Guild Wars 2

One of the things that really, really bugs me about Staff (and therefore about the Ele as a whole) is that, while I realize it’s designed primarily as a support weapon, I continuously find that (particularly when solo) Fire is the only semi-respectable fallback attunement.

Earth and Water have effective skills, but the weakness of their autoattacks makes them highly situational – I almost never find reason to stay in them for long and tend to dance back out of them as quickly as I can. Their autoattacks should do much more significant damage so that you aren’t forced to hop out of them as quickly as possible to remain even semi-viable.

Meanwhile, Air is just terrible. Everything about it other than maybe Static Field is sub-par and I rarely find any reason to even bother going into it, much less staying in it for any appreciable period of time. Chain Lightning and Lightning Surge both need significant buffs or need to just be redesigned altogether.

This problem actually exists on the other weapon sets as well (east least in PvE), but isn’t quite as egregious as it is on the staff.

Do other people feel the same or am I just doing something wrong?

Agree that the other attunements don’t encourage sticking around. I switch to others to drop CC, fields, etc. (which is very important). Staying in those attunements doesn’t feel useful however. You could argue that Water auto is nice for the 500+ pt heal it generates per attack. Using it on the door of a keep helps keep them rams alive in WvW.

There are times I really want to hang out in earth because the auto-attack adds weakness. However the skill does not hit hard enough, nor travel fast enough, to make it worth while as a valid single-target DPS attunement.

I never use any auto attacks on staff unless I’m waiting for attunement cooldowns. Ironically, my two favorite attunements are Air and Earth. Air 2 does a ridiculous amount of damage (I’ve hit some targets for 6.9k-8k with it). Earth 2 does a ton of damage too + bleed.

The weakness spam on Stoning can be useful at times. Whenever I’m in a team that I knwo will have trouble handling the big hits, I tend to spam a bit more stoning to get perma-weakness up on the boss. And that usually helps a lot.

But I agree, the auto attacks are a little…clunky compared to Fireball. Especially the Air auto attack, which is kinda pointless ever since Fireball’s AoE got buffed.

Just simple buffs will not help this situation. There will always be most dps-effective 1+2 combo and everyone will use it. Even if it will be water.
Something that may fix it is more powerful synergy between spells in different attunements. Like you stack vulnerability with earth 1, place firefield with fire 2, blast it with water 2 and blow the kittens out of target with air 2. Or maybe unique combos designed just for ele’s spells. That would be good. If proper attunement rotation would provide more dps than just fire spam people would really do that. Currently I feel something like that only about earth 2, not because it is effective, but because thats the only staff ele’s finisher and timed blasts look cool.
But to be honest such gameplay would be far above of GW2’s 1-spamming pve meta.

On the side note I really want to have powerful and fast single target skills on ele. Give it a gun. With attacks that would concentrate on pure 1200(1500?)-range cannon action, without this crappy “support” and “aoe” effects that come with a cost of being slow and boring.

Vinteros Asteano.1209:

I never use any auto attacks on staff unless I’m waiting for attunement cooldowns. Ironically, my two favorite attunements are Air and Earth. Air 2 does a ridiculous amount of damage (I’ve hit some targets for 6.9k-8k with it). Earth 2 does a ton of damage too + bleed.

I don’t really get why people say this – it’s not like using the autoattack prevents you from doing anything else, ever.

My point is that Fire’s auto-attack combined with the damage from its 2-5 skills makes it viable, if not optimal, to stay in for extended periods of time. No other attunement is. I find that annoying, because it means Fire always has the ‘fallback’ role.

I understand that Attunement dancing is intended, and don’t have a problem with doing it when I need to be highly versatile or effective, but I shouldn’t be forced to do it just to kill a regular mob or two within a reasonable period of time. Air, Water, and Earth all three need damage buffs to at least their autoattacks IMO.

Einlanzer.1627:

Vinteros Asteano.1209:

I never use any auto attacks on staff unless I’m waiting for attunement cooldowns. Ironically, my two favorite attunements are Air and Earth. Air 2 does a ridiculous amount of damage (I’ve hit some targets for 6.9k-8k with it). Earth 2 does a ton of damage too + bleed.

I don’t really get why people say this – it’s not like using the autoattack prevents you from doing anything else, ever.

My point is that Fire’s auto-attack combined with the damage from its 2-5 skills makes it viable, if not optimal, to stay in for extended periods of time. No other attunement is. I find that annoying, because it means Fire always has the ‘fallback’ role.

I understand that Attunement dancing is intended, and don’t have a problem with doing it when I need to be highly versatile or effective, but I shouldn’t be forced to do it just to kill a regular mob or two within a reasonable period of time. Air, Water, and Earth all three need damage buffs to at least their autoattacks IMO.

I guess people say it because it’s their experience. Even fire’s auto attack I couldn’t sit there and spam 1 in between fire cooldowns because I knew I could be doing other things (one of the reasons I have a lot of trouble running pyromance puissance and fresh air builds). TBH, as a WvW ele, I don’t feel like fire attunement is my major go to attunement. Only using 2,3, and 5 on a consistent basis and 1 and 4 being situational.

I’ve always found auto attacks for staff way to stiff. I can understand the whole fancy show as we form the elements in our hands before we throw them but it feels like by the time I let lose the attack I could of attacked several times with any other weapons auto attack. and then there that throw itself…. I feel like i’m playing little league. Speed the kitten attacks up already!

If your argument is for PvE, then I definitely agree. There’s almost no reason to switch out of fire unless you really need some CC (which doesnt happen on most boss fights)

But if your argument is for sPvP or WvW, then I can stand to argue there. Every element plays into each other very well. They made sure to put a CC in every attunement to (in my opinion) make them very accessible.

Eruption is also a strong source of damage and the bleeds should not be overlooked. But the autoattacks (besides fire and earth) are largely useless and should be revamped.

I made a video on the basic combos of sPvP for staff here if it tickles your fancy:
Two links to the same video. Fast forwarded to the combo sections for your convenience.

http://youtu.be/QDX7lo1xtak?t=15m25s
http://youtu.be/QDX7lo1xtak?t=9m45s