Guild Wars 2

I’ve been doing well with my Scepter/Dagger build (which is based on Phantaram’s build) (after quite a bit of practice, of course), but there are a few small issues that need to be ironed out.

1.)
The Problem:
Ride The Lightning is bugged and only travels all the way to the target around 50% of the time. This is absolutely detrimental to Elementalists, since our only near-surefire way to land an updraft is via Ride The Lightning.
The fix:
Make Ride The Lightning function as intended. Since I (obviously) haven’t been able to look at the way Ride The Lightning is coded, I’m not quite sure what should be done to fix this issue. However, on moving targets (and especially airborne targets), Ride The lightning will sometimes cause a self-stun of sorts. In any case, this is a huge oversight of a bug that needs to be fixed.

2.)
The Problem:
We’re too reliant on updraft to begin fire attunement combos. If the opponent manages to dodge Updraft or uses a stun-breaker, the Elementalist’s damage potential goes down significantly. If this happens in a 1v1 fight (say, at the enemy trebuchet), the best option is often to escape the fight and come back later when you may stand a better chance.
The fix:
This fix is also quite easy. Make Dragon’s Tooth aimable. This means that I can lead the target and potentially still land my damage. The fact that Dragon’s Tooth isn’t aimable means that any opponent with any knowledge whatsoever of Elementalists (or people that just so happen to notice the giant floating tooth about to fall on them) will just move out of the way. I understand that Elementalists already have a lot of aimable AoE spells, but what’s one more for the sake of balance? Honestly, I wouldn’t mind a slight cooldown increase if this change happens.

3.)
The Problem:
We have fairly low overall sustained damage after we use our initial burst. In fights over points, after our fire combo is spent, our best option is to go into water for a bit of support, and perhaps swap into earth for a quick knockdown. We don’t have the option to continue to do moderate sustained damage to a target that needs to be focused.
The fix:
Slightly increase the damage on Air Attunement’s autoattack, Arc Lightning. A small 10%-15% increase is perfect. This would line us up with other bursty classes in terms of sustained damage after initial burst and give more choices after our fire combo (as in, we have 3 attunements to swap to, rather than just water or earth and air as a last option).

Sidenote.) These three fixes do not address the fact that Fire is not an attractive trait tree to spend points into due to its lackluster trait slots throughout the entire tree, nor does it address the fact that 20-30 points (usually 30) in Arcana is almost mandatory due to how valuable lower attunement-swap cooldowns are (and how great some of the traits are). Fire, and potentially a few of the other trees, should have their trait slots brought up to be competitive with Arcana and Water, and all trees should be geared toward frequent attunement swapping. Trait skills such as “Reduce Fire cooldowns by 20%” simply are not a viable choice at the moment.

Anyone else have any thoughts/ideas on my proposed changes? Any flaws in them?

I just want to say that Updraft isn’t only vital to Sceptor Fire attunement attacks, but also Dagger’s Burning Speed. We share similar issues, which really should be addressed. D/D Elementalist attunement dance a lot in order to juggle between utilizing our survivability and utility skill with our damage.

Burning Speed should functionally work like Ride the Lightning where it actually tracks the target and stop in front of them, range permitting, instead of going right through your target.

Right now D/D is really contradictory once your initial burst ends. Now you’re right beside your target and they’re too close for the 600 range that must be traversed before Burning Speed detonates and delivers the majority of its damage, which is the PBAOE explosion.

We shouldn’t be locked our of defensive options because we have to go through absurdly complicated and demanding sets of rotations just to deliver damage that is actually LOWER than the burst damage of other classes who are also more survivable and less complicated than us.

The idea that a profession must be played by using the same combo 1-2-3 over and over again is simply wrong, there are several way to start any combo, all the problems you mention are yours only

tbh I just want dragon’s tooth to animate faster. Ground targeting isnt gonna help much with how slow it is now in my opinion.

3 is wrong. Air magic can be good sustained damage, and condition builds have amazing sustained damage in a fight with earth magic.

The other two points I agree with you.

Arheundel.6451:

The idea that a profession must be played by using the same combo 1-2-3 over and over again is simply wrong, there are several way to start any combo, all the problems you mention are yours only

he is referring to the Scepter/Dagger Power build which is essentially based around using your other attunement abilities to put your opponent in a position where this combo is most effective

on the subject of dragons tooth, the very mechanics of the ability are wrong, its slow enough you dont need to evade out of it (you can literally just run out with no speed buffs) yet its so utterly massive you will always see it coming and it has a cooldown, this screams bad game design

its damage even after gear scaling its simply not enough making the risk often not worth it in most pvp encounters both structured and WvWvW, the few being its ability to hit players on walls in WvWvW and the fact that it sometimes does not load in correctly in large 50+ player battles (this should be fixed by the way)

you can make it targeted but i recommend simply making it form and drop faster, just fast enough so an enemy player will still get hit by it while moving at standard run speeds and can still dodge it with evasive maneuvers

another solution would be to attach a root to the skill, many classes share this kind of mechanic such as thief’s pistol whip, however i recommend against this
There’s far to many “push button to stun and butcher” buttons in this game already

Arheundel.6451:

The idea that a profession must be played by using the same combo 1-2-3 over and over again is simply wrong, there are several way to start any combo, all the problems you mention are yours only

Considering Updraft is the only cc we have (unless you take Signet of Earth) that lasts long enough for Dragon’s Tooth to land, it is in fact the only “1-2-3” combo for Dragon’s Tooth.

Therefore, this problem is not “mine only”. Also, suggesting that Ride The Lightning’s awful glitch is a problem of “mine only” just confuses me.

Also, matadom is correct in saying that I’m talking about the S/D power build. At the moment, it’s the most popular style of S/D build, although it’s possible to Bunker decently as well. We are actually quite pigeonholed in playstyles right now if we hope to do well.

Aries.5182:

3 is wrong. Air magic can be good sustained damage, and condition builds have amazing sustained damage in a fight with earth magic.

The other two points I agree with you.

Our sustained damage isn’t too bad, but a small 10% bump would put us in line with other bursty classes in terms of sustained damage.

Obie.3268:

I just want to say that Updraft isn’t only vital to Sceptor Fire attunement attacks, but also Dagger’s Burning Speed. We share similar issues, which really should be addressed. D/D Elementalist attunement dance a lot in order to juggle between utilizing our survivability and utility skill with our damage.

Burning Speed should functionally work like Ride the Lightning where it actually tracks the target and stop in front of them, range permitting, instead of going right through your target.

Right now D/D is really contradictory once your initial burst ends. Now you’re right beside your target and they’re too close for the 600 range that must be traversed before Burning Speed detonates and delivers the majority of its damage, which is the PBAOE explosion.

We shouldn’t be locked our of defensive options because we have to go through absurdly complicated and demanding sets of rotations just to deliver damage that is actually LOWER than the burst damage of other classes who are also more survivable and less complicated than us.

I tried some more D/D PvP (it’s what I used for a while, until I realized the futility, but I wasn’t as skilled as I am now) with several different builds so that I could come up with some simple solutions to their problems, but D/D is a complete mess. It has less burst potential than S/D by quite a bit, less sustained damage, and is far less survivable, causing the need to play hit-and-run. The problem is, they don’t do enough damage to actually whittle someone down in this manner. From what I can tell though, Lightning Whip definitely needs more damage and Fire Breath needs a reason to be used. Magnetic Grasp also suffers from glitches that need to be fixed.

I hear a lot of good Eles say support Staff builds are quite powerful and balanced as long as you don’t try to duel anyone without calling for immediate backup. I’ll probably play some this week to get an accurate gauge on that.

If you’ve burnt through all your cds and stuff, Stone Shards is still good ST DPS to fall back on.

Dragons Tooth just needs to animate faster. People shouldnt be able to just idly walk out of it without needing to dodge or anything. Heck even in PvE I’ll usually kill my target before it lands or it will overkill or the pve mob will run out of it. No spell should be like this, and the damage on dragon’s tooth isn’t THAT high to justify being nearly unusable in a large number of situations.

DreadShinobi.4751:

If you’ve burnt through all your cds and stuff, Stone Shards is still good ST DPS to fall back on.

Dragons Tooth just needs to animate faster. People shouldnt be able to just idly walk out of it without needing to dodge or anything. Heck even in PvE I’ll usually kill my target before it lands or it will overkill or the pve mob will run out of it. No spell should be like this, and the damage on dragon’s tooth isn’t THAT high to justify being nearly unusable in a large number of situations.

I thought about a faster animation time for Dragon’s Tooth and how it would help, but it honestly doesn’t seem like it’d do much aside from allowing it to land after an Earthquake. Unless it dropped instantly, players would still be able to move out of it (unless the blast radius were increased or it was sped up to the point where it instantly drops). Perhaps if the faster animation time were combined with a faster cast time, it could be an acceptable change.

if anyone has ever looked at the damage of the skills, dragons tooth is the 3rd strongest dmg spell, almost the strong as firegrab except it is literally 8x shorter on cooldown compared to anything else that comes close to its dmg. If people ever do expect it to get buffed for a higher chance of connecting with their target, be prepared to expect a pretty hefty dmg reduction/cd increase coming along with it. As for PvE it is the highest sustained dps spell for an ele.

Micro Hard.3601:

if anyone has ever looked at the damage of the skills, dragons tooth is the 3rd strongest dmg spell, almost the strong as firegrab except it is literally 8x shorter on cooldown compared to anything else that comes close to its dmg. If people ever do expect it to get buffed for a higher chance of connecting with their target, be prepared to expect a pretty hefty dmg reduction/cd increase coming along with it. As for PvE it is the highest sustained dps spell for an ele.

I’d be fine with a cooldown increase. However, Elementalists seem to be designed to press a lot of buttons and always have something to do. Rarely are we just autoattacking (in comparison to other classes), so too much of a cooldown increase may hurt. That said, Dragon’s Tooth may as well be on the same cooldown as Updraft, as that’s the only way you’re landing it against a competent player.

1.) Agreed, RTL needs a big fix. In the current state it’s very risky to use, as 7/10 times I’m just left hanging like a pinata getting attacked by the target I should’ve taken by surprise – the whole point of the skill.

2.) I dunno. D/D feels like the only build that really relies heavily on Updraft to open the combos. Mostly because D/D builds are low on defense and need to keep the target immobilized for fear he might hit back. I typically run S/D and the only time I open with RTL + UD is against ranged foes to put them on the defensive early. Far better to reserve UD and RTL against a melee charging at you IMO. Regarding Dragon’s Tooth, it really just needs to animate faster. I have found however that if you time it right you can pop RoF → DT → FG/Phoenix → Swap to Earth and land the knock down the same time DT drops. Does some pretty awesome damage when fighting on contested nodes.

3.) Agreed we have issues with sustaining dmg between big combos but I think I’d rather see some of those long CDs reduced or a flat increase in dmg for performing such a lengthy and intricate combo rotation. If I happen to land 90% of those hits, that should be plenty enough dmg to take down anyone except some full on bunker builds. If other classes can pop high burst dmg with 1 or 2 buttons, then mastering an 8-10 button combo should produce devastating results IMO.

Agree with bugs but lmao S/D is arguably closest to balance out of other weapon combo

@Micro Hard – I’d be fine with Dragon’s tooth getting a cd increase or damage nerf if it means getting the delay significantly reduced. With that said though, if they did reduce the dmg or increase the cd on dragons tooth then they should also decrease the cd or increase the damage on fire grab so that fire attunement still has a respectable attack chain.

they really dont need to decrease the damage of DT, the issue with DT is entirely mechanical

its simply not reliable

Very easy solution: Undo the nerf given to us between BWE2 and BWE3. Elementalist damage with all weapons is lackluster, and although an elite minority is able to make it work well, its potential should not be accessible by an elite few while the rest are left to make easy prey for warriors spamming quickness and hundred blades, or thieves with pistol whip.

While I can make a S/D build work… somewhat, as well as D/D, staff builds are just atrocious unless building for support. This is ridiculous as the very design of the elementalist indicates it should be capable of damage, support, healing, or whatever else just via speccing and current attunement. The weapon should denote engagement range and style of damage, not functionally limit the class to support.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/elementalist/
Read what aNet’s class description says about Fire and Air attunements. Fire is accurate, but Air is way off with every single weapon. Air has been relegated to CC, Mobility, and Buffs/Debuffs, honestly which would be better suited to Earth attunement for CC and Debuffs, and Water for Mobility and Buffs. Restore Air’s rightful place as targetted damage. A lightning bolt in real life would kill a man outright, where as fire is a slow, painful death. Granted real life has no bear in gaming, but… still.

I agree that RTL needs fixing (I’ve posted several times only to have elitists say “jump first”. I don’t want to jump first. I want the friggin spell to work.).

S/D and D/D are the better ones. I prefer S/D but I’m considering running D/D some soon to see if I can tweak it better for skills.

However, I think Dragon’s Tooth is good. It is one of our biggest hitters, it is on a really low cooldown, and on top of that it adds a huge burning effect (which some of our traits are geared towards) and is AOE. The draw back is that it can be evaded. If you are going to rely on its damage, you need to consider using signet of earth as a backup for Updraft.

Scepter/air’s single target damage is horrible. Arc lightning’s channel does crap damage for the first 1/3rd, low damage for the second third and good damage for the last third. I shouldn’t have to channel for 2-3 seconds just to get 2k single target damage

Most ele’s pass through this attunement in 2-3 seconds

S/D’s problem is that most of the #1 skills suck, and the #2 skills are easy to avoid. Resulting in massive bursts, or zero damage.

Look at all classes. The #2 skill is on a 6s cooldown, and it’s usually a high damage skill if used right. But it’s a lot easier to land a shotgun skill than DT.

Spifnar.4712:

Scepter/air’s single target damage is horrible. Arc lightning’s channel does crap damage for the first 1/3rd, low damage for the second third and good damage for the last third. I shouldn’t have to channel for 2-3 seconds just to get 2k single target damage

Most ele’s pass through this attunement in 2-3 seconds

S/D’s problem is that most of the #1 skills suck, and the #2 skills are easy to avoid. Resulting in massive bursts, or zero damage.

Look at all classes. The #2 skill is on a 6s cooldown, and it’s usually a high damage skill if used right. But it’s a lot easier to land a shotgun skill than DT.

You don’t understand air magic.

Air 1 is not our bread and buttter attack, it’s only meant to supplement the actual damage from Air 2 with a small boost. Air 2 actually hurts with precision builds, spec for 20% CD recharge on air skills and you get a 2k spike every 4 seconds from that skill alone (factor in the other damage you get from air 1+3).
For scepter crit builds (read: kitten that doesnt have cond. damage), air is actually the closest thing to sustained damage we have.

As for dragon’s tooth…Yeah you’re right it is waaaaaay too easy to dodge. I’ve been rocking a crit heavy build lately and anymore I don’t even bother to take immobilization on my utilities and just rely on Earth 4 And Air 5 to set up combos – even then they only work about half the time assuming I get the combo off perfectly after theyve blown dodges and cooldowns and such. I use Earth 5 A LOT more than I use Fire 2/5, because both of those skills are ridiculously hard to land.

It feels like fire grab has an actual range of 100 with an extremely small margin of error, because if you move/they move even SLIGHTLY during cast, it misses.
I don’t know how this is supposed to be remotely fair when thieves have homing skills that can hit people for 8k.

I can fully agree with your points. If i had written a post about ele’s it would look a lot like yours.

Our burst is there, but it has problems that you outlined. As well as our low auto attack damage. We need it higher to keep the pressure up, as your burst will still not be blowing up anyone from full.

And actually air 1 is used to stack vulnerability. To then unleash our fire combo or use Water 1 with amazing damage boosts. But the base damage on our auto attacks is just still too low. Also you dont need to always hit your fire spells, you can cast them in flame ring to gain Might boosts and Vigor. Oftentimes i use it for this purpose when at range as well, and to drop a Dragon Tooth on the base circle at the same time. Might is delicious.

EnochDagor.6185:

I agree that RTL needs fixing (I’ve posted several times only to have elitists say “jump first”. I don’t want to jump first. I want the friggin spell to work.).

S/D and D/D are the better ones. I prefer S/D but I’m considering running D/D some soon to see if I can tweak it better for skills.

However, I think Dragon’s Tooth is good. It is one of our biggest hitters, it is on a really low cooldown, and on top of that it adds a huge burning effect (which some of our traits are geared towards) and is AOE. The draw back is that it can be evaded. If you are going to rely on its damage, you need to consider using signet of earth as a backup for Updraft.

I always jump before using RTL and it still glitches constantly. Sometimes I have no idea why, but I’ve noticed that if the target is dodging, it won’t close the gap.