Guild Wars 2

Jski.6180:

Wolfric.9380:

3 flies at once with trashing mainhand dagger.

1.) Scepter becomes more used when mainhand D is away
2.) OP D/D PvP ele is gone.
3.) Prepared for sword as next elite close combat mainhand …

………

I have a strong feeling that your going to see d/d tempest replaces d/d ele in spvp.
Having heal on auras more protection / stronger protection and shots (most likely the rebound shout is going to be very powerful for holding points will become the best eliet that ele over all can use).

That is quite an opinion, because, in practice (and maybe even on paper), there really is no reason to take shouts over cantrips for bunkering points.

Most point bunkering is done solo and your support consists of one or two players coming to your aid. In that scenario, having powerful self sustain over shout skills that only get their full value when they hit a group of players is much more valuable.

In fact, having a 5v5 team fight in conquest is pretty rare. Maybe you can get some value from a full set of shouts in a deathmatch. Outside of that, they get their most value in a large group setting like a WvW zerg.

Maybe, tempest will find a useful role in stronghold.

Signet typically works better because of the fast dagger attacks, but Ether Renewal gives you more condition cleanse.

The meta celestial build is mostly for PvP where amulet choices are limited. You simply get the most value out of celestial amulet as an elementalist.

Not the case in WvW. You are better off doing a mix of like Soldiers and Beserkers or any other combination of power/toughness/vitality and precision gear.

Pride.1734:

MadRabbit.3179:

Now, if you could use the shout, apply fire to yourself and 4 people and then apply fire to 4 completely seperate people from Powerful Aura, that would be awesome and kind of insane.

I didn’t test this, but since group members have priority over shared boons (and auras?) and if you are within a 600 radius to your group but outside of a 360 radius, wouldn’t they get the effect of the shout because of priority but the aura share would then go to the people in your proximity?

Absolutely no idea. First time we’ve had two seperate mechanics for applying AoE auras where one could potentially trigger the other.

In all seriousness without continuing this debate, I won’t worry too much about it. They will eventually tweak the game and Tempest will be viable for some facet of the game in some build. I just honestly never expected all the new specializations to be viable right at launch. Making this kind of massive change to the game balance with a new class and 8 more specializations and weapons is pretty ambitious.

But then again, I’ve been a gamer for over 16 years at this point. I’ve played all manner of RPGs, MRPGs, MMORPGs and MOBAs and seen every kind of shenanigan you can imagine. I’m pretty cynical when it comes to this kind of stuff.

Khalic.3561:

MadRabbit.3179:

I don’t really feel like my money spend on the expansion was flushed due to a single bad elite specialization for what is already arguably the most powerful class in the game…

I don’t feel like I’ve wasted my money either, but people really need to stop toting the ele’s strength as justification for a poor elite spec. The devs should be more than capable of creating something that is viable and fun to play without breaking class balance. Expecting less is ridiculous.

I strongly disagree. I’ve never played a MMO that allowed people to make their own builds from a pool of choices that ended up with even balance across the board. How many weapons in GW2 currently do not have a position in the current meta? How many utility skills do elementalists alone have that don’t end up in the meta? How many traits are never used in the meta across the board? Where are the mass swarms of condition elementalists wrecking havoc on the world? You ever play a ranger in PvP or a necromancer in dungeons?

Where is the outcry over Earth Shield? I payed kitten good money for this game and Earth Shield should be viable. Ever heard of an Earth Shield elementalist? You haven’t? Because it doesn’t work and never has.

People crunch numbers and come up with the cream of the crop and that is what is considered viable and everything else falls to the wayside. When you consider how much of the pool of abilities currently in play do not get used by competent players, to think that all elite specializations released in HOT would get a place in the meta is silly. It simply isn’t going to happen with this large of a pool and so few roles builds can fill.

I mean, look at it from a simple game of musical chairs. If you plan out a meta for WvW that includes 15 players, we now have 9 classes with 9 elite specializations making for a total of 18, each probably with currently 2-3 meta builds for any given game facet. Now, if you pick one of each, who is going to get left out? The same will happen with the meta for 10 man raids to a larger extent and even larger with 5 man dungeons.

So yes, it is perfectly reasonable to expect a developer to release an elite specialization that isn’t going to be viable, because that’s just reality. The fact that we are the strongest class just means that is less likely that specialization is going to be viable. We’re just collectively kittened it’s us this time that gets screwed after years of having a role in the meta for every facet of the game.

I don’t know…

All new PvE content, raids, guild halls, masteries with a way to acquire precursors besides blind luck, new pvp system, a new WvW map, new brand of pvp map, a new class and elite specializations for all the existing classes…

I don’t really feel like my money spend on the expansion was flushed due to a single bad elite specialization for what is already arguably the most powerful class in the game…

Jski.6180:

A better version i think.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBIhdSfJ0fJ25AYhJwhJWEBM32acNvS0BSAHghAwAIBC-TFyHABOv/AdKBV+EA0qqKHp8DN9AFqWBAPAgAAIA3sNDghO0hO0hO0u5Qv5Pv5PLFATCtA-w

I was messing around with something like this awhile back. It is potentially the only viable tempest build, imo. Critical hit immunity and 55% dmg reduction with protection on auras is the only way I think an elementalist could stand on the front line. It reduces you down to essentially a heal and buff machine with some decent dmg. Overload Earth is only one you could probably use without dying, but it locks you out from your main form of dmg mitigation for a long time.

Only difference I had was Latent Stamina over Unstable Conduit. With the addition of magnetic aura to Sand Squall, you have access to all 4 auras with this setup. An occasional additional aura from the few times you can pull off an overload without killing yourself isn’t worth passing up vigor on water attunement. Vigor is potentially one of the strongest boons and being able to do AoE vigor on frontline is pretty awesome.

Powerful Aura is questionable, since Fire and Ice are already granted to other people. However, your two strongest auras, Lightning and Magnetic, require the trait to share with the front line. Now, if you could use the shout, apply fire to yourself and 4 people and then apply fire to 4 completely seperate people from Powerful Aura, that would be awesome and kind of insane.

And boon share!

So far, this is only build I have seen with tempest where everything synergizes and you potentially fulfill some kind of useful role, provided you can stay alive.

Edited to Add: Btw, Soothing Ice loses synergy with Stoneheart, so I think Stop, Drop and Roll is a better choice.

soulknight.9620:

Thank you guys!
The problem with berserker builds is that i am not skillfull enough to play it at viable level. I need some more practice, with more solid builds.
I think i will try “knight” item build, which Bandit mentioned, looks decent from what i see.

But there is one question unanswered:
Why does noone build defence stats? Are defences broken or something (i mean like formula vice)? What happens if in PVP a full zerk meets a full def player, which one will have an uper hand? Will def build mitigate all of zerks damage or just a small portion?

I have got another question, is healing a viable stat for elementalists? I mean is it worth on getting for support purposes, does it scale well with water attunement?

Sorry for so many questions, tried to study Wiki, but hadnt had much luck understanding it on practice.

There is only one role where thats needed and thats bunkering points in PvP, because point control is how you win. WvW and PvE involves killing stuff. PvE has content too easy at the moment to justify a full defensive bunker type character and in WvW, elementalists simply can’t live long on the frontline and thus play backline.

It’s mostly personal preference. I’m willing to trade off some damage for strong group support. Just how I play and it makes my life a lot easier in PUG fractals. I’m not discounting anyone’s build. Just sharing my own.

Just take the standard arcane and water setup from D/D or WvW staff and use fire specialization with the might on hit, might on cantrip and 10% dmg increase traits. Use all cantrips and gylph of elementals and swap them out for arcane brilliance and arcane blast as you feel comfortable. Only problem is you have to get runes of strength, sigil of strength and sigil of battle to be able to consistently keep up 20-25 stacks of might by yourself. All of these are really expensive on trading post. Might is where all your damage compensation comes from after taking arcane and water and cantrips for survivability and support.

Once you learn how to play it and use all the skills correctly, you won’t ever die in open world content. This is my setup I use for pretty much everything. I’ve never had a complaint about my damage output and have done high level fractals with it. I just swap out the might on hit for fury on fire field blast finisher for groups.

I personally run soldier’s armor, berserker trinkets and berserker weapons. I could easily swap out soldiers for berserkers if I only did PvE content and not die much, but I do a mix of WvW and PvE, so I gear more for WvW.

There is still a high learning curve on this, so don’t expect to use it and be all god mode right off the bat.

This video is bad, the build is bad and the players are bad. Anyone reading this shouldn’t take this as a testament to tempest’s viability in PvP. You, by your own admittance, are new to elementalist and don’t have the experience to be making some of these statements.

Use Armor of Earth to ensure a overload goes off? You are going to burn your only source of stability and serious protection uptime and put it on CD for 75 seconds so it’s not available when you get bursted just to cast an overload? No condi cleanse so disengage? Lol

The only real advantage this presents over the traditional fresh air S/F build is that overloads give you a way to actually do damage to someone in stealth. And warhorn, too….at the cost of a huge amount of synergy from losing focus.

I mean, the only strong points of this build are below avg dmg and a lot of healing…which all mostly occurs in a radius around the elementalist and is problematic when you aren’t strong enough to actually bunker and make use of it.

You don’t have sigil of fire or sigil of air, so the dps is below average than the normal build. I mean, why do you need a sigil that increases critical chance on a build whose main benefit is constant fury uptime from auras? Maybe, take something that procs on critical hit and does a little more than give you 4 stacks on might uptime, since you don’t have any boon or might duration increase. I recreated your build in build editor and I was sitting at 61% before fury. What’s the point of 81% over 74% if you have nothing that procs on critical? So you can camp air and pew pew a bad warrior with low damage auto attack while watching vulnerability build up so you can NOT swap into fire for a burst and then back into air?

You don’t have lightning flash for the burst combos. I didn’t see you setup a might stack combo with, at least, fire 2,3 and 5 which either means you are just bad or it’s not possible to do with the pulses from fire 5.

The condi cleanse is half of what it is when you take arcane over tempest which makes the main weakness of fresh air S/F even worse.. The main benefit to taking tempest is the protection dmg reducation increase which is negable due to your lack of sources of protection. You have a 6 second on a 75 second cooldown, a 2 second on a 30 second cooldown and a 25% chance to get 3 seconds every 30 seconds. At least, you it for the duration of an overload which is something. Not sure what, but something. You have no source of vigor.

And this is the big one, the entire strategy of camping air for overload removes any point to taking fresh air, since without constant attunement swapping, you aren’t utilizing your procs. No reason! None! Bolt to the heart gives you more value.

Basically, what you did was you spent 3 minutes in a fight camping air and doing awful dmg to mediocre players. In fact, because of your sigil setup and your lack of utilization of fire to potentially stack might, you actually didn’t showcase even half of the damage potential the build is capable of. And this was against players who, in none of your short clips, applied any serious condition pressure, CC or competent burst dmg to highlight all the weaknesses of your build and why exactly it’s not viable at all in a pvp game.

You can’t just make a montage video from two unranked solo ques during a beta weekend and declare tempest is a viable spec for PvP

Oh yeah and rebound in solo que…..ahahahaha

I imagine the experience will be one of a glass spellcaster dying constantly as he attempts to move into combat to effectively use his or her shouts.

Water/Arcane/Earth or Water/Arcane/Fire staff with cantrips still provides better support, because you can live long enough to use it.

If I were to make a bunker with tempest, it would probably be something like this…

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWnMMANYiVYCGOA0RgFRAzdtGXzrERgFQFYIAMASgA-TJxHAB1eBA0Z/BAeAAFVGAA

Wolfric.9380:

Would be intrestin if that can also do the job or even better.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBLhdSfJ0gJ2fJYhJQHBWEBM306bNvSEB2AVghAwAIBC-TJxHAB1+AAQqMgO7PAwJAAA

I was goofing around and came up with something similar as a bunker build. I am going to give it a shot next beta weekend.

If the shouts were blast finisher, then holy kitten. Talk about synergy with staff.

Oh yeah and I do actually find myself stacked out with every condition available and need that extra condition removal from the regen. When people figure out what you are doing and see you heal your entire team to full, they start to put some heavy, heavy pressure on you.

Earthen Proxy as an Adept Trait with Stoneheart and Rock Solid with all the water synergy would be god mode 2.0. I already easily go entire matches with the above build without dying once.

I mean think about it… 53% dmg reduction from protection and immunity to critical hit.

With the above build, you already have four potential sources for protection.

- Swapping into Earth
- Getting hit when in Earth
- Armor of Earth
- Earth Elemental’s stomp ability

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWhMMozhFOwyB0RMECY0EoBcBmAQBYBWxgH4KA-TJxHAB1eBA8Z/BAeAAFVGAA

Pretty much any healing rune will work except for Dwayna, as I just recently learned the regen from it doesn’t work with Soothing Disruption.

Soothing Ice looks like a tempting trait over Stop, Drop and Roll, but people forget it loses synergy with stone heart, because you can’t be critically hit.

You aren’t going to kill anyone with this, but that’s not your purpose. It’s to peel for your team with all of your CC and keep them alive with all your healing and boon sustainment while they kill people for you, as well as to hold points until they can arrive.

Earth is awesome and it’s part of the meta for the Celestial Staff build.

If your perception is nobody runs it, then it’s due to personal preference of wanting to be a ganker and not a full bunker.

I run Earth/Water/Arcane celestial staff all the time in sPvP. You are hard as hell to kill and your team sustain with the right rune and sigil setup is awesome. I love it particularly for unranked matches where everyone runs a glass cannon type ganker build and my sustain allows my team to slaughter.

I mean, if you think this is a useless spec, you are playing it wrong or don’t fully understand the synergy it has with water.

For example, Rock Solid + Stoneheart + Soothing Disruption + Cleansing Water + Ether Renewal gives you a god mode combo you can use every 14.5 seconds.

- Start channel of Ether Renewal which takes 3.5 seconds
- Swap into Earth Attunement

and here is what you get…

- 2 seconds of stability to absorb whatever CC they are going to throw at you when they see you start to ether
- 33% damage reduction plus immunity to critical hits which drops any pressure you are getting down drastically so ether renewal can restore you.
- Ether rewenal applies regen for additional healing and sustain after it is finished healing.
- Pretty much all your conditions are cleared from ether renewals removal plus the extra condition removed from the application of regen.

As long as you time things so earth attunement is off CD when ether is, that kind of synergy is hard to beat, particularly when you can do it every 14.5 seconds. It gets even better when you use healing sigils and runes that proc aoe heals on weapon swap and use of a healing skill.

Become a Earth/Water/Arcane stoneheart bunker, eat the burst with earth element stance, then bunker for your team while they kill him.

At least, that’s how I deal with mesmers =)

Aetrion.8295:

The fundamental issue ANet needs to address is that it’s currently way too easy to make an ideal build and literally thousands of other build possibilities are viewed as useless as a result. So sure, as long as that’s broken nobody is going to be happy with getting something added to the game that isn’t better than what they got in every way.

This is a fundamental issue to every MMORPG or even MRPG ever and will always be. It is simply impossible in practice to achieve perfect class balance. World of Warcraft eventually just said “kitten it. We’re pouring all this time and money into class balance, so let’s just streamline the talent and spec choices, so players have less options and balancing requires less work.” Want to see a really imbalanced game? Go play old school Neverwinter Nights.

People set this unrealistically high bar for developers when it comes to class balance when in actuality, Guild Wars 2 is one of the more balanced games I’ve played. The meta is mixed and there is a variety of different builds the classes can play that are viable.

And people’s opinion’s on these forums are largely hyperbolic, misinformed, based on limited perspective and usually rehashed from somebody else. The whole celestial D/D thing is a good example. This is constantly being heralded as the ultimate build for elementalists, but there is other options. Celestial staff is an equally viable option and exceeds D/D in terms of team healing, support, bunkering and peeling. It has been used in top ladder pvp.

There is always going to be a small set of select meta builds that represent the optimal max and mins for certain roles, no matter how much variety is in the game. But just because a new variance doesn’t make it into the meta doesn’t mean it’s useless. There is plenty of people who aren’t into speed dungeon runs or competitive pvp who are going to play Tempest and enjoy it for what it is. They are just the people who don’t post on forums like this. I mean, look at rangers. They were the redheaded step children of GW2 and yet, there was always an abundance of them in game.

- Remove the channeling completely.
- When overload is activated, it applies a buff to the elementalist that performs the pulses that were performed by the channeling previously. Expiration of the buff creates the final effect.
- Make the buff strippable so there is a counter.
- Scale down the power of the abilities and increase the recharge times to balance it out.

This allows us to swap into an element, overload if we choose to and immediately swap to another and continue using our rotations while receiving additional benefits from the overload.

It keeps the concept more in line with a fast, attunement swapping play style while stilling giving us a risk vs reward option of increased benefits while delaying our attunement rotation.

Earth is useless in PVP? I use it all the time when bunkering a point. Combat is constrained to a small point which the elemental stays on and therefore always hits with cripple and protection when he executes his stomp.

Water elemental is pretty awesome, too. In addition to heal and condition cleanse, it provides you with a second way to decap a point besides your air knockback.

If I am off point and out in the open, I will go with Air a lot for the ranged damage and the on demand stun.

Fire is for PVE.

Valento.9852:

MadRabbit.3179:

I’m actually pretty happy playing staff as it is right now, so no, I don’t think I am going to quit as my life is relatively unaltered. I am just disappointed, but it was bound to happen. Anet is a great development company, but you can’t add this many specializations to the game and expect them to all be winners.

At least some folks will enjoy the visuals. You know, some people are into that. /zaithanfight

I can assure you I will enjoy killing tempests with my staff.

The overload concept is completely contradictory to the elementalist playstyle and their channeled nature negate their value.

Shouts require having cantrips to be able to actually use them in the middle of a brawl without dying. Hence, this presents a rather large dilemna.

You have to give up a hell of a lot to make an auramancer build, because the aura traits are spread out across three different specializations.

I’m actually pretty happy playing staff as it is right now, so no, I don’t think I am going to quit as my life is relatively unaltered. I am just disappointed, but it was bound to happen. Anet is a great development company, but you can’t add this many specializations to the game and expect them to all be winners.

I have absolutely no plans on giving up my staff or taking tempest.

There just is no reason.

The overloads might work if it wasn’t a channeled skill, but rather like a buff like aura that performed the pulses and then created an effect when expired. Even so, the only one that is really viable is fire, because it’s the only attunement you end up camping for an extended period of time. Sitting in Air, Water or Earth for 5 seconds is about 4 seconds of being useless just to get the overload.

I thought it might be cool to try and do a celestial staff bunker build that focuses on shouts and auras with like a Tempest/Earth/Air setup, but you lose so much to try and make that work.

The warhorn is kind of neat, but it doesnt bring much to the table in terms of fields and finishers, so I feel you lose synergy with any main hand weapon by taking it over dagger or focus. The boon share elements might be it’s redeeming quality.

Should have just given us a bow and gone for an arcane archer type of archetype with different elemental themed arrows and a focus on single target damage. I don’t see any reason to give up my bunker staff for a tempest build.

I roll with ascended beserker trinkets, ascended beserker staff, and ascended soldiers armor.

You can’t alter the stats on trinkets, so beserkers is the way to go. They have more potential value if move them over to an alt. Armor and weapon you can reforge into whatever you want.

Some people are saying condition staff is viable. I don’t think so. I don’t really like it. We just don’t have the mass variety of conditions that serve as fonder for condition removal.

Healing power just isnt worth it as a backliner. You can’t serve as a bunker like you can in PvP. You will just get squished. Therefore, things like soothing mist, heal on water attunement swap, regen on water attunement swap and heal on dodge that require close proximity don’t come into play as much. You mostly just lay down water fields from a far so people can blast them. That alone isn’t worth it to stack healing power.

Yeah, my bad. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Water

Thanks for feedback. Time to change my rune choices.

Mejiora.9584:

Cleansing water does unfortunately not work with either of the regen procs from rune of dwayna.

Huh…kitten …. I guess I need to test this a bit more.

With that much regen procing and conditional removal in combat, it’s hard for me to pinpoint what does what.

Thank you for pointing that out. If it is true, then the synergy is non-existant.

And yeah, I am not claiming to be the offer of this build. It’s pretty much the bread and butter Celestial staff build. I just wanted to point out potential synergy with rune choices and provide some general tips, because to be honest, I am tired of hearing about D/D lol.

With all the said, I think the reason it gets looked down on is, because it’s dependent on your teammates to fully utilize your abundance of combo fields. You don’t have any way to trigger them except for projectiles and blast finisher in Earth attunement. You can’t afford to trade out your cantrips for arcane blast finishers, because they are simply too important to stay alive. Once you lightning flash into a battle and aoe heal your team back up to near full health, you are going to get a big target on your head.

This is just public perspective for the most part. Both Celestial D/D and Celestial Staff have the same score on Metabattle and Celestial staff gets used in top tier pvp. You just need to give up on the idea that you are going to win 1v1 fights with celestial staff, because thats not what you are therefore. You are there to bunker hard and to provide exceptional aoe team support.

I swear by Staff. I just have no interest in D/D and I have to play a match where I didnt pull my weight or had someone “dd or gtfo”.

Edited because I was greatly misinformed about Soothing Disruption’s synergy with Rune of Dwayna

This is my slight modification of the meta Celestial Staff Conquest build. It’s my personal build I have been using in arenas and I love it. This build is not about doing damage or winning 1v1 fights. It’s about bunkering, being hard as hell to kill and providing heavy support to your allies in team fights via heavy condition removal, healing, boon support and CC.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWhMMozhFOwyB0RMECY0HoBcBmAQBYBWxgH4KA-TJxHAB1eBAA4BAUUZAM2fAA

I am not by a long shot a pro pvper, so any feedback or criticism is welcome.

Here is a list of bullet points about key skills and how they synergize.

• Soothing Disruption is the cornerstone of your condition removal, because of all the sources of regen you have. You get regeneration from swapping into water via Elemental Attunement, regen from all 4 of your cantrips, regen from being hit from Rune of Dwayna, regen from being hit with soothing ice and [/s]regen to nearby allies when you use Ether renewal[/s]. In short, you have a lot of regen at your disposal which equals a lot of condition removal.
• It’s a toss up between Rune of Dwayna and Rune of Water. The boon duration is nice, but all the potential regen from Dwayna just synergizes too nicely with Soothing Disruption.
• Sigil of Renewal gives you an additional AoE heal when swapping to any attunement, not just water.
• Sigil of Energy is needed, because you are going to be dodging a lot when bunkering a point.
• Ether Renewal is a powerful heal that can take you to full and remove all conditions, but its channeled, making it vulnerable to interrupts. To negate this, swap into Earth attunement. Rock solid will give you stability to stop the interrupt and the increased toughness, protection and Stone heart allows you to get ahead of any pressure being put on you.
• Unsteady Ground doesn’t only prevent enemies from crossing, but also interrupts their abilities. Laying this down on a point and moving back and forth across it can disrupt an opponent’s rotation.
• Gylph of Elements is your friend for point control with either Earth Elemental or Water Elemental. The Earth Elemental’s stomp will hit every inside the point with the cripple while applying protection. The Water Element’s special attack is great for pushing someone off a node while providing a heal.
• Water and Earth are where you are going to live with Lightning for CC and decaping with gust of wind. Fire is for when you have breathing room to try and apply some dmg pressure of your own, but I find that doesnt happen very often, because as soon as your opponents figure out what you are and what you are doing, they are going to focus you hard.
• Burning Retreat is not only an evade, but with careful positioning, you can lay down a long line of fire for your rangers and bow warriors to use to stack burns.
• Meteor shower is a great way to blanket a point with a strong aoe, but the cast time can be lethal. I won’t try to use it without lightning flash on hand. It won’t interrupt your Meteor Shower cast.
• It almost worth it to lose a little regen and drop Soothing Ice for Stop, Drop and Roll, because getting chilled can really mess your world up.
• Eruption is your only blast finisher, so thinking about how you are going to use it is important. Most people go might via a fire field or for aoe healing, but AoE frost armor from Frozen Ground can really change the course of a fight. It should be used at the start of a match with Static Field for swiftness.

Weavenflow the Blind Wanderer

Runes didnt show up in last link

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWnMICtMgFOAWOA0RgBCAjaCHhoQUACALgaNkELDA-TFiFABD8ABGZ/hqUCakyPAuAAEq+DDHIgz0RQKgIWAA-w

Duration increase from Runes of Strength, extra might from Sigil of Might and Runes of Strength, might from cantrips, might from aoe blasting fire field with Arcane Brilliance -> Arcane Wave -> Earth 2, accumulated might stacks from attacking in fire from trait.

I usually maintain like 15-20 avg solo in the course of a battle.

So I have been following various staff builds on the forums and metabattle and haven’t really seen this one up there yet. This is my personal build. It’s based on the old WvW backline staff support build, but I pretty much use it everywhere: WvW, Silverwastes, World Bosses, Dungeons, etc.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWnMICtMgFOAWOA0RgBCAjaCHhoQUACALgaNkELDA-T1hFABAcBAG4BCYkyPGOQAEq+zZ6IqSJIpAiYBA-w

General idea is Water for the exceptional healing and condition removal, Arcane for variety of boons and Fire for heavy dmg from might stacking with 2 blast finishers in slot skills to use as needed and 2 cantrips for defense.

The uses of the attunements breakdown as…

Fire – Camp fire to stack might and do damage.
Water – Swap into water for condition removal and to use blast finishers on water combo fields for heavy aoe healing.
Lightning – Blast finishers on static field for perma swiftness.
Earth – Mostly for the protection boon and the blast finisher which you can prime for fields in other attunements.

My general rotation for taking down a large group is Earth Attunement for Protection -> Earth 2 for blast finisher -> Fire Attunement -> Fire 2 on Earth 2 -> Fire 5 -> Fire 3 -> Fire 2 -> Fire 1 anyone left.

I change it up some.

Sometimes Ice Bow for one of my cantrips. In this case, I drop soothing disruption for cleansing wave.

Sometimes Lightning Flash for one of my cantrips if I need more mobility.

If in a group in dungeons with a might stacker, Persisting Flames -> Pyromancer’s Puissance.

All in all, I love and haven’t switched to anything else yet. Plenty of defensive ability, healing, group boon support, crowd control and with Fire Specialization, your damage is pretty strong compared to old staff support builds.

Purple Miku.7032:

Water’s #2 probably could do with being a blast finisher, but that’s about it. I think the long cast time is justified by the decent damage it inflicts.

You would have to lengthen the cooldown. A blast finisher on that short of a CD would be pretty nuts. And even then, it’s questionable. Swapping from Earth → Water, I can line up Earth 2 → Arcane Brilliance → Arcane Wave on a water field for a massive self heal and a nice aoe heal. It won’t be too hard to add Water 2 to the mix. I bet I can prep Earth 2 and Water 2 and still get a fire field down before they pop. 4 potential blast finishers…so much fury and might.

To be honest, Fire and Water are where staff really shine, but you have to spec into Arcane and Water to get the healing and condition cleansing beast that is Water. With a Fire Water Arcane spec, I spend most of my time in those attunements.

For Earth, I mostly swap in for the protection buff from Arcane and to setup Earth 2 as a blast finisher. Air is mostly for perma swiftness via the static field and sometimes tagging mobs that are spread out.

The rest of Earth and Air’s skills could use a little work, but to be honest, they are largely situational and geared towards PvP.

I run staff, because it is more general purpose and adaptable. I keep the same gear setup of ascended celestial armor, ascended berseker trinkets and ascended berseker staff and alternate between 6/6/2 when I want to focus on camping staff for DPS or a 2/6/6 when I want to focus on support via healing, boons, conditional removal and okay dps. It’s viable and I am able to hold my own in both WvW and PvE without having to keep alternate gear sets.

Staff excels in support, because it has access to a variety of combo fields. But those only really matter if you are in a group that actually uses blast finishers when you lay them down. Most of the time in pugs, it’s just me blasting my own fields for area might, swiftness or healing.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

MadRabbit.3179:

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

I still think thieves and mesmers are OP in pvp though…

I would agree if viewed from the perspective of dueling or 1v1, but in other facets of the game, they get pegged into niche roles where we don’t.

interesting… never looked at it like that.
I just figured GS for mesmer at long range and thieves can pick off low hp ones easily in team fights.

Some examples of what I mean:

There was a time when you didn’t see a thief in dungeon groups until stealth stacking to skip trash mobs became a thing. Mesmers arent even listed in the dungeon meta and most of the time when they are wanted, its for portal to do skips.

Mesmer’s primary mechanic, illusions, die really fast inside of WvW zergs, making their usefulness limited. Thiefs don’t really have a place either outside of a couple of niche builds or taking a role to try and assassinate backliners which is a role with a short life expectancy.

So both are really awesome at sPvP and WvW roaming where they can excel at what they do best, but they aren’t really desired in other facets of the game.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

I still think thieves and mesmers are OP in pvp though…

I would agree if viewed from the perspective of dueling or 1v1, but in other facets of the game, they get pegged into niche roles where we don’t.

Just use the 6/6/2 D/F fresh air build with D/D. With or without might stacking is kind of a moot point, because you will still be blasting your fire fields for the fury uptime even if you have a Phalanx Warrior.

FrownyClown.8402:

uh….like hitting the door with your weapon? or like using a flame ram? get a group of 20 dps eles and have them all use fgs #4 on the door. it will go down really quick.

And a time machine to go back to when that still worked? Or am I mistaken in thinking the days of stacking fgs4 trail dmg are over?

I won’t say hard as much as complex. You can, for example, effectively camp fire in staff and produce high dps with a simple rotation like other classes, but elementalists can bring a lot more to the table than that. And what you are capable of bringing to the table will be determined by your knowledge of what skills in different attunements to use together to create different effects.

For example, you can use magnetic grasp in a dagger/dagger setup to close distance to an enemy, but if you do it after laying down ring of fire in fire attunement, the combo fire field plus magnetic grasp’s pull finisher will give you a fire aura that will dmg anything that hits you. So now, you have not only closed distance, but given yourself a buff as well.

Another example is you can use Staff 4 in air to give your party swiftness, but you can also use Staff 5 in air with blast finishers like Arcane Wave, Arcane Brilliance and Earth 2 to grant area swiftness and essentially give them 100% swiftness uptime if done over and over again.

So where I am going with this is what you get out of an elementalist is directly related to your skill and knowledge level which takes a time investment to accumulate.

Lighting hammer does get used in scepter builds to make up for scepter’s weak auto attacks.

Race doesn’t really matter.

shrugs

I use a 0/0/2/6/6 variation all the time in pugs that are inexperienced.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWnMISLDW9AGOAdEGIEII/0cNKocd5KA-TFSGABA8AAAZ/hHV/RKlgDp0LKlBkpjwgLAAA-w

I only use staff conjurer when I run with a group I am comfortable knows what they are doing.

Main difference is I run a mix of celestial and beserkers so I can make both work.

The PvE Meta is geared towards experienced players who have dungeon runs down pack and thus can go full glass cannon, because they know all the boss fights or know how to exploit the map.

Dungeons take a LONG time when your 4 glass cannon dps aren’t dpsing, because they are down or dead half the time. They relatively take less time when I can give them a little forgiveness with a support staff setup.

Of course, people will argue that you should just gtfo and leave the noobs behind, but that’s not how I roll.

This is my personal setup MOST of the time in WvW, open world and dungeons. I probably won’t take this into PvP if I started to play again.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWnMISLDW9AGOAdEGIEII/0cNKocd5KA-TFSGABA8AAAZ/hHV/RKlgDp0LKlBkpjwgLAAA-w

I take vital striking, because I only run one cantrip, but soothing disruption is still worth it, because of earth’s embrace.

4/4/6 and 2/6/6 is kind of a trade off.

In 4/4/6, you get the cripple on earth attunement which is useful for putting distance between yourself and an opponent. The stability is also potentially powerful, since its on a 9 second cd technically, but the 2.5 second duration means you have a small window to anticipate when you will need it and use it.

Main reason to go 2/6/6 is Cleansing Water which strips a condition when regen is applied. This combined with cantrip traits gives you a lot of condition cleansing in staff.

You remove a condition for each use of a cantrip (except for Mist Form. Something with the invul nullifies the condition removal when the regen is applied). You cleanse one condition off 5 people on swapping into water from Elemental Attunement. Your healing rain cures an additional condition on the initial pulse when it applies regen, in addition, to the condition removal build into the AoE. And (I am pretty sure this is true, but haven’t verified it) team mates get a condition removed when they shoot a projectile thru your water field and get regen applied to them. And you also have an AoE conditional removal on the end of your dodge in water from evasive arcana.

The other advantage is Bountiful Power which is pretty much a static 3-4% dmg increase since you are almost always going to have 3-4 boons on you with this trait setup.

So the question is do you want to provide a brief AoE stability to your teammates every 9 seconds or do you want large condition cleansing potential?

I personally leave group stability to warriors and guardians, use Earth Armor and Earth’s Embrace to provide it to myself and bring condition cleansing to the table.

That’s why I keep to a more traditional 0/0/2/6/6 support setup.

Conncept.7638:

Altair.8402:

Elementalists are arguably the best class in the game at the moment.

Forgetting to mention something? Like the fact that we are only such with one single build, the same single competitive build we have had since launch. I guess we have two if you consider the WvW staff build a ‘build’ at all, I don’t see how though with how little individual build hardly even matters in WvW.

You want to know the real improvements that have been made to the class over the last year? You remember the DD cantrip water/arcane build? They destroyed that build, leaving us with pretty much nothing for nine solid months, then buffed celestial gear and gave daggers another blast finisher, bringing the exact same build back, except under celestial gear and with slightly less escape-ability because of the RTL nerfs.

That’s the big improvement everyone is lauding. Clerics is now celestial, on the still single competitive build we have. Woohoo…

EDIT: Oh, and they heavily nerfed two of our three elites… none of which were particularly useful in any game mode in the first place. Yeah…

Forest for the trees. Or trees for the forest. However, that kitten does.

We are one of the fundamental classes for speed clearing dungeons in PvE.

Staff in WvW is fundamental to a solid zerg backline.

D/D is strong in sPvP. So strong, every team composition in the last world tournament had one or two.

And the same D/D build used in sPvP has strong solo power in open world content like silverwastes.

Warriors and Guardians are the only other classes that have the same kind of strong presence in all three facets of the game that we do.

And if you approach the argument of “best” in terms of variety in what the class can bring to the table, it really is a toss up between us and Guardians as the best class.

cheese.4739:

fracture.9754:

Give them party stealth and reflects and you can remove all other classes from the game, as they’re not needed anymore (a bit of an exaggeration, but I’m trying to make a point here, kitten it!).

Would still need a Guardian to share blocks

Guardians are arguably the best class in the game for people who can’t play Elementalists.

I just don’t try and make staff what it’s not: a dueling build.