New to Elementalist! Best Power build for Staff AoE?

I've finally capped an Ele after all these years and I'm having lots of fun. My only gripe is that I don't really enjoy playing melee, as cool as I think swords are it's just not for me. I enjoy the sit-back-and-nuke style of the staff. It seems like a lot of the metabattle builds and guides are fairly out of date though. A lot of the info on rotations are these incomprehensible videos that I have to play at 50% speed, and could very well not even be the optimal way to play anymore.

Is Weaver basically the choice? Does Tempest work well with this style? Also, is there a way I can get around using conjured weapons and still be quite effective with the staff? I'm just not the biggest fan of those. Thanks for the help, and sorry for the nubby questions. ^^

As long as you're not doing raid/fractals/pvp, staff is still a pick, though its damage got hit harder than anything I could ever think of but it is usable in Open World if you can make use of the CC and learn some tricks like forward Burning Retreat. Though it is less optimal for survival but here it goes.

• Staff: core or weaver, but I prefer weaver. Fire/Air bolt to the heart variant or you can go Fire/Arcane if you find it hard to survive.

• Weaver 1/2/1 or 1/2/3. 3/x/x is a waste on anything but the sword.

• Fire 1/1/1 or 3/1/1 (if you're facing condition mobs), you may run x/1/2 for Might build up but staff has 2 fire fields on weaver, one is already on a 4s cd and you may expect getting downed as a staff ele so...

• Air 3/2/1

• Arcane variant (instead of Air) x/2/1 or x/3/1 but Arcane without x/x/3 is a huge damage loss, yet weaver itself generates 0 boons to make use of it.

• Mid-range: You can somehow play mid-range Tempest Sc/wh

• Tempest 3/3/1, you can mostly shape Tempest line around your own needs but keeping x/3/x is great for the extra damage.

• Fire x/1/1 or x/1/2

• Air 3/2/2 for countless Air Overloads, 2/2/2 for keeping the distance.

• Safer variant Arcane (instead of Fire) x/2/3 or x/3/3 or x/x/1, depends on the situation and if Fire line makes you feel squishy.

As I said, these build are for open world, any raid/fractal build is better checked on snowcrows.com

For open world and small hitboxes, you are not obliged to pick conjures. I don't run any conjures in open world, they hardly work there, except FGS as a backup.

And feel free to ask, it's alrighty.

Edit: I'm on the phone, so the format might be a bit messed up (apologies if that's the case).

I would prefer starting on Tempest to get the feel of the class then switch to Weaver.

After switching to weaver, you would need to watch the rotations (might as well with tempest), not to perform them, but to understand how your damage works.

@Auburner.6945 said:As long as you're not doing raid/fractals/pvp, staff is still a pickAh, that's a bummer to hear. That's why I posted though. The fractal staff build is rated 5 on metabattle, so I wouldn't know any better.

@Killamari.7931 said:

@Auburner.6945 said:As long as you're not doing raid/fractals/pvp, staff is still a pickAh, that's a bummer to hear. That's why I posted though. The fractal staff build is rated 5 on metabattle, so I wouldn't know any better.

What's your goal? Do you intend to raid / do high end fractals? In such a case you won't really have that much freedom regarding your build, as the meta is quite established and you'll just have to adjust that, unless you can find a friendly guild that'll accept other builds (the requirements to complete content are pretty low, but the pug community sticks to what's safer, and that means following the meta).

I'd say that conjures hardly mix with Weaver, as you really want to cast your dual skills which are not available while a conjure is wielded. While conjures work better with tempest as you need to camp elements even if their skill set isn't that good (eg: it's really good to use a fiery axe while attuned to earth until you can get the overload off). However, overloads are close range, so that makes it sound like something you wouldn't like. On the other hand, if you can grow comfortable with the range of overloads, it's quite valid to stick to conjure skills while preparing air / water / earth overloads as your damage will not suffer that way.

Just sharing some ideas.

Staff is perfectly fine even for endgame PvE content.It's not "optimal" but when you know what to do, you still pull competitive numbers....not as high as sword, but unless you run with a super elitist party, literally nobody will mind.

Afaik, on non-large hitboxes arcane blast is better than the conjure hammer, so you at least wont have to bother with one.For the elite Slot, FGS still is pretty much the best option.

Sadly the staff kept on getting nerfed harder each patch since the Meteor Shower nerf. It would have found itself some sort of a place if it wasn't for last balance patch that deleted Arcane line. But I don't know, some would mind using it, others won't, just keep in mind the damage is really low compared to sw/d weaver or sc/wh tempest.

As for conjures, since you have mentioned fractals. It depends on the encounter, for fast kills with fast bars, there is BttH weaver using Unravel, Arcane Blast and Glyph of Storms. There is also weaver or tempest with LH, Glyph of Storms and Arcane Blast for longer encounters, can also be used in short encounters if not familiar with Unravel (just that unravel provides higher burst for fast kills). Some may run double conjures instead of Arcane Blast. Primordial Stance is more of a raid utility because it is mostly condi damage thus it is delayed. I see that there is somehow a hard way out of using conjures, unfortunately.

The utilities of weaver running conjures though can be swapped to the small hitbox variant: Arcane Blast, Glyph of Storms and Primordial Stance, it won't be optimal as it is slower but there will be groups that won't mind it, it's not a game-breaking difference after all.

Staff is the only way to play ele you may be able to get away with sword but your best bet is staff on all builds all the time.

Unfortunately, staff's only place is as a backline or open world.

In raids, last patch butchered its damage more than it was almost unplayable. Now it is literally unviable in raids.

In fractals, it's not the optimal option because there is sword weaver and sc/wh tempest. Sword comes with better burst but less cleave, tempest has the complete opposite because fractals lack large hitboxes for tempest's burst to pass weaver's. Staff has delayed burst and delayed cleave with lower damage, making it playable but outshined by other weapons.

In pvp, no comment

Even in wvw, herald and scourge are more reliable, but the buff to MS's first impact hit per target makes it good in open fields and it was already fine for clearing siege.

Staff is by far the least competitive weapon on ele at the moment. Kind of ele's signature weapon, no more, I guess.

@Jski.6180 said:Staff is the only way to play ele you may be able to get away with sword but your best bet is staff on all builds all the time.

Thats only true for wvsw zerg fights. Staff isn't good in any high end fractal/raid content anymore.

@Auburner.6945 said:Staff is by far the least competitive weapon on ele at the moment. Kind of ele's signature weapon, no more, I guess.It was the most broken thing in the game for years though. Had almost twice the damage of other professions on big hitboxes.

@Nephalem.8921 said:

@Jski.6180 said:Staff is the only way to play ele you may be able to get away with sword but your best bet is staff on all builds all the time.

@"Auburner.6945" said:Staff is by far the least competitive weapon on ele at the moment. Kind of ele's signature weapon, no more, I guess.It was the most broken thing in the game for years though. Had almost twice the damage of other professions on big hitboxes.

It was only "broken" because it did it's job well in group play. And even then, it wasn't guaranteed high damage due to the player using it since the skill cap is ridiculously high. It could never reach the damage output without the support of the other classes, which was fair. It could not might stack, give any major boons like alacrity or quickness like other classes could, was glassy which gave incentive for the high risk high reward. The only thing staff provided was it's damage now it's only viable for backline/mid line zerging for wvw even then you might as well just take a scourge instead so basically this weapon is obsolete in every way possible.

@Nephalem.8921 said:

@Jski.6180 said:Staff is the only way to play ele you may be able to get away with sword but your best bet is staff on all builds all the time.

@Auburner.6945 said:Staff is by far the least competitive weapon on ele at the moment. Kind of ele's signature weapon, no more, I guess.It was the most broken thing in the game for years though. Had almost twice the damage of other professions on big hitboxes.

You realty do not aoe with scepter and you got to be in melee ranged for dagger (sword sadly a 3 target aoe wepon) there just truth you must deal with being a mages with out any real way to stop dmg from hitting you in the first places (healing dmg after your hit is NOT a mages class).