Obfuscate.6430 Posted March 24 Share Posted March 24 I'm sorry if this is the wrong section. I originally had a great tempest staff build before the recent patches for pve. Now I am not sure - but I went through a lot of trouble to make Nevermore specifically for my ele. Are there any decent pve builds that use staff? It doesn't have to be "meta" - I don't plan to do raids/fractals with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paradoxoglanis.1904 Posted March 24 Share Posted March 24 Not really unless you like playing off-meta support 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evilcat.6817 Posted March 24 Share Posted March 24 http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGQAYlZwuYZsKmJOyOmvKA-DyIY1ogCcGJoAiTCowCiBAA-e If you are in "party" swap tiny ele for primodial strike, if you are solo can swap avatar stance for more ele. Earth ele is the best as we use them to keep enemies in place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chyro.1462 Posted March 24 Share Posted March 24 (edited) Heal-alac tempest can use staff quite effectively. Great boon coverage (except fury unless you give an entire traitline up for it), ranged heals, strong revives nice passive and potent burst heals. Not much cc though, but has a little. And can have permanent stability uptime if you use the earth aura burst skill (staff earth 3) well. Short bursts of superspeed, an aoe stunbreak, on demand stability or aegis (just in limited amounts). Though the downside is having to rotate through elements and overloads to keep up alac yet knowing when you need to have water available for heals. Edited March 24 by Chyro.1462 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obfuscate.6430 Posted March 24 Author Share Posted March 24 The options are so limited for staff which is arguably something an Elementalist would consider a main weapon. I looked up a heal-alac tempest build and it uses dagger/warhorn. Taking staff would dramatically reduce it's effectiveness, but I can try it. If any mavericks want to throw me their build ideas, feel free! 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chyro.1462 Posted March 24 Share Posted March 24 Dunno about staff being drastically less effective than dagger horn. You lose a bit of boon duration but can still have full uptime on all important boons if you play it well. Having more than 100% uptime only matters in rare situations. Might is easy to max out even with staff if you properly blast combo your fire fields. Staff's main advantage is ranged heals, ranged revive (water 3 with trait), more stability and aoe frost aura (10% dmg reduction on top of protection) + tons of stability from earth 3. Warhorn dagger has easier boon upkeep, overkill amount of might, and more mobility. Not sure how they compare in heal amount, but both felt decent to me with the amount of burst healing they can do in water. Played both in all strikes and a bunch of raids. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devbo.6280 Posted March 25 Share Posted March 25 There is an open world staff catalyst build on guildjen that I have had a lot of fun with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Einlanzer.1627 Posted March 25 Share Posted March 25 (edited) The main problem with staff is that fire is the only attunement that deals respectable damage, and damage is 80% of what matters when talking about general/solo play, or basically anything other than dedicated group support. So, despite all the fun skills staff has in theory, in practice, you'll rarely find yourself leaving Fire because doing so gimps your damage too much, which means at all times you're choosing between starving yourself of either damage or utility with very limited potential synergy between the two - a problem compounded by the fact that elementalist lacks weapon swap. It's also boring because who wants to be exclusively a fire mage when you could dance around and do cooler things with other weapons? It really doesn't reflect well on Anet devs that they either don't know or don't care about this problem and actually made it worse after the last round of major staff changes. Pretty dumb since "elementalist with staff" is the most magey character you can have thematically and tons of people like the mage with a staff theme, causing this to be a pretty big hole in the game. Edited March 25 by Einlanzer.1627 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gubbin.5723 Posted March 25 Share Posted March 25 I think you can re-work this to work in PvE: https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/elementalist/power-catalyst-2/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chyro.1462 Posted March 25 Share Posted March 25 15 hours ago, Obfuscate.6430 said: I'm sorry if this is the wrong section. I originally had a great tempest staff build before the recent patches for pve. Now I am not sure - but I went through a lot of trouble to make Nevermore specifically for my ele. Are there any decent pve builds that use staff? It doesn't have to be "meta" - I don't plan to do raids/fractals with it. Oh yeah. If you don't do instanced group content, really any build can work. You don't need big dps for open world or story. Throw on celestial gear, put on staff if its the weapon you enjoy most and play the elite spec you find most enjoyable. Personally I find tempest most enjoyable and easier to play than the other two. For a more offensive build, fire traitline offers the most for both power and condi dmg. Air can boost your power damage with crits and fury, and optionally run fresh air for some fun interactions (spaming air overload on tempest, or easier energy generation on cata through the more frequent attune swaps). Arcane traitline has a nice mix of offense, utility and defense. The arcane shielding traits make you a lot more robust in chaotic situations if you can trigger them frequently with the summon elemental elite. As support though am a big fan of the revive trait to get others up quickly (which you get double use of if you run staff). Earth traits if you lean more towards condi damage and want to be tankier or just enjoy using signets a lot and want to keep their passives while on cooldown. And finally water if you enjoy healing or want more self sustain. Great for supporting yourself or others and keeping people alive. It does have some traits that boost power dmg or to put vulnerable stacks on enemies. Also if you're a fan of the alac or quickness boons (cd reduction / action speed) you can do that with the right traits on tempest or catalyst - though keeping quickness up on catalyst can be a bit of a challenge to learn and a bit painful in open world content in my experience. tldr: You don't have to restrict yourself to meta builds if you don't do group content where performance matters. Experiment, be free to try out what you enjoy. And celestial gear is great for any ele build if you're not trying to get top numbers out of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaman.2034 Posted March 26 Share Posted March 26 On 3/24/2024 at 3:21 PM, Obfuscate.6430 said: I looked up a heal-alac tempest build and it uses dagger/warhorn. Taking staff would dramatically reduce it's effectiveness, but I can try it As far as heal alac tempest goes, staff is much stronger in open world PvE than warhorn. Warhorn with either dagger or sword allows you to be precise and efficient with your boon and heal applications. Staff allows you to cover a large range and area, which is much more valuable outside of raids and fractals, especially traiting Geyser to be a big AoE revive from 1200 range. Open world bosses are designed to stunlock you to death or knock you across the map, and staff comes with easy AoE stability to ignore it. It's easier to combo staff blast finishers with water fields in between overloads for more AoE heals. Staff makes the build better if, like you said, you aren't doing raids and fractals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wyrdern.4092 Posted March 26 Share Posted March 26 Condi staff weaver works well enough for open world play. Basically the same as the regular condition weaver build but with a staff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Markus.6415 Posted March 26 Share Posted March 26 4 hours ago, Wyrdern.4092 said: Condi staff weaver works well enough for open world play. Basically the same as the regular condition weaver build but with a staff Yes, I use that build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGQAYlZwkYasLmJOqOmvKA-DSJYmRB/ZEnEoDFgCPGwCvnVAA-e and it does fine in endgame PvE unless the boss isn't moving extremely much. Falls a handful of k dps behind the scepter varient, but still decent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeyeti.8347 Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 Staff isn't a well designed weapon , any attunement lack in several roles and some skills are seriously old and odly designed , as said up , the only efficient way to deal damage is fire , you have only a pair of skills on other attunement to deal damage , water has only skill 2 , air skill 2 and earth has skill 2 and 5 , the rest is either most oriented support or useless , some skills need a fair rework. The only way you coumd play damage is clearly weaver cause it ahs some decent skills in 2x attunement who deal damage other than in fire . For a heal tempest the reason staff isn't used at all is because warhorn is a super efficient support weapon and also because boon coverage without warhorn is very narrow vs other support who can boon from afar or have big aoe boon coverage , example : scourge can boon from a 900 distance with 240 radius aoe and herald can boon around him with 600 range aoe , now compare that to overloads with 180 radius melee only ... warhorn is needed for huge might coverage with fire 4 and boon expand from earth 4 and it's sad cause staff has actually kitten good healing in water coupled with great condi cleanse but in a game where 50% of your squad efficiency come from boons , the equation i pretty simple : boon > healing, not to mention that unlike many other mmos everyone has a healing skill uncluded either way you play who is mostly efficient. And even with a rework the htemp need more to be on pair with other support , cause if indeed there is powercreep i happen to think that the most busted things in this games are the support healers who can practically cover all dps/suppdps mistakes But if you play in open world don't bother the meta , just go staff dps and throw fireballs at trash mobs 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the krytan assassin.9235 Posted March 27 Share Posted March 27 (edited) Staff is in kind of a weird spot in terms of open world PvE. Effective open world builds tend to rely heavily on overall boonuptime, but unfortunately both Tempest (melee range overload) and catalyst (spheres need frequent hits for energy& swap between attunements) do not synergize well with staff. Cdps Weaver (on world bosses) and Pdps Weaver (for world bosses& large scale events) can be a decent pick in the right situation if Boons are provided by the squad. For instanced PvE staff is a very strong healweapon for healalac temp in Raids and strike (cm's) and outclassed d/wh in most occasions, but its unfortunately to slow for fractals. Cdps staff Weaver is an ok'ish dps pick that benches around ~42k i believe. It relies quite heavily on bosses being stationary and having burning retreat in your dps rotation can be quite annoying. Pdps staff Weaver offers a decent LI dps option, but struggles abit in terms of benchmark dps. The nerfs to swift revenge & elements of rage from last year's balance patch to bring down sw/wh dps unfortunately heavily impacted staff's dps output. It unfortunately lacks any sort of utility, but should be able to provide 30k+ dps on the golem with little effort (especially with large hitboxes). If you want, grieving staff Weaver can be a fun pick aswell, although it tends to be just slightly lower in terms of dps compared to the regular p/c dps while not providing any bonusses. Edited March 27 by the krytan assassin.9235 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obfuscate.6430 Posted March 28 Author Share Posted March 28 After a lot of fiddling with builds and selling my mystic coins for gold so I can buy runes and sigils to test them out - I've come to the conclusion it's just not good. Nevermore was my second legendary I ever made. It was the first Legendary I knew right away who I wanted it for. I love the skin so much. I loved the lore about it when I was building it. I made it for my elementalist specifically. She's a norn who considers the Raven spirit her patron spirit. That's why it was important to me. It still performs well for a WvW zerg following healer, but I rarely Wvw. I'm a pve player. I'm just left kind of heart broken. But thank you all very much for the input. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shiyo.3578 Posted March 28 Share Posted March 28 On 3/24/2024 at 9:20 AM, Obfuscate.6430 said: I'm sorry if this is the wrong section. I originally had a great tempest staff build before the recent patches for pve. Now I am not sure - but I went through a lot of trouble to make Nevermore specifically for my ele. Are there any decent pve builds that use staff? It doesn't have to be "meta" - I don't plan to do raids/fractals with it. Necro staff is everything you'd ever want from Ele staff and much more. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obfuscate.6430 Posted March 28 Author Share Posted March 28 4 hours ago, Shiyo.3578 said: Necro staff is everything you'd ever want from Ele staff and much more. Yes, and with almost 30 alts, believe me when I say I do use it on my necromancers. However, I feel staff is like one of those weapons that is intrinsic to the elementalist theme and yet here we are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Codename T.2847 Posted March 28 Share Posted March 28 4 hours ago, Shiyo.3578 said: Necro staff is everything you'd ever want from Ele staff and much more. No it's not. Necro staff's functionality might be good now and it might seem as an attractive weapon to clear mobs with but it's really fvcking boring compared to staff Weaver for example 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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