Any staff open world build?

[Neko.9508]

Hello! I'm looking for some builds using staff for elementalist, it's need to be weaver/tempest/core 

Any ideas? :-)

[AliamRationem.5172]

Don't do it.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

There's always the lazy tempest build :http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGQAYlNwoYLsGWJOqKbtLA-DSIYhipAfG1KBqQBIzzCAUB-e

You start out in Earth, so you can use Magnetic Aura and Sandstorm on enemies.  You can use Unsteady Ground to stop enemies at a point, making it easier to cleave.  After doing that, use Eruption, swap to fire, and stay there for the remainder of the fight.  The utilities are whatever you feel like.  The ones I chose were to maximize uptime of Tempestuous Aria.  This doesn't have particularly high performance, but it will get the job done.

[soulknight.9620]

13 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Don't do it.

^ this
 

14 hours ago, Neko.9508 said:

Any ideas? 🙂

But if you want some rough time i can recommend going full cele fire/arcane/weaver (or tempest, but i like weaver better for dual skills). The majority of your damage would be condies and you can do some healing too. At least this build doesnt die in 2 hits lol (im looking at you full vipers/zerk gear). 

[Jeydra.4386]

It's not great, but it works. Go Weaver and use the standard raid Weaver build (Fire/Air/Weaver). Use Ether Renewal as your heal skill (since it cleanses condis), Glyph of Storms, Primordial Stance, and whatever for your last slot (Lightning Flash for mobility, Arcane Wave for AoE damage that has an annoying cast time these days, Arcane Shield as a stunbreak, etc.). Use Glyph of Elementals as your elite, summoning the Water Elemental if you need healing and the Fire Elemental otherwise. Full Berserker works, especially if you have Jade Bot tier 10 for more vitality.

Don't expect to solo champs or anything, though; your damage output is also somewhat lower than other builds.

[soulknight.9620]

7 hours ago, Jeydra.4386 said:

Don't expect to solo champs or anything, though; your damage output is also somewhat lower than other builds.

Thats basically another way to say "you wont do damage, but will still be glass". 

Although this may shine in some specific situations, but you need to have: full set of boons (q/a/fury/25might minimum), healers nearby, running in a zerg, you go against large numbers of densely packed trash mobs or a large hitbox boss. 

[Papaj.9035]

What everyone else said - DON'T DO IT. You'll only bring yourself more pain and want to ponder life's existence more than you already do because you're playing Elementalist. As a reference point - I ran Soldier stat Staff in a Water/Earth/Arcane before Tempest (then it became Celestial Water/Arcane/Tempest) cause I mostly did WvW and it was an incredible support build where you couldn't die and could easily stall out 3 people in full Zerker builds (it took minutes to 1v1 people, especially high HP classes and builds - but you eventually whittled them away) .

Having recently ran through 10 years of content in like 4 months (took hiatus from 2013 to 2024) I realized about halfway through Elona that something was off. I wasn't sure if it was power creep in the elite specializations/weapons in other classes and I just hadn't gotten that far yet to unlock my own (it's partially true), or if full Zerker/condi builds were still the thing for open world and the new specs/weapons were just vastly outshining my capability. Either way, I found no trouble soloing things never really felt threatened and near death by anything whereas others would eat one attack and go down...things just took a long time to kill and sometimes the events and bonus story achievements with timers I would fail because of damage output.

Then I got BlishHUD and ArcDPS and did world boss trains and realized my suspicions were in fact correct, I was essentially no better than an AFK Zerker build guy with #1 on autocast beyond the fact that I could eat mechanics and not die even though I was cranking out APM (as fast as staff lets you do that...which isn't fast at all) and attunement swapping, setting fields up left and right, etc. And even looking at ArcDPS function for boon uptime and cleanses I realized that well above average, I still wasn't the best of the classes and specs. So there I sat grinding painstakingly through the game and dealing with the dumb kitten the solo life of WvW brings you (getting absolutely gobsmacked and a freight train ran over me by any roaming build Reaper/Harbinger/Deadeye/Soulbeast/Grenade kit Holo or Mechanist  even though I never got 1v1'd by anybody 11+ years ago) in order to unlock stuff without doing the story so I could get through the story faster.

It was a slow realization and I really had a hard time coming to terms with it because I got Bifrost as my first legendary in 2012 solely because I loved how Elementalist and Staff played.

[Sifu.9745]

I play full Celestial Staff Tempest occasionally when i want to have pure fun and i am doing great in open world.  Survivability is just awesome with the dmg being for roughly 5% to 10% lower than Scepter/Warhorn Celestial Tempest or Celestial Sword Weaver. Not a big deal. You don't play Staff Ele in open world for the dmg part anyway (regular mobs still die quite fast). You can solo toughest champions (all those that can be soloed)  with Glyph of Elementals (summon Earth Elemental for tanking champions) and Glyph of lesser Elementals (summon both: Fire and Water elementals). If you need healing Water attunement is your life saver + group support. Just slightly harder to play than Mirage double Staff Viper or Celestial, which is probably the easiest spec in the game for soloing champs. It takes a while to bring some though champions down but in return you can afford to make some small mistakes.

Staff Weaver is not that good: dmg is lower than Staff Tempest (at least in my hands), survivability is lower + healing and group support is a bit more complicated.

So celestial staff Tempest (Fire, Earth, Tempest) is perfect for open world IF you are manage to keep at least 50% crit chance, otherwise you waist your Power and Ferocity stats. That can be easily achieved with Signet of Fire + Superior Sigil of Accuracy. Take Runes with both Condi and Power instead of pure conndi and condi duration, such as Superior Rune of the Adventurer or something like that. Stay in Fire Attunement most of the time for the dmg part + #2 Earth (Eruption) is also great dmg with Overload Earth. Switch to Air only for Overload Air, if needed, but in most cases you can completely avoid Air. If low on health use Water spells. Because of Celestial gear your healing is quite noticeable.

Anyway Staf Tempest with Celestial gear works just fine for me in open world. Power Staff with Marauder gear might also work somehow: higher dmg, way lower survivability and not that fun.

Edited June 2 by Sifu.9745

[rwknoll.7824]

I have been running celestial staff Tempest in open world and agree that it has been fun for me. There is a huge difference when even one other person is around to draw aggro so I can focus on my rotation, but I like being able to switch rapidly to support and throw out meaningful healing with just a few button presses before flipping back to DPS. Staff has some great ranged CC options as well, which I enjoy using, and that helps me feel a lot more effective. 

Edited June 2 by rwknoll.7824

[Sweetbread.3678]

Staff works well with Celestial for open world on any espec, and you can take it into group pve content as a Tempest heal/support. Tempest is obviously going to be easier, but staff Weaver is actually really decent and a lot of fun once you get used to it. Here's what I usually run for open world when staffing (also works for chill Fractals and it was surprisingly not terrible for PvP before I completely lost all hope for the mode):

Fire/Arcane/Weaver - Hybrid w/ Evasive Arcana
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

Playstyle: Constant dodge rolling with Evasive Arcana and using Unravel to setup multiple blast finishers in either Fire or Water fields.
Pros: Good for open world metas, small group, and solo content. It's really versatile and swaps between group healing and aoe dps as needed. Great AoE damage/healing. Tons of might generation. Decent CC. Lotsa iframes(dodges/evades). Amazing kiting ability. Not as complicated as it seems.
Cons: High APM. Dependent on Unravel utility. Melee range for max dps. Forced movement from dodging/Blazing Retreat. Some light cooldown management on Earth/Water 2s and Unravel.

Staff Weaver's 4 second attunement feels really clunky on it's own, but if you use Unravel, it's actually really fluid. The basic combo is using Unravel to set up double blast finishers with:
Earth 2 > Water Swap > Water 2
and then following up with either:
Damage/Might: Water/Earth 3 > Unravel > Fire Swap > Fire 2 
Group Healing/Rezing: Unravel > Water 3

On top of that you can use Evasive Arcana to easily set up Blazing Retreat for dps or more blast finishers to use on might generation or aoe burst healing.

For dps, use Fire 3, and then dodge roll forward through the enemy to proc Evasive Arcana and position you behind the mob, and then immediately use Blazing Retreat (Fire 4) to setup it's long duration burning/fire field on the enemy, Earth Swap, and then dodge roll forward again to use it's blast finisher while reposition back into melee range (you can swap elements during the roll and it'll still switch the triggered Evasive Arcana effect used at the end), use Primordial Stance, and either Meteor Shower if the enemy has a huge hitbox, or Earth 2 > Earth/Fire 3 > Earth 3 > Earth 3 (transmute blast finisher) > Earth 5, and then repeat the double blast finisher w/ Unravel loop.

For Healing (from Water/Water attunement) you can get another 4 blast finisher aoe heal burst by doing Water 2 > Water 5 > Earth Swap > Earth 2 > Dodge roll > Earth Swap > Earth 3 > Earth 3 (transmute), and you'll be set up to do the double blast finisher Unravel loop again.

It's really not super complicated. The main thing is pacing yourself so that you don't run out of Unravel charges and making sure to only use it in Water so that you can keep Vigor up for Evasive Arcana procs.

Relics:
- of the Fractal: The go-to condi dps relic for Eles.
- Karakosa: Tons of blast finishers = tons of aoe healing.
- Fireworks: Staff has a lot of long cooldowns to trigger this with. Strike damage focused though, which doesn't work great for a Cele build like this (also Staff strike damage means a lot of self-rooting for Meteor Shower).
- Isgarren: If you're confident you can consistently evade attacks, this is the best dps relic in the game. It stacks duration, so if you evade a duration aoe multiple times, it'll count each evade. Hard to keep up though and mostly not worth it outside of pvp imo.
- Mirage: Another decent condi dodge relic that mostly is suited for pvp.
- Daredevil: Another dodge relic suited for pvp. This one's interesting though since it lets you gear entirely for ferocity without wasting any stats on crit chance/precision (stacks with intelligence sigils too).

Variants:
- Arcane Brilliance vs. Signet of Restoration: SoR is a pretty good all rounder, but it loses a lot of effectiveness if you're using Meteor Shower on cooldown. Arcane Brilliance is another button to press and requires melee range (which you should be in anyway), but also gives another blast finisher, which adds to your Might upkeep and aoe Healing potential.
- Arcane Resurrection vs. Elemental Lockdown: Arcane Resurrection is great for mass rezing in group content. The % revive applies to the staff's Geyser (Water 3) as well so you can layer two at once and get either 56% or 70% (can't remember) of a full revive off just from those. Elemental Lockdown is good for soloing as it lets you keep Fury up if CCing while in Air or Protection if using Pile Driver (Air/Earth 3) while in Earth.
- Lightning Flash vs. Armor of Earth vs. Arcane Shield: Lightning Flash can be used to reposition during the Meteor Shower channel or to get back into range after movement shenanigans, but if you prefer the utility of a stun break you can use Armor of Earth or Arcane Shield to protect the channel on Meteor as well.
- Primordial Stance + Weave Self vs. Glyph of Lesser Elementals + Glyph of Elementals: Primordial Stance + Weave Self is definitely higher dps and my pick, but it also requires melee range and to use a Weave Self rotation (it's pretty easy, just activate Weave Self in Air, then immediately swap to Fire, rotate between that and Earth until the buff is about to run out, then swap to Water to "reset" it, bonus style points if you activate it's final Tailored Victory aoe cc and then Lightning Flash yourself into a mob of enemies during the cast), Elementals are easier (Fire for dps, Water for heal support/cc, or use the elite Earth for an extra blast finisher), but less dps, clutter your screen, and add to the button mashing.

Fire/Earth/Weaver - Hybrid with condi cleanse spam (after next balance patch)
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

This won't be a thing until next patch, but with the Diamond Skin rework (blast finishers cleanse a condition from you/allies around you), it'll be a decent condi/hybrid dps + group support option I think. Basically the same as the build above, but it gets to ignore all of the dodge rolling, while pulsing out 20+ aoe cleanses a minute. Probably higher dps too, since it more or less is the standard Ele condi dps trait setup, just without having to give up all of it's utilities for boring kitten signets.

This ended up being a way longer writeup than I was intending lol.