Guild Wars 2

I’m trying to figure it out why : Fire Grab , require the player to fulfill several conditions in order to land it…and still have a huge CD.
The skill itself is useful only to the most glass cannon build out there , having less than 50% Crit dmg will result in a Fire Grab hitting the enemy for little more than 2K dmg while the user possess over 2.1k Power and the target possess 1.4K toughness or less.

But if the ele uses a glass cannon build, he’ll still have to deal with the short CD defensive skills of the enemy or lucky dodge and all this because of the aoe component?!

I’m sure I’ll get people telling me :" but hey I can crit for 5k dmg most times!"
Well maybe, but other professions can have the same dmg for less crit dmg ,power for like 1/4 of the time you’ll be able to use Fire Grab, on top of this their dmg is way easier to land

My opinion?
Fire grab should have 15s less CD, right now churning earth is easier to land and deal way more damage overall, its base dmg is higher than Fire Grab so that even non glass cannon eles will benefit from its use.

Time to change something maybe?

But hey, I can crit for 5k dmg only with 26 critical damage and 2.8k sore attack!

The problem with elemenetalists these days is that they expect too much.
The problem with fire grab is that if often fails whenever you don’t stand directly to your target.

Please don’t compare other proffession’s burst (probably you meant thief or mesmer with their high damage and short CD), while elementalist brings highest group support along with guardian.

the answer is easy: no love for Ele, that’s all

Lert.6287:

Please don’t compare other proffession’s burst (probably you meant thief or mesmer with their high damage and short CD), while elementalist brings highest group support along with guardian.

Why compare burst to a profession’s ability to group support when specced for it?

@OP

The problem with buffing offensive moves like firegrab, is that is also improves bunker specs dealing more damage. We saw how the last patch was meant to tone down bunkers, but offensive/burst eles were hit harder. The other way works the same: buff burst, but bunkers benefit too.

I’m all for improving offensive ele builds, but to do so without breaking bunker builds… we don’t need another round of Fotm and ele crying.

Edit: I am talking mainly about direct changes to weapon skills/utilities that can be used in any build. However, if traits were changed, only builds that have those traits would be affected without throwing other builds out of balance.

Lert.6287:

But hey, I can crit for 5k dmg only with 26 critical damage and 2.8k sore attack!

The problem with elemenetalists these days is that they expect too much.
The problem with fire grab is that if often fails whenever you don’t stand directly to your target.

Please don’t compare other proffession’s burst (probably you meant thief or mesmer with their high damage and short CD), while elementalist brings highest group support along with guardian.

Maybe using raw number would facilitate your answer , I wonder how people can keep comparing a burst specc with a bunker specc, in my OP I wasn’t talking about bunker specc obviously.

How can somebody say that expecting a 45s Cd skill to hit hard and reliably it’s “too much to ask”, beats me.

By the way to say that a d/d ele bring as much support as a guardian specced for it..it must means you’ve got little to knowledge of the ele profession and simply you must have jumped on the “Ele is OP” bandwagoner few weeks ago..otherwise you’d know that staff is the best support weapon for eles

Absolutely see your concern, Tbh the only build I actually actively use fire grab is one where it involves changing to water atonement half way through the fire grab animation for extra dmg vs vulnerable targets while in water. In those cases I’ve hit near 10k with it on low HP targets.

That’s in pve however, in pvp it’s a waste of space to even attempt to hit someone with it, especially with timing like in pve.

heres what you gotta do:

go to your login screen
Delete character if no empty slots are available
Creat an Engineer character of any race
Max out the said engi and go to WvW
Realize you should be grateful you had such an extremely versatile and powerful class and Delete the engineer.

Fire grab is one of the most powerful ele bursts for off hand dagger along with churning earth, and it’s fine as is.

BLKNovember.5620:

Fire grab is one of the most powerful ele bursts for off hand dagger along with churning earth, and it’s fine as is.

also great with Scepter since #1= instant burn.

Arheundel.6451:

I’m trying to figure it out why : Fire Grab , require the player to fulfill several conditions in order to land it…and still have a huge CD.
The skill itself is useful only to the most glass cannon build out there , having less than 50% Crit dmg will result in a Fire Grab hitting the enemy for little more than 2K dmg while the user possess over 2.1k Power and the target possess 1.4K toughness or less.

But if the ele uses a glass cannon build, he’ll still have to deal with the short CD defensive skills of the enemy or lucky dodge and all this because of the aoe component?!

I’m sure I’ll get people telling me :" but hey I can crit for 5k dmg most times!"
Well maybe, but other professions can have the same dmg for less crit dmg ,power for like 1/4 of the time you’ll be able to use Fire Grab, on top of this their dmg is way easier to land

My opinion?
Fire grab should have 15s less CD, right now churning earth is easier to land and deal way more damage overall, its base dmg is higher than Fire Grab so that even non glass cannon eles will benefit from its use.

Time to change something maybe?

The only issue i have with Fire Grab is that I never seem to hit anything with it. However, this issue might be less with the skill itself and more with just general targeting issues in gw2.

edit; i have the same issue with the dagger air 2 skill, but the difference is that i never use dagger air 2, haha.

Rezzet.3614:

heres what you gotta do:

go to your login screen
Delete character if no empty slots are available
Creat an Engineer character of any race
Max out the said engi and go to WvW
Realize you should be grateful you had such an extremely versatile and powerful class and Delete the engineer.

heres what you gotta do:

go to your login screen
Create an ele of any race
Go sPvP to the 2vs2 servers
Realize you haven’t learned half of what the engy is capable of, condition/burst aoe dmg, uber pressure on top of frequent 2-3k dmg hits, net turrets…now try to land your fire grab against a r50 engy legend of the arena
Now be glad you made an engy and no an ele, you can see what true versatility looks like

BLKNovember.5620:

Fire grab is one of the most powerful ele bursts for off hand dagger along with churning earth, and it’s fine as is.

If fire grab is one of the most powrful burst skills in the game…you’ve never played against high tier phantasm mesmer, D/P thieves, tank burst guardian ( YEAH You read right, tank burst GS guardian), BM ranger, eviscerate warrior or HgH engy….

Arheundel.6451:

BLKNovember.5620:

Fire grab is one of the most powerful ele bursts for off hand dagger along with churning earth, and it’s fine as is.

If fire grab is one of the most powrful burst skills in the game…you’ve never played against high tier phantasm mesmer, D/P thieves, tank burst guardian ( YEAH You read right, tank burst GS guardian), BM ranger, eviscerate warrior or HgH engy….

I didn’t say that.

So I want my Firegrab to be able to do 7-8k damage on targets with 1500 or so toughness when I spec for damage (which means 4-5k normal builds).

OR reduce cooldown to half.

Swim.6830:

So I want my Firegrab to be able to do 7-8k damage on targets with 1500 or so toughness when I spec for damage (which means 4-5k normal builds).

OR reduce cooldown to half.

Ouch, what’s up with that build?

To simply put it, the base dmg of fire grab is far too low if we look at the high CD and conditions required to land the dmg ( burning target, mele range, facing the enemy at 90 degree) then it’s obvious that something is wrong with it.

The risk/reward ratio is way off, the enemy got mroe chances to dodge fire grab than churning earth.

The cone pattern of the skill is far too narrow, I’d say right now the cone open with a 20-30 degree which force you in directly facing the enemy in a straight line, I can understand the whole risk vs reward things..but then why the huge CD? even if I land fire grab ( almost impossible against experienced players) the end result would be little unless the ele goes full glass cannon but even in this case the dmg is forgettable unless you’re facing another pure glass cannon…it’s not like with thieves /mesmers which can hit you for 3k+ regardless of your level of toughness

Increase cone angle and decrease cooldown to beta version. The mere suggestion that this skill is in line with other burst skills is insulting.

kitten skill is kitten skill

massive damage vs. afk players

massive miss vs. anyone who has a functional brain.

dante.4657:

kitten skill is kitten skill

massive damage vs. afk players

massive miss vs. anyone who has a functional brain.

Not really. It can miss (Easily) even on mobs and they don’t have a brain :P

simply said, I expect Fire Grab (with burning running on target) to completely obliterate my foe, considering its insane high CD and how difficult is to build a decent amount of might, burning ecc.
Now it’s poor to say the least.

I tend to forget I even have this skill available when fighting any competent opponent. Maybe use it to force them to burn a dodge, but then, most will realize you don’t even need to do that, just keep circle strafing.

I barely play sPvP. It feels like going to the city swimming pool when the beach is a few blocks down the street (the town I grew up in had this feature, lol), small, safe, sterile…. Been hanging around the spectator mode a bit the last couple days, and I can see how the 0-10-0-30-30 cantrip build can be considered OP. There just isn’t enough crit damage available in there with the amulets to make a burst ele capable of killing a bunker (anything) unless they facetank everything, which makes fire grab all the crappier. I tried to approximate my WvW build in there, which can hit CEs of over 10k (on geared 80s, you naysayers), and the biggest crit I saw was not even quite 6k. Balancing around this game mode seems odd to me (looking at the numbers in the PvP browser it looks like there are about as many total sPvP players as there are WvW players in one single EB map, and the PvP browser is across all servers, right?) when it seems to have by far the smallest population of any game mode.

Not sure what I’m ranting about any more….. oh yeah FIRE GRAB! FIX PLEASE! Make it, like, hit sometimes, or so some damage, or at least shoot friggin rainbows or something so I can spam it in LA all day since there’s no other use for my “jack-of-all-trades-but-sucks-at-every-single-one-of-them” class.

Interesting. Fire Grab is one skill I can always land. Taking my fingers off the movement keys and hitting the skill will auto turn me to the target and hit it everytime as long as I am in range. All I have to remember is to be sure the target has not moved off and is burning..

^tested and it doesnt work..you autoturn but its like you dont do it fast enough and it still miss.
Unless you are talking about pve

Suppose I should have said usually. If a player is moving fast and sideways to us, they can avoid it. The skill hits where they were when we triggered the skill. But, usually it will work. I think it beats the alternative which is to take precious time to mouse point every time. Now that you know the game works like that, you’ll recognize when to use it and when not to.

Fire grab is fine the way it is. NOW the hit box on that kitten thing is kittenen stupid. If you are moving or try to hit something that is not literally standing right in front of you, it completely misses. Does anyone know the shape of the hitbox?

LightningBlaze.4913:

unless he/she dodges or uses a skill that gives him/her distance.

you mean any average player? fire grab hits only mobs.

the reason the cooldown for fire grab is 45 secconds is because we have 4 atunements to switch to instead of 2 weapons. that gives us 4x a nr 5 skill where other professions have 2. it makes sense that our cooldown is double than. for me fire grab damage is fine as it is, id like to see it hit more often tho. but im sure this will be looked into by someone some day

Recharge should only be reduced slightly if at all. What I want improved is hitbox.. again.

Grevender.9235:

LightningBlaze.4913:

unless he/she dodges or uses a skill that gives him/her distance.

you mean any average player? fire grab hits only mobs.

Not necessarily, you can force even above average players to run out of endurance and have their skills that give them distance on cd before hitting them with this skill. The point I was trying to make is, this skill should never miss if your opponent is only strafing like many state it always misses if your opponent moves slightly to the right/left.

WvW, fire grab misses if the enemy is moving pretty much. skill delay in t1 does factor into it but it’s still no excuse to have the skill being fairly useless against players.

Best way to land firegrab is with third spell on main hand dagger and immediatly after use fire grab.

Yeah

Btw.. firegrab fun

Btw.. firegrab funhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2z0mN09m_8

BLKNovember.5620:

Swim.6830:

So I want my Firegrab to be able to do 7-8k damage on targets with 1500 or so toughness when I spec for damage (which means 4-5k normal builds).

OR reduce cooldown to half.

Ouch, what’s up with that build?

Stats got a bit messed up since I was dead. Crit change and damage were at about 30 each and toughness was 100 pts more.

LOL @ anyone who says Firegrab is “fine as is.”

You could move Firegrab to skill#1, make it auto-attack, increase its damage to a billion, and if its current targeting issues weren’t fixed, you’d have a zero damage AA.

A skill that rarely if ever hits anything is not balanced, regardless of its CD and damage. This is the problem with this forum, they’ve got “ele hate” like a bull who’s seen red, and nothing will dissuade them from their bias, not facts, not numbers, not anything.

Fire Grab can end fight very quickly because people don’t expect the burst if you hit it. It is currently one of ele strong finishing burst, so I don’t think the CD is too long.

The reason a lot of you guys find fire grab hard to land is because you are used to running around in circles spamming all of your aoe damage/heals. I doubt targeting is even a thing for d/d eles

Turbo Whale.1738:

I doubt targeting is even a thing for d/d eles

Why do you think Dagger/Dagger is so popular? They just turn the camera and click buttons

Turbo Whale.1738:

The reason a lot of you guys find fire grab hard to land is because you are used to running around in circles spamming all of your aoe damage/heals. I doubt targeting is even a thing for d/d eles

Wrong. Anybody who pays half a mind to skill animation can see this coming a mile away and simply sidestep it. I know because ele is one of my mains, and I’m also used to fighting against them. It’s terribly easy to dodge, even if you stand still and let the character target; the skill does not follow the target during animation.

well, i tend to tele churn in, switch to fire before the churn goes off. cast my fire field then fire grab and with all the stuff on the screen they never see it coming and it tends to hit for about 6k

I am working on some build stuff that ill post in a thread. Im quite excited about it.

The problem with firegrab is that when it was nerfed during beta, they nerfed both the cd and the damage, which was to much imo. Of course they later nerfed all ele damage later as well, so it’s basically went through 3 nerfs in beta before it got here. IMO, it’d be fine on a 30sec cd.

I’d be okay with Fire Grab if it was more accurate. Sometimes I could be standing face-to-face and close enough to kittenslap my target but it will still miss.

It’s really hard to hit b/c 90% of the time every enemy (person) is at least strafing. If they made it more reasonable to hit (improve cone, or improve aiming so that at least dodging was required) or made it on shorter cooldown, I would be ecstatic! I prefer shorter cooldown as it fits into the war-of-attrition approach I prefer, but I understand the higher spike could be a great boon for people who want to play more offensively.

Im a Fire Grab fan, my highest it’s 10-11.000 crit. I’m going Crit damage build. Got 58% crit damage and over 3000+ power with might.

Pew pew burst, mostly i can take down in 2-4 sec if its a light armor/medium

EDIT: This is my build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhImObkx5gjEAkCmEUQADiHWARElCxA-ToAg0CnI4SxljLDXSuscNyYCB

I would say it is easier to get the all the bolts on the ballista 4 skill to hit a single target then fire grab. The hit box is just so bad

Shinji.2063:

I would say it is easier to get the all the bolts on the ballista 4 skill to hit a single target then fire grab. The hit box is just so bad

If only that would the problem…currently landing a fire grab won’t bring you much joy if we compare it to churning earth, the latter is a skill that everybody know, every opponent will try his/her best to avoid the skill and why is that?

- 3k base dmg
- 2.5k bleeding dmg
- huge aoe component

In few words, churning earth is devastating, you land it and you’ve got good chance to win the fight/battle but fire grab….the base dmg is far lower, no additional dmg ( bleeding or burning) and miss far far too easily

I’d settle for it actually hitting reliably – that, and Air1 on d/d.

I admit fire grab is not our greatest skill but its half decent if you know its flaws. when I first heard the name my first though was “Grab” and not a puff of fire. I almost feel like anet had another skill in mind and scrapped it for this but kept the name. every other skills name matches the skill ability/ animations so why not this one?

The main issue is that you can’t think of Fire Grab in a vacuum. Sure, on its own it may be sub par, but you’ll Always be running it in a build that can also stun, snare and heal itself. It’s the fact that we have other elements too that makes the skill less powerful.

And if you really want to burst with it, I’d recommend combining it with scepter. If you Hurl→3x Lightning Strike (1 from weapon, 1 from sigil and 1 from trait)→Fire Grab (on an already burning target), you get quite a massive spike in just 2 seconds or so.