Guild Wars 2

Part I:

Hello there, my gamertag is Fortus, I have been playing since Beta, I come from a wide array of online games and MMOs including WoW were I reached 2k arena rating with a great team of friends, Rohan, Aion and other smaller MMO not very widely known. My friends and I moved to this game shortly after we heard GW2 was being launched, we kept out team and decided to move in into the game.
Each picked a different profession, me, coming from mostly healers and long-distance nukers I decided to pick the profession that seemed to fit this scheme; Elementalists. Ever since then I have been exclusively playing elementalists, only creating other classes to see their different skills and how they worked, all in the purpose of understanding their mechanics and beat them.

This thread is mode only and SOLELY for contructive criticism, I will ask to please refrain from posting here if your comments include comments like: “Eles OP” or “Eles sucks” or “you suck, eles are ok” without REASONS as to what makes you say that. I would also appreciate if it gets stickied to the top of the forum page for Elementalist as I think it would serve as a great place to gather all the frustration and suggestions for the profession.

Now that introduction and background is set, I would like to address some of the core problems that, in my humble opinion, set the elementalist back. Before I start, let me say that I have tried a WIDE variety of builds, self-created and copied from other sources, different weapons and about every single armor specc that seemed to fit eles. So far, gameplay-wise, Staff is my to-go weapon and the real reason why I picked a “mage” character.

My opinion on Staff Elementalists: UnderPowered.

Now, here is my constructive criticism;

•By now we all know that staff was meant to be a method of AoE control and damage, designed mostly for WvWvW and as a sPvP supportive character. Right now staff is the weapon you want to go if you desire to stay out of range of the enemy and use if someone gets to you by using the wider array of scape mechanisms that the weapon contains……except for one detail, neither of these things are accomplished….at all.
> Let me begin by saying this, trust me, i HATE comparing things but given that this is a team-oriented game where there are 7 other profession you HAVE to compare as to have a point of reference. A few weeks ago I decided to start a mesmer alt to be able to do Bosses chests (which unfortunately got removed) and start doing dungeons to farm enough badges to buy Staves and use them for the precursor to Bifrost, I decided to go to sPvP and give it a go with GS and staff. I searched some online guide and followed it to the letter, went inside a game and before 5 minutes passsed I had already killed 2 people (with barely any knowledge of skills) and was holding my ground in teamfights. It came to my surprise that I had 20.1k hp with the same Beserker set I had been using on my ele, which had 13.2k hp, all that while doing considerably more damage and escaping just as good (if not better) than my PVT ele.

Part II:

I got sad, VERY sad, i felt like I had just WASTED months, MONTHS playing a class which thought was high risk high rewardsm but in reality was merely high risk…..subpar-regular rewards.
But now you say, “just bashing the profession, where is the CONSTRUCTIVE criticism?”
Well, let me start by saying that I knew staff was supposed to be long range support, so I played both PVT and zerker for boons and damage respectively.
Here is the issue, thought PVT (im going to be using this a lot, so I might as well tell you what it means in case you dont know: Power, Vitality, Toughness) increases survavility, the mayority of your supportive skills requires absolutely no survival nor get better with said stats, so a zerker ele has the same utility as a soldier one, therefore you are ony left with going full damage in order to be able to be more than a punching bag. The support we ive is great, AoE debuffs and control but ong CDs, understandable on WvW, but NOT on sPvP. So lets begin with the uggestions:

Traits: For a class locked in one weapon set, with several attunements to make up for this, the reward for staying in one element are bad, the traits would say you HAVE to stay in one element to reap all the benefices of said traits, but reality is; you need to constantly change attunements and therefore you lose all benefices, unless you go 20 or 30 arcana, therefore all decent builds will have to have arcane, limiting your options. My solution, introduce traits for other elements into the element traits, example Fire: “after changing to another attunement, you retain the benefices of fire for 5 seconds and your next attack in:
Water: Small AoE blast heal on target
Earth: Small AoE Blast that cripples on target hit
Air: Small AoE Stun”

That way you removed the need to go 20 into arcane to get the 5 seconds trait and yu reward careful switching of elements. As it is now you do know whether to stay in one element and be “decent” or get out of it and become a running chicken for the next 9-12 second swaiting for the element to come back up while you waste all other skills including utilities trying to just survive until then.

Part III

Weapon(remember, this is all about staff):

Fire is relatively ok, the strongest attunement and has clear strenghts and disadvantages, though making #2 hit on cast wouldnt hurt, for how small it is, even with Arcana VIII which increases radius you ca literaly walk out of it wihthout using a single dodge before it does the first tick.

Water: We removed the casting time for Guardians #% staff, it is time we do the same for eles #5, it is pointless and more often that not the benefices are too small to have the ele rooted for such long time, this game is about mobility, self stuns only make things worse to us.

Air: this is whats wrong with this weapon, “high single target damage and control”, right now the #1 bounces 3 times, but subpar damage when it is one target (single target, remember) good vs mesmers but bad everywhere else, my suggestion, given the casting time make it so that the first attack hurts, like eles #1, successive attacks have decreased damage, say 50% of previous attack and have it have another bounce (last attack would have 12.5% damage of the first attack) that way it rewards hitting your primary target, does whats supposed to do (single target) and still fulfill the AoE philosophy of staves. The comes #3: Is that even supposed to hit anything but an AFK player on the verge of a cliff in WvW? Right now it sure does, casting time, slow motion…and wait, the hit-box of a strike zone in baseball. Either casting time goes away and increase speed or increase hitbox and make it AoE and non-blockeable. There is not reason why this skill remains so hard to aim, can be blocked and it is single target. Finally #5, good for control, except that you dont really control, given the casting time and animation topped with Arcana AoE increase, it is near impossible to land, and even if the target moves, the AOE field is too big and people can just run around, stand without any consequence, my suggestion: AoE stun if you stay for longer than a second, inflict damage in the meanwhile, applies Fumble. It has a 40 secs CD, it should AT LEAST make thm burn one dodge or eat the stun, i mean, thats our only real AoE CC outside water #4.

Part IV

Earth: Im sorry, but this element is a joke in staff, i mean, have you actually tried hitting #2 in a fight? 3 seconds detonation, 3/4 activation, if you dont get away from it, you are bad, VERY bad, I dont use for anything other than combos and even then, 3 seconds to explode, most fields are gone by the time i can set it up. Suggestion, rethink the whole thing, what do you want from the skill, the damage or the blast? If it is the damge, make it explode instantly or a short delay, increase CD and decrease damage, if it is the blast, make it explode instantly, no other way! decrease damage by a lot and make the CD the same. The crippling part is underwhelming, make it so that it also blocks projectiles via traits (like mesmer) or reflect them. The root……same treatment as the air one.

Now, im NOT asking for all this changes to be considered, but some must happen, right now it has to or otherwise there is not real reason to pick an ele over guadian for support or a mesmer for utility AND damage.
Which brings me to my last point:

Utility:

Cantrips, perfect, marvelous, the only thing saving this class from not being played, would not change a thing, except the little part where they are the ONLY options yo have, except for the occasional 25% increase in movement for WvW. Have you seen the weapons? I will start with the bow and wont go into details with the rest:
It gives healing and condition damage, but lets analize it a bit more

1. healing AA, great if you have an ally in between you and the enemy, not homing, slow moving, I dont think it has damage (not that i have seen anyways….), it require you to get out of position to heal an ally, but for minuscule healing that cant be spammed is it worth it to get killed, for 300 healing? i think not. make it worth it
2. its ok, i guess thats the only skill thats supposed to do damage, it fulfill what the AA does not, but that weapon is not about damage, i think…. Increase activation.
3. great at taking down Burrows in AC explorable, and WvW…minus the 900 rnage part….where if you get nearby a zerg with that bow, 900 range and self-stunned…hmm, yeah…. suggestion Increase range.
4. Casting time, travel time, easily avoidable, not even homing……… Please remove one of the handicaps, for a skill that is #5 for a class with access to ONLY one weapon this skill surely falls short, 3 handicaps and regular reward is NOT ok.

Part V

I understand they are supposed to fill in the spot for the lack of weapons, but for being “team utility” skills with long CD, let me put it into perspective, certain mesmer skill has 45 secs CD and removes all boons from enemies and conditions from allies (all!) for 7 seconds (7), 45 secs CD (45), teamwide, meanwhile, frost bow on the same tier has 60 secs CD, only affect one other person and it has seirous draw backs that make them less than desirable except for AC. I want to be able to cast it and see people fighting over who gets it! Not saying “did you just waste a utility slot for that?”. Right now it is only used in towns for fun.

Elites are out of place and except for the elemental in PvE they do nothing special for you, twister makes you a live punching bag, swords takes you into melee range, and who focuses an elemental? Unlike AoE stealths, or AoE 100% heals with knock backs and AoE burns.

Overall there is a reason why people dont ask for eles in tournaments outside of D/D, it is because D/D is the only thing that can actually hold its ground, because of it people think eles are strong and are afraid to ask for buffs, im sorry, but the reason im playing ele is to fulfill that staff-mage fantasy, not to run around like a thief without stealth. Scepter has it issues too and so does focus, but unfortunatley i dont like neither of their playstyles so I wouldnt be the best one to start describing its problems, thought Dragon Tooth…..ughh, can you make a skill harder to land? Cant aim, long casting time and animation and detonation……

Part VI

Overall I want to see some viability into staff other than “run around with PvT set being unkillable but useless”. Those suggestions might help, maybe they would amke OP the ele, but what I wont accept is a trade, a trade would mean they are balanced and therefore would only shift its power to other places, they are NOT ok, or at least not reliable enough. I surpased the learning curve, i know how to play them, i know their ins and out, lots of experience since Beta, I want to have the same reward I have playing mesmer, ranger and thief ranged for the risks Im tanking.

tl;dr If you cant read that then its better than you move along, this is not the thread for you, this is to make staff eles acceptable to play at competitive level, not to whine about UP, balanced or OP.

Correct me if i am wrong, but this is just another thread complaining about Pvp dps shortcomings. Well written to be sure and quite a bit of time and thought too, but still looking at the class thru one facet of the game, dps. You run in a group yet I did not see anything about group synergies, but then Pvp players rarely if ever do. It’s all 1v1, I can’t hit anything.

In other words, if we took out everything in the thread that dealt with Pvp dps oriented material, there would not be much left. There’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t get me wrong. I just wish perhaps that was in the title so I didn’t have to read the whole thing to find that out.

I should have realized at the second paragraph, “This thread is mode only and SOLELY for contructive criticism.” My Bad. It’s not really about the class taken as a whole and an even handed discussion of the positives and negatives, just the shortcomings. I have to ask, why to you play the ele at all?

Baladir.2736:

Correct me if i am wrong, but this is just another thread complaining about Pvp dps shortcomings. Well written to be sure and quite a bit of time and thought too, but still looking at the class thru one facet of the game, dps. You run in a group yet I did not see anything about group synergies, but then Pvp players rarely if ever do. It’s all 1v1, I can’t hit anything.

In other words, if we took out everything in the thread that dealt with Pvp dps oriented material, there would not be much left. There’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t get me wrong. I just wish perhaps that was in the title so I didn’t have to read the whole thing to find that out.

I should have realized at the second paragraph, “This thread is mode only and SOLELY for contructive criticism.” My Bad. It’s not really about the class taken as a whole and an even handed discussion of the positives and negatives, just the shortcomings. I have to ask, why to you play the ele at all?

you are certainly correct and I didnt notice at all, but you also have to understand, that this is not only about damage, it is also about boons and support, especially the risk and rewards, as well as casting times and detonation times, which are arguably as important as damage and i definitely covered, but yeah, this is indee mostly about damage and about team utility, that other than a couple of buffs from switching elements which require you to be close to melee range (agaisnt their purpose), the other option is to combo Earth 2 with any field, but we all know thats is really hard to do in a constantly moving field, specially since it tkaes THREE whole seconds, by the time it explodes the buffs are probably not needed or people have moved away. Lastly all they have left is the combo field, which, once again are the only redeeming quality about them, and it is not enough, the CDs are TOOO long, 40 secs on both Air #5 and water #4, even traited its 36 secs and I would not have a 5 team spot taken by an ele who can only do that.

Why I play ele? Simple , i want a hard hitting nuker as promised, right now rather than glass cannon Im a shooting pea, also i want a team to say: “an ele? great, finally we get some nasty support and damage!!” just like they say when a Guardian or Mesmer joins. I gave plenty of suggestion on how to fix this and I wont go over it again, there is no way around it, Staff ele needs help, period.

This is a quote from Jonathan Sharp from the 12/14/12 patch:

•Ele
•We see the elementalist as the king of versatility. The skill ceiling for the Ele is exceptional, as the ability to leverage all four attunements at the right time is crucial for understanding the elemetnalist. The Ele boasts some of the best team support and control abilities in the game, as well as some great area of effect damage.
______

When they got rid of the trinity dps/healer/tank, the fire breathing, elemental wielding, caster got “team support and control abilities.”

I am not proficient at small engagement use of the staff so I can’t speak to that. I prefer to use dagger dagger and hope to accurately foresee the use of it. In large field warfare however, and in running battles of larger groups, the staff is great at providing cover and impeding players with crowd control. In large field combat utilizing our range, we can bring significant fire to bear to aid our own melee characters or run off ranged. I’ve never seen anything break the line of opposing forces like my meteor storm. They will turn and run, and always away. A quick shockwave is often a way to catch a straggler or runner. In a close running battle, unsteady ground and static field do catch players. Windborne speed for everyone around. Chain lightning to use on the run.

Wvw commanders love staff eles. There are too few of them by far. Eles during a siege will clear the walls, end of story. The staff too is a great weapon to assist in holding a bridge or narrow area such as a break in a wall.

The profession as you see it would be fun to play, it would. I don’t think the devs will give us alot of help, given their view above of the class. If we kept our movement and we had ranged hard hitting, no induction, short cooldown skills on the staff like we have dagger dagger, we would reign supreme in PvP, and be OP in the process. Staff is simply signifcant additional damage, but I can dream too.

Hmm, where to comment. I love playing Staff Ele, but will often switch to d/d or s/f, depending on the situation. I have found the Staff offers excellent support for my group (especially if they know not to kite targets in random directions), excellent crowd control with moderate escape capability, and decent damage. IMO, it requires a lot of cross-attunement combos and buildup to really be effective.

I play using a semi-balanced gear set, with a focus on crit damage and boon duration with your standard 0/10/0/30/30 (usually). Recently, I’ve tossed Blasting Staff for Renewing Stamina because when I swap to another weapon or I’m underwater, the trait is useless. Even in combat, it’s not always helpful – I find Static Field, for instance, to be much more effective as a small cage than one in which enemies can dodge around in. Mind you, I’m not entirely sold and I miss the larger Ice Field, for instance.

That said, I agree that Fire attunement is pretty strong and wish Lava Font would hit on the initial cast or whenever a target first enters the field. That said, it’s still a very strong skill and like most Staff Ele skills just needs to be cast where the target is going to be (not where it is). Against melee, this is pretty easy to do, but against ranged it can be a bit annoying.

Were healing rain insta-cast, I might use it a little more often than I do, but its still a powerful spell. Not only does it regen and remove conditions (2 per tick if traited), but like Burning Retreat and Ice Field, it lasts long enough that you can follow it up with an Eruption for a combo.

I rather like Air on the staff. The auto attack has decent damage, is particularly good against characters with pets (especially rangers with 1 pet because it’ll typically hit the ranger twice, pet once) and tracks your target so it actually hits moving characters at long range. I agree that Gust could use some improvements because it’s hard to land unless your target is stationary, at point blank range, or running directly towards or away from you. Airborne speed is awesome as an AoE cc cleanse and Static Field is phenomenal as-is. I think it’d be too powerful if it stunned characters caught inside for too long (just like Ring of Warding shouldn’t knock me down if I don’t hit its sides).

Perhaps I’ve simply adapted to Earth’s downsides, but I think this attunement binds the others together. Stoning could still use some tweaks so it lands more frequently, but infinite projectile finishers that cause weakness are great in 1v1 situations for piling on those conditions. I agree that Eruption is hard to land on targets when my CC is down, but its blast finisher (which can be placed and used before any of our fields or after a select few) makes up for the delay. Unstable ground is probably my least favorite due to the cast time and low duration cripple. However, it works quite well as a source for 5(4?) seconds of immobilize when paired with Elemental Surge + Arcane Power. It’s also decent when used with Glyph of Elemental Power since it ticks damage. If Unstable Ground affected a circular area instead of line, I’d probably be very happy with it. As for Shockwave, while I wish the cooldown was shorter without having to trait into earth, I rather like the skill – not only is it piercing (great on bridges) and a projectile finisher, but I’m pretty sure it tracks targets because it connects FAR more frequently than Gust (maybe even Stoning, for that matter).

We have some nice utilities that synergize well with traits and skills. However, I never leave home without at least 1 or 2 cantrips. The arcane spells are nice, the Glphys are okay, and the conjures are situational (though I’ve taken a liking to the Lightning hammer post conjure and aura buff). I’m not a fan of Signet of Air because it doesn’t stack with the Swiftness boon, but the CC signets aren’t so bad.

I think that it made sense to reduce our overall damage when any trait could be equipped on the first major trait slot. However, since the designers made the traits tiered, we certainly hit with a lot less umph. Slightly more damage or slightly better CC (ie, longer condition duration, or lower cooldowns) wouldn’t be too shabby for our class.

My attention span is 5 lines. You lost me at your thesis long suggestion at 6.

The thing what most people tend to overlook is the sheer number of combo fields that come with the staff. This means that the weapon’s effectiveness increases exponetially with the number of players in the group. Also, PVT isn’t the best way to create a support build, Celestial gear is much better suited for such. My final point is that you’ll also need to build around your staff a bit more with utilities. People tend to go with the full cantrip build, but I’ve found that in practice, glyphs work a lot better to compliment your role.

Yes, the staff ele has some issues, but there’s also a learn to understand issue. It’s not a duelling weapon, it’s a group weapon. And if you play it like D/D or the standard MMO glass cannon caster…well, that just doesn’t work as well.

Hmm… you mention you understand Staff is supposed to be a support weapon, yet seem to point out its weaknesses when facing single targets, which only happens when:

a) you are soloing people
b) you are ganking people

In case of a), you shouldn’t be using staff for general roaming. D/D is better for that in all aspects. In fact, D/D is the optimal weapon set for anything not involving keep siege and defense and zerg fights.

In case of b), staff can be a decent “catch ’em” tool, if used properly. For example, Earth #2 has a long casting time, but not so long if you hit them with #5 (immobilize, 2s) and #4 (cripple) prior to that. If they break off, you can use Static Field and Frozen Ground, and the only way they can get through all that is by popping stability AND condition removal. At the very least you will force them to use their stun breakers and/or condition removal and most likely stall them enough for the rest of your team to catch up and down them.

The weapon set that has real issues is Scepter, due to the slowness and predictability of most damaging attacks. This might change slightly if the Arc Lightning gets the same buff Mesmer GS beam attack will get. We’ll see.

Staff, however, is mostly fine. It is a emphasized support weapon, meaning you don’t want to be caught alone out in the open with it, or even in small groups where your chances of getting focused are much higher.

Gaudrath.6725:

…..

The weapon set that has real issues is Scepter, due to the slowness and predictability of most damaging attacks. This might change slightly if the Arc Lightning gets the same buff Mesmer GS beam attack will get. We’ll see.

Staff, however, is mostly fine. It is a emphasized support weapon, meaning you don’t want to be caught alone out in the open with it, or even in small groups where your chances of getting focused are much higher.

I think that sums it up pretty well in Wvw. Two of our weapon sets, staff and dagger/dagger are very useful for differenct roles. I am not going to complain that we get two out of three (not to say scepter or focus don’t have any use at all, but there it is). I enjoy switching between the two sets often. In fact I have little choice lol, because if I am not around alot of people, I feel helpless running in the open with a staff. D/D is the weapon of choice in small engagements.

+1 on your post. I’ll have to take another look at Glyph of Elemental Power. There’s no reason not to swap that in for Lightning Flash when I am using staff, imo Per the wiki: The chance of the effect triggering is high (around 50% for fire and water, and 25% for air and earth) but has a cooldown of about 5 seconds.

Somewhere someone said Staff is the iconic weapon of wizards/mages, wouldnt it be better, if we make Staff the viable weapon and D/D the support one? What do yo say?

To offer a constructive criticism, I will also have to suggest some nerfs to my class.

But first, I wouldn’t suggest the devs to start buffing our useful skills, because they probably won’t even do that, and also because we should start by our weakest stuff. Healing Rain and Lava Font are good as they are.

1. So, Staff.
- Fire attunement is fine, but if I could suggest something, it would be a short damage radius on our burning retreat skill, much like how it works in D/D’s burning speed but inversed. This would give us a little extra edge against 1v1, without going too far into it (afterall, staff is NOT meant for 1v1, right?).
- Water attunement’s auto-attack is underpowered. I would suggest either a faster animation/ cast time, like the frost bow’s auto-attack, or a small self-heal that would stack with the radius heal. Why the later suggestion? Because it would allow eles to heal twice as much with this skill in 1v1. Again, to give us an extra edge in duels, without going too far into it.
- Air attunement has a few issues. First, I actually think #5 is good, and go as far as suggest that it should NOT be affected by the staff’s trait. Second, the auto-attack is fine as it is, and so is the movement skill. So, my problems are with #2 and #3. For the former, I think a high damage boost would make perfect sense, both because of the high casting time and air attunement’s philosophy for spikes or setting up spikes. For the later, it’s a fine skill to keep the enemy’s distance, get them away from a point, or interrupt them, but it’s mechanically clunky. It needs to be fixed to work on horizontal environments, and maybe to have a larger hitbox. Predicting the enemy’s direction, like RTL, could also be a possibility.
- Earth attunement’s Eruption is, in my opinion, perfectly fine. Great to generate blast finishers; the delay allows for an unique combo of setting up the blast first, and only the field second; and even though it’s hard to hit, the staff has several means to control movement, and when it hits, it hits hard. What I would suggest is a few changes to #4 and #5. First, Unsteady Ground should either apply a single, full stack of cripple (4s total? 6s total?), similar to how other line skills work for other professions, or if it is to be kept as it is, I would probably suggest it adding 1 extra second of cripple per hit. Second, Shockwave has the same problems as with Gust, but in addition to immobilize, I would probably buff the bleeding effect. Instead of 1 stack of 20s, I would say 3 stacks of 10s.

2. The stunbreakers
- The fact that all elementalists’ stunbreakers are all of their cantrips is a bad idea. And Mist Form is simply too “needed”. Here’s my suggestions:
- Change Mist Form’s cooldown, from 75s to 90s. I don’t think it needs more than that, because the functionality is mechanically perfect.
- Remove the stunbreaking effect from Cleansing Fire and Armor of Earth. Add a 3/4 casting time to both. Cleansing Fire might have its cooldown reduced from 50 to 40s, and Armor from 90s to 60-75s.
-Now, add a stunbreaker to signet of air’s activation, in addition to its blind effect; and make Conjure Earth Shield instant cast and break stun. This should add a new dimension to elementalists. Earth Shield can be considered over mist form, and signet-aura builds will become more relevant.

3. And talking about conjures…
- Frost Bow’s auto-attack could have a buff to healing, maybe a self-heal that is stackable with the radius heal, much like what I’ve suggested to staff’s water auto..
- Hammer’s Lightning Storm could be buffed, because it’s underwhelming and this worsens the hammer’s dps.

4. Back to weapons: scepter
- Fire and Air are perfect, regardless of their “flaws”.
- Water’s #1 and #2 are useless, they add nothing to the weapon. I don’t know what it can be done with the auto, but maybe a dumb damage boost could help (fire’s and earth’s auto is for conditions, air’s for line aoe and activate critical effects). But for the #2, in addition to vulnerability, I would suggest 2s cripple or 1s immobilize on its end effect. Why? To help dragon’s tooth (and phoenix). It would be synergistic.
- Earth’s #2 and #3 are weird. They feel rather random. I would say to greatly increase Hurl’s power. This would make the barrier’s “sacrifice” more relevant. Dust Devil, in my opinion, could go fine with a slight mechanical change: remove the damage, but have the tornado stay in the battlefield after it was cast for an extra second or two, applying blind each second. That would further differenciate it from Blinding Flash, and give scepter eles a moment to pause at the expense of damage (or even to cast churning earth).

4. Fire traits:
- Persisting Flames: have the fire fields’ duration to be increased by 50% instead of 30%. This only affects a single skill per weapon, so why not? Guardian’s spirit weapons and elites also have traits that increases them by 50%, and they’re not even grandmaster traits.
- Pyromancer’s Puissance: instead of adding might per fire spell, which contributes to a boring and ineffective auto-attack playstyle (besides only offering about 4s to a normal player who doesn’t auto-attacks often), have it apply might per attunement swap. 3 stacks of might for 5s per swap seems fine. Clearly, it would motivate players to burst as fast as possible, or make fire/ arcana builds. The former which is the goal, the later which would open a possible new build.
- Grounded: Also affect launched foes, to work with Updraft.

I have said it before, and can say it again.
Staff have too much AoE.

AoE is good… against stationary targets. like the dangerous golems in the mists.

Staff need to split up the 4 elements.
Make 2 elements focus on AoE/Support/Healing.
and 2 elements focus on Single targeting/CC
(this way you open many doors and options to variation).

Hindenburg with hydrogen. was a great idea. on paper.
Staff with all its stuff now. is also great idea. on paper.

Hindenburg became a burning pile of scrap… their paper design idea didnt work.

Staff elemental is a big mess of skills… the paper design idea doesnt work.

I get the idea the designers have of their staff elemental.
A bearded skinny old man on a hill, helping his army with his power to controll
meteors, healing rain, lightning storms and earthquakes.
The power to controll all 4 elements.

It does sound realy realy cool and totaly awesomness. (but only on paper)

DiogoSilva.7089:

- Water attunement’s auto-attack is underpowered. I would suggest either a faster animation/ cast time, like the frost bow’s auto-attack

Conjure Frost Bow auto-attack is 3/4 second, like the water auto-attack. On top of that, Frost Bow auto-attack animation time is slower than water auto-attack.

Some changes are asked since launch :
1- Make Eruption (staff 2) “erupt” faster (because staff is so heavily based on blast finisher)

2- Make Water jet travel/animate faster or a channeling so you can actually heal someone you want to heal.

3- Let us use utility/heal skills while in Tornado

4- Let us swap in and out conjured weapon without having to waste them away.

5- Change intelligence and give a reduced cooldown to specific attunement when you invest trait points into the specific line (ie if I put more points into fire I can go back to fire faster)

Water jet needs to be a beam, would be awesome healing and damaging in a line. Also comparing null field to our on attunement aoe cleanse and heal trait, I’ll take the switch heal thanks :p

The single attunement traits need to go away, everyone single one of them should have an effect for each attunement…

Many feel forced into arcane / water to fill our deficiencies, maybe some of that stuff needs to be baseline…

Still staff in a group if people build to take advantage of combo fields, it’s very good.

I agree that conjures should probably be our weapon swap. But maybe balance them by replacing that attunement. (or just giving us the full 20 skills with each lol)

emikochan.8504:

Water jet needs to be a beam, would be awesome healing and damaging in a line. Also comparing null field to our on attunement aoe cleanse and heal trait, I’ll take the switch heal thanks :p

The single attunement traits need to go away, everyone single one of them should have an effect for each attunement…

Many feel forced into arcane / water to fill our deficiencies, maybe some of that stuff needs to be baseline…

Still staff in a group if people build to take advantage of combo fields, it’s very good.

I agree that conjures should probably be our weapon swap. But maybe balance them by replacing that attunement. (or just giving us the full 20 skills with each lol)

some good suggestions, i do like the idea of water been a beam bean, lol, I have yet to see one, but maybe if we can cast it on an ally ? LOL, i know its OP and I actually mean it as a joke, but I can only imagine it as a medic healing a heavy!! I would totall itemize for this and tag the commander with it, heck, even have a full guild of water eles doing that to the commander, INVINCIBLE!)