Guild Wars 2

I see a lot of discussions about traits, but people don’t discuss weapon skills much. I want to tweak the weapon skills a bit to make the Ele play style more active, and more fun to play/be played against. The weapon skills are tweaked to allow for more combo, and more skill that depends on timing. Let me know what you think

The main goal of this is to not substantially buff Ele damage, or to make Ele OP in anyway. It’s to tweak the skills with cast time and a little bit of mechanics so the ele gameplay is more active, with more combo/timing and higher skill ceiling.

= Staff =

Staff skills must have faster cast time, especially faster after cast animation. Right now, staff can’t really react to a lot of situations because of the slow cast time. We don’t need to make a lot dramatic changes to staff skills, just buff the projectile speed and cast time a bit. This won’t make staff OP, but help a lot with making it viable in pvp.

1) Fire
Staff lack burst. The below changes enable staff ele to burst, while the reduced damage and increased cooldown of Lava Font keeps it balanced. Imagine combo like Fireball -> while the fireball is flying, Lava Font, Flame burst. This encourage active play, and good timing. The small burst every 10s is not OP because it’s still less than medi guard burst, which is every 8s.

• Fireball
  Increase projectile speed by 1.5x
• Lava Font
  Make it ticks as soon as it’s placed on the ground. Reduce damage by 15%. Increase cooldown to 8s.
• Flame Burst
  Make it instant cast
• Burning Retreat fine as it is
• Meteor Shower fine as it is

2) Air
Air auto attack projectile speed is too slow, we should increase the speed while reducing the damage to keep it balanced. Air is also the attunement of control, the changes below add a more active playstyle to Air, while keeping it balance. Seeing a hammer F1 burst? A well timed Lightning Surge would help. Need distance from a shoutbow? Static Field to daze, then Gust the guy to the static field and Windborne speed to run.

• Chain Lightning
  Increase projectile speed by 2×. Reduce cast time to 1/2s. Reduce damage by 25%.
• Lightning Surge
  There is no reason why this skill has a 1.5s cast time. Reduce cast time to 0.5s.
• Gust
  Increase cone shape width to 240. Increase projectile speed by 1.5x
• Windborne Speed
  Reduce swiftness duration from 10s to 7s. Reduce cooldown from 30s to 20s. This allows the skill to be used more often.
• Static Field
  Reduce cast time to 1/2s. Still stun the enemies who cross it. Daze the enemies inside for 0.5s

3) Water
The staff heal is too OP with Cleric/monk runes. To discourage boring bunker staff, we should increase base healing, but reduce healing scale. Also, the delayed activation of Ice Spike already make it hard enough to be used in pvp, we should make it instant cast. This allows combos like Frozen Ground + Ice Spike at the same time. Or Ice Spike + Geyser (area denial, so the opponent is more inclined to stay away, allowing you to stay in Geyser for heal).

• Water Blast
  Increase projectile speed by 1.5x
• Ice Spike
  Make it instant cast, however, it still has 2s delayed activation (instant cast to ground, and it drops down hit the ground 2s later). Increase cooldown to 10s.
• Geyser
  Reduce cast time to 1/2s. Increase base healing by 15%. Reduce healing scale with healing power by 25%.
• Frozen Ground
  Hitting a Frozen Ground with Ice Spike increases the Frozen Ground duration by 1s
• Healing Rain fine as it is

4) Earth
Each is mostly fine. One of the things that needs to change is Eruption, which should tick 3 times, each gives 2 stacks of bleeding and cripples, instead of 6 stacks at the blast. This gives Earth the ability to do small area denial (although if the opponent thinks 2 stacks of bleeding is not that strong, they are free to stay in the area). Magnetic Aura also does too little for its 30s cooldown. Magnetic Wave (Focus Earth) has 25s cooldown, deals damage, and cleans condition. I suggest we add a small 1s knock back to Magnetic Aura, so it can be used as a brief disengaging tool when a melee character jumps on the staff Ele. Smart play can be used to knock people into Unsteady Ground too.

• Stoning
  Increase projectile speed by 1.5x
• Eruption
  Reduce cast time to 1/2s. Each pulse gives 2 stacks of bleeding and cripples, instead of 6 stacks of bleeding at the end.
• Magnetic Aura
  Add knock back enemies in melee range (180 radius) for 1s.
• Unsteady Ground fine as it is
• Shockwave
  Increase projectile speed by 1.5×. If it hits an Unsteady Ground, increase the duration of Unsteady Ground by 2s.

= Scepter =

Scepter auto attack is really, really bad. We should improve it. Scepter also doesn’t have any evade and not mobile enough. I propose changing Water Trident to increase the active playstyle by giving Scepter a short range leap.

1) Fire

• Flamestrike
  Reduce cast time to 3/4s
• Dragon’s Tooth fine as it is, or make it ground targeted
• Phoenix
  Currently it is hard to dodge this. Increase the cast time to 0.5 to allow a bit more counter play/dodge. Maybe a bit more animation would also help (like a phoenix rising up from the Ele for 0.25s before it flys out)

2) Air

• Arc Lightning
  Tick every 0.25s instead of every 0.5s. Reduce each tick of damage by 35% (essentially a 15% damage buff)
• Lightning Strike This skill as it is right now is a bit strong. The activation should be delayed by 0.5s. The Ele will have a glowing animation during that, so the enemy can dodge it if they are fast enough.
• Blinding Flash fine as it is

3) Water

• Ice Shards
  Reduce cast time to 0.5s, increase projectile speed by 1.5x
• Shatterstone
  Make it instant cast, still keep the delayed activation
  After it hit, there remains shards on ground for 1s that bleeds if enemy cross, if you use Water 1 Ice Shards on it, extends duration by 1/2s.
• Water Trident
  [Optional — not a lot of people like this] Conjure a water trident where you are, lift you to the targeted location. The animation will be like a dodge jump with a wave of water trident moves from the start location to the targeted location. The healing still ticks 3 times during the leap duration. Increase cooldown to 25s. Is a leap finisher.

4) Earth

• Stone Shards
  Reduce cast time to 3/4s. Reduce to 2 stacks of 5s bleeding.
• Rock Barrier fine as it is
• Hurl
  Make instant cast
• Dust Devil
  Reduce cooldown to 10s

= Focus =

Focus is mostly fine as it is. Except for a few abilities that have an unnecessary long cooldown/cast time. CC should have 1/2s cast time, so the ele can use it to interrupt. This encourage good timing and active gameplay.

1) Fire

• Flamewall
  Instead of a single line, make it a cross (2 lines)
• Fire Shield
  Reduce cooldown to 25s

2) Air

• Swirling Winds fine as it is
• Gale
  Reduce cast time to 1/2s. Add animation to the opponent, so they can dodge it.

3) Water

• Freezing Gust
  Reduce cooldown to 20s
• Comet
  If the target is chilled, stun instead of daze

4) Earth

• Magnetic Wave fine as it is
• Obsidian Flesh fine as it is

= Dagger =

Dagger skills are actually pretty good in term of active game play. There are a few small tweak. Water auto attack deal very low damage (only about 25% of Lightning Whip). It should be increased. Ride the Lightning should be based on whether there is a target selected, not whether the attack is blocked/missed/evaded.

1) Fire

• Dragon’s Claw fine as it is
• Drake’s Breath
  Reduce channel time to 2s, still hit 4 times.
• Burning Speed fine as it is
• Ring of Fire fine as it is
• Fire Grab fine as it is

2) Air

• Lightning Whip fine as it is
• Lightning Touch increase the weakness duration by 2s
• Shocking Aura fine as it is
• Ride the Lightning
  If there is an enemy target selected, half the cooldown.
• Updraft fine as it is

3) Water

• Vapor Blade
  Increase damage by 1.5x
• Cone of Cold
  Reduce channel time to 2s, still hit 4 times. Heal double the amount for Allies only (healing for the Ele will be the same). This gives the Ele more tools to support allies.
• Frozen Burst fine as it is
• Frost Aura
  Reduce the cooldown to 30s
• Cleansing Wave fine as it is

4) Earth
The Magnetic Leap animation is too slow, it reduces the fluid play of Ele. Churning Earth will not work with a decent enemy. Ele should have the ability to detonate it with a low damage.

• Impale
  The range is too small. Increase the range to 480.
• Ring of Earth
  Reduce cast time to ½ from ¾ s
• Magnetic Grasp fine as it is
• Magnetic Leap
  Increase the pull speed by 1.5x
• Earthquake fine as it is
• Churning Earth
  Allow the ele to activate the cast by pressing the skill again. The damage will be as following
  0.5s 15%
  1.0s 25%
  1.5s 35%
  2.0s 50%
  2.5s 70%
  3.0s 100%

Reserve for under water skills. Although I’m not sure if people care enough about it, nor if HoT will have underwater pvp combat.

Sunshine.5014:

Reserve for under water skills. Although I’m not sure if people care enough about it, nor if HoT will have underwater pvp combat.

I wouldn’t bother with underwater combat as part of the discussion, it seems to be a legacy item where pvp is concerned as they removed the ability to even interact with with underwater option in spvp. I’ll be kind of surprised if there is more than a couple of underwater areas in the open world maps added in the expansion.

Sunshine.5014:

I see a lot of discussions about traits, but people don’t discuss weapon skills much. I want to tweak the weapon skills a bit to make the Ele play style more active, and more fun to play/be played against. The weapon skills are tweaked to allow for more combo, and more skill that depends on timing. Let me know what you think

The main goal of this is to not substantially buff Ele damage, or to make Ele OP in anyway. It’s to tweak the skills with cast time and a little bit of mechanics so the ele gameplay is more active, with more combo/timing and higher skill ceiling.

Great suggestions, would certainly balance things out.

some things that i can’t agree with at all:

-dragon’s tooth needs ground casting, so it’s not fine.
-arc lightning is fine because you can channel it out of air and trigger fresh air with it.
-ice shards are fine, they’re actually the 2nd best auto attack
-shatterstone should apply chill with every tick, they already reduced the casting of it.
-while i’m not against the idea of more leaps i feel like it doesn’t fit water trident tbh.
-the problem with hurl is that it puts rock barrier on a 15s cd when you use it.

Sunshine.5014:

1) Fire

• Flamewall fine as it is

3) Water

• Freezing Gust fine as it is

What? These two are the absolute worst weapon skills for ele. Arguably, they are the worst weapon skills in the entire game. Flamewall is literally old unsteady ground levels of uselessness.

Flamewall weaknesses
1)weak damage
2)1 second of burning every second
3)field is a narrow line (no enemy will stand in this and it is harder to combo with)
4) longer cast time and cooldown than other more damaging ele fire fields

Flamewall strengths
1) 8 second duration lets it set there being ineffectual longer than other fire fields
2) dropping it on a downed player and walking away is a max swag move
3) getting a kill with it is amusing

Freezing gust is just a single target 3 second chill on a 25 second cooldown. The damage is also weak. It is literally, mathematically and objectively inferior to every other chilling weapon skill on any class.

I agree in most part but:
-DT needs to be ground targeted
-Firewall needs to be remade/replace – totally useless outside pve
-Fireshield needs to be remade/replace – again totally useless
-Gale – other then what you’ve listed I’d say it could use few secs lower cooldown

-your trident idea, although neat, imo doesn’t really fit scepter

Fire. Shield should Include protection and half cd. All weapon auras should be 20-25 cd max.

I mostly agree with your change. Those change does make them OP but improve them.
I only disagree, as the other people before, on dragon tooth that shold be ground targeting (less usefull in wvw to kill siege but better for other things) and I don’t think the healing rain need change. It’s a long cast but rewarded by the big area. it’s all about timing and I don’t think a change is needed here.. staff is a slow weapon so it makes the caster in danger. If you change things like cast time on aoe for lower efficacity. It would be ever to OP or totally uselss :/
It’s only my opinion obviously.

Hello there! I like most of your ideas, especially about staff. Staff has indeed some very slow attacks making it very hard to use on PvP, so some reductions specialy the auto attacks would be nice. I won’ t agree with the reductions on heals, cause they are very useful on wvw group pvp and not good when solo. I like the idea of being able to support large grous more effectively due to finishers.

Now the idea with the trident on scepter sounds bit weird to me but I like the thought of having a leap on scepter cause it’s missing some mobility.

About focus i would like to see comet as ground target skill, cause it is very dissfunctional right now.

Lastly I love your idea for daggers churnng earth but I do not aggre with the dragons breath and cone of cold suggestion. Daggers have a lot of fast skills and active game play they won’t be balanced otherwise. Now about fire grab can deal a lot of damage if it lands on burning target i wouldn’t make it stronger, better to increase range a bit or cone.

Sunshine.5014:

= Scepter =

• *Water Trident
  Conjure a water trident where you are, lift you to the targeted location. The animation will be like a dodge jump with a wave of water trident moves from the start location to the targeted location. The healing still ticks 3 times during the leap duration. Increase cooldown to 25s. Is a leap finisher.

I would suggest: that after use water trident your water skill 1 change for meele for period of time.
Or: that after use water trident your next water skill freeze into block of ice for 3/4s.

;leap imo no.
Water trident change have nice animation on weapon that is why I fought about slashing enemies with that.

With many suggestions I agree.

Hi all! Thanks for the feedback!

What I gathered is that people want:

• Dragon Tooth to be ground targeted
• Flamewall damage is too weak, and the field is too small
• Overall scepter/focus damage is too weak, including fire shield, freezing gust.
• Leap doesn’t fit scepter

Beside that, do you like/dislike any other change? Also, do tell if you like a change, since that’s the signal that ANet will use to implement the change. If the whole thread people only talk about the things they don’t like, ANet won’t know what they should implement to make ele gameplay more active.

Also, feel free to add your ideas too!

I would have to say that i disagree with increasing cooldown while reducing damage.

Also, I feel as though Staff needs better Soft and Hard CC. Meaning:

-Eruption needs to pulse crippling effect. The ground is literally shaking at their feet, why are they moving at the same speed.
-Unsteady ground should work even if the enemy has stability. People can walk around or teleport over it anyways :/. Hell some even glitch through it.

Also, itd be cool if ice spike, summoned a hailstorm instead on a location instead of what we get now.

iKeostuKen.2738:

I would have to say that i disagree with increasing cooldown while reducing damage.

Also, I feel as though Staff needs better Soft and Hard CC. Meaning:

-Eruption needs to pulse crippling effect. The ground is literally shaking at their feet, why are they moving at the same speed.
-Unsteady ground should work even if the enemy has stability. People can walk around or teleport over it anyways :/. Hell some even glitch through it.

Also, itd be cool if ice spike, summoned a hailstorm instead on a location instead of what we get now.

Ken, your suggestions would make ele too OP. I want ele to be fun to play, but also fun to played against too.

Sunshine.5014:

iKeostuKen.2738:

I would have to say that i disagree with increasing cooldown while reducing damage.

Also, I feel as though Staff needs better Soft and Hard CC. Meaning:

-Eruption needs to pulse crippling effect. The ground is literally shaking at their feet, why are they moving at the same speed.
-Unsteady ground should work even if the enemy has stability. People can walk around or teleport over it anyways :/. Hell some even glitch through it.

Also, itd be cool if ice spike, summoned a hailstorm instead on a location instead of what we get now.

Ken, your suggestions would make ele too OP. I want ele to be fun to play, but also fun to played against too.

There is no way a pulsing cripple would be op. If its like 2 or 3 pulses.

Unsteady ground needs some sort of change if its going to remain a small block that is easily counter by common sense :/. Its even a bit delayed so people can run over it before it takes effect.

Staff:
Fire 2 True it should give this first thick as it is placed.
Air 1 should have higher velocity and more bounces basicaly or through trait, it is skill for dmg/fast one it doesn’t fit now perfectly.
Air 2 instant cuz too slow (even if I like that animation).
Air 3 even increase velocity of that would be ok, it is hard to land it when u need it even on stading enemy, increasing cone shape would give love to Staff.
Scepter
Fire 1 after use also it should works like pillar of flame sprouting from ground for 0,2s after normal effect of this skill, for additional burining/and manipulating with movements of enemy.
Water 3 as I said make as to slash with water trident meele for seconds or next water skill freeze enemy into block of ice for 3/4s.
Earth (I play earth only so I will tell there something).
Earth 1 It can be one projectile 1/2s cd 1bleed stack but it must fly to enemy as soon as you press 1, it is too slow to to give first hit to enemy, much more it they have abilities to dispel target like stealth. Increase projectile velocity.
Earth 2 Rock barier should work for 5s after hurl,
hurl should be instant and if used decrease cd of rock barier for 5s
Earth 3 10s cd it could be good, but I would like to see: if dust devil didn’t hit it back the same path that it moved earlier (it isn’t like pheonix, but very similar, much more like winds of that centaur boss in PS2 with caithe, faolain ,wynne, have no idea why I link it with that).
Focus
Fire 5 Flamewall instant just in front of you, there should be effect if you cross you own fire fields (maybe trait)

Still think there should be confusion/dmg chill from water skills.

iKeostuKen.2738:

I would have to say that i disagree with increasing cooldown while reducing damage.

Also, I feel as though Staff needs better Soft and Hard CC. Meaning:

-Eruption needs to pulse crippling effect. The ground is literally shaking at their feet, why are they moving at the same speed.
-Unsteady ground should work even if the enemy has stability. People can walk around or teleport over it anyways :/. Hell some even glitch through it.

Also, itd be cool if ice spike, summoned a hailstorm instead on a location instead of what we get now.

hum … no.
that eruption cripple ok, I like this idea but that our earth wall working with stab is totally ridiculous, the stab have already been nerfed so let’s it work on everything at least Oo. but it shoulb be nice if it worked like the guard like, I mean, till it’s here you shouldn’t be abble to pass without stability wich is not the case actually (after being interrrupting once you can pass … )

i’d like to see
a) gust apply 5s of torment, since torment synergizes with the concept of control
b) unsteady ground should actually knockdown anyone who runs into it. (this would create more synergy with tempest defense trait)
c) eruption needs to apply bleeding every second instead of only at the end, and then apply 2-5 seconds blindness and 2-5 seconds of poison at the end, due to how difficult it is to land this ability on foes. (and it would finally be worth the name “eruption” since all those particles exploding into the air in such close proximity would be harder to breath, like a poison, and the blast would also naturally cause momentary blindness)

sorry to say this but giving ele skills new conditions won’t work. every profession has its main conditions that fit the theme and as long as our elite specialisation won’t be something like a butcher i can’t see (and i don’t agree with) ele getting torment or poison.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Sunshine.5014:

iKeostuKen.2738:

I would have to say that i disagree with increasing cooldown while reducing damage.

Also, I feel as though Staff needs better Soft and Hard CC. Meaning:

-Eruption needs to pulse crippling effect. The ground is literally shaking at their feet, why are they moving at the same speed.
-Unsteady ground should work even if the enemy has stability. People can walk around or teleport over it anyways :/. Hell some even glitch through it.

Also, itd be cool if ice spike, summoned a hailstorm instead on a location instead of what we get now.

Ken, your suggestions would make ele too OP. I want ele to be fun to play, but also fun to played against too.

There is no way a pulsing cripple would be op. If its like 2 or 3 pulses.

Unsteady ground needs some sort of change if its going to remain a small block that is easily counter by common sense :/. Its even a bit delayed so people can run over it before it takes effect.

I have to agree with you on the pulsing cripple definitely not being op at all. Churning Earth has one and no one uses that skill unless the elementalist goes unnoticed.

Okay, I’m convinced that pulsing cripple on Eruption is not OP. It’s true that people barely notice the cripple from Churning Earth. Please keep the feedback coming. I’ll update the posts with your feedback! Let’s hope that ANet will implement the tweaks

My biggest complains are in regard to the Staff and Scepter

Almost everything on Staff Air is under-tuned. Chain Lightning should be much faster with a better animation and sound effect. Lightning Surge has way too long a cast time/cooldown, and Gust just doesn’t have a good enough effect area and should do some damage.

Staff Earth and Water autos are so weak that those attunements are virtually unusable outside of a large group. There’s no reason they should sacrifice so much DPS for the utility they provide. A little, yes. As much as they do? No.

All of the scepter autos and Vapor Blade are all significantly under-tuned.

Bit more creative:
Staff:
Air 4 if in next 3s after use you will made loop around your enemy it will make tornado that will launch-up that enemy.
Earth 4 if you use Earth 5 on your unsteady ground will will hide under ground still visible (tunneling only on path of unsteady ground), can’t be attacked and can’t attack anyone, extend your unsteady ground for 2s if hit with shockwave. Its also can change shape of unsteady ground to shape of semcircle if hit perpendicularly.
Dagger:
Fire 3 if you use that skill and on your path there will be your fire field you will extend lenght of your skill (yeah ring of fire and you use dagger3 then you make nice loop).

I like the idea of Shockwave extending unsteady ground duration by 2s! That’s creative

Staff:
Water 2 if you hit your Ice Spike with Fireball it shatter in more wide range and give bleed stack. Trajectory of projectile just need to cross below Ice Spike or for more makro make it able to target only for us, but idk if with fireball that slow it will works properly.
Water 4 if you use Water 3 Geyser on that field it will change into mud field for 1s that imobilize and cripple.
Scepter:
Water 2 after it hit, there remains shards on ground for 1s that bleeds if enemy cross, if you use Water 1 Ice Shards on its extend duration by 1/2s.

Syngery with everything you can, combomentalist.

Mem no Fushia.7604:

Staff:
Water 2 if you hit your Ice Spike with Fireball it shatter in more wide range and give bleed stack. Trajectory of projectile just need to cross below Ice Spike or for more makro make it able to target only for us, but idk if with fireball that slow it will works properly.
Water 4 if you use Water 3 Geyser on that field it will change into mud field for 1s that imobilize and cripple.
Scepter:
Water 2 after it hit, there remains shards on ground for 1s that bleeds if enemy cross, if you use Water 1 Ice Shards on its extend duration by 1/2s.

Syngery with everything you can, combomentalist.

Your scepter water #2 skill is brilliant! I like the idea that ele skill should interact with each other more. It should be kind of like a class mechanic for us.

Bump for a little bit more visibility. People focus on trait changes too much, they hardly remember that Ele weapons need some love/tweaks too.

Sunshine.5014:

Guys, what if we didn’t actually change… ANYTHING… but instead all of the offensive effects that elementalists inflict… were just faster and therefore harder for anyone to properly mitigate? We could even increase recharges to make people wait even LONGER in order to do things again!

Now you’re thinking like anet.

Erasmus.1624:

Sunshine.5014:

Guys, what if we didn’t actually change… ANYTHING… but instead all of the offensive effects that elementalists inflict… were just faster and therefore harder for anyone to properly mitigate? We could even increase recharges to make people wait even LONGER in order to do things again!

Now you’re thinking like anet.

First, I didn’t write that. It’s a strawman.

Second, it appears that you didn’t even read the change before you try replying with a snarky comment.

• the only cool down I propose to increase is Lava Font, and it is because we add another tick, as soon as the spell is casted. The total damage is increased, so of course there should be a minor change to keep it balanced.
• I stated that I didn’t want to propose changes that would make Ele OP. I want to propose needed changes that helps keep the Ele’s play style active and fun.
• Staff’s weapons are just too slow, making none bunker staff not viable in PvP. That’s a fact. During the time you cast one Static Field/Gust, a decent thief can already instantly down you. The projectile speed tweaks I proposed, while minor (as you said “didn’t change ANYTHING”), make it easier to react to the opponents’ move, while not making the Ele OP, and promote a more active playstyle.

Do you have anything valuable to say? I’d love to hear it.

I like most of your changes, but have different opinions on scepter a bit. My ideas below:

1) Fire
Flamestrike – Reduce cast time to 1/2s, shorter burning
Dragon’s Tooth – Either make this ground-targeted (so people can use it), or reduce the cast time to 0.25-0.5s with the same wind-up (so it is at least worth firing as a zoning tool on something other than downed bodies/while you are LOS)
Phoenix – Personally, I think it is kinda dumb how much damage you can do in melee with this. I would increase the cast time to 0.5 or 0.75s, but increase the projectile speed by 50%.

2) Air
Arc Lightning – No change to channel time, just put the first hit instantly, rather than 0.5s into the channel.
Lightning Strike – Perhaps make ele glow and have it strike 0.5s later, so there is more counterplay.
Blinding Flash fine as it is

3) Water
Ice Shards – Reduce cast time to 0.5s, increase projectile speed by 1.5x (agree)
Shatterstone – Make it instant cast, still keep the delayed activation (agree)
After it hit, there remains shards on ground for 1s that bleeds if enemy cross, if you use Water 1 Ice Shards on it, extends duration by 1/2s. (not sure if this is necessary, but its nbd)
Water Trident – I think this one is fine as it is. I don’t think scepter needs more mobility, they just need to give more tools so /D is more viable with it.

4) Earth
Stone Shards – Reduce cast time to 3/4s. Reduce to 2 stacks of 5s bleeding.
Rock Barrier fine as it is
Hurl – fine as it is (it is instant cast, just the rock projectiles are delayed to reduce the insane instant burst old s/d eles had)
Dust Devil – Probably fine as it is, decreased CD would also be ok

These are sensible changes!

Also I like the suggestions by BlackBeard
Don’t mind Erasmus, he is just frustrated because his ideas are not well received in his suggestion threads.

Some things I would add:
- decrease the cast time of Impale (dagger earth 1) a lot
- decrease the cast time of Churning Earth (dagger earth 5)

Some notes:
The channel time of Drake’s Breath and Cone of cold are lower than you think: it is 1.5s at the moment. But there is a cast time before the channelling takes place, this takes 0.7s. The after cast time is 0.6s. So the total animation time is 2.8s, which is quite long indeed. However I find that drake’s breath is strong enough. I would like to see a buff to Cone of Cold though. I think it should freeze targets for 1s each tick or something like that. With this change in mind, a cast time reduction from 0.7s to 0.5s would be nice, as well as a little reduction in the aftercast time.

BlackBeard.2873:

I like most of your changes, but have different opinions on scepter a bit.

Thank BlackBeard!

I changed the Dragon Tooth, Phoenix, Lightning Strike a bit to reflect yours. I don’t think we should change Arc Lightning the way you described though, since it will open it up for weapon stow exploit.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

These are sensible changes!

Thanks!

I also notice that Impale is kind of lacking recently. I need to stay really close to the enemy to use it. I added a suggestion to increase the range to 480.

For Churning Earth, if they implement my change, to allow a “detonate” option, then the current cast time would be fine. Freezing on Cone of Cold would be too OP though haha. We can buff the healing part (to make Ele be able to support better) but I don’t want it to be too OP.

It seems like you want to try and buff up weapon sets in the areas they currently lack. This is fine, but would upset the current balance of eles pretty significantly.

Let’s start with staff. You want to make this weapon into a more aggressive, burst weapon. Staff’s current strong points include large AoE damage, support, control, and zoning. Zoning is probably the most potent of all of these because even if your attacks don’t land, it creates areas where your opponents don’t want to be. This in itself is a form of control without needing to land control skills.

Going down your list:

Fireball: And increase to the projectile speed would be nice, however it’s not very necessary. It’a s long range auto which has AoE to it. The only time it misses is if someone is at max range and uses a mobility skill, or if someone dodges it.

Lava Font: You would give up one of the ele’s strongest area denial skills (and PvE forms of damage) for instant cast. Not a needed change imo. Let it hit like a truck but be avoidable.

Flame Burst: Current flame burst is fine as it is. The effect comes out very fast and applies a hefty chunk of burning.

Chain Lightning: This change would be alright, but as of now the auto already does track quite well, it’s just slow. If you try to hit someone running they can just keep moving away and avoid it.

Lightning Surge: Shorter cast time? Yes. Instant cast? HELL NO. This thing hits like a truck. It needs to be telegraphed. Instant cast blind is meant for scepter, not staff. Also, this attack hits up to 5 enemies. An instant cast AoE blind nuke would be too strong.

Gust: Use it in melee range and it’s fine. This is a GETAWAY FROM ME skill. Not a long range knockback.

Windborne Speed: Fine as it currently is. You seem to be forgetting the part where this skill removes all movement impairing conditions. This is extremely powerful. The swiftness is nice, but this skill should be saved for a condi cleanse.

Static Field: Is amazing as it is. It has no limit to the amount of enemies it can hit. You either do unblockable damage to a large group of enemies and/or strip a stack of stab or stun them. The synergy with Lightning Rod is also very strong. The daze while inside isn’t needed to make this skill strong. The lower cast time would be nice but the idea is this skill needs to be placed with thought, not thrown willy nilly.

Ice Spike: Stop it with these instant cast skills. Do you realize that “instant cast” means you can cast it while under the effect of control abilities? Ice Spike is also the highest single hitting move a staff ele has. It hits harder than a meteor or an eruption, plus it applies a lot of vuln. With how you’re changing things, I can cast a signet of earth or shockwave, attune to water to start the ice spike, attune to fire to apply burning and cover the immob/bleeds with another condi, then attune to air and burst them using Lightning Surge. This is all within 2 seconds. Staff is an AoE control weapon, not a single target burst weapon.

Geyser: Is fine as it is. It comes out fast and heals a lot at base, with a poor scaling, just like you suggested. The full heal from all 3 ticks results in a total heal of 2,424 with a 0.75 healing power scaling. Healing Ripple (Water magic 3 point minor) heals for 1,302 with a 1.0 scaling. You don’t have to stand in one spot for 2 seconds to get this heal and it comes out every 10 seconds rather than 20. If you want to nerf healing from bunker eles, look to nerf Healing Ripple and Evasive Arcana. Doing so would nerf every ele though.

Frozen Ground: Neat interaction.

Eruption: Another powerful zoning tool and hits like a truck while also applying heavy condi pressure. They’ve already buffed this skill quite a bit from its original and it’s fine how it is.

Magnetic Aura: Adding this would be cancer. You have Gust for a melee range knockback. This is to stop long ranged pressure. A reasonable buff would be for it to prevent damage from ranged non-projectile abilities. (Mesmer GS auto attack)

Shockwave: Neat interaction. Projectile speed increase would be nice but may be too strong. Having a single target lockdown ability on a ranged AoE support weapon is very strong. This is why a lot of eles take Signet of Earth right now.

(cont.)

For all scepter auto attacks: Scepter has MASSIVE burst. Probably the highest in the game with no set up. Giving scepter powerful auto attacks would make them overpowered. This was a thing in the past. It was nerfed.

Phoenix: Needs to stay the way it is right now. If landed properly, this skill will destroy the enemy it hits. However to do this, it requires the ele to set up properly for it or to use a Lightning Flash and combo it properly. If you wanted to remove the LF interaction though, you’d need to remove mesmer GS 2 with blink as an interaction as well, as they do fundamentally the same thing (although the ele’s does do more damage.)

Lightning Strike: This along with Electric Discharge (Air magic 3 point minor) is how a scepter ele does the damage they would normally get from auto attacks. The only difference is that it comes in bursts and requires attunement dancing.

Shatterstone: It’s bad. Reworks would be good for it.

Water Trident: I feel like this would be a large change to a skill that doesn’t need to be changed.

Hurl: Hurl is instant cast. Each shot comes out with a delay though. The damage is very high over time. Making it all hit at once would probably be too much.

Dust Devil: This would give scepter eles 2 blinds with a 10 second cooldown.

Flamewall: I’d say if any skill needed a full rework, it would be this.

Fire Shield: 20 seconds may be a bit too strong. This reduces incoming condi duration by 20%, grants you might when struck, and applies burning to enemies. Synergies from traits are also very potent. Fury and swiftness, protection, blind enemies on burn. I’d say 25 seconds at lowest, maybe 30 seconds.

All the other focus skill changes would be nice.

Drake’s Breath: Is fine as it is. It has a 2 1/4s cast time for a very powerful effect.

Fire Grab: This is the hardest single hit an ele can do bar Churning Earth. It really does not need a damage buff.

Lightning Touch: Applies a long lasting weakness. Adding a Daze would make it too strong.

RTL: Nice change, but removes enemy counterplay. Could be abused by targeting an enemy at a long distance then using the skill, getting the half cooldown even without it feasibly hitting anyone.

Vapor Blade: Doubling the damage would make it do more damage than Lightning Whip. 25% more damage would be more realistic. This can be used at range and applies a cover condi. It’s stronger than you think.

Cone of Cold: Nice buff to ally support, but you already heal allies from attuning to water, giving regen for going into water, giving soothing mist for going into water, dodge rolling while in water from Evasive Arcana, clear conditions on allies for giving them regen and/or attuning to water, can can heal allies with Cleansing Wave from Dagger 5.

Frost Aura: Frost Aura is ridiculously powerful. It lasts for 7 seconds, reduces damage by 10% (this stacks with protection,) and chills anyone that hits you. Chill reduces movespeed and skill recharge. Making it a 25s cooldown would mean 20s when traited. If I used runes of Radiance (which some people may be trying come specializations) this would be 9 1/4s seconds of frost aura every 20 seconds. That would be beyond broken.

Earth changes all seem fine.

Just my thoughts an the changes you suggest. Some are nice, but a majority of them would throw elementalists out of whack. As of right now, balancing elementalists is extremely difficult. Indirect buffs can seriously throw them over the top, just the same as indirect nerfs can bury them. Giving a huge direct buff to so many skills would be too much and many heavy handed nerfs would follow very soon afterward.

GoatCheese.2704:

Lava Font: You would give up one of the ele’s strongest area denial skills (and PvE forms of damage) for instant cast. Not a needed change imo. Let it hit like a truck but be avoidable.

I don’t advocate for instant cast Lava Font. It still has the same cast time. What other Ele in this thread and I want is for it to tick as soon as it touch the ground. It is still an area denial skill. People still need to avoid it. The tick damage is even lowered. The current Lava Font is suitable for PvE, but hardly hit in PvP. The change I proposed makes it work equally well for PvE, WvW and PvP. It even opens more possibility for a burst build. Notice that I know it’s a strong skill, so I also added -15% damage and increased cooldown to 8s.

GoatCheese.2704:

Lightning Surge: Shorter cast time? Yes. Instant cast? HELL NO. This thing hits like a truck. It needs to be telegraphed. Instant cast blind is meant for scepter, not staff. Also, this attack hits up to 5 enemies. An instant cast AoE blind nuke would be too strong.

I agree with you that Instant Cast would be too strong. I’ll modify the proposal to shorter cast time instead.

GoatCheese.2704:

Gust: Use it in melee range and it’s fine. This is a GETAWAY FROM ME skill. Not a long range knockback.

The problem with Gust is not the range, it’s the hit box. I proposed to increase the hit box width, not the range. In fact, you’re right that the range currently is a bit long. It should be reduced by 25%.

GoatCheese.2704:

Windborne Speed: Fine as it currently is. You seem to be forgetting the part where this skill removes all movement impairing conditions. This is extremely powerful. The swiftness is nice, but this skill should be saved for a condi cleanse.

Ele need more innate way to escape without having to rely too much on traits. Being able to remove Chill/Immob once every 20s is not really OP in any sense. It has a medium cast time, and does no damage. Warrior movement skills also allow them to escape Immob, but with a much shorter cooldown and deal damage as well. I don’t think it’s too strong at 20s. But if you still think it’s strong, we can agree with 25s?

GoatCheese.2704:

Static Field: Is amazing as it is. It has no limit to the amount of enemies it can hit. You either do unblockable damage to a large group of enemies and/or strip a stack of stab or stun them. The synergy with Lightning Rod is also very strong. The daze while inside isn’t needed to make this skill strong. The lower cast time would be nice but the idea is this skill needs to be placed with thought, not thrown willy nilly.

In HoT, the radius of Static Field will be increased. It is actually much harder to hit. Secondly, I don’t agree that Static Field is that amazing on its own. Yes, if you spend a Grand Master trait on it, it’s amazing. However, without Lightning Rod, it has a 40s cooldown, and deal very low damage. And then can only stun the opponent at most once. Adding a 0.5s daze is actually not OP at all, considering it still has a very long cooldown.

GoatCheese.2704:

Ice Spike: Stop it with these instant cast skills. Do you realize that “instant cast” means you can cast it while under the effect of control abilities? Ice Spike is also the highest single hitting move a staff ele has. It hits harder than a meteor or an eruption, plus it applies a lot of vuln. With how you’re changing things, I can cast a signet of earth or shockwave, attune to water to start the ice spike, attune to fire to apply burning and cover the immob/bleeds with another condi, then attune to air and burst them using Lightning Surge. This is all within 2 seconds. Staff is an AoE control weapon, not a single target burst weapon.

I like your above suggestions, but for this one, you’re getting to hyperbole. First, even with instant cast, it still has the activation delay. It’s very telegraphed, and you can even walk out of it when you see it (even with the instant cast). Next, 5 stacks of vuln is just 5% more damage. I wouldn’t say it’s a lot.

Second, the combo you said is what I want to enable for Ele. We should be able to combo/mix up skills more instead of just relying on a fixed rotation! However, it’s hardly as OP as you said.
Signet of Earth: 3/4s cast + animation
Shockwave: 1s cast + animation
Attune water: instant
Cast ice spike: instant
Wait 1.5s attunement cooldown
Attune fire: instant
Cast flameburst: instant
Ice spike drops: damage!
Wait 1.5s attunement cooldown
Attune air: instant
Lightning Surge: 1s cast (we agree to not make it instant anymore above)

The above burst takes ~ 4s and deals a chunk of damage. However, it has just a bit higher damage than staying in Fire, throw 1 Fireballs, 1 Lava Font, and Flameburst (instant), while it wastes 3 attunements. Even then, a thief can burst for even more during that kitten . It’s fun to play! I’d love to enable this. Nevertheless, it’s hardly as OP as you say.

Also, there is nothing wrong for making Staff being able to burst. As is there is nothing wrong for making Scepter having more sustain damage.

GoatCheese.2704:

Geyser: Is fine as it is. It comes out fast and heals a lot at base, with a poor scaling, just like you suggested. The full heal from all 3 ticks results in a total heal of 2,424 with a 0.75 healing power scaling. Healing Ripple (Water magic 3 point minor) heals for 1,302 with a 1.0 scaling. You don’t have to stand in one spot for 2 seconds to get this heal and it comes out every 10 seconds rather than 20. If you want to nerf healing from bunker eles, look to nerf Healing Ripple and Evasive Arcana. Doing so would nerf every ele though.

It’s actually a strong heal. I don’t have a strong opinion on this. I just don’t want Cleric Staff ele to become so unkillable. It’s not fun to play against. The fewer people complain about immortal Ele, the better our life will be.

Healing from Evasive Arcana’s Cleansing Wave is reduced by 50% in PvP.
Healing Ripple only has 1302 base healing.

GoatCheese.2704:

Frozen Ground: Neat interaction.

Thanks!

GoatCheese.2704:

Eruption: Another powerful zoning tool and hits like a truck while also applying heavy condi pressure. They’ve already buffed this skill quite a bit from its original and it’s fine how it is.

It’s fine in PvE, but it’s not fine with PvP. Unless you’re only talking about standing-on-the-point Conquest mode, it’s extremely unlikely that any opponent will stand on it for 3s for it to burst. Even then, applying 2 stacks with each pulse instead of applying 6 stacks at the end deal the same damage to the above opponent.

GoatCheese.2704:

Magnetic Aura: Adding this would be cancer. You have Gust for a melee range knockback. This is to stop long ranged pressure. A reasonable buff would be for it to prevent damage from ranged non-projectile abilities. (Mesmer GS auto attack)

1s knockback in melee range every 30s is hardly OP. Warrior has a lot more CC’s, with longer duration. Do you think Dagger Earthquake is cancer too? It has more damage, and longer stun, and a blast finisher. Focus Magnetic Wave cures 3 conditions, deal damage, and has a lower cooldown. The additional of knockback makes this skill become more tactical. You have to think about when to use it. It’s not exactly an “oh !@#” button either, but you can time it right and gain an advantage. It’s not spammable with a 30s cooldown.

GoatCheese.2704:

…

I made a lot of changes based on your comments

Mostly like the suggestions you made sunshine, you have great points. I especially like the idea of eruption getting a pulsing cripple effect, it really would help the soft cc of the set plus landing the damage which is near impossible right now when the opponent isn’t forced to stand on a node. It would be better for it still to explode at the end though for the bleeding and damage portion, its one of the few bursts the set has and it just fits in with the name. Lightning surge does need to get a cast time reduction definitely but it cant be like scepters lighting strike. Id say a 1/2 second cast time would be good, and I also think ice spike should mainly have a reduced delayed activation. People should’t be able to just walk out of the field before it drops, especially being that this is the only damaging skill that will come out of water attun. Then the last thing would be that i’d say scepters earth auto should get a projectile speed increase. With how it is now, it misses most shards when your not right in front of a moving target

I’ll admit I may have come off as a bit aggressive, but you there is a very fine line that eles walk when it comes to game balance.

Enabling staff burst and scepter DPS would be AMAZING, I agree. However, if you give a jack-of-all-trades class even MORE tools to work with, and make those tools better, there will be serious balance issues.

Food for thought.

would be enough to just fix skills and make the useless ones less useless. hello shatterstone.

Staff shouldnt have crazy burst but should be able to deal consistent damage over time, which it cant do unless the opponent is constricted to a point. It may seem viable now but no one will use it when stronghold mode comes out because it will be impossible to land its main damage abilities with all the small scale battles in a open battlefield. Scepter’s main fix is that it should have less burst from those insta cast skills and traits which are to hard to counter, but should have more damage from auto attacks because it basically has the worst ones in the game and will have a problem killing any of the tougher oppenents. Scepter users shouldnt be forced to use a trait just to make viable. Balancing these things wouldnt make ele op, it would make something besides d/d eles more viable

Jekkt.6045:

would be enough to just fix skills and make the useless ones less useless. hello shatterstone.

Definitely Shatterstone. If the dev only wants to fix one skill, we must push for it.

GoatCheese.2704:

I’ll admit I may have come off as a bit aggressive, but you there is a very fine line that eles walk when it comes to game balance.

Enabling staff burst and scepter DPS would be AMAZING, I agree. However, if you give a jack-of-all-trades class even MORE tools to work with, and make those tools better, there will be serious balance issues.

Food for thought.

With better weapon skills, ANet can start reducing our reliance on traits.

I rather have more active style weapon skills than passive increase in damage/heal, or random proc. It makes Ele fun to play, and is also fun to play against.

Sunshine.5014:

1) Fire
Staff lack burst.

Why does it need it? It’s probably because the rest of the game can hit damage as easily as selecting a target and dropping an angry cat onto the keyboard, no? So you’re just going to lower the bar for every one else then. Sounds like anet to me. Besides, if you’ve never dealt burst damage with a staff or think that it’s impossible, you have no idea what you are actually doing.

Sunshine.5014:

Fireball*
Increase projectile speed by 1.5x

• Lava Font
  Make it ticks as soon as it’s placed on the ground. Reduce damage by 15%. Increase cooldown to 8s.
• Flame Burst
  Make it instant cast

Make it go faster.

• Burning Retreat fine as it is

It’s already instant; we can’t actually make it go faster, so it’s fine.

• Chain Lightning
  Increase projectile speed by 2×. Reduce cast time to 1/2s. Reduce damage by 25%.

Make it go faster.

• Lightning Surge
  There is no reason why this skill has a 1.5s cast time. Reduce cast time to 0.5s.

Zerker lightning surge can strike from 1200 range for 2-4k in PvP (no/low might). But, that’s fine, make it go faster.

• Gust
  Increase cone shape width to 240. Increase projectile speed by 1.5x

MAKE IT GO FASTER. It’s not even a cone: it’s a projectile. That said, it is very narrow. If you want to just be good, you’ll use it as a melee attack or on someone in the midst of a long animation (oh, wait, the only thing like that is a stomp).

• Windborne Speed
  Reduce swiftness duration from 10s to 7s. Reduce cooldown from 30s to 20s. This allows the skill to be used more often.

At least this one is debatable, but only because it’s a non-damage skill.

• Static Field
  Reduce cast time to 1/2s. Still stun the enemies who cross it. Daze the enemies inside for 0.5s

I don’t like aiming or timing my abilities either.

• Water Blast
  Increase projectile speed by 1.5x
• Ice Spike
  Make it instant cast, however, it still has 2s delayed activation (instant cast to ground, and it drops down hit the ground 2s later). Increase cooldown to 10s.

Make it go faster. Cooldowns are the ideal way to balance everything.

• Geyser
  Reduce cast time to 1/2s. Increase base healing by 15%. Reduce healing scale with healing power by 25%.

Make it go faster. Your point about healing power is interesting, but it’s hilarious that you would effectively remove healing power’s effect at all from this skill. Now that’s anet-level: buff it or remove it from the game.

• Frozen Ground
  Hitting a Frozen Ground with Ice Spike increases the Frozen Ground duration by 1s

Cute.

• Stoning
  Increase projectile speed by 1.5x

Gotta go fast.

• Eruption
  Reduce cast time to 1/2s. Each pulse gives 2 stacks of bleeding and cripples, instead of 6 stacks of bleeding at the end.

Can’t wait around for effects or deny area. Gotta just get effects now. Also add more effects. Can’t have people moving quickly on the battlefield (they’ll just teleport anyway so it doesn’t matter).

• Magnetic Aura
  Add knock back enemies in melee range (180 radius) for 1s.

Given its base cooldown, it’s cute (also, again, because it’s fundamentally a non-damaging, situational skill), but it’s still ultimately just another free buff that you’re giving a perfectly (borderline overpowered) fine skill.

• Unsteady Ground fine as it is

It activates so quickly already. Why not just “Increase duration by 2 s” when you say “use an immobilize skill in order to buff a ward wall which requires that enemies WALK OVER IT in order to trigger its effects?”

• Shockwave
  Increase projectile speed by 1.5×. If it hits an Unsteady Ground, increase the duration of Unsteady Ground by 2s.

FASTER.

You’re right, you are changing some things, but functionally it’s not much. You’re mainly just making it easier to hit damage. You have to understand that as you make damage easier to hit, players will want to be more durable. Since anet never increased HP pools or gear stat levels (to any considerable degree), they just kept adding more and more invulnerability periods and passive healing to various skills. Instead of players dodging or tracking opponents based on gamesense, they just press an instant button or let a passive trigger carry them.

Staff’s damage potential is fine. The rest of the game is out of whack.

Yea but its alot harder trying to balance the whole game out than to bring one weapon set up to par with everything else. I would rather them make staff skills easier to hit and nerf the damage each one does a bit so that half the skills aren’t being wasted in anything besides defending a node. That is basically what they are doing with the bomb kit for engineers, i don’t see what would be so wrong doing that with staff ele