Guild Wars 2

Can anyone convince me that these skills are useful and unique and do not need a rework?

I would say they are unique since all of them guarantee at least 1 critical hit without precision investment. And all of them except the heal skill are instacast, so you are able to cast them while wind up other skills (and elementalist has many skills with large charge time).

About useful and rework: I really don’t know. It would be fun to make them a way to get constant critical hits. So you can trigger effects on demand without precision investment. But many of them have large cooldowns, that’s in the way for that.

Maybe with a REAL scepter rework this skills would become more appealing (for a viable spike build) biggest problem so far is that they take a spot on the utility bar that is much needed for more defensive skills.

I just don’t usually see the point of taking them over canteips, shouts or ice bow

PvP, PvE or WvW? .. I used to take them on PvE along witch scpeter to spike everything, hardly anything other than elite survived a dragon tooth+phoenix down on arcane power + arcane blast and the ring of fire. …. I still use them on water combat xD …. … but “real world applications”… none in current meta.

Im currently using arcana in pvp. with s/f Thats all im gonna say Its really strong. but very hard to play.

The major issue with arcane skills as I see it is that they’re mostly attack skills on the class that just doesn’t need to blow utility slots on attacks and is desperate for any defence it can get.

We already have 20 weapon skills and despite the questionable quality of many of them that’s generally enough to get all the attacks you need, so why would we want to spend precious utility slots on even more attacks? What we really need from utility slots is defence, which is why cantrips and shouts are obvious picks. Arcane shield can contribute, but it’s cooldown is just too long.

Glyphs, conjures and signets also suffer from the problem of mostly doing things other than keeping you alive, with a few exceptions.

Alex Shatter.7956:

Can anyone convince me that these skills are useful and unique and do not need a rework?

They are useful and unique but they still need a rework. A cooldown reduction would be appreciated for instance. 60s for 3-blocks if traited, when others can spam blocks/evades on their low cd weapon skills… Or maybe make arcane skills unblockable and ignoring armor.

I use it for PVP on my assassination build… :C I hope if you guys get your wish, I can still use Arcane to 100-0 someone in 1-2 seconds.

Edit: You think they’ll fix Flamestrike (scepter fire 1)? 1.25 second cast time auto for that little of an effect is…saddening. :C

Arcane Wave is nice, and the heal is ok. The other 3 completely suck, though.

Arcane Brilliance, Arcane Comet, Arcane Wave, Arcane Power, and Arcane Shield. Just for reference. I agree they need buffs, but these reward you for aggressive play so I personally believe them to all be fine. But I play an assassination ele. And I always will, unless something better comes up.

Can someone explain why they are “garbage”? Genuine curiosity. I do dag/dag fire/air/arcane with burn traiting and some other odd stuff (another one of my “omg that build sucks” builds that somehow completely works and kills people despite them knowing exactly what’s about to happen…permission to be proud?) and for me it works. I just Arcane Power into Burning Speed, Ring of fire and comet at same time with shield up the moment my ring fires off, followed by brilliance and earthquake into updraft to rtl and shocking aura through running away.

Serious Thought.5394:

Can someone explain why they are “garbage”?

I didn’t say they were garbage I was just genuinely unsure as to whether people used them

Serious Thought.5394:

Can someone explain why they are “garbage”? Genuine curiosity. I do dag/dag fire/air/arcane with burn traiting and some other odd stuff (another one of my “omg that build sucks” builds that somehow completely works and kills people despite them knowing exactly what’s about to happen…permission to be proud?) and for me it works. I just Arcane Power into Burning Speed, Ring of fire and comet at same time with shield up the moment my ring fires off, followed by brilliance and earthquake into updraft to rtl and shocking aura through running away.

The reason people say arcane skills are “garbage” nowadays is that they just do way too little given their CD’s now. With power-creep, the damage they output isn’t all that high (for arcane blast and wave, and even shield), and giving up any defensive cooldown makes you a 1-trick pony that is countered by all the passive survival traits everyone has.

Back when there weren’t as many (or as popular) traits that prevented you from being bursted, you could sometimes achieve high-risk, high reward. In the current state of the game, you play very high risk (still) but the reward is basically 0.

I think the whole arcane line needs a rework. I think it needs a more focused role. Right now it’s boons with a variety of other things thrown in. I don’t feel that’s good enough anymore.

With celestial being removed from pvp it makes arcane even less useful as many of the traits go well with celestial.

I did use arcane line and arcane brilliance + arcane shield before tempest and loved it.
Tempest replaced arcane and shouts the skills. Still thinking if it makes sense to take it again.

Greetings

Wolf

I used them while i was PVE leveling. Now i only swap mist-form to arcane shield in some cases.

What I would like to know if the +Ferocity on Arcane Skill trait (Elemental Surge) would stack with the new Fresh Air + Fero trait…

In the preview John Corpering said the new Fresh Air trait won’t stack (but I think he meant “with itself”).

EDIT: this could be a straight +300 ferocity only using Fresh Air, Elemental Surge and Arcane Blast…

It might be enough to make me play S/D FA marauder again. Maybe.

But I still enjoy my Carrion version (soon to be “Mercenary”) more.

I sometimes use wave for the blast finisher if I’m using staff and not using tempest. Without arcane spec for elemental surge they are pretty trash though.

(pve)