Guild Wars 2

While the last buffs were a nice start, the weapon is nowhere near viable, unless you consider golems threatening.

The lack of reliably putting damage to targets is detrimental to the class, and even if landing everything the damage is definitely NOT worth it.

Please, look into the weapon, even the support it brings is subpar to non-support classes.

Possible fixes include; fire; making it easier to put some damage, that or simply upping the damage by A LOT. Water #5 needs some direct healing or lower CD, though tbh I would be ok with water #5 if water #1 could be cast on either allies or targetted. Lighting is supposed to be single target, yet element remains low damage, the #3 is impossible to land, STILL, #2 has a long casting time for a meh damage. Earth is pretty much pointless beyond magnetic aura.

Please Anet, lets see staff elementalist finally get their deserved buffs, we have only gotten the short end of the stick with indirect nerfs, we have neither mobility nor healing, CC is easily avoidable (too easily except for frozen field, which has a whooping 40 seconds CD), support is subpar and damage is “normal” if you manage to land everything on a golem.

EDIT Here is a little video about some of the problems we have:

Earth is mostly fine. 4 could use a 1s immobilize and shockwave needs to be faster.

Fire is fine

Water:
#2 should be blast
#4 less cd
#5 should heal more and remove more condies. But: the animation could be more obvioud and easy to interrupt. You know adding some skill plays to the game wont hurt
Air
#2 increase damage
#3 should hit enemy

Earth
#4 should work as a real wall

Staff is now viable and very far from op

Here’s your answer

The current patch is an attempt to do small “shavings” to bring the class into line with these goals, in the same way we tried to “shave” the Ele numerous times, rather than “nerfing it from orbit”. Are all Ele specs equally viable in all game types? No. Is this ok? Yes. Staff can see play in one game type while D/D or S/D see play in others. As we’ve said, we’ll split skills/weapons more and more in the variuos game types, but each time we split a skill, it gives us more update work down the road. We have to be very prudent when we split skills.

@Jonathan Sharp

Small shavings. Lol.

Alilinke.7690:

Here’s your answer

The current patch is an attempt to do small “shavings” to bring the class into line with these goals, in the same way we tried to “shave” the Ele numerous times, rather than “nerfing it from orbit”. Are all Ele specs equally viable in all game types? No. Is this ok? Yes. Staff can see play in one game type while D/D or S/D see play in others. As we’ve said, we’ll split skills/weapons more and more in the variuos game types, but each time we split a skill, it gives us more update work down the road. We have to be very prudent when we split skills.

@Jonathan Sharp

This is sad. I don’t really play Elementalists that much, but my heart cries for them.

That is actually really funny…“small shavings.” I would hate to see what a “big adjustment” would be. Perhaps they would octuple a skill’s CD and halve its range, or remove 98% of the utility from a utility skill if those adjustments were “small.”

“small shaving”!? mist form is a free punching ball that does neither damage, allows you to heal, conditions will still tick, long CD, allows enemy to reset the fight by allowing them to heal and cast long casting skills. The only reason it was ever used was for the heal, now it is almost a favor to the enemy. Water/arcana nerfs sure hit D/D, but the poor staff ele bit it dry since we already had almost no sustain to begin with and no condition removals except for a 40 secs long CD skill.

D/D RoTL, 40 seconds if it doesnt hit anything. Please, that would only be fair if every skill in the game; Guardians GS #3, warriors 99999999 movement skills dont hit and have the CD doubled, heck, even thieves D/D HS should have a double CD if the skill doesnt hit, would only be fair.

I dont like to sound like “eles are the worst bla blah blah” but right now eles are outmatched in EVERYTHING, and it isnt about “jack of all, master of none” thing, a guardian can literally do everything an ele does, better. Mesmers despite the lack of “mobility” does a better job at surviving while doing INSANE damage and bringing insane utility.

Eles are in a really" bad spot, only thing they have going for them is a *one trick pony thing which is to go with S/D and try to burst someone by surprise or definitely die trying.

Imjust gonna leave this here

They tactically nuked D/D back when it was OP, and forgot to factor in collateral damage that the blast would inevitably cause on the other builds.

Does anyone even wuvwuv anymore?

It is sad that people’s ignorance get classes nerfed, eles are an example of this. People assume that all eles can heal for massive amounts, deal massive amount of damage and get away everytime because they saw 3 D/D eles doing doing each thing separatelly, hence they, once again, ASSUME all eles can do so, including STAFF which is definitely the underdog of all weapons (im gonna assume focus doesnt exist because it might as well).

Because of this we suffer from people who have had to “deal” with these “nightmares” in PvP and want the class to be eliminated since they dont play it and they couldnt care less. I understand, it is human nature, nobody wants to be paper facing scissors, everyone wants to be rock and have paper being wet. What I didnt like is how Devs gave in to the whinning and nerfed right and left without any thoughts on how this could affect other speccs.

Even more, it pains me even more than we have such a useless Fire trait line. It pains me even more knowing that none of the devs or testers play staff (by a fact, all it takes is 10 minutes of play to realize how flawed that weapon is)

balancing a class in pvp because ZvZvZ was a dumb idea from the start

I feel bad for staff elementalists but then again I don’t want to see more AOE splatter everywhere..

At least unlike necro splatter it gets effected by retal…

Darnis.4056:

I feel bad for staff elementalists but then again I don’t want to see more AOE splatter everywhere..

At least unlike necro splatter it gets effected by retal…

Actually staff aoe is “good” aoe.Lava font ticks after a sec and isnt that big of a threat,ice spike and eruption have a huuuuge delay and meteorshower ..wll its meteor shower!I dont know what to sayabout that.
And thats pretty much all aoe damage staff has except the minor aoe from the blast of fire ball and bounching air auto but thats like the thiefs sb auto.
All the rest aoe is control or heal with a bit of dots and very very little damage here and there ..You can improve the weapon by fixing the autoattacks and giving it more defence without touching the aoe damage it has at all

I’m not saying that we should or should not improve the aoe damage..
I’m saying if buffs of any sort were to make staff viable we’d see a lot more aoe damage in an aoe damage meta and I’m not so sure I want that :/