Guild Wars 2

Chain Lightning

Problem
Back before Fireball was affected by Blasting Staff, this skill’s niche was to hit multiple targets reliably. With the change, Chain Lightning effectively became a poor man’s Fireball.

Solution
Increase the damage a bit, to make it a good alternative to Fireball.
-or-
reduce the cast time so it becomes our “fastest” autoatack (suggestion by Mizhas.8536)

Pros
-Chain Lightning will be a good alternative for Fireball (same skill, different flavor) and not a ‘stopgap’ measure.

Cons
-May deal a bit too much damage against a target if there’s only 1 other target due to the ‘double bounce’. However, given the low fighting chance staff eles have in such duels, combined with the relatively low usage of staff auto attacks in general, this shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

Lava Font

Suggestion to move damage to the front of the pulse rather than to the end removed due to convincing feedback.

Water Blast

Problem
No matter how strong the heal, the fact that the ele essentially deals no damage makes it impractical for use. Healing has little to no use in PvE, and the radius is too small for it to heal anyone in PvP.

Solution
Lower the heal, increase the damage up to the level of stoning.
-or-
Make the heal center around the ele rather than the target.

Pros
-The skill will have more varied use, making it an actual alternative to fireball or other attacks.

Cons
-Some folk may actually like the healing, despite the fact that it essentially cuts your party’s dps by 20%.

Blinding Surge

Problem
It takes a long while to cast, which takes away the effect of being able to stop an attack through blindness.

Solution
Lower the casting time, reduce the radius, recharge and/or the damage.

Pros
-The skill will be more useful as an active defense.
-It’ll make staff eles able to defend themselves a little better in 1v1 without making them more powerful in large scale events.

Cons
-Some people may prefer the extra damage or lower casttime.
-It may become too similar to scepter #3.

Gust

Problem
Gust takes so long to activate and has such a narrow cone that in order to actually hit something with it, you’ll have to pay them gold to stand still. This makes the skill utterly useless.

Solution
Make gust activate instantly on cast.

Pros
-The skill will finally be useful. Seriously, it does nothing at the moment because you’ll never hit with it.
-It won’t make staff eles more powerful in large encounters.

Cons
-Why wouldn’t you want to make a skill usable? Seriously, it’s just to make the skill actually DO something.

Eruption

Problem
The activation time on eruption is so long that it’s often only used as a blast finisher. It’s hard even in PvE to hit stuff with it. Given that it’s staff’s major bleed contributor, its delay effectively makes condition builds for staff useless.

Solution
Instead of waiting 3 seconds to deliver the entire effect, split the effect in 3 parts and add an effect every seconds. The blast finisher would still come at the final second.

Example
Instead of:
after 3 seconds, deal 300 damage, 9 stacks bleeding
the skill could read:
deal 100 damage and 3 stacks bleeding every second. The final pulse is a blast finisher.
Duration: 3 seconds

Pros
-It’ll make condition staff builds viable.
-It won’t affect using the skill for blast finishers in any way.
-It won’t increase the ele’s dps, just the timing.

Cons
-It may become too reliable. Instead of dividing the damage equally, the first damage package could deal 20%, the second 30% and the final 50% to still make it work.
-It could be a tad too powerful combined with Arcane Power immobilizes (because it can now immobilize for itself).

Someone on the balance forums asked me to put all these changes in a single post so here it is. This of course is just my opinion and not those of the full forums. So feel free to discuss.

My thoughts on them all:

Chain Lightning:
I’d just like to see a bit more of the damage frontloaded, so that it’s not useless against single targets.

Water Blast:
Eh. Somehow my rotation almost never leaves me sitting in water anyway :P
Giving it actual damage potential is probably best, since the game doesn’t really allow for ’tanks’ so much and so sitting back healing up the melee fighters isn’t really a good plan.

Lava Font:
I’m pretty sure this skill should stay as it is - it’s got a very short cast time, which would need to be increased if it did damage instantly. It’s a powerful area-denial spell, since it can do so much damage - getting someone to waste their dodges getting out of it, or give away the positional advantage, is fine by me.
Super quick cast fire field, easy to chain into/from other skills, yes please. Slow cast but instant-ticking? Ew. We have enough easy-to-rupt skills on Staff as it is.

Gust:
It can hit semi-reliably at close quarters, but isn’t great, no. Not entirely sure if I’d prefer a wider AoE effect, quicker cast or faster projectile (or some combination of these) to make it easier to land. Leaning just towards the first one I think, we don’t want to end up getting called OP for instant-cast knockbacks.

Eruption:
That’s a pretty interesting idea, though I definitley would lean towards putting most of the damage/bleeds on the end of the skill - it fits thematically with the blast finisher, anyway. Don’t see it being OP in ESurge builds, since more reliable immobilises are available with instant casts through the arcane utilities anyway.

Oh, I missed Lightning Surge.

I use this one primarily for its damage, or sometimes supporting an ally with a stomp. Definitely unreliable in all situations, though the AoE blind/damage combo is good in theory.

I’d much rather it stay as-is with regards to damage and cast time... and for the blind to be swapped with weakness.
Much better damage mitigation than a single blind (that pretty much requires you to predict a skill two seconds before it’se cast), could make the condition only apply to the target if it’s judged to be too strong AoE.

interesting ideas, ThiBash.

for sake of discussion / collection of staff ideas:

Forgotten Legend.9281:

a little bit of a dream sheet of mine for staff skills:

staff earth skills:

1: make this piercing so it can hit multiple targets, also add 1 stack vulnerability 4s
2: reduce the time between the cast and the blast finisher, or add a channel that when complete, buffs the bleed by another few stacks and/or increase the initial blast damage by 2x EDIT: spreading the damage out during over a few seconds would be good too, like how ThiBash mentions
3: add retaliation for 5s
4: add poison field for 3s
5: enable piercing to allow for multiple targets. “shockwave.” sounds like it should be AoE

staff air skills:

1: add 4s vulnerability, and add swiftness (4s) to allies it touches
2: blast finisher 20% chance (or more)
3: projectile finisher
4: add quickness (3s) to allies

staff water:

2: blast finisher 20% chance (or more)

staff fire:

1: blast finisher 20% chance

i can’t really offer any suggestions to D /D or S /C as my ele only uses staff (RP reasons)

as for cantrips, since they have the longest cooldowns of similiar skills among all the classes:

~armour of earth: grant nearby allies stability and protection
~arcane shield: change to function like guardian shield 5 skill. allowing the elementalist to detonate the shield early for damage on command via skill press.
~mist form: increase duration to 5 seconds, allow the elementalist to cancel early and gain retaliation (or regeneration) for 5 seconds

cheese.4739:

Lava Font:
I’m pretty sure this skill should stay as it is – it’s got a very short cast time, which would need to be increased if it did damage instantly. It’s a powerful area-denial spell, since it can do so much damage – getting someone to waste their dodges getting out of it, or give away the positional advantage, is fine by me.
Super quick cast fire field, easy to chain into/from other skills, yes please. Slow cast but instant-ticking? Ew. We have enough easy-to-rupt skills on Staff as it is.

Good point. I suppose if other changes were implemented, Lava Font would be fine. I’ll cross it off the list.

Forgotten Legend.9281:

interesting ideas, ThiBash.

for sake of discussion / collection of staff ideas:

Forgotten Legend.9281:

a little bit of a dream sheet of mine for staff skills:

Your ideas are a bit more…changing than mine. I kept mine close to the originals to avoid power creep as much as possible. In the hope that by doing so, they would be more likely to be implemented of course. Overall, I like staff. It’s just the little things that irk me.

Tactu.4867:

Gust -> Why isn’t this skill behaving like mesmer’s Ilussionary wave ?

No idea. I’d be ok with a single target skill if it would actually hit something.

• Why only 1 blast finisher on staff ? why isn’t Ice spike a blast finisher ?
  (don’t tell me it would be too much . Look at Pistol whip (stun + evade + instagib damage + spammable) , or mesmer’s mostly skills that do more than 2 things at once)

My guess would be because of our great variety of combo fields. Since we also have utilities and traits for blast finishers, it might be a bit much if we get extra blast finishers on the staff.

If anything, Anet has said in the past that they didn’t want finishers and fields in the same attunement for staff. Maybe it’s time to change that, but I’d like to get the minor stuff in first.

• why our skills enter on short cooldown, without actually firing, if the target moved besides us , or behind .
  ( the other classes , their character automatically turns to face the opponent and fires the ability )

This seems like a major bug…which could mean it’ll get fixed on the 15th…here’s to hoping it will!

Chain Lightning:
Damage is fine atm. The real problem is the cast time. Since you can’t control the bounces i believe that it would be fair to reduce the cast time so it becomes our “fastest” autoatack. In my opinion it would make real sense to be the fastest as it is an air AA.

Lava Font:
Nothing to say. Everything has already been said.

Water Blast:
I think that it should have its damage increased a bit. The heal is fine for me since i understand that it has its uses f.e. atacking a keep gate to heal the melees nearby.

Blinding Surge:
Damage and utility pretty powerful. Perhaps the cast time should be reduced so it doesn’t become a kitten atack comparing it to the other attunement number 2 skills.

Gust:
Definitely must be AoE. Cast time and even the range its fine but its really worthless trying to use a skill that fails almost 90% of the time.

Eruption:
I agree with the OP about this skill. Eles already have water 2# for delayed atack so making it something similar to Lava Font + bleeding would be nice.

Theese changes would really make the staff the awsome weapon that should be.

They aren’t actually making any changes to the staff with this update though, correct?

They haven’t mentioned any big ones, might be a couple of cast/aftercast tweaks but I’d not expect many.

Since there’s the big rune/sigil shakeup, and those new traits, I would hope that any significant weapon changes were nerfs to the meta-defining builds right now, and maybe small improvements to underpowered sets (like D/D since it got nerfed so kitten hard and pulled the rest of Ele down with it).

ThiBash.5634:

Lava Font

Problem
Lava Font starts to deal damage at the ‘end of the second’ rather than at the start. This makes dodging it even easier. Maybe this used to be an issue during the beta, but given the current state of the game, it’s a leftover relic.

It’s a leftover relic of a time where we had more charge-up skills and more ground-based projectile skills that required a fan-shaped ground-targeted aiming reticle. If anything, they were a better time.

ThiBash.5634:

Solution
Make it deal its damaging pulses at the start of the second.

Pros
-It’ll make it easier for eles to hit without really adding much to their overall dps.
-Other skills work like this too. Only Lava Font doesn’t.

This fact doesn’t make a difference in PvE.

If you’re playing in PvP, lead your targets or place it in an area that you don’t want a target to go. It does extremely high damage per pulse when the player is built for power damage, and sometimes controlling an enemy’s movement is more effective than raw damage, especially in team fights.

ThiBash.5634:

Cons
-There was a reason for this implementation that’s currently lost on me. Feel free to enlighten me.

You’re further encouraging the development of spammy gameplay that is void of aiming, timing, positioning or thinking. Giving players the opportunity to dodge something is what is supposed to balance this game. By removing that opportunity, you’re asking that GW2 become more like Runescape (as if it really already isn’t close in resemblance). Stop that.

Build your combos and don’t auto-attack in water unless you’re fighting Mai Trin with max stacks. Stop being bad.

Swagg.9236:

You’re further encouraging the development of spammy gameplay that is void of aiming, timing, positioning or thinking. Giving players the opportunity to dodge something is what is supposed to balance this game. Stop that.

My aim is to make staff slightly better at 1v1 duelling without adding anything that’ll make them more powerful in general. I’m fully aware of how the staff ele works, in fact I count myself among the biggest supporters. Staff doesn’t need huge changes or overhauls, just some tweaks. Any dot field already has the ‘move out of it’ balance option. What I’m asking for is to make the necro’s instant field damage apply to Lava Font too. And if you’d have read my post, you’d have seen I already ‘removed’ the suggestion anyway.

Build your combos and don’t auto-attack in water unless you’re fighting Mai Trin with max stacks. Stop being bad.

If you solution to a skill not working is “don’t use it” then you’ve effectively admitted that it’s in need of a change. So thanks for supporting my argument even if your intent was to talk me down.

ThiBash.5634:

My aim is to make staff slightly better at 1v1 duelling without adding anything that’ll make them more powerful in general. I’m fully aware of how the staff ele works, in fact I count myself among the biggest supporters.

Then get better at it. It’s a viable 1v1 spec in many situations if the pilot is actually thinking ahead. Remember that battles start at a distance of 3000 range.

ThiBash.5634:

Staff doesn’t need huge changes or overhauls, just some tweaks. Any dot field already has the ‘move out of it’ balance option. What I’m asking for is to make the necro’s instant field damage apply to Lava Font too. And if you’d have read my post, you’d have seen I already ‘removed’ the suggestion anyway.

You want to remove the idea of tracking a target or setting up a strike for damage. This is a simple skill that any ordinary human should be able to handle. Please don’t attempt to remove one of the few bastions of this skill that remains in the game.

ThiBash.5634:

If you solution to a skill not working is “don’t use it” then you’ve effectively admitted that it’s in need of a change. So thanks for supporting my argument even if your intent was to talk me down.

A non-reliance on an auto-attack is healthy of the game. Active, cool-down-balanced skill use that delivers well-cued attacks creates more legible combat for defenders and rewarding combat for attackers.

In the end, here’s your problem: the majority of GW2 is broken/overpowered, so—instead of attempting to tone things down (the more difficult way because such efforts would need to incorporate the entire game)—you just want to buff the things that are actually well-balanced. Stop that.

Swagg.9236:

A non-reliance on an auto-attack is healthy of the game. Active, cool-down-balanced skill use that delivers well-cued attacks creates more legible combat for defenders and rewarding combat for attackers.

Auto-attacks should probably serve as an important part of the game allowing new players to enter and be effective within the game while having a small skill requirement. They should not be the most effective option when compared to strategies and abilities that take more skill to use. That said, while strategies that have a higher skill requirement should have a higher output, the ratio of skill to power should decrease so that there is still an entry point for new players.

(Where I’m pulling this from: Extra Credits: Balancing for Skill)

Swagg.9236:

Then get better at it. It’s a viable 1v1 spec in many situations if the pilot is actually thinking ahead. Remember that battles start at a distance of 3000 range.

If that’s your best argument then you’ve already lost the discussion. I do just about everything with staff, including duelling, roaming and sPvP. These suggestions come from over 1.5 years of playing experience on the staff and are intended as QoL changes rather than power creep.

You want to remove the idea of tracking a target or setting up a strike for damage. This is a simple skill that any ordinary human should be able to handle. Please don’t attempt to remove one of the few bastions of this skill that remains in the game.

Not at all. As I’ve said before, I’ve already removed the Lava Font due to better arguments than yours. The only thing I left was a placeholder so any replies to that would still make sense.

A non-reliance on an auto-attack is healthy of the game. Active, cool-down-balanced skill use that delivers well-cued attacks creates more legible combat for defenders and rewarding combat for attackers.

No argument there. Which is why I’m careful in my balancing of auto-attacks. I’m not calling for huge damage buffs. I’m not even touching Fireball or Stoning. All I’m suggesting is a slight change to Water Blast so that it won’t be a total waste in the rare cases that it is used.

In the end, here’s your problem: the majority of GW2 is broken/overpowered, so—instead of attempting to tone things down (the more difficult way because such efforts would need to incorporate the entire game)—you just want to buff the things that are actually well-balanced. Stop that.

A fix for gust going on cooldown without cast because your camera orientation was slightly off isn’t a buff. None of the changes proposed here are major buffs. They’re mostly aimed at making skills do what they’re supposed to.

Staff is in a decent place right now. But that doesn’t mean everything is working like it’s supposed to, and I’m asking for Anet to re-examine the things that in practice just don’t function.