Staff Attunements
Yeah, fire is the pivot, and with practice you’ll get used to quickly support fire with the rest of attunemets, that’s the DPS playstyle of staff really. And don’t forget air overload.
Yeah, fire is the pivot, and with practice you’ll get used to quickly support fire with the rest of attunemets, that’s the DPS playstyle of staff really. And don’t forget air overload.
It seems kind of weird. It seems like Water, Air, and Earth should come closer to Fire’s DPS than they do, so the player has some choice in which one to pivot from based on circumstances and build.
water = lower dps but heal to compensate, earth its mitigation, air it should be single target and cc – fail there.
The overall issue however is gaming modes like raids and other mmo put an inflated value on dps, not versatility, because you cant min-max or stack versatility. Add on top of that people who have learned that min-maxing is all that matters and you have a double pronged problem that enforce each other.
“Trying to please everyone would not only be challenging
but would also result in a product that might not satisfy anyone”- Roman Pichler, Strategize
water = lower dps but heal to compensate, earth its mitigation, air it should be single target and cc – fail there.
The overall issue however is gaming modes like raids and other mmo put an inflated value on dps, not versatility, because you cant min-max or stack versatility. Add on top of that people who have learned that min-maxing is all that matters and you have a double pronged problem that enforce each other.
Not only that, but other healing and CC builds do not sacrifice as much DPS as Ele does to take on those roles. It really doesn’t make sense. Water’s auto should do 75% or so of Fire’s auto, not 40% like it does.
water is fine. earth could use some minor tweaks. but air is the only one that fails. it needs a lot more damage
To be honest swapping between air and fire (using fresh air trait) is a dps boost vs small hit box than camping fire.
The AA on air is not really good so you can use a conjured weapon in the while you are waiting for air overload to be ready to use.
Water and earth are not for dps, they are for utility. You need heals/water field? Go water… You need some cc or a balst finisher or a reflect? Go earth.
Parabrezza
To be honest swapping between air and fire (using fresh air trait) is a dps boost vs small hit box than camping fire.
The AA on air is not really good so you can use a conjured weapon in the while you are waiting for air overload to be ready to use.
Water and earth are not for dps, they are for utility. You need heals/water field? Go water… You need some cc or a balst finisher or a reflect? Go earth.
You don’t understand what I’m saying. I know they aren’t for DPS, but that’s no reason why they shouldn’t offer enough DPS to be usable outside of burning cooldowns and frantically swapping out of them. The gap in DPS between Fire and the other attunements is too large, creating a situation where, no matter what your build is, Fire is your core attunement with the others only being used situationally. My opinion is that that’s silly.
water = lower dps but heal to compensate, earth its mitigation, air it should be single target and cc – fail there.
The overall issue however is gaming modes like raids and other mmo put an inflated value on dps, not versatility, because you cant min-max or stack versatility. Add on top of that people who have learned that min-maxing is all that matters and you have a double pronged problem that enforce each other.
Not only that, but other healing and CC builds do not sacrifice as much DPS as Ele does to take on those roles. It really doesn’t make sense. Water’s auto should do 75% or so of Fire’s auto, not 40% like it does.
I would agree with that, at the moment with sceptre( for example) you swap into water fire of a solitary heal, maybe a cc then get the hell out of water asap as that auto is terrible. Instead the combination of water spells should be effective taking into account heal and dps such that your output doesn’t fall of a cliff with cool downs if you choose to keep in it.
Looking into water scepter alone, i do not see why the auto does not do the same damage as dagger lightening one, it doesn’t cc, it doesn’t heal. Its a great test case, why is it lower?
“Trying to please everyone would not only be challenging
but would also result in a product that might not satisfy anyone”- Roman Pichler, Strategize
(edited by vesica tempestas.1563)
I’m just curious – does anyone use anything other than Fire as a fallback in Staff? I get that they just offer different types of utility, but seems like Fire is the only one that isn’t under-tuned in terms of DPS.
In particular, it seems like Lightning should be able to compete well, but it just doesn’t, at least not for me. What do people think about this? Am I doing something wrong?
Fire is your main DPS attunement and most content in PvE doesn’t challange you enough to get out of fire… Low risk high reward gameplay. If you want to make the most out of a staff ele by effectively using the other attunements beside fire, try WvW.
Retsu ~ Inner Monkey [IM] ~ Piken Square
I’m just curious – does anyone use anything other than Fire as a fallback in Staff? I get that they just offer different types of utility, but seems like Fire is the only one that isn’t under-tuned in terms of DPS.
In particular, it seems like Lightning should be able to compete well, but it just doesn’t, at least not for me. What do people think about this? Am I doing something wrong?
Fire is your main DPS attunement and most content in PvE doesn’t challange you enough to get out of fire… Low risk high reward gameplay. If you want to make the most out of a staff ele by effectively using the other attunements beside fire, try WvW.
Ele players really should be joining together to ask for DPS buffs for the other attunements. There’s no reason Water’s auto should do less than 1/3 the damage of any other auto in the game. Likewise, there’s no reason Earth’s auto should be so weak just because it applies Weakness. How many other abilities stack Weakness while also doing more standard DPS?
The fact that the game essentially prohibits you from “camping” (and by this I mean falling back to, not staying exclusively in) in any attunement except for Fire is totally preposterous.
(edited by Einlanzer.1627)
I’m just curious – does anyone use anything other than Fire as a fallback in Staff? I get that they just offer different types of utility, but seems like Fire is the only one that isn’t under-tuned in terms of DPS.
In particular, it seems like Lightning should be able to compete well, but it just doesn’t, at least not for me. What do people think about this? Am I doing something wrong?
Fire is your main DPS attunement and most content in PvE doesn’t challange you enough to get out of fire… Low risk high reward gameplay. If you want to make the most out of a staff ele by effectively using the other attunements beside fire, try WvW.
Ele players really should be joining together to ask for DPS buffs for the other attunements. There’s no reason Water’s auto should do less than 1/3 the damage of any other auto in the game. Likewise, there’s no reason Earth’s auto should be so weak just because it applies Weakness. How many other abilities stack Weakness while also doing more standard DPS?
The fact that the game essentially prohibits you from “camping” (and by this I mean falling back to, not staying exclusively in) in any attunement except for Fire is totally preposterous.
I’m not sure that’s so clear cut … The approach to gameplay is pretty simple; killing stuff before you die, so it makes sense that the highest DPS attunement is the most leaned on.
The argument to buff other attunements so you don’t camp Fire is the same argument to buff a classes weapons for balance. The problem is that there is no why for doing that, other than giving more choice. From a purely practical consideration, it’s not needed and it adds very little to the game to do it. There is little reason to care about what attunment you are if they are all doing the same damage.
(edited by Obtena.7952)
I’m just curious – does anyone use anything other than Fire as a fallback in Staff? I get that they just offer different types of utility, but seems like Fire is the only one that isn’t under-tuned in terms of DPS.
In particular, it seems like Lightning should be able to compete well, but it just doesn’t, at least not for me. What do people think about this? Am I doing something wrong?
Fire is your main DPS attunement and most content in PvE doesn’t challange you enough to get out of fire… Low risk high reward gameplay. If you want to make the most out of a staff ele by effectively using the other attunements beside fire, try WvW.
Ele players really should be joining together to ask for DPS buffs for the other attunements. There’s no reason Water’s auto should do less than 1/3 the damage of any other auto in the game. Likewise, there’s no reason Earth’s auto should be so weak just because it applies Weakness. How many other abilities stack Weakness while also doing more standard DPS?
The fact that the game essentially prohibits you from “camping” (and by this I mean falling back to, not staying exclusively in) in any attunement except for Fire is totally preposterous.
I’m not sure that’s so clear cut … The approach to gameplay is pretty simple; killing stuff before you die, so it makes sense that the highest DPS attunement is the most leaned on.
The argument to buff other attunements so you don’t camp Fire is the same argument to buff a classes weapons for balance. The problem is that there is no why for doing that, other than giving more choice. From a purely practical consideration, it’s not needed and it adds very little to the game to do it. There is little reason to care about what attunment you are if they are all doing the same damage.
You are just… I dunno. I don’t understand. I was very clear that I’m not talking about making all the attunements do the same DPS. That would be silly. The point is that the DPS discrepancies between the attunements is way too large – so large that Fire is the only attunement that is not highly situational. You want to spend as little time in the other three as possible because, within seconds, they’ll tank your DPS while only providing you with mildly useful utility. This is especially true when you’re solo, vs in a large zerg.
It’s straight-up badly designed. Water’s DPS should be about 75% of fire’s, not 35%.
I got your point … so you want to reduce the discrepancy … but that still wouldn’t change how often a person swaps between any attunement because that’s based on the encounters. I mean, if you need healing 90% of the time, you would be in water approximately that much. Fire would be useless to you. But the game encounters aren’t designed like that.
I think you are exactly right on how Ele works; you swap to the attunements you need at the moment. If you need DPS 90% of time, you are in Fire 90%. If you need heals for 10%, you’re water. I mean, that’s exactly how the game works for all the other professions and weapons. I don’t understand how that’s different for Ele. The game is designed in that way, on purpose to facilitate active defenses and avoid trinity play. It’s not a mistake that you don’t use other attunments that often.
if you need heal, you swap to heal..but you only get a small heal. water is not fit for purpose for healer, its also not fit for purpose for sustained dps, its in nowhere land. Swapping to water to get a heal is also not an attunement, its a click sequence to get a heal. A water attunement should be heavy healing + dps filler, not weak healing + weak dps filler, jut like fire is sustained dps + 0 heal.
“Trying to please everyone would not only be challenging
but would also result in a product that might not satisfy anyone”- Roman Pichler, Strategize
if you need heal, you swap to heal..but you only get a small heal. water is not fit for purpose for healer, its also not fit for purpose for sustained dps, its in nowhere land. Swapping to water to get a heal is also not an attunement, its a click sequence to get a heal. A water attunement should be heavy healing + dps filler, not weak healing + weak dps filler, jut like fire is sustained dps + 0 heal.
Yeah, this is pretty much my argument. Water, Air, and to a lesser extent Earth all have more trouble than they should operating as sustained attunements. For staff, effectively, Fire is the only sustainable attunement, while the other three offer very situational utility and are otherwise extremely underpowered.
I don’t know why this isn’t seen as a problem by pretty much all Ele playerss.
I would venture to guess that people don’t regard this as a problem because as long as you have a good option, having more equivalent options to the good one is redundant. In addition, all classes have weapons that demonstrate limited application, just like non-Fire attunements on Ele. In the end, it’s a consistent application of weapons design philosophy.
Personally, i would like to see some reason to bust out of Fire once in a while, for reasons other than breaking CC bars but in the general game design, Anet still has to design encounters so that every class can succeed. The overall game design doesn’t give much reason to use anything but Fire. Does that warrant a complete attunement revamp? Hard to say.
(edited by Obtena.7952)
More damage means nerfing the utility and healing. You have to make the trade.
thats the point, the trade is unbalanced. Take water sceptre, you need heals so you swap to it…and get 1 heal every 20 seconds for 2000 health, with no other heal skills and sub par dps. That’s useless.
“Trying to please everyone would not only be challenging
but would also result in a product that might not satisfy anyone”- Roman Pichler, Strategize
(edited by vesica tempestas.1563)