Guild Wars 2

Hello, everyone.

Elementalists have 20 weapon skills. As exciting as that may sound, it’s harder to balance 20 weapon skills and make sure each of them is good, when compared to the typical 5 from other professions. This leads to elementalists having several underwhelming skills even within their best weapon choices, and their scepter’s skillset is such an example. I’ve created this thread to suggest proposals to address that.

Detected problems

• Weak auto-attacks.
• Some uneffective skills.

Sensible design considerations for Scepter

• Prevent auto-attacking spam.
  Combat is boring when spamming auto-attacks is the best strategy for any given encounter. They shouldn’t be the main damage source.
• Prevent power creep.
  If scepter is already one of the options for elementalists, something has to give for new buffs.
• Streamlining without dumbing down.
  Gameplay lasts longer when it’s harder to master. Buffs should ideally add more synergy between skills whenever possible, and not directly make the respective skills easier to use.
• Changes are made with both PvE and PvP in mind, and attempt to fix the problems without radical mechanical changes.

DESIGN/ BALANCE PROPOSALS

Fire Magic

• Flamestrike
  This is the most misplaced skill in the scepter line. It’s a slow burning AA in a burst-oriented set. It doesn’t fits, so what should happen?
  Proposal: 2.25 channeling casting time. Ticks every 0.75 seconds, for a total of 3 ticks. Each tick to be worth 1 second burning, the current damage value, and 1 stack of might for 6 seconds.
  Why? My proposal would have a casting time about 1.5x of the original version, for 1.5x the burning too. The damage, however, would tick three times instead of one, for the benefit of the power/ precision/ critical stats that this weapon set demands for. But because the damage value is already low, and the casting time high, self might-stacking was added, complementing the might-stacking subtheme of this weapon set.
• Dragon’s Tooth
  Fine in PvE, but can’t connect in PvP against non-downed opponents.
  Proposal: 3/4 casting time instead of 1 second.
  Why? The delayed damage mechanic of this skill can already be hard-countered by movement, and that’s why makes it so interesting. The 1 second casting time, however, feels like an unnecessary second restriction, and thus my proposed decrease.
  Is that enough in PvP? No, but the problem is no longer with this skill. We don’t want to dumb it down, right? Instead, we’ll look to create some synergy with something else, that would help to connect it. I’ll address this with my Shatterstone suggestion.
• Phoenix
  Very strong as it is. Because we want to avoid power creep, we’ll tone it down a little bit.
  Proposal: Damage decreased by ~10%.
  Additional proposal: Remove vigor from this skill. Make it so that it removes 1 condition from each ally it passes through.
  Why this second suggestion? Anet is looking for improving party support strategies across the game. This suggestion is directed towards that.

Water Magic
Scepter is a burst weapon, and one of its ice attack adds vulnerability to set up a burst. Let’s improve that strategy, shall we?

• Ice Shards
  This AA seems to have no purpose.
  Proposal: Add 1 stack of vulnerability for 6 seconds per hit.
  Why? To set up for future bursts.
• Shatterstone
  This skill is underwhelming. Because vulnerability was already added to the AA, let’s take this into a new direction.
  Proposal: Each 0.75 seconds applies torment for 1-2 seconds. On shattering, applies 2 seconds of chill.
  Why? To punish or to cripple movement… to set up future bursts with Dragon’s Tooth, of course!

Air Magic
This attunement is generally fine. But I would consider a detail:

• Blinding Flash
  Proposal: Reduce blind duration to 4-5 seconds, from 6.
  Why? To promote timing over spam. Shouldn’t affect good players.

Earth Magic

• Stone Shards
  It’s a strong bleeding attack in a burst weapon… but the projectile finishers give it a nice niche.
• Hurl (from Rock Barrier)
  Proposal: Make each hurling rock slower.
  Why? This skills has so much potential to be like staff’s Eruption: a finisher to use before, and not only after, combo fields. Unfortunately, it’s currently too fast for that, thus the suggestion.
• Dust Devil
  Blind skill under a casting time is generally unneffective…unless…
  Proposal: Have it more slower, tick more than once, and have it apply 3 seconds of blind for every tick.
  Why? Ticking several times leads to more direct damage, and applying blind several times can disable multiple-hit attacks for its duration. Would make it further stand out from the more precise and anti-burst Blinding Flash.

But what about air-burst eles in PvP? Wouldn’t they become too powerful?
The problem with PvP air burst eles is not the individual damage of each of their skills, which is not that high by itself, but how many instant-cast attacks can be stacked at the same time. Most of the changes proposed here were carefully crafted to tone down this problem instead of making it worse. The buffs suggested mostly only affect attacks with higher casting times, and some of the faster skills, like Phoenix or Hurl, respectively lost a bit of damage and a bit of speed, effectively making the instant air burst sequence a bit weaker. To further tone down that problem, we should look at arcane skills instead:

• Arcane Blast
  Proposal: Decrease the range from 1500 to 1200. Decrease the projectile speed by ~33%. Decrease the cooldown by 5 seconds, from 20 to 15.
  Why? This will make the skill weaker in instant burst sequences at range, due to an easier to dodge and slower projectile. To compensate for that, the cooldown was increased for more sustained damage and more utility through projectile finishers.
• Arcane Wave
  Proposal: Extend the animation time. Keep the skill instant cast, but delay the gap between the skill’s activation and the damage input. Decrease the cooldown by 5 seconds, from 30 to 25.
  Why? Think of it as a (much faster) Dragon’s Tooth. This will make the instant air burst less instant, and give more time for the opponent to react. To compensate for that, the blast finisher will be available a little bit more often.

SO, WHAT DO WE GAIN WITH THIS?
A funnier playstyle.

• Hurl > Fire Field becomes a viable, new sequence.
• Dragon’s Tooth > Shatterstone or vice-versa becomes a far more effective sequence.
• Improved fire and water auto-attacks will allow us to build up a higher burst the next time, without being too strong by themselves.
• Phoenix gains party support abilities.
• Instant air bursts won’t become too strong with the new changes due to compensated nerfs. And best of it, fresh air was unnaffected!

Thank you for reading.

By far the most sensible propositions on this forum so far. Honestly, I’m sitting here amazed

Q: Is your reworked version of shatterstone going to be single-target? Will you be able to dodge either application of torment or the shattering application of chill effect? If I understand correctly you intend to make it somewhat like warrior impale?

Q: Is the 10 percent damage reduction on phoenix called for? Overall your propositions would hardly buff the scepter, just make it so much more fun and versatile to play. Also, adding 1 condition remove per ally it passes through will not warrant using it as a supportive tool due to it being the strongest offensive spell on scepter, so any use out of this new feature would be coincidental, agreed? I feel like the vigor makes more sense thematically.

What if we add vigor and retaliation on allies it passes through, plus the condition removal. That would allow for phoenix to become so much more. Essentially a doubly important spell, allowing for much more depth in its placing and arcing it through allies on return. Naturally its damage would need toning down in this case.

You’re changes are blatantly favoring one play style and disregarding another as expendable.

The scepter is NOT solely a power burst weapon, in fact it’s specifically designed as a condition weapon across nearly the entire skillset, the air attunement being the only exception. We have 20 skills for a reason, when you build largely for a certain attunement others are going to be less effective, that’s part of having a variable build system.

Fire, earth, and water are all dedicated to conditions. Fire and water especially needs to be better at applying conditions, not worse, and especially not changed in to power-based attunements.

That said, I do believe that the scepter needs a lot of work, especially as I said, the fire and water attunement, but I don’t see why the Elementalists principal (and practically solitary) option for conditions should be sacrificed to that end.

Fresh air isn’t the only scepter build. Burst is not the only damage type.

Conncept.7638:

You’re changes are blatantly favoring one play style and disregarding another as expendable.

The scepter is NOT solely a power burst weapon, in fact it’s specifically designed as a condition weapon across nearly the entire skillset, the air attunement being the only exception. We have 20 skills for a reason, when you build largely for a certain attunement others are going to be less effective, that’s part of having a variable build system.

Fire, earth, and water are all dedicated to conditions. Fire and water especially needs to be better at applying conditions, not worse, and especially not changed in to power-based attunements.

That said, I do believe that the scepter needs a lot of work, especially as I said, the fire and water attunement, but I don’t see why the Elementalists principal (and practically solitary) option for conditions should be sacrificed to that end.

Fresh air isn’t the only scepter build. Burst is not the only damage type.

What on earth are you talking about?! Nothing about the condition-potential of the scepter was even touched. Burning from scepter autoattack improved, torment was added to shatterstone and a new possibility for a burning combo has opened with the new version of hurl. Earth autoattack wasn’t touched either.

Literally, what are you talking about, cause it’s certainly not this.

The only problem with scepter i have is really the air 1 AA. With SoR equipped it only ticks once for the heal at the beginning of the attack. If your opponent has retaliation on him it ticks for every tick the AA does. Either fix SoR to tick every time or fix retaliation to tick once either at the beginning or at the end.

Gokil.2543:

By far the most sensible propositions on this forum so far. Honestly, I’m sitting here amazed

Q: Is your reworked version of shatterstone going to be single-target? Will you be able to dodge either application of torment or the shattering application of chill effect? If I understand correctly you intend to make it somewhat like warrior impale?

Q: Is the 10 percent damage reduction on phoenix called for? Overall your propositions would hardly buff the scepter, just make it so much more fun and versatile to play. Also, adding 1 condition remove per ally it passes through will not warrant using it as a supportive tool due to it being the strongest offensive spell on scepter, so any use out of this new feature would be coincidental, agreed? I feel like the vigor makes more sense thematically.

What if we add vigor and retaliation on allies it passes through, plus the condition removal. That would allow for phoenix to become so much more. Essentially a doubly important spell, allowing for much more depth in its placing and arcing it through allies on return. Naturally its damage would need toning down in this case.

Hello, Gokil.

To answer your questions:

• My idea for shatterstone was to still keep it as a ground AoE spell. The opponent could still move out of it. It would require less work from ANET this way, I think.
• My intention wasn’t to buff the scepter as a whole, because I feel that it’s already a decent weapon set as it is (putting aside all issues elementalists have). I’ve attempted instead to re-balance it, to make room for the weaker skills to shine and, as you said, to make the playstyle funnier and more versatile.
• When we think of the word “Phoenix”, the first thing that comes to mind is “rebirth”, no? It’s a lot more party support-ish name. If Dragon Tooth became a more viable choice, the damage loss from Phoenix wouldn’t matter as much.
• I’ve also tried to not fill each spell with too many effects. I like simplicity and elegance, and Phoenix already has a complex effect as it is. Giving allied vigor, allied cleansing and allied retaliation is a bit too much, no? :P If anything, I tried to make the skill a bit easier to understand by making cleansing party-wide and completely removing vigor out of it.
• Vigor synergies poorly with the scepter’s trait that gives +50% endurance regeneration. Although that trait isn’t picked up at the moment, it’ll probably will once Anet does something with Renewing Stamina, which they’ve stated that will sooner or later.

Gokil.2543:

Conncept.7638:

You’re changes are blatantly favoring one play style and disregarding another as expendable.

The scepter is NOT solely a power burst weapon, in fact it’s specifically designed as a condition weapon across nearly the entire skillset, the air attunement being the only exception. We have 20 skills for a reason, when you build largely for a certain attunement others are going to be less effective, that’s part of having a variable build system.

Fire, earth, and water are all dedicated to conditions. Fire and water especially needs to be better at applying conditions, not worse, and especially not changed in to power-based attunements.

That said, I do believe that the scepter needs a lot of work, especially as I said, the fire and water attunement, but I don’t see why the Elementalists principal (and practically solitary) option for conditions should be sacrificed to that end.

Fresh air isn’t the only scepter build. Burst is not the only damage type.

What on earth are you talking about?! Nothing about the condition-potential of the scepter was even touched. Burning from scepter autoattack improved, torment was added to shatterstone and a new possibility for a burning combo has opened with the new version of hurl. Earth autoattack wasn’t touched either.

Literally, what are you talking about, cause it’s certainly not this.

How did burning improve? Unless I’m misunderstanding what he meant it’s being applied in shorter bursts over a greater cast time to give power, not conditions, more damage ticks. And that’s the jist of my problem with these changes, it’s a condition weapon yet all of these changes are to help power damage. Which means the condition damage buffs this weapon so desperately needs would no longer be an option. Even the application of torment is largely to improve kiting rather for the sake of actual condition DPS.

Conncept.7638:

You’re changes are blatantly favoring one play style and disregarding another as expendable.

Hey, Conncept.

If you think about it, condition damage was actually improved in my proposed ideas. Let’s take a closer look:

• Flamestrike would still apply around the same burning duration per casting time spent, but the self might-stacking will make conditions stronger.
• Dragon Tooth would have extra support, so its burning application will become a bit more reliable.
• Shatterstone would now apply torment, even if for only a little while.
• The fire field -> hurl combo could be reversed, making it more versatile, and thus easier to apply burning from projectile finishers.

I think the potential for a might-stacking, power/ condition damage setup is also there!

Otherwise, I have to make a question:

• Is it such a good idea to have elementalist’s weapons to be entirely hybrid?

If anything, the lack of specialization is more of a drawback.

Scepter, especially, is entirely built around: 1. instant bursting (Lightning Strike, Hurl), 2. high skill/ high reward burst skills (Dragon’s Tooth, Phoenix), damage buffs (vulnerability, might) and some defenses.

For this reason, I feel that Scepter should be more specialized at what it already does. Still, like I said, the potential for power/ condition damage setups is also there.

So you want to nerf air burst eles AKA fresh air?

silvershadez.8421:

So you want to nerf air burst eles AKA fresh air?

Fresh Air is not getting any weaker. Note that I haven’t touched electric discharge trait nor lightning strike, which are the base of fresh air’s build.

Outside of that, air burst eles use the scepter, and my proposed ideas generally boost scepter’s effectiveness. This would have made already existing instant burst builds way too strong, if nothing was done to compensate for the buffs.

The biggest buff you proposed (for me) was the fire and water AA buffs. Slowing down Hurl is more of a nerf for me (even if you can combo projectile better), so is your dust devil change. Dust devil allready is incredibly easy to dodge, I wonder how it would work out in your version.

The biggest drawback would be arcane skills tho. If you need to cast them they will be far less effective, maybe even entirely broken given there is nothing to compensate (except a tad more faster dragon tooth + fire and water AA).

I still doubt I would use shatterstone. But I guess I would need to try it first.

If yi could make a wishlist:

-fire AA has to change. (something like you allready proposed)
-shatterstone needs to be more reliable. (faster cast or animation)
-give dragon tooth ground targeting.

for scepter.

for focus I would like to see replacements or workarounds for the fire skills.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Otherwise, I have to make a question:

• Is it such a good idea to have elementalist’s weapons to be entirely hybrid?

If anything, the lack of specialization is more of a drawback.

Scepter, especially, is entirely built around: 1. instant bursting (Lightning Strike, Hurl), 2. high skill/ high reward burst skills (Dragon’s Tooth, Phoenix), damage buffs (vulnerability, might) and some defenses.

For this reason, I feel that Scepter should be more specialized at what it already does. Still, like I said, the potential for power/ condition damage setups is also there.

That’s a fair point, but arguable, the crux being whether or not it is intended that we are able specialize in one or two attunements as we build, something that many argue that we ought to be able to do.

But, if specialization is necessary, why then would a weapon which has an attunement, and at least half of two others, dedicated to conditions be specialized as a power weapon? Especially when those are really the only attunements across the entire class dedicated as such. In my opinion, we already have daggers to fulfill the niche you’re trying to create here, I believe efforts to give us a power/might stacking weapon would be better placed there.

@silvershadez,

Dust Devil could be incredibly effective against melee classes because it would re-apply blind for several ticks. Think of Sandstorm.

Hurl would tone down instant air’s burst, yes, and that was my intention too, but its higher synergy with combo fields would compensate for it. Keep in mind that scepter burst eles would be able to use it.

Higher might/ vulnerability from fire’s and water’s AAs could work really great while the main skills are under cooldown.

Basically, thse changes it would give less emphasis on instant bursting, and more emphasis on other skills.

I am confused, in the OP you talk about losing ground-targetting, while in your reply you say you want to keep it as a ground AoE spell. So do you want to make it a PBAoE then? Cause that doesnt make too much sense on a ranged weapon to me.

Edit: talking about shatterstone btw

These are some really nice suggestions. I especialy like the shatterstone change.As a long time elementalist, i can tell without a doubt that you play the class and understand the scepter. The only thing i might not agree with is the 10 percent damage nerf on phoenix; When I think of phoenix I think of a nasty firey bird that goes boom! I feel the problem with ele burst is not really phoenix and is more so the arcane skills and instant damage of skills like air 2 or earth 2 (also love your suggestion for the slower velocity).

I would be in favor of removing the vigor from phoenix in order to get the team utility. Phoenix is my personal favorite skill in the game and I would much rather have the arcane skills changed and have a .75 second cast time on the instant air 2 skill. Please leave my phoenix damage alone

I love your changes for Shatter-Stone and Arcane-Spells. I’ve always wanted Arcane-Utilities to be tools for better sustained damage or real utility (blast-finisher) instead of ridiculous burst-spells. Lower CD (and lower damage to balance them) would perfectly fit this.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Conncept.7638:

You’re changes are blatantly favoring one play style and disregarding another as expendable.

Hey, Conncept.

If you think about it, condition damage was actually improved in my proposed ideas. Let’s take a closer look:

• Flamestrike would still apply around the same burning duration per casting time spent, but the self might-stacking will make conditions stronger.
• Dragon Tooth would have extra support, so its burning application will become a bit more reliable.
• Shatterstone would now apply torment, even if for only a little while.
• The fire field -> hurl combo could be reversed, making it more versatile, and thus easier to apply burning from projectile finishers.

I think the potential for a might-stacking, power/ condition damage setup is also there!

Otherwise, I have to make a question:

• Is it such a good idea to have elementalist’s weapons to be entirely hybrid?

If anything, the lack of specialization is more of a drawback.

Scepter, especially, is entirely built around: 1. instant bursting (Lightning Strike, Hurl), 2. high skill/ high reward burst skills (Dragon’s Tooth, Phoenix), damage buffs (vulnerability, might) and some defenses.

For this reason, I feel that Scepter should be more specialized at what it already does. Still, like I said, the potential for power/ condition damage setups is also there.

I have to say i generally like the changes noted, and might even consider playing a scepter build that isn´t zerker. Although as is now, I´m not even bothered with playing scepter just sticking to a D/D build that generally feels a bit more tanky to stay at close range.

@Gokil,

By ground-targeted, I mean an aoe spell that must be manually targeted on the ground, like phoenix and water trident. I instead proposed something more like dragon’s tooth, that automatically targets the ground bellow the opponent.

However, on second thoughts, maybe that wouldn’t be a good idea. The best way to hope hitting a moving foe with this spell’s proposed chill effect, would be to target the ground ahead of their direction.

@ Conncept,

Scepter’s air and water damage skills revolve entirely around direct damage or direct damage buffing (vulnerability) at their current state. In the remaining two attunments, we see several examples of high skill/ high burst skills, with dragon’s tooth, phoenix, or hurl’s defense sacrifice. In comparison, only dragon’s tooth and two underused auto-attacks offer condition damage.

The playstyle is also unlike mh dagger in this regard. Daggers offer more aoe, condition control (weakness, chill, cripple, immobilize), movement skills, and sustained damage. You can use it as a burst weapon with burning speed and with the aid of OH dagger, but ultimately, you are consistently applying damage more often and at a higher aoe rate, while with scepter, you’re looking for the best opportunities to single target burst someone. I decided to preserve and further enhance this scepter’s playstyle.

Dagger’s drake breath is a better burning skill than anything the scepter can offer, and dagger also has access to two bleeding skills instead of scepter’s one. This makes dagger a better condition damaging weapon than scepter itself, although not still good enough at it.

Elementalists simply don’t have a good weapon skillset tailored around condition damage. That’s something that, in my opinion, is better fixed by either making conjures more useful or adding new weapon choices, instead of generalizing the playstyle of our current existing weapon sets.

Edited my Shatterstone’s suggestion to keep the ground-target functionality. It would be unnecessary to take that out of the skill.
Stealth Bump.

Not bad suggestions but here’s what I’d like to see.

Flame Strike changed to: Lava Arrows. Fire 3 Lava Arrows at your target doing damage and causing .66 seconds of burning each hit (arrows fly in an arc. Similar to the dagger auto but not as quick. All 3 will hit in melee)

Dragon’s Tooth change to a ground target skill.

Phoenix is fine.

Ice Shards. Applies Vulnerability for 4 seconds on each hit.

Shatter Stone. Damage increased. Recharge increased. Causes 1 second of chill on placement. Still applies Vulnerability

Water Trident. Removes a condition. Heals more if a condition is removed

Arc Lightning. Make max damage happen faster (take one strike off of stage one so it gets to stage 2 faster, and stage 3 hits an extra time)

Blinding Flash now does damage. Reduced blind duration

Stone Shards: Shorter after cast

Dust Devil: Now ground targetted. Makes a Dust Devil (5 seconds) at the location. Upon casting will cause blind then apply bleed (10 seconds) each second afterwards and does damage

I agree that Stone Shards could have a shorter after cast. Perhaps it would be the best way to buff it without making the damage or the bleeding way too strong.

Dust Devil as a ground-targeted skill is very… interesting. It would certainly make it more appealing than what it is now, and especially compared to Blinding Flash.

But I don’t think Flamestrike needs to be completely re-designed like that. Just give it self might and make some further tweaks, and it would fit the weapon set perfectly, in my opinion.

Personally I dislike how Flamestrike is pretty much a condi focused, projectile-less attack with stupidly long aftercast. Making Flamestrike a projectile would definitely justify a bump in power due to increased counterplay, and that’s great, because I am hard pressed to find a use for it at all when running S/D.

As for Blinding Flash doing damage…it would make Fresh Air burst more potent without changing anything appreciable about the build. However, if Arcane skills were reworked to have the Arcane Precision trait as baseline and their damage was nerfed, I could see Blinding Flash receiving damage as compensation.

I love the idea of Dust Devil being a GTAOE Skill. It would give S/x Ele a defensive option outside of the off-hand when the cooldowns aren’t up. Would actually make Dust Devil actually useful for damage too. Right now, it’s not that useful due to slow travel time making it hard to use as a clutch Blind; and the Bleed idea is also nice because it might make condi ele possible.

Shatterstone definitely needs Chill on placement to force dodges. It’s not worth casting otherwise. Even 1 second of Chill would make Shatterstone infinitely more viable. I don’t agree with Torment on placement because people are still going to move out of the way of Shatterstone and it’ll still be useless as a result.

The best part about the thread is the alliteration in the title. The suggestions I would make is to reduce the number of instant-ticking skills like air 2, because they’re sort of counterplay breaking.

Surprised that no-one commented on the alliteration earlier.

As for instant ticking skills, I do feel that Blinding Flash does need to be instant as it is meant to be clutch. I wouldn’t mind the earlier suggestion to reduce the Blind duration as it does raise the skill floor marginally. Blind itself is definitely stronger now thanks to the buff and I almost use it as part of active defense when running S/x with Fresh Air as you are super glassy and sometimes, you’ve got nothing else.

As for Lightning Strike being instant; it has been part of the basic Scepter instant skills since the Beta Weekends. Changing it now is kind of late but here’s the version in GW1 .

As a cast-time skill in GW1, Lightning Strike probably was best used as a followup skill to another spell causing Overcast (certain spells reduced your maximum Energy as an additional cost).

We can bring some of that into GW2 if you really want to make Lightning Strike “worth” cast time:

• Lightning Strike has 0.5-1 second casting time (I think 0.5 is fair; 1 would require more damage)
• If you strike a moving Foe, inflict 3-5 stacks of Vulnerability (Just trying to port over the conditional mechanics of GW1. To make it more straightforward, Lightning Strike could simply inflict Vulnerability unconditionally)
• As the skill is now stronger, a longer cooldown of, say, 10 seconds, is justifiable
• This would make Lightning strike more of an “Opener” in that you want to make your opponent Vulnerable before you start your burst. It also means that you can no longer cast Lightning Strike while casting Arc Lightning.
• To add counterplay, a black cloud over the opponent’s head appears briefly before the Lightning strikes.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

The best part about the thread is the alliteration in the title. The suggestions I would make is to reduce the number of instant-ticking skills like air 2, because they’re sort of counterplay breaking.

Is the alliteration that great, or are just my suggestions that are poorer in comparison? :P

Although I think that the number of instant-ticking skills should be reduced, I wouldn’t touch Lightning Strike. It currently helps making Fresh Air more viable and more appealing. But for Fresh Air purposes, I would even say that the 5 second cooldown is more sacred than the instant-casting. I definitely wouldn’t touch the cooldown, and I would go as far as make sure other air skills from other weapons also have a 5 second option. (Hmm… Gotta edit my staff changes thread).

Also, the instant skills gives identity to our scepter’s air attacks. For that reason, I have decided to target all other instant skills instead: Hurl (by making it slower), Arcane Blast (by making it slower) and Arcane Wave (by giving it some delayed animation/ damage). This would tone down the instant bursting of the weapon, without taking away the identity from scepter’s air skills and the appeal of Fresh Air.

I imagine my version of Arcane Wave with some kind of beam coming from the sky, and exploding one second after. Think of Skyhammer’s animation, or even the animation used in PvE’s nightmare tree’s final boss to prevent party-stacking. There’s this ray of energy that connects the sky to the ground, and then, boom!

I would not decrease the damage of the arcane utility skills neither. I can understand that some people want more utility in their utility slots, but for that case, it’s the glyphs, the signets and the conjures that need to be tweaked. Arcane spells are great for those who like to burst, but they are also great to give some extra burst potential to support/ defensive weapon sets. Like our staff and our Focus. Because staff and focus are not used much in PvP, people might not notice it, but arcane bursting skills really fit them very well due to the heavy utility support that the weapons already bring. So, making arcane spells more counter-able, yes, slightly toning down their CDs to compensate, yes (and hey, that’s more utility from the combo finisher effects!), but I would definitely keep their damage values at where they are.

They also allow for some interesting build variations with high burst but low precision.

That sounded mean, sorry :P. I do like most of the suggestions, I just think that skills that hit instantly are part of what is keeping scepter and possibly elementalist on the whole from getting much needed improvements in other places.

I’m fine with spells being instant cast, but they should not instantly hit if they are (well except for the blind, I agree, but that’s a special case in that it actually promotes skillful use and timing). It’s sort of against the whole reason I play this game, which is the ability to counterplay with skill and not with builds.