Guild Wars 2

Greetings, all.

As the subject header indicates, I am the village idiot. This means I know how to dodge, attunement swap for maximum effectiveness, and tweak my build when necessary. That said, I’m nowhere near being an excellent player — I can only solo four or five mobs my own level, and there are some classes (you know who you are) who beat me every time in PvP. You Have Been Warned.

I personally feel that the Elementalist is almost where it needs to be; I certainly don’t want the class to be altered in such a way that facerolling becomes possible. Consequently, I have a short list of suggestions for the Elementalist. Note that I hardly ever use the staff, so I have few suggestions for it.

This is a living thread — I have already modified the OP in accordance with community feedback and discussion, and I will continue to do so as long as this thread remains popular, or until such time (about next Tuesday) as someone demonstrates that my suggestions are fundamentally flawed.

Before I begin, I will enumerate the issues the elementalist faces:

• Poor trait efficacy and synergy: the majority of elementalist traits benefit a single attunement, consequently encouraging you to remain on one attunement — but they provide so little benefit that attunement swapping will almost always be better, ergo the traits that benefit a single attunement will almost always be eclipsed by traits that benefit an attunement-swapping playstyle
• Certain abilities provide minimal return-on-investment (ROI)
• Disappointing elites (by default, we can either turn into a tornado that can be crowd-controlled, summon elementals that we can’t directly command, or summon a sword that replaces all our action bars); though addressing this issue is beyond the scope of this thread, I would just like to throw it out there that I get the feeling that the Elementalist community would probably appreciate an elite signet, glyph, or spell that directly enhanced our existing combat capabilities

A brief overview of my suggestions:

• Make certain abilities easier to use by increasing animation speed, widening their area of effect, or fixing bugs
• Provide ancillary benefits for certain abilities
• Normalize Aura cooldowns to 30 seconds each (Flame Shield, Frost Aura, etc.)
• Normalize Wall cooldowns to 15 seconds each (a-la Ring of Fire)
• Improve synergy

My specific suggestions are as follows:

Scepter

• Dragon’s Tooth (Fire-2): Now targets a specified area; increase animation speed by 25-50%
• Ice Shards (Ice-1): Applies Vulnerability with every hit
• Shatterstone (Ice-2): No longer applies Vulnerability; instead, Chills targets for 2 seconds; increase animation speed by 25-50%; damage and cooldown increased to be in line with Dragon’s Tooth
• Lightning Strike (Air-2): Also inflicts Weakness (to compensate for the fact that Blind is useless against fast attackers)

Focus

• Flamewall (Fire-4): Cooldown normalized to 15 seconds
• Fire Shield (Fire-5): Cooldown normalized to 30 seconds; also grants Vigor
• Freezing Gust (Ice-4): Cooldown changed to provide 25% uptime — thanks, Shockwave

Dagger

• Drake’s Breath (Fire-2): Wider cone
• Burning Speed (Fire-3): Now counts as both an Evade (if it doesn’t already) and a Leap combo finisher; can self-trigger (thank you, Shockwave)
• Ring of Fire (Fire-4): Now inflicts Burning on foes who are within the ring when it is cast, but does not continue to inflict Burning on these foes unless they cross the ring again
• Fire Grab (Fire-5): Wider cone
• Cone of Cold (Ice-2): Wider cone
• Frost Aura (Ice-4): Cooldown normalized to 30 seconds
• Lightning Whip (Air-1): Wider cone (Helpfully provided by ArenaNet as of October 1st patch!)
• Lightning Touch (Air-2): Wider cone (Helpfully provided by ArenaNet as of October 1st patch!)
• Ride the Lightning (Air-4): Now acts as a Leap finisher; ignores intervening obstacles and elevation changes; also acts as an Evade (it currently does not); also provides a Detonate sub-skill so the user may cancel it at any time (thanks, Shockwave!)
• Churning Earth (Earth-5): Chargeup speed increased by 25-50%
  -OR-
• Churning Earth (Earth-5): Players can now manually control chargeup speed by holding the button for up to 4 seconds, increasing the detonation radius (damage remains constant)

Staff

• Ice Spike (Ice-2): Increase animation speed by 25-50%; increase damage and cooldown to be in line with Dragon’s Tooth
• Geyser (Ice-3): Damages foes in proportion to its healing in the same manner as Water Trident (thank you, AngryHelper!)
• Eruption (Earth-2): Applies Cripple to all targets within the area of effect as soon as the buildup animation begins; the Cripple condition lasts until Eruption does damage
• Magnetic Aura (Earth-3): Cooldown normalized to 30 seconds
• Unsteady Ground (Earth-4): Cooldown shortened to 15 seconds (like Ring of Fire)

Again, all suggestions are open to discussion and debate.

I’m only really familiar with the Staff, its been a long time sense I’ve used the other combos…

But from what I see…Geyser would be giving 4+ seconds of immobilize… as it ticks twice. I think it would be nice if Geyser at least hurt enemies…I’m not asking for a lot of damage or anything buuut… (looks over at Orr) oh, the Undead’s Geyser hurts and heals. :P Some extra supplemental damage would be nice, granted I’m just happy with the combo field.

Eruption only hits one time, so it already does what you are saying orrr your recommending it be a bleed Lava Font….at which point staff loses its blast finisher (ignoring utilities and traits).

I would love to cool down reduced on Magnetic Aura…Only because it would make my life easier. But to make it identical to the focus ability is well…making it identical to another ability. The focus as a defense focused skill set should have better defensive abilities than the staff imo. Also, my Magnetic Aura already has a 24 second CD because of traits… Playing with CDs that can be reduced further is always a dangerous game.

Reducing the CD on Unsteady Ground is interesting as well as it would allow an elementalist to keep the wall up nearly 60% of the time. which is a very long time to be kiting through a cripple field, especially if you look at our other options for CC.

Your asking for a lot of skills to have reduced animation times…but that would make many of these skills fairly difficult to dodge and most of them pack a significant punch to make up for the slow casts.

Only thing I have to say is that dagger ice 2 (cone of cold) needs to keep its heal.

Also – Staff Air #1 should be castable while charging #2

Only thing I have to say is that dagger ice 2 (cone of cold) needs to keep its heal.

@Wolfbane:
This is an example of me being the village idiot. I’d forgotten it heals YOU. It seemed rather counterintuitive to have a healing spell that would never really heal allies.

I’ll fix the OP.

Likewise, AngryHelper: thanks for the pointers. I had thought I’d remembered Eruption hitting an opponent multiple times before it burst, but that was just me.

As for Magnetic Aura, well, it basically IS the same thing — the problem is, the staff version doesn’t remove conditions AND it has a longer cooldown. >.<

For the moment, I’ll stand by my initial suggestions for Unsteady Ground, however — at the moment, it is ridiculously easy to dodge. I’ll wait until another helpful soul comes along and tells me why exactly I’ve got my head on backwards.

Your suggestion for Rock Barrier(Scepter Earth 2) is drastically overpowered. 5 blocks is insane when Arcane Shield which has I believe a 90 second cooldown only blocks 3. Also, if you consider how strong of a buff Aegis is you can see why this change will never take effect.

5 blocks in some dungeons would absorb over 40k damage, given the short cooldown along with the fact that you can keep the shield up at all times, this skill alone would make Elementalists ridiculously strong.

That being said I really like a lot of these changes, especially the change to Dragon’s tooth as hitting with that is almost impossible unless its a ranged mob. And if you get hit by that in pvp you were probably immobilized or knocked down. However, with the buff to cast time they would probably need to nerf the damage a bit as well.

Thank you, Thor, for pointing that out. I had forgotten the length of Arcane Shield’s cooldown. I’ll fix the the OP. =)

Regarding our cone skills like Fire Breath and Cone of Cold, I would really love them to be as responsive as the Guardian’s off-hand Torch #4 Cleansing Flame. It is so much more responsive and ticks at a better pace compared to ours. Give it a try if you have an open alt slot, you’ll agree I guarantee!

You claim in the first post that there is no elite glyph. This is incorrect. We have Glyph of Elementals. While I do not consider it a stellar skill, it IS a glyph, and should benefit from glyph traits.
(Not to be confused with the utility skill Glyph of Lesser Elementals.)

My apologies, Jorn — I had forgotten that Elementals was a glyph.

I’ll edit the OP to more accurately reflect my sentiments on elite skills.

I had to log in to show my support and approval for OP’s review on elementalists weapon suggestions. I think you adressed most weapon issues especially daggers and staff.

Now hopefully a developer reads this and says oh yeah ( light bulb )

Great stuff, but leave eruption alone. The delay gives us an extra blast finisher in any combo field of our choice.

Please change Churning Earth (OH Dagger #5 skill) to either have a shorter cast-time, or invulnerability to “push-overs” while channeling.. It takes 4 secs to cast and if someone merely bumps into you, you don’t get the spell of and you have a CD of 30 secs on your kitten..
You should still be receiving damage while casting the skill offcourse, I’m not talking about full invulnerability, just to stuns and the likes..

On top of that, it’s a rediculous combo finisher.. What combo are you gonna finish with a 4 second cast-time anyway?
(or am I using the spell wrong?)

I would suggest instead of Churning Earth having a faster wind-up time that you could determine an activation time (a la “press and hold” or alternatively “press to activate, press to release”) and deal more cumulative damage the longer you wind it up, the way skills in some other professions or bundles work.

Affably.7102:

I would suggest instead of Churning Earth having a faster wind-up time that you could determine an activation time (a la “press and hold” or alternatively “press to activate, press to release”) and deal more cumulative damage the longer you wind it up, the way skills in some other professions or bundles work.

Or something like this ^^

You’ll have to keep in mind though, that Magnetic Aura is also an AURA. That means it’ll benefit from certain traits (unlike the scepter skill).

In certain trait builds, Magnetic Aura will also grant the caster Swiftness, Fury and Protection. Making it equal to the scepter version will therefore make it overpowered compared to the scepter version.

I believe that is how it used to work back in beta – churning earth was a channeled spell with tiers that after 1,2,3 sec it got stronger.

Note that some blast finishers can use combo fields in strange ways. Dragon tooth can be cast from inside ring of fire to a location outside, and you get the stacks. Churning earth can be started in a ring of fire and even if the ring ends .1 seconds later, you will still get the might when churning earth goes off.

I am currently playing with a might-stacking build using S/D, a might on swap sigil (forgot the name), 30 in arcane and 2 each of the 3 might rune sets (total +90% might duration). combo goes L2L3F4F3F2E4E5 with an arcane wave and 2 cantrips in there since all of them are instant. 15 might from blast finishers in the fire field, 1 from attuning to fire (trait), 6 from cantrips-give-might trait, 3 from sigil. boom 25 stacks. Anything left alive gets quickly killed by bleeds since i remain in earth with all those stacks helping condition damage.

My point in posting all of this here is that speeding up these times would make that whole combo flow much faster. I do not have trouble dieing in that short time – i do use armor of earth and gain protection when i swap to earth – but that is only for PvE. If i try this same combo in PvP the enemy does not stand still long enough for me to hit them with DT or phoenix, and i need lightning flash to land my churning earth. As it stands right now, my combo is excellent in pve and horrible in pvp simply because of how different the movement of your opponent is. My opinion is that we would be appropriately strong in pvp if we could land whole combos like this in less time than we do now, but I do not know exactly how much less it should be. I strongly agree with OP that changing dragon’s tooth will be a good start.

tl,dr;
ele can easily get 25 might stacks, dragons tooth is too slow, pve and pvp balance is not equal.

On top of that, it’s a rediculous combo finisher.. What combo are you gonna finish with a 4 second cast-time anyway?
(or am I using the spell wrong?)

I believe the blast finisher occurs when you start the channeling, not at the end (not 100% sure about this). This could be tested easily in the mists (e.g., start in fire, ring of fire (#4), switch to earth, start channeling and observe when the might stacks get applied).

Also, when interrupted it goes on full cooldown (30s) because the skill applies a cripple effect (up to 4s) DURING the channel. If it didn’t go on full cooldown, this could be abused (e.g., start channel, apply cripple, cancel channel, wait 4s cooldown for an interupted skill, wash/rinse/repeat). It kinda sucks I know. Try using armor of earth, arcane shield, and/or lightning flash during the channel (Armor of earth is great as it provides stability and prevents interrupting) and you’ll get it off more consistently.

I would suggest instead of Churning Earth having a faster wind-up time that you could determine an activation time (a la “press and hold” or alternatively “press to activate, press to release”) and deal more cumulative damage the longer you wind it up, the way skills in some other professions or bundles work.

From what I’ve heard, I believe this is how the skill worked in early Beta. I didn’t play the BWE’s however, so I don’t know for sure. Maybe someone will come along here and clarify

edited to add:

Churning earth can be started in a ring of fire and even if the ring ends .1 seconds later, you will still get the might when churning earth goes off.

Ah, it might work like this.

It did have a click and release mechanic during the BWE’s and made using it without using lightning flash alot more intuitive. I can’t recall the exact damage co-efficients while charging it up though and when the blast finisher triggered.

Gaius.2781:

• Eruption (Earth-2): Animation speed increased by 25-50%

That would remove self combos from the Staff.

There has been a LOT of productive discussion above.

With regard to Eruption, the two main issues appear to be the following:

• As it currently stands, you can dodge it easily
• Speed up the animation and the Earth staff loses a combo field

I agree with both; consequently, I am going to make the following suggestion:

• At the start of the animation, it applies Crippled to all targets within the area; the Crippled condition lasts as long as the buildup animation lasts, forcing people to either dodge or take the full brunt of the Eruption damage.

This solves both the long animation problem (by making it easier to hit people with it) and the combo field problem. =)

As for Churning Earth, I’m also a huge fan of manually charging it up, for either more damage or (preferably) a wider area. I will implement this suggestion in the OP as an alternative to my own.

Cheers, all!

Eruption and Churning Earth are interesting as they are. I think eruption should have a shorter casting time (NOT animation time), and I think Scepter/ MH dagger (or even OH dagger) should give more instant-cast support to make sure Churning Earth works AFTER you started channeling it.

Re: churning earth and combo fields

Your blast finisher can only ever be inside one field. If the spell had 0 cast time and had the same animation time as it does now, it would still be possible to fit one combo field after youre done casting to combo it.

You can change attunement mid-cast and finish casting the previous spell. As an example, equip a scepter and start arc lightning. Then change to water, and notice that arc lightning is still going off but you have soothing mist/cleansing waves etc. This can be useful if someone blinds or weakens you during churning earth.

So if you have no delay from when you finish casting eruption, then it removes the ability to self combo. BUT if you only remove the cast time but leave the delay, then it is essentially the same as it is now, only with less time to press the buttons. At even a medium level of skill I think that removing the cast time and maintaining the same animation time would not prevent self-combo’ing. Removing the cast time and keeping the same total time would not reduce the dps of this single skill, but it would free up more time for casting other skills and will leave just as much time to combo with. Either of those changes would be helpful.

Actually, here is a scenario for how staff earth could work better:
i do not know the exact value, but for now ill assume that eruption takes 1sec to cast and 1sec to animate.
Change the skill to be instant cast (can even be done while other spells are being cast) with a 2sec animation.
Throw down an eruption and a unstable ground (or shockwave) on an enemy to cripple or root them.
then you can put your combo field down after the slow/root is applied in order to get your might or heal from the blast.
If the spells worked like this, a skilled player could use his abilities to self combo while still keeping an enemy controlled in the eruption damage.

@DiogoSilva:

Eruption and Churning Earth are interesting as they are.

Could you elaborate further on this statement?

I only ask because, from where I’m sitting (and remember, I’m the Village Idiot):

• Eruption is child’s play to dodge (“Huh, there’s this big clump of dirt with a red circle around it on the ground. I wonder if I should avoid it?”)
• In PvP, Churning Earth basically only works consistently when paired with Lightning Flash or Armor of Earth (unless you’re facing off against monumentally stupid opponents). Certainly, the need to use Lightning Flash under most circumstances makes it interesting, but since you’re basically using TWO abilities to fire off ONE ability consistently, shouldn’t Churning Earth basically deal the damage of two abilities? Otherwise, it’s a poor Return on Investment, yes?

That’s what it looks like from my perspective. That said: there could be something I’m missing. Like I said, I’m the Village Idiot.

So, explain it to me: why are these abilities interesting as they are? Pretty please?

Here’s some things I’d like to see.

Dagger
Burning Speed – Self triggering combo field of fire and leap to create a fire aura. Allows d/d ele’s to trigger aura traits for combo chains without first putting water or air on cool down.

Fire Grab – Lower recharge, maybe ~35 seconds.

Frost Aura – Lower recharge, maybe 30-35 seconds.

Shocking Aura – Higher recharge, 30 seconds

Ride the Lightning – Sub-skill to “detonate”

Focus
Flamewall – In addition to the burning condition apply 2 seconds of cripple, weakness, and vulnerability.

Fire Shield – Reduce recharge to 20 seconds. Applies Retaliation (for skill only not combo fields + finishers)

Freezing Gust – Tweak the numbers for an upkeep time of 25%, don’t drop the recharge lower than 20 seconds.

Magnetic Wave – nerf it a bit, several things to pick from.

Obsidian Flesh – Make the invulnerability real, so that duration over time doesn’t deal damage. Deny all sources of damage.

Scepter
Dragon’s Tooth – Faster drop

Phoenix – Reduce recharge to 15 seconds.

Shatterstone – Reduce detonations to 1.5 seconds. Add 2 second chill. Increase recharge to 4 seconds.

Arc Lightning – Inflict weakness for 2 seconds each hit during Stage 2 damage, and Vulnerability for 4 seconds each hit during Stage 3.

Staff
Burning Retreat – In addition to the burning condition apply 2 seconds of cripple, weakness, and vulnerability.

Lightning Surge – Add Weakness

@Shockwave:
In a word… intense!

I’ll go through your suggestions point by point, just to let you know which I like (most of them) and which of them cause me to raise my eyebrows a bit.

Burning Speed – Self triggering combo field of fire and leap to create a fire aura. Allows d/d ele’s to trigger aura traits for combo chains without first putting water or air on cool down.

Fantastic. Adding to the OP shortly.

Fire Grab – Lower recharge, maybe ~35 seconds.

This is one of the few suggestions you made with which I disagree, for two reasons:

• The suggestions I made in the OP are more “quality of life” and “consistency” suggestions; I tried to avoid altering damage values or cooldowns except for the above reasons
• Though I personally wouldn’t mind a reduced cooldown (it’s a single-target melee range nuke), I think a suggestion like this one needs to wait on a “numbers pass” — that is, someone doing some serious Elementalist number crunching.

For the moment, I’m leaving this one off the OP.

Frost Aura – Lower recharge, maybe 30-35 seconds.
Shocking Aura – Higher recharge, 30 seconds

From what I’m seeing here, you and I feel auras should be normalized to about 30 seconds. I’ll fix the OP to reflect this.

Ride the Lightning – Sub-skill to “detonate”

Absolute perfection. Added to the OP.

Flamewall – In addition to the burning condition apply 2 seconds of cripple, weakness, and vulnerability.

I understand WHY you made this suggestion (in a word, Flame Wall does nothing but provide a combo field and an insignificant amount of damage), but I don’t feel your suggestion is on the money. Vulnerability seems to be the purview of ice; likewise, Weakness seems to be an Air thing. Cripple is more Earth (in fact, Unsteady Ground is a wall that cripples — it would be rather redundant, yes?).

Fire Shield – Reduce recharge to 20 seconds. Applies Retaliation (for skill only not combo fields + finishers)

I’d rather it apply Vigor and/or Might or Fury. These seem more Fire’s style.

Besides: Elementalists need to dodge a lot more than other classes — Vigor is more useful to us.

Freezing Gust – Tweak the numbers for an upkeep time of 25%, don’t drop the recharge lower than 20 seconds.

Ten-four. =)

Obsidian Flesh – Make the invulnerability real, so that duration over time doesn’t deal damage. Deny all sources of damage.

Good catch!

Dragon’s Tooth – Faster drop

Already taken care of.

Phoenix – Reduce recharge to 15 seconds.

Same story as Fire Grab — I’d wait on a numbers pass to make a change like this.

Shatterstone – Reduce detonations to 1.5 seconds. Add 2 second chill. Increase recharge to 4 seconds.

Already done. =)

Arc Lightning – Inflict weakness for 2 seconds each hit during Stage 2 damage, and Vulnerability for 4 seconds each hit during Stage 3.

I like the way you think, but I baked Weakness into Lightning Strike. It’s a tossup — either way, I think we both agree that Scepter needs a way to inflict Weakness.

Burning Retreat – In addition to the burning condition apply 2 seconds of cripple, weakness, and vulnerability.

I actually like your combo field idea better. =)

Lightning Surge – Add Weakness

I like where you’re going with this, but I’m wary of leaning too heavily on Lightning Surge. I agree with you: Air staff needs Weakness, I’m just not sure where.

Thanks for your contributions, and feel free to discuss my response or yell at me.

I haven’t had a chance to read through all the posts, however going over the current OP I have to say a lot of the changes sound very reasonable, and would inspire me to use more than the staff. I liked my gameplay with both daggers and scepter/focus and combinations thereof, but I felt the staff always provided so much more flexibility.

My main concern with Scepter was that, fire felt decent to play in, if I could land dragon’s tooth, but water was annoying. I felt if I wasn’t casting shatterstone, I wasn’t be effective, yet casting shatterstone would be all I do. I got more mileage out of the focus offhand when I swapped to that attunement, that and water trident.

I really hope a dev takes a look at this thread and weighs in on the ideas. But then again, I might be just spoiled from spending most of my time reading the personal story section where Jeff posts a ton.

@MagosLich:
To be honest, I feel that if the devs read this thread, I hope they take it as inspiration rather than a laundry list — a community approved muse rather than a list of demands.

That’s why I edit the OP in response to discussion: so the most favorable ideas rise to the top, whilst the more scatterbrained of my ideas disappear.

That way, the devs can get the distilled version just by reading the OP — and if they like what they see, they don’t have to say anything. All they have to do is say, “Huh, hadn’t thought of that.”

It’s a self-selecting collection of ideas they can kick around, without having to take a position on the forums. =)

Understandable. If anything I really like the idea of a vigor buff on fire shield, as vigor seems like an underestimated boon that can be tricky to get. Not to mention, we get it on our trident 5 skill, why not focus?

Gaius.2781:

Flamewall – In addition to the burning condition apply 2 seconds of cripple, weakness, and vulnerability.

I understand WHY you made this suggestion (in a word, Flame Wall does nothing but provide a combo field and an insignificant amount of damage), but I don’t feel your suggestion is on the money. Vulnerability seems to be the purview of ice; likewise, Weakness seems to be an Air thing. Cripple is more Earth (in fact, Unsteady Ground is a wall that cripples — it would be rather redundant, yes?).

I’d at least like to see a Trait in Arcana or Fire Magic for making fire fields deal burning, weakness, vulnerability, and cripple. As it stands, ele have a lot of skills for fire fields, but they can largely be ignored as burning only stacks in durations then can be purged once the field dies.

@Shockwave:
Fire fields provide a lot more than burning.

If combo’d, fire fields provide Area Might (3 stacks of it), Flame Shield (which, I feel, should provide Vigor), and Burning Bolts. You can get a lot out of them besides Burning.

I understand what you’re asking: you want Fire to provide conditions besides Burning.

My only counter-arguments are as follows:

• Other conditions are provided by other attunements (Air = Weakness, Blind; Earth = Crippled, Bleed; Ice = Vulnerable, Chilled). Fire is already our best DPS, for single targets AND groups — if you provide conditions, too, what incentive is there to swap attunements at all?
• Fire is pretty generous with boons, namely Vigor (provided by Phoenix and Heat Wave), Might (which is provided within Fire fields), and Fury (when attuning to Fire).

Yeah, it sucks that Fire can’t do everything. At the same time, it’s kinda GOOD that Fire can’t do everything. =)

Magoslich.6857:

Understandable. If anything I really like the idea of a vigor buff on fire shield, as vigor seems like an underestimated boon that can be tricky to get.

Vigor is GODLY for Elementalists, for two reasons:

• Elementalists are squishy. As has been discussed to death, we are the squishiest class in the game in terms of base armor and health. Squishy classes like being able to dodge things. Vigor helps us dodge things more. Ergo, Vigor is great for Elementalists.
• If you swap attunements correctly, Elementalists have a HUGE number of crowd control spells that you can juggle with dodging to avoid things. Against foes with slow attacks, Blind + Dodge + Knockdown is your friend. Against foes with fast attacks, Weakness/Chill + Dodge + Knockdown is your friend. Vigor just makes it that much better.

Vigor is also provided by Phoenix, BTW.

Pretty good list. I hope the devs are reading and kick it around the office.

Gaius.2781:

@Shockwave:
Fire fields provide a lot more than burning.

If combo’d, fire fields provide Area Might (3 stacks of it), Flame Shield (which, I feel, should provide Vigor), and Burning Bolts. You can get a lot out of them besides Burning.

I understand what you’re asking: you want Fire to provide conditions besides Burning.

My only counter-arguments are as follows:

• Other conditions are provided by other attunements (Air = Weakness, Blind; Earth = Crippled, Bleed; Ice = Vulnerable, Chilled). Fire is already our best DPS, for single targets AND groups — if you provide conditions, too, what incentive is there to swap attunements at all?
• Fire is pretty generous with boons, namely Vigor (provided by Phoenix and Heat Wave), Might (which is provided within Fire fields), and Fury (when attuning to Fire).

Yeah, it sucks that Fire can’t do everything. At the same time, it’s kinda GOOD that Fire can’t do everything. =)

I should clarify, I just want the line fire fields to do more. They can still be used for combo fields yes, but the bonuses from fire fields are damage only and I only use the line fire fields as an after thought due to the feasible of gaining meaningful damage from those two skills (Burning Retreat and FlameWall).

Ring of Fire and Lava Font are fine as far as I’m concerned, as the first you’ll trigger at 2-3 blast finishers plus a leap finisher in easily and the seconds main purpose is significant raw damage with a bonus of being a fire field.

Burning Retreat and Flamewall don’t provide much value as they exist now. The first is a an extra dodge, but you’re using staff so the potential damage boons don’t go very far and the second is just ground targeted without the dodge.

D/F is awkward in general and Flamewall doesn’t really make sense with that weapon set. S/F really only gets benefit out of Dragon’s Tooth and Phoenix, which is something but not much.

It’s my opinion that the line fire fields are comparatively ineffective to other skills, and I would find it interesting to allow them to inflict weakness, vulnerability, and cripple on top of burning for 2 seconds each second someone is in one of those fields. If something like that comes via traits, I’d also like to see line fire fields be remodeled as purple. Again just my opinion, based on all the above and then some.

@Shockwave:
You have a point.

Let’s be about this systematically. Within the Guild Wars 2 Elementalist Canono, fire does:

• Vigor
• Might
• Burning
• Damage

Currently, Flame Wall doesn’t do much damage. One option is to increase that damage.

Another option: Fear. I don’t know about you, but were I confronted by a wall of fire, I’d be terrified. But it would have to be under certain circumstances (like a combo). But the combo system is pretty well entrenched right now, so you’d have to work it in another way.

Another option is Fury, though I have no idea how you’d implement it.

One last option is condition removal, although that generally falls within the purview of Light Fields.

Of these, the most likely option is Moar Damage — which can’t hurt, given that the Elementalist is a tad low on damage right now.

I shan’t add anything to the OP without more discussion, however. What say you?

Gaius.2781:

@Shockwave:
You have a point.

Let’s be about this systematically. Within the Guild Wars 2 Elementalist Canono, fire does:

• Vigor
• Might
• Burning
• Damage

Currently, Flame Wall doesn’t do much damage. One option is to increase that damage.

Another option: Fear. I don’t know about you, but were I confronted by a wall of fire, I’d be terrified. But it would have to be under certain circumstances (like a combo).

So thinking this through… we want a damage skill to make the enemy run away from the damage?

Not saying fear isn’t more useful than the damage, just counter productive to the skill’s purpose which is area control via out dps’ing opponents. Fear is area control via making a character move in a direction away from the fear source.

I wouldn’t go down that road, but if we did we’d then have to figure out what the actual fear source is. Is it the caster or the field? If it’s the field the caster can potentially move an enemy in whatever direction he/she chooses, so having the caster as the fear source is more balanced. Due to conflict of balance and weird mechanic of having line fire fields inflict fear, I’m again not wanting to go down that path.

I prefer an arcane flame concept that I’ve suggested previously where line flame fields inflict conditions from all attunements for a very short duration. I think a trait, which can easily be recategorized to adept, master, or grandmaster and potentially be moved between two trait lines Fire Magic and Arcana for balancing is the best solution for making linear fire fields meaningful in combat. Changing the Flames from red to purple when traited for visibility would be important as well for balance.

There are of course numerous other solutions. I happen to prefer mine, because I feel like it’s easy to balance due to trait flexibility and I feel like it fits the elementalist well.

@Shockwave:
I think we might end up butting heads on this one because I feel that if Fire attunement could inflict all those conditions via Flame Wall, it would render other attunements (all of which do less damage) obsolete. Why switch to Air to inflict Weakness or Blind when you can do it with Flame Wall from Fire attunement, which puts out more damage?

The only way your suggestion would work is if you could put out Fire DPS via the Grand Master traits in every other attunement. That would balance it out: Grand Master Fire gets conditions; Grand Master Air and Earth get DPS to complement their conditions and control (Water would be the exception because it has both conditions AND healing AND condition removal built in).

But that would be a major, MAJOR change to the entire Elementalist class. A much simpler solution to this particular problem (to wit, Flame Wall sucks) would be to straight-up buff Flame Wall’s DPS. =)

I was thinking a Master Major trait, which is asking a lot for only 1 of 20 skills. Not sure how it would render the other attunements obsolete when the class is designed to combo between attunements. You’ll still want to play the class the exact same, the difference is you’re Burning Retreat or Flamewall becomes a more effective tool to utilize and would be worth kiting around. Increasing the DPS on the skills is simpler solution, but I’m all about “Flare”.

Gaius.2781:

@Shockwave:
Fire fields provide a lot more than burning.

If combo’d, fire fields provide Area Might (3 stacks of it), Flame Shield (which, I feel, should provide Vigor), and Burning Bolts. You can get a lot out of them besides Burning.

I understand what you’re asking: you want Fire to provide conditions besides Burning.

My only counter-arguments are as follows:

• Other conditions are provided by other attunements (Air = Weakness, Blind; Earth = Crippled, Bleed; Ice = Vulnerable, Chilled). Fire is already our best DPS, for single targets AND groups — if you provide conditions, too, what incentive is there to swap attunements at all?
• Fire is pretty generous with boons, namely Vigor (provided by Phoenix and Heat Wave), Might (which is provided within Fire fields), and Fury (when attuning to Fire).

Yeah, it sucks that Fire can’t do everything. At the same time, it’s kinda GOOD that Fire can’t do everything. =)

I would say there are a few reasons fire is the primary for dps that should be looked it. Your changes do a lot to help bring Water up to par, but I think Air needs work too.

(This is pretty much for staff as it is my love.)

Fire, aside from having naturally higher numbers, is the only stance with two attacks on a low cooldown, and our best autoattack. Water has a great 2, even without the buffs you suggest, but Geyser is a mid cd, no damage spell, and Water’s autoattack is the worst on staff. Air (which is billed as our second damage attune) only has one skill that does damage, and while it’s auto is good if only two targets are in range, can be random, and is far worse than Fire on one target. So basically in my opinion Air and Water need some more damage spells, and at least for Water I would /adore/ if so of its underwater mechanics got brought on land. Flinging spheres and detonating, or ice walls that you explode are soo fun and very fitting for an ice mage. Air just needs focus and I am not quite sure how to get it to fit and be fun. Making it /only/ single target would be a neat fix. As for Earth, it needs help too, but Eruption is also one of the best skills staff has, so I don’t know what to add.

As for elites, I would love to see them scrapped and redesigned. And I would love to see a massive ‘blow up the world’ type spell as an elite. Huuuuge damage, but similarly huge cast time. Could be an arcane spell or a glyph. Would be a lot of fun. I just love Meteor/Pyroblast type spells though.

@Shockwave:
Something just occurred to me in my sleep.

Maybe, just maybe, Flame Wall (and Flame Wall alone) could have an ancillary effect when it sets things on fire. So, “On inflicting Burning, applies Fury to caster and nearby allies.” Or some such.

(if you’re curious, I had a dream reminiscent of the first scene in Gladiator and remembered the rationale that those flaming arrows were supposed to be used for psychological effect).

@Eimi:
You’re absolutely right about Air having no damage, but then, I’m noticing that Air tends to double as a “control” attunement. You use it when you need to blind or knock things thing around.

As I indicated above, this thread is mainly devoted to “quality of life” suggestions and consistency for the Elementalist. Whilst some of the Elementalist’s skills may need to do more damage or have shorter cooldowns, I’m of the opinion that that judgment needs to be made on a “numbers pass” for the Elementalist — a forum post seriously comparing Elementalist DPS at 80 with other classes.

Flamewall could also be given an effect for allies passing through it. Vigor or Fury are both good options there. Ring of Fire could possibly get the same treatment, although with the initial damage that has a bit more going for it.

I’d definitely like to see a way for D/D to get Vigor without having to trait for it. It’s such a crucial buff that 20 into water or arcane feels mandatory.

Gaius.2781:

@Eimi:
You’re absolutely right about Air having no damage, but then, I’m noticing that Air tends to double as a “control” attunement. You use it when you need to blind or knock things thing around.

As I indicated above, this thread is mainly devoted to “quality of life” suggestions and consistency for the Elementalist. Whilst some of the Elementalist’s skills may need to do more damage or have shorter cooldowns, I’m of the opinion that that judgment needs to be made on a “numbers pass” for the Elementalist — a forum post seriously comparing Elementalist DPS at 80 with other classes.

Yeah, Air does have control but that’s one of the blurbs Air attunement has. It is supposed to have heavy damage and control, while Fire is heavy damage and AoE iirc. Seeing Air be really high single target, like say Zeus from DOTA, would differentiate it from Fire which is all about the aoe.