Guild Wars 2

(Meant to say Change instead of Chance)

Also, on your comments towards Staff, I’m not sure if you play ComboFinisher Staff. I’d suggest under the Lava Font to remove the start-up time is all. I enjoy have Fire so I can throw Might around like a child with a bowl of peas.

If you could do anything to buff Staff, it would be to give us another combo type (pleasedoShadow,pleasedoShadow,pleasedoShadow)

Things that would be obvious improvements to Staff:
Increased damage from Fire, Air, and Earth autoattacks
Increased delivery time of Lava Font and/or replace with Trigger Skill or instant damage skill (Lava Mine)
Increase Flame Bursts normal damage, reduce burning duration if needed to balance
Increase Air autoattack damage, cast speed, and travel time (Like to see this replaced with a bolt of lightning rather than chain lightning, honestly)
Increase Lightning Surge damage, reduce cast time slightly
Make Gust a directional AoE, similar to Mesmer equivalent
Make Windborn Speed do lightning damage to enemies inside its area of effect
Make Static Field a DoT inside its AoE, with the stun remaining on the ring
Improve Cast Time for Eruption, maybe small knockback a la Big Ol’ Bomb but not as strong
Increase duration of Magnetic Aura? (Maybe, this one is pretty good as is)
Increase length of cripple effect for Unsteady Ground, or better yet make it unpassable like the Guardian skill, except minus the swiftness for allies
Improve projectile speed for Shockwave; its far too easy to dodge (It’s just a slide to left… XD)

@Elric. Thank you for posting. These are the type of discussions we need to be having. I agree with you that you can spec Staff for condition damage. However, about the burns and bleeds. Flame Burst is not even half as good as Signet of Fire. Burning Retreat’s burn damage is also underwhelming and would only work in PvE against a melee mob, but like I said in the article, it’s more about the gap opener and dodge for me anyways. As for the bleeds, Eruption would be amazing with a faster animation time. Shockwave’s bleed is just bad, but again, it’s more about the added effect of immobilize. Scepter’s bleed is amazing, and with a Dagger OH, churning earth would be amazing with a faster animation. Every move in Fire Scepter/Dagger is amazing, aside from Dragon’s tooth being a bit slow. You say Staff is chock full of attack abilities. To that I say show me a good reliable non-condition damage ability. You cannot, as I stated in the article. You can either play Lava Font dancing games, or rely on the very subpar damage of Lightning Surge or something.

@Castor. I encourage you to try another class at least for a little while. Pick absolutely any class and level it to 20-30 or so. I’d love to hear what you think.

@Selo. I would agree on your points about Meteor Shower. it was actually changed once upon a time to “Meteor”, doing it’s damage all at once. But people wailed and moaned and it got changed back. The problem is, it’s great in huge battles like in WvW, but terrible otherwise. I don’t want to open that can of worms. Like you said, Barrage is a much better ability since it is not completely random like Meteor Shower.

@Seraskus. Like I said to Elric, Flame Burst compared to Signet of Fire is just bad. I realize you can use both, and if it’s working for you then by all means stick with it. If you actually use Eruption, well you are a better man than I. I agree on Stoning. The only thing you posted that I majorly disagree with is on Gust. Gust is amazing for when an enemy is trying to rez someone. Just blow them away. Or blow them off a cliff It’s 1200 range too. Oh and the Auras are amazing, like Westley states. Just the Fire one I really don’t like.

@ Flennel. It’s great to hear from someone who plays so many different classes and keeps them all at the same level. That’s what I did with my Warrior. I agree with everything you said. Every fight is a complete hassle and huge risk. On my Ele I would avoid any fight I didn’t absolutely need to engage in like the plague. On my Warrior, I killed absolutely everything in sight. I couldn’t believe how many items and money I was raking in.

@Westley. I like that idea of casting Stoning through ice Field. The only problem is the steep cooldown of Frozen Ground. 40 seconds reduced to 32 with trait. If Stoning was a bleed, and if there was a Water trait to increase the DURATION of Frozen Ground, then we’d really be in business. the damage of Stoning is just so terrible. But anyways, another thing you could do for that build is to use Glyphs of lesser and greater Elementals. You could throw up more frost fields when Frozen Ground is on cooldown with ice Elementals. Just something to try I suppose. As far as what you said about unstable Ground, I find Frozen Ground accomplishes the goal of slowing mobs much more efficiently, and keeps them slowed for a longer period of time. It is all due to it being a circle instead of a line, which I mentioned in the article. If unstable Ground was placed like Burning Retreat, in a vertical line instead of a horizontal line, that would be absolutely god-like.

@Olinn. I am aware that Eruption is a blast finisher. That is why whenever I am using Staff, I make sure to equip Arcane Wave. As to Flame Burst, like I said to Seraskus, Signet of Fire is vastly superior. You could use both, by all means. However, you would have to give something up. Signet of Earth for CC and landing Lava Fonts, Arcane Wave for having a blast finisher that is actually good, Mist Form for…living, Armor of Earth for Prot/Stability/Stun Break, Lesser Elementals for soloing or for healer duty. Seriously though, Flame Burst compared to Dragon’s Tooth (when tweaked), Drake’s breath, or Signet of Fire is just bad.

@Clackerr. Judging by your utilities and trait distribution, you are really really trying to make Ele work. I salute you. let me know how The Dagger/Focus works out.

@Zarron. Could not agree more. The Elemental Attunement trait in Arcane is absolutely necessary in my opinion. And if you are playing Staff, you have no choice but to invest at least 20 to get Blasting Staff as well.

@Tyrel. I agree about the health pools. I’m absolutely fine with having different armor classes. Thats a part of these type of games. But these health pools are just too much. They add a second layer of suck to the Elementalist they do not need. I think every class should have the same 15k health pool, but still have the different armor classes. Having both variables is just too difficult to balance. Just have the armor difference and tweak from there.

I could not possibly agree more with your section on damage. Mobs just don’t stand still, and move extremely fast especially at later levels. Might as well just Lava Font your own feet and face tank the mob. Oh wait, my bad, thought I was playing my Warrior for a second and could do that. This is why I’m pushing so hard for Flame Burst to be changed to a good single target (not ground target arghhh) non-condition damage ability. All glass and no cannon, for sure.

Agree on the Traits. While leveling my Warrior I came to the conclusion that what made it so good was not just abilities such as Hundred Blades. It was that their traits were absolutely great, and has such a great synergy with eachother. You can literally spec any way you want, and use whatever weapon you want. Greatsword is just the best for just raw PvE killing speed.

As far as the Weapon Choices, I never understood why they would even consider making the class with the lowest armor and lowest health be in melee to do any kind of burst damage. You want to be at range, preferably 1200, whenever possible. It’s just bad design to force the Ele into melee. And that burst you get for being in melee with a Dagger/Dagger build is still not as much as a single Hundred Blades from a class with the highest armor and health.

In your general section, I definitely agree with what you said about burning. Bleed is my condition of choice, but in Scepter/Dagger your only good bleed is single target. So when facing multiple mobs your only choice is to switch to fire for Dragons Tooth and face tank the mobs (lol) because that’s the only way you’re going to get it to hit unless you have someone tanking for you.

@Qwert. I agree. Our high damage attunement (single target at least) somehow does the lowest damage. It has turned into some sort of weird utility attunement. I can’t say it is a bad thing though, as I am particularly fond of Air Staff. But yeah, damage-wise it’s bad.

@Chronologist. Definitely. Warrior Rifle is part of the reason I rolled Warrior. I wanted to know what it felt like to do good single-target ranged damage. Volley at 1200 and Kill Shot at 1500 absolutely blow anything the Ele can do out of the water.

@Erawys. I definitely agree that 1500 range would be amazing. I’m not crazy about having to get Blasting Staff though, for reasons I mentioned in the article. And yes, the squishiest class should do the most damage, or do the most SOMETHING. Agree on Meteor Shower, just wouldn’t touch it for reasons I mentioned to Selo. Whining mainly. Your idea to speed up the animation so it hits less randomly is a great one though. I agree that Earth Staff 1 should have a bleed, as I mentioned to Westley.

@tclark. I agree that the slow-casting abilities are definitely a main issue. The only thing I disagree with you on is the only thing you disagree with me on, and that is Churning Earth. I would much rather have it do less damage but have a faster cast, making it more accessible for it’s great burst or bleed. If you are just using it for a finisher, it’s great bleed and cripple won’t even matter. Imagine it not casting so slowly and being able to throw it into your Scepter/Dagger condition build for some sweet AOE bleed, or throwing it into the Dagger/Dagger burst combo for another step of good burst. Right now it’s mechanics just don’t allow for this.

@issac. I wish you luck, and encourage you to try every spec and keep tweaking til you find something that works. But just know that since you use Staff, you pretty much have no choice but to invest 20 points into Arcane to get Blasting Staff. So your 30 Fire 30 Earth build is not possible. I hate the Arcane tree because of this issue, and the fact that in order to swap attunements and rotate through whatever skills you may need at the time in an efficient manner, you need to lower that swap cooldown.

@Ryld. Try Arcane Wave. You can thank me later. Bro.

@Taikanaru. Agree on Unsteady Ground. They just need to make it a circle. But yet another person who doesn’t want Eruption changed because they like it as a Blast Finisher. I’m telling you, try Arcane Wave. Eruption is an attack you know. It is supposed to hurt things. In it’s current state it is only going to hurt things if you are standing still, face tanking the mob. About that Churning Earth thing, I will say using Lightning Flash is very cool, and something I did not know about. The problem is that I would never be able to fit Lightning Flash into a build, no matter what weapon set I use. I just don’t have the room. But hey, that’s just my problem, and may not be yours or any other person’s.

Munchkin.4137:

@Ryld. Try Arcane Wave. You can thank me later. Bro.

I do.

But I like having another way to do it.

Ryld.1340:

Munchkin.4137:

@Ryld. Try Arcane Wave. You can thank me later. Bro.

I do.

But I like having another way to do it.

I don’t want to take away the fact that Eruption is a Blast Finisher. I just want the animation sped up.

Munchkin.4137:

Ryld.1340:

Munchkin.4137:

@Ryld. Try Arcane Wave. You can thank me later. Bro.

I do.

But I like having another way to do it.

I don’t want to take away the fact that Eruption is a Blast Finisher. I just want the animation sped up.

That’s what I’m saying. If you do that, then it’s a lot harder to cast it, switch attunements, then lay down the combo field.

Excellent thread raising some of the issues and possible solutions with Ele.

GJ op, hope Arenanet read this.

Ryld.1340:

Munchkin.4137:

Ryld.1340:

Munchkin.4137:

@Ryld. Try Arcane Wave. You can thank me later. Bro.

I do.

But I like having another way to do it.

I don’t want to take away the fact that Eruption is a Blast Finisher. I just want the animation sped up.

That’s what I’m saying. If you do that, then it’s a lot harder to cast it, switch attunements, then lay down the combo field.

If the cast speed was fast, you could lay the combo field you want to blast, then switch to Earth and still have time for the field to be blasted, since Eruption has a faster cast time. It’s the same end result. Your field gets blasted. It would just take some slight playstyle adjustments to reverse the steps. Keep in mind that I am also pushing for attunement swap cooldowns to be reduced to a base of 10 seconds, like a weapon swap.

a couple of points to add, as far as i’m concerned the primary reason for the cooldown on attunement switch is because a class with 20 abilities would be considerably more powerful than a class with 10, if those 20 abilities were tuned to a similar level. In reality i feel like 2/5 of the abilities on each line are filler that you won’t really use unless your sat in that attunement.

Looking at it like that you can see we have to have a cooldown or considerably worse moves on several attunements to compensate in the grand scheme of things. I’d rather keep the attunement delay it puts a decent onus on making the correct decisions as you can’t flip back if you did something wrong. That appeals to me, higher skill cap is a good thing, it also makes the arcane tree viable as realistically what this provides is the ability to swap more readily which is currently underrated i feel, though i like the arcane tree a great deal.

my biggest beef with ele is i feel that dagger is totally pointless, i really feel it doesn’t have the melee damage markup that the genuine melee weapons have so its just a short ranged version of scepter, about the only reason i’d use it is to kill the fabled condition immune buildings.

I also think that being able to stack 15 might for your group is currently underrated, thats worth a serious amount of damage in any group.

Speaking cooldowns why do people think having a much lower attunement swap timer would be a problem? Due to Elemental Attunement perhaps? Slap on a “once very ten seconds to it”.

We already have cooldowns on our skills, why not just decrease base attunement swap cooldown to 5 seconds reduced to 1 second if going ten into Arcane for Elemental Attunement?

Two other things I’d like to mention…

a) Allow attunement swapping and utility usage while using RTL
b) Meteor Shower, 90% of the time in WvW I drop CC in rapid succession after channeling MS (rapid succession because frankly two seconds of soft CC is a joke).

So let’s think about a huge fireball hitting the ground, surely it would leave a dent, and surely that dent would have some impact on mobility, what I’m getting at is that MS should logically apply some form of cripple within the area of effect or a daze if you get hit by a METEORkitten

Why does Barrage get to cripple and apply a more compact hit than MS? I’d offer a counter to anyone saying it would be OP simply due to the random dispersion of the Meteors already.

I think Meteor Swarm just does damage so that if you want cripple/CC you have to swap over (of course, Lava Chains underwater sort of messes with this reasoning, but, whatever.) I think really all Meteor Swarm needs is some way to make it more consistent (maybe give the meteors some more splash so even indirect hits still do something to anyone in the AoE?)

Before I start I have to say I’ve used a staff since I got one at lv 3 end haven’t switched once, I tried multiple weapons in the beta’s but this one clearly stand out as the best for me.

I agree on a few things with what people have said like the air trait, I hardly use it at all cause it does minor damage compared to the other attunements or atleast in my case and the skills aren’t all that great, the gust is so easily avoidable and also easily blocked by another person/mob, this is extremely annoying when you want a to interrupt someone like an graveling breeder and one of the small one spawns or gets in your way, a blast would be much handier.

About fire, burning retreat is indeed good as it is, it is an extra dodge with a bit of burn but I hardly focus on that, Lava font is also great and Flame burst could use more burn but with the Meteor Shower I have to completely disagree, you say it’s useless aside from WvW, that’snot true at all, it’s one the best skills when focused on mutiple opponents or big ones, the more there are or the bigger they are the better for every shot that comes down, combined with the fire version of glyph of storm and lava font you can wipe many group easily or atleast do tons of damage.

Water is perfect as it is, maybe a bit more healing in Healing rain but I would never complain if it’s stays like this.

Earth, I agree on all fronts except on eruption, it’s shouldn’t get only normal damage and no bleeding, it could use a faster time to hit but this is not needed in the way i use it

I use the follwing utility skills: Glyph of storm, Glyph of lesser elemental and Radiation field and my elite skill is de D-defensive golem and my heal is the standard one which I find the best since they adjusted the one with the healing per skill, that one was indeed overpowered. The glyph of lesser elemental is for using this one as distraction or extra damage mainly when fighting against a single opponent. The glyph of storms is another AoE and this is also what I’m mainly focused on, I can survive in large groups of enemies cause of the following use of skills, whenever they get close I start switching to earth and use the Glyph of storms, this will damage and blind enemies with every hit making you almost invunerable inside, after I use this skill I use Eruption and Radiation field causing bleeding/poison/weakness, next I usually wait for another eruption and then switch to fire while performing the move and then use lava font creating alot of damage and also an area of might effect and as last meteor shower if needed to finish them off, you say the damage is terrible but it might just be your build cause mine is fine and yes I have other characters so I know how much damage they do. Staff can indeed be support but that is mainly the 2nd function, I clearly define it’s purpose as dealing damage and so do other elementalist I know, you hardly see any at a high lv be it alone or in a group use anything other than a staff.

My traits are the following: 20 in fire for power and 10% extra ower/ 20% faster cooldown trait, 10 in lighting for the 20% faster cooldown with glyphs since I use 3 of them and very often, 10 in earth for a bit more defence and the armor of earth, 10 in water for the extra healing/vitality/ soothering mist and cleansing wave and lastly but for me the most important one 20 in arcane, increased boon duration/ faster attunement recharge rate, attument boon when swithing and +5 seconds for these bonusses and blasting staff for larger AoE.

About the attunements swapping, you clearly don’t want to lower it, here are a few reasons, if you spend point at the arcane trait( explained why above) and switch quite often between them for the boons and then lower the recharge rate you would get them too fast like for example might, you already get enough to last you till the next time you can switch into it when spending some points at this trait, this not the worst part cause that will be switching to earth and water, granting protection and regeneration too ofton would be too much and might even make an elementalist too strong in some cases.

The reason I bring my build and fighting style into this discussion is to show you that things you and others may view like problems aren’t neccesarily problems to other people, on the contrary, changing some things to your liking might ruin builds of others, the elementalist is indeed not perfect and could use things like a little more health though if your healing stays the same and doesn’t fully heal you now you don’t even really need more health. My character does fine in PvE, WvW and dungeons as it is. sPvP is another matter but that is also not where this build is made for. You do have some points and I see that many others agree with you but not everything is a problem, some thing can really be caused by a persons build, his/her fighting style or just that the profession isn’t really suited for them. This is my opinion, you and others may disagree but that’s fine with me, this is what discussions are for.

You say to fix an elementalist, I don’t see how when it’s not even broken.

Zarron.6420:

I think Meteor Swarm just does damage so that if you want cripple/CC you have to swap over (of course, Lava Chains underwater sort of messes with this reasoning, but, whatever.) I think really all Meteor Swarm needs is some way to make it more consistent (maybe give the meteors some more splash so even indirect hits still do something to anyone in the AoE?)

And here again we have the issue with our 20 skills!

Rangers Barrage is damage AND CC.

Elementalist? First you cast MS which takes a year, swap to water and cast Frozen Ground and pray there’s someone still standing there. On second thought, skip the Frozen Ground, anyone that’s still standing in your MS by the time Frozen Ground has cast wouldn’t move anyway so there’s no need for the Frozen Ground. If you do it the other way around by the time your MS finally is done casting Frozen Ground is already gone.

Why have 20 skills when we need 2 skills to do what other classes do with 1 skill?

About Eruption; I never ‘face-tank’ with it and it deals plenty of damage. It’s actually my build’s most damaging skill.
I used Arcane Wave since betas and I got it as soon as I could on release. I learned about Eruption’s blast finisher much later.
Lightning Flash works well with the water trait Soothing Disruptions, which gives you regeneration and vigor every time you use a cantrip. The +100% endurance regen is awesome.

Exactly, this is why I said I drop all my CC after I’ve finished channeling MS, I literally drop Frozen Ground, Ice Spike, Unsteady Ground, Eruption spread around the MS area to confuse any dodging that takes place and even after all of that I may knock off 1/3 of any players caught in the area’s health.

Our CC is practically useless when dodge roll distances aren’t affected by any of it. I’m talking purely WvW here, PVE is fine.

Traited 20 Arcane, 30 Fire, 10 Air and either 20 Water or Earth depending with Blasting Staff. 90% of the time I’ll switch in Glyph of Storms and Arcane Power when fighting from a wall, granted I’m running Carrion Armour currently but hope that when switching that out for more Power/Precision/Crit damage the numbers will improve.

Apart from buggy skills that need fixing and better trait synergy the best suggestions since BWE3 nerf have been looking at our scaling coefficients to get better bang from our stats.

So what caused the BWE3 changes? Were Eles that mighty? That seems odd to see as an issue, considering out of my 4 professions played, the Ele dies more often. Clearly the changes were too draconian if they were needed.

Treacle.2654:

So what caused the BWE3 changes? Were Eles that mighty? That seems odd to see as an issue, considering out of my 4 professions played, the Ele dies more often. Clearly the changes were too draconian if they were needed.

The cause apparently was that Elementalists could kill to fast. Considering the state Frenzy 100B Warriors or Haste Pistol Whip Thieves are in at the moment I really wonder what kind of insane killing machines Elementalists must’ve been to be considered faster at killing stuff than those two combos. Even with increased damage and if you used something like Flame Ring + all your blast finishers to stack might you’d still need loads of CC to make your combo actually hit and it’d take a lot longer than the Quickness combos. I mean Dragon Tooth you see a mile away, Flame Grabs aiming is just awkward at times and Churning Earth takes a year to cast.

I’m also kinda interested in the complete change list on the Elementalist nerfs. From what I’ve heard the CD on Arcane Blast/Wave were increased and Flame Grab damage reduced?

Thanks for putting this together Munchkin. My first and only character is an Elementalist so I had no idea just how much this class was lagging behind the others. I had a feeling I was underpowered but didn’t really know for sure.

I must be in the minority here, because I absolutely love my staff elementalist.
I agree some small tweaks should be made here and there, but I honestly am happy with 99% of the abilities.

I don’t feel underpowered at all. Sure I don’t do as much damage as my friend’s ranger or warrior, but I feel like i can control the fight a lot easier than he can.
I also don’t see much of an issue with damage. When dealing with multiple mobs i just round them up, slow and aoe nuke them down. I can easily kill groups of guys faster than my gf’s engineer. (she doesn’t use the flamethrower though, so probably part of the reason why haha)

I agree with some of the OPs points, and commend you for laying them out so eloquently.
I would definitely like to see the cooldown when swapping between elements closer to typical weapon swap cooldowns. Until then, I just throw points into arcane. doesn’t bother me though, i absolutely love the attunement buffs when swapping, and the larger staff aoe areas have helped considerably with healing and slows/snares while grouping with friends.

I can’t comment on scepters and daggers though, as I rarely use them.
Staff is just more my style i guess. I’m having a blast with him.

Change Lava Font ? It is the best skill that elementalist has… I did all my levels 1-80 with staff + my 3.5k kills in WvW.
And Lava Font is perfectly fine. You just need to work on the placment of it in order to work in PvE try to kite the mobs in it and you will get the full duration. You have like 0,4 sec deley on your lava font. Use chill instead of imobilise it is quite huge area and in this area you can kite better and keep the enemies in you lava font. The Icy spike animation is slow for a reason. It has very high damage and applies condition, same with erruption. Landing erruption mean alot of bleeding 6 stacks for 15 seconds and 1k base damage. All this skills are meant to do around the same amount of damage in given period of time.
Lava Font is more forgiving as you can miss 1-2 ticks. and still get dmg output from it. While erruption and ice spike if you miss you miss all dmg.
To be effective you need to rotate the skills properly and you will have no CDs at all.

Munchkin.4137:

@Olinn. I am aware that Eruption is a blast finisher. That is why whenever I am using Staff, I make sure to equip Arcane Wave. As to Flame Burst, like I said to Seraskus, Signet of Fire is vastly superior. You could use both, by all means. However, you would have to give something up. Signet of Earth for CC and landing Lava Fonts, Arcane Wave for having a blast finisher that is actually good, Mist Form for…living, Armor of Earth for Prot/Stability/Stun Break, Lesser Elementals for soloing or for healer duty.

I figure it’s safe to assume you were directing that to me yes

I’m really not sure that I understand why you think Signet of Fire is better though. They have the same uptime over a 20 second period (That’s one application of Signet of Fire and two of Flame Burst) and over that 20 second period Flame Burst is capable of hitting an area of effect. I’m not going to say it’s the best power ever or anything, but it’s better than the active effect of Signet of Fire and certainly fits in with the AoE nature of an elementalist’s staff.

You’ve managed not to actually try and convince me that eruption is bad though. Sure you’ve said it’s bad because its slow, but I’ve found that’s what makes it useful. In PvE content I very rarely miss hitting the enemies I intend to with it. In PvP though yea …. That doesn’t make it a bad power though, just a bad PvP one.

Alright here’s my take on your post as well as some of my own input
1) Absolutely correct, this is a huge problem with the elementalists damage capabilities.
Staff-
Fire- I’m personally alright with lava font, the only change I’d like to see with lava font is possibly a size of the area increase 10-15%
Meteor- I think the animation time needs to synchronize with the damage time better, so when you start using the attack it actually starts damaging the target rather than halfway through the animation.
Water- Ice Spike needs to be sped up a wee bit considering the whole damage of water attunement basically depends on this 1 skill. Maybe a 30 – 35% increase?
Air- No problems with animations
Earth- Eruption takes way to long to be useful in PvP except in the frenzied fights that occur in matches when people are sort of new to the game. It’s also just way too delayed considering the majority of the skills damage is condition based.

Scepter:
Fire- Dragons tooth is simply not going to hit in PvP, it’s blatantly obvious and all you have to do is walk out from under it.
Phoenix- Possibly have the travel time sped up slightly, again it’s a very usable skill in PvE, but only really useful at close range in PvP, so if the movement speed of the skill sped up say 40-50% it would be nice.
Water- Shatterstone, this is possibly the primary reason I don’t use the scepter, because every 2 seconds I have to place another one and I find I simply end up staring at my UI. I’d like to see it sped up extensively if it’s going to be used that frequently.

Daggers- The only real problem with daggers is churning earth, I get interrupted by mobs very frequently and by players even more. The cast time needs to be reduced by at least 40%.

Trident: Magma Orb needs to explode slightly quicker, maybe 15-20%, just to make it a little more friendly in PvE.

2) About attunement swapping, I have to disagree, the cooldown does not need to be decreased. As while we have a higher cooldown than weapon users, we have 4 of them to deal with and use strategically.

3) I have to agree with the 20% woes to a certain degree, but the good thing about 20% cooldown reductions are for people who aren’t all that amazing at the class or want to focus on a specific attunement. As with the reduction of time on one attunement means that staying in that attunement is more important and staying in the other attunements is less important. So, many less experienced players who can’t actively make use of all 4 attunements would strongly benefit from having skills that decrease cooldown time while more experienced players need to be able to select traits and buffs which benefit the profession as a whole.

In regards to dagger/dagger I primarily find that there’s just a tiny bit of tweaking needed. First there is a rather large lack of combo finishers and combo fields. Aside from ring of fire and burning speed(which lasts like 4 seconds and is tiny) and earth attunement there are no combo finishers or fields at all. Compare this to the staff or scepter and the dagger is rather lackluster in this aspect. Having a projectile finisher or another explosion would give the dagger a pleasant boost while making it more useful in PvE and PvP.

Otherwise I’d just like to see a slight tweaking of cooldowns and possibly a damage buff to air attunement in daggers.

@Brian. Thank you for posting. I find your build very interesting, and am going to try out a variation of it. I’m just glad I’m Asura. Meteor Shower is great for big groups of players or mobs. I agree. The problem is that if you don’t have someone tanking those mobs for you, then you are tanking the mobs, and it’s startup animation and casting animation keep you standing still for a very long time. If you could just drop it like a Lava Font I would be all for it. On Earth, I know some people want the bleed to stay. That’s fine. I just want a faster cast. If it had a faster cast, and the attunement swapping wasn’t so limited, you could use it to blast your fields like you already do, just blasting the field after you cast it, instead of laying the Eruption first and then the field. I kind of agree on Gust about other targets getting in the way. It would be nice if it affected everything in a line. I still find it useful to stop rezzes and stomps, though. I realize that lowering the cooldown for attunement swapping would cause problems with the Elemental Attunement trait in Arcane, but all that would need to be done is to either give that trait a cooldown (can only occur once every X seconds), or make it so the boons granted by the trait overwrite eachother.

I just want to say one more thing about your AOE build Brian. It does sound good, but for all those combos, all those abilities cast, all that planning and execution, a single Hundred Blades would do it better, faster, more safely, and with a much lower cooldown. Radiation Field is 60 seconds and Glyph of Storms is lowered to 48 from 60 with trait. Hundred Blades is 8 seconds lowered to 6.5. I know I have been over this, but for the extra effort to accomplish what you do in what a Warrior could do in one button press, what do you get? What is your compensation? Nothing. In fact, you get less than nothing because you have less armor and half the health.

@Taikanaru. I’m glad Eruption works for you and does great damage. I just want it to activate faster. Surely that would only help you if you are using it for damage.

@Icarium. I love my Elementalist too, and Staff is my favorite weapon by far. I just think we need some help. You say you slow groups and AOE nuke them down. The only nuke you can be referring to is Lava Font, and my changes to it would help you out in a big way. About Arcane, yes I do the same. I put 20 points in to get Elemental Attunement, Blasting Staff, and to lower the attunement swap cooldowns. But that is because I am forced to, and I don’t like that. The Arcane tree has killed more Elementalist builds than all the Elementalist nerfs put together, and that is saying a lot because they were nerfed every single beta as well as every single stress test.

@AcOrP. Believe me, I have tried kiting mobs into my Lava Fonts. If Ice Spike is slow because it’s powerful, then make is less slow and slightly less powerful. I realize the same about Eruption. I know the damage of these skills would have to be adjusted if the animation times were sped up. I talked about it in the OP. I just happen to think it would be absolutely worth it, and from what I can see, most people posting here agree with me aside from a few who use Eruption as a delayed blast finisher.

@Oliin. I’m sorry I spelled your name wrong sir. And you are right about Flame Burst. It has the same up time as Signet of Fire and affects multiple foes, so I stand corrected. I know Eruption being slow is useful for doing a delayed blast finish right now, but if it activated faster, and if the attunement swap cooldowns weren’t so severe, you could just swap to earth after you lay a field and blast it with the faster Eruption, instead of swapping to Earth first to lay the Eruption, then swapping to another attunement to lay the field. It’s just reverse order. The faster animation would also help you land it in PvP, which you said it was bad for (and I agree). Nothing really changes except it becomes easier to land.

@Toxification. You can increase the area of of Lava Font with Blasting Staff, but I agree it is still too small. Increasing the size of it is the other possible approach to fixing it, because it would be easier to kite the mob around in, like Necromancer’s excellent Well of Suffering skill. About Phoenix, I also think the travel time is a bit slow. It’s a great move with great damage and effects, but it’s just so strange in it’s execution. About Trident, oh man don’t even get me started on water combat.

About attunements, remember other classes can swap weapons and achieve vastly differing playstyles. For example, Greatsword/Rifle on Warrior. The thing with Elementalist is that all of your attunements are very similar. You aren’t getting an insane swap like great melee to great range, because you can’t swap Dagger/Dagger to Staff. If each attunement were more different and “specialized” I belive a long attunement swap cooldown like the current base 15 seconds would be warranted. That is because it would be more like an actual weapon swap, and since we have four of them, a cooldown longer than 10 seconds would be necessary.

As to the 20% woes, I do see what you’re saying. This is the problem though. For the Ele to have it’s 1-5 abilities receive 20% cooldown reduction, you need 4 traits, spread out over 4 trees. Investing 20 in Fire, 20 in Air, 20 in Earth, and 10 in Water is required. That is all your trait points, so no points get to be spent in Arcane to lower those nasty attunement swapping cooldowns, or give you Elemental Attunement/Blasting Staff/Evasive Arcana, or to lower the cooldowns of your Arcane abilities. How about that GS/Rifle Warrior I mentioned earlier? For all of his 1-5 abilities to be 20% cooldown reduction, he needs 30 points in a single tree, which is the Arms tree. I realize Warrior is probably not going to have that weapon setup, but the point is that reducing the cooldowns for all of your abilities isn’t difficult at all, unless you are playing an Elementalist. The fact that we need twice the amount of traits for cooldown reduction is made even more unpleasant by the fact that we receive no other bonuses from these traits.

Imagine a trait like this for Elementalist: “Staff and Trident skills recharge 20% faster”. Can you imagine? But we have 4 attunements, so that would be overpowered. What would be balanced is something like this: “Fire and Air skills recharge 20% faster”.

I’m very confused in regards to some people’s feelings on Staff. In PvE I feel that staff is perfectly fine and fully functional. It could use some slight tweaks that I list below:

Lava Font – I honestly think this ability is fine as is. I think it could be made better by having the first tick happen instantly (instead of delayed) but it is fine otherwise.

Flame Burst – This skill isn’t absolutely zomg amazing, but I’m surprised to see people saying it’s “useless.” First of all, this ability launches instantly and burns in an AoE. It also has a relatively low cooldown (10s, 8s traited). Also, besides Burning Retreat, it’s the only burning Staff skill you have so it syncs up really well with your other abilities because they are direct damage (in a nutshell, you get the full burning duration easily instead of so much burn stacking that you lose damage). Flame Burst is a huge part of my damage when kiting groups of mobs, because of its ease of use.

Meteor Shower – I also don’t think this ability is too bad as is, it just needs a few tweaks. First of all, you’ll notice with this ability that the meteors fall on the edge of the area affected (basically never really hitting the center). I feel it would be better if the meteors fell evenly across the area. I agree that it would be good if the individual meteors either had a larger AoE or, preferably, if they fell in succession much faster.

Ice Spike – I think this is a more group-oriented ability (with its Vulnerability), but I agree that it should land much faster.

Geyser – I’m surprised no one has said anything about this ability (I assume people are talking almost exclusively from a solo perspective?). Solo this ability is okay, but it is very difficult to use in groups without Blasting Staff. I feel the default area of effect for this ability should be increased.

Chain Lightning – I feel like this should be made to be more of a single-target damage skill. While it does have some uses (hitting a group of mobs that are spread out), it’s damage is not very appreciable compared to our other options. I feel they should greatly increase the damage and instead have it deal significantly less damage each bounce.

Lightning Surge – This ability is okay, but the casting delay is immense. Reduce the casting delay significantly.

Gust – I think this ability is okay as is, but I find it strange to find a single target ability in Staff when basically every other ability is an AoE (or affects multiple targets). Seems inconsistent. I also HATE that it acts as a projectile and hits what is directly in front of you instead of your intended target.

Stoning – Weakness seems like an odd choice for a condition, especially when you consider that Staff Earth has two abilities which are seemingly designed to kite.

Eruption – There seems to be two camps on this ability. One wants to keep it as is because they use it as a Blast Finisher and others want to change it to make it more viable. I’m on the fence on this one, because I use Eruption as a Blast Finisher (usually with my Water fields) and it is very useful for this purpose, but the delay + 12s of Bleed is a bit long and cumbersome for the damage potential of Eruption. I would say put more of the Bleeding into the direct damage portion of the ability. The delay of Eruption is too useful as an additional Blast Finisher to give up (and before you say to use Arcane Wave, I actually use BOTH in dungeon groups [Eruption -> Healing Rain -> Arcane Wave = Almost full health for my entire group]).

Unsteady Ground – You know, to make this ability more useful, I would like to see it do a short knockdown (like 1s) to opponents when they cross through it. I think that would make it much better than it is now. As it stands now, I usually use Shockwave to immobilize the target and then position Unsteady Ground on them in such a way that they will walk through much of it on their path to me.

Overall though, I think Elementalist Staff is in much better shape compared to other builds (again talking strictly PvE).

I’m also not entirely sure why people have such problems with Staff. I mostly “face-tank” mobs (multiple mobs) with no problem with a full damage specc. How is this possible? Because I kill them much faster than they can kill me.

I’ve learned that stacking Vitality or Toughness on an Elementalist does not help them live, it just delays their death. I find that Elementalist viability in PvE is mostly a DPS race. If you are not a full damage specc, you are not going to win that race. I use my utilities to survive and have done very well, all the way from 5-80. I agree that Sceptre/Dagger has some nice burst combos, but I, like the OP, hate the immense cooldowns that these abilities have. With Staff, I can pretty much chain mobs with no issues. The only time I have issues with dying is against certain mobs counter to my specc: namely Earth Elementals (I hate them!) and “Thief” style mobs that deal tons of damage upfront. Also underwater, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

I would also like to mention that Blasting Staff is not a required trait by any means. Blasting Staff is great for increasing your support in groups (mainly to make Healing Rain absolutely massive and Geyser a bit less useless for others), but your damage abilities are fine without it. In fact, Blasting Staff has the notable effect of basically weakening both Meteor Shower and Static Field. In summary, I feel Staff is great, because I do good single target damage, great AoE damage, and have enough utility to either kite difficult mobs or shift disadvantageous situations (like multiple mob adds) to a successful outcome.

Now I’m very surprised that only one (or was it two?) other posts touched on Elementalists’ Underwater combat. I mean, Elementalist survival against mobs either depends on a) kiting them or b) killing them way faster than they can kill you. Underwater, both of these things are almost impossible to do.

Trident Fire does very weak damage compared to other attunements (and especially compared to ANY land Fire Attunement!). I don’t understand the logic of this when Fire is such a strong damage specc on land. The only truly useful ability in Trident Fire is Lava Chains, and you would try to use that to get away.

Trident Water, ironically, does the most burst DPS of all the underwater attunements. Again, wtf? Why does our healing and support attunement deal the most damage underwater? That makes no sense. Also once you blow your cooldowns to burst your DPS, you’re better off switching to Air to deal damage.

Trident Air is.. okay. You only have Forked Lightning (your auto-attack) and Electrocute to deal any real damage, but that’s still much better than most of what is offered to Elementalists underwater. Forked Lightning deals good damage ONLY if the target is at point blank range (where all three bolts hit them), otherwise it deals crappy damage. It also has a single-target and AoE stun so that’s not too shabby.

Trident Earth is poor as well. Rock Blade deals laughable damage (partly because it’s so friggin’ spread out) and the only other ability that deals any good damage is Rock Spray. You’re better off switching to Earth, using Rock Spray and immediately switching out (Murky Water is okay too, but is on a 45s cooldown).

So basically if you want to deal single target damage underwater, you use Air (or Water) and if you want to deal any kind of real AoE damage, then you use Water. Fire and Earth being pathetic underwater is a bit frustrating and doesn’t have any real justification. Trident damage could use a serious boost.

Freakiie.8940:

I’m also kinda interested in the complete change list on the Elementalist nerfs. From what I’ve heard the CD on Arcane Blast/Wave were increased and Flame Grab damage reduced?

After BWE3:

• 15% damage nerf to MS.
• 50+% effective damage nerf to Lava Font assuming the average decent player doesn’t stay in field for more than 1.99s. (20+% nerf in PvE)
• Vapor Form nerfed (health doesn’t reset as high and ability applies downed state debuff)
• AW cd increased by 50%.
• AB cd increase by 25%.
• Vulnerability far less effective against low armored targets.
• Glyph of Elemental Harmony cd increased by 25%.
• Static Field stun duration decreased by 33%.

After Release:

• Arcane Power – nerfed to 3 attacks.

Munchkin.4137:

Otiz, I’ll feed your fat troll mouth one more time before I go to bed. For someone who likes WvW, Staff is definitely not crap. For someone who likes to run dungeons, Staff is definitely not crap. And if it’s sPvP you’re concerned about, I would direct you to this video of Super Squad vs. Team Paradigm. The PoV is of a Staff Ele. They win by the way. So I’m gonna go ahead and say definitely not crap.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUjW6m7_qvY
And before you say the video is too old, here is his build. You can still trait the same way. There have been no significant changes since then, except perhaps the increased cooldowns on Arcane Blast and Wave, which he does not use.
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.7.0.0.0.27.0.0.0.2.9.11.17.24.1.6.8.0.0.0.18.0.0.33.0.0.48.46.0.64.65.68.0.10.10.20.30

I was talking about PvP. And what way would I possibly be convinced by a video link with a guy using staff. Did you see how fast he died when they focus him? Wasn’t blown away by his contributions at all either.
and lastly its probably the few who play coordinated tournament so using video footage of that paints a different picture than that you’d get by solo joining pvp.

Im not a troll, you’re just an uneducated fool.

I swear, everyone has different opinions and experiences. “I USED THIS BUILD BUT DIED ALL THE TIME. BUT THEN I USE THIS AND LIVE 24/7.”
It is basically all based on how you play (Besides a few obvious points, like staff > daggers in 99.9% of dungeons. Or some casting times being a tad too long). I went through all maps with dual daggers and thought I survived fairly well and I have an all 30 fire, air and 10 in arcane. Yeah I would occasionally have to deal with a mob every now and then, and I’ve survived as well as died (I expected to die a lot more, but surprisingly didn’t). It all comes down to you, to how you play and what works for you.
Though I won’t deny that sometimes I do feel I take way too much damage compared to the damage I’m giving and the risk I’m taking. If we’re going to be the squishiest class, even despite dumping points into Earth/Water, we should have some more damage.
Also, having the ability to quick change weapons would be super kind. I have found myself sometimes in need of having to switch to something with a bit more range, yet can’t because I have to find somewhere safe in the middle of a mob (THERE WERE JUST A FEW ZOMBIES, THEN AN ARMY CAME AFTER I TURNED AROUND AND I WANTED TO CRY ;~;…).

Eyevan.6027:

I swear, everyone has different opinions and experiences. “I USED THIS BUILD BUT DIED ALL THE TIME. BUT THEN I USE THIS AND LIVE 24/7.”
It is basically all based on how you play (Besides a few obvious points, like staff > daggers in 99.9% of dungeons. Or some casting times being a tad too long). I went through all maps with dual daggers and thought I survived fairly well and I have an all 30 fire, air and 10 in arcane. Yeah I would occasionally have to deal with a mob every now and then, and I’ve survived as well as died (I expected to die a lot more, but surprisingly didn’t). It all comes down to you, to how you play and what works for you.
Though I won’t deny that sometimes I do feel I take way too much damage compared to the damage I’m giving and the risk I’m taking. If we’re going to be the squishiest class, even despite dumping points into Earth/Water, we should have some more damage.
Also, having the ability to quick change weapons would be super kind. I have found myself sometimes in need of having to switch to something with a bit more range, yet can’t because I have to find somewhere safe in the middle of a mob (THERE WERE JUST A FEW ZOMBIES, THEN AN ARMY CAME AFTER I TURNED AROUND AND I WANTED TO CRY ;~;…).

You are exactly right, which is why threads like ‘’let me show you how elements should be like’’ is garbage. Everyone would rather point their finger at the game rather than themselves. I ain’t saying there isn’t room for improvement for Ele, there deffinatly is – but it isn’t going to be done correctly if everyone just shouts out about how THEY want the class to be.

Seriously if you’re having a bad time don’t be too proud to ask for help. At best theres like 1/10 threads thats about people wanting to improve, the rest is about how the game should change to their liking.
Thats not going to improve balancing in the future.

@Munchkin
Regarding Attunements, I see what you mean, and I feel that the big problem at the moment is that the “1” skills are quite underwhelming and not very useful in regards to the attunement.
Fire fits the archetype well typically, does great direct damage in an AoE
Earth attunement however really isn’t very defensive, with daggers(the playstyle I spend the most time in) there is literally a single defensive skill(earthquake)
Water attunement does heal and fit the archetype well, and I think that dagger/dagger does water attunement really well, but the healing and damage could use a wee bit of a buff. However I’d prefer to see a passive regeneration buff(like what you get in the trait line) and the trait from the trait line would buff the passive regen effect by like 50%
Air attunement should provide some sort of buff to endurance regen and movement speed. Also considering lightning touch(to my knowledge) has identical targeting to fire grab, it should do at least 4 times its current damage to justify its targeting and cooldown.

In regards to the 20% woes I do understand exactly what you are saying, and I was thinking that the traits themselves should provide 30% cooldown reductions to the one element. Or having a 10% cooldown reduction in like the arcane tree for all elements. But you wouldn’t be able to have both. I am personally of the opinion that 30% would be optimal as it allows for low skill ceiling elementalist builds but leaves the option open for high skill ceiling builds. Unfortunately you can’t really compare the elementalist to the other professions as it has very unique mechanics in regards to cooldowns which have to be handled extremely carefully.

In regards to the staff, eruption, while great in PvE, it’s another one of those skills where, unless you have complete control over your opponents movement, it’s near useless. If combo’ing it with certain fields and such is a huge problem(the only one I can think of is geyser), then I’d see a slight increase of the duration of geyser to be justified(and have the healing more spread out across the duration) so you can actively combo it.
Meteor: Should be more concentrated on the centre of the radius and the number of meteors should decrease as you move towards the outer edges of the radius, something like double the meteors hit in the centre of the field than at the edges of the radius. I also think that the meteors should daze the opponents hit(but that’s just my bias to elementalist talking)

Scepter: Air attunement with scepter is horrendous, I basically find myself facerolling 1 – 3 whenever they’re not on cooldown. It just lacks spice and stuff to make it legitimately interesting. I also dislike how there’s no point dodging if your faced against a scepter elementalist as you can literally dodge nothing when they’re in air attunement.

I have over 220 hours with my Elementalist and I pretty much agree with everything in the OP. I could quibble over some specifics, but in general it’s right on and the profession would be much better with these changes.

@Srondon. I agree about Lava Font. The first tick actually used to be there, but they nerfed it in one of the Betas (3 I believe) and got rid of it. I believe they did the same with the first tick of Healing Rain as well. And apparently, according to Wildclaw, the damage of Lava Font was grealy decreased. About Flame Burst. I agree that it’s not terrible, but for people who use Staff for conditions as well as raw damage, which surprisingly is quite a few, the only condition attacks available are Flame Burst, which I still think is mediocre and would be best replaced with a good strong full range single target attack, Burning Retreat, which is bad for burning but great for the gap opener and dodge, Eruption, which we’ve talked about ad nauseum, and Shockwave, which is a bad bleed but is really for the immobilize. For condition, Staff is just bad compared to Scepter, which is good and would be great with a tweak to Dragon’s Tooth. I did a substantial amount of leveling as Scepter/Dagger, and I found it to be the fastest killing weapon set for single mobs. Again, Dagger/Dagger would be the best were it not for it’s terrible cooldowns. I agree with your other points and I also agree that Staff is probably in the better shape than most builds, It just shines more in groups.

@Otiz. I know you were talking about PvP, even though my post is almost entirely about PvE. You, apparently, only care about sPvP, and that’s fine. So when you just make a troll blanket statement like “Staff is teh suck”, I show you a video of someone using Staff effectively in sPvP. I don’t know what you want from me. You say the Elementalist has room for improvement. I agree, and in fact, it’s why I made this thread.

@Toxification. I like your ideas, especially the one about the 30% cooldown reductions. That would make much more sense. Another thing that could be done is to leave them at 20%, but put put them at the beginning of the trait lines so you would just need 10 points to grab one. About Meteor. Wouldn’t it be great if they replaced Lava Font with Lava Bomb, then made Meteor the same mechanic as Lava Font? Just a big Font that ticks. No random meteors, just if you’re in it, you take damage. I can dream.

@Fiontar. Thank you sir. And I would love to hear more from you, even if it’s just a few quibbles. The more discussion and opinions, the better.

I don’t have a lot to add, since my Ele has only gotten to the mid-20’s. However, I do find the class to be lacking, especially in comparison to Thief, Ranger, Warrior and Guardian. With my limited experience, I believe that the OP is mostly correct, especially in regard to long casts, and long CD’s on some spells.

+1, a lot of skills are bugged and few are just broken outright.

risk reward on eles is a massive joke, takes longer time in combat with someone who cant handle dmg to be able to put out what a monkey can do in 2 secs by rolling their head on the keyboard.

My only issue with the Elementalist are the worthless utilities and traits that clearly go against the theme of an Elementalist. Conjured weapons that disable 15 of your abilities? Stupid. Traits that only work in one attunement, when I’m supposed to be using them all? Insane.