Guild Wars 2

Please do not Stone me for saying this (see what I did there) but Churning Earth is so disappointing to me and feels out of place. Now don’t get me wrong, I FREAKIN LOVE this skill but it feels like it ruins the pace of X/D a little too much. I’m going to throw a few suggestions out here and I’d like your opinions on them. Please note there is more to a skill than functionality and a huge part of what makes Churning Earth so cool is quite simply, the animation so I’d like input on that as well.

Suggestion 1-
Move Churning Earth to Staff #5. Essentially making it an Earth version of Meteor Shower. This means ranged. This means large AoE snare.
OR
Keep PBAoE. Add Knockback effect. (This could pair with Magnetic Aura very nicely. Synergy!)

Move Shockwave to /D #5. Decrease Range. Single Target. Remove Projectile Finisher. Should it hit a Knocked-down foe it explodes (blast finisher) for a very large amount of AoE damage.
(I have this great picture of a forward stomp with the body and foot facing sideways animation that I can’t quite put into words unfortunately that I think would go PERFECTLY with this.)

Reasoning-
This keeps Churning Earth and Shockwave (which i love too) around and gives a wider range (literally) of soft CC to Earth Staff. This is balanced by the cast time and delay. I like Shockwave there and I find it very useful all the time but tbh I’d much rather replace with an AoE cripple because I feel if there is a place for that its definitely on the staff. Not saying I’d never miss Shockwave on the staff but I feel this fits the feel of each weapon better. Additionally moving the quick casting but low damage Shockwave to the dagger helps keep the pace while the added effect on Knockdown throws in some fun and effective synergy. Plus, how does a Shockwave NOT follow a Earthquake? C’mon!

Suggestion 2-
Replace with new skill.
Meteor: Call down a meteor from the heavens to strike foes near your target. (Blast Finisher) The resulting shrapnel causes multiple stack of bleeding. Damage is greatly increased against a knocked-down foe.

Reasoning-
Although slightly less favorable than Suggestion 1 it would be many times easier to implement. Also brings back the Meteor skill from GW1 which knocked-down foes and did large damage but with an Earth Magic twist. Since the large damage portion of the skill is hidden behind requiring a Knockdown the cast time can be significantly reduced to keep the pace of /D much better meanwhile is not completely useless if used freely due to the unrestricted bleeding and Blast Finisher. Before anyone makes the comment about “Earth Magic” and “Space Debris” please stop to think where the “Earth” is located. Please.

Suggestion 3-
I shut up and never post here again before you all Stone me. (Oops I did it again…)
(Yeah I just referenced that. Get at me.)

Anyways, thank you so much for your time. I literally made most of this up on the spot…I had fun writing it and I hope you enjoyed reading it.

Seems like someone really loves earth benders. ^^

I really like suggestion 1 for the new mechanic for offhand dagger. Sounds interesting to cause heavy aoe damage if you get manage to hit laying foe with it. But another ranged heavy aoe for staff seems little redundant. If it still will be centered around the elementalist, I would be totally fine with it.

Kodama.6453:

But another ranged heavy aoe for staff seems little redundant. If it still will be centered around the elementalist, I would be totally fine with it.

This is really my only gripe with it as well but I’d love an alternative to Meteor Shower sometimes and sometimes I’d love having two. I do happen to WvW a lot so the appeal is much different to me than others I’m sure. As I said tho, I love shockwave as it is and I’m sure I’d miss it at times but if I was going to place a long cast, AoE snare, and BIG BOOM anywhere it’d be the staff for sure. xD

churning just needs either a charge channel scaling the effectiveness of it. or a 50% faster cats.

I can imagine swaping churning earth to Staff and shockwave to dagger.

Churning earth on Staff with staff’knocking ground beneath us and rooted. I would it give a try to be target aoe with 1200 range.

If you would like new earth skills:
- earth pillars striking periodicaly from ground and launching foes,
- earth fold (like a paper in half) blunting foes / stun /,
- earth avalanche that fall from sky on the enemies imobilizing/kd them or that one that go in cone in front of you launching foes,
- sand grave [pyramide’ shaped] that imobilize and prevent from using offensive skills,
- ranger have skills that incantate transparent bear, hawk and snake head, some earth skills could gain something similar: rock dog, rock beast, centaur,
- rock hands still great earth magic that is only in grasp of centaurs,
- summon huge rolling rock that will knock down foes,
- make rift in earth to swallow foes,
- make earth stairs to go up and jump to proc Earthquake from your falling dmg reduce trait,
- summon earth hawk on target enemy to deal dmg for 4, nextly hawk grab to foe and go with him, after time it fell off make rost with egg and if enemy stomp on it new hawk appear etc.,
- summon relentles clay golem on target enemy, he will try to grab enemy in his hands, if successful, you can order go in what direction to go with that enemy, if clay golem killed make mud field,
- summon flying garden to fall from they sky kd foes on impact, drops: water bucket, scissors, rake, pitchfork and chance for carnivorous plant that will last for some period of time dealing dmg to nearby foes,
- bettle’ widsom – dmg attacking foes for period of time and gain bettle animation of being kd.

It just needs a cast time reduction, about halved would be good. Right now it is just an exremely high risk relatively low reward skill. A 3 second rooted cast time that can be completely negated by a single dodge, block, blind, interrupt, and is requires you to be close to your enemy would need insane damage to be worth that risk. And while the damage is very high, pve dps calculations have shown that the skill is actually a dps loss not worth using even in a situation where all the risk doesn’t matter. So we can up the damage to basically be able to one shot many builds even without going full glass, or we reduce some of the all or nothingness of the skill by dramatically reducing the cast time which seems like the obvious choice.

They aren’t even touching useless skills so I doubt they will improve churning earth.

Xillllix.3485:

They aren’t even touching useless skills so I doubt they will improve churning earth.

Doubt? You left room for the possibility?
You need to work on your pessimism. I made the poor post and by no means do I think it’ll ever even be touched. But hey I was bored.

Xillllix.3485:

They aren’t even touching useless skills so I doubt they will improve churning earth.

If your class doesn’t start with E and end with “ngineer” you get no love to fix core underlying issues. At least we start with “E.”

i’d rather they keep the stupidly long cast time and double or quadruple the damage it does. If you’re dumb enough to get hit by the most highly telegraphed and easiest to dodge and interrupt attack in the game, you deserve to get 1 shotted. You will never, ever hit any semi conscious decent player with it.

needs to hit for 20k then on a full glass cannon. not that i’m opposed to it, would be a lot of fun^^

To do more damage and give loads of bleeding stacks would realy be nice. It needs forever rumbling in the earth but then ^^. Not oneshot but 10k and shure death within two seconds of bleeding would be funny.

It used to hit for 20k on full glass. Those were the days. When high risk = high reward. Now glass cannon ele will be glass slingshot ele. And high risk = mediocre reward that’s a waste of time since auto attacks are safer and do more dps. Needs to go back to what it used to be. same thing with 15k fire grabs.

funny thing with auto attacks is, i notice this everytime i fight a mesmer: i dodge the gs berserker, i dodge mirrorblade, i dodge the shatter but i’m still close to 50% hp because of the gs autos, sigil procs and crit bleeds lol.