Guild Wars 2

So, I caught a glimpse at a couple changes not mentioned explicitly in today’s stream. I paused the video at several points and noticed the following:

Meteorshower’s damage radius (not storm radius) was increased to 180 from 90. I’ve always felt something was off about meteorshower since the last patch update because it was doing drastically less damage than before. If this means what I think it means, the blast radius from each meteor has been doubled; or increased by 30 units like fireball.

I found some of the changes to conjure earth shield quite interesting:

The old conjure earth shield reads as follows:

1. Shield smack: smack your foe with the magnetic shield (130 range). CT=3/4s / CD=0.
2. Crippling shield: throw your shield in a line, crippling struck foes (900 range, 2s cripple) CT=3/4s / CD=8s.
3. Magnetic surge: unleash a magnetic force, surging at your opponent and dazing them (2s daze) CT=3/4s / CD=12.
4. Magnetic shield: pull your foes to you with magnetic force (600 radius, 600 range) CT=1 1/2s / CD=25.
5. Fortify: use magnetism to envelop yourself in a shield, becoming invulnerable (3s invulnerability).

The new conjure earth shield reads:

1.1. Shield smack: smack your foe with the magnetic shield (130 range, 1 stack of bleed for 6s) CT=1/2s / CD=0s.
1.2. Shield smash: smash your foe with the magnetic shield (130 range, 2 stacks of bleed for 6s) CT=3/4s / CD=0.
1.3. Crippling shield: throw your shield in a line, crippling struck foes (450 range, 2s cripple) CT=3/4s / CD=0.
2. Stone sheath: block the next attack and cause bleeding to foes around you (240 radius, 3 stacks of bleed for 6s) CT=2 1/2s / CD=8s.
3. Unchanged
4. Magnetic shield: pull your foes to you with magnetic force. Gain protection for each pulled foe (400 pull, 600 radius, unblockable, 6s protection per foe) CT=1 1/2s / CD=25.
5. Unknown.

That’s a whole lot of protection from the #4 skill. That along with the block on the #2 combined with the large stacks of bleed off #1 and #2, makes for a pretty impressive build option I’d say. I’ll be even more blown away if they improved the #5 skill.

Hopefully, all of the conjures were reworked to a similar extent. If so, I’d say this is an extremely favorable patch for the pvp ele. fingers crossed

Wow. That actaully sounds kind of…nice.

And holy kitten, 6s of prot per mob? What’s the limit, probably 5, yes?

assuming it’s 5 in a best case scenario that’s 35 seconds of prot holy kitten (not to mention if you’re running like 60% boon duration like i do on my ele you’re looking at an ADDITIONAL 21 SECONDS OF PROTECTION HOLY kitten.)

I don’t think it’s 6 seconds. I went back and watched the video again and saw (pretty sure) 2½ seconds protection per person pulled. That was with 30 arcane, I believe. We’ll see tomorrow.

Seems like a great Utility skill for a “Dire” gear build with boon duration rune (or just protection duration)

Malcastus.6240:

I don’t think it’s 6 seconds. I went back and watched the video again and saw (pretty sure) 2½ seconds protection per person pulled. That was with 30 arcane, I believe. We’ll see tomorrow.

It was actually 7 1/2 with 30 arcana; 6 seconds without.

Really? That is quite a lot, hah.

This might be interesting.

But why would you pull 5 enemies to you?
I don’t think 20s+ protection gonna help you much against focus fire from several opponents

If you want to pull someone off a point of interest, or keep someone from stomping, I could imagine. Perhaps using it to keep orb runners slowed. Pull a group towards you, while others focus AoE in the area, while you shield yourself for 3 seconds with Fortify.

Could be interesting to use in dungeons as well, if someone is downed.

My thoughts as a WvW elementalist..

1.I cant use melee abilitys as a caster,I instant drop going balls deep,even with protection.
2.Give conjured weapons to any other class than elementalist..we already have 4 stances,a fifth in form of conjured weapons are lame.

All elementalists really needed was;
-more survivability,so we dont get oneshot by superior ballistas or 2 shotted by thiefs.
-longer duration on geyser,so its a viable waterfield.
-All abilitys with delayed impact(eruption,dragon tooth etc)should have no casttime.
-the singletarget knockback from staff/air should be point blank aoe,since you dont survive long enough to target highburst classes jumping you.

But above all we were entitled to more baseline defence being 3-4000hp or 3-400 toughness.

From a WvW POW

I use the earthshield when sieging walls, can pull people off the top of the wall, having lots of protection while doing that will be interesting, since generally you don’t die quickly in a wvw zerg situation.

I still say earthshield should be a stunbreaker as well. I’d take that over the now useless mistform any day.

The meteors’radius was increased by blasting staff

Zelyhn.8069:

The meteors’radius was increased by blasting staff

I don’t think so. As I said, it’s not the meteor shower’s area of effect radius, but the blast radius of each meteor that was increased. If blasting staff increased the aoe radius AND blast radius, it still wouldn’t explain the increase. Remember, blasting staff increases the radius of staff skills by 60 units. Currently, the blast radius is 90, with blasting staff it would only be 150, not 180, as indicated in the livestream. So, at the very least, it was bumped up by 30 units, similar to fireball and water blast.

I can’t recheck the video right now but I think they pointed our that the radius of skills affected by blasting staff will have a different color in the tooltip, and I am pretty sure I saw that in meteor shower’s tooltip.

Blasting Staff only adds 60 radius, which means the base radius for those skills increased from the current 90 to 120 (120+60=180). This means Fireball should have lava font’s radius, which is really nice for an auto-attack. Was Water Bast affected by this as well? If so, it’ll make its healing radius as big as its current-but-soon-to-be-updated geyser’s radius. Again, really nice for an auto-attack. And with Blasting Staff, Fireball will simply get delicious.

Also, 6 seconds of protection is awesome by itself, even more if you can multiply it.

I just checked. With blasting staff, fire 1, 2, and 5 all have a 180 damage radius while 3 has a 240 radius. There may be a tooltip error on fireball right now since blasting staff already increases fireball radius to 180.

Edit
water blast and geyser have 240 radius

“more survivability”

This. +1.

My elementalist, albeit a berserker staff ele, simply can’t go to the higher level areas and survive in pve content because his armour, despite being full exotic, is still paper-thin. I even tried going full toughness, along with the signet which increases toughness – and it still didn’t seem to make any difference, so I ended up going back to full berserker gear + stats.

I think the main thing elementalists definitely lack is survivability. Like another player has said, you literally get 2 hit ko’ed by thieves (REALLY annoying – not to mention by the time you realize you’re being ninja’d and try to press any skills, you’re already downed), or 2 hit by siege. It’s ridiculous.

Zaoda.1653:

“more survivability”

This. +1.

My elementalist, albeit a berserker staff ele, simply can’t go to the higher level areas and survive in pve content because his armour, despite being full exotic, is still paper-thin. I even tried going full toughness, along with the signet which increases toughness – and it still didn’t seem to make any difference, so I ended up going back to full berserker gear + stats.

I think the main thing elementalists definitely lack is survivability. Like another player has said, you literally get 2 hit ko’ed by thieves (REALLY annoying – not to mention by the time you realize you’re being ninja’d and try to press any skills, you’re already downed), or 2 hit by siege. It’s ridiculous.

Well that’s how mages are in most games. Although in most other games the mage class has the highest damage of all the classes as well. We have the lowest. Just waiting for someone to come in now and say ele has high damage and post some gimmicky hammer build that can’t survive without an entire party built around supporting your build just so you can do as much damage as a warrior can do by himself.

I seriously hope they nerf lightning hammer into oblivion just so people can no longer say eles have decent damage and we can get some much needed boosts to our base stats and the base damage of all our abilities. I made an ele to play as a mage, not as a poor man’s hammer warrior. I’d rather stand back and drop meteors that hit for 10k each.

I hope they nerf staff damage to oblivion, make it truly support weapon and make close range weapon more deadly.

staff damage already has been nerfed into oblivion. Its damage was cut by over 60% after beta. They need to undo that and make it a weapon actually worth using for something besides hiding in zergs or being a combo field monkey for everyone else so they can do damage. I miss how it used to be. It was so much fun before.

Same with other weapons, check fire grab for instance.

haviz.1340:

I hope they nerf staff damage to oblivion, make it truly support weapon and make close range weapon more deadly.

I hope you step on a lego.

TC, link for your info? I see people referencing a stream but…

Solo.9027:

I hope you step on a lego.

Me too because that would mean I have it.