Guild Wars 2

Before I goes into detail. I have to say English isn’t my first language so I am trying to make myself clear. I also quote the comment I found from duffy.net, because they have very accurate perspective.
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As a main Ele player, I find Water really is under power. Most people would related Water to heal, but unless you dedicated yourself to healing, water only provide some extra heal that’s all. (In dungeon, WvW, even PvE… pure heal isn’t all that useful!)

Water spells lack of damage, very mediocre heal, very little Chill condition/option. (and chill don’t deal any damage!), vulnerability condition is there but with issues. All that left is when you need help, you switch to Water then switch off, I don’t agree with Anet’s perspective on Water magics.

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Here’s the problem skills:
-Cone of Cold
Low damage! The heal is not substantial enough to justify using this spell.

-Frozen Burst
Although blast finish, the actual damage is terrible, this again… emphasis on how Ele can only stay in Fire or Air for damage. Very limited play style.

-Frost Aura
Hardly useful since we can not withstand direct hits. The Frost Armor can be helpful against an incoming burst that you can not dodge.

These are the Daggers skills, and 3 of them have problems, which only left Vapor-Blade and Cleansing Wave.

-Ice Shards
A weak single target auto-attack which little value! No other additional conditions or function at all.

-Shatterstones:
In an ideal world, this spell is good to stack vulnerability! But in reality its long cast time and delay TAKES AWAY ALL its value. Everyone mentioned the problem, how come Anet never see it?

-Water Trident
In a reality situation, the heal is bad… I think Anet should make this spell versatile for both damage and heal. (Where is the push-back ability in GW2 skill preview?)

(Scepter Water skills are terrible… you basically switch for Trident’s tiny heal then switch off, why create useless skills? Because they think we have 3 other elements so Water is not important?)

-Freezing Gust
This skill is very weak, barely useful for kiting. It does almost no damage. (Quote from duffy.net) I agree! If this is going to serve as one of Ele’s main chill option, at least make the duration longer and recharge time shorter…. or make AOE chill! (Like we had in GW1 or Frozen ground)

-Comet
What happened to the good old Maelstrom from GW1? Is this suppose to be a replacement? This deal bad damage, difficult to aim, low radius with inability to ground-target!

(Now that’s Focus Water spells with all the problems….)

Staff Water spells…. I won’t go detail, they are “okay”, except the “RECHARGE TIME!” Ice Spike’s delay also make it less value, even though it has highest damage among all Water spells.

I would suggest dramatically shorten recharge on Frozen Ground and Healing Rain! Adding a follow up skill for Geyser, make it explode and push back or chill nearby enemies. Water Blast can still use a bit more damage or…. a % of applying Chill.

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In Conclusion: Water spells really need some improvement. I “think” Anet give Water Attuntment roles of being able to heal/crowd control chill and apply vulnerablity. But none of the above really present in game, at least “not enough!” We definitely have very little chill, hard to stack vulnerablity, hard to crowd control, deal very little heal/group heal…. not to mention the awful damage.

I understand people may not agree, but that’s just from my experiences from playing ELE since day one until now. Not sure if the skill balance team will take a look at my concern but I tried anyway. Thanks guys!

water adds some nice control /chill , heal, dont touch water, its nice .

edit: besides scepter water 2

I actually agree with the OP. Water on most if not all weapons sacrifices too much damage for its healing and utility. It should be weakish, but not as weak as it is. It serves no purpose but to make the element virtually unusable when solo or in small groups.

frost aura is pretty good, u must be using it wrong, use it when u need to kite enemys, the constant chill aplication (even ranged) is crazy.

its my favourite aura..

If you want to increase the damage from water spells, you need to reduce their ability to heal and cleanse. You cant have an attunment which makes the ele virtually unkillable while they are using it and still expect to be pushing hard.

Uh…. Just take the trait that makes you deal 20% more damage to people with vuln while you’re in water? Idk about you but with a staff I can maintain 10 vuln and scepter 16vuln with no issues, so that’s 30% and 36% damage increase respectively with no runes or sigils or condi duration.

That trait alone makes water Attunement nothing to be scoffed at damage wise. Is it higher than fire? kitten no, but it’s on par with air and earth attunements and keeps all the control and healing.