The Staff Tempest is an incredibly versatile healer role in Guild Wars 2, providing support, healing, and survivability that can be tailored to any situation. This guide will go over the gear, traits, and skills needed to make the most of this build in both PvE and PvP group content.
Gear:
The most important stats for a Staff Tempest healer are Healing Power, Concentration, and Toughness. The best gear for this role is Minstrel gear, which provides all three of these stats. However, if you don't want to be too tanky in raids, you can mix in some Harrier's gear, which provides more support but less survivability.
If you're looking for more damage potential for solo situations, then go for Celestial stats, which will give you enough support in groups but also allow you to do some damage when alone. If you can't afford these, Magi stats will suffice until you can get the others.
For runes and sigils, the best healing rune is the Monk rune. If you can't get them from dungeons, then Dwayne Arunes are the next best thing. For sigils, put a Transfer in sigil to improve healing and a Concentration sigil for more buffs.
Traits:
Water is mandatory for any support build, as most support abilities are tied to the water's attunement. Arcane gives a wide variety of boons like swiftness and protection and has the Arcane Resurrection trait which provides a spell effect on dodge and pulses revival.
Evasive Arcana gives a spell effect on dodge when you're in the water attunement, and when you're in the earth attunement it provides a combo finisher blast. Aura Sharing is not necessary because all of your spells are already AoE, so you can take the extra healing from Soothing Mist or the extra cleanse from Cleansing Water.
For Tempest Grandmaster traits, if you're in a squad with multiple healers per group, then you can go for the extra alacrity, but if you're the sole healer, you may want more healing from auras. Take Stop Drop and Roll, because even though you have plenty of cleansing, burning and chill are some of the nastiest conditions, so making sure they're cleansed as soon as possible helps. Then take the Cleansing Water trait, because most of the auras you create will already share with allies, so you don't need powerful auras.
Skills and Combos:
To heal and buff your party in PvE content, start out by overloading fire to give might and alacrity to your party. Once you're finished overloading fire, swap to earth to give protection from the Arcane trait line. Cast Earth 3 and dodge in your fire field, and you can transmute that aura to get a blast finisher, as well as your Evasive Arcana. This will give you two blasts in your fire field to give you more might.
While you wait for your Overload Earth to come off cooldown, you can use your Heal skill or Aftershock, which will give Magnetic Aura, and you can transmute that for stability to your allies. Then cast the Earth Overload. Once that finishes, you can cast your Earth 2, which will cause a delayed attack which will be a blast finisher.
Then swap to Water and before the blast finisher finishes, you can cast the Water 4 for Frozen Ground, which will create an Ice Field and give Frost Aura to allies in the area. Auras give regeneration and vigor, and the Frost aura gives damage reduction. But Earth 2 is still there, which will blast the Ice Field and create another Frost aura.
From here, you can cast the Water 5 Healing Rain to create a large Water Field, which will cleanse and heal allies, and blast that Water Field with your Water 2 to heal even more. If allies really need extra healing, you can put the Water 3 on top of them. The Geyser with the Arcane Resurrection trait will pulse revival to allies, and if you interact to revive them, you'll create a second geyser which will revive them very quickly.
After you've finished overloading Water attunement for alacrity, you've essentially run through your main rotation and can start out in Fire again and give might with the Fire Overload.
Utility Skills:
The real job of a Staff Tempest is to be able to react to a situation while maintaining a somewhat fluid rotation between the elements. Obviously, you can stay in Water for longer if you need more healing, but you have to leave eventually and then you have to wait before you're able to go back in. This is when you want to use your utility skills to make up for that.
You can give Super Speed to allies with the Air 1 skill and that can help them move more quickly for mechanics. The Air 3 is a CC, and so is the Air 5. If the enemy has a big enough hitbox and you place the edge of the Static Field on them, the Eye of the Storm shout gives stability and break stuns in PvE, and Rebound will prevent fatal damage. So it's great to use when your team is under heavy pressure or right before a mechanic that can one-shot your squad. Player 4 is a backward evade which can help you get out of trouble or reunite with your team so that you can heal them, but you don't really need to be on top of your allies to do so.
The Water 1 skill can target allies and heal them from range, as well as any of your other Water skills. However, you can't just save your Water attunement until people are in danger, because you still need to rotate through your attunements to give alacrity, other boons, and minor healing.
PVP
You should focus on using your overloads, auras, and finishers to heal and protect your team in pvp. Use your frozen ground to slow down enemies, your earth overload to protect allies, your air overload to cleave targets, and your water overload to heal and cleanse. Use mist form to stay safe and dodge to heal allies.
World Versus World
In World Versus World, use your combo fields and finishers to provide healing and protection, and use your glyph to revive allies. When you need to rotate, remember to look at the map and decide where the team needs the most support. Lastly, always try to keep as many allies alive as possible and avoid over-committing to fights to reduce the volatility of the map.
Conclusion:
The Staff Tempest is an incredibly engaging healer role, as it requires you to react to the situation immediately and won't wait for you to be ready to heal. With the right gear, traits, and skills, you can make the most of this build and provide the support, healing, and survivability your team needs to secure victory.
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