 1:5 while legs, chest, and ring are 1:16.

Izer.2083:

The best way of gaining might is using D/D or S/D for ele.
For staff:
the only way for u to gain might is using skill 2 earth (eruption) – switch to fire and use skill 2 fire (lava font)
or use fire field lava font / burning retreat and use arcane wave
Check here for the combo http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

For staff elementalist there are a total of three blast finishers available to you depending on your choice of utilities and traits. That said, you’re probably not getting all three off on the same field due to the required order of spells. You can do eruption->lava font->arcane wave. You can also do lava font->earth EA dodge (in combat of course)->arcane wave. Then again, burning retreat has a longer duration so you might be able to do burning retreat->eruption->arcane wave->EA roll. If you use a sigil of battle that gives you a few more stacks of might. Arcane abatement can give another blast I guess, but you’re probably not going to use that to stack might.

Depending on trait layouts, staff may actually have more ways of generating might than D/D due to the additional blast finisher from eruption.

With the availability of the numbers for celestial, where would that fall on the plot? I imagine it’s not even close to optimal, but it would be interesting to see where it lands.

Lambent.6375:

You can by them on the tp if you want, the wind ones are kind of expensive, but the others are pretty cheap.

I happened to get a wind one within an hour after the patch

laokoko.7403:

I thought they are only available from fortune scraps which is “account bound”.

But apparently there are BOFW back skin in the TP. Where do people get theirs?

I honestly don’t remember where I got mine since I don’t remember getting it. It might have been off of the chest for sprint, but I don’t know.

Xenon.4537:

Now that I hit 110% crit damage with my berserker staff build, I don’t think I can ever go back.

Apparently the crit damage modifier on celestial armor and weapons is equal to or in some cases greater than zerkers. That said, you would also have less power and precision.

oZii.2864:

what I am thinking is boots, gloves, and soldiers are prime spots to put the all stat gear.

I hope you meant shoulders. That’s what I was thinking since my guess is that the +critical damage will be the same as any of the other +critical damage items while granting a nice balance of other attributes. Now whether the small amount of these attributes makes any difference is a different story.

welp ninja edited

I would like to point out that your analysis of the water EA effect is wrong. It removes a condition inherently due to the spell not because of triggering cleansing water. You also don’t really go into utilizing EA strategically (e.g. blast finisher on earth).

Solo.9027:

Aydain.5012:

Question, i know fire tree has no real love due to our survivability, but would a celestial setup perhaps allow us to take advantage of 30 fire setup in any way? say something like 30/0/0/20/20

I’d say yes(in theory) on the grounds that celestial gear doesn’t add condition duration on its own but adds condition damage.

Anyone else notice that nobody here cares what this armor will look like. I know I’ve chosen the right profession when the math nerds are playing it.

I’d be fine if it was just an additional option on the exalted skin.

Sabull.5670:

Yes Celestial items are extremely powerful for any content that has P on both sides of the v.
Currect celestial items have more total stats than standard items, and then trow in extra crit damage in there as a gift, and magic find just for the giggles.
Ascended accesory: 91+2x60 = 211
Celestial: 6×38 = 228 AND 5% critical damage and 4% magic find.

Ascended amulet: 296
Celestial: 6×54 = 324 AND 7% and 4% magic find.

Ascended ring: 239
Celestial: 6×43 =258 AND 6% critdmg and 4% magic find.

If these items had just the stats and magic find, one could think hmm im not sure about these, guess some specs. But when there is even crit damage, it should be no brainer how powerful these are for specs like 30water30arcane anyweapon, or 20earth version. Or support guardian. Or engineers with elixir gun& healing turret. And so on.

If the ratios for exotic pieces are anything similar, hell yea they are good.

You know there are exotic pieces that already exist right (ancient karka shell, triforge pendant)? The ratio seems to roughly hold just judging by the ratio of the minor of a 3 stat to the all stat value.

DiogoSilva.7089:

The dps loss for losing berserker gear is probably too big. Granted, the health, toughness and healing are going to be nice while still allowing you to deal decent damage, but I doubt it’ll be the best choice.

I’m wondering how it will be for the people that run 0/10/0/30/30 still. Compared to knight’s you probably still lose some damage and some EHP, but I haven’t gone through to check how much the extra vitality counteracts the lost toughness. I’ll have to play around with numbers more to figure out how it affects defensive builds like support staff.

Solo.9027:

kirtar.8453:

Solo.9027:

Given your best estimates, how much of a difference would 100% celestial w/divinity runes make versus say 100% berserkers? I’m wondering if it would be worth the month+ of time investment.

Just based off of a quick guess assuming 65%, if you somehow manage to have full exotic celestials (and assuming there’s a celestial jewel for trinkets):

+514 to all stats, +52% critical damage (greatest uncertainty here).

Zerkers with ruby orbs in armor (and of course exquisite ruby for trinkets):
+1123 power, +782 precision, probably +74% critical damage

Zerkers should be pretty accurate as I took the numbers off of the wiki then added the stats of 6 ruby orbs (wiki includes gems for trinkets). I have a pretty good certainty ont he celestial set’s stats except the critical damage. Oddly enough superior divinity adds the same amount of +crit as ruby orbs which is why it’s above my estimated 60%. That said I haven’t checked if they made it possible to craft celestial accessories. At the moment the only available exotic celestial accessories that I know of are the triforge (able to ascend) and the ancient karka shell, the latter is unique so you can’t have two of them. That said, if it’s not possible to craft celestial accessories, the numbers would change. I’m too lazy to calculate just armor right now.

Thanks for that analysis. I may invest in these after all, depending on where the prices of some other things fall after the patch.

Also, you can buy another ancient karka shell for 1000 karka shells off a vendor in southsun. I’m not sure if its unique in that you can only use one, but you can surely buy one more.

Per the wiki it is unique and you can only equip one just like you can’t have two identical ascended items. It’s also about 18g to do that.

Major Kaldash.3542:

kirtar.8453:

Solo.9027:

Given your best estimates, how much of a difference would 100% celestial w/divinity runes make versus say 100% berserkers? I’m wondering if it would be worth the month+ of time investment.

Just based off of a quick guess assuming 65%, if you somehow manage to have full exotic celestials (and assuming there’s a celestial jewel for trinkets):

+514 to all stats, +52% critical damage (greatest uncertainty here).

Zerkers with ruby orbs in armor (and of course exquisite ruby for trinkets):
+1123 power, +782 precision, probably +74% critical damage

Zerkers should be pretty accurate as I took the numbers off of the wiki then added the stats of 6 ruby orbs (wiki includes gems for trinkets). I have a pretty good certainty ont he celestial set’s stats except the critical damage. Oddly enough superior divinity adds the same amount of +crit as ruby orbs which is why it’s above my estimated 60%. That said I haven’t checked if they made it possible to craft celestial accessories. At the moment the only available exotic celestial accessories that I know of are the triforge (able to ascend) and the ancient karka shell, the latter is unique so you can’t have two of them. That said, if it’s not possible to craft celestial accessories, the numbers would change. I’m too lazy to calculate just armor right now.

you can buy the ascended celestial acessories http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Celestial_Sigil and http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ancient_Mursaat_Token

I suppose you could do that, but I’m not going to calculate for mixed stuff. Obviously solaria/lunaria would also be options for rings; however, there is currently no such thing as a celestial ascended back and that problem would still stand unless anet adds an ascended one or allows crafting of ascended trinkets. Furthermore, if it’s only the latter, it assumes that there is a celestial jewel (perhaps quartz/charged quartz?).

Oh when I said craft celestial accessories, I really meant trinkets in general (except of course the forge recipe for triforge).

Aydain.5012:

Starting to wonder now how elementalists might fair with a full celestial setup now that we will have armor/weapons to toy with the equation. I still see it possibly being valid, since we keep getting shoved out specializing every time it becomes meta.

At the least it gives the option of “eh too lazy to change armor”

Solo.9027:

Given your best estimates, how much of a difference would 100% celestial w/divinity runes make versus say 100% berserkers? I’m wondering if it would be worth the month+ of time investment.

Just based off of a quick guess assuming 65%, if you somehow manage to have full exotic celestials (and assuming there’s a celestial jewel for trinkets):

+514 to all stats, +52% critical damage (greatest uncertainty here).

Zerkers with ruby orbs in armor (and of course exquisite ruby for trinkets):
+1123 power, +782 precision, probably +74% critical damage

Zerkers should be pretty accurate as I took the numbers off of the wiki then added the stats of 6 ruby orbs (wiki includes gems for trinkets). I have a pretty good certainty ont he celestial set’s stats except the critical damage. Oddly enough superior divinity adds the same amount of +crit as ruby orbs which is why it’s above my estimated 60%. That said I haven’t checked if they made it possible to craft celestial accessories. At the moment the only available exotic celestial accessories trinkets that I know of are the triforge (able to ascend) and the ancient karka shell, the latter is unique so you can’t have two of them. That said, if it’s not possible to craft celestial accessories trinkets (except the triforge), the numbers would change. I’m too lazy to calculate just armor right now. There is no celestial back right now so that portion of it is purely speculative.

DISCLAIMER: Most of the the items are actually closer to 62% so the estimate is a bit optimistic in addition to the previously mentioned problem of celestial trinkets (especially back)

oZii.2864:

kirtar.8453:

The critical damage difference may be even less on minor armor pieces. As an example with an existing celestial stat item, the ancient karka shell gets 3% critical damage which, according to the wiki, would be identical to all other exotic items (that actually give crit damage of course) since there’s no crit damage primary combination. There’s no guarantee that it will happen on armor as it might be 1% lower on the minor pieces, but it’s a possibility.

I made a edit on my last post but based on your post for gloves then speculating if the pattern holds true the coat would be 60 to all stats?

I think you’re misreading my post. I said it’s about 60% of the minor stats (e.g. vitality and toughness on solider’s equipment). On exotic chest pieces right now the minor stat is 72. 60-65% of 72 is more of around 43-45. This is also supported roughly by the fact that the celestial ascended amulets (syzygy, eye of janthir, ascended triforge) are +42 and the exotic triforge (note: excludes amount for the “jewel”) is +40 since chest gives a little more than amulet.

This of course excludes all upgrade components on exotics. Critical Damage is perhaps a little more difficult for me to guess on due to its variable nature (ratio to other stats isn’t constant), but going by the overall relation on full celestial trinkets (extrapolated back piece) it seems to still be around 65% of the value.

oZii.2864:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the celestial stats worse than divinity runes? Divinity might have a bit of every stat, but they also specialize at something: critical damage. This is excellent for elementalists, who have the arcane skills and decent access to fury and decent critical rate with divinity + a bit of precision investment, while still having decent power, decent condition damage, a good healing + toughness combo, and enough vitality for their HP not being too low.

But if I’m not wrong, there’s nothing special about celestial’s critical damage, which makes it just plain mediocre. The small magic find will be worthless to make you stronger. There’s a reason why elementalists don’t use celestial gear in pvp (or do they?). Generally, Valkyrie with divinity is much better for excellent critical damage, good healing + toughness, and strong power, and all you need is a bit of extra vitality and precision from secondary gear.

The critical damage on celestial ring for example is 6 the critical damage on ascended zerker ring is 8. It is not that much of drop off. Divinity runes give 2 critical damage per rune. If they go by the same pattern they did for the trinkets that they did for armor you will get less critical damage than berserker which is 5 on the coat. My guess is you will get 3 critical damage on a all stat coat.

The critical damage difference may be even less on minor armor pieces. As an example with an existing celestial stat item, the ancient karka shell gets 3% critical damage which, according to the wiki, would be identical to all other exotic items (that actually give crit damage of course) since there’s no crit damage primary combination. There’s no guarantee that it will happen on armor as it might be 1% lower on the minor pieces, but it’s a possibility.

oZii.2864:

If we just speculate on the possibilities

Right now say you want to go damage glass you get zerker.

Zerker gloves would be

34 Power
24 precision
2 critical damage

The stat combination to all stats would have to be extremely terrible to not want all stat over zerker’s gloves.

20 to all stats and 1 critical damage is not going to be better for direct damage compared to zerker but it won’t be far behind. If you look at combined damage of direct and the condition damage you will add to your direct damage I would say it would be really close in terms of dps.

The attack stat in the hero panel is your power + your condition damage its irrelevant to most people if they know it or not unless you can apply the condition damage with your direct damage regularly which a ele can a sword warrior can do the same also since they can get bleeds on reliably with sword.

Speculating and extrapolating based on the relation of the stats for celestial trinkets compared to specialized variants, the non percentage stats should end up being around 60 to 65% of the minor attribute of an equivalent rarity item. You would probably see closer to 15-16 to all stats and 1% crit (and whatever magic find) based on the numbers you listed for gloves.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

dulfy.1493:

There are some confusion here so I will clarify

1) There are more options than just the personal node to get quartz from. I listed a bunch here. However, it doesn’t matter how much Quartz you have as the bottleneck is in the production of Charged Quartz which is only produced once per day per acccount.

http://dulfy.net/2013/07/08/gw2-quartz-crystals-and-celestial-recipes-guide/

2) That personal node thingie is only available for once per account. Once you consume it, it disappears and you can’t get it on other characters. This means that you can only mine that character’s home instance once per day per account.

Yeah, sorry dulfy I read your guide after I posted my first comment. Based on your guide it seems that quartz will be as common as candy corn or ziataffy (at least for people who roam in the new zone). And Erasculio I guess you are right. Having to wait 30 days to get a full set of exotic gear is a little silly. But I don’t think your concern of not having enough quartz will happen. I’m sure the market will be flooded after this event, and the inclusion of 1 node/account that does the meta event is just to help keep a constant flow to make sure we don’t run out (opposed to snowflakes for givers gear).

I didn’t notice in your guide dulfy (also great guide and thanks!), but can you trade charged quartz?

Given that it specifically says it’s account bound (in bold), no you can’t trade it.

Malcastus.6240:

Celestial gear + might stacking = good stuff.

Now with magic find!

Devildoc.6721:

Yeah I run staff 100% of the time, I just never really got the feel for daggers, find several of the dagger skills not very useful (churning earth is highly situational, both of the breath attacks I just never see get used), and I like fields and aoe, and the many control options of staff. I’ll be the first to admit Staff is subpar in small group or 1v1 skirmishes. But in zerging I like it best.

Yeah I only really use D/D when running solo or in a small roaming group. Churning earth is really good as an opener, but it can be difficult to use after combat is initiated (churning earth→lightning flash→earthquake→ring of earth). The breath attacks are actually pretty useful. The water one functions as a heal and the fire one can help set up fire grab. They do take some getting used to if you’re actually trying to hit with them due to the usual hitbox problems (also affects engineer flamethrower to some extent).

Devildoc.6721:

I actually trait 0/0/10/30/30, the 10 in earth not only gets you some more toughness (especially when attuned to earth) but also an automatic armor of earth at 50% hp major trait. That is huge. I tried running with 10 in air instead for some more crit and crit damage and bolt to the heart… not worth it. The automatic stun break, 9s of stability and protection and with the Soothing Disruption trait in water, automatic regen and vigor ramps up your survivability in a zerg significantly.

As far as gear goes. I use Soldier earrings (ascended), a soldier backpiece (ascended) and berserker/valkyrie (ascended) rings and neck, a berserker chest, and the rest of my armor is valk. The goal for me is 17K+ hp unbuffed (if your server is doing well in wvw it comes out to about 19k hp mid week) with 2000+ armor (which I’m at 2100+), damage comes secondary, and even with soldier and valk gear you’ll have over 3000 attack (about 3100). My weak part is that I only have 21% base crit (50% crit damage), it goes up if you have sources of fury, and I’d suggest a staff with a Perception sigil to build stacks for crit chance, and then swap to a staff with a sigil of energy or stamina (depends on how confident you are that you’ll be getting kills) for more dodges.

I would also suggest that change from lightning flash to armor of earth, it’s a massive help having 2 armor of earths for 18s of stability in a big zerg vs zerg fight. Signet of air can be dropped if you’re running with a zerg and have permanent swiftness, you can run an aoe like glyph of storms (in earth attune) or a blast finisher (arcane wave) in the third slot, or arcane shield if you’re still finding yourself getting cut down easily. Personally I don’t run the falling damage trait, I run Water III, V, and XI. Massive condition removal (remove 2 conditions from everyone around you on water attune plus a heal, and healing rain removes 2 conditions on cast and a further 2 conditions during the field), as well as added survivability by using mist form, armor of earth, and your automatic armor of earth at 50% hp for more dodging and regen.

I think if I was only running staff 0/0/10/30/30 looks great because the air adept traits aren’t terribly useful given available skills (other than perhaps bolt to the heart). Like the OP I’m running 0/10/0/30/30 since I do switch to D/D on occasion so I want the be able to use zephyr’s boon.

For my traits I take bolt to the heart and the standard layout for arcane staff (elemental attunement, blasting staff, evasive arcana). Water traits depend on how I’m running. I always have cleansing water and two of the following: arcane abatement, soothing disruption, cleansing wave. Typically I prioritize soothing disruption over cleansing wave to improve the efficiency of cantrips.

For equipment, I use full knight’s armor and knight’s weapon of battle. My trinkets are knight’s with a valk jewel with the exception of the back which is soldier’s.

Utilities that I use are arcane wave (blast finishers are really useful), mist form, and armor of earth. These utilities give you two stunbreaks, although on long cooldown. In addition armor of earth gives you access to stability in case you need it while storming a keep. Elite is whatever since I rarely see a good time to use it in the zerg. I’m still up in the air about what healing skill I want to use. At the moment I’m running Ether Renewal since it does have higher healing potential.

cheshirefox.7026:

Razor.6392:

staff flowchart

1. got a group of 20 people or more?
no – find one
yes – proceed to #2
2. see enemies?
no- keep searching
yes – DROP ALL THE AOES
3. did you kill them?
no – MORE AOES
yes – back to #2

you forgot the variable x = do enemies see you?
no – proceed with caution and hopefully luck
yes – congratulations you’re dead

addendum: Is there a tower/keep in range of mistform
yes- mist form and run in to heal
no- is there a nearby cliff
-yes: mist form and suicide
-no: welp

Depending on the context it can. Probably the place that it would shine the most is in WvW. With evasive arcana and staff you have two water fields available along with one dodge roll that heals and another that can blast the water fields. That said, you should not just be trying to heal or you’re going to spend a lot of time doing nothing. Staff elementalist can be a great nuker since meteor shower rocks if you can get it off with good placement. In addition, you have access to a decent amount of crowd control (frozen ground, static field, gust, unsteady ground, shockwave). Cleric’s gives a pretty good balance of stats if you want to do a decent amount of healing. The primary is healing power, but also gives toughness to synergize with healing and power to help you deal damage.

You should try looking over several of the other recent threads that have basically asked the same thing after the patch on June 25th. I’m still running the old 0/10/0/30/30 build, though 0/20/0/30/20 should be ok though you of course lose a little bit of utility/survivability due to the loss of EA (mainly the water and earth spells). One thing you might consider is Arcane Abatement (master water trait) depending on what you’re doing in WvW.

For utilities I always run arcane wave since blast finishers on elemental fields can help you stack might, heal, or maintain swiftness. I run the same cantrips listed for stunbreak and stability/invulnerability/etc. Your armor looks fine though +boon duration could be useful to compensate for lower arcane (superior monk, superior water). Not sure about the weapon as I’d rather run zerk, valk, knight, or soldier. Either way if you’re using a bloodlust staff, I would recommend having a second one with either force or battle. Sigil of Battle gives you a good amount of damage since you get might stacks every time you switch attunements (in combat)

I run 0/10/0/30/30 in the basic setup that daphoenix has in his D/D guide. Obviously while running staff you’ll want blasting staff instead of the on crit trait. In a zerg (and in general) arcane abatement may be useful as well.

To balance it you would have to do something like make it only be a finisher x%. Say 20% like many of the physical weapon autoattacks. Stoning is actually somewhat of an anomaly since it is always a projectile finisher while being an autoattack.

Hierophant Firedance.5809:

What do you mean by versatile mighty upgrade in the trinkets?
Is there a versatile might infusion?
If so, where Can I get it?
And a last question could I use berserker trinkets with Valkyrie jewels for the extra vitality?
I’m talking about the Fresh Air DPS (0/30/0/20/20 or 0/30/0/10/30) builds.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Versatile_Mighty_Infusion
Or for the list of omni infusions http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infusions#Omni_infusions

Fortus.6175:

I have played exclusively staff ele on this game, from lvl 2 to now, and I can tell you, even without the buffs we had, staff is actually quite good for PvE.

When you are low lvl you cant really pick your gear as eas as you would do with high lvl stuff, so i was focusing on power and precision, with some vit if needed.

For staff all you need in PvE is to kill, and do it fast. You have plenty of defensive skills, so dont worry about that part, once you get the hang of the skills you will find that all you need is killing potencial. Im currently a full zerker gear with MF runes. With 30% MF food i sit at around 112% MF and 7x% crit increase, my crit chance is 6x% with fury (easily obtainable through element switching) and no monster in PvE can last more than 5-6 seconds vs me, and I can take 3-4 at a time. You have to watchout for ranged ones thugh, thats our bane, thats why we have magnetic shield on earth, use it wisely.

As for dungeons, they are mostly designed so that you dont need to much defense, so given our range just go damage, learn to dodge and when to pop arcane blast in close combat for combo fields like healing and might

I hope you meant arcane wave since arcane blast does burning through fire fields.

I’m still running the old 0/10/0/30/30. The air adept traits are mostly mediocre for my setup so I used bolt to the heart since it seems better than zephyr’s boon (only one aura). Water traits are sort of up to you, but I went cleansing wave, arcane abatement/soothing disruption/cantrip mastery (depending on if I need fall reduction), cleansing water. Arcane traits that I use are Elemental Attunement, Blasting Staff, Evasive Arcana.

Utilities: Arcane Wave, Mist Form, Armor of Earth
Elite: Tornado (really whatever you want on here)

One thing you need to be aware of with staff elementalist is that while you can perma swiftness, you should try to have windborne speed available during combat since it cures immobilized, chilled, and crippled. The build probably isn’t really optimal anymore, but the trait point layout works pretty well regardless of weapon setup, so I’m still using it. That way I can switch to D/D (Daphoenix’s build that has the same point allocation) for roaming without having to retrain.

Either way if you’re running staff, you should have at least 20 points into arcane for blasting staff.

How about just making the flag that you plant a guild banner if it isn’t already

Raven.9603:

kirtar.8453:

I haven’t tested it, but I imagine that thief downed 2 can also go through doors assuming it can work like lightning flakitten

requires line of sight, so it doesnt really work with portals (you have to run into a portal, not just land near it). mesmer skills randomly relocate them. that said, both of these classes downed attacks hit very, very hard compared to every other class in the game.

If the ground targeting works like lightning flash, placing the circle on the door (e.g. having it creep up the wall) will put you through. That could of course, be a bug because I’ve had times where I’ve fallen off a wall near a door and ended up back inside a tower.

Raven.9603:

if you had to ask yourself, “what is the point of mist form on downed state?” , the only real conclusion you could come to is that it is designed to let the elementalist move to safety to be rezzed. the other 2 skills are simply very weak (offensively, about as weak as the guardian). if getting to safety is the design goal of mist form, then going through portals is probably intended.

this is different than the thief/mesmer down skills, which are offensively much, much more powerful, which focus on getting a kill or buying some time.

I haven’t tested it, but I imagine that thief downed 2 can also go through doors assuming it can work like lightning flash.

Miziki.8326:

I can confirm this bug as well. There has been several times where I have been within the Healing Rain circle and used a blast finisher, but the combo did not go off. Before the most recent update this was not an issue.

To be fair I have thought that something like this has happened with every combo field available to staff elementalists. Half of the time it was just the system bugging out and not telling me it happened (e.g. no area might message but still applying might).

Mik Hell.8206:

That “thing” is second tier minor earth trait: Earthen Blast, damages foes and clipples them for 3 seconds (when attuning to earth).

I’m fairly certain the EA spell causes bleeding, so it’s probably not a normal spell.

zastari.1730:

Sad to see that we can’t report to get account names any more. To any of the people that I’ve 1v1’ed, thanks for the kick kitten fights. Especially the D/D ele I ran into from LZBO, I spent a lot of time reconsidering my build after those fights

Adding characters to your contact list should get you their account name.

EDIT: Wait… I forgot you can’t see character names for enemies in WvW.

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

Neither is the earth finisher according to the stickied bug list.
It’s Shockwave but the animation is churning earth

To be fair the spell effect is also churning earth since shockwave causes immobilize and is linear rather than radial.

Raikkonen.3196:

owever the fire/earth spells that get triggered are actually blast finishers, so hopefully those will still work.

I don’t know why I keep seeing this. Unless it’s a completely undocumented effect, the fire spell is not a blast finisher (it’s the same as staff 3).

Lilun.8732:

kirtar.8453:

At least this week it was more of “get into a BL and we’ll figure it out once people are actually in”

That is kinda troublesome, especially when the maps are all full. You have people in the Q and then they see a whole guild sitting around waiting for others…
As I said, we prep 30-60 minutes before the reset happens. Then we all jump in when the new fight starts.
In EBay, usually don’t have a problem getting in the first 5-10 minutes it opens up. Anytime after… yea, might have to wait some.

It was expected that the maps would fill and that it was very possible that groups would get split up. In fact, I clicked one borderlands and ended up in another, but that seems to be common. I’m sure some guilds tried to do some coordination, but the queue probably messed that up.

Kodiak.3281:

ThiBash.5634:

Kodiak.3281:

" Evasive Arcana: This trait no longer creates unintended blast finishers."

Even so, it should at the VERY LEAST create a blast finisher on Churning Earth. Since, you know, the dagger version also has a blast finisher.

Seems like Anet was a bit too thorough with the blast removing. This cannot have been intentional.

No where in Evasive Arcana does it state the intended effects are supposed to be Blast Finishers at all which could also mean that they were never intended from the start.

Sure, but it says it creates a spell. The spell for Earth Attunement (Churning Earth) is normally a blast finisher.

Lilun.8732:

Ninein.4782:

Friday Ebay zerg was pretty epic. Lots of complaint in chat how Maguuma couldn’t match Ebay zerg in size even though there was a queue.

Friday openers are the best times. A few of the organized guilds on EBay prep up and organize parties/teams… around 30 minutes to an hour before the reset. I’d think that at least some of Maguuma does the same?

If nothing else, it is what the guild I favor representing has been doing for a long while. Admittedly, the guild does not organize anywhere on that level for the rest of the week.

First impressions and what not, we like to try to give good ones, even if we flag afterwards.

At least this week it was more of “get into a BL and we’ll figure it out once people are actually in”

Direngrey.1247:

That’s so stupid it hurts.
Why the Hell did ArenaNet make WvW a part of exploration?
Jesus…

Your exploration progress carries over from week to week. Just get the vista when it’s in your “home” area whether that’s your borderlands or your area of EB. Within a few days I had almost all of EB explored except the green area and since Maguuma is green this week, I finished it up pretty easily.