Guild Wars 2

Hey so I have been noticing something. When I auto attack a target with a staff clearly in range with no object or barrier in the way I sometimes see “Obstructed”. This I find is a huge problem since out auto attack is so kitten slow with a staff. Also, I have noticed that some people can just stand out of the way of our very slow projectile and most of the time it wont connect (not talking about dodging just running to the side). This is another huge issue.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Ranger’s have a similar issue, and so do Guardian’s with there Sceptre not sure if it’s an oversight by the dev team, or intended. They do have spells that are slow moving but home in and follow the target so I’m guessing it’s intended.

Obstructed is often randomly thrown in. Usually it is only once or twice, though that is enough to cause me to die half the time. The bug that annoys me the most is the immune bug, that happens everywhere especially underwater.

don’t worry about it. staff autoattacks (except for fire) more or less tickle your opponent anyway :P

besides, you should expect to lose if you’re fighting anything other than other staff wielding elementalists in PvP. the weapon has no 1v1 practicality. sure, it’s flashy, but even when you magically get every shot off perfectly, it still won’t deal a ton of damage.

now d/d or s/d, on the other hand…

wertyuio.8630:

now d/d or s/d, on the other hand…

Will still get you killed and you’ll be lucky to kill anything with more than a few functioning brain cells. If your opponent has the escapes and utilities he should to open gaps your melee to mid range attacks will not be connecting half the time either, particularly in D/D. The scepter auto-attacks are even weaker than the Staff ones, and that’s saying something, because those are some of the weakest auto-attacks in the game.

I just read a forum post on the Thieves section. That thief made a list of how hard it is for him to kill each class. Starting from Guardians and Warriors.

Elementalist was not even in the list. We are just kittens.

wertyuio.8630:

don’t worry about it. staff autoattacks (except for fire) more or less tickle your opponent anyway :P

besides, you should expect to lose if you’re fighting anything other than other staff wielding elementalists in PvP. the weapon has no 1v1 practicality. sure, it’s flashy, but even when you magically get every shot off perfectly, it still won’t deal a ton of damage.

now d/d or s/d, on the other hand…

Unfortunately, I must disagree on both your points. The Earth auto-attack may not do a lot of damage, but it can maintain weakness on an enemy. That by itself makes it worth it.
Also, the staff isn’t as poor at 1 vs 1 as everyone makes it seem. Sure, you got a lot of AoE skills, but guess what? If you’re in melee, against a single opponent…you can still use them! But you’ll have to beat your opponent through kiting and disabling, while slowly taking them down. There’s no fast instant-kill burst damage available.

scepter fire autoattack is not that bad when i have specced for condition and power.
thats 600+ fire damage on top of the base damage.

thats spvp.
conjured axe auto does about 500 but its faster. hmmm. with a crit power build the axe would be hitting for near 1k per hit.

Staff air auto-attack… for more then one enemy does almost 6k (cursed shore) dmg divided between 2-3 enemies, fire is quite good for 1vs1, earth – combo finisher… water meh… no opinion on other weapons auto attacks.
If I remember correctly i run staff 20/20/30/0/0 ele full berserker, 6/6 dolyak in pve, i can solo any content minus champions (but with one or two people – no problem), this build is quite good in www IMO, but almost unplayable in spvp

I don’t even have the Ele #1 bound to a key….that’s how bad it is with every weapon and every attunement (except scepter/earth for the bleeds..that’s the ONLY decent one)

I don’t even have the Ele #1 bound to a key….that’s how bad it is with every weapon and every attunement (except scepter/earth for the bleeds..that’s the ONLY decent one)

That’s pretty much BS.

With D/D, all four of the auto-attacks are good. Whip does good dmg (although it still misses a lot), Impale stacks bleeds pretty quickly, and vapor blade isn’t bad if it hits twice (it also stacks vulnerability).

With staff, fireball is great provided you’re getting a chance to throw a couple (AOE dmg from 1,200 range) and chain lightning is good too.

Finally, w/ scepter, both stone shards and flamestrike are pretty good, w/ shards being the clear winner.

Perhaps many Ele’s are struggling because they think like this, and neglect to use a good chunk of their damage. Seriously, NOTHING is lost by having #1 on auto-attack (although if using a scepter, i put #2 on auto for Air), if you’re not using another skill at that instant it’s FREE DAMAGE.

WTF?!?

I see the obstructed randomly even on a level field and being within range. Normally doesn’t impact me on land, but in water when it happens it’s gotten me killed a few times.

The damage is too low (imo) and should be bumped up 15-20% to compensate for the slow cd’s in the rotation.

@BSsquared.

I didn’t say I didn’t use auto attack, I said I don’t have it bound. Why would I lead with the worst attack we have? And yes, they pretty much all suck.

vitigis.4160:

@BSsquared.

I didn’t say I didn’t use auto attack, I said I don’t have it bound. Why would I lead with the worst attack we have? And yes, they pretty much all suck.

Fair enough, but I disagree that “pretty much” all of the auto-attack skills suck and regarding your statement that they’re the “worst attack we have,” they’re not supposed to be as powerful as the rest of the skills, hence why they do not have cooldowns!

PvEwise one should almost never start a fight with a #1 skill, on that we agree. PvPwise, I see no harm in it and do so on occasion. Sometimes the enemy isn’t in a position that makes using more powerful, cooldown based skills worthwhile. So fire off a few auto’s and save the big ticket items for when they’ll hit.

Seriously, the auto-attacks are not that bad. Tweaks to things like the whip not hitting, and the “obstructed” fireball issue mentioned by the OP need fixing, I agree, but that is a far cry from stating they suck.

I can’t remember ever getting an “obstructed” bug, and I find most of the autos are fairly reliable. Stoning is the only one I ever have any trouble with, and that’s only because it’s so ungodly slow, flies in a huge arc, and isn’t homing. Don’t forget you can juke pretty much any projectile in the game without dodging, it’s just easier when they’re big and slow.

Stoning is still the only one worth using for its own sake, because perma-weakness is delicious. I suspect it’s so hard to hit with because it’s useful, to balance the fact that we probably aren’t meant to use our autos for much more than filler.

I’d agree that auto-attacks on elementalist feel underwhelming though I wouldn’t know if statistically they are.

Auto-attacks I currently like would be air sceptre, water staff, earth staff, air staff. Though they still feel rather weak, but I think are better than the other options.

As far as scepter goes, Stone Shards is really the only good one. The Lightning one is semi-good for tagging mobs. The fire one used to be good for being able to attack while not facing the mob, but they nerfed that. Water is absolute crap.