Guild Wars 2

Fire seems to be the only consistently usable attunement for the staff. The others are all highly, highly situational – and it mostly seems to be driven by comparatively weak autoattacks.

I don’t really understand the point of this – shouldn’t Lightning, Earth, and Water all have more effective autos than they do? Especially Lightning, since it only deals damage. At least Earth and Water have utility effects so can be more useful in groups.

Just curious.

I guess mostly this is a complaint about Air’s performance on Staff, since Earth and Water have more specialized roles. Air just seems pointlessly weak compared to Fire, which means that, with a damage build, it’s rarely useful to swap out of fire.

I think that’s pretty lame.

On core ele it’s pretty much like that. On a Tempest you dip in Air for Overload, as it’s still quite strong.

Air 1 realty should hit harder or have some other effect. Earth 1 needs to be a 3 target aoe as well as projectile finish with 3 target hit too. Fire 1 and water 1 are good as is.

Staff loves multiple targets. The Air auto isn’t completely terrible if you’ve got 2+ targets, but stinks if you only have one target. That said, I’d agree that a damage bump would help. A 50% bump would put it on par with Fire for single targets, which wouldn’t move the needle on the meta, but would at least give Air Staff some sort of offense.

Boost air AA damage, lower fire AA damage but add burning. Done. Now air has some value and fire finally has some extra condi damage.

Yes, because the thing this game needs the most is MORE condi damage…

Air AA could just stack up if you have only one target. Or at least bounce back at you before going back to target. Maybe could add an effect when bouncing back at you, like making the second projectile hits twice faster…

I would be happy enough with Air staff AA if it was actually faster. For a chain “lightning” the projectile is painfully slow. Give it a 10-20% damage increase as well maybe, but otherwise the fact that it jumps between targets relatively far from each other makes it unique enough. Its just slow.

(Oh, and sometimes the bounces just go wide to who knows where. Probably a bug, or its supposed target gets killed by the time the bounce happens…)

lakdav.3694:

I would be happy enough with Air staff AA if it was actually faster. For a chain “lightning” the projectile is painfully slow. Give it a 10-20% damage increase as well maybe, but otherwise the fact that it jumps between targets relatively far from each other makes it unique enough. Its just slow.

(Oh, and sometimes the bounces just go wide to who knows where. Probably a bug, or its supposed target gets killed by the time the bounce happens…)

Yeah, I think the animation/sound effect is crap too, but, regardless, the damage isn’t good enough. Fire is just way better, and that isn’t justified by the utility on Air.

The whole skill just needs a rework really.

But the same could be said of Earth. Earth’s AA seems needlessly weak, which makes Earth really situational in the same way. Again, I don’t get that. Why should Fire be the only attunement capable of working as fallback? That just serves to thematically pigeonhole most Elementalist players.

Earth’s staff autoattack would be a lot stronger if Projectile Finishes would be worthwhile. That 100% projectile finisher chance would be the actual utility of Stoning, not the weakness it inflicts.

Another thing that came to mind is the Stoning skill of Guild Wars 1. It didnt inflict weakness, it knocked down the target if it was inflicted with weakness. (Enervating Charge followed by Stoning was a skill combo used by some annoying mobs). So what if GW2 Stoning kept inflicting weakness, and had say, a 33% chance to knock down if the target is already suffering from weakness?

Generally speaking I don’t believe buffing damage for all non-fire element autoattacks would be the way to go. Fire is meant to be the damage element, naturally it should outshine all other elements in that regard.

Its also worth considering that staff is generally the long-range weapon of the elementalist, and when you are safely away from the hostile situation you feel more confident going full-on damage most of the time, which can also contribute to the feeling that Fire is the only worthwile element on staff.

Iirc air aa is stronger than fire aa when you have two targets next to each other. Anyway, air aa is actually better than fire aa in a pvp environment cause you actually hit things, so theres that at least. Some buffs wouldnt be bad, tho.

lakdav.3694:

Earth’s staff autoattack would be a lot stronger if Projectile Finishes would be worthwhile. That 100% projectile finisher chance would be the actual utility of Stoning, not the weakness it inflicts.

Another thing that came to mind is the Stoning skill of Guild Wars 1. It didnt inflict weakness, it knocked down the target if it was inflicted with weakness. (Enervating Charge followed by Stoning was a skill combo used by some annoying mobs). So what if GW2 Stoning kept inflicting weakness, and had say, a 33% chance to knock down if the target is already suffering from weakness?

Generally speaking I don’t believe buffing damage for all non-fire element autoattacks would be the way to go. Fire is meant to be the damage element, naturally it should outshine all other elements in that regard.

Its also worth considering that staff is generally the long-range weapon of the elementalist, and when you are safely away from the hostile situation you feel more confident going full-on damage most of the time, which can also contribute to the feeling that Fire is the only worthwile element on staff.

I would say the knockback on weakness should be attached to earth 2 rather than earth 1, as even with the reduced % it feels rly strong, and rng is usually bad. Having earth 2 knockback would make more sense as it gives some “use” to earth aa and promotes seting up a good earth 2 to make sure you hit it on moving targets and stuff.

EDIT: by knockback I meant knock down

Knockback on eruption makes sense too. That will never happen, but one can dream. I like the weakness/finisher on earth AA though, it’s good against condi builds with cleansing water and guard light fields.

In retrospect yes, I agree. Knockdown chance on AA would be either annoyingly strong or annoyingly unpredictable with the very low chance it would need to be balanced. A guaranteed knockdown on weakened foes on other non-AA skills would be better.

Eruption is a good choice. But I would also consider Shockwave too: If target is weakened, the Immobilize is replaced by a knockdown.