Guild Wars 2

The Focus is very useful for Swirling Winds and Earth Attunement.
Unfortunately; Gale, Flamewall, Fire Shield, and Freezing Gust make focus not worth it.

Gale should have its cooldown reduced to 35 sec, 50 is too long for what it does.

Flamewall should remove a boon every sec an enemy stands in it, it does too little dmg and is too small to be effective. Boon Removal would give focus more area denial.

Fire Shield should grant Aegis for 10 sec, justifies long CD, circumvents ele’s low base stats by negating dmg, comparable to Virtue of Courage.

Freezing Gust should stun the enemy for 1 sec and create a 160 AoE Ice Field. The chill is not good enough compared to daggers, especially since it is single target.

Comet should have the AoE increased to 200

What else can be changed besides aftercast to make people choose a focus?

Agree on giving some love using focus. Anet wants more diverse builds….well this would be a good start.

Running a condition build as well, so i guess I am even more of a rare breed. A little help in the condition corner would give us elementals even more diverse builds as well. Hey how about giving us that new condition damage instead of thieves !

I currently use the focus in my sPvP build. Mainly for messing with rangers. But yes it needs more love.

Lower the CD of Fire5, Air5 and Earth5 by 10sec.

Boon removal on flame wall for enemies, 3 might stacks for allies, longer duration burning dmg (2-3sec) (great idea, OP).

Improve Fire Aura to reflect melee damage the same way Earth Aura reflects ranged damage. This makes focus great, it also makes 20 points in fire for aura-signet builds great and saves an endangered traitline from extinction (though the trait likely would need an ICD added).

Replace both water skills with Ice Storm and Deep Freeze from the Conjured Frost Bow.

Raven.9603:

Lower the CD of Fire5, Air5 and Earth5 by 10sec.

Boon removal on flame wall for enemies, 3 might stacks for allies, longer duration burning dmg (2-3sec) (great idea, OP).

Improve Fire Aura to reflect melee damage the same way Earth Aura reflects ranged damage. This makes focus great, it also makes 20 points in fire for aura-signet builds great and saves an endangered traitline from extinction (though the trait likely would need an ICD added).

Replace both water skills with Ice Storm and Deep Freeze from the Conjured Frost Bow.

I love all your/OP’s suggestions.
Though I think comet could stay just make it deep freeze if the target is suffering from chill?

Omg you could do an AOE ice field maybe with freezing gust and then hit them with a comet and freeze 2 or 3 people!?

If we can freeze people we can land Dragons Tooth?!

An ice field would be great ^^

When you hit someone with a fire aura on, they gain 3 might stacks for 10 seconds with an internal cooldown of 1 second per attacker.

Or maybe instead of might, fire aura grants retaliation

Or aegis (3 cheers for more boons).

Something like this can even be made into a trait to give the fire tree a little bit of defense and replace the useless trait known as one with fire.

Adastra.9821:

When you hit someone with a fire aura on, they gain 3 might stacks for 10 seconds with an internal cooldown of 1 second per attacker.

Or maybe instead of might, fire aura grants retaliation

Or aegis (3 cheers for more boons).

Something like this can even be made into a trait to give the fire tree a little bit of defense and replace the useless trait known as one with fire.

The idea behind an aura is that people choose not to hit you (because frost aura chill hurts, because being stunned by shocking aura is bad, because doing no damage to a magnetic aura ele while your arrows bounce back and hit you in the face hurts). Note that all those auras are successful without relying on the elementalists choice of stats.

Right now, burning doesnt hurt much. It’s like 400 a tic if youre power spec. Retaliation is about 220-320 a tic. People will still opt to melee you with ret and burning up, because its not much of a bother at all. And the strength of those effects are dependent on the ele’s stats (condi/power).

But if you were reflecting that damage? That would actually be useful. The enemy would either have to give breathing room or switch to a ranged weapon (similar to Magnetic Aura).

Though I’m okay with it already, here are some things that could help focus.

Freezing gust- an 120 radius aoe component like comet or just freeze 5 sec like someone else said.

Comet just needs to strike a bit faster imo since it will miss a running target, although if you chain it with freezing gust it usually hits. That or make it ground target.

Fire shield- How about just making it a bit more punishing? In addition to the fire aura effect, it also gives the user 5sec of retaliation.

Gale-40sec cd

Flamewall- This one I’m uncertain of. Maybe just double the damage and/or burn duration? Or make it a curtain skill and readjust it from there.

Raven.9603:

Adastra.9821:

When you hit someone with a fire aura on, they gain 3 might stacks for 10 seconds with an internal cooldown of 1 second per attacker.

Or maybe instead of might, fire aura grants retaliation

Or aegis (3 cheers for more boons).

Something like this can even be made into a trait to give the fire tree a little bit of defense and replace the useless trait known as one with fire.

The idea behind an aura is that people choose not to hit you (because frost aura chill hurts, because being stunned by shocking aura is bad, because doing no damage to a magnetic aura ele while your arrows bounce back and hit you in the face hurts). Note that all those auras are successful without relying on the elementalists choice of stats.

Right now, burning doesnt hurt much. It’s like 400 a tic if youre power spec. Retaliation is about 220-320 a tic. People will still opt to melee you with ret and burning up, because its not much of a bother at all. And the strength of those effects are dependent on the ele’s stats (condi/power).

But if you were reflecting that damage? That would actually be useful. The enemy would either have to give breathing room or switch to a ranged weapon (similar to Magnetic Aura).

Currently it gives burning + 1 stack of might. Now make it burning + whatever I put up there. Anything more will just be asking for some massive forum complaints.

Focus is meant to be a defensive weapon. It’s the only weapon without a healing skill in water attunement. So give it one.

Comet, while nice, is not one of the mechanics of water attunement; it’s an air attunement effect (CC) in the wrong attunement. So, imo, that slot should be changed to some form of healing skill, which could be as simple as switching the daze out for a Cleansing Wave effect (AoE heal/condition removal around the point of impact, which the elementalist may not necessarily be in the range of).

Gale needs a lower cooldown, or additional effects (1 or more of: damage, blowout, vuln)

Fire shield needs to last longer or provide some additional effect on top of the fire aura, such as retaliation, so it actually has a chance of discouraging people from attacking.

i think fire #5 should be a completely different skill. it’s strange how every profession that can leap into a fire field can get a fire aura, but to have a dedicated version on your skill bar has to have a cooldown of 40s.

it would make more sense to just replace Fire Shield with Cleansing Fire, or have a smoke field that makes projectiles miss (call it Smouldering Ashes or something). anything that gives active defence would be better than a fire aura