Guild Wars 2

I think Fire, Earth, and Water are in a pretty good spot on the Staff right now, but Air is still in need of some buffs. The bottom line is that it offers situational utility and poor damage so there’s never a reason to linger in it.

The aftercast reduction on Chain Lightning is nice but the fundamental problem with it remains – it’s only better than Fire’s #1 when fighting exactly 2 targets, and even then Fire is better for its other skills. I think there are problems with the way Ricochet is designed in this game in general that affect quite a few skills (Trick Shot, Dancing Dagger, Richochet, Chain Lightning, etc). It would be better if there was only a chance to bounce but the damage was significantly improved, much like the Thief’s Pistol trait Ricochet.

Lightning Surge is potentially amazing, but it doesn’t do nearly enough damage for its wind-up time and cooldown. It needs to either cast faster or do much better damage.

Gust is just bad- it has bad range, bad effect area, is on a long cooldown, and does no damage. It needs to be totally reworked

Windborn Speed and Static Field both offer decent utility, but are situational and won’t be super useful in the majority of fights. I think they’d be fine though, if the problems with the above 3 were addressed.

Not sure I agree with the judgement on Gust – it’s a piercing knockback with a very quick cast. It won’t push a crowd away from you, but you can line it up to get a pair of foes controlled and make a little distance. At most they could make the projectile wider, but I really do think it works.

Chain Lightning is all about spreading the love / damage. I enjoy it in multi-opponent fights when I’m not trying to focus one target down. If that means I shouldn’t sit in Air Attunement to wait for Lightning Surge to come up again, I’m okay with that, since Earth and Fire are both pretty good to stick in.

I agree on Lightning Surge though. The AoE blind / damage is nice, the 1.5 second cast ruins it though. I’d love it if they made this skill instant (like a combo of blinding flash & lightning strike) so you could use that blind to counter specific attacks.

I agree that air needs to be made a bit more interesting somehow. The auto-attack is not a huge problem to me, because every weapon of the ele seems to have a certain attunement with an okay auto-attack (for the staff: fireball).

Lightning surge needs to be made less clunky. I think the best way to do this is reducing its cast time to 1/4 second, and either:
1) making it a ground-targeted AoE (think of something like Spirit Rift from GW1);
2) making it stick to the foe for 1 second and then exploding for an AoE effect (think of something like Lightning Surge from GW1.)

Either way, the enormously long casting time needs to go. I don’t mind the delay of the blind (instant aoe blind + damage would be OP), but I want it to be a skill that increases DPS instead of decreasing it!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/staff-fixes-improvements/first

Been a while since I got any feedback on this thread. Some of what I asked for came through in the last patch, but not nearly enough. Staff is still our weakest weapon. Also, shamelessly bumping my old thread, because… well, I’d like to see it float on the front page till staff gets the love it deserves.

Air on Scepter I also find to be inexplicably weak. I can demolish large groups of enemies with fire and and Air has trouble killing one at a time. The support it provides isn’t anywhere near good enough to justify that. Is there some secret that I’m not privy to here?

Air is the element I spend the least amount of time in, aside from running place to place between fights.

The auto attack is more likely to get you in trouble by pulling mobs you don’t want to pull, and does lower damage than the fire projectile and doesn’t have healing like the water projectile or a debuff like the earth projectile, so it’s not really worth using.

Lightning Surge has too long of a cast time, often times if I’m chasing someone with it they get out of range by the time it casts. It would be better if it was an instant cast with a delayed effect, as lightning surge in GW1 was a delayed effect.

Gust doesn’t knock back far enough to be viable in most situations. and does no damage. i find that the only uses for it are potentially as an interrupt for a still target (a moving target it’ll miss) or as a way to knock an enemy into static field’s outer ring to get stunned. Or very niche use, pushing idiots off cliffs in WvW.

Windbourne speed, well, I suppose having swiftness is a benefit in the calculations of the game but I find that even with swiftness, I can’t really outrun people in combat. Does combat speed reduce everyone to the same speed no matter what run buffs they have? It’d be great if the burst of air in windbourne speed was given an effect in combat, such as a whirl finisher, or a blowout.

Static field is the only skill I feel is good as it is, and even its use is very situational. It’s great in wvw zerg fights, it can be useful in on dungeon trash, but bosses being immune to stuns kind of makes it pointless in those situations.

Personally they can make a few changes to help staff get a big boost

1 – make fireball aoe as big as lava font; 120 and be affected by trait
2 – make water blast bounce like chain lightning
3 – remove bounce off chain lightning and give it 20% less damage then lightning surge
4 – make lightning surge give 5 sec of fury

these changes will boost staff ele in support, damage and aoe hopefully without making it overpowered.

I just wish gust had slighlty bigger aoe, or that it would be like mesmer gs push.

Lightning surge is…i don´t even know, just never figured out what this is supposed to be for.

Chainlightning has some decent places to use, but all in all it´s just another ele autoattack, kinda crappy but you never really use them much anyway.

Don´t touch mah 4 and 5, i like them very much. Nothing more satisfying than halting whole blob with well places static field, and windborne speed is invaluable source of swiftness and condition removal (gets rid of just the right things too)

As it stands, the air staff skills are very lackluster in terms of damage and utility. While gust can knock down in a line, it’s hampered by its ridiculous cooldown and projectile speed.

Static field is a mixed bag: it’s useful when catching enemies unaware and at the start of a fight in pve, but it doesn’t do anything to enemies inside of the field and it’s not as useful mid-battle as it is during the beginning. The short 4 second duration doesn’t help at all either. I wouldn’t mind if it lasted just 1 more second (5 second total), that makes a noticable difference when being attacked or attacking.

As for lightning surge, well, it’s cast time is too long for what it’s supposed to do: apply AoE blind. The cast time needs to be reduced by about .5 – .75 seconds to make it much more responsive.

Chain lightning is a doozy: It was great during the betas, but for the retail release, it became crap. While I understand the viewpoint of the devs to hit chain lightning, I don’t think hitting chain lightning that hard was called for. In fact, the damage it deals is relatively low against single targets and the bounce is unreliable. If I could do anything to chain lightning, it would be to remove the ability for it to bounce between two targets and boost the damage coefficient higher than .65 (somewhere around .75 – .80).

Windborne speed seems to be well balanced to me, but how often do other elementalists remember to use it to clear cripple, frozen, and immobilize? For me, I always forget about its condition removal and primarily use it as a mid-combat/out of combat speed boost.

The other elements have issues of their own, but air is my least used element so I would love to see focus on that as an area for improvement.

arka.8456:

Personally they can make a few changes to help staff get a big boost

1 – make fireball aoe as big as lava font; 120 and be affected by trait
2 – make water blast bounce like chain lightning
3 – remove bounce off chain lightning and give it 20% less damage then lightning surge
4 – make lightning surge give 5 sec of fury

these changes will boost staff ele in support, damage and aoe hopefully without making it overpowered.

Those are all silly. Fireball is fine as is, water blast is low damage and low healing numbers but the pattern is fine. If it scaled better with healing power, it would be great. If healing power scaled better period, it’d be great.

Chain Lightning’s bounce is its only forte, problem is it’s lower damage than fireball (and I think stoning) and doesn’t cause any conditions or boons. If it stacked vuln it’d be more viable.

Lightning Surge just needs cast time adjustment. The effect is fine, it does some spike damage to a clustered group and blinds.. it’s just the windup for the effect is long.

I think chain lightning could be given a condition-applying component without making it OP, but I don’t think the direct damage output needs adjustment. It definitely has its uses and drawbacks, just like the other auto-attacks.

I agree that Lightning Surge could use a cast time reduction, even possibly to the point of making it instant-cast with a longer cooldown, so it becomes a viable counter.

I think Gust could be a cone AoE knock-back to make it more viable. Even as a piercing knockback, it’s too limited to really be useful on an AoE weapon like staff.

Windborne Speed is fine as-is, although it would be nice if the swiftness application prioritized nearby allies that didn’t already have swiftness (for WvW purposes).

Static Field is perfect as-is.

Gust for me the problem is the range of the knockback. It knocks back 400 units. that’s not giving you enough space to work with if they’re up in your grill. If it was 900 units, then we’d be talking using it as an escape along with its niche uses as an interrupt (which as has been said before, it’s effect is so narrow it’s one of the worst skills to use for that), pushing people into static field, or if they’re dumb enough to fight on the edge of a cliff, send them over.

Lightning Surge the more I think about it, the fairest way to deal with it is to make the skill instant cast but have a delay to its effect, no longer than its current cast time hopefully a little shorter. Then there’s strategy to lightning surge. Someone hit by it might run back into their group for it to go off and blind multiple people, or they might recognize that they’ll blind all their friends and avoid them, making them easy to pick off alone.

Yeah…. Air on staff is the only thing that makes me sad about my staff, I found myself just avoiding the Attunement recently unless there was something specific I wanted IE static field.

I’d be happy if they buffed the damage on the #2 and slightly buffed the dmg on #1 and then made Gust either a faster projectile or a wider one.

For the staff, air is the only element that I am looking to get out of quickly during combat. That always seems odd -- it’s not like an interrupt, blind, daze/stun, and speed boost are bad things!

air-arcane can do amazing damage on a single target in pve.
traits 20% more dmg to knocked down foes, sigil +10% dmg to knocked down foes.
Full on crit-dmg should be able to burst around 10k easy.
The auto-attack does do a ton of damage near the end of its cast. Have had it do up to 4k dmg easy.

stale.9785:

Staff is still our weakest weapon.

I strongly disagree. The staff was very potent and the fixes solved a few of the quality-of-life issues. It’s a very good weapon now. But like before, you really need to get a good feel for how to use it. It’s not an easy weapon to get maximum effectiveness out off, but when you do master it, it rocks.

The problem of staff is that it has plenty of lacklustre skills in every attunement and only a few that are actually worth using, due to long casting time. The air is the worst in this regard.

Air 1: mediocre damage, not worth using unless in very specific situations. Not to mention it can cause serious troubles when you accidentally aggro more enemies than you can handle.

Air 2: The casting time is too long to be bothered using it.

Air 3: The projectile travels too slow, more often than not it misses its target completely.

Air 4: Decent OOC source of swiftness, other than that, I almost never use it in combat.

Air 5: Great if you have aim of a god or the enemy is stupid enough to walk into it. Otherwise it’s only good for comboing with Earth 2.

Air 1: Speed up the projectile a bit, and add a Vulnerability proc on it or increase the damage a little

Air 2: Change the Blind to a Daze. Suddenly it’s worth the long cast time.

Air 3: Widen the projectile just a little, and make it a touch faster. It doesn’t need much tweaking to go from terrible to decent.

Air 4: Awesome skill. Good OOC Utility. Good anti-CC cleansing. No complaints.

Air 5: Awesome skill. OOC Utility. Great area denial.

the #1 is fine, actually.
Staff’s air attunement is more about controlling the flow of battle than dishing out spikes.
The only thing, which realy seems off is the #2.

i think it’s silly that 19/20 staff skill are aoe. air #1, #2, water #2 should all be looked at. also sceptre fire #2 (DT), IMO the worst-designed skill in the game.

Air #2 needs one of, or a combination of the following: A change in function, increase in damage, reduce casting time, reduce recharge time.

The greatest change would be to reduce the recharge time, but then the function may need to change so that spammable blind would not be imbalanced. But consider that lava font (fire 2), ice spike (water 2), and eruption (earth 2) are all on shorter cooldown, thus making staff play in those attunements much more fun and fluid.

Gust still needs an adjustment so it is slightly easier to ‘hit’ the target. I cannot count how many times I have seen the gust projectile actually touch my target, only to produce no effect. I have played 1200-1500 staff ele pvp games, have leveled 2 eles to 80, and I still have difficulty with reliably landing gust (though it seems to aim most accurately if the ele character stops moving before casting).

mjharrison.3209:

i think it’s silly that 19/20 staff skill are aoe. air #1, #2, water #2 should all be looked at. also sceptre fire #2 (DT), IMO the worst-designed skill in the game.

Staff has a skill that’s not an AoE? The whole point of that weapon is to be a mobile Artillery unit…

Am i the only one who wants to see the Staff Air #2 skill to be like it was in Alpha? The longer you hold it down the more damage it does, it always blinds, if you hold it to halfway point it’s kitten daze, if you hold it to full charge it’s a 1s stun? That would suddenly make that skill amazing…. again.

Durzlla.6295:

mjharrison.3209:

i think it’s silly that 19/20 staff skill are aoe. air #1, #2, water #2 should all be looked at. also sceptre fire #2 (DT), IMO the worst-designed skill in the game.

Staff has a skill that’s not an AoE? The whole point of that weapon is to be a mobile Artillery unit…

Am i the only one who wants to see the Staff Air #2 skill to be like it was in Alpha? The longer you hold it down the more damage it does, it always blinds, if you hold it to halfway point it’s kitten daze, if you hold it to full charge it’s a 1s stun? That would suddenly make that skill amazing…. again.

Charging up is so air like!
OMGYESPLZ

naphack.9346:

Durzlla.6295:

mjharrison.3209:

i think it’s silly that 19/20 staff skill are aoe. air #1, #2, water #2 should all be looked at. also sceptre fire #2 (DT), IMO the worst-designed skill in the game.

Staff has a skill that’s not an AoE? The whole point of that weapon is to be a mobile Artillery unit…

Am i the only one who wants to see the Staff Air #2 skill to be like it was in Alpha? The longer you hold it down the more damage it does, it always blinds, if you hold it to halfway point it’s kitten daze, if you hold it to full charge it’s a 1s stun? That would suddenly make that skill amazing…. again.

Charging up is so air like!
OMGYESPLZ

Yeah and while they’re at it they should change Churning Earth to a real charging spell again, meaning whenever you release the button it fires instead of having to channel for 4 seconds all the time.

Aether McLoud.1975:

naphack.9346:

Durzlla.6295:

mjharrison.3209:

i think it’s silly that 19/20 staff skill are aoe. air #1, #2, water #2 should all be looked at. also sceptre fire #2 (DT), IMO the worst-designed skill in the game.

Staff has a skill that’s not an AoE? The whole point of that weapon is to be a mobile Artillery unit…

Am i the only one who wants to see the Staff Air #2 skill to be like it was in Alpha? The longer you hold it down the more damage it does, it always blinds, if you hold it to halfway point it’s kitten daze, if you hold it to full charge it’s a 1s stun? That would suddenly make that skill amazing…. again.

Charging up is so air like!
OMGYESPLZ

Yeah and while they’re at it they should change Churning Earth to a real charging spell again, meaning whenever you release the button it fires instead of having to channel for 4 seconds all the time.

Oh god yes, i forget though, did Churning Earth at higher charges do more damage AND have more range? Or was it only more range?

The main reason i wanted to play an Ele was they had access to every type of Weapon skill in the game (Chain, Charge, Channel, Instant)

Durzlla.6295:

mjharrison.3209:

i think it’s silly that 19/20 staff skill are aoe. air #1, #2, water #2 should all be looked at. also sceptre fire #2 (DT), IMO the worst-designed skill in the game.

Staff has a skill that’s not an AoE? The whole point of that weapon is to be a mobile Artillery unit…

Pidgeonholing a weapon into AOE on a class with no weapon swap is a really dumb idea. It virtually guarantees a weapon will be hard to balance – OP in its niche and UP everywhere else.

At the very least there should be traits that increase single target dmg on staff at the cost of less AOE.

mjharrison.3209:

Durzlla.6295:

mjharrison.3209:

i think it’s silly that 19/20 staff skill are aoe. air #1, #2, water #2 should all be looked at. also sceptre fire #2 (DT), IMO the worst-designed skill in the game.

Staff has a skill that’s not an AoE? The whole point of that weapon is to be a mobile Artillery unit…

Pidgeonholing a weapon into AOE on a class with no weapon swap is a really dumb idea. It virtually guarantees a weapon will be hard to balance – OP in its niche and UP everywhere else.

At the very least there should be traits that increase single target dmg on staff at the cost of less AOE.

You mean like pigeonholing a total Melee oriented build on the same prof or having a purely defensive off hand? I see no problem with it being AoE only, it really shines at area Denial and nuking down groups of mobs.

Durzlla.6295:

mjharrison.3209:

Durzlla.6295:

mjharrison.3209:

i think it’s silly that 19/20 staff skill are aoe. air #1, #2, water #2 should all be looked at. also sceptre fire #2 (DT), IMO the worst-designed skill in the game.

Staff has a skill that’s not an AoE? The whole point of that weapon is to be a mobile Artillery unit…

Pidgeonholing a weapon into AOE on a class with no weapon swap is a really dumb idea. It virtually guarantees a weapon will be hard to balance – OP in its niche and UP everywhere else.

At the very least there should be traits that increase single target dmg on staff at the cost of less AOE.

You mean like pigeonholing a total Melee oriented build on the same prof or having a purely defensive off hand? I see no problem with it being AoE only, it really shines at area Denial and nuking down groups of mobs.

The problem is we have no weapon swap. So when we get told no aoe because we don’t want to kill the marked cultist in cliffside fractal, all we have as an option is stoning…. but we want our aoe when the marked cultist is not nearby to burst down the other group.

Devildoc.6721:

Durzlla.6295:

mjharrison.3209:

Durzlla.6295:

mjharrison.3209:

i think it’s silly that 19/20 staff skill are aoe. air #1, #2, water #2 should all be looked at. also sceptre fire #2 (DT), IMO the worst-designed skill in the game.

Staff has a skill that’s not an AoE? The whole point of that weapon is to be a mobile Artillery unit…

Pidgeonholing a weapon into AOE on a class with no weapon swap is a really dumb idea. It virtually guarantees a weapon will be hard to balance – OP in its niche and UP everywhere else.

At the very least there should be traits that increase single target dmg on staff at the cost of less AOE.

You mean like pigeonholing a total Melee oriented build on the same prof or having a purely defensive off hand? I see no problem with it being AoE only, it really shines at area Denial and nuking down groups of mobs.

The problem is we have no weapon swap. So when we get told no aoe because we don’t want to kill the marked cultist in cliffside fractal, all we have as an option is stoning…. but we want our aoe when the marked cultist is not nearby to burst down the other group.

Try a different strat? Run scepter for that part instead? Learn to get mobs away from each other? Take off blasting staff for one encounter?

I’ve said it before, and I imagine I’ll say it again.

Fire should all be high damage AoE skills; the splash on fireball should be far larger, the default area of Lava Font should be double what it is.

Air 1 and 2 should be instant cast, high single target damage. Air 3 still needs a larger hitbox.

Water 1 should either have it’s damage removed and it’s healing increased, or the reverse. Water 2 needs to be far, far faster.

Earth 2 needs to be faster (make it so it’s laid after the field instead of beforehand to trigger a combo), earth 4 should be a circle, like water 4.

So the final result would be:

Fire: AoE damage
Air: Single Target damage
Water: Snares and heal
Earth: Snares, bleed and defense

Red Jay.2516:

Air 5: Great if you have aim of a god or the enemy is stupid enough to walk into it. Otherwise it’s only good for comboing with Earth 2.

No.

This is perhaps the single best ability in the entire game.

Durzlla.6295:

Devildoc.6721:

Durzlla.6295:

mjharrison.3209:

Durzlla.6295:

mjharrison.3209:

i think it’s silly that 19/20 staff skill are aoe. air #1, #2, water #2 should all be looked at. also sceptre fire #2 (DT), IMO the worst-designed skill in the game.

Staff has a skill that’s not an AoE? The whole point of that weapon is to be a mobile Artillery unit…

Pidgeonholing a weapon into AOE on a class with no weapon swap is a really dumb idea. It virtually guarantees a weapon will be hard to balance – OP in its niche and UP everywhere else.

At the very least there should be traits that increase single target dmg on staff at the cost of less AOE.

You mean like pigeonholing a total Melee oriented build on the same prof or having a purely defensive off hand? I see no problem with it being AoE only, it really shines at area Denial and nuking down groups of mobs.

The problem is we have no weapon swap. So when we get told no aoe because we don’t want to kill the marked cultist in cliffside fractal, all we have as an option is stoning…. but we want our aoe when the marked cultist is not nearby to burst down the other group.

Try a different strat? Run scepter for that part instead? Learn to get mobs away from each other? Take off blasting staff for one encounter?

Run scepter, and then have next to no aoe. Guess you missed that part about wanting to have lots of aoe for when the marked cultist isn’t in range.

covenn.7165:

Red Jay.2516:

Air 5: Great if you have aim of a god or the enemy is stupid enough to walk into it. Otherwise it’s only good for comboing with Earth 2.

No.

This is perhaps the single best ability in the entire game.

Only thing I wish for static field is for if you’re traited blasting staff, the target circle reflected the increase in radius, would make it easier to aim the edges.

As a staff I use Air as much as any other attunement:

Chain lightning – large fights, bounces of siege equipment also (problem is that it will bring in mobs in 1v1 fights)
Lightning surge – single target damage, but aoe blind (to slow for small fights but zerg vs zerg I always use it)
Gust – I use on ramps, in tunnels, through archways and along side cliffs
Windborne speed – I am always using this – roaming; swiftness – battles; removing C,C, I on allies
Static field – A great CC spell.

If the only thing ANet did was to change the Staff Air #1 skill to an Emperor Palpatine AoE Lightning Storm channel, we’d be set.

POWAH!

Pretty much all of staff’s pvp issues could be solved if air attunement worked like air attunement is suppose to work. Air is our single target burst element. But the only weapon where it performs this role is the scepter.

Change air 1 into a single target high damage auto attack (Since this attunement can’t do damage with skills 3, 4, and 5) and remove the blind on Lightning Surge and make it do a LOT more damage for it’s charge time. A long channeled blind is next to useless. A long, channeled burst is not.