Guild Wars 2

Ok staff got an huge hit but… I mean… SCEPTER Ele will be meta for pve!!! It’s since the old s/f lighing hammer time that I dream this moment!

And before someone come here to say scepter dps sucks
https://youtu.be/5qylEEXvGtc

Edit: I’m not the guy on the video

That’s pretty impressive. Do you mind posting a video of you doing the staff rotation as well? I find that comparisons are always best if we can control everything, which would mean that the best comparison would be made if the same player did both the staff and the scepter rotations.

I’m not the guy on the video, will edit the post to make it more clear

It hasn’t really made any difference for me. I play staff, scepter/focus, dagger/warhorn

Scepter dmg is fine, but it feels like catpoop. Worst ele weapon imo.

I wonder if the lightning hammer has a chance to become viable now with this changes?

To be honest, I’m incredibly dissapointed pvp got nothing other then some cooldown reductions. i hope that they would atleast get rid of that annoyingly long cast time of ether renewal.

Mostly what they did was simply gave back the cdr of 13% they took away but to only a few skills. It did nothing to help ele as a core class and made tempest the end all be all for the ele type class. Its nice as a support class now but its not realty a mages class any more. Just a melee or near melee class with super low armor and hp.

Cleaning wave was the only real changes in the update that was positive healing 2 condis is nice.

The icd for metor was a major nerf in pve / wvw (it seems though hard to test.)

Every thing else was mostly fluff.

People don’t want to change play style since the pve/raids players got used to that style and damage. They won’t be able to carry weaker guildies or pugs who not always use meta builds or aren’t as good. I believe that’s the QQ factor out there.

As for wvw if you play core D/D ele it’s a step in the right direction.

it was a noticeable offhand dagger buff and meteor tonned down in special cases. The metor nerf was one of the most well done nerfs only targeting a very specific case. Shure its a nerf but accaptable.

Raid centered people tend to be more elitist and sensitive so meteor has been a kick in the balls for them, i rarely do raids so i’m pretty much in the same spot as before the patch, i keep using staff in pvp so i appreciate the buff to arcane shield and the fact that they didn’t touch tempest defense and lightning rod.

I was never unhappy with the state of the elementalist and i don’t understand the load of kitten people throw at staff in pvp, i’ve always found it resourceful with the right traits.

I made meteorlogicus something like 2 years ago and have barely used it….I am finally happy.

Oooh that’s interesting. I just started playing Ele again since my Revenant is still shelved for Raiding but looks like my ele might be my new Raider

Rain.9213:

Oooh that’s interesting. I just started playing Ele again since my Revenant is still shelved for Raiding but looks like my ele might be my new Raider

Ele really isn’t in a good place for raids right now. In theory, you can still produce competitive damage output. However, it still requires a lot of skill to do so. Meaning if you’re new, average, or even decent ele, you’d be easily outclassed by other professions which are easier to play. Last night I saw my condi ranger have 30-60% more dps over the ele in the party.

Feanor.2358:

Rain.9213:

Oooh that’s interesting. I just started playing Ele again since my Revenant is still shelved for Raiding but looks like my ele might be my new Raider

Ele really isn’t in a good place for raids right now. In theory, you can still produce competitive damage output. However, it still requires a lot of skill to do so. Meaning if you’re new, average, or even decent ele, you’d be easily outclassed by other professions which are easier to play. Last night I saw my condi ranger have 30-60% more dps over the ele in the party.

This could be true also before the patch… If you was bad at doing Fa staff rotation, thieves and Rangers could have outdps you.
Now the rotation for them is still the same, and it is very easy, while the scepter rotation is new and need some practice before push out the max from it.
But you can still out DPS every class if you become good at it.

Ele was always meant to be an hard class to play, is an High risk High reward class and it is what make the class fun to play.

Reroll a thief and be stuck to AA or reroll a ranger and spam all skills out of CD will be never satisfactory to me as to push out a good dps rotation on Ele

lucadiro.4519:

But you can still out DPS every class if you become good at it.

Only on large hitbox. On small, realistically, you can’t. Unless they are pretty bad.

The FA Staff was similar in difficulty, but on the theoretical numbers it had a bigger advantage. Meaning you had more room for making mistakes, while still retaining a competitive dps. Right now, you pretty much have to be perfect, otherwise you get out-dps’d.

My viper focused scepter tempest dishes out a lot of damage. Shure it´s not just two clicks …

Feanor.2358:

lucadiro.4519:

But you can still out DPS every class if you become good at it.

Only on large hitbox. On small, realistically, you can’t. Unless they are pretty bad.

The FA Staff was similar in difficulty, but on the theoretical numbers it had a bigger advantage. Meaning you had more room for making mistakes, while still retaining a competitive dps. Right now, you pretty much have to be perfect, otherwise you get out-dps’d.

Yes we are not anymore top DPS and small hitbox, thats true, but we are still very competitive on them.
Also on small hitbox the rotation on both Dagger and scepter is way easier to do since you don’t have to use icebow, so is also easier to be competitive if you are a good Ele.

The micromangement in skills like phoenix, burning speed, wildfire etc etc is what make the difference between a good Ele and a FTW reroller and is what give you the reward and the satisfaction to play Ele. And I like it.

If you prefere to do an easier rotation and archieve a good dps you can always play another class.
Condi Warrior, thief and ranger are now very good for it.

While i like condi on ele power warrior is much more fun. I like the hybrid nature of ele and i stick to it since i started which reaches two years soon.

lucadiro.4519:

Yes we are not anymore top DPS and small hitbox, thats true, but we are still very competitive on them.
Also on small hitbox the rotation on both Dagger and scepter is way easier to do since you don’t have to use icebow, so is also easier to be competitive if you are a good Ele.

The micromangement in skills like phoenix, burning speed, wildfire etc etc is what make the difference between a good Ele and a FTW reroller and is what give you the reward and the satisfaction to play Ele. And I like it.

If you prefere to do an easier rotation and archieve a good dps you can always play another class.
Condi Warrior, thief and ranger are now very good for it.

To be competitive, even on a large hitbox, you need to be really good. Sticking to simplified rotations just won’t cut it (dropping the Ice Bow, for instance, will lose you substantial dps).

The point isn’t that Ele is hard to play. That’s not a bad thing. I like how Ele plays, I always have. My first character was an Ele and I have 90% of my playtime on her. The bad thing is your ele is more fragile and at the same time it’s harder to play it. And you get similar or worse results for it, compared to professions which are both sturdier and easier to play. In high-end content this translates to unnecessary risk.

Sure, Ele is just fine for open world, dungeons or fractals. But for raids, not really. Perhaps on KC, because of the specifics of the fight. Maybe on Xera for shard clearing. Maybe on Sabetha as a throwaway DPS class to go on cannon duty. Outside of these, there really isn’t much point in taking one, if you’re trying to maximize your odds against the boss.

Feanor.2358:

lucadiro.4519:

Yes we are not anymore top DPS and small hitbox, thats true, but we are still very competitive on them.
Also on small hitbox the rotation on both Dagger and scepter is way easier to do since you don’t have to use icebow, so is also easier to be competitive if you are a good Ele.

The micromangement in skills like phoenix, burning speed, wildfire etc etc is what make the difference between a good Ele and a FTW reroller and is what give you the reward and the satisfaction to play Ele. And I like it.

If you prefere to do an easier rotation and archieve a good dps you can always play another class.
Condi Warrior, thief and ranger are now very good for it.

To be competitive, even on a large hitbox, you need to be really good. Sticking to simplified rotations just won’t cut it (dropping the Ice Bow, for instance, will lose you substantial dps).

The point isn’t that Ele is hard to play. That’s not a bad thing. I like how Ele plays, I always have. My first character was an Ele and I have 90% of my playtime on her. The bad thing is your ele is more fragile and at the same time it’s harder to play it. And you get similar or worse results for it, compared to professions which are both sturdier and easier to play. In high-end content this translates to unnecessary risk.

Sure, Ele is just fine for open world, dungeons or fractals. But for raids, not really. Perhaps on KC, because of the specifics of the fight. Maybe on Xera for shard clearing. Maybe on Sabetha as a throwaway DPS class to go on cannon duty. Outside of these, there really isn’t much point in taking one, if you’re trying to maximize your odds against the boss.

You drop icebow only on small hitbox.
Ok I got your point about the fact an higher risk should deserve an higher reward.
But still as you said Tempest is more desiderable in a lot of bosses, you already pointed some but I can also add Vg (if chronos doesnt distort greens) lose less DPS than a thief or a ranger going in greens.
On gorseval, mechanics are so simple that if you can archieve a good dps on golem, here you Will do the same. And Tempest is also faster to clean orbs than a condi ranger.
Ok slothasor can’t say nothing because After the patch I still have not tried it with both condi ranger and Tempest.
And I never tried Wing 4 so I can’t talk about that.

So as you can see Tempest is really desiderable in most of the raid.

Edit: to be honest sabetha is One of the bosses where may run a thief is better than a Ele, since doing cannons make you lose lot of alacrity uptime

I wouldn’t say “desirable”.

I’ve been on VG greens duty with both ele and condi ranger and my feeling is the ranger loses less by going there. Both have big parts of their damage coming in melee range, but condis keep ticking for you even if you’re away. And perhaps you can still get a greater percentage of your damage output from afar than an ele can.

On Gorse you can bring pretty much anything. And if you have enough dps you don’t even have to bother with much clearing. So again there’s no particular advantage to running an Ele over another damage dealer.

On Sloth there’s some value in the cleave potential of the staff and the stunbreak. But the nature of the fight will hinder the staff quite a lot. Yesterday I saw my ranger outdps a fellow ele there by a fair amount.

Wing 4 is a dps fest all the way. The most reason to bring anything specific would be on Samarog where you need pushes, CC and immobilizes, which Eles do not really excel in.

So I just don’t see any particular desirability in the class. Yeah, it CAN clear the content. Just like anything else. But there’s nothing to justify the greater risk incurred in playing one. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a long-time ele main and it disheartens me greatly to say this. But it’s just how the current situation is.

Lets be real the dps classes are alot closer to eachother, which is a good thing ( though necro and rev still are lackluster), so in the end you can run any boss with any dps and still be totally fine.

Howeverl Ele is by far the most squishie DPS class, with a relatively difficult rotation and little CC / utility, yet we are 2/3k behind in raw dps in medium hitboxes. So high risk for no reward.

I fully agree the gap between a well played tempest and another dps class pre patch was to big on large hit boxes, however the nerf to medium hitboxes was not needed at all. Pre patch I could nail 28k/32k dps on sabetha ( keep in mind most tempests typically would be around 19/20k dps). Which is only slightly ahead of what a decent DD, Engi, DH or ranger can hit nowadays.

My static can clear all wings with pretty much any dps comp and people play what they like ( Power necro even yeah), however most prefer to bring condis/DHs/Daredevils because it is simply way more forgiving and efficient.

I just feel the devs wanted to wreck ele so other professions would become more appealing. So yeah I think the change was good for the overall health of the game, but it is a bad change from a balancing point of view. With the use of dps meters pugs already started to accept other classes anyways, so I question whether the overkill on ele was really needed.

I’d like to change my earlier statement, after having seen that sceptre relies on excessive multihit via phoenix I think it’s a terrible idea to have Sc/Wh builds. Some may say it’s skill but it’s very clear phoenix was not meant to hit this many times going through large hitbox targets and it hinders sceptre being properly buffed and changed to be useful. I dare say it won’t be long before we see that fixed either leaving ele with only 1 competitive build.

As for the larger question, if you’re good at ele and it’s your main there’s no reason to switch to a different class imo. Was running a dps meter for the first time yesterday on my D/Wh ele in raids and was pulling 28k solid which I know is competitive with other classes on small hitboxes and it’s not like many of them are bringing much more in utility either.

The meteor nerf however I do feel is bad and made staff substantially worse to the point where unless you need to range something it offers no advantage at all vs any other weapon set. Even then the range on air overload and sceptre make sceptre a much better weapon imo for a lot of fights if you can hit the multihit of phoenix.

FYI, both Sc/W and D/W also rely on Wildfire hitting enemies with large hitbox twice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-m7OB5c20U&feature=youtu.be

Feanor.2358:

FYI, both Sc/W and D/W also rely on Wildfire hitting enemies with large hitbox twice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-m7OB5c20U&feature=youtu.be

Yeah I know about that too and it should also be changed so it only hits once on large hitboxes. There was a good reddit post about it which died out very quickly but still.