Guild Wars 2

The focus is a weird weapon for ele. That’s not news for anyone. Air and Earth are both really strong, but water is in a weird place and fire is completely useless. Because of that weakness, focus rarely sees any play, being often ignored over dagger, which provides useful, strong skills on all 4 attunements. So how do we change that? Well, taking advantage of the fact that ele is at the bottom of the meta and focus is at the bottom of the ele options (when taking in consideration all game modes), a buff to the two lacking elements while keeping the already strong ones untouched would be a good start.

• Fire:

Flamewall: completely useless. Not worth the cast time, so no one ever uses it. It deals little to no damage, applies measely 1sec of burn, and can be evaded through.
Change: it needs some utility to it. Another ward would be overkill and doesn’t fit the skill, and blocking projectiles is already covered on air attunement. Perhaps just a straight buff to damage, with an added dose of cripple, would make it a bit more enticing, but it might not be what this skill needs. Suggestions would be appreciated.

Fire Shield: also useless, but at least it’s an instant cast. But fire shield is by far the easiest thing to obtain in this game through combo fields. And it’s on a 40sec cooldown?
Change: either scrap the skill and replace it with something else entirely, or make this version of the Fire Shield much stronger than the combo field version (longer duration, more might stacks, gives might on cast, etc.)

• Water:

Freezing Gust: it’s got its uses, a 3 second chill at range is pretty nice to compensate the lack of mobility on focus, but it always felt like it lacked “oomph”. It felt underpowered for what it is, especially considering its staff (an unblockable ice field with a really large radius that pulses chill) and mainhand dagger (3s chill on a 240 radius, stronger damage, and soon to become a blast finisher) counterparts.
Change: a slight improve to the damage would be a nice start. If it hit up to 3 targets (requires a target), then i feel it would justify its cooldown. As it is, it’s a quirky catch up skill at best (especially given that the alternative offhand has ride the lightning on a shorter cooldown)

Comet: the best skill of the four listed here. It’s on a decent cast time and applies 2 seconds of daze. It also blasts the area and deals moderate damage, and it’s AoE (albeit so small it’s basically so it actually lands on moving targets).
Change: the dilemma here is “do i want to change a strong daze into a weak one, but reduce the cast time to make it a more viable interrupt?”. Comet is in a good spot, but I wonder if it wouldn’t be better used as an interrupt rather than a shutdown.