Guild Wars 2

They are horrendously underpowered. Especially the scepter.

It feels like whenever I can’t melee with a lightning hammer because I can get one/two shot with my 13k hp, my only option for actual damage is spamming fireball on the staff.

Every other single autoattack the ele has is pretty terrible. Lightning Whip might seem good to eles but I assure you having played warriors and thieves and guardians that lightning whip hits like wet noodles.

Essentially, in any PuG where I’m forced to range or high fractal encounter where people aren’t mitigating correctly boss hits for me, I do pitiful damage while waiting for an opportunity to be able to use my lightning hammer.

I’d like to use my weapons for once instead of having to slot a utility for a viable damage dealing weaponskill.

Also, buff base HP to 15k please. 13k hp is absurdly inadequate when you can’t rely on blind spam from a thief.

In fact, such low base HP is the primary reason why signet of restoration often goes unused, because taking a single hit means immediate danger of death with little time for building the heal sustain up with signet procs. The healing signet works for warriors because they have enough of a large HP pool to absorb burst and heal back up.

Its not 13k. Its 10805 same as thief has. Get your facts right. If you want to rely on thiefs blind spam, I suggest you taking one to your group. Blinds wont save you from boss hits, what anet has to change so everyone and their grandma would want to have thief in group for every pve encounter.

Karolis.4261:

Its not 13k. Its 10805 same as thief has. Get your facts right. If you want to rely on thiefs blind spam, I suggest you taking one to your group. Blinds wont save you from boss hits, what anet has to change so everyone and their grandma would want to have thief in group for every pve encounter.

13k HP with the mandatory points in water line for the 20% extra damage on vulnerable targets and 10% extra damage when above 90% health, alongside runes of divinity/traveler since scholar runes are not as great in low hp classes.

And blinds do save you from some bosses’ attacks. Against the Archdiviner several of his attacks can miss.

From a pvp perspective

Staff:
Fire #1 – Good damage but misses at anything +900 too much
Water #1 – Obviously horrible at damage and extremely hard to heal teammates with also misses just like fireball
Air #1 – Reliably hits and slightly above average damage, good auto attack
Earth #1 – Pretty sure it misses even more often than water and fire

Scepter:
Fire #1 – Reliably hits, good damage for condi or if you have might stacks, mediocre damage otherwise
Water #1 – Mediocre damage if you can hit all 3 attacks consistently, good luck with that though. I’ve been near melee range of an opponent with swiftness and was missing almost all swings.
Air #1 – Extremely reliable and average damage auto attack, paired with Air #2
makes this the only reliable source of consistent damage a scepter ele has, which is why fresh air is so necessary for pvp with scepter.
Earth #1 – Misses a lot but not as often as Water #1, often not very worth it to cast as a power spec

Dagger:
Fire #1 – Good damage
Water #1 – Misses too often, vulnerability isn’t good enough to make up for its mediocre damage
Air #1 – Very good damage
Earth #1 – Hits reliably and average damage

Dagger also has abilities like Earth #2, Water #2, and Fire #2, which are all just like auto attacks with side benefits. This makes the dagger weapon set flow really well because it always has consistent damage through out all of its attunements. Scepter and Staff do not have this ability to the point that healing signets on warriors often heal for more than you do damage if you go anything but glass/fresh air.

No people. Buffing auto attacks is never a good idea because it is skill-less. Spamming 1 is really terrible. Necro staff is an example of a balanced weapon. The auto attack is horrendus (as all should be) and yet the 2-5 skills are useful. But you can get stuck in the weapon and get owned because the auto attack is bad. This is how all weapons should be. Asking for auto attack buffs is like asking for easy mode and it is stupid. Scepter on necro is an example of easy mode.

They have done nothing but buff auto attacks and it is a major problem with this game. Also auto attacks become stronger as a result of passives. Dhuumfire = auto attack. Altruistic healing = auto attack. Incediary ammo = auto attack. Sun spirit = auto attack. Fire sigil = auto attack.

It is ludicros to keep adding power to spamming 111111. Good game designers should be able to understand that making 1111111 effective (with no skill cd and no resources expended) is really not engaging game design.

Please actually read what I wrote above and try to change your views – everyone in this thread or who will post in this thread. The more you all lobby for easy mode and zero risk/ high reward specs (nothing is more zero risk than auto attack) then the more you kill this game. Which has already been put on life support by mindless buffs to passives (which effectively buffs auto attacks) and auto attacks themselves.

Come on. Please consider things before you all post. This is getting ridiculous.

Elementalist auto-attacks are deliberately underpowered. That is because it is the #2 skills that are the elementalist’s bread and butter. Most of them do a good amount of damage, and they all have a cooldown of 5-6 seconds. Some are situational, however, and in other cases it is the #3 skill that makes a weapon truly worthwhile (although the #3 skill is on a slightly longer cooldown).

So if you believe that elementalist auto-attacks are weak, go use the other skills. And swap attunements if too many of your non-auto-attack skills are on cooldown.

Phantaram.1265:

Dagger:
Fire #1 – Good damage
Water #1 – Misses too often, vulnerability isn’t good enough to make up for its mediocre damage
Air #1 – Very good damage
Earth #1 – Hits reliably and average damage

I use Dagger.
Fire is very average damage at best
Water – Misses to much and the Vul is rather Meh.
Air – Best Dagger Auto attack we have
Earth – Terrible. Everything else is Multitarget and this one isnt? Longer cast time as well and just very clunky like they designed the rest and then just gave up.

Fire – Think a 1 second burn would be a reasonable addition
Water – Maybe add Torment? Make it so that you can have more than 2 blades up at a time as well
Air – Fine the way it is really
Earth – Turn it into Multi-target and then change its animation and cast time, The scepter Earth Auto is great, maybe something like that but of course at a shorter range.

They shouldnt buff autoattacks, infact i think autoattacks need to be nerfed in a lot of weapons for a lot of professions.

They should buff the skills on elementalist weapons, certainly the ones that deserve it. Why for example is Flame Grab on a 40 or so second cooldown? Thats absurd! I can understand long cooldowns on things like Static Field, powerful Aoe CC/area denial.

But on a, fairly hard to hit, pure damage attack that requires pre-existing conditions to deal good damage? Absolute nonsense.

God, it’s obvious a lot of these comments are either from pvp players, or from people who are incompetent in high end pve and just zerg world events with suboptimal builds.

I know that the skill rotation of attunement swapping works somewhat in pvp, because the HP pools are small enough for the burst of chained skills to seem significant.

But in fractals and dungeons, where mobs don’t die to a couple of attunement swaps, the obvious issue of cooldowns on skills while attunement swapping becomes obvious.

For better or worse, autoattacks are the core of sustained damage. It’s why the pve ele meta is the lightning hammer, which is the only weapon besides fiery greatsword that can sustain autoattacks competitive to the thief and warrior.

You CANNOT make up the difference of weak autoattacks by buffing active skills. I think the math should be pretty obvious to people. In order to make up for the glaring weakness of ele autoattacks compared to warrior axe atuoattack chain and thief dagger autoattack chain, ele cooldown skills would have to be buffed to a degree that would make their burst broken in pvp.

And so the autoattacks need to be buffed if ele is to have competitive, LONG TERM SUSTAINED DAMAGE in pve that happens outside conjured weapon utilties.

And no, they are not going to nerf thief and warrior autoattacks. We’ve had warriors at what they are for about 1.5+ years, if their damage and thief damage hasn’t been reduced, don’t expect it to happen now.

Scepter autoattacks are particularly weak. 4-5k autotargeted channel may seem good to pvp’ers from the air attunement because HP pools are limited to usually no more than 23k at the top end, but when you consder that 4-5k is done upon 3 seconds, when a greatsword autoattack (which isn’t even the strongest melee weapon for either guardian or warrior) can do instant crits for 3-3.5k, Arc Lightning actually turns out to be pretty terrible damage. Even with lightning strike weaved in every few seconds.

P.S. I don’t want to dismiss the pvp perspective at all, I’m just reminding people to keep the pve perspective in mind.

To Phantaram I’d say that anything that isn’t a rifle/gun misses pretty miserably at 900+. On my ranger with the longbow any target running in a curve beyond about 700 range, my longbow autoattack will miss, easily.

It’s just an issue with how they design projectiles. And water attunement obviously suffers from the flawed design decision that because it has heals, it ought to do negligible damage, but that just places water attunement in a ghetto where you only swap to it for the heals and want to swap out as soon as possible to keep pressure up, and it devalues any traits in the water line that seek to improve water spells offensively.

It’s ironic how the 20% damage to vulnerable targets in water attunement completely developed to be abused with presetting burst or using a lightning hammer instead of it being a trait allowing water spells to do meaningful damage.

Lordrosicky.5813:

No people. Buffing auto attacks is never a good idea because it is skill-less. Spamming 1 is really terrible. Necro staff is an example of a balanced weapon. The auto attack is horrendus (as all should be) and yet the 2-5 skills are useful. But you can get stuck in the weapon and get owned because the auto attack is bad. This is how all weapons should be. Asking for auto attack buffs is like asking for easy mode and it is stupid. Scepter on necro is an example of easy mode.

They have done nothing but buff auto attacks and it is a major problem with this game. Also auto attacks become stronger as a result of passives. Dhuumfire = auto attack. Altruistic healing = auto attack. Incediary ammo = auto attack. Sun spirit = auto attack. Fire sigil = auto attack.

It is ludicros to keep adding power to spamming 111111. Good game designers should be able to understand that making 1111111 effective (with no skill cd and no resources expended) is really not engaging game design.

Please actually read what I wrote above and try to change your views – everyone in this thread or who will post in this thread. The more you all lobby for easy mode and zero risk/ high reward specs (nothing is more zero risk than auto attack) then the more you kill this game. Which has already been put on life support by mindless buffs to passives (which effectively buffs auto attacks) and auto attacks themselves.

Come on. Please consider things before you all post. This is getting ridiculous.

This is the common mantra, even from Anet, but it’s flat-out wrong. Yeah, there’s no need to make autoattacks so powerful that you don’t need to use anything else. That isn’t what anyone is arguing.

The problem is whenever autoattacks are all over the place in terms of effectiveness. Some weapons have very strong autoattacks while others have very horrendous ones. What’s actually ridiculous is thinking that you can properly balance weapons through traits and cooldown skills while leaving gigantic gaps in the #1 skills in place.

Particularly in PvE, the autoattack establishes the baseline for sustained DPS, which is then modified based on cooldown skill usage. Weapons with very bad autoattacks will always underperform in long and/or passive fights (most PvE fights) while weapons with very strong autoattacks outperform them with ease in most situations. There is nothing you can do short of making all the cooldown skills horrendously OP to fix that, and that would be an absurdly stupid design paradigm. This, in turn, means that ignoring autoattacks altogether when balancing weapons is incredibly, laughably inept because they are the primary determinant of relative weapon balance in any encounter that isn’t both active and over quickly. It’s like trying to fine-tune a badly misaligned telescope without bothering with coarse adjustments first.

Anyone arguing that Ele autoattacks (along with many other ranged autos across weapons & professions) are fine as-is is simply being myopic and isn’t getting big picture balance concerns.

Zenith.7301:

God, it’s obvious a lot of these comments are either from pvp players, or from people who are incompetent in high end pve and just zerg world events with suboptimal builds.

I know that the skill rotation of attunement swapping works somewhat in pvp, because the HP pools are small enough for the burst of chained skills to seem significant.

But in fractals and dungeons, where mobs don’t die to a couple of attunement swaps, the obvious issue of cooldowns on skills while attunement swapping becomes obvious.

For better or worse, autoattacks are the core of sustained damage. It’s why the pve ele meta is the lightning hammer, which is the only weapon besides fiery greatsword that can sustain autoattacks competitive to the thief and warrior.

You CANNOT make up the difference of weak autoattacks by buffing active skills. I think the math should be pretty obvious to people. In order to make up for the glaring weakness of ele autoattacks compared to warrior axe atuoattack chain and thief dagger autoattack chain, ele cooldown skills would have to be buffed to a degree that would make their burst broken in pvp.

And so the autoattacks need to be buffed if ele is to have competitive, LONG TERM SUSTAINED DAMAGE in pve that happens outside conjured weapon utilties.

And no, they are not going to nerf thief and warrior autoattacks. We’ve had warriors at what they are for about 1.5+ years, if their damage and thief damage hasn’t been reduced, don’t expect it to happen now.

Scepter autoattacks are particularly weak. 4-5k autotargeted channel may seem good to pvp’ers from the air attunement because HP pools are limited to usually no more than 23k at the top end, but when you consder that 4-5k is done upon 3 seconds, when a greatsword autoattack (which isn’t even the strongest melee weapon for either guardian or warrior) can do instant crits for 3-3.5k, Arc Lightning actually turns out to be pretty terrible damage. Even with lightning strike weaved in every few seconds.

P.S. I don’t want to dismiss the pvp perspective at all, I’m just reminding people to keep the pve perspective in mind.

To Phantaram I’d say that anything that isn’t a rifle/gun misses pretty miserably at 900+. On my ranger with the longbow any target running in a curve beyond about 700 range, my longbow autoattack will miss, easily.

It’s just an issue with how they design projectiles. And water attunement obviously suffers from the flawed design decision that because it has heals, it ought to do negligible damage, but that just places water attunement in a ghetto where you only swap to it for the heals and want to swap out as soon as possible to keep pressure up, and it devalues any traits in the water line that seek to improve water spells offensively.

It’s ironic how the 20% damage to vulnerable targets in water attunement completely developed to be abused with presetting burst or using a lightning hammer instead of it being a trait allowing water spells to do meaningful damage.

This is precisely accurate, and why anybody arguing that the #1 skills are fine because ‘lolspam’ is egregiously misguided in their thinking. Apparently, this applies to the entirety of Anet’s balance team also.

I’m trusting someone in this thread to have already made the point that making pressing a single button over and over into an effective strategy that can kill an opponent is the stupidest idea in any game format ever.

Swagg.9236:

I’m trusting someone in this thread to have already made the point that making pressing a single button over and over into an effective strategy that can kill an opponent is the stupidest idea in any game format ever.

Yeah, and it was promptly debunked by people who can see the bigger picture of how having poorly tuned autoattacks ruins any semblance of relative balance.

Einlanzer.1627:

Swagg.9236:

I’m trusting someone in this thread to have already made the point that making pressing a single button over and over into an effective strategy that can kill an opponent is the stupidest idea in any game format ever.

Yeah, someone already tried to make that point and failed, considering it’s a strawman argument resulting from misguided views on relative balance.

See the above conversations.

Enjoy your Runescape Wars 2, then.

Swagg.9236:

Einlanzer.1627:

Swagg.9236:

I’m trusting someone in this thread to have already made the point that making pressing a single button over and over into an effective strategy that can kill an opponent is the stupidest idea in any game format ever.

Yeah, someone already tried to make that point and failed, considering it’s a strawman argument resulting from misguided views on relative balance.

See the above conversations.

Enjoy your Runescape Wars 2, then.

Let me try explaining this again. Sustained DPS is primarily derived from the autoattack. Weapons that have poorly tuned #1 skills are also going to have poor sustained DPS, which is a problem in PvE. The only possible alternative is making all the cooldown skills OP in an attempt to compensate, which creates a lot more problems than it solves.

In short- it’s not about making #1 skills overly strong, it’s about balancing them relative to one another so that there aren’t egregious efficacy gaps between weapons/professions. Ignoring the disproportionate role of autoattacks in relative balance is stupid on about 100 different levels.

Einlanzer.1627:

Let me try explaining this again. Sustained DPS is primarily derived from the autoattack. Weapons that have poorly tuned #1 skills are also going to have poor sustained DPS, which is a problem in PvE.

In short- it’s not about making #1 skills overly strong, it’s about balancing them relative to one another so that there aren’t egregious efficacy gaps between weapons/professions. Ignoring the disproportionate role of autoattacks in relative balance is stupid on about 100 different levels.

• Buffing auto-attacks makes spamming 1 more effective as a means to kill targets.
• When spamming 1 becomes more effective, it simultaneously hurts the effectiveness of weapon skills that are balanced around cool-downs, timing and potentially even aim.
• Hurting the effectiveness of 2-5 skills, bottlenecks the effectiveness of entire weapon-sets. Why would anyone press any button other than 1 if it’s so effective?
• Ultimately, buffing 1 invites players to do nothing but press 1.
• When players win by pressing 1, we end up with something looking very similar to Runescape.

Auto-attacks could have easily been set-up skills instead of primary sources of damage. Any s/d elementalist worth his salt will tell you that [Flamestrike] is valuable as a means to fuel a full-power [Fire Grab]. However, seeing this sort of purpose for auto-attacks requires creativity, so I can understand why there would be a lot of threads like this on the game’s official forums as well as people defending them.

And as an end note: balancing around PvE is a terrible idea in GW2 because big target PvE enemies are brain-dead HP-sponges with little to no mobility, few unique skills, but still manage to three/one-shot players in many situations. PvE-centric balancing has much to do with standing as still as possible and spamming 1 in addition to a few other key skills. It’s not an engaging play-style.

Swagg.9236:

Einlanzer.1627:

Let me try explaining this again. Sustained DPS is primarily derived from the autoattack. Weapons that have poorly tuned #1 skills are also going to have poor sustained DPS, which is a problem in PvE.

In short- it’s not about making #1 skills overly strong, it’s about balancing them relative to one another so that there aren’t egregious efficacy gaps between weapons/professions. Ignoring the disproportionate role of autoattacks in relative balance is stupid on about 100 different levels.

• Buffing auto-attacks makes spamming 1 more effective as a means to kill targets.
• When spamming 1 becomes more effective, it simultaneously hurts the effectiveness of weapon skills that are balanced around cool-downs, timing and potentially even aim.
• Hurting the effectiveness of 2-5 skills, bottlenecks the effectiveness of entire weapon-sets. Why would anyone press any button other than 1 if it’s so effective?
• Ultimately, buffing 1 invites players to do nothing but press 1.
• When players win by pressing 1, we end up with something looking very similar to Runescape.

Auto-attacks could have easily been set-up skills instead of primary sources of damage. Any s/d elementalist worth his salt will tell you that [Flamestrike] is valuable as a means to fuel a full-power [Fire Grab]. However, seeing this sort of purpose for auto-attacks requires creativity, so I can understand why there would be a lot of threads like this on the game’s official forums as well as people defending them.

And as an end note: balancing around PvE is a terrible idea in GW2 because big target PvE enemies are brain-dead HP-sponges with little to no mobility, few unique skills, but still manage to three/one-shot players in many situations. PvE-centric balancing has much to do with standing as still as possible and spamming 1 in addition to a few other key skills. It’s not an engaging play-style.

Again, you’re missing the point. The premise is not that all #1 skills need to be really strong, it’s that all #1 skills need to be balanced relative to one another. Part of the reason the Elementalist under-performs is that the only good sustained DPS weapon they have is Lightning Hammer, due to the fact that all of their standard weapons have poorly tuned #1 skills. Attunement dancing ends up being a requirement rather than a versatility feature just so you can maintain basic damage.

Not only are your defenses somewhat half-baked, but you even overtly admitted to not considering PvE balance after implying that people arguing for buffs to egregiously weak autoattacks are doing so because they’re too dumb to get it, which is laughable, especially considering that balancing autoattacks wouldn’t hurt PvP at all while leaving them unbalanced hurts PvE badly. This admission discredits your entire argument.

Yeah, disregard the troll he clearly doesn’t care about PvE in this game and thinks the only format they should cater to is his so much superior condi spam/cc spam spvp.

No format deserves to be left unbalanced. It should have worked like GW1 all along with split skills.

Einlanzer.1627:

Again, you’re missing the point. The premise is not that all #1 skills need to be really strong, it’s that all #1 skills need to be balanced relative to one another.

I can agree with that. Unfortunately, with the fact that GW2 auto-attacks are the actual 1 skills on the weapon skill bar makes this difficult.

The wiser decision that should have been made literally years ago would have been to simply make all weapons have basic, low-damage auto-attacks and reserve the 1 slot for an actual, player-activated skill that is balanced with a cool-down.

However, as it stands, the entire system is goofed.

The auto-attack (more like auto-skill, as you can technically slap it on any non-GT skill on your bar) is a late addition, and pretty much a admission that they overloaded the UI by actioning up a traditional MMORPG.

GW2 should have gone the route of Tera or Neverwinter. permanent mouselook, one skill on left mouse button, one skill on right, a few more clustered around wasd for easy reach during a hectic fight.

Instead they did one “better” than SWTOR, where even the basic attack is a pr press skill to be dropped onto a bar. Note however that SWTOR do not have a dodge mechanic. Instead they focus on interrupting the opponent and maybe moving out of AOEs by way of normal movement.

I partially accept the argument that all weapons’ #1 skills should be balanced with each other.

However, I would go one further: All sets of weapon skills should be balanced with each other. This means that elementalist MH dagger should be balanced with elementalist scepter and the first 3 skills of warrior greatsword, etc.

This means that weapons with very good #1 skills should have relatively poorer #2-5 skills (either in terms of cooldown or damage values), while weapons with poorer #1 skills should have relatively better #2-5 skills (either in terms of cooldown or damage values).
This creates interesting trade-offs, as certain weapons are better for short-term damage bursts, while others would be better for sustained damage.

Addtionally, main-hand and off-hand weapons should be slightly less powerful than two-handed (5-skill) weapons, because of the extra flexibility to mix-and-match weapon skills allow.

Finally, other profession mechanics should weigh in as well. A few examples:
- A profession that has above-average utility skills should probably have slightly weaker weapon skills.
- The elementalist’s attunements have twice the number of weapon skills available during combat as most other professions with a weapon swap. For this reason, the weapon skills can be made slightly weaker.
- However, the elementalist player has less freedom to choose which weapon skills he has access to based on weapon choice. It’s an “all or nothing” package deal. For this reason, the weapon skills can be made slightly stronger.
- Warriors and guardians have better armor than elementalists and necromancers, so this could be compensated by slightly weaker weapon skills.
- Guardians and elementalists have less health than warriors and necromancers, so this could be compensated by slightly stronger weapon skills.
- Etcetera.

For these reasons, I believe the argument that only auto-attack skills should be compared and made equal is short-sighted. The thought behind it is a good one, but YOU need to see the bigger picture.

P.S. I’m not saying that all skills are perfectly balanced. Just that the proposed solution to the perceived problem is too simple, and that balancing takes far more effort than just improving elementalist auto-attack skills. Maybe it’s warranted, but maybe not. My main is an elementalist, and I can’t tell.

Not really zenith, you just buff the 2-5 skills that are hard to hit with in pvp, like eruption and icespike / shatterstone.

Every auto should be reduced, along with ridiculously long pve fights.

emikochan.8504:

Not really zenith, you just buff the 2-5 skills that are hard to hit with in pvp, like eruption and icespike / shatterstone.

Every auto should be reduced, along with ridiculously long pve fights.

LONG?!!!!!!!

You can’t be serious. Bosses already die in 3 minutes or less to a melee train.

It is likely due to a weak build that you are hitting for crap damage on auto attack. I am constantly dealing over 1k on fire and lightening auto attacks with no might at all. I do not remember off hand what kind of numbers I am hitting for but I swear I see some 2.5 to 3k hits. I cannot remember the range for damage that water and earth do because I don’t use those auto attacks very often, but I believe they are close to 1k. I am not even full zerker and have 16.5k health with 2.6k armor. Despite the damage I can do on an auto attack there are other things I would rather be doing. God help you if you get hit by skill 5 fire and 2 in water by me. I have seen those hit for up to 5k per impact.

The crazy thing is that I am not the only one hitting like that with staff.

The lack of dps on auto attacks is compensated largely by the #2 skills being more powerful. Sure, the auto attack is relatively weak. Yet you hardly ever use auto attacks unless everything else is on cooldown.

You get to use a lot more #2 skills than other professions because where they have 1 or 2 every ten seconds, you get 4.

Some professions have auto attack dps with utility on their other skills. Eles have dps and utility on their other skills, and use auto attacks while they’re waiting for them to come of cooldown.

Jesus, some people are just utterly mathematically inept. Linking the number of a single cooldown thing means nothing without context. Your #2 skill does not make up for the autoattack discrepancy, ever.

Try playing a warrior or thief before you try opening your mouth again.

What matters is over a certain period of time, how much damage can you sustain.

Let me give you a hint, my Warrior mainhand axe autoattacks start at 3.5k crits the initial weak hits, and the last 3 hits crit for over 5k. That’s with minimal to no might stacks.

Warrior and thief autoattacks also both cleave, have little to no cast time unlike a staff, and in the case of thieves they already supplement their already high autoattack sustained damage with cloak and dagger>backstab in between the chain.

If you fail to understand that your cooldown skills will never average out the majority of good sustained damage, and don’t understand why lightning hammer is so integral to ele PvE dps builds, then you are beyond any help.

This is why this game needs proper DPS meters, so people can stop talking out of their kitten .

Lordrosicky.5813:

No people. Buffing auto attacks is never a good idea because it is skill-less. Spamming 1 is really terrible. Necro staff is an example of a balanced weapon. The auto attack is horrendus (as all should be) and yet the 2-5 skills are useful. But you can get stuck in the weapon and get owned because the auto attack is bad. This is how all weapons should be. Asking for auto attack buffs is like asking for easy mode and it is stupid. Scepter on necro is an example of easy mode.

They have done nothing but buff auto attacks and it is a major problem with this game. Also auto attacks become stronger as a result of passives. Dhuumfire = auto attack. Altruistic healing = auto attack. Incediary ammo = auto attack. Sun spirit = auto attack. Fire sigil = auto attack.

It is ludicros to keep adding power to spamming 111111. Good game designers should be able to understand that making 1111111 effective (with no skill cd and no resources expended) is really not engaging game design.

Please actually read what I wrote above and try to change your views – everyone in this thread or who will post in this thread. The more you all lobby for easy mode and zero risk/ high reward specs (nothing is more zero risk than auto attack) then the more you kill this game. Which has already been put on life support by mindless buffs to passives (which effectively buffs auto attacks) and auto attacks themselves.

Come on. Please consider things before you all post. This is getting ridiculous.

I’ve stopped playing GW2, and rarely keep myself up to date.
Good to see there are still people fighting the good old cause.
When I saw the title I cringed, but I don’t believe GW2 will ever have a comeback, so I dont think it really matters.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

IThe elementalist’s attunements have twice the number of weapon skills available during combat as most other professions with a weapon swap.

with double cooldown and half effectiveness
Some of them are condition based, Others are auras, Others are direct damage…
ALL of them are pigeonholed in a range depending on the weapon

In the end you depends on few skills in most situations that are totally underperforming…because with all those downsides your 20 skills becomes 2

This is the exact nonsense that led to ele overnerf by anet and until they totally give up on the “ele has 20 skills” reasoning…ele will be forever a gimmick profession….

Lordrosicky.5813:

. Asking for auto attack buffs is like asking for easy mode and it is stupid.

Agreed.

However

Elementalist is already a very high skill profession and it could use some easy mode.

All of the attunement swapping requires you to have mad piano skills or a custom rig. That’s just to get any real use out of the class, and doesn’t count all of the spatial awareness and cooldown managing that the profession requires.

A buff to auto attacks isn’t going to change any of that, nor will it make a difference in the long term max potential of the elementalists, but it might buff poorly played elementalists enough that players stick it out with the class long enough to become good.

nekretaal.6485:

That’s just to get any real use out of the class, and doesn’t count all of the spatial awareness and cooldown managing that the profession requires. A buff to auto attacks isn’t going to change any of that (…)

I disagree here. The core problem of the ele in the current state is that base line dps requires constant attunement swapping. Most of your defensive or utility tools on the weapon set are on attunement cooldown and not available when you need them.

That would not a problem if the #1s dealt viable sustained damage. The player could decide wheter he stays in one attunement for safe dps or if he risks putting all attunements on cooldown for a burst combo. Right now eles have the choice between poor dps (auto attacking) or baseline sustained dps (attunement dancing). Burst is currently only possible by blowing Utilities as well.

While i agree that eles autoattacks are most of the time are weak, there a weapons of other professions that have even worse autoattacks. Those also would need to be buffed then.

Muchacho.2390:

While i agree that eles autoattacks are most of the time are weak, there a weapons of other professions that have even worse autoattacks. Those also would need to be buffed then.

And the problem was?

Muchacho.2390:

While i agree that eles autoattacks are most of the time are weak, there a weapons of other professions that have even worse autoattacks. Those also would need to be buffed then.

Except, they all have weapons that are strong attacks…Ele has none as it is. So at least other classes HAVE high damaging auto attacks already.

Well, at least staff eles are capable of 6k autoattacks in fire. I wouldn’t really want to buff this one at least.

It really is unreal how many people don’t get why this is an issue.

Iavra.8510:

Well, at least staff eles are capable of 6k autoattacks in fire. I wouldn’t really want to buff this one at least.

That is true. Some of them are “okay” Air Dagger Auto could do with a little tweak, Fire, Water and Earth Daggers range from “Meh” to “totally useless” Fire could do with a tweak, maybe add Burning to it. Water could have Torment maybe added to the auto? and Earth needs a redesign, the Bleeding is nice the animation and the way the skill deals damage is not so nice. Maybe make it like Scepter Earth? Throwing the dagger and it bleeds targets on way and on way back – kinda like a boomerang or how Water Auto works i guess would better say it lol

Iavra.8510:

Well, at least staff eles are capable of 6k autoattacks in fire. I wouldn’t really want to buff this one at least.

No need to buff that one, it’s in line with other ranged auto attacks. Compared to Spatial Surge, Fire Ball is a bit stronger at 600 range, but weaker at 900 range. Fireball dps-wise Long Range Shot (at 500+ range), but weaker than Long Range Shot at 1000+ range or Crossfire. The real problem are the other 3 staff auto attacks.

In skill coeff / second:

• Winds of Chaos (without cond): 0.30 / 1.35 = 0.22
• Water Blast: 0.30 / 1.35 = 0.22
• Stoning: 0.50 / 1.35 = 0.37
• Chain Lightning: 0.55 / 1.17 = 0.47
• Spatial Surge (600): 0.81 / 1.4 = 0.58
• Fireball: 0.85 / 1.4 = 0.61
• Long Range Shot (500): 0.65 / 1.0 = 0.65
• Spatial Surge (900): 0.95 / 1.4 = 0.68
• Crossfire (without bleed): 0.4 / 0.54 = 0.75
• Long Range Shot (1000): 0.90 / 1.0 = 0.90

pmnt.4067:

Iavra.8510:

Well, at least staff eles are capable of 6k autoattacks in fire. I wouldn’t really want to buff this one at least.

No need to buff that one, it’s in line with other ranged auto attacks. Compared to Spatial Surge, Fire Ball is a bit stronger at 600 range, but weaker at 900 range. Fireball dps-wise Long Range Shot (at 500+ range), but weaker than Long Range Shot at 1000+ range or Crossfire. The real problem are the other 3 staff auto attacks.

In skill coeff / second:

• Winds of Chaos (without cond): 0.30 / 1.35 = 0.22
• Water Blast: 0.30 / 1.35 = 0.22
• Stoning: 0.50 / 1.35 = 0.37
• Chain Lightning: 0.55 / 1.17 = 0.47
• Spatial Surge (600): 0.81 / 1.4 = 0.58
• Fireball: 0.85 / 1.4 = 0.61
• Long Range Shot (500): 0.65 / 1.0 = 0.65
• Spatial Surge (900): 0.95 / 1.4 = 0.68
• Crossfire (without bleed): 0.4 / 0.54 = 0.75
• Long Range Shot (1000): 0.90 / 1.0 = 0.90

Interesting. What about the ~1200 range aa of the other professions?

• Bleeding Shot (without bleed): 0.4/0.96 = 0.416
• Necrotic Grasp: 0.666/1.4 = 0.47
• Dual Shot (1000): 0.66/1.19 = 0.55
• Hip Shot (1000): 0.650/0.9 = 0.72
• Orb of Wrath: 0.666/0.8 = 0.83

Hope i didnt miss one…

Seems like necro staff aa and warrior longbow aa are also bad.

Edit: By the way, Chain Lightning has 0.65/1.17 = 0.55 for the first 2 opponents

All those numbers are from http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Main_Page

And yet bringing up ranged weapon damage is useless under a PvE context.

In PvE anyone who is competent melees, so you are failing by setting the bar at the ranged weapon line.

Also, please, Fireball doesn’t hit for 6k without might stacks and ideal conditions. I run full berk with food and at best it crits for about 4k without might stacks.

And still you guys miss the point that it’s not that great considering it’s a 4k crit OVER a 1 second activation time and its travel time.

Personally, i don’t think the game should be balanced around PvE at all. Most encounters, except high fractals and world bosses, are easy enough to be completed while half asleep and breaking your fast at the same time.

Balancing should be applied in an environment where players are playing against each other. That’s why Diablo III has no PvP system, because this way they don’t have to care about balancing.

Also, please, Fireball doesn’t hit for 6k without might stacks and ideal conditions.

Don’t know about stacks and such but just yesterday i’ve been hit by 6k+ fireballs on my 2100 armor. Sure that ele was squishy as hell and i would’ve probably killed him in seconds if we were 1v1, but we weren’t.

Karolis.4261:

Its not 13k. Its 10805 same as thief has.

Same as thief and guardian have,actually.

At least do something about main hand Dagger Auto Attack so we’d know if we’re hitting enemies in stealth.

Kyon.9735:

At least do something about main hand Dagger Auto Attack so we’d know if we’re hitting enemies in stealth.

You mean something like a chain attack?

Muchacho.2390:

Kyon.9735:

At least do something about main hand Dagger Auto Attack so we’d know if we’re hitting enemies in stealth.

You mean something like a chain attack?

Doesn’t have to be a chain attack, Elementalists don’t have chain attacks because Anet discourages passive play on Elementalists a lot. Maybe add even a small animation effect or something if you’re hitting something on Dagger Auto Attack. Of course it won’t be really needed if Anet decides to put Damage Counters on the combat log for hitting units in stealth.

Zenith.7301:

And yet bringing up ranged weapon damage is useless under a PvE context.

In PvE anyone who is competent melees, so you are failing by setting the bar at the ranged weapon line.

Also, please, Fireball doesn’t hit for 6k without might stacks and ideal conditions. I run full berk with food and at best it crits for about 4k without might stacks.

And still you guys miss the point that it’s not that great considering it’s a 4k crit OVER a 1 second activation time and its travel time.

I personally think you need to learn to play ele… In pvp they suck, in pve they are amazing. I wouldn’t speed run a dungeon without one if I can help it. Ever hear of this funny thing called fgs that can down lupi in about 30 seconds with 2 eles in the party? That’s why eles auto attacks aren’t great, because their other dps skills are off the chart. I play a full zerk staff ele, and I can out dps anyone else in my party (except warriors since warriors are OP). I rarely if ever use my auto attack.

eleshazar.6902:

Zenith.7301:

And yet bringing up ranged weapon damage is useless under a PvE context.

In PvE anyone who is competent melees, so you are failing by setting the bar at the ranged weapon line.

Also, please, Fireball doesn’t hit for 6k without might stacks and ideal conditions. I run full berk with food and at best it crits for about 4k without might stacks.

And still you guys miss the point that it’s not that great considering it’s a 4k crit OVER a 1 second activation time and its travel time.

I personally think you need to learn to play ele… In pvp they suck, in pve they are amazing. I wouldn’t speed run a dungeon without one if I can help it. Ever hear of this funny thing called fgs that can down lupi in about 30 seconds with 2 eles in the party? That’s why eles auto attacks aren’t great, because their other dps skills are off the chart. I play a full zerk staff ele, and I can out dps anyone else in my party (except warriors since warriors are OP). I rarely if ever use my auto attack.

You are an idiot. I mentioned specifically in my posts that I have a problem with all our damage being tied to conjured weapons to be competitive in PvE instead of the weaponskills. Last time I checked, FGS is not only a conjured weapon, but an elite as well.

How about you learn to read before telling people to learn something else.

I can outDPS warriors with my lightning hammer, without even needing to cheese fiery greatsword exploits.

That’s not the point. The point is that if I don’t use the fiery greatsword or lightning hammer, the sustained damage from my actual weapons is garbage.

The long and short of it is that Attunement dancing should be a feature granting versatility in utility and extra burst capability, not a requirement for maintaining even reasonable sustained damage.

The autoattacks of all attunements and all weapons should be capable of doing a fair amount of sustained damage on their own. On Staff, only Fire even comes close. On Scepter, not even Fire really does.