Guild Wars 2

I can’t help but feel the Elementalist’s Air Attunement with a staff could be improved.

Why do I feel this way?
As I see it, there’s no reason to stay in Air Attunement while fighting with a staff. When comparing the first and second weapon skills of each elemental attunement for the staff, Air just doesn’t hold up.

Fire has the hardest hitting auto attack, which has a small area of effect, and it has a very nice area of effect attack on a six second cooldown for its second skill.

Water’s auto attack has the utility of healing (admittedly for a small amount) nearby allies and it has a hard hitting second skill that also inflicts five stacks of Vulnerability for ten seconds on just a four second cooldown.

Like Water Attunement, Earth Attunement’s auto attack doesn’t hit very hard; but it does inflict Weakness. And Earth’s second attack is an area of effect (albeit a slowly executed one) that inflicts six stacks of Bleeding for 12 seconds and serves as a Combo Fishiner: Blast.

Then we have Air. It’s auto attack bounces to hit up to three total targets. If fighitng a single enemy, there is no bounce. If fighting more than one enemy, I believe Lava Font is a better area of effect attack than Chain Lightning. And while Air’s second weapon skill is very nice, its ten second cooldown means it’s less spammable than the other attunements’ second weapon skills.

To me, this makes Air Attunement something you stop on just long enough to fire off it’s abilities as you cycle through to the more effective attunements (Windborne Speed for roaming notwithstanding).

What I propose be done.
I would change Chain Lightning so that it hits the orginal target and bounces twice (as it currently is) plus an additional bounce for each critical hit scored (with a maximum of five targets per attack).

OR

I would make Blasting Staff cause Chain Lightning to gain an additional bounce (for a maximum of four targets instead of three).

PS – I’m not sure if this qualifies as discussion on the Elementalist profession or as a suggestion, so feel free to move this if it’s in the wrong sub-forum.

I would also like to see the Air Attunement being improved. Currently it just fills the gap between fire and earth (and sometimes water) without really adding to much to the fight. The stun and blind are both nice but the rest is just… meh. The swiftness for example does not help in a fight at all (in PvE). You have perma swiftness anyway.

I really like your ideas but I feel like they are just going to be ignored like most other good ideas. Another idea I had was to make them like the air skills in Guild Wars 1. They had armor penetration back then which made them ok vs squishy foes and strong vs tanky enemies. This would also fit what Anet was aiming for with the Air Attunement.

P.S. I would also like to see these improvements for dagger and scepter. They are not as bad as the staff air skills but still not as good as the fire, earth or water skills.

Blackhat.4016:

P.S. I would also like to see these improvements for dagger and scepter. They are not as bad as the staff air skills but still not as good as the fire, earth or water skills.

I haven’t played with daggers, scepters, or foci on my elementalist enough to know if they need work or not, so I’ll have to defer to you. As to Armor Penetration, that seems to me more likely to happen as a trait than a blanket change to Air Attunement.

Yes. Please make the air skills for staff better. I find that I mostly switch to air just to use windborne speed for the nice speed boost. Chain lightning is too random during encounters and doesn’t do much damage. Honestly, since air is supposed to specialize in single target damage, it would seem to make more sense for it to hit a single target for a very high amount of damage. Also, gust should do something more than just knockback as Mesmer GS has a skill which does the exact same but also damages, so why can’t Gust have some damage or at least some sort of secondary effect as well.

I mean, other than the air skills, staff is just fine.

Id Agree with this. Air Staff, feels, for lack of better word-Muddy. It really doesnt know what it’s doing. Lets break down the skills,

1-Chain Lighting-It’s actually a pretty powerfull attack, but ONLY if theres 2 targets. Add more then that, and suddenly its pretty useless. Add lesss, and were back at point one, useless.
2. Lighting Surge- Ohh Wow, an aoe blind. That should be very usefull, but it’s Charge time, and small range combined with it’s high recharge sort of negates that use. It also does not hit very hard.
3.Gust-A knockback. Should be great. But wait, it’s not. it’s the WORSE SKILL EVERY THOUGHT OFF. No really, I mean it-I hate gust. It’s so slow it never hits, it can be straf dodged, and doesnt even do what it was ment to do. Gust Used to Knockback in a line-Meaning anything in that projectiles path was flung away. That’s usefull. But Anet nerfed it to death, for some bizare reason, and now its a high recharge, low use utility skill at best. Ohh and it does no damage. Sort of bizzare don’t you think for Air attuenment,which should be HIGH DAMAGE AND CONTROL.
4. Windborn Speed-Look, I love swiftness, I do. But this skill has no part in combat. We already have a rain spell that will get rid of all those condtions. Lets also tack on Ele’s are the masters of condtion removal. Do we need yet another skill which removes contions. Only this time, very specificaly? Yea, we all love swiftness, but if you trait into air(which you have to to utalize any of these worthless skills)…then suddenly Swiftness becomes redundent. WHY!?
5. Static Feild-Well it’s a great skill, in theory. But only That. Static feild has one hell of a cooldown, and for only brief control and damage. But sadly, I would say it’s the best skill on Air ele staff, and I would not change it. It suits an Air elementalist.

Air elementalist posses the most destructive, and powerfull of the elements. Unlike fire, Air and lighting can actually push. Fire is hot yes, but Air is everywhere. it is everything. Air should be alot like it used to be. Air is powerfull, damaging. It controls very well too. But It has it’s weaknesses. I have idea’s to help this. But Anet would not listen. They seem to think Air staff is great. Which I don’t understand. It’s not broken no, but it would do well with polish.

frostflare.6390:

1-Chain Lighting-It’s actually a pretty powerfull attack, but ONLY if theres 2 targets. Add more then that, and suddenly its pretty useless. Add lesss, and were back at point one, useless.

What I’d like to see is
If fighting a single target, it takes the equivalent of the damage from all three strikes.
That way, each target increase lowers the individual damage on any given target, and would better fit Air’s “Single Target DPS” tagline.

frostflare.6390:

3.Gust-A knockback. Should be great. But wait, it’s not. it’s the WORSE SKILL EVERY THOUGHT OFF. No really, I mean it-I hate gust. It’s so slow it never hits, it can be straf dodged, and doesnt even do what it was ment to do. Gust Used to Knockback in a line-Meaning anything in that projectiles path was flung away. That’s usefull. But Anet nerfed it to death, for some bizare reason, and now its a high recharge, low use utility skill at best. Ohh and it does no damage. Sort of bizzare don’t you think for Air attuenment,which should be HIGH DAMAGE AND CONTROL.

I would love that to be changed to like a tornado to knock people back

I do partially agree.

Windborne speed is a good skill, fairly good speedbuff for those who wish to balance their attunements.

Static field is fairly good skill, maybe the most versatile skill I’ve seen. You can use it to boost your speed, stop opponent from fleeing or to cause extra damage to an opponent… Seriously, it’s almost overpowered. It’s in top 5 of my favorite staff skills.

On the other hand, I rarely ever even consider using Chain Lightning, Lightning Surge or Gust, they just don’t have any role in or outside of combat.