Guild Wars 2

I am the 1% of eles who use d/f for burst builds and s/f for condi builds. So i love the focus. Dont do anything to it, lol , i have hundreds of hours played with the focus, and while a lot of eles may have a little hate for it, i wouldnt know why. Its a really great set of skills. If eles were to just pick the focus up instead of asking why is focus so underpowered, then, they would realize where the focus’s niche lies. If the focus gets a buff, BELIEVE me, i WOULD be happy! but the focus would be so overpowered if it got ANY sort of buff!!! Its perfectly balanced right now, its just a game of whos gonna turn in their test first on the finals. (an analogy ofc.)

If only 1% of players use a weapon, dont you think that they might be a problem with that weapon?

Remember guild wars 2 is a global game, this isn’t the United states where the 99% doesn’t matter.

Focus is an extremely underrated weapon. People don’t use it because they’re too blinded with the DPS bandwagon. Focus is a control weapon, and it’s amazing at what it does. My only real complain about it is flamewall which is pretty lame, but all the other skills are way superior to dagger offhand

I like focus too (D/F especially…S/F feels the weakest and slowest of the ele weps). If I had to pick one skill to get buffed/altered though it would be the fire shield. It is really weak and has long cooldown. The flame wall is meh too but at least the wall duration/cooldown is not too bad. Besides that, I really don’t understand why people keep complaining about comet. I think comet is great, and it is also the elementalist’s fastest recharging interrupt ability. Yea freezing gust is underwhelming, but it is a ranged chill…maybe the chill duration could be boosted a sec or 2, or have some additional effect.

I also enjoy the focus, I use s/f for dps, bursts and zoning in wvw. I actually like it better than d/d or staff. But it DOES need work, maybe a change to both water skills and air 5 to add an aoe effect around the target, or reduce the cooldown. Add retaliation, confusion or torment to the fire shield only given by focus… and fire 4, well hmm. Now if they added a fire trait that burnt off condis while standing in your own firefields or something, that would be cool

I also play D/F and love it. I have had great success with it in tpvp. Like many, I think the fire skills are a bit lacking. The flamewall should be changed to something more useful. The fire aura definitly needs to have a reason for people not to hit you. Most of the time I use it for speed and spend my time trying not to get hit, so the might stacks are rarely seen from it.
As for water, I dont mind them at all. Usually use #4 then #5 and comit will hit most of the time. I would like to see a ice field if say #4 hits. The only problem with comit is when detarget or the enemy stealths it will still fire in a random spot.
Air abilties are good. #5 needs to be looked at with it still firing without a target or may be make it hit whatever is in front of you instead of missing everything. Wish #4 blocked more things like channeled lightning or gave a lightning field perhaps.
Love earth abilities may be cooldown reduction.
Anyway d/f still has some great damage and just needs some minor tweaks.

I use d/f as well and found it to be rather good. I’m also looking into s/f more now though to use it a a ranged burster ^^ Focus mixes with GC builds fairly well despite being a defensive weapon thanks to it’s snares and stuns. Plus that invulnerability means more when two hits kills you :p S/D can also make an interesting semi glass with about 2.4k armor on a signet build, but I haven’t actually tried using it though.

silvermember.8941:

If only 1% of players use a weapon, dont you think that they might be a problem with that weapon?

Not at all, it only means the other 99% of eles don’t know how to play with it as great as that single 1% of eles do. Orignally, it was the same case for s/d way before it was even mentioned as a burst build wep set. Most eles used to run d/d bunker/healer build(still are) and I was one of the few eles busting down those same type of eles with the so believed “unreliable” s/d wep set.

silvermember.8941:

If only 1% of players use a weapon, dont you think that they might be a problem with that weapon?

Remember guild wars 2 is a global game, this isn’t the United states where the 99% doesn’t matter.

Or maybe they just don’t know how good it is yet…?

I only want Gale cd to be reduced to 40 seconds from 50, then I’ll seriously be happy.

^ I’d be happy enough with flame wall working again :p

LightningBlaze.4913:

silvermember.8941:

If only 1% of players use a weapon, dont you think that they might be a problem with that weapon?

Not at all, it only means the other 99% of eles don’t know how to play with it as great as that single 1% of eles do. Orignally, it was the same case for s/d way before it was even mentioned as a burst build wep set. Most eles used to run d/d bunker/healer build(still are) and I was one of the few eles busting down those same type of eles with the so believed “unreliable” s/d wep set.

But here is the thing the S/d relied entirely on one attunement b4buff. The fire and water line were/are horrible. The only decent thing was the lightening attunement. The focus feels like a very situational set. Except in PvE dungeons, any other scenario that involves the focus puts you at a disadvantage in a S/F set. Most of the advantages of it come with long CD with the disadvantage of losing a lot of damage potential, which unfortunately the game still favors.

Drop that whole 1% silliness. If you think you’re special for using offhand focus, I have a newsflash for you Walter Cronkite, you’re not. Plenty of eles have been using focus for months and that’s the way it is. Does it need improvements? I think so.

Burst, condi, whatever; focus has quite a few useful skills, mainly the air and earth ones.

Earth – Best of OH Focus
Obsidian Flesh – perfect the way it is. Pseudo godmode
Magnetic Wave – also fine the way it is.

Air
Swirling Winds – large aoe projectile destroyer, it was so awesome catching 5 enemy treb shots with 1 swirl, but i can see how that’s a bit overpowered.
Maybe make a small light field in the eye of the swirl.
Gale – decent for single target bursting, but the cool down is way too long, try to compare it to Updraft and you’ll see there is no comparison. Needs a rework, maybe just a numbers shuffle (ala range/cooldown).

Water
Freezing Gust – rather weak soft CC, dismal range, single target. Looks cool on large PvE bosses. This skill needs to be 5s chill or 3s chill with some Torment stacks. Torment if cast on dazed target, idk, needs improvement.
Comet – Not very good imo. Bugged too because it shows me a red aoe ring when i cast it, not sure what that’s all about. I’d really like this skill to be an instant cast ground targeted skill so that you could use it while channeling other things (like glyphs), of course it would need some sort of delay b4 damage(ala Shatterstone/Dragon’s Tooth).

Fire – Worst of OH Focus
Flamewall – totally laughable skill, fire field and that’s about it. Almost a Napalm cookie cutter skill, way to similar. Though i believe Napalm may be a projectile, not that it matters much.
Fire Shield – joke skill on a 40s cooldown. I mean come on, it’s not even an aura! It’s a shield that doesn’t do any shielding! Aegis would be counterproductive because the apparent goal of this “shield” is to get attacked and gain might/burn enemies, but if you let that happen you die shortly after it ends.

Solution #1 for Fire = Combine these two skills. Let Flamewall cast Fire Shield on up to five allies when they pass through! Then there’s a whole new weapon skill to create and balance!

Solution #2 for Fire = Let Flamewall cast retaliation on allies that pass through. Then for Fire shield… hmmm.. so lame… idk I guess 33% reduction damage or um Aegis/Protection/Retaliation when it ends?? Swap the abysmal Might stacking portion for Retaliation. Not really sure how to make this skill decent.

Recap and End

I’ve played with focus for a long time. It’s at an ok spot right now between air and earth but when you compare it to dagger it will always come out the lesser offhand. Unlike other classes foci, the ele’s has no trait that corresponds, I’m interested to see if that will ever be changed.

Maybe these ideas will be seen and considered, plz don’t leave the focus alone.

Cheers to all you focused elementalists!

Vic Viper.1986:

Drop that whole 1% silliness. If you think you’re special for using offhand focus, I have a newsflash for you Walter Cronkite, you’re not. Plenty of eles have been using focus for months and that’s the way it is. Does it need improvements? I think so.

Burst, condi, whatever; focus has quite a few useful skills, mainly the air and earth ones.

Earth – Best of OH Focus
Obsidian Flesh – perfect the way it is. Pseudo godmode
Magnetic Wave – also fine the way it is.

Air
Swirling Winds – large aoe projectile destroyer, it was so awesome catching 5 enemy treb shots with 1 swirl, but i can see how that’s a bit overpowered.
Maybe make a small light field in the eye of the swirl.
Gale – decent for single target bursting, but the cool down is way too long, try to compare it to Updraft and you’ll see there is no comparison. Needs a rework, maybe just a numbers shuffle (ala range/cooldown).

Water
Freezing Gust – rather weak soft CC, dismal range, single target. Looks cool on large PvE bosses. This skill needs to be 5s chill or 3s chill with some Torment stacks. Torment if cast on dazed target, idk, needs improvement.
Comet – Not very good imo. Bugged too because it shows me a red aoe ring when i cast it, not sure what that’s all about. I’d really like this skill to be an instant cast ground targeted skill so that you could use it while channeling other things (like glyphs), of course it would need some sort of delay b4 damage(ala Shatterstone/Dragon’s Tooth).

Fire – Worst of OH Focus
Flamewall – totally laughable skill, fire field and that’s about it. Almost a Napalm cookie cutter skill, way to similar. Though i believe Napalm may be a projectile, not that it matters much.
Fire Shield – joke skill on a 40s cooldown. I mean come on, it’s not even an aura! It’s a shield that doesn’t do any shielding! Aegis would be counterproductive because the apparent goal of this “shield” is to get attacked and gain might/burn enemies, but if you let that happen you die shortly after it ends.

Solution #1 for Fire = Combine these two skills. Let Flamewall cast Fire Shield on up to five allies when they pass through! Then there’s a whole new weapon skill to create and balance!

Solution #2 for Fire = Let Flamewall cast retaliation on allies that pass through. Then for Fire shield… hmmm.. so lame… idk I guess 33% reduction damage or um Aegis/Protection/Retaliation when it ends?? Swap the abysmal Might stacking portion for Retaliation. Not really sure how to make this skill decent.

Recap and End

I’ve played with focus for a long time. It’s at an ok spot right now between air and earth but when you compare it to dagger it will always come out the lesser offhand. Unlike other classes foci, the ele’s has no trait that corresponds, I’m interested to see if that will ever be changed.

Maybe these ideas will be seen and considered, plz don’t leave the focus alone.

Cheers to all you focused elementalists!

Comet is good. It’s a targeted daze that will hit nearby enemies in a small aoe.

The skills that need work are:
Flame wall – I never use this ability.
Fire aura – It’s not a worthless skill, but compared to other auras it is rather lack luster.
Freezing gust – No damage, ridiculously low chill duration and long cooldown.
Gale – The only aspect in which Gale wins over Updraft is the range. Everything else is notably worse.

Fix these, and focus will be a very popular weapon choice

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Focus is an extremely underrated weapon. People don’t use it because they’re too blinded with the DPS bandwagon. Focus is a control weapon, and it’s amazing at what it does. My only real complain about it is flamewall which is pretty lame, but all the other skills are way superior to dagger offhand

^I agree with this for the most part but i wouldn’t say dagger offhand is inferior to focus. Dagger offhand adds to the “nuke” setup (nicely if I say so myself) while focus fills the defense/control niche. x/f is actually IMO the superior 1v1 weapon. d/f control and damage mitigation is beautiful.

@Razor
You can cast gale without facing target too. Gale is hard to spot already but doing a turnt away gale plus turnt away burning speed > LF on top of enemy no one sees coming ( I just thought of the turnt away gale> turnt away burning speed> lightning flash just now…..gonna have to try this….)

I think the focus might shine in environments where you’re going to get hit hard and it’s OK to be defensive, I imagine competitive environments and dungeons. I think there are some excellent skills (earth line!!).

However, there are several pretty poor skills: gale, freezing gust, flame wall and fire aura- (although the effect isn’t too bad). These particular skills are unjustifiably restricted by possessing both (arguably) weak effects and extremely long cool downs for their functionality. I feel that this is a problem with the focus. I am put off from using it because it has too many poor skills.

Really, my gripe with the focus is that it is pretty awful in general PvE compared with literally everything else. Some points I suppose are:

-Lack of mobility. Could be mitigated by signet of air I suppose, or certain air traits and GoEH, but no movement skills or swiftness otherwise. It is tedious for me to bring.

-Too defensive for general PvE. I personally feel that the best defensive strategy in general PvE is just to kill quickly. Mob damage tends to be low, meaning that the defensive nature of the focus is just overkill. Ultimately, you’re gaining nothing from being defensive against a mob because they’re generally too weak to pose any threat. So I think it’s just inefficient to bring. Plus it feels soooooooooo slow.

-Awful skills. I mentioned that some skills had weak effects. They might be useful in the competitive environments? However, they’re trash in general PvE. Monsters just die too quickly, and even quicker if you take literally anything else, with almost no risk to you.

In this environment, it’s better just to kill quickly. The only reason I’d use the focus skills is just… to feel like I’m doing something a bit different? Honestly though, it’s a waste of a mouse click in my opinion. 99% of the time, you’re better off not taking it, otherwise you’re just burdening yourself with weak skills for general PvE. OH dagger offers much more in my opinion.

Also synergy! I personally feel that the dagger has much better synergy with the scepter. Maybe in the future, we need a new main hand weapon that fits better with the focus perhaps? I can’t speak for dagger/focus, but I have seen some really cool videos of it in WvWvW.

In conclusion, just fix the weak skills and I’ll be happy.

Flamewall is the main reason that tends to keep me from using the focus. As a fire field, it’s not big. Damagewise it is very underpowered, and even if you use a condition build, people can run through it without dodging, and not get the burning condition.

You can put it down hoping to fight on top of it, but even then it does little.

Just adding more burn duration to it wouldn’t do much, as people can still easily run through it.

If the damage was similar to the line of fire with Fiery Rush (FGS), it would be different. Otherwise it would be nice to see it changed into a ground target comet-type skill, or a channeled fire shackles skill, crippling the opponent while doing 3 or 4x burst damage while channeling. That would be neat. Just something useful, really.

It’s most often pointless using this skill, taking the fun out of fire attunement knowing that there is one skill that hinders the flow of your gameplay. And since it is fire attunement, I believe that a damage skill would be fitting, as focus has little to no real damage output (yes, I know that it is a defensive off-hand).

The Game Slayer.7632:

I am the 1% of eles who use d/f for burst builds

i stopped reading after that…

^ I prefer s/f for focus based burst builds.