Guild Wars 2

After waiting for a few days to let things sink in, I’ve decided to make a list of things from the October 15th patch that affect Staff eles. This should help make up the balance of how well the patch actually is for us. Note that I’ve omitted ‘neutral’ changes to avoid the posts becoming too lengthy.

The Good News

*Additional way to use ground targeting.
*Stun breakers now break launch.
*Fixed issue where stuns would always round up their duration to the nearest second.
*Downed skill #2 is harder to accidently activate.
*Skills that buff allies in an AoE now prioritize party members.
*Persisting Flames: The duration was increased for most fields.
*Geyser: Increased the radius with and without Blasting Staff.
*Water Blast: Increased radius and healing stat scaling.
*Frozen Ground: Added an unblockable skill fact.
*Unsteady Ground was changed.
*Shock Wave: Increased the projectile velocity by 12.5%.
*Burning Retreat: Increased the retreat distance by 200.
*Fireball: Increased radius with and without Blasting Staff.
*Meteor Shower: Radius now increased by Blasting Staff.
*One with Air now grants superspeed instead of a passive speed buff.
*Glyph of Storms: Lightning got slightly bigger areas for its lightning bolts.
*Glyph of Renewal is now ground targetted.
*Conjures were buffed.

Thief
*Larcenous Strike: This skill now steals only 1 boon.
*Basilisk Venom: Petrify is now removed on stun break.

The Bad News

*Immobilize now stacks in duration to a maximum of five times.
*AoE spells with a maximum number of targets will now count combatants that block or evade the attack towards that maximum.
*Removed the heal that occurs if the water blast strikes nothing.
*Unsteady Ground: This skill no longer damages or cripples enemies.
*Windborne Speed: Decreased radius with Blasting Staff.
*Healing Rain: Decreased radius with Blasting Staff.
*Glyph of Storms: maximum number of targets for Fire and Earth was reduced, Lightning got slightly bigger areas for its lightning bolts.

Thief
*Body Shot: This skill now applies 1 second of immobilize

Other professions
Both ranger, mesmer, guardian and engineer got some buffs to their supportive side, thus closing in further on our niche. Especially on AoE stability, the mesmer and engineer seem to outclass us now, while the ranger can spread vigor to party members.

At first when I saw the patch notes, I was leaning towards positive. However, after letting things sink in, I’m still leaning towards positive. True, the changes to staff have mostly been to our secondary skills and not our primary (where most people feel the main issues lie). However, ArenaNet has shown that not all of our concerns fall on deaf ears.

Taking Meteor Shower for example, it’s clear that ArenaNet listened to players that felt you couldn’t easily hit things with it. The conjures also recieved buffs to the point where I feel that nobody can complain they’re not useful anymore. Shockwave’s speed increase made me wonder why they didn’t change Gust as well, but when I checked ingame the skills are now more alike so it makes sense. The change to Unsteady Ground is rather interesting because it gives use something completely new (to us). Finally, stuns, the bane of our existence, have been reeled in a bit. The sigil fix essentially takes nearly a second off the most problematic stuns from stunlock builds. Launch and Basilisk Venom can now be countered effectively. Given that we’re the most vulnerable of all professions to stun, this is good news.

With the buff on burning speed and the superspeed on One with Air, staff eles can now properly disengage! Gust an enemy (use chill/static field/shockwave/whatever to actually hit them), switch to fire and roll backwards. Turn around and run away! Easy right? Well, not easy maybe but at least it’s possible.

But there are some concerns. For one thing, immobilize now stacks. Where immobilizes would be wasted pre-patch, they now all stack (or at least up to 5). With immobilize being the nasty younger brother kicking us in the groin while older brother stun holds us down, this is a tough blow. For most 1v1 cases, this won’t be much of an issue but when a group decided to gang up on us with multiple immobilizes, we’d better have our Windborne Speed ready to cleanse them off. Thieves even got an extra immobilize and they hardly needed help against us, but at least they’re removing less boons from us. Hopefully protection and regeneration will save us now that they’re not gone all the time.

One thing in particular that I’d like to comment on is the AoE & block nerf. While it’s true that this can hurt our damage potential, you’ve gotta ask yourself where this will matter. In PvE and sPvP, you’re unlikely to hit more than 5 targets (and if you do, your position is either good or bad enough that hitting another target wouldn’t affect the outcome of the fight). The only thing affected is WvW zerg fights. It’s sad, but not something we cannot handle. After all, Meteor Shower can still hit up to 120 targets, and we got an additional CC skill to compensate.

So to sum things up, I think overall this patch has done more good than bad and it’s certainly not worthless. The new Fireball radius is huge, giving us much more dps in dungeons (on the thrash you do not skip of course). The main issues (casting speeds. projectile speeds, etc.) are still out there however and some input from a dev on those would be very welcome. Overall though, I think I like this patch. At there very least, we got a new toy!

EDIT: One thing I forgot to mention is the loss of cripple. While this is hardly a ‘crippling blow’ given the low duration unsteady Ground usually gave, it’s still something that could harm us in the long run because we’re all about moving faster than our opponent. I guess we have to focus on chill now.

While I recognize this patch was decent for staff, although marred by the aoe change, I don’t think it was positive overall for eles as a whole.

Only five of your ‘positives’ were even beneficial to us, the rest benefit others as well. So they can’t really be considered positives for ele. They’re just the new state of the game.

Continuing on, the one with air trait is useless for any build I could craft, but I don’t use staff. Perhaps it is useful in the way Thibash described it. I wouldn’t know.

Conjures will still be useless in a fight. I’ve tested them all. They have no way of letting you use elementalist without being kitten. I died each time I used one UNLESS I wasn’t being focused. Then they were actually helpful.

Let’s be real. When isn’t the elementalist the FIRST target of every fight?

Continuing on, with the buffs to other professions, elementalist is certainly becoming less viable. There was no help for dagger focus or scepter in this patch. Until they say “well we’re focusing on those weapons and builds this coming patch” I’ll be upset, but more because they failed to listen to any of our valid comments.

We are just as vulnerable to daze and immobilize. Why not give us an earth trait that decreases the effectiveness of stuns and immobilizes even further? I know I’d use it. The stability trait is nice, but not 20 earth nice, and ether renewal is a waste of precious time that you should be focusing down on your enemy.

All in all, there were some positives that for me, were overshadowed by the negatives I see on a daily basis.

The greatest positive of these changes is that everyone and his brother is trying to run a staff ele in WvW.

And gods are they easy to kill if you catch them alone.

Edit:
Glyph of Renewal = Ground targeted. THANK YOU.

Stupid pugs kept eating my Glyph for someone actually helpful

The new staff is simply great, hands down..my new favourite weapon set

I’d actually consider Unsteady Ground a buff, they can’t dodge through it which is perfect for forcing them into eating eruption, drop it right infront of them and watch them dodge roll into the wall only to be flung on their kitten just in time for the earth shattering kaboom =D

Durzlla.6295:

I’d actually consider Unsteady Ground a buff, they can’t dodge through it which is perfect for forcing them into eating eruption, drop it right infront of them and watch them dodge roll into the wall only to be flung on their kitten just in time for the earth shattering kaboom =D

Yeah lol , so kittening funny^^! Most people still think they can roll through unsteady ground

ThiBash.5634:

With the buff on burning speed and the superspeed on One with Air, staff eles can now properly disengage! Gust an enemy (use chill/static field/shockwave/whatever to actually hit them), switch to fire and roll backwards. Turn around and run away! Easy right? Well, not easy maybe but at least it’s possible.

With regards to gust, can you use it fast enough and switch back to burning retreat within 1.5 seconds?

Not trying to disagree with you lol, just curious.

EDIT: ah just noticed you said it’s difficult, but possible. Cool

Aiglos.2907:

With regards to gust, can you use it fast enough and switch back to burning retreat within 1.5 seconds?

Not trying to disagree with you lol, just curious.

EDIT: ah just noticed you said it’s difficult, but possible. Cool

It literally REQUIRES 30 in arcana. If you don’t have that, the buff wears off before the global attunement cooldown expires. It’s not really about gust so much as using burning retreat within 0.2 seconds of switching to fire

I don’t believe it’s generally possible to do. will not believe it until I see it