Guild Wars 2

In my opinion …..

Fire 4 — need much higher direct damage (think about the Pot of Burning Oil in Fotm); bigger area or burn out foes’ buffs are both good too.

Fire 5 …… please remake it. Simply creating a firey aura makes it a haha-power. It can be more aggressive, for example, create a lava spot which provides stability and fire aura per pulse and also damages foes within melee range.

Ice 4 — please remake it. Low damage with 3s chilled and 25s CD? C’mon ….. If Focus is defined to be a defensive weapon, then this skill can be, for example, widely freeze ground. Anyone stands on the icy area suffers chilled per pulse and is unable to move — if he trys to move, he may slip (randomly).

Ice 5 — Look at Meteor Shower (staff fire 5) which has 30s CD and amazingly big area. Please make focus 5 become Comet Rain or something. It doesn’t need to do damages as good as Meteor shower-- just allow ele focus users to continuously interrupt foes’ skills in a wide area.

Air 4 — It is ok. But personally I perfer it can follow caster.

Air 5 — the CD is too long and knock-down is nothing. Personally, I perfer, for example, create some small tornados which go random path. People touched by the tornado will be knocked up and knocked back. Tornado does no damage but people may suffer fall damages.

Earth 4 and 5 are both fine.

I’d like to see air 4 become a lightning field for it’s duration. There are not enough of those in the game.

histerico.6153:

I’d like to see air 4 become a lightning field for it’s duration. There are not enough of those in the game.

It’s actually one of the strongest skills in the game for its recharge. It doesn’t need anything else. The area it affects bigger than an entire cap point and the only thing it won’t neutralize is treb shots/unblockable attacks, which aren’t that common.

Leuca.5732:

Parktou.4263:

I like it the way it is actually, only thing I would want is Focus Water #5 to not have a delay like Dragons tooth, or make it a targetable AoE. Focus can be pretty strong, particularly against ranged.

What significant use do you get out of Fire/Water?

Flamewall works pretty well, most people try to use it in conjunction with the blast finishers to stack might which you CAN do, but I prefer to use it before I switch into earth attunement. Once your in Earth you can use Rock Barrier’s Hurl ability to send 5 physical projectile combo finishers through the fire field, stacking burning for 5 secs or more. I run S/F condition build and I won’t lie and say it isn’t tricky or hard to get everything to line up right but it’s certainly possible. I use Comet in water before switching back to fire and dropping a DT. WHEN I land it, it’s pretty devastating and even though it isn’t a great ability I still use freezing gust, I try to time it when a heal is about to come available or after they burn some big abilities. Fire shiled is nice foe when multiple players are training you and when you do it right you can use it like retaliation/confusion to either hurt them when they attack you or prevent them from attacking you until it ends(5 sec duration). People also seem to glance over the might stacking ability of Fire Shield, if you’re in a group and multiple people target you and you pop it, your going to be rolling in might.

Everything has a use in at least 3 situations, IMO.

LoL

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/S-F-glass-cannon-eles/first#post2838563

" 5-10% more dmg if target is burning"
" they can use signet of air"

Can you guys even start to realize how bad this @MrBig is?

Another go at thoughts.
Fire shield. Gain a fire aura for 5s and heal every second for 5s. Heal: 300 + (0.2x healing power). Cooldown reduced to 35s.
Adds a heal out of water attunement, however really when under fire Fire shield grants you little, the Heal over time will help with that.

Flame wall: 3.5s of burning. Applies 3 seconds of “Elemental Flame” (doesnt stack) if they touch it regardless of whether they dodge, block or invulnerable through. Elemental flame ticks Power damage every second for 4 seconds but each tick can be blocked/evaded/invuln’d.
Makes dodging through it still effective but diminishes it, ideally you want to walk around it.

Arheundel.6451:

LoL

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/S-F-glass-cannon-eles/first#post2838563

" 5-10% more dmg if target is burning"
" they can use signet of air"

Can you guys even start to realize how bad this @MrBig is?

Fairly rude of ya.

I’ll take a whack at this:
Fire:
These feel like they need the most work.
Scrap Flame Wall: and bring back the pre-release skill, Backdraft as our #5 skill and make it ground targeted. For those that don’t want to click the link it pulls enemies into an area and burns them. They could even make the damage component come from the pull but have the burning component come from a fire field like the current flame wall effect so we don’t lose a field, though I’d be willing to sacrifice it but I can’t speak for all. (Engineer had a similar skill on flamethrower that was also scrapped)
Fire Shield: Change to our #4 skill. Reduce the CD and have it grant retaliation as other have suggested or keep the current cooldown and give it protection. It just seems a little off that any class with a reliable leap finisher can get the same exact effect as a bonus, while it costs me a 40 second CD, and our having an extremely limited access to leaps feels weird to justify it when aura’s are kind of an ele class mechanic. The CD just seems too much for what it currently is.

Water:
Freezing Gust: This skill is completely out of line with other ranged skills that chill, having a longer cooldown and while having less effect, and it makes the skill feel unfinished by comparison. Freezing Gust is 25 second CD for 3 seconds of chill compared to
Spinal Shivers 20s CD, more damage damage, chills for longer, and strips boons and deals additional damage for it
Chilblains 20s CD, more damage, longer chill, leaves behind an AoE poison field.
Winter’s Bite More damage + weakness from pet attack. Only a 10 second cooldown.
So Freezing Gust actually feels pretty pathetic by comparison. Either have it provide some additional form of personal or group support, or increase the damage and give it an AoE radius with a target cap (up to x players), and probably a longer chill duration.
Comet: I actually like this skill as it is for the most part.

Air
Swirling Winds: <3 very yes.
Gale: Reduce cooldown maybe to 40s. I get that it’s the only real ‘ranged’ knockdown in the game but 50s feels too steep.

Earth:
I’m actually perfectly fine with the earth skills as they are.

I’m thinking focus should get more sustain. That’s the whole point of elementalist survivability. Have water skills replaced with heals. The rest can focus on cc and defense.

Names copied from Gw1.

Fire:
4 – Flamewall replaced with Bed of Coals: 1 second burning damage coefficient of 0.1 per second like Flamewall, double effect against stationary foes. Circular 8 second duration fire field. Radius of 360. Can reuse the destroyer’s cracked earth animation.

Keeping the damage low but make it larger so it actually hits things. The conditional effect would reward comboing.

5 – Fire Shield replaced with Incendiary Bonds: Throw chains of fire at nearby foes. After 3 seconds, struck foes are inflicted with 3 seconds of immobilize and burning. Damage coefficient of 0.5 on hit and on end effect. Can reuse Lava Chain’s animations.

QoL CC to allow you to combo without Gale being the ONLY possible way of landing Dragon’s Tooth without having to resort to Signet of Earth and for use as an escape tool.

Water:
4 – Freezing Gust renamed to Winters Embrace, added functionality: now also inflicts 3 stacks of Torment for 10 seconds.

Adds abit of damage to make it feel more powerful and be more synergistic with Comet, that only dazes and not stuns and interact with Bed of Coals to create a do I stop or do I run situation.

Air:
4 – Swirling Winds – added functionality: now also causes knock-back on cast.

As much as I love swirling winds, it’s totally useless since rangers could simply swap to sword and mash your face so it needs abit more than purely projectile absorption.

5 – Gale – reverted the knock-down duration to 3 seconds.

Or they could standardize it with updraft an lower it’s CD to 40s, but the original 3 seconds knock-down was what made Gale distinct. With other proffessions having their stuns buffed to 3 sec, Warrior’s Skull Crack and Mesmer’s Sig of Domination, I don’t see why ele wasn’t treated with as much love.

Parktou.4263:

Flamewall works pretty well, most people try to use it in conjunction with the blast finishers to stack might which you CAN do, but I prefer to use it before I switch into earth attunement. Once your in Earth you can use Rock Barrier’s Hurl ability to send 5 physical projectile combo finishers through the fire field, stacking burning for 5 secs or more. I run S/F condition build and I won’t lie and say it isn’t tricky or hard to get everything to line up right but it’s certainly possible

Ring of Fire can be used for the same purpose, and it has superior damage+only requires somebody passing over it once to apply 5 seconds of burning. It’s also a much bigger field, making it substantially easier for you to get both its offensive and team-utility effects.

The fact that you’re admitting that it’s hard just to get things lined up to use a combo that would otherwise be intuitive for your set says something’s up.

I use Comet in water before switching back to fire and dropping a DT. WHEN I land it, it’s pretty devastating and even though it isn’t a great ability I still use freezing gust, I try to time it when a heal is about to come available or after they burn some big abilities.

Comet doesn’t actually help DT to land unless they’re immobilized and you’re trying to daze their condition removal, which is a pretty rare occurrence and even more unlikely if you’re running a condition build, since it’d be more effective just to land two auto attacks in Fire. However, we should address why Comet falls short in general. It has a really small AoE for an effect that’s really only useful if you get lucky. It takes a marginal amount of skill to know when a heal is coming up, but your timing cannot go astray at all because of Comet’s delay. Comet also lacks the ability to interrupt key mobility skills because of said delay, further constraining its possible uses when it should have more. Its delay+foe-targeted nature also means that they must be locked in Flame Wall for a significant amount of time for you to get the full synergy that would be suggested.

You’re admitting Freezing Gust isn’t great so I don’t need to elaborate on that.

Fire shiled is nice foe when multiple players are training you and when you do it right you can use it like retaliation/confusion to either hurt them when they attack you or prevent them from attacking you until it ends(5 sec duration). People also seem to glance over the might stacking ability of Fire Shield, if you’re in a group and multiple people target you and you pop it, your going to be rolling in might.

Everything has a use in at least 3 situations, IMO.

Comparing Fire Shield to retaliation is almost comical because its effect has an internal cd and doesn’t directly scale with any stat but condition damage, which is extremely unreliable on an ele. People aren’t glancing over the might Fire Shield offers; the trade-off to get hit that many times when you are in the lowest armor/max health bracket just isn’t worth it. Its internal CD, while necessary to balance the might stacks, again makes this an insignificant skill to punish your foe with because they can get in more quick hits than you can deal back out with might-boosted damage. You are only going to gain significant might if you are consistently hit throughout the entire duration, which is not a feasible situation on an elementalist for aforementioned reasons.

zencow.3651:

Names copied from Gw1.

Fire:
4 – Flamewall replaced with Bed of Coals: 1 second burning damage coefficient of 0.1 per second like Flamewall, double effect against stationary foes. Circular 8 second duration fire field. Radius of 360. Can reuse the destroyer’s cracked earth animation.

Keeping the damage low but make it larger so it actually hits things. The conditional effect would reward comboing.

5 – Fire Shield replaced with Incendiary Bonds: Throw chains of fire at nearby foes. After 3 seconds, struck foes are inflicted with 3 seconds of immobilize and burning. Damage coefficient of 0.5 on hit and on end effect. Can reuse Lava Chain’s animations.

QoL CC to allow you to combo without Gale being the ONLY possible way of landing Dragon’s Tooth without having to resort to Signet of Earth and for use as an escape tool.

Water:
4 – Freezing Gust renamed to Winters Embrace, added functionality: now also inflicts 3 stacks of Torment for 10 seconds.

Adds abit of damage to make it feel more powerful and be more synergistic with Comet, that only dazes and not stuns and interact with Bed of Coals to create a do I stop or do I run situation.

Air:
4 – Swirling Winds – added functionality: now also causes knock-back on cast.

As much as I love swirling winds, it’s totally useless since rangers could simply swap to sword and mash your face so it needs abit more than purely projectile absorption.

5 – Gale – reverted the knock-down duration to 3 seconds.

Or they could standardize it with updraft an lower it’s CD to 40s, but the original 3 seconds knock-down was what made Gale distinct. With other proffessions having their stuns buffed to 3 sec, Warrior’s Skull Crack and Mesmer’s Sig of Domination, I don’t see why ele wasn’t treated with as much love.

As a GW1 veteran I love, love, love your Fire Magic references, but I think it’d be more likely for them to alter functions of existing skills rather than creating entirely new ones, especially with Fire Shield due to your change removing our ability to have an aura from every element on a weapon. It’s a thematic discrepancy I doubt Anet would allow to happen.

I also like your change to Swirling Winds as a way to give Focus some CC lock (though it would probably be OP for point control) but I dislike putting all our significant CC in one element; it makes it rather predictable. I also don’t want to see them up the cast time to telegraph a knockback when I’m using it primarily for its duration function, which I want immediately. You could also solve the problem it poses as a purely ranged-defense skill by buffing Shield of Fire to return damage upon attacking, or making Flame Wall do significant damage for crossing it, which would serve the dual purpose of making Fire Attunement useful while rounding out the set’s different ranges of control.

I love focus, I just hate fire 4 & 5.

I think comet, like DT, is dodged too easily. Playing against any competent player they will easily dodge both skills if not stunned or knocked down. Your best combo is gale/DT+Phoenix.

We don’t need mobility or dmg from focus. I love the fact it’s so defensive it lets you be more offensive. The best buff they could give focus would be to reduce all its CDs and change fire 4 & 5 to something like…

- Flame wall—-> Flame Barrier- an impassable wall of fire that knocks back foes who come in contact with it and causes 1.5 secs of burning.

- Fire shield—-> Pyromancers Agony- sets caster a blaze dealing burning dmg to foes within 300 and cures up to 3?conditions. Each condition cured increases burning damage.

Edit- changed flesh to agony.

Hyena.2037:

I’ll take a whack at this:
Fire:
These feel like they need the most work.
Scrap Flame Wall: and bring back the pre-release skill, Backdraft as our #5 skill and make it ground targeted. For those that don’t want to click the link it pulls enemies into an area and burns them.

Ah..So that happened to focus.Thats why Jon said eles had more ccs in beta and were unstoppable .Focus must have been extremely strong weapon for pvp and in their attempt to balance it they just replaced the fire spells with crap and left it there unfinished,
Probably the same that happened with shatterstone and dust devil and unsteady ground which both had effects that were removed and became useless filler skills.
People might have actually been using focus as the top weapon instead of daggers !!!
It all make sense :P

I don’t think we need more area denial ‘lines of warding’ because the devs said staff is going to get one. However I do agree fire is pathetic on focus.

To me the focus feels like it is wanting to be a really strong team support and personal survivability weapon. Skills like swirling winds make that evident.

Flame wall could be such a helpful skill if it granted a buff to allies passing through (like 5 second fury) and/or burns boons off enemies passing through it. Right now there seems no reason to use it.

Also fire shield is terrible because it doesn’t help anyone and it relies on you taking damage. I personally think it could use a change. Perhaps if it became a self combo’ing skill (like Black power) 1second fire field and a ground targeted leap a little like the engi’s jump shot (without the spike damage at the end) just to give the focus one avenue of engage/escape and still retain the aura.

Other than that I think other peoples ideas for adjustments outside of fire attunement are good. I just think SOMETHING has to be done. It has a lot of potential but is let down by some useless skills.

Bumpiiiiiing.char15

Any hit on fire shield should produce an explosion with AoE damage and burning.

good god, focus is amazing on ele with an aura build and d/f wep set. Sure the mobility isn’t spectacular, but it has incredible condi remove and defense…an aura build is awesome, but you have to know how to use it.

Yup, that’s basicaly my build, but you gotta move like crazy with right timing, placement, and combo to inflict average damage. One mistake and you’re done, because of the long CDs, low damage output, lack of synergies, and unability to outrun your opponents, or catch them whenever they flee and come back to fight you while you’re still on CD.

its kinda funny, like some ppl don’t know that auras even exist, or they see it as “oh, people don’t use auras, they must be bad…better keep running d/d and hope for the best” :P I’m entirely obsessed with auras right now. You know that old WoW video where that guy is all like, “You want some healing? oh ill lay down healing totem then ill cast FROST SHOCK!! why dont I self rez, then BAM FROST SHAWCK!!!!” XD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5mD1n4v2JA

That’s what I’m like now with auras and ele haha

Oh I’ve always been obsessed with auras, i just regret they are scattered through every weapon set except scepter wich has none in-built.

CMstorm.8679:

good god, focus is amazing on ele with an aura build and d/f wep set. Sure the mobility isn’t spectacular, but it has incredible condi remove and defense…an aura build is awesome, but you have to know how to use it.

Please tell us how to use it.

but with scepter, u can go s/d with signet of rest. and i think u know where im goin with this 1.

CMstorm.8679:

but with scepter, u can go s/d with signet of rest. and i think u know where im goin with this 1.

Not really, because aura builds are pretty subpar if you’re going for a full signet bar, and your aura uptime is not that great if you aren’t.

with s/d u can go vigorous scepter and zephyrs focus for arc lightning and regaining endurance and keeping up dodges. also works good as dps. I cant remember what exactly I used, but i know i used shaman amulet/jewel and some kind of 0/0/30/20/20
i had really low health, but basically whenever i popped into water, i was back at full hp. It was hard to time rotations right, but when I got it down, it was pretty solid. I relied on FGS for desperate dps, because I had lots and lots of nasty condi dmg and duration.

if running aura build, then u gotta have at least 1 more aura ele in the group to help sustain boons and aura rotations. arcane resurrection is pretty nifty with this

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAodhEmibuR2gjDAkHvcSJBFKgwQBIiA-ToAg2CvI2RtjbHzOyds7M+YyA this is my first aura-support builds, but turns out that Fire’s embrace doesn’t really help the build, besides might stacking …

Bump.

Fire needs love. Wall is lackluster, shield is lame overall unless auramancer, and cd is insane for such a mediocre skill.

Water could use a bump. It’s ok, but when compared to dagger it just doesn’t look hot. A frost aura and a lowish cd heal/condi remove or a single-target cold and a super-delayed 2-second daze…. Daggermon, I choose you!

Earth = i love. Awesome skills. Lower Cds welcome, but not sure if that would be too much.

Air. Pretty good. Love 4, but also love suggestion of it giving quickness to give focus some mobility. 5 is ok. Necessary if going S/F, but nothing special if D/F.

Leuca.5732:

CMstorm.8679:

but with scepter, u can go s/d with signet of rest. and i think u know where im goin with this 1.

Not really, because aura builds are pretty subpar if you’re going for a full signet bar, and your aura uptime is not that great if you aren’t.

+1

I used to bunker with 20/0/30/10/10 Signet Aura aaaaaaages ago but it’s been useless since they nerfed Boon Duration runes in sPvP which meant you could no longer maintain perma protection, Signet of Resto’s nerf as a by-product of the god D/D eles that destroyed the viability of SoR on every other build and then Fire Shield’s internal cooldown was introduced so it no longer burns enough.

I wouldn’t mind ice comet becoming “Maëlstrom” like in GW1. (Gosh how I hated the ice imps)

Make air 5 never miss, and aoe the knockdown like a stomp.

MyPuppy.8970:

I wouldn’t mind ice comet becoming “Maëlstrom” like in GW1. (Gosh how I hated the ice imps)

that was such an amazing skill. of course it would have to be tweaked a bit, but an AoE area that dazes for 1s every second for 4s or so could really bring up focus

- Give swirling winds Lighting Field and reflect projectile or one of this.
- Change those water and air CC’s into something usefull.
- Fire 4-5 is just useless.

As it doesn’t make any damage, flame wall could at least burn ennemies’ boons. Cleansing flames for the ennemies: Flames of looooove (Take that morron!)

Oh and remove the internal cd on auras, they’re obvious enough to let ennemies chose wether to hit us or not, or cancel their attacks. Or make it so the might gained from being hit scaled with the intensity of the damage received.

Azunai.5974:

I’m thinking focus should get more sustain. That’s the whole point of elementalist survivability. Have water skills replaced with heals. The rest can focus on cc and defense.

^^^ This

Focus needs heals!

I think Focus would be bordering on Op with heals. It has mitigation through CC, invulnerability (that doesn’t lock out skills) and the situational projectile deflection (Then again, the Warrior has similar type of mitigation with mace and hammer and they’ve got that signet heal…. so maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have Freezing Gust become a heal). Using Dagger with Focus, you can keep a very not-so-wary person locked down forever whilst you lightning whip them to death. You can also combo magnetic grasp with comet to get a makeshift stun and that allows you to land Burning speed.

Freezing Gust is pretty cool because of the the ranged chill but I just wish I didn’t have to turn around to activate it. Flamewall is pretty useless in my D/F specc. It just serves to pass the time between attunement swaps.

A burst spec with D/F can actually survive to land the burst if played right.

Focus Fire and Water need some love. No, LOTS of love. Healing in water, moar damage in Fire.

zencow.3651:

5 – Gale – reverted the knock-down duration to 3 seconds.

Or they could standardize it with updraft an lower it’s CD to 40s, but the original 3 seconds knock-down was what made Gale distinct. With other proffessions having their stuns buffed to 3 sec, Warrior’s Skull Crack and Mesmer’s Sig of Domination, I don’t see why ele wasn’t treated with as much love.

Gale’s KD seems to last for 3 seconds even if the tooltip says 2 seconds. I say this because people take a longer time to get up when I use Gale than when I use Hammer 5 on the Warrior or Bull’s Rush.

I agree with Flamewall becoming bed of coals though.

Dirame.8521:

zencow.3651:

5 – Gale – reverted the knock-down duration to 3 seconds.

Or they could standardize it with updraft an lower it’s CD to 40s, but the original 3 seconds knock-down was what made Gale distinct. With other proffessions having their stuns buffed to 3 sec, Warrior’s Skull Crack and Mesmer’s Sig of Domination, I don’t see why ele wasn’t treated with as much love.

Gale’s KD seems to last for 3 seconds even if the tooltip says 2 seconds. I say this because people take a longer time to get up when I use Gale than when I use Hammer 5 on the Warrior or Bull’s Rush.

I agree with Flamewall becoming bed of coals though.

Gale KD duration has been nerfed a few eons back. I’m pretty sure but I’m too lazy to search.

fire shield is hilariously underwhelming
as is flamewall

literally the only thing good about fire shield is that it has no cast time. its effects are meager at best. increase the burn duration to 1.5 and the shield duration to 10 seconds, and then you have an actual skill.

freezing gust is also awful. a whole 3 seconds of single target chill. and no other effects, including damage (more or less), on a lengthy cooldown. wow.

tbh I think focus is super strong even with it’s flaws.

Flamewall’s faster cast time since the last patch and it lasting for so long you that you can take all the time in the world to magnetic wave/arcane wave in it is pretty commendable. And at least fire shield is instant cast in all it’s craptasticness ;D
Focus just feels so strong that I doubt they’d make any changes to it.

I’d rather they make dagger offhand more usable first, fire grab is weak with dagger main-hand since lightning whip is stronger. RtL was one of dagger offhand’s major redeeming features but with it’s nerf, focus is so much better in so much better in ‘making a stand’ against your foes vs the offensive/run-away capability of dagger offhand that is so minimal.

reikken.4961:

fire shield is hilariously underwhelming
as is flamewall

literally the only thing good about fire shield is that it has no cast time. its effects are meager at best. increase the burn duration to 1.5 and the shield duration to 10 seconds, and then you have an actual skill.

freezing gust is also awful. a whole 3 seconds of single target chill. and no other effects, including damage (more or less), on a lengthy cooldown. wow.

Fire shield is good in semi-large pve mobs. u get tons of might stacks real fast, though the burning damage may not be as much, but the might is nice.
Ele’s can have 6 fire shield activations if you really want to (though i seriously doubt any1 will ever spend the traits for that) But, you have fire shield from focus(5sec) gain a 3sec fire shield from activating a signet(4 signets + signet mastery) and superior rune of the fire (5sec fire shield@80%hp) you could almost have a perma fire shield up.

Though I understand what you’re saying about fire shield. It should deal more damage and last a bit longer, but if fireshield did last for 10 seconds, you’d see ele’s running around with 25might 24/7

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Dirame.8521:

zencow.3651:

5 – Gale – reverted the knock-down duration to 3 seconds.

Or they could standardize it with updraft an lower it’s CD to 40s, but the original 3 seconds knock-down was what made Gale distinct. With other proffessions having their stuns buffed to 3 sec, Warrior’s Skull Crack and Mesmer’s Sig of Domination, I don’t see why ele wasn’t treated with as much love.

Gale’s KD seems to last for 3 seconds even if the tooltip says 2 seconds. I say this because people take a longer time to get up when I use Gale than when I use Hammer 5 on the Warrior or Bull’s Rush.

I agree with Flamewall becoming bed of coals though.

Gale KD duration has been nerfed a few eons back. I’m pretty sure but I’m too lazy to search.

You go test it, take a Warrior, take a hammer, use Hammer 5, on knocking the target down, count till the animation for getting up starts then do the same for an Ele with Gale.

CMstorm.8679:

reikken.4961:

fire shield is hilariously underwhelming
as is flamewall

literally the only thing good about fire shield is that it has no cast time. its effects are meager at best. increase the burn duration to 1.5 and the shield duration to 10 seconds, and then you have an actual skill.

freezing gust is also awful. a whole 3 seconds of single target chill. and no other effects, including damage (more or less), on a lengthy cooldown. wow.

Fire shield is good in semi-large pve mobs. u get tons of might stacks real fast, though the burning damage may not be as much, but the might is nice.
Ele’s can have 6 fire shield activations if you really want to (though i seriously doubt any1 will ever spend the traits for that) But, you have fire shield from focus(5sec) gain a 3sec fire shield from activating a signet(4 signets + signet mastery) and superior rune of the fire (5sec fire shield@80%hp) you could almost have a perma fire shield up.

Though I understand what you’re saying about fire shield. It should deal more damage and last a bit longer, but if fireshield did last for 10 seconds, you’d see ele’s running around with 25might 24/7

water does seriously need a re-evaluation. as does fire. i can LIVe with air, but its not easy living, as swirling winds is pretty nice but gale is your typical “wtf” skill.

Freezing gust-2 of the following-increase chill to 5 sec, increase base damage to 150, 120 or 180 radius
Gale-One of the following-reduce cd to 40, reduce activation time to 1/4sec, 120 or 180 radius, add base damage of 200
Fireshield-one of the following-reduce cd to 25sec or increase duration to 9 seconds
(I want to avoid altering the effect since it’s gained by multiple sources)

Flamewall- I see two major options
0. Either way, make the cast time 1/4 second
1. Straight buffing- some combination of buffing the burn duration and direct damage
ex. twice the damage and burning duration.
2. Make it a veil skill like the old spectral wall or veil of invisibility. Burns foes who pass through it for 6 seconds
bonus- also, increase the height by 50% or so to make it look cooler :p

edit: Or if your concerned more with showing d/f some love, you could try making freezing gust, comet, and gale have a stronger or an added effect under a certain range.
You could also add a pbaoe element on the activation of fire aura or maybe some of the other skills.

Revised thoughts…
Flamewall ~
Create a wall of flame at the target area that burns foes who pass through it.
Allies who pass through it gain Might.

Might 4 stacks: 10s.
Burning: 4s
Duration: 8 s
Combo Field: Fire
Range: 900

Fire shield
Cooldown reduced to 25s.

Freezing Gust
Chill your foe for a brief time. If they are already chilled they take double damage.
Cooldown reduced to 20s

Damage: 79
Chilled: 3 s
Damage ( chilled): 79 (x2)
Range: 900

Flame wall change increased the support of /Focus in general. 4 stacks of might will be more practical than the near non-existent damage it currently ticked for. Couple that with the burn lasting longer. Fire Shield would be really big when traited, and untraited the extra frequency makes it a bit more relevant.

Freezing gust.
S/F can’t trigger this normally but it will make things like say Signet of Water and Glyph of Elements a bit more attractive. For D/F frozen burst already gives you chill access so this is a straight increase to the effectiveness of D/F.

ensoriki.5789:

Revised thoughts…
Flamewall ~
Create a wall of flame at the target area that burns foes who pass through it.
Allies who pass through it gain Might.

Might 4 stacks: 10s.
Burning: 4s
Duration: 8 s
Combo Field: Fire
Range: 900

Fire shield
Cooldown reduced to 25s.

Freezing Gust
Chill your foe for a brief time. If they are already chilled they take double damage.
Cooldown reduced to 20s

Damage: 79
Chilled: 3 s
Damage ( chilled): 79 (x2)
Range: 900

Flame wall change increased the support of /Focus in general. 4 stacks of might will be more practical than the near non-existent damage it currently ticked for. Couple that with the burn lasting longer. Fire Shield would be really big when traited, and untraited the extra frequency makes it a bit more relevant.

Freezing gust.
S/F can’t trigger this normally but it will make things like say Signet of Water and Glyph of Elements a bit more attractive. For D/F frozen burst already gives you chill access so this is a straight increase to the effectiveness of D/F.

I really like the might idea. swirling winds is incredibly effective in a zerg or large group scenario, this would improve its capability to do so as well. i also think a change to it would be a nice secondary effect, where you cast it and there is the flame wall, and then if you wanted you could press the skill again to activate something around the flamewall area. either would server focus well

So I was looking through some of the removed beta skills and I found this old focus skill. The name refers to a gw1 skill but it was basically acts like the ice storm on glyph of storm, but it would be a great replacement for freezing gust
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Maelstrom

histerico.6153:

So I was looking through some of the removed beta skills and I found this old focus skill. The name refers to a gw1 skill but it was basically acts like the ice storm on glyph of storm, but it would be a great replacement for freezing gust
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Maelstrom

That sounds like an amazing thing to swap in freezing gust in for!!
A-net i hope you guys see this thread! great ideas being tossed around, but the biggest thing we want its simply change for the focus. doesn’t have to be our ideas, they could, but they dont have to. Change. Focus. Please. :’(

Maybe they’ll delete Focus and Replace it with Torch?? Like TA F/U to TA Aetherpath.

Shorter cast time on flamewall, fire aura reworked, freezing gust a slight cd reduction; gale imo is fine. Comet is fine aswell in my opinion, swirling winds cast time should be reduced and have the ability to break your current channel. Any major changes are highly unlikely. This would help smoothen out the gameplay.