Guild Wars 2

Im getting very frustrated how elementalists lack the option to go burst ranged, specially staff. Right now it is very unreliable and even when landing everything Im getting outbursted by mesmes, warriors, thieves, even a necro was able to do it, he blew quickly to my team but the fact that he still made me go from 100 to 0 tells you how bad it is.

DO NOT GIVE ME THE D/D ARGUMENT! Im sick and tired of it, I didnt pick up this class to play a thief without stealth, I wanted a mage class, able to justify their poor health by the amount of damage they could put, right now its taking everything I have and a very specific set of runes, trait, skill order and utility skills to achive getting an opponent to HALF health, all that while tryng to deal with long-casting-and-also-activating-skills-and-a-few-more-that-root-you-in-place-making-you-an-even-easier-target-than-you-already-are.

I have over 700 hours played on ele, main since beta, I know what Im doing, I have tried everything, I have even given positive feedback, and all I get are some minor buf fixes. Please devs, HIRE MORE PEOLE, only 2 in charge of balance result in this! I dont care how beast ele staff is at ravaging enemy walls on sieges at WvW, the fact that thats the only moment they actually shine makes this NOT justificable. Im doing twice, TWICE the damage i do with my mesmer and thief with barely any gear nor knowledge of them than my ele which I will dare to say im playing to 85-90% MAXIMUN POSSIBLE POTENTIAL!

This many people cant be wrong, it is a fact, ele staff are an easy kill, they contribute barely anything in 5 tournaments since you have to usually go in pairs or alone, right now they are underwhelming and their CC does not justify their lack of damage.

I dont want a trade, i dont want you to take away CC in order to give damage, i want a straight up buff! Right now we offer nothing in 5-T and our casting times and delayed skill makes us have a bad time on battles constantly moving, leaving us with PvE and and sieges, which guess what, it takes forever to kill a mob, and usually i cannot take more than 2, while my mesmer and thief can do that, more and beyond.

“Dont play the class, move on not your thing”
“Why are you even playing this class? Stop playing it if it is so bad”
No, just NO. Im sorry but YOU WOULD NOT throw away your kid if he suddenly is doing bad at school or gets bullied a lot, you would try to see and do anythign within your power to fix the issue! I like the mage class, I want to play a bender of elements, all I ask is some reliability on our skills and CAPABILITY of burst…..like any other profession.

Yes, im frustrated, Im ranting but it has been near 9 months since release and I have yet to see a good buff to staff ele other than “decreasing activation time from Meteor Shower” (which barely made a difference, still makes you a sitting duck and activation time does not justify it) I mean, even staff guardian can now cast #5 without self rooting and needlessly sacrificing himself.

Until this happens you will keep seeing D/D (mages in melee and dagger….?!), either give us weapon swap or give us a good element to shake off all those melee classes which take little to no effort to get to us and stick to us for the 4 secs that we last.

[/rant, for now]

I agree. There is nothing more I can even say after this. Its been very hard, and ive been turning my head upside down trying to find any build that is good damage for the staff. I have tried everything, I even crunched numbers, used formulas, sat at practice dummies. Staff just cant cut it for damage in PVP and PvE. It is sad because I am forced to use D/D and than I get annoyed cause I want to use a staff.

I am at a point where I will just play my warrior. At least I can use heavy armor in melee range.

Not entirely sure I agree. I’ve played staff ele since beta, some 1200hours. It used to be top of the game in spvp until they nerfed evasive arcana.
The only 2 skills that root you in place are meteor shower and healing rain, and for good reason.
The only thing i think could be improved is the after-cast delay. A little too long imo

I want solo ranged combat, dagnabbit.

Chaosky.5276:

I want solo ranged combat, dagnabbit.

staff ele is actually pretty good solo in pve.
Step 1: Round up some mobs
Step 2: Drop water 4
Step 3: Drop sandstorm
Step 4: ????
Step 5: Profit!

Quick Mouse.7635:

Not entirely sure I agree. I’ve played staff ele since beta, some 1200hours. It used to be top of the game in spvp until they nerfed evasive arcana.
The only 2 skills that root you in place are meteor shower and healing rain, and for good reason.
The only thing i think could be improved is the after-cast delay. A little too long imo

most of evasive arcana’s benefices are for melee;
fire: a blast (better than nothing)
water: healing (got nerfed, half healing in SpvP now)
air: blind (short AoE, but right now the stronger tbh)
earth: blast similar to D#5 but considerably reduced damage and DoT.

As you can see it is mostly melee and does help when people reach you in melee, but add absolutely nothing to burst.

Let me pu it this way;
Only way you can do a burst, and, in case people dont know what burst exatly mean, let me explain a bit, there seems to be some confusion about it: “Burst; the capability to do a great amount of damage in a short amount of time, usually given little window for reaction and out damaging most ways of healing”. Usually it is accompanied by the caster being extremely squishy (say 13k hp for ele), wich is called a glass cannon.

Now lets analyze our options for RANGED burst:

Auto attacks, hey literaly take 3/4 of a second to cast, have the slowest projectile motion of the game, an effective 1 3/4 to 2 full seconds before one actually lands, you have to be bad, REALLY bad to not dodge one of those, and guess what, outside fire, none of them hurt….at all…not even the crits in lighting… and even with two bounces the damage is ridicously low for such handicaps.
Then are the easily-avoidable, delayed-ground-casted AoE which, the only one you could “relay” on would be fire #2, and it takes a casting time of 3/4 seconds, activation time of another 1/2 second, thats a whole second and more, that even with arcana trait VIII which increases the radius, people can literaly walk out of it, it does no more damage than an autoattack and for the most part you can only get one IF ANYTHING.

For earth…well, i dont think #2 should even be considered part of a burst since 3 seconds explosion AND 3/4 casting, for almost 4 seconds before you see anything happening….and by then you walked out of it….twice….without dodging.
Air #2…casting time, not doing nothing….for a mere attack that does “decent” damage and blinds….still 1 1/2 second casting….. So for ranged e got nothing that could be used at a moments notice, all can be easily avoided, walked out of, or simply ignored. Yes CC is there but….whats the point of CC if you can only use it to run away?

Then he utility, the only redeemable thing about staff is that you can use that arcana projectile to do some damage, that with the lighting you get from switching to air, the chances for lighting with 30% in weapon with a crit and Air runes…..even when all those proc at the same time…..you wont be doing more than 30% to any non-squishy noob in the game (and thats a lot, considering that in order for the Air rune to proc you need to be attacked and has a VERY low chance, and the weapon one is based upon chance as well, more reliable though)

As you can see, for a class that cant pick their cards (weapons, almost anyone else but engi can say “ok, this set for group, this one for those oh SHlT moments, after all, in a five tourny you can go from one to the other in a moment”) we lack variety that were promised by Anet with elementalists. Sure, play D/D in tournament, but that would gut one of the most beautiful classes when it comes to lore/gameplay potential. D/D bunker is the way to go and for that I resent the team that balances the game.

We lack RELIABLE RANGED BURST, period, the CC does not justify the low stats when all you can do with it is RUN AWAY since you cant do anything else for your team but to be a poor man’s guardian when it comes to supporting.

Quick Mouse.7635:

Chaosky.5276:

I want solo ranged combat, dagnabbit.

staff ele is actually pretty good solo in pve.
Step 1: Round up some mobs
Step 2: Drop water 4
Step 3: Drop sandstorm
Step 4: ????
Step 5: Profit!

Solo *PvP* ranged combat.

s/d has no issues with burst and have range.

There ya go.

Lysico.4906:

s/d has no issues with burst and have range.

There ya go.

wrong, ever tried landing a dragons? exactly, you need to root them, but once every 40 seconds is not ok, and even when landing it doesnt do as much for all the sacrifices made. It has absolutely no defense and most of its damage is , guess wht, easy to avoid ground targeted with DELAY and DoT (yep, autoattacks except lighting, which stuns you for a few seconds and does laughable damage)

Let me present to you a good comparison:

A mesmer, one weapon set; GS: does the same as air#1, but higher damage. Has some nice buffs and a pretty sick debuff if you can land it, the #4 is INCREDIBLY strong, does 2-3k EACH hit and usually hits 2-3 times, 4 times if you manage to pin them agasint a wall, then #5 a nice way to take the darn melees off you, reacts quickly and effectively. Thats only ONE weapon set, then you can pick another one fore more damage, or defense (staff) There, one class which is supposed to have less versatility than ele just beat the whole 4 elements of that ele with only GS…..

Lysico.4906:

s/d has no issues with burst and have range.

There ya go.

Lolwut.

Phoenix is so slow that it’ll only hit AFKers at 900 range, Dragon’s Tooth doesn’t hit at all without a 3 second CC or something, Flamestrike is downright terrible no matter how you build, Shatterstone is useless, and the only real damage in the earth attunement is the Stone Shards autoattack, which does pitiful direct damage.

Only concerned about effectiveness at 900 range here.

If you can’t get burst out of your s/d you are doing it wrong. And 900 range is more then enough for all but keep defense (and everyone should have staff anyway).

I am not the only one running it and doing very well wpvp. Just check the first page here. There are posts, videos etc of other players rocking it.

If YOU can’t handle the spec, that is fine. But the tools are there.

Lysico.4906:

If you can’t get burst out of your s/d you are doing it wrong. And 900 range is more then enough for all but keep defense (and everyone should have staff anyway).

I am not the only one running it and doing very well wpvp. Just check the first page here. There are posts, videos etc of other players rocking it.

If YOU can’t handle the spec, that is fine. But the tools are there.

Im not saying it doesnt work, it does, I have gotten my fair amount of kills to some extend ……. in hot-joined… like everyone else that you see playing that weapon set. Face it, the amount of work and risk vs reward is not there. Right now you have to blow the entire weapon set and utilities to get someone low, and even then they will bounce back and kill you for the most part. Im sorry but unless you give me some prove other than “it exists” it remains void. The burden of prove is on you, you have no evidence to back it up nor argument, you will have to use a little more that “just use S/D” or “l2p” to convince me and everyone else who plays eles.

I will even dare to say that you have not read completely most of the answers so far. Please explain a little better your reasoning and/or build.

Lysico.4906:

If you can’t get burst out of your s/d you are doing it wrong. And 900 range is more then enough for all but keep defense (and everyone should have staff anyway).

I am not the only one running it and doing very well wpvp. Just check the first page here. There are posts, videos etc of other players rocking it.

If YOU can’t handle the spec, that is fine. But the tools are there.

I never said that I don’t preform well with it, I said that the scepter does not function properly at its maximum range – scepter/dagger is fairly reliant on the offhand dagger. If I can’t effectively fight my enemy from maximum range, that weapon is not an effective ranged weapon.

Worst problem with scepter is lack of an appropriate 900 range offensive offhand to go with it. Offhand scepter, or pistol, or whatever.

Minion of Vey.4398:

Worst problem with scepter is lack of an appropriate 900 range offensive offhand to go with it. Offhand scepter, or pistol, or whatever.

Eh, I’d really prefer it if the scepter was just better, because I’d a ranged/melee hybrid. Kinda like a Rifle + Greatsword warrior.

Chaosky.5276:

Minion of Vey.4398:

Worst problem with scepter is lack of an appropriate 900 range offensive offhand to go with it. Offhand scepter, or pistol, or whatever.

Eh, I’d really prefer it if the scepter was just better, because I’d a ranged/melee hybrid. Kinda like a Rifle + Greatsword warrior.

Rifle/ Greatsword warrior is I think of as one of the effective examples of weapons swap. It offers two playstyles, two ranges and is effective, even impressive, at both. Heck, warriors even get banners for all the useless speed boosting etc our staff air does.

Our “weapon swap” is like the same weapon twice, but with slightly different flavours and half the abilities of the warrior banners stuck in clumsily. Some of our attunments barely contain any damage dealing powers, like staff air or are so build specific they may as well not be used by a generalist.

Yeah Devs! HIRE MORE PEOLE!!
Seriously though, elementalists are the masters of the elements, I see them as the masters of their given weapons too.
Staff for me is hugely powerful weapon but very situational , mainly used for WvW tower defense/offense, I switch between D/D and Staff alot even in dungeons.

Switch weapons in between combat as well as Attunements in combat or play another class, simple as. Elementalist’s won’t be changed drastically anytime soon.

I think the weapons are just really poorly designed IMO. There is no rational design justification for why 19/20 staff skills are AOE on a class with no weapon swap (and don’t get me started on how crappy and clunky conjures are). At the very least there should be trait(s) that sacrifice AOE capability to gain single target DPS/solo capability… the present state is just stupid.

Then there’s Dragon’s Tooth, a skill that’s designed to miss its target in the general case. That’s like designing a car with a 5L petrol tank… useless for 90% of the purposes for which it was built. Appalling design.

I agree they really have to change ele, this can’t continue like this, please

Chaosky.5276:

Stone Shards autoattack, which does pitiful direct damage.

Glad that you mentioned direct damage, because the bleed easily carries it to 2k total damage. That’s quite a bit for an auto attack.

Simple way they can fix it. reduce all cooldowns, decrease caasting time, remove blasting staff and make the increased range standard range for all the staff’s AoE abilities. Replace blasting staff with some sort of evasive arcana thing thats as powerful as it was in beta, but only works with staff equipped. Staff won’t suck anymore, and it won’t affect non staff builds in any way.

Some stuff that would help staff without causing any problems:

Earth 2: This should have the casting time reduced by a full second.
Earth 4: Unsteady ground should be increased from 2 to 4 seconds of cripple.

Water 5: Allow this to be cast while on the move.

Air 3: Increase the hitbox on this so it can actually hit things. This shares similar problems to fire dagger #5.

IMO, the autoattacks are the Staff’s main problem. Fire has a 1 second activation speed, while Water, Air, and earth have 3/4 second activation speed are are weaker than Fire. Yet, the animation of the attack means they all have a 1 1/4+ second recast speed.

It’s a ridiculous oversight that they have failed to address for 6 months. There is something wrong with the way their development/QA is structured, period.

I think when anet said they wanted some easier builds for eles rather than just the high skill cap builds, they were thinking about upping the autoattack damages.. They do look quite powerful, the numbers don’t match the animation though. Trouble is you can’t really have d/d damage at 1200 range and it being balanced :p

ThiBash.5634:

Chaosky.5276:

Stone Shards autoattack, which does pitiful direct damage.

Glad that you mentioned direct damage, because the bleed easily carries it to 2k total damage. That’s quite a bit for an auto attack.

If you build for condition damage, yes, but that leaves a lot of other skills useless. A mix of power and condition damage is better, but even then condition damage only affects three scepter skills, and without a high critical chance you can’t take a sigil of earth to improve that situation.

Notice how you still need dagger, which….has all skills close to melee, and if you dont use those melee skills, then you are wasting its “potential”.

Truly ranged classes are these; Mesmers (look at the amount of options they have, just look at them, even the GS is ranged, gap closer? #5 and repeat) Ranger (well, duh), even a rifle warrior (the lore-wise in-your-face archetype) is more effective than staff.

Ever played a game with the mage-archetype where they wore staff and were scary as kitten when they were able to unload their stuff?! but on the flip side, one sneeze and they were goners?! Yeah, glass cannons, thats right, effective if they got the first jump, pretty much a slap game, but here is the joke; we are a shooting pea, no damage, no disengage other than use the CC we have to run away like chicken and even when people stand in place, try hitting anyone with fire #5, it is like saying “if i dont kill you of damage, I will do it of laugh”