Guild Wars 2

reikken.4961:

staff is a support weapon. the damage skills are not good on their own in pvp settings, but it has nice utility

Is it? I wonder why it was top dps in pve for such a long time then.

Mechalibur.9618:

Ele has weaker autos because it has a very large range of cooldown abilities. You have 4 attunements, allowing you to cast 16 other weapon abilities in between your auto attacks, many of which wreck havoc among a zerg.

If you’re talking about poor 1v1 potential, then too bad. Staff isn’t amazing at everything. It’s great at PvE DPS, zerging, support, and PvP teamfights, but it’s not great at dueling. Them’s the breaks.

The average person does not want to constantly switch between attunements because it is annoying. Also is you are specing for a certain damage and you switch damage type then your DPS goes way down. There should at least be an option to remove switching for more of a specific damage type.

The staff is NOT great at PvE its damage is extremely disappointing especially considering how squishy the class is. If I die really easily then I should either heal extremely well or I should do MASSIVE damage, neither one of those is true. This is just a broken class and has been for years. The Revenant just illustrates this very well.

P.S. This class needs to be brought up, it is unacceptable to bring the Revenant class down.

Cinnamon Goddess.3869:

Mechalibur.9618:

Ele has weaker autos because it has a very large range of cooldown abilities. You have 4 attunements, allowing you to cast 16 other weapon abilities in between your auto attacks, many of which wreck havoc among a zerg.

If you’re talking about poor 1v1 potential, then too bad. Staff isn’t amazing at everything. It’s great at PvE DPS, zerging, support, and PvP teamfights, but it’s not great at dueling. Them’s the breaks.

The average person does not want to constantly switch between attunements because it is annoying. Also is you are specing for a certain damage and you switch damage type then your DPS goes way down. There should at least be an option to remove switching for more of a specific damage type.

The staff is NOT great at PvE its damage is extremely disappointing especially considering how squishy the class is. If I die really easily then I should either heal extremely well or I should do MASSIVE damage, neither one of those is true. This is just a broken class and has been for years. The Revenant just illustrates this very well.

P.S. This class needs to be brought up, it is unacceptable to bring the Revenant class down.

You should probably change your build then. Ele has been one of the top dps classes for ages and for a long time it was with staff. If you find attunement swapping annoying, you should probably pick a different class.

Staff damage/survivability is fine in pve, the only issue is it is very spread out or too concentrated. Luckily you have ccs and mobs are predictable. Depending on number and hitbox of ennemies, some skills are more suited than others. But you can clean large numbers of mobs faster than any class out there.

PvP is another matter though.

Cinnamon Goddess.3869:

The average person does not want to constantly switch between attunements because it is annoying. Also is you are specing for a certain damage and you switch damage type then your DPS goes way down. There should at least be an option to remove switching for more of a specific damage type.

The staff is NOT great at PvE its damage is extremely disappointing especially considering how squishy the class is. If I die really easily then I should either heal extremely well or I should do MASSIVE damage, neither one of those is true. This is just a broken class and has been for years. The Revenant just illustrates this very well.

P.S. This class needs to be brought up, it is unacceptable to bring the Revenant class down.

If you find that class mechanic ‘annoying’, then don’t play the class.
In PvE staff Elementalist does criminally absurd amounts of damage (and is/was Top DPS for a long time), especially considering the ‘rotation’ is the easiest thing in the world. You even have to camp Fire for maximum DPS, so I don’t know what you’re complaining about.

In PvP, if you could just easily camp one Attunement then people would complain and it would be changed. That’s like complaining that classes need to use their utility skills or swap weapons.

As for survivability and damage in PvP, I suppose that’s true.

Sourde Noire.5286:

….

If you find that class mechanic ‘annoying’, then don’t play the class.

I can’t do that. I wanted to play a mage that throws fireballs and lightning, freezes enemies and knocks them over with earthquakes. The only class that does that is the elementalist. Sadly it’s the class with this kittenty mechanic.

I’d be really excited if the ele got an elite spec which allowed you to focus on one or two attunements instead of four.

Just look at how many obstructed errors i get. It is so bad.

I’ve been saying for years that staff attunements other than fire sacrifice too much damage for the utility they provide, and it’s mostly due to how bizarrely weak the #1 skills other than Fireball are.

They need to be buffed. You should not be forced into frantically attunement dancing or camping in fire to be even somewhat effective.

Timelord.8190:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCnTTS9KYqI

Just look at how many obstructed errors i get. It is so bad.

This. I get it all the time. And our utilites are bad as well. I think I’m getting this video sent to ArenaNet via support ticket so I can hope they’ll take a look Kappa

I’ve been thinking how its funny that ele’s air staff is so similar to dragon hunter’s longbow. Both autos bounce, both have a “ring ward” on the 5, both knockback with the 3, and have a long, slow windup on the 2.

However, DH’s autos hit pretty dang hard, the 3 hits very hard, and the 2 hits super-hard. Eles are all pretty….weak.

BlackBeard.2873:

I’ve been thinking how its funny that ele’s air staff is so similar to dragon hunter’s longbow. Both autos bounce, both have a “ring ward” on the 5, both knockback with the 3, and have a long, slow windup on the 2.

However, DH’s autos hit pretty dang hard, the 3 hits very hard, and the 2 hits super-hard. Eles are all pretty….weak.

Well, this is more a problem with DH longbow AA and #2 hitting too hard. I’m always against AAs hitting, and will always advocate for buffing other skills on the weapon set before the AA. AAs should only be buffed when necessary IMO.

Ele’s staff AAs are decent overall. They could use some improvements to help hit far away moving targets, but it’s probably intentional to be able to avoid ranged attacks from nearly max range if you move around properly. Also, Fire AA should really apply burning on the main impact target. That’s really the only change I would like to see done to Staff’s AAs. Water can heal, Air can chain to multiple spread out targets, and Earth is a 100% projectile finisher that also applies weakness.

Also, who noticed that this is a revived thread from 10 months ago?

it took me to my last post instead of the new ones, so I couldn’t not notice

and while I like the idea of giving staff more condi power, fireball is already really strong. I’d add it somewhere else

Cinnamon Goddess.3869:

Mechalibur.9618:

Ele has weaker autos because it has a very large range of cooldown abilities. You have 4 attunements, allowing you to cast 16 other weapon abilities in between your auto attacks, many of which wreck havoc among a zerg.

If you’re talking about poor 1v1 potential, then too bad. Staff isn’t amazing at everything. It’s great at PvE DPS, zerging, support, and PvP teamfights, but it’s not great at dueling. Them’s the breaks.

The average person does not want to constantly switch between attunements because it is annoying. Also is you are specing for a certain damage and you switch damage type then your DPS goes way down. There should at least be an option to remove switching for more of a specific damage type.

The staff is NOT great at PvE its damage is extremely disappointing especially considering how squishy the class is. If I die really easily then I should either heal extremely well or I should do MASSIVE damage, neither one of those is true. This is just a broken class and has been for years. The Revenant just illustrates this very well.

P.S. This class needs to be brought up, it is unacceptable to bring the Revenant class down.

It saddens me that the balance team said they’re going to “bring elementalist up” at the expense of other professions’ nerfs, so…

I would only say earth 1 is bad because its non aoe if it was more like morder 1 on eng aoe combo finisher i think it would be very usable. I would not mind seeing fire 1 and water 1 blow up at it max rang and lighting 1 do a bit more dmg.

Zintrothen.1056:

BlackBeard.2873:

I’ve been thinking how its funny that ele’s air staff is so similar to dragon hunter’s longbow. Both autos bounce, both have a “ring ward” on the 5, both knockback with the 3, and have a long, slow windup on the 2.

However, DH’s autos hit pretty dang hard, the 3 hits very hard, and the 2 hits super-hard. Eles are all pretty….weak.

Well, this is more a problem with DH longbow AA and #2 hitting too hard. I’m always against AAs hitting, and will always advocate for buffing other skills on the weapon set before the AA. AAs should only be buffed when necessary IMO.

Ele’s staff AAs are decent overall. They could use some improvements to help hit far away moving targets, but it’s probably intentional to be able to avoid ranged attacks from nearly max range if you move around properly. Also, Fire AA should really apply burning on the main impact target. That’s really the only change I would like to see done to Staff’s AAs. Water can heal, Air can chain to multiple spread out targets, and Earth is a 100% projectile finisher that also applies weakness.

Also, who noticed that this is a revived thread from 10 months ago?

That’s the exact opposite of what needs to happen. Fire’s AA is already way beyond the other three attunements in overall effectiveness, which pushes you into camping fire, and when you switch attunements, you want to switch back to Fire as quickly as possible. Air’s AA needs buffed the most, since its only role is DPS, and Air gets virtually no supplemental DPS from its other skills. Water and Earth also need some improvement since they’re way too situational as they are. This is because the utility they provide is not as significant as the DPS they lose. As someone mentioned above, the tradeoff is imbalanced in 95% of situations. This is true for many other weapons in a support role in the game, and is a large part of the reason why support builds are so hard to work with.

Also, your philosophy of “buffing other skills in place of the AA” is terribly wrong-headed. Auto attacks set the tempo for sustained DPS or utility in any engagement that lasts longer than a couple of seconds (i.e. all of PVE), so they operate as coarse adjustments to a weapon’s performance, with the cooldown skills operating as fine adjustments. The only way you can compensate for an undertuned AA is to make the cooldown skills dramtically overpowered, and vice versa. That makes zero sense as a balancing paradigm. In fact, Anet needs to put disproportionate energy into making sure AA’s are well balanced across weapons and professions before they waste time tweaking cooldown skills to try to fix gross imbalances in weapon performance.

That’s the exact opposite of what needs to happen. Fire’s AA is already way beyond the other three attunements in overall effectiveness, which pushes you into camping fire, and when you switch attunements, you want to switch back to Fire as quickly as possible. Air’s AA needs buffed the most, since its only role is DPS, and Air gets virtually no supplemental DPS from its other skills. Water and Earth also need some improvement since they’re way too situational as they are. This is because the utility they provide is not as significant as the DPS they lose. As someone mentioned above, the tradeoff is imbalanced in 95% of situations. This is true for many other weapons in a support role in the game, and is a large part of the reason why support builds are so hard to work with.
Also, your philosophy of “buffing other skills in place of the AA” is terribly wrong-headed. Auto attacks set the tempo for sustained DPS or utility in any engagement that lasts longer than a couple of seconds (i.e. all of PVE), so they operate as coarse adjustments to a weapon’s performance, with the cooldown skills operating as fine adjustments. The only way you can compensate for an undertuned AA is to make the cooldown skills dramtically overpowered, and vice versa. That makes zero sense as a balancing paradigm. In fact, Anet needs to put disproportionate energy into making sure AA’s are well balanced across weapons and professions before they waste time tweaking cooldown skills to try to fix gross imbalances in weapon performance.

I agree with you. Fireball is a good example of AA. The other AAs are a joke, not only for staff but for other weps as well. If water AA is meant to heal ppl and yourself by a mediocre amount while dealing neglectable dmg, then increase the healing and the duration of Geyser. Sacrifing Healing Rain for just a healing is way too much because of the cooldown. Air in staff is very underperforming: even though I can hit 2,6k with the AA, gust doesn’t work properly besides have long cd, lightning surge should channel faster and Windborne Speed should have lower cd.
Earth #2 takes too long to explode and Steady Ground doesn’t work in a good, reliable way. You have to put it with the AoE mark threshold edging the enemy player (sorry for bad english) if you put in on top of player it won’t work, even though if you force players to cross it again. And honestly, for a skill called Shockwave that just paralyze for a few seconds I’d rather not use it because it’s bad, it misses hits 95%. People say that staff is a dps/healing support wep, but only works in PvE (WvW is just another facet of PvE).