Guild Wars 2

The change to Lightning Whip is both good and necessary, but now Fire’s primary attack is put to shame. The best way to resolve this issue would be to have the 3 flames that travel along the ground pierce through targets, always travelling to their maximum distance and hitting everything along each line. This would go a long way towards giving Dagger a viable autoattack in each line.

No…just no…
Lightning is meant to be an attunement with comparable damage capability. RTL has a decent sized AoE hit, but Lightning Touch does a relatively small amount of damage (as intended). The attunement’s main source of damage is Lightning Whip. Fire, on the other hand, has Drake’s Breath, Burning Speed (AoE blast at the end), Ring of fire (small AoE hit), and Fire Grab, one of the hardest hitting abilities available to the Ele (and a cone, at that). Basically, Fire has 5 damage abilities while Air has 3. And then you have to consider that fire also inflicts burning. Fire does PLENTY of damage as is. Anet wanted air to have more comparable damage output and they’ve done just that. Leave it.

the two are totally different skills.

Obsolete? Hardly. This just made lightning whip (and staying in air during combat) no longer useless.

Rolo.9248:

Obsolete? Hardly. This just made lightning whip (and staying in air during combat) no longer useless.

slightly less useless

slightly less useless

I’m not sure how anyone can feel this way about the whip now in it’s current form. The thing can hit multiple targets now and doesn’t miss all the time (like before), it’s probably the best auto-attack in the D/D arsenal.

/boggle

LW double hits for 2k a pop on a target, so 4k total. Dragon’s claw, each “slice” hits for 2k, so 6k total. Fire 1 is not obsolete.

But you can only hit for 6k on one target…

You don’t pick one attunement as the catch all and stick with it during a fight; that’s for weapons. Cycle attunements more and don’t complain when a skill gets a boost. JFC.

Dumbo.8167:

But you can only hit for 6k on one target…

Yea but if it’s more than one targe tI’m not going to sit there and just spam LW. I’m going to switch to fire, burning speed, ring of fire, flame burst, drakes breath, switch to earth and continue the rain down of pain.

The auto attack would never be the reason for shifting attunements, I’m confused how by making lightning whip better that it makes fire dagger 1 worse.

Lightning has 1 real damage ability, and it’s whip, with the rest showing more utility. Fire has 5 damage abilities with really zero or minimal utility (fire step being arguable).

Personally, I find the change to be great and only adds to the value when lightning attuned.

If a target is low I’ll RTL to them, cast lightning 2, then finish them off with LW. That’s about the only time outside of PVE when I use it.

I’m not sure how anyone can feel this way about the whip now in it’s current form. The thing can hit multiple targets now and doesn’t miss all the time (like before), it’s probably the best auto-attack in the D/D arsenal.
/boggle

Lightning Whip still misses a ton, they didn’t fix it at all, just added the multiple target aspect.

Lightning Whip already out damaged Dragon’s Claw before this change. Anybody who thought it did poor damage is dead wrong, it is our strongest auto attack across all weapons, at least for power builds. But the hit detection is still broken, which really seemed more important to me.

lol yeah, I like lw but it does seem to have some targeting issues. Point blank at times and ‘miss’ ‘miss’ etc

…Wait there are people who actually use the basic attacks on D/D?

I was under the impression people figured out how to 2-3 hit mobs using combos by now.

Or are we talking about pvp here?

After testing in the Mists with 916 power. It’s pretty clear several people are making numbers up for Dragon’s Claw and Lightning Whip.

The tool tip for dragon’s claw states each projectile deals 126 damage.
The tool tip for lightning whip states lightning whip’s damage is 235.

Arithmetic shows…
126*3=378 (Dragon’s Claw)
235*2=470 (Lightning Whip)

Actual testing on a medium armor dummy shows…
Dragon’s Claw consistently hitting for around 160 per projectile (3)
Lightning Whip consistently hitting for around 300 per hit (2)

Further Analysis using numbers identified
Net Single Target Damage
Dragon’s Claw – 160 * 3 = 480
Lightning Whip – 300 * 2 = 600
Percent damage Lightning Whip has over Dragon’s Claw – 25%

Net Three Target Damage
Dragon’s Claw – 160 * 3 = 480
Lightning Whip – 300 * 2 * 3 = 1800
Percent damage Lightning Whip has over Dragon’s Claw – 375%

Now that it’s clear that the numbers hold a significant favor for Lightning Whip, let’s be clear that this is a low priority issue in the grand scheme of Dagger balance on an Elementalist. Skill 1 should be used infrequently regardless of attunement in order to maximize the ele’s effectiveness. At some point ANet should address this, but it’s not an immediate issue of significance.

Feel free to provide suggestions on whatever y’all think ANet should do to bridge the gap, but don’t expect a quick turn-around for the resolution.

“Skill 1 should be used infrequently regardless of attunement in order to maximize the ele’s effectiveness”

How does NOT using a frequently cycling ability reduce the ele’s effectiveness? I find that constant attunement swapping is both a right royal pain in the butt and gives very little reward in a solo PVE situation.

@OP: Personally i think the arc size for DC should be reduced, thereby allowing all three projectiles to hit the target without having to stand on top of it.

Switch to almost useless in combat attunement (for D/D spec, and I mean damage dealing) just for get viable auto-attack? It’s sad :/. There needs to be rework – change dragon’s claw to (drumroll) fire whip and make air attunement more mobility/CC, anyway its terrible for damage dealing as it is now.
@Aries
Kill mobs in 2-3 hits… in Orr… This can’t be true =)

Tarkaroshe.8370:

How does NOT using a frequently cycling ability reduce the ele’s effectiveness? I find that constant attunement swapping is both a right royal pain in the butt and gives very little reward in a solo PVE situation.

Your findings are your own and apply to you being effective.

Players who utilize frequent attunement swapping are simply dishing out more powerful effects. Skill 1 is weak. Skills 2-5 are much stronger.

Elementalist players who know all 20 skills in their weapon/attunement matrix and can effeciently swap between attunements hitting their damage oriented skills on cool down deal the dps most efficiently.

Furthermore players who know their 20 skills and can properly identify when to use their crowd control skills are the most efficiently at damage mitigation.

That’s what it comes down to, and the challenging fast pace combo based effectiveness is what people love about the profession.

Shockwave.1230:

Tarkaroshe.8370:

How does NOT using a frequently cycling ability reduce the ele’s effectiveness? I find that constant attunement swapping is both a right royal pain in the butt and gives very little reward in a solo PVE situation.

Your findings are your own and apply to you being effective.

Players who utilize frequent attunement swapping are simply dishing out more powerful effects. Skill 1 is weak. Skills 2-5 are much stronger.

Elementalist players who know all 20 skills in their weapon/attunement matrix and can effeciently swap between attunements hitting their damage oriented skills on cool down deal the dps most efficiently.

Furthermore players who know their 20 skills and can properly identify when to use their crowd control skills are the most efficiently at damage mitigation.

That’s what it comes down to, and the challenging fast pace combo based effectiveness is what people love about the profession.

Hmmm. I know all about the combo’s, however I find that frequently using certain 1 skills (the Fire 1 skill which for me appears to be dishing more damage than the numbers you posted earlier) appear to be more effective in a solo situation than going through the motions of attunement switching just to use a skill with a cooldown on another attunement.

Perhaps it partly comes down to how “nimble” someone is at constant attunement switching + activating a skill. But to me, in a solo situation it largely seems like a waste of time due to swift countdowns on debuffs and what I percieve to be poor rewards for actually trying to make use of certain combos when soloing.

To each their own I guess.

Of course, all that will probably change in a group or pvp based situation.

Bsquared.3421:

slightly less useless

I’m not sure how anyone can feel this way about the whip now in it’s current form. The thing can hit multiple targets now and doesn’t miss all the time (like before), it’s probably the best auto-attack in the D/D arsenal.

/boggle

You don’t rotate the camera with your mouse do you? There is a bug, which this didn’t fix, that makes it so most of the lightning whips attacks miss while rotating the camera with the mouse. So it’s still useless for a lot of us.

Are people seriously running around using ONE element only? >.<