Guild Wars 2

From the stream,

Arcane Wave is now going to be ground-targetted.

Arcane Brilliance – 3/4 casting time, 25 seconds cooldown
300-ish base damage
3500-ish base healing
20% more healing per target hit (max 5)
Blast Finisher
PBAoE (like the old Arcane Wave)

DiogoSilva.7089:

From the stream,

Arcane Wave is now going to be ground-targetted.

Arcane Brilliance – 3/4 casting time, 25 seconds cooldown
300-ish base damage
3500-ish base healing
20% more healing per target hit (max 5)
Blast Finisher
PBAoE (like the old Arcane Wave)

I am just watching the stream now had to work during it. Will post a better reply after I watch the stream.

I’ve attached an image of the new heal tooltip.

My opinion: Meh. 1/2s cast time is more appropriate. The radius should be at least 300-360, not 240. It appears to heal about as good as ether renewal when it hits two people, and a bit worse than glyph when we hit one person. It’s very crappy if you don’t hit anyone.

The base damage is meh, though it always crits. Still, meh.

Sure, it works with arcane traits, but we’re almost always better off with other traits than the arcane ones. I don’t think I’ll be using this heal as D/D. I think it is most interesting for staff though, with the ability to blast water fields.

I’m a bit excited about the arcane wave change, though as a D/D ele, I hope it doesn’t make fighting much… clumsier. I usually just go near my enemy and use it, and that’s it. Now I have to worry about where my mouse is. At least I can use it from range. It’s good for scepter and staff, but I’m personally a bit worried. We’ll see how it plays.

Thanks for the screen shot Timebomb!

My thoughts after watching the stream in organized group setting I think this heal will be pretty decent for support if you can keep your personal sustain through weapon heals. I will run this for sure with staff and 30 air.

With D/D I think SOR, Ether, Glyph are better options for solo roaming those heals are better options.

What I do like though is Arcane Wave 900 range guaranteed crit. Arcane wave hits for pretty substantial damage if you are geared with good power and critical damage. I will probably run this for groups when I go S/D 30 air 1v1 the buff to arcane wave I think is pretty good. Solo roaming I’ll stick with my cantrips. I like the arcane wave change alot. It is the hardest hitting arcane skill and they just gave it 900 range.

Traited your looking at the hardest hitting arcane skill at 900 range, the only arcane trait I like is arcane lightning.

Assuming the formula of

(base + healing_power) * (1 + 0.2 * num_targets)

base	healing	targets	total
3500	0		0		3500
3500	0		1		4200
3500	0		2		4900
3500	0		3		5600
3500	0		4		6300
3500	0		5		7000
			
3500	500		0		4000
3500	500		1		4800
3500	500		2		5600
3500	500		3		6400
3500	500		4		7200
3500	500		5		8000
			
3500	1000	0		4500
3500	1000	1		5400
3500	1000	2		6300
3500	1000	3		7200
3500	1000	4		8100
3500	1000	5		9000

Arcane Wave is going to be even better for s/f fresh air builds in pvp, if you use any. Much easier to get those might stacks with flamewall, or even to keep your range advantage.

Arcane Brilliance shines in three situations: when you can expect plenty of enemies (pet builds, zergs, pve swarms), when you want extra party support or min-maxing, and when you trait for it (IF you use the arcane traits).

I do use arcane’s grandmaster trait sometimes for s/f pvp fresh air. So that’s worth an extra blind from this skill alone, or 5s burning, or chill or immobilize. At a 20 second cooldown. It comes at the cost of condition removal, though.

Something else I picked up in the stream.

Conversion traits are bumped up based on tier this is uniform across all classes. Example like soothing winds.

Adept conversion = 7%
Master = 10%
Grandmaster = 13%

I really have mixed feelings about this one. Seems like it’s one of the weakest (except for Cleric Thieves) of the new healing skills.
Is it me or does ANet lack the imagination for properly building an effective Ele?

They seem to know flaws of every other professions but are a bit lost when it comes to Eles… dunno I just have that kind of feeling…

Arcane Wave buff is insane. Ranged instant-cast immobs with elemental surge again, only this time you get the damage too!

Staff eles will love it.

Cast in a water field it’ll get the extra 1.2k blast finisher, bringing the base heal on par with Glyph before considering if it hits somebody for the extra ~700 heal per target hit; meanwhile it still has potential to be used for Might (and possibly Fury), swiftness and frost armor depending on the ele’s needs.

it has a cast time? bleah
128 damage? what the heck.
k this thing is crap.
also, inb4 arcane wave’s damage is horribly nerfed to compensate for making it ranged

Again we get the least needed skill.

A mage class that needs to go into melee range to actually heal good ammount.

Still i dont see this as a useful skill, you can remove the damage and increase the heal amount, that would be better.

Well thanks for the blast i guess, but still horrible why we need to get into melee range??
really………

the only thing making it unique is the damage
may as well just use the glyph if it’s not going to do damage
but then the damage is nothing, so

I guess I might use it s/d LH build in fractals? That’s about it. AW change doesn’t really help me any since I need Dragon’s Tooth in a fire field for stacking purposes, so a ranged AW doesn’t change anything.

as far as the heal:
-not gonna use it solo roaming wvw d/d…
-not gonna use it in ANY type of spvp…I find staffplay far too clumsy and unfun, and it really only helps against spiritrangers or MMnecro? Neither of which are really the issue in the meta right now…
-can’t even really imagine a gimmicky open-world pve use for it, so that’s out too.

my excitement is pretty flat here.

reikken.4961:

the only thing making it unique is the damage
may as well just use the glyph if it’s not going to do damage
but then the damage is nothing, so

I think the damage is mainly for the procs.

Breakdown

Arcane Brilliance
Type: Arcane

• Guarenteed crit
  - Somewhat helpful to proc effects more often, but it’s only 1 hit per enemy
• Arcane Mastery (Arcana Trait I) – Reduce Recharge by 20%
  - Reduces the Recharge of the heal to 20s. Also reduces recharge on the other two arcane skills. (I don’t count arcane blast, it’s too limited)
• Elemental Surge (Arcana Trait XII) – Inflict Burning (5s), Chilled (3s), Blind (5s), Immob (1s) depending on attunement
  - An extra blind, chill, or immobilize after healing. Cool
• Arcane Lightning (Air Magic Trait VII) – Gain 15% more critical damage
  - More damage if you need

Activation: 3/4s
- Fastest activation by 33%, 66%, 366% when compared to the other three heals

Recharge: 25s
- Consitent with other ele recharges, solid.

Damage : 120ish
- Arcane wave is about 5x more powerful, not very useful for damage

Healing: 3600ish
- Weak base heal. GoEH or ER are 50%+ better heals for that, which is the main purpose of skills in this slot.

Healing increase per Target: 20%
- Realistically you’re going to have 1 target around always. So expect heals to be 4300ish. At 2 targets which is pretty reasonable expect 5000ish. Max expect 7200ish.
- Unfortunately you can be dodged or blinded so that this heal won’t proc.

Radius: 240
- This radius is kind of weak. Lightning whip has a better range than this, but it can hit behind you too. Arcane wave has a 50% bigger radius.

Combo Finisher: Blast
- This is great for Staff, because of the access to water fields.
- As far as personal benefit, GoEH offers better selfish utility options.
- This is better if you are trying to give might to your party though.

Conclusion
It’s a solid skill for Group play in PvE/WvW.
It’s okay for solo play in PvE/WvW
I don’t expect to see it used in PvP much, because GoEH/ER are better in most situations and 1 handed weapon builds don’t have a water field to compensate.

Great, another pure damage skill with little utility. Like we didn’t have enough of those already. At least in PvE I can make a very slightly better case on ele DPS.

Edit: Take it back, being a blast finisher ups the utility considerably. Still most effective in PvE for might stacking, but for staff builds that’s a ton of extra healing from water fields.

Arcane wave being ground target might be a little annoying actually, even if it is more versatile… since I usually like to use it point blank after laying down a fire field with offhand dagger.

Edit2: Good lord, the mesmer heal is the most overpowered thing I have ever seen in this game. Do they realize how easy it is to keep clones up with clone on dodge? We will now have mesmers with better heal per second than hs warrior, which is mind bogglingly broken with how many active defenses mesmers have.

I was expecting it to be better. Don’t know why when this is ele we’re talking about. Doesn’t work the way I had hoped it would. I guess it will be ok for pve stuff or hiding with a staff for the extra blast finisher. And blah, they nerfed arcane wave. Why make it ground targeting now? It’s good the way it is now where I can just instantly cast it in a group of people for burst damage.

To be honest I don’t really understand the complaints. Arcane Brilliance is obviously aimed at staff eles, for which the blast finisher is a huge factor. It’ll combine well with the water fields obviously, but for defensive needs it can also double with static field for swiftness or frozen ground for armor of frost. It can also be traited with Elemental Surge to cause massive chill or AoE blindness on demand.

It’s not as straightforward as the other healing skills, but I think it has potential. As for Arcane Wave, it’s obviously changed in favor of staff eles (who will love a ranged AoE immobilize). Anet wants us to try new things and I think that, for me at least, this will accomplish that.

Let’s not forget that the heal scaling benefits MH Dagger the most, so it can give to squichy D/D eles a very strong 7k health boost depending on the situation. Against pet classes in pvp, or in crowded point battles, and against zergs in wvw and mob swarms in pve, there’s plenty of situations where you can hit up to 5 targets, and only two of those situations can realistically block/ evade your heal.

This means that in addition to the plenty of utility it can give to staff users, and in addition to the extra might/ fury stacks for min-max scepter users, it can also potencially offer more health to melee eles on average.

This makes it potencially strong in any weapon set, but of course, you’ll have to build around it.

EDIT Just as a sidenote, mesmer’s passive heal only triggers every 3 seconds, so it’s not as crazy as it sounds at first.

Mesmer heal is healing signet on crack.
And you can’t even use the pathetic ab damage to kill illusions.

The mesmer heal is horrible for almost any build besides tanky.

Though I must be honest, as it looks now the cooldown is 5sec too long and the casting time 1/2 second too long. (from the ele healing skill I mean)

DrTenma.7249:

Mesmer heal is healing signet on crack.
And you can’t even use the pathetic ab damage to kill illusions.

Nah I don’t think it will be that good compared to what most mesmers use now. I think it will allow a mesmer to bunker in sPvP possibly, signet of illusions, 20 dueling. 30 chaos, 20 inspiration will become popular bunker mesmers with phantasmal defender.

Out in WvW maybe for trolling but regular roaming don’t think it will be that good. The best DPS is shatter mesmer, the other ones take longer to build up damage. That mesmer heal isn’t designed for shatter mesmers at all.

I think the real gem here is the Arcane Wave change is a bigger change for all ele. I feel like you can always swap one cantrip if you are a cantrip ele. 900 range on wave is very tempting to run I always felt like waves weakness was the radius this allows you to now make sure you can hit it.

Its a instant cast range aoe with ground targeting. I already see churning earth setups with wave to bait a dodge. You can do this now with blast but blast doesn’t hit for as much damage as wave.

PS: looked at the stream again and there was no damage change to it or cast time added. Its the same exact skill just with ground target and 900 range.

Hotjoin is already terrible with PU mesmers everywhere, with this signet it’s going to be much worse.
Inb4 lol hotjoin

If arcane blast still has lower cd and bigger range then I don’t see it to be replaced by wave for solo and small group roaming on my Ele.

Vissarion.6509:

Again we get the least needed skill.

A mage class that needs to go into melee range to actually heal good ammount.

Still i dont see this as a useful skill, you can remove the damage and increase the heal amount, that would be better.

Well thanks for the blast i guess, but still horrible why we need to get into melee range??
really………

You don’t have to?

The other (more then likely better) healing skills you know and love aren’t going anywhere. Choices are good, and AW got a really nice buff out of the deal.

Not all eles are range.

Ele really didn’t need another situational heal with glaring weaknesses. Ether renewal gets hard countered by interrupts, and the long cast time means you spend a lot of time just healing yourself. The signet is useless against anything other than low sustained damage, and cc is a soft counter to it because you’re losing time when you could be using skills. Soon, we’ll have arcane brilliance, which will need a desirable field to blast and 5 enemies within 240 range to reach maximum effectiveness.

Brilliance should at least be instant cast. If you’re making an arcane build, you’re already giving up defensive utilities and possibly traits in arcana anyway. Brilliance could also use some more noteworthy advantages compared to ether renewal and the glyph. A blast finisher pales in comparison to removing 8 conditions on a 15 second cooldown or picking 1 of 4 boons.

As long as we have condi-spam all over the place ER will be obligatory anyways in PvP.
The new heal might have a niche against pet-classes and for staff-users but that’s it. For GC-speccs ER or glyph are better. I also think that it’s kind of a design-flaw to add damage to a heal-spell that benefits from many enemys standing around you. When playing GC you should avoid standing in the middle of a bunsh of enemies and as a bunker you don’t need the damage – so in both scenarios the spell is sorta misplaced.
They should either boost the damage or remove the damage and increase the heal (while keeping the blast finisher) to make it more interesting … then I might consider using it.

i’m pretty disappointed for this skill… for be better than others u have to be melee vs 5 mob.. otherwise glyph casted in water attunement give u something like 5.4k heal +2.6 regen in 13 secs.. so its 8k every 20 sec (if u have glyph 20%) w/o have to kill, and stay close to any mob…
i’d like to have guardian heal…

I think the damage really should go up. If you’re running high crit damage and power you are looking at what maybe 1k damage. I agree that if it requires you to be in melee for the max heal it should move up in damage comparable to arcane wave. Then you would see more arcane traits used. If I know I can hit everyone for 2k+ if they are close then it is more attractive and maybe opens up decisions to use it offensively. The damage that it has now I think is to low.

Ele really didn’t need another situational heal with glaring weaknesses.

Quite the contrary, all the professions should have skills with strong and weak points, in order to reward skillful playing.

As long as we have condi-spam all over the place ER will be obligatory anyways in PvP.

With new condition removal traits coming up for us, and with other professions also getting some stronger condition counters, it’s too early to tell that.

i’m pretty disappointed for this skill… for be better than others u have to be melee vs 5 mob.. otherwise glyph casted in water attunement give u something like 5.4k heal +2.6 regen in 13 secs.. so its 8k every 20 sec (if u have glyph 20%) w/o have to kill, and stay close to any mob…

Used at its best, this skill can heal for around 8k without needing regen, and still an extra 1.2 – 1.5k aoe heal while on a water field. Or 3 stacks of aoe might (and maybe even fury) instead of might only to yourself. And with half the casting time. I’d say even by just hitting one or two foes, with some team playing, it’ll be almost always better than the glyph.

I think the damage really should go up. If you’re running high crit damage and power you are looking at what maybe 1k damage. I agree that if it requires you to be in melee for the max heal it should move up in damage comparable to arcane wave.

This would make air burst builds way too strong in pvp. It could be fire for pve, though, but in pve, it’ll also be easier to get the full heal bonus, and min-max players will already prefer an extra blast finisher over slightly more healing, so the skill is already inherently stronger in pve.

lol 128 damage, why not 1 damage if you really want to make it crappy? Are we once again having a laugh at the elementalist?

It’s a healing skill that heals less but could heal more if your extremely lucky agains’t a group (again confirming that Anet doesn’t care about the ele when confronted with less than 5 opponents or in 1 VS 1) BUT don’t feel bad they say, because it does crappy damage on top of it!

It has a 1200 range… Because with a healing spell that suck that much you’ll want to stay far away from battle. [edit: oh they removed the range on it, great!]

The only good thing it has going for it is the fact it is a blast finisher but I think that’s the kind of skill you equip once to try and never use again because it will end up being so much worse than Ether Renewal.

Jabberwock.9014:

Good lord, the mesmer heal is the most overpowered thing I have ever seen in this game. Do they realize how easy it is to keep clones up with clone on dodge? We will now have mesmers with better heal per second than hs warrior, which is mind bogglingly broken with how many active defenses mesmers have.

But… But… We have RTL the most OP skill ever…

Vissarion.6509:

Well thanks for the blast i guess, but still horrible why we need to get into melee range??
really………

In the 1500 hours I’ve played this game I have never seen an Anet tag playing an elementalist. And in the last tournament demonstration thing they had no elementalist but every other class. Now with the next patch they are nerfing my build. I just don’t think they have a clue what they are doing with this class.

Xillllix.3485:

The only good thing it has going for it is the fact it is a blast finisher

That’s not true. It can also be traited to give AoE blind, regenerate endurance, cause vulnerability or increase your critical damage. It’s also always a crit when activated, triggering any ‘on crit’ effects as well. Dodging and blinding is doable but still very hard because of the fast casting time. How many healing skills can do that?

ThiBash.5634:

Xillllix.3485:

The only good thing it has going for it is the fact it is a blast finisher

That’s not true. It can also be traited to give AoE blind

what
how?

reikken.4961:

ThiBash.5634:

Xillllix.3485:

The only good thing it has going for it is the fact it is a blast finisher

That’s not true. It can also be traited to give AoE blind

what
how?

Elemental surge, the other arcane grandmaster that hardly anyone uses

I think AB is pretty disappointing, but then I think the whole game has been pretty disappointing so I guess that means it’s what I expected.

Constructive feedback would be that this heal fails to address any real deficiency with the class – it’s just a heal skill that does damage. I would have expected something that improved mobility or defense in some way, eg: blink forwards 10m and heal, reflect melee dmg for 3sec and heal, something like that.

This skill addresses the staff ele’s need for more blast finishers, adresses the d/d ele’s need for more survivability (being at melee range increases your chances of hitting more foes), makes arcane-traited builds stronger, makes min-max pve builds stronger, and makes elementalist’s party support builds stronger.

Obviously, it needs to be weaker than other skills in other areas of the game. Ether Renewal will still be the best against conditions. Signet of Restoration will still be the best for healing over time. Glyph of Harmony will still be the best for a spike heal and “selfish” utility.

It seems like you people are disappointed because this skill is not overpowered. Did you seriously expected this skill to heal as much as Glyph while dealing 1000 aoe critical damage, speccing renewing stamina and sigil of fire, applying blind/ chill/ immobilize/ burning, all under a low casting time of 3/4 and a low 20 second cooldown, AND still being a blast finisher for party-wide might and fury, or for party-wide heal, or for party-wide frost auras?

This skill must have a low base heal to compensate for all of this, and even then you can still boost its base heal by 20-100%.

When I take a look at the mesmer heal I would expect the ele heal to be special too. As it is now it’s just inferior to all other heals we have (maybe except the nerfed signet-heal) and nobody will use it – because, like said, the damage is too low to pick it for the bonus-damage, and the heal is lower than other heals so why should I pick a skill that heals less? The blast-finisher is only good with staff – but that alone doesn’t make staff more viable in PvP.

I would like to see the cooldown at 20 seconds or less. As it is now, I don’t see it having much value as an actual heal skill without staff outside of PvE. It was quite disappointing seeing some of the other heals that were shown.

If it should stay at 25 seconds, its base heal should be higher. Comparing it to glyph, the main differences would then be that one applies a boon and the other applies a blast finisher. Then with a higher base, the target scaling would also go down.

Don’t forget all of our heals can be improved through traits. You sacrifice a lot to get those arcane traits that benefit only your utilities. I don’t think it will be as powerful as it may seem. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how this turns out. Knowing Anet, any changes to this skill would occur after a minimum of 6 months.

Gorni.1764:

When I take a look at the mesmer heal I would expect the ele heal to be special too. As it is now it’s just inferior to all other heals we have (maybe except the nerfed signet-heal) and nobody will use it – because, like said, the damage is too low to pick it for the bonus-damage, and the heal is lower than other heals so why should I pick a skill that heals less? The blast-finisher is only good with staff – but that alone doesn’t make staff more viable in PvP.

I for one think that arcane brilliance has insane potential, but I usually use a staff and put 30 points into arcane.
Let’s see… Extra blast finisher, shortest heal cast time, potential to slightly outheal other heals if played correctly and a small amount of extra damage. This is all without considering all the possible traits that can help this skill get better.
Between this new skill and the buff to arcane wave I am actually considering to drop elemental attunement to get an extra trait to boost my arcane skills and fill all of my utilities and my heal with arcane skills.

Sure, this heal may not increase our defensive capabilities or give us a huge edge but it’s not supposed to be overwhelmingly superior to everything else. Issues like defensive capabilities need to be fixed for the entire class not just the players who choose the new heal.

Oh and BTW, the only heal that we have atm that I would call good would be glyph of harmony. Ether renewal takes too long to cast which makes it prone to interruption and gimps your damage. With the new burning fire trait ether renewal may become even less useful to some builds but that remains to be seen since we don’t know the specifics for how it procs yet.

Adastra.9821:

I would like to see the cooldown at 20 seconds or less. As it is now, I don’t see it having much value as an actual heal skill without staff outside of PvE. It was quite disappointing seeing some of the other heals that were shown.

If it should stay at 25 seconds, its base heal should be higher. Comparing it to glyph, the main differences would then be that one applies a boon and the other applies a blast finisher. Then with a higher base, the target scaling would also go down.

Don’t forget all of our heals can be improved through traits. You sacrifice a lot to get those arcane traits that benefit only your utilities. I don’t think it will be as powerful as it may seem. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how this turns out. Knowing Anet, any changes to this skill would occur after a minimum of 6 months.

There are some benefits to the arcane traits that are not immediately obvious, for example making your arcane skills apply burn synergies with fire 25 which will be +10% dmg to burning targets after the patch. There may be more but I don’t have the time to look for everything atm, I will probably look more into it when we get the patch and have some solid data.

Of course I don’t play tpvp so I don’t really know if this skill has any sort of potential there.

Ganathar.4956:

Adastra.9821:

I would like to see the cooldown at 20 seconds or less. As it is now, I don’t see it having much value as an actual heal skill without staff outside of PvE. It was quite disappointing seeing some of the other heals that were shown.

If it should stay at 25 seconds, its base heal should be higher. Comparing it to glyph, the main differences would then be that one applies a boon and the other applies a blast finisher. Then with a higher base, the target scaling would also go down.

Don’t forget all of our heals can be improved through traits. You sacrifice a lot to get those arcane traits that benefit only your utilities. I don’t think it will be as powerful as it may seem. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how this turns out. Knowing Anet, any changes to this skill would occur after a minimum of 6 months.

There are some benefits to the arcane traits that are not immediately obvious, for example making your arcane skills apply burn synergies with fire 25 which will be +10% dmg to burning targets after the patch. There may be more but I don’t have the time to look for everything atm, I will probably look more into it when we get the patch and have some solid data.

Of course I don’t play tpvp so I don’t really know if this skill has any sort of potential there.

Well that’s why I made a broad statement “outside of PvE”. The fire traitline is rarely used if ever outside of PvE.

Adastra.9821:

Well that’s why I made a broad statement “outside of PvE”. The fire traitline is rarely used if ever outside of PvE.

Persisting Flames is a good grandmaster trait anywhere, the problem was everything else. So with the new burning fire trait, the buff to the minor #25, and the lesser reliance of arcana for attunement swapping, we might start seeing more fire-traited builds. This new heal also synergies very well with persisting flames.

I have in my mind a cantrip/ might-stacking build that would pick spellslinger (3 stacks of might per cantrip used), burning fire, persisting flames, and 20 points in water and 10 in earth for the remaining cantrip traits. This would mean regen/ vigor/ might from five different sources, plus passive (and possibly active) protection, stability and condition removal, with even more might and fury, this time party-wide, with scepter’s skills and this heal.

I don’t see this heal being terribly useful. Like the ele in general, the reward is not high enough to justify the risk.

Adastra.9821:

Well that’s why I made a broad statement “outside of PvE”. The fire traitline is rarely used if ever outside of PvE.

seriously? 30 fire seems great for PvP
power is the best stat in the game, the grandmaster is great, and Burning Fire is about to be OP
I take it all the time, at least

I’ve always thought that most traits in fire don’t justify taking 30 in fire. This might all change on Tuesday; I wouldn’t know at the moment. At least for me, I haven’t seen any successful build that goes deep into the fire tree since air gives far more personal dps. I don’t really count hiding behind the zerg since pretty much anything goes in that case.

And yes I love persisting flames too. Before anyone cared about it, I loved to wreck hotjoins with 30/20/0/0/20 glass cannon staff.

It seemed interesting until i saw the 240 range part. It could at least be the same as arcane wave so you dont need to practically be on top of people to get enough people in range to make it worthwhile as far as healing. If you have 4-5 people within 240 feet of you I doubt you will live long enough to get a 3/4s cast off unless youre a really heavy bunker spec, so maybe some people will find it useful but not many.

More blast finishers is a good thing but that seems like it. I dont know why every ele change seems to be forcing the class with the lowest hp/armor in the game to play in melee range to be useful.

Adastra.9821:

I’ve always thought that most traits in fire don’t justify taking 30 in fire. This might all change on Tuesday; I wouldn’t know at the moment. At least for me, I haven’t seen any successful build that goes deep into the fire tree since air gives far more personal dps. I don’t really count hiding behind the zerg since pretty much anything goes in that case.

And yes I love persisting flames too. Before anyone cared about it, I loved to wreck hotjoins with 30/20/0/0/20 glass cannon staff.

Yes, the fire traits aren’t that great (yet), but the air traits are even worse, barring bolt to the heart, which can be gotten with only 10 in air anyway. And no way does air give far more personal dps. Yes, the combination of precision and crit damage gives more damage than power alone, but that’s mostly evened out by three things: things that auto crit, things that can’t crit, and condition duration. I’d say they’re pretty much the same. Except that air’s grandmasters are kind of useless for staff

As for hiding behind the zerg, I wouldn’t know anything about that. I’ve been avoiding zergs of any kind since 2012

30/20/0/0/20 staff is what I do too, yes

Sizer.5632:

If you have 4-5 people within 240 feet of you I doubt you will live long enough to get a 3/4s cast off unless youre a really heavy bunker spec, so maybe some people will find it useful but not many.

exactly this. But, like said, as a bunker you don’t need the damage of the skill – so why would I choose the new heal over a spell that heals more without any risk and even grants boons (glyph) or cures conditions (ER)?