Guild Wars 2

Hello, im here now to speak about the skill “Shatterstone” (from here on refered to as “SS”), how it breaks the flow of combat and also why it doesnt fit our current playstyle . Also my elementalist wields a S/D setup and that is the playstyle i will talk about in this post.

But first the good stuff about it. SS is a great skill because of the huge amount of vulnerability it can stack on a target in a relativly short time, but that alone does not really justify swapping into water attunement to get it off. So what does justify swapping in to water attunement? Well, in my opinion one single thing, dying. Or to be more specific the moment you realize “Oh kitten im dying here”, and in such a situation we are talking just a few moments to get it under control or die.

Now, im not a pro in any sence but i know how i like to handle it and it goes something like this. SS -> Frost Aura (applies chill on target) -> Trident (hit both me and enemy) -> Running/Dodging away from my enemy -> Cleansing Wave -> Glyph of Elemental Harmony -> SS -> Attunement swap.

This is the ideal way (ofcourse open to some alteration depending on the situation) i would prefer to use water to heal myself, get my enemy under control and apply some free vulnerability in the process. But this all breaks apart because the way my character acts during the animation and the way the skill is described does not indicate such a long cast time. When cast, SS first forms the crystal with a crackle sound then it grows with another crackle sound and at this point my elementalist by all visual means seems to have finished his cast and is ready to move on but instead he cannot cast until the final crackle blows the crystal apart.

What this does to me while playing is that my mind is set on the fact that my elementalist now is ready to cast another spell while the cruel reality is that he isnt and this is how it breaks the flow of combat. Its just a matter of control and freedom, i want to have compleate control of my character and the freedom to use him to his full potential and the way to do this is for me to go with my gut which in turn gets its feelings from the visual information on the screen. In other words this is not a post about how SS needs to cast faster although that would be the prefered solution and its not a big change, all that is needed is for my elementalist to regain his casting freedom at the second crackle instead of the third. But if this is for some reason out of the question i must stress the importance of casting animation and actual skill compleation to add up or else the flow of combat is broken and irritation is spawned in my brain because my character “ISNT DOING WHAT HE IS SUPPOSED TO, I CAN SEE THE LITTLE KITTEN IDLING AWAY BUT HE WONT CAST WHEN IM TELLING HIM TO, RAAAAGEEEE!”.

Also this break in the flow of combat compleatly contradicts the current playstyle (atleast mine) of the elementalist. Attunement dancing, casting as fast as possible, always doing something and very rarely auto attacking. Everything must add up when such a fast playstyle is the key to utilizing the potential of the class, my character must respond to every action i take unless he is already clearly performing one.

I am also quite sure that SS isnt the only skill suffering from this kind of problem and im also quite sure we elementalists cant be the only ones with skills like that. Im not blaming Anet for this because no game this huge is 100% at release although i would want to beg all the devs out there to deal with these kind of problems first before trying to balance the game, clunky combat will always be most responsible for less fun and more rage and needs to be trimmed to perfection IMO.

I will thumbs up this one. I believe since it takes the skill time to grow and is easily dodgable it should be insta cast and then you are able to cast another spell.

I agree. Scepter water skills have no synergy and serve no real purpose (to great effect anyway).

Sure Shatterstone is useful for the long stacks of vulnerability but why would I use this when I can easily use the auto attack in daggers to inflict vulnerability with high DPS and just as effective (if not, better) as an AoE skill.

Using water with scepter is definately NOT for those who try to solo PvE and is probably more suited towards team scenarios but even then its a bit of a lack luster skill set.
It probably just needs to inflict “chill” or function similar to how it worked in GW1. Which was deal damage on use, then deal more damage 2 secs later.

Also, water scepter can have some projectile finisher with %x probability and some combo fields.

I miss the beta days when Shatterstone basically was the ice scepter autoattack. I think it was only 2 stacks of vulnerability and less damage than it does now, but there was no cast time so you could crank them out twice as fast and still cast other spells in between.

TBH it was the only part of the scepter I ever really enjoyed using.

^ Thats how it should be now

I agree with Shatterstone being way too weak… especially in solo pve! Yes we have other elements but Anet is basically making me ditching water scepter skills, and reluctantly using other elements when I have personal favorite on Water attuntment spells. (I actually find Water Trident to be even worse… 20 sec, ground aoe, terrible damage, removed the push back when they first introduce it for why?? WT used to be such a pleasent spell in GW1! Now its just disappointing…)

It’s not worth casting at all at this point.

A combination of low damage, long cast time, low cooldown, damage delay, tiny AoE, low-duration condition, poor condition choice (vuln on its own isn’t all that powerful, and can be applied much faster by other classes) pretty much mean…

Hell, the skill is flat-out awful. It has no redeeming features. I feel this way about a lot of the sceptre. Fire attunement can put out decent damage, but no more than a decent dagger elementalist could. Air is completely thoughtless and not dynamic at all. Earth attunement also suffers from similar problems, except pretty much none of its spells feel worth casting. I’ve seen some fairly successful sceptre elementalists in WvW, but I’ve no idea how they pull it off.

Here, I’m stupid tired and tried to re-imagine the skill in a more dynamic/useful form:

Shatterstone
.75s cast time, 900 range
Fires a block of ice at target enemy. On contact, applies Chilled (3s) and Shatterstone (3s), in addition to light damage.

When the Shatterstone debuff fades, target enemy and all adjacent enemies take heavy damage from the Shatterstone detonating. Applies 10 stacks of Vulnerability (8s) to all affected individuals.