Guild Wars 2

Since everyone else gave their opinion on what must be done to fix the elementalist, here’s mine:

AoE spells should hit at the start of the second, instead of at the end
Lava Font, Wall of Fire, etc.
Most spells are fairly hard to hit players with to begin with, and they’re unlikely to be in them for the entire duration anyway. The fact that it takes another second makes it even easier for opposing players to avoid them entirely, where avoiding 75% of the damage would be punishment enough for the ele. Seeing as how npcs don’t suffer from this, I don’t see why players should.

Either casting time or trigger delay, but not both
Shatterstone, Ice Spike, Eruption
Skills like shatterstone suffer greatly from this. It wouldn’t matter as much that they take a few seconds to actually trigger if the player wouldn’t have to spend that much time to cast it in the first place. Making it (near) instant cast would actually turn Shatterstone in a fairly decent skill. If you don’t spend time doing nothing to prepare it, it won’t matter as much if you hit less with it, and the short casting time would make it harder for the opponent to see it coming.

Spells that target something should make us turn towards the target and then cast
Lightning Strike, Gael, Dragon’s Tooth etc.
It’s very annoying when you rely on a certain skill to land, only to see it go on cooldown without the skill actually activating. Some skills first turn us towards the target (like the auto attacks). The other skills should do so too.

Interrupts and snares should have travel time or casting time, but not both
Shockwave, Gust
Compared to things like the engineer’s net shot, the casting time of these abilities is way too long. The target is unlikely to be in the place you want them to be even before the spell starts to travel towards the target. The desired effect could be gained by speeding up the projectile, but lowering the casting time to near instant would be preferable. All the hand shaking just takes too long.

These fixes would be mostly uality of life, but it’s my belief that they will fix a lot of the issues the ele has without actually boosting them in power directly. It could be that a buff is still needed after that, but this would be a good start in my opinion.

+1

It would also be appreciated if there was some looking into the bug that stops the damage of Shatterstone, Ice Spike, and Eruption if you are hard cc’d during the trigger delay.

true but shatter stone has a 2 second cooldown, if you got the survivability to boot you can quickly use up opponnents endurance by spamming shatterstone I would think. Even though its a pretty harmless spell.

I really want them to change how players can rally off summons. I’m not sure if it was intentional or not but it makes them so useless in pvp!

autoduck.2837:

I really want them to change how players can rally off summons. I’m not sure if it was intentional or not but it makes them so useless in pvp!

Yes, that does make them a bit perilous to use. Although they did get a hp buff recently right? So it may be less of an issue?

+1 for the original post – and impressed. This is the first time you’ve admitted to there being room for improvement.

stale.9785:

+1 for the original post – and impressed. This is the first time you’ve admitted to there being room for improvement.

Hehe, touché.

But to be fair, I do agree that some changes would be welcome. However, I feel that they should be implemented in such a way that preserves the current playstyle on the staff. I like the staff a lot and I feel that most skills are powerful enough. It’s mostly the practical implementation of the staff that needs a little polish, imho.

Combo fields for example are a lot of fun and I’d rather keep fields like Frozen Ground the way they are now, rather than doubling the effect and removing the combo part.

I’m also giggling because this is exactly what i’ve said, just less of it. I went through every single staff skill, and most of mine were simply duration based, or speed/animation based… whereas yours are speed/animation and aiming, without worrying about the durations on the fields.

After so very much dissent, too…

I’d +1 again, if I could.

EDIT: My approach to the whole aim thing was to increase the projectile speed – if you don’t hit because you’re facing the wrong way… well, that’s only fair. If you don’t aim at someone, you shouldn’t hit them. (having it auto turn you to track would be cool though.)