Guild Wars 2

EDIT:

The consensus from this thread is that staff air is in need of a buff, and not water.

The suggestion is that air 3 should be given a blast finisher instead of the original suggestion of ice spike in the water line.

Anyone else agree?

I agree, why not? It’s already pretty terrible as it is, only has niche uses.

Umm, with a 4 second delay , it has limited use as a blast finisher.

Lawful.5314:

Umm, with a 4 second delay , it has limited use as a blast finisher.

What? ^ Is this guy being sarcastic or trying to troll?

Op i agree it would be a nice change. The extra heal/might/swiftness would be pretty legit. The cooldown is a little low so i almost see it as an overbuff.

A change that would be a bit more balanced imo is just halfing its cast time.

It has a 4 second recast timer, not casting time. My bad.

The casting time is 1 second.

I’m not saying it would be a bad change as it would add some value to water magic, but I do think that staff elementalist is already pretty overpowered without it

How is a staff ele overpowered? Serious question.

MrSilver.5269:

How is a staff ele overpowered? Serious question.

Excellent CC, excellent damage, excellent survivability, excellent mobility. Something seems off.

dboylolz.3916:

MrSilver.5269:

How is a staff ele overpowered? Serious question.

Excellent CC, excellent damage, excellent survivability, excellent mobility. Something seems off.

Excelent dmg if people decide to sit on lava font and meteor shower. When that is not the case your dmg is very low. Excelent cc? Air has 2 on a long cooldown and gust almost never lands unless you are almost melee range.

I agree with OP. It should be a blast finisher.

dboylolz.3916:

MrSilver.5269:

How is a staff ele overpowered? Serious question.

Excellent CC, excellent damage, excellent survivability, excellent mobility. Something seems off.

You keep the word “excellent” for things that are only “average”. Staff has excellent damage, moderately good CC, but the rest is pretty average. If staff has “excellent mobility” then what would you call a thief or warrior? “Ultra super duper excellent mobility of the extreme excellence”?

Nikaido.3457:

dboylolz.3916:

MrSilver.5269:

How is a staff ele overpowered? Serious question.

Excellent CC, excellent damage, excellent survivability, excellent mobility. Something seems off.

You keep the word “excellent” for things that are only “average”. Staff has excellent damage, moderately good CC, but the rest is pretty average. If staff has “excellent mobility” then what would you call a thief or warrior? “Ultra super duper excellent mobility of the extreme excellence”?

When I mentioned excellent mobility, I include the easily available swiftness. And explain to me if staff eles have moderately good CC, who has excellent CC?

dboylolz.3916:

Nikaido.3457:

dboylolz.3916:

MrSilver.5269:

How is a staff ele overpowered? Serious question.

Excellent CC, excellent damage, excellent survivability, excellent mobility. Something seems off.

You keep the word “excellent” for things that are only “average”. Staff has excellent damage, moderately good CC, but the rest is pretty average. If staff has “excellent mobility” then what would you call a thief or warrior? “Ultra super duper excellent mobility of the extreme excellence”?

When I mentioned excellent mobility, I include the easily available swiftness. And explain to me if staff eles have moderately good CC, who has excellent CC?

Rifle engis, fearmancer, hambow, etc…

Well, staff Ele need some love, but for me water attunement its fine as it is, you can easily blast your water field switching in earth with evasive arcana or start in earth casting eruption and then swap to water. I dont see any problem with fire, water and earth skills, in my opinion the only change we need is in air attunement, something like make air2 nearly istant, because right by now u can only blind random skill

So you consider 2 CC skills on engi vs 4-5 on staff ele excellent? Ok.

dboylolz.3916:

So you consider 2 CC skills on engi vs 4-5 on staff ele excellent? Ok.

best cc in the game:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Slick_Shoes

aoe 2s ranged stun:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Supply_Crate

easiest knockback to land in the game:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Overcharged_Shot

One ok pull:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Magnet

one can also trait for knockback when destroying turrets.

Staff ele has only 3: gust, unsteady ground and static field. All 3 are high cooldown. Gust wont land unless the enemy is almost melee range and the other 2 are ground target. In a lot of cases people can just walk around unsteady ground.

I recommend you reading this in case you don’t know the definition of CC in gw2.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Control_effect

xDudisx.5914:

- snip-

First of all you’re talking to a primary PvE player. dboylolz is a very skilled and knowledgeable player so lose the condescending attitude.

No one expects you to know that, but you should hopefully be aware of the fact that what is deemed as the “best cc in the game” is totally different for both PvE and PvP.

In PvE the all-around best cc skill in the game is this: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deep_Freeze

Scepter water #2 could become a blast finisher to make the skill useful. Staff water #2? Have you used that thing in pvp as zerker staff ele? It crits for 6k. Higher damage than any other staff skill. It could have a slightly decreased delay time though.

I’m not experienced enough with scepter to comment, although I’ve logged about 900 hours played on staff, and a second blast finisher outside of earth (separate from utilities) would be extremely helpful when your rotations are on cooldown.

d/d: 2 blasts + 1 evasive arcana
s/d: 3 + 1 evasive arcana
s/f: 4+ 1 evasive arcana
staff: 1 + evasive arcana

Clearly scepter does not need another blast finisher. Could get some improvement? Yes, but lack of blast finisher is not a problem for scepter.

You know what really needs a blast finisher?

Earthen Blast

Hell, I mean just put a blast in my blast so I can blast while blasting!

Purple Miku.7032:

xDudisx.5914:

- snip-

First of all you’re talking to a primary PvE player. dboylolz is a very skilled and knowledgeable player so lose the condescending attitude.

No one expects you to know that, but you should hopefully be aware of the fact that what is deemed as the “best cc in the game” is totally different for both PvE and PvP.

In PvE the all-around best cc skill in the game is this: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deep_Freeze

What he said is right and by no means condescending. Yes, Engi has the best CC capability in the game with its spammable CD, good landing, either unblockable or devastating damage. Best PvE CC is Deep Freeze but best PvP CC is Slick Shoes (followed by Ring of Warding, imho). And as we already know it, the game is “mostly” balanced around PvP. And in PvP, staff ele is pretty uninteresting and staff play mostly depends on terrain.

An extra blast on water attunement could need a bit of consideration since staff ele bunks pretty well on their own already. On the other hand, that skill does need rework.

P.S. I know Abe is an excellent PvE ele but to be honest, his comment just shows how inexperienced he is in the esportz.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

You know what really needs a blast finisher?

Earthen Blast

Hell, I mean just put a blast in my blast so I can blast while blasting!

Dis

Pwent.2639:

Lawful.5314:

Umm, with a 4 second delay , it has limited use as a blast finisher.

What? ^ Is this guy being sarcastic or trying to troll?

Op i agree it would be a nice change. The extra heal/might/swiftness would be pretty legit. The cooldown is a little low so i almost see it as an overbuff.

A change that would be a bit more balanced imo is just halfing its cast time.

You must be blind or ignorant, as in you want to tell me that the 2s casting time then 1s delay before it drops, doesn’t count?
Total skill time, takes 3-4 seconds, most fields will end before you can cast it in time.

Sarcasm? Totally serious, no point in this skill being a blast finisher and obviously Anet felt the same way.

Eruption also has a long delay time (which is completely different from cast time) and yet it is very easy to blast fields with it.

I think that a blast finisher on a 5.4 seconds real cd (4s cd + 1.4s total animation) is a bit over the top guys. Anet will not take this seriously.

But staff does need a buff in the air attunement.

Those who say that staff is already strong are right in a way: in PvE it is powerful, but let’s put PvE aside when talking about balance; in PvP staff’s strength mainly comes from the same source as D/D’s strength, that is, the traits. Whether our traits are balanced is a question for an other topic, but objectively speaking it is hard to argue against a buff in the air attunement.

On the question of how balanced eles are, haven’t you people noticed something: as an ele you have to pay a lot of attention on dodging relevant enemy attacks, but do you really feel that our opponents are under a strong pressure to dodge any of our attacks? Most of the time our opponents hardly understand what we do. That’s also due to the fact that most ele players don’t know what they are doing But anyway I find that this lack of symmetry is striking.

edit: overprotective censorship

I always dodge updraft/ ride the lightning, burning speed and magnetic grasp. At the same time i feel like my opponents hardly dodge my skills at all. Those that do usually live for a long time and profit.

Purple Miku.7032:

First of all you’re talking to a primary PvE player. dboylolz is a very skilled and knowledgeable player so lose the condescending attitude.

No one expects you to know that, but you should hopefully be aware of the fact that what is deemed as the “best cc in the game” is totally different for both PvE and PvP.

In PvE the all-around best cc skill in the game is this: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deep_Freeze

The game is balanced around esportz so most mentions about pve are pointless. The fact that someone is good in pve doesn’t hold much value because knowledge in pvp is all that matters. And the best pve cc is mostly useless in pvp due to an obvious long animation and slow projectile speed.

Lawful.5314:

Umm, with a 4 second delay , it has limited use as a blast finisher.

Playing along with Ice Spike being a blast finisher, it wont be useless at all. Drop a field underneath once it lands – both the Fire and Ice fields come out instantly to ensure a combo field. The Water field can easliy be slid underneath as well. Also, it’s ground targetable (compared to Dragon’s Tooth) and has a telegraph that allies can coordinate with.

That said, I dont think it should be a blast finisher, it’s on such a low cooldown and can be traited to be more spammable. It will be incredibly broken and adding to the amount of blasts you have on an ele. It’ll be hilariously broken in WvW.

Yep, that’s the way to go Iris

It’s interesting how you did not even mention firegrab! People do not realize how terrible this spell is. Allow me to give you a little breakdown:

Total animation: 1.3s
Coefficient: 1.75 normal | 2.8 on burning target
Real cooldown: 45+1.3=46.3s
Casting mechanic: you have better chances at winning in a casino in Syria while being underage than landing this spell.
Range: 300, but you only have a chance to hit if the target is 150 range away. So the target limit of 5 is just irrelevant.

Comparison: Burning speed

Total animation: 0.9s
Coefficient: 2
Effects: evade (kinda), movement (so it takes accuracy to land the spell), burning.
Subspell: burning speed trail, coeff 0.1, burning, fire field.
Real cooldown: 15+0.9=15.9s
Range: 240 radius 400 range away, yeah you will hit those 5 targets easily.

Do you see where I am getting at? We have a 46.3s cd spell with terrible casting mechanics that deal more damage than a 15.9 cd spell if and only if the target is burning, assuming that the target did not walk into burning speed trail (because then burning speed with its trail could deal more damage than firegrab on burning targets!).

Reward for effort?
Well I guess the feeling of beating the odds can make you feel good, but that’s really not related to combat in any way

Oh by the way, try to compare firegrab to eviscerate, try not to cry, then cry in a corner.

The point of my rant you ask? The ele has a defense system that is too automatic with the synergy of water and arcane traits. But this is required, because our attacks are seriously under-powered. A while back I asked devs to give burning speed an evade factor; they did it. Hopefully my rant will reach the attentive ears of caring devs To give the class room for development you need to nerf the automatic water healing, then make our attacks more relevant and easier to land. I’ll give more details on each of these aspects some other time.

Oh my, fire grab!!! Its only use is almost as a dodge bait or a je-ne-sais-quoi right before leaving fire attunement. Or in my desperate attempt to cleave the rezing people. Just to say how sad this skill is.

Oh but I could go on!

Water auto attack: it’s really beautiful to watch the blades as they slice threw the air hitting nothing.

Churning earth: I deal more DPS by using drake’s breath.

Dragon’s claw: heh, good for people with aegis, but not much more than that.

Ride the lightning: remember that time when we asked devs to make this go on the short cooldown if it hits a target that is dodging/blocking so that it is balanced for combat? That was a long time ago.

Updraft: please, if I get controlled just after I pressed the button, I do not need to have updraft wastefully casted when I finally recover from the cc … !

Flamewall: haha

Fire shield: well at least it’s an instant cast skill! Otherwise I could feel like I wasted precious time if ever my fingers would slip onto that button.

Freezing gust: look, even the cast animation is bugged…. (it deals damage before casting is finished) Maybe it’s time to look at this spell?

Comet: Philae was hard to land on it, but apparently landing a comet is even harder.

All conjured weapons: nope.

Not that you don’t bring up valid points. You do.

…But this thread is about adding a blast component to staff water 2.

I don’t think water attunement needs a buff, also having 2 water fields and a 4sec CD blast finisher in the same attunement would be OP imo… staff have another things to change / buff

MaXi.3642:

I don’t think water attunement needs a buff, also having 2 water fields and a 4sec CD blast finisher in the same attunement would be OP imo… staff have another things to change / buff

If not water 2 how about air 3 then?

Air staff 3 Gust ¼ sec cast 30 sec recast: Push foes backward with a burst of air.

Makes sense for this to be a blast finisher.

Ice spike as a blast would be OP. It already does good damage as a large aoe. It’s worth casting in a lot of situations. Putting another blast on staff would make it too strong (especially with the short CD). Ice spike as a blast would allow you to 3x blast healing rain (you can get eruption to proc inside if you are fast), and 2x blast water 3. Staff is already tanky enough.

The only things that need fixing are:
- Air 2 not being useless
- Air 3 gets a slightly wider cone so it hits a little bit further than melee range (and even then sometimes misses)
- Earth 5 gets faster projectile speed/larger cone so it doesn’t miss a strafing target that is 200 away.

BlackBeard, you are preaching to the ele staff choir my friend!

I completely agree with BlackBeard

I could see it as a blast finisher but would need a cooldown incressed to compensate.

Air 2 not really sure what to do with this, make it a larger ground targeted aoe? or have it work like chain lighting and bounce between people causing blind.

Personal i would rather have Air 3 as a PBAOE would be much more useful

Earth 5 defiantly need a speed up to what it currently is would probably bump up the amount of bleed to 3 or 5 too

I kinda like BlackBeard.2873’s suggestions.

I still don’t think making ice spike a blast finisher is a bad idea either because it’s pretty crappy. Increase the cooldown if you must, just make it worth using.

Cooldown timers for Staff #2 skills:

Lava Font: 6 seconds
Ice Spike: 4 seconds
Lightning Surge: 10 seconds
Eruption: 6 seconds

Can you spot the problem?

BlackBeard.2873:

The only things that need fixing are:
- Air 2 not being useless
- Air 3 gets a slightly wider cone so it hits a little bit further than melee range (and even then sometimes misses)
- Earth 5 gets faster projectile speed/larger cone so it doesn’t miss a strafing target that is 200 away.

Completley agree

Celtus.8456:

Cooldown timers for Staff #2 skills:

Lava Font: 6 seconds
Ice Spike: 4 seconds
Lightning Surge: 10 seconds
Eruption: 6 seconds

Can you spot the problem?

Real cooldowns for staff 2:

Lava Font: 6.4 seconds
Ice Spike: 5.4 seconds
Lightning Surge: 11.7 seconds
Eruption: 7.2 seconds

Blast finisher on water #2 would be OP, will never happen. While it is a weak skill, i think there are other staff skills more worthy of improvement:

• air #2 – slow, ineffectual
• air #3 – never hits
• earth #1 – never hits

scerevisiae.1972:

Blast finisher on water #2 would be OP, will never happen. While it is a weak skill, i think there are other staff skills more worthy of improvement:

• air #2 – slow, ineffectual
• air #3 – never hits
• earth #1 – never hits

So make air 3 a blast finisher. One problem with staff is that our only blast finisher from weapons skills is a delayed targetable aoe. We need a second blast finisher from weapon skills that is insta-cast, or short-cast.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

You know what really needs a blast finisher?

Earthen Blast

Hell, I mean just put a blast in my blast so I can blast while blasting!

Yes, I suggested this over a year ago… It would be one of these amazing simple things that give the class some new life.

With Lava Font on a 6 second CD and Ice Spike on a 4 second CD and the unbuffed boon duration of Might stacks from Area Might sitting at 20 seconds, you would be able to stack some serious might, even with the attunement swap delay between water and fire slowing you down.

Not to mention the buff to our AoE healing potential from having a readily available blast finisher in the same attunment as geyser and healing rain. You would be able to lay down healing rain, blast for AoE healing, lay down geyser after healing rain expires and blast again. Then, hey, kitten it, camp water a few more seconds, lay down frozen ground and blast again to give everyone frost aura.

And it’s not a weak skill. 5 stacks of vulnerability on 5 targets with a 10 second duration from a skill on a 4 second CD makes a difference in a WvW zerg. You can easily blast the melee train for 5 stacks, lay down your combo fields and blast again for another 5 before swapping attunments.

MadRabbit.3179:

With Lava Font on a 6 second CD and Ice Spike on a 4 second CD and the unbuffed boon duration of Might stacks from Area Might sitting at 20 seconds, you would be able to stack some serious might, even with the attunement swap delay between water and fire slowing you down.

Not to mention the buff to our AoE healing potential from having a readily available blast finisher in the same attunment as geyser and healing rain. You would be able to lay down healing rain, blast for AoE healing, lay down geyser after healing rain expires and blast again. Then, hey, kitten it, camp water a few more seconds, lay down frozen ground and blast again to give everyone frost aura.

And it’s not a weak skill. 5 stacks of vulnerability on 5 targets with a 10 second duration from a skill on a 4 second CD makes a difference in a WvW zerg. You can easily blast the melee train for 5 stacks, lay down your combo fields and blast again for another 5 before swapping attunments.

Might is already getting a huge adjustment.

What are your feelings about a blast finisher in air which is clearly in need of an upgrade.

MrSilver.5269:

Might is already getting a huge adjustment.

Are you talking about the huge adjustment that it got a month ago or something else?

Nah, not a blast on that sort of CD. maybe air 3 as a blast was a good suggestion.
Ice Spike could be improved by a small damage increasement, and a delay reduce so you could chain it with air 5, and in exchange increasing cd to ~10s.

Henrik.7560:

Nah, not a blast on that sort of CD. maybe air 3 as a blast was a good suggestion.
Ice Spike could be improved by a small damage increasement, and a delay reduce so you could chain it with air 5, and in exchange increasing cd to ~10s.

This seems like a fair compromise to me.

Agreed. Support.