Guild Wars 2

Devs,

Thank you for putting some time into this weapon. I wanted to weigh in on the changes now that I’ve had some time to get used to them. Curious if others would agree / disagree.

1. Meteor shower seems to be better, liking it. Fire is in a good place. I wouldn’t change a thing.
2. Radius increase on Geyser is nice, tks.
3. I appreciate the attempt at improving unsteady ground, but for PvE, it isn’t helpful.
4. Overall ground targeting stuff makes staff easier.

What still needs work, IMO, PvE vantage:

1. Fire is awesome. Thanks!

2 Air: Get rid of chain lightning. 3 targets cannot even come close to comparing w/ lava font / fireball / fireblast. If I want AoE, I’ll go fire. Make auto air attack a high single-target damage spell (help w/ bosses and maybe pvp). Make blind spell instant or hit for way more dmg. Make gust an AoE cone. Not effective for PvE right now. 4 and 5 are fine.

3. Water: All fights really come down to A vs. B’s time to kill. Damage decreases your TTK on opponent, opponent’s healing increases it. Water blast provides healing, yes, but at the expense of a ton of dmg. Please increase damage, radius, etc to compete with fire. How compete? Make them equal in their impact on TTK vs. TTK. I know that’s what the skill is trying to do now, but I think it just needs a little bump.

Tested numbers: 800-1500(crit) dmg w/ no might on fireball. water for 250-600(crit), and heals for 400 on my zerker gear. Assuming crit to crit.

1500dmg for fire auto attack VS. 600 dmg / heal 400 on water auto. = 1000.

There’s about 500 points of love missing from there somewhere. Using cleric’s would increase the heal at the expense of the dmg, balancing nothing.

3 (water cont): Geyser (and Healing Rain). As said before, appreciate the radius increase, but these need duration increases more. I’d even take a nerf to healing per tick for a longer duration. Blink and you miss geyser. I’m talking 7-10 for healing rain and maybe 3-4 for geyser. Increase duration on frozen ground too (or lower CD).

4. Earth: Increase damage on auto attack. Eruption animation start to finish much quicker. mag shield should have some buffs like focus 4. Turn 5 into a PbAoE imob. The slow single-target is meh.

Biggest issue in PvE for earth staff…new unsteady ground. I haven’t tried in PvP but in PvE, it’s near useless.

a. Too many mob fights are stationary. This skill does nothing most of the time.
b. If you accidentally cast too close, mob is unaffectekitten
D effect is so minimal that you’d almost missed that it happened. mobs are up and at you lightning quick. Yes, some of them can be hit twice, but frozen ground is better overall.

Hate to say it, but this one needs another go over at least for PvE. Maybe make a direct cast instantly cause the KD? Are others using unsteady ground to great success? What are you doing? Thanks.

The staff stays true to the attunement swap except earth which is supposed to be superior damage over time but now rivals air as the cc attunenent

Well yea Unsteady Ground is highly pathetic atm, especially since it does nothing if you cast under your opponent, should instantly knockdown enemies that are over it after cast.
So basically you have to waste time of it’s short 3 seconds duration casting ahead.
Add to that the ridiculous “aftercast cooldown” for every spell except eruption that works as expected.

the problems I see and how I would change them.

I feel staffs are meant to be more support than other elementalist weapons with more combo fields with some steady DPS at range

water:
frozen ground cd too long. (maybe make it 30s cd for 4 seconds)
geyser needs a 2 second increase but heal the some amount just a bit less per second, this would help with combo finishers and positioning problems.

air:
lightning surge cast time too long.
gust only hits one target which is bad in 99% of pve situations since you need mobs grouped up for aoe.
as for the air auto attack, chain lightning, i think it should do 100% bonus damage if it only hits a single target, that would make it as if there were 2 targets and it bounces between them except the 2nd target isn’t there.

earth:
eruption takes so long you have to cast it before combo fields if at all.

shockwave needs more than one stack of bleeding and needs to be able to be cast like whirlwind without the movement, which isn’t foreign to elementalists because of firey greatsword so I think we would love it (maybe 3 stacks of bleeding for 10 seconds)

the “stoning” auto attack needs bleeding. (1 stack for 3 seconds)

the biggest problem is earth’s unsteady ground. It’s a new concept for elementalists so i can only assume it’s not finished being changed.

unsteady ground can be used in conjunction with static field for some serious mob control but it’s too short by itself, i think it should be increase by 1 second because if you are trying to escape and you are currently out of combat then you can cast unsteady ground and not get the combat movement speed decrease, but if you combine it with static field then you are slowed. it should also knock back if you cast it under an enemy so it puts them behind the wall instead of being able to freely go through it.

How about air 3 and earth 5 as skillshots instead of targeted?

Axelifus.3269:

How about air 3 and earth 5 as skillshots instead of targeted?

I didn’t think about that for air’s knockback, but i did suggest that with earth’s shockwave.

I only talked about things I actively notice while playing. I see nothing wrong with water’s auto attack…or anything wrong with fire to be honest.

serisho.7053:

Axelifus.3269:

How about air 3 and earth 5 as skillshots instead of targeted?

I didn’t think about that for air’s knockback, but i did suggest that with earth’s shockwave.

I only talked about things I actively notice while playing. I see nothing wrong with water’s auto attack…or anything wrong with fire to be honest.

Ok my bad, I meant keep them as they are in terms of hitbox as well.
Single long columns with 5 (or more in case of earth 5 iirc) targets.

The water auto radius increase was actually rather pretty, now you can dance around that ettin at the harpy fractal while healing.

While we do need a more reliable way to apply bleed than eruption, blasting staff makes it large enough to be almost (not sure) as big as a cap point so it’s good enough denial, can’t afford to speed it up too much. Same goes for ice spike, giant circle is giant and spammable, love that thing, would buy a skill skin to make it look like the jade golem version.

Stoning applies constant weakness which is rather useful, at least at pve, adding bleed and/or removing weakness would make things a bit bland when it comes to variety, since it’s the only source of that condition for staff.

Unsteady ground could be detonatable, to please all the people that used its previous version to kite people.

Air auto is actually rather nice for structures when it doesnt fizzle and go to infinity and beyond, you can hit jormag for example all 3 times with it.

Shockwave does need some more bleed or 1-2 seconds longer immobilize.

Fire is great.

Staff air is weak.

Staff water is for healing/snares. There’s no need for a dps increase. You go water when you need heals, fire when you need DPS.

Earth:

Stoning – Weakness and projectile finisher… there are few reasons to use a low dps projectile finisher to apply short duration conditions and much better ways to apply weakness (in PvE)

Unsteady ground – the short duration and cast time make this awkward to use.. you’ve got to predict where you want this to be after the cast time knowing it’ll be gone by the time you switch to a more useful attunement

Eruption – I like it the way it is. The long time between its cast and its bast finisher explosion lets me lay down an Eruption, switch attunement and lay down a combo field before it goes off letting me apply AoE swiftness (Air: Static Field), AoE healing (Water: Geyser/Healing Rain), AoE Frost Armor (Water: Frozen Ground), or Might (Fire: Lava Font/Burning Retreat). This lets you Flaming Retreat, swap to Earth attunement, and lay Eruption down for a blast finisher, hang out in Earth until Fire attunement is 2-3 seconds out from coming back up, lay Eruption down, attune to Fire and place a fire field for another might stack.

Eruption is fine the way it is. -imo

Love the changes too =)
This was the most exciting patch for me yet.

I personally would like to see 3 more things adjusted:

1. Increase the overall damage of staff on all attunements, not so the staff is uber, just so it’s less uber sad.

2. Like others have suggested, make Chain Lightening something worthwhile to use. I personally don’t think it makes sense as a ‘single target’ spell because it’s “chain” lightening. It’s a chain… of lightening, not a ball of lightening. To fix it, I think it should hit 2 more targets, so 5 targets total instead of 3, and it should also do more damage along with the other attunements. Chain Lightening has always been able to hit targets in a larger radius then fireball (and lava font) which is why, theoretically, it is another interesting choice for AE damage. However, the fact that it hits only 3 targets and does fairly miserable damage, is the reason why it’s mostly ignored. Damage wise, it NEEDS to compete with both Fireball and Lava Font used in CONJUCNTION with one another. Let us switch to chain lightening to AOE mobs that are further apart. That’s what it’s meant for. We do not do this now because the damage is too limited, too kitten.

3. Geyser should have a 4 second duration for reasons already stated by others. I don’t think it should do half the healing per tick at 4 seconds, but maybe reduce the ticks so they heal for 20% less. Transfusion for Necros is at a fun place right now, even with no healing gear. At least have it heal for the same total amount as Transfusion, if not more.

Never change chain lightning. It is mandatory for tagging in high lag or chaotic situations.

now if only we had a ground target option of “instant cast on target”

Mars.6319:

…
Eruption – I like it the way it is. The long time between its cast and its bast finisher explosion lets me lay down an Eruption, switch attunement and lay down a combo field before it goes off letting me apply AoE swiftness (Air: Static Field), AoE healing (Water: Geyser/Healing Rain), AoE Frost Armor (Water: Frozen Ground), or Might (Fire: Lava Font/Burning Retreat). This lets you Flaming Retreat, swap to Earth attunement, and lay Eruption down for a blast finisher, hang out in Earth until Fire attunement is 2-3 seconds out from coming back up, lay Eruption down, attune to Fire and place a fire field for another might stack.

Eruption is fine the way it is. -imo

While I like being able to use Eruption to blast fields from other attunements, the way it is set up right now is the exact opposite of synergy with Evasive Arcana. If I could make Eruption Blast sooner (say for less damage/bleed stacks/smaller radius/whatever) then I could lay down Lava Font > Switch to Earth > lay down Eruption > blast Eruption > use Arcane Wave > then dodge into the Lava Font and get 9 stacks of Area Might.

As it is right now the max I can provide is 6 stacks (unless I go crazy with Lightning Hammer but that is a TON of work for 9 stacks of Area Might).

Am I asking for too much here?

Jabberwock.9014:

Never change chain lightning. It is mandatory for tagging in high lag or chaotic situations.

I’d say lava font, fireburst, and meteor shower still completely outshine this at least in PvE, not sure bout WvW. I’ve been running mad king’s realm constantly and I never get below gold.

Da Beetus.1275:

While I like being able to use Eruption to blast fields from other attunements, the way it is set up right now is the exact opposite of synergy with Evasive Arcana. If I could make Eruption Blast sooner (say for less damage/bleed stacks/smaller radius/whatever) then I could lay down Lava Font > Switch to Earth > lay down Eruption > blast Eruption > use Arcane Wave > then dodge into the Lava Font and get 9 stacks of Area Might.

As it is right now the max I can provide is 6 stacks (unless I go crazy with Lightning Hammer but that is a TON of work for 9 stacks of Area Might).

Am I asking for too much here?

Lay a 6 second fire field down (Burning Retreat/Traited Lava Font), swap to earth, immediately lay Eruption on top of your fire field, dodge into your fire field to trigger Evasive Arcana’s Shock Wave blast finisher, activate Arcane Wave in the fire field, watch the timer on Fire attunement, lay Eruption down before Fire attunement comes off CD, attune to fire, lay a fire field on top of Eruption, repeat.

That’s 3 Might x 3 short CD blast finishers (2 Eruption +1 EA Shock Wave) = 9 per rotation + 3 from each Arcane Wave (30/24 secs) + 1 Might if you have Elemental Attunement (~10 secs if you’re swapping back and forth on CD). If you add boon duration runes and food you’ll be able to provide 25 Might stacks to your entire party without any help.

So you spend half of your time auto attacking in earth.

Zelyhn.8069:

So you spend half of your time auto attacking in earth.

If you want to provide might using Evasive Arcana and Eruption then yes, you need to spend a portion of your time in Earth since that’s where the blast finishers are.

If you do precisely the rotation that you described then that portion is precisely half of your time.
Stoning has a coefficient of 0.5, an animation time of 1.35s, and is single target.
Its damage per second is equal to one third of that of lightninh whip.
I really hope that your team mates know how to make the most out of the might stacks you give them!

Zelyhn.8069:

If you do precisely the rotation that you described then that portion is precisely half of your time.
Stoning has a coefficient of 0.5, an animation time of 1.35s, and is single target.
Its damage per second is equal to one third of that of lightninh whip.
I really hope that your team mates know how to make the most out of the might stacks you give them!

You comparison isn’t completely accurate, because the stoning (and his other spells) will get bonus damage from the additional might that lightning whip wouldn’t get. Also, given that might adds roughly 2% damage per stack, a mere 10 stacks party wide would equal to +100% damage. I’d say that makes him a worthy addition to a party. And as a bonus, he gives the boss perma weakness too!

Hm, Zelyhn, maybe you should write a guide about your dagger/focus build that stacks more might and deals more damage than this awesome 30 points arcana staff thing. Maybe even put it in your signature? Yeah, thats a good Idea. You should do that…

Zelyhn.8069:

If you do precisely the rotation that you described then that portion is precisely half of your time.
Stoning has a coefficient of 0.5, an animation time of 1.35s, and is single target.
Its damage per second is equal to one third of that of lightninh whip.
I really hope that your team mates know how to make the most out of the might stacks you give them!

If you were only auto attacking you’d be spending precisely half the time auto attacking in Earth, but since you’re also doing 2x Eruption as well as a dodge roll for EA’s blast finisher it’s actually less… and those are AoEs, too.

With 30/x/x/x/30 giving 30% condition duration, Eruption applies a 6x 15.5 sec bleed and you do this twice during the rotation giving you 12 × 15 bleed ticks plus EA’s Shock Wave which adds 1×25 on top of Eruption and Shock Wave’s direct damage. Never mind that your fire fields persist and continue to deal damage while you’re in the Earth attunement so their downtime is also less than half.

Anyway, the whole point was simply that if you wanted to stack Might with a Staff it is entirely possible.

PlatypusRex.3428:

Jabberwock.9014:

Never change chain lightning. It is mandatory for tagging in high lag or chaotic situations.

I’d say lava font, fireburst, and meteor shower still completely outshine this at least in PvE, not sure bout WvW. I’ve been running mad king’s realm constantly and I never get below gold.

Try using anything besides auto-attack in lagfest stonemist castle battles. You can’t. So we need at least one auto-attack good for tagging multiple foes.

Staff is still bad as ever in pve.

haviz.1340:

Staff is still bad as ever in pve.

A staff ele can out-dps HB warriors by simply spamming two buttons, and can do so by staying at range while providing infinite fire fields.

It’s one of the best pve builds in this game since the buffs to blasting staff and persisting flames in the last patch.

DiogoSilva.7089:

haviz.1340:

Staff is still bad as ever in pve.

A staff ele can out-dps HB warriors by simply spamming two buttons, and can do so by staying at range while providing infinite fire fields.

It’s one of the best pve builds in this game since the buffs to blasting staff and persisting flames in the last patch.

This post is the perfect example of people miss-interpreting the spreadsheets.
Well I can’t blame you too much, considering the amount of wrong information being published in some guides like on guru for example …

DiogoSilva.7089:

A staff ele can out-dps HB warriors by simply spamming two buttons, and can do so by staying at range while providing infinite fire fields.

It’s one of the best pve builds in this game since the buffs to blasting staff and persisting flames in the last patch.

Were there unicorns as well?

Axelifus.3269:

How about air 3 and earth 5 as skillshots instead of targeted?

I use shockwave without a target half the time. it goes in the direction you’re aiming.
but making it ground targeted would make this a lot easier, yeah

Zelyhn.8069:

DiogoSilva.7089:

haviz.1340:

Staff is still bad as ever in pve.

A staff ele can out-dps HB warriors by simply spamming two buttons, and can do so by staying at range while providing infinite fire fields.

It’s one of the best pve builds in this game since the buffs to blasting staff and persisting flames in the last patch.

This post is the perfect example of people miss-interpreting the spreadsheets.
Well I can’t blame you too much, considering the amount of wrong information being published in some guides like on guru for example …

DPS is about numbers. About math. a>b. If the sheed say that your number is smaller than guangs, I dont see how you could miss-interpret this. Care to explain?

Staff is ok in pve.

You’d be surprised how easily people can misread sheets of numbers

Molch.2078:

Zelyhn.8069:

DiogoSilva.7089:

haviz.1340:

Staff is still bad as ever in pve.

A staff ele can out-dps HB warriors by simply spamming two buttons, and can do so by staying at range while providing infinite fire fields.

It’s one of the best pve builds in this game since the buffs to blasting staff and persisting flames in the last patch.

This post is the perfect example of people miss-interpreting the spreadsheets.
Well I can’t blame you too much, considering the amount of wrong information being published in some guides like on guru for example …

DPS is about numbers. About math. a>b. If the sheed say that your number is smaller than guangs, I dont see how you could miss-interpret this. Care to explain?

Staff is ok in pve.

Well to start off, Guang’s maths is like religion.
Then trust me he is not the first to say that staff deals damage, and he is definitely not the first to notice how the patch buffed that damage.
Also to out-dps warriors staff eles need more than just lava font and fireball: they need meteor shower. That’s why I say you misinterpreted the maths.
Furthermore they need to be within 600 range, or actually within 360 range to benefit from might combos, so at the same range as a dagger wielder.
Staff provides fewer of the necessary conditions to get max buffs than other weapon sets.
Staff has very little hard control and its use comes at a high cost.
Staff requires the targets to be immobile.
So no, staff is not the best pve build around. Actually it is thought to be one of the worst.

Zelyhn.8069:

Molch.2078:

Zelyhn.8069:

DiogoSilva.7089:

haviz.1340:

Staff is still bad as ever in pve.

A staff ele can out-dps HB warriors by simply spamming two buttons, and can do so by staying at range while providing infinite fire fields.

It’s one of the best pve builds in this game since the buffs to blasting staff and persisting flames in the last patch.

This post is the perfect example of people miss-interpreting the spreadsheets.
Well I can’t blame you too much, considering the amount of wrong information being published in some guides like on guru for example …

DPS is about numbers. About math. a>b. If the sheed say that your number is smaller than guangs, I dont see how you could miss-interpret this. Care to explain?

Staff is ok in pve.

Well to start off, Guang’s maths is like religion.
Then trust me he is not the first to say that staff deals damage, and he is definitely not the first to notice how the patch buffed that damage.
Also to out-dps warriors staff eles need more than just lava font and fireball: they need meteor shower. That’s why I say you misinterpreted the maths.
Furthermore they need to be within 600 range, or actually within 360 range to benefit from might combos, so at the same range as a dagger wielder.
Staff provides fewer of the necessary conditions to get max buffs than other weapon sets.
Staff has very little hard control and its use comes at a high cost.
Staff requires the targets to be immobile.
So no, staff is not the best pve build around. Actually it is thought to be one of the worst.

DnT said they got 9k lavafont/tick and 8k autohits with this build. Even I get ~5k without might and bufffood. And I play 20 points in arcan. You don’t need meteor shower.

And be carefull, I said staff is okay. Not more, not less. You say staff is one of the worst pve builds? Well, I can easily name 10 weaker builds. Can you name 10 better ones?

Well there is D/F, D/F, D/F, D/F, D/F, D/F, also D/F, D/F, and one must not forget D/F as well as D/F.
I could also mention D/F but I don’t want to sound like I’m biased or anything.

What’s the difference in DPS between Lightning Hammer auto-attack and Staff’s Fireball + Lava Font?

I’m not very good at math, nor am I very good at testing stuff, but I’ve experimented them versus the Lion’s Arch dummies. With my current setup, in 6 seconds, and without critical hits working, here are my numbers:
Staff: 4 Fireballs and 6 Lava Font ticks for ~1250 damage average. That was 10 hits worth for a total of 12500 damage in 6 seconds, or ~2080 dps.
Lightning Hammer: I’ve got around 2 full auto-attack chains in the same time. Again, let me repeat that this is based on observation, and is not very precise math, so the numbers are biased. Each first and second auto-attack skill hit for 1400, and the final hit for 2300. That was 2800*2 + 2300*2, for a total of 10200 in around 6 seconds, or ~1700 dps.

Now, within these biased numbers, LH can always go for +20% damage while in water. This would mean the DPS would go up by 10% (it would come at the cost of +10% damage while in fire, although I can always take the +5% damage versus burning foes), and I would take 10 points out of arcana (blasting staff) to add to it. Anyways, this would also mean I would have more defense (or would I? Staff’s Burning Retreat is handy). Meanwhile, the slot I would use for LH could be taken for something else. For example, Arcane Blast or Signet of Fire (assuming third slot would go for Arcane Wave), so whatever the result of that would be, it doesn’t seems LH would outdo staff’s dps, or if so, only very slightly.

LH can spam blast finishers, but staff can spam fire fields. I can also get 20s of fury at the beginning of each battle for my party, which is usually more than enough, but might-stacking must be handled by my team mates.

Anyways, as I mentioned, this is not precise math. But the numbers do favor staff. And of course, I’m not even mentioning Meteor Shower, which is pretty much a free-slotted Frost Bow’s Ice Storm every 24s.

The real flaw with staff is that improvizing comes at a huge cost. Whenever you need to change your attunements, or if enemies kite you (=rare), a fresh air build or a LH build would be superior. But this is PvE we are talking about. For pure party-stacking and dumb boss-smacking, it seems strong enough to me.

Fire fields are irrelevant.