Guild Wars 2

I feel cheated out of auto attacks. They are mostly one second cast time and seem to hit 1 outta 2-3 cast at max range. This is when most classes can just spam 1 all day long and auto kill you. When fighting another ranged class, I can not keep pressure up cause they just pluck me away while never missing with their auto attacks. It just feels so wrong to be a mage class that cannot mage. Anet needs to spend a good month repairing the Elementalist.

I love this class and thought it was going to be a mage/wizard type of play. Even support is rough. Its just not enough to keep up with what other classes can do every 10 seconds, while ours are 40 sec cooldowns, let alone the only source of our damage output relies on insta gibbing someone in a mesh of 10 button mashing and now on a 40+ cooldown before it can happen again and unable to access other skills in those attunements.

/frustrated

Welcome aboard!
The majority of us agree it is frustrating but we keep playing regardless.

As a Staff Elementalist from the first open Beta weekend, I understand.

I would like to offer some advice, on being a staff Elementalist.

1) Whether it was should be or not, the staff if not a good weapon for 1v1 play. Even in PVP if I am attacking one enemy at a time I like to use the scepter.

2) The staff really shines in WvW against several targets or assaulting walls (Meteor storming the siege equipment). With Blasting Staff using Eruption, Lava Font, Flame Burst (not boosted, but fun to set everyone on fire), and Meteor storm allows you to really punish a group enemies. You can even solo camps with a staff build if you use the Earth Golem (I suggest both glyphs for safety).

I will agree with you that the 40 second cool down on our skills really cripples us. It forces us to change attunements, but some attunements like air suck (unless you are just there to grab haste) or Water (I only go in here when I need to heal, but it adds some serious healing power without any need for a healing build).

If you want a powerful auto attack though try a condition build with earth scepter auto attack. It is a bit of a gamble, but if the opponent does not have enough condition removal, it can bleed them out quickly.

I do agree, the auto-attack and air attunements still need a bit of work, but staff ele is SO CLOSE!

Staff is the only kit that really does have a bit of everything, especially with the buffed unsteady ground and burning retreat. You can get a good number of jukes using those skills, lightning flash, and static field.

I do play staff quite a bit in groups, when I can lay out some hurt on areas, but the 1v1 damage is still non-existent (which is a problem b/c of no weapon-swap). Anytime I take down some fool while caught 1v1 with a staff I don’t feel very accomplished, I just notice how poorly the other guy played to get killed by a staff 1v1.

In groups though, when dealing with those ranged enemies: magnetic shield and laugh as they kill themselves while spamming at max-speed!

Try WvW Raiding. Staff Ele functions there just like it does in your imagination. Find a good WvW Raid Group that uses voice comms and calls out Water FIelds and you’ll see just how wizardly the Ele can really be in large battles.

Ya I’ve done the WvWvW thing for first 6months of the game. Don’t want to be a combo field bot. Into the spvp these days. I love the feeling of killing 3-4 people on a point with my aoe. I just feel like our auto attacks are lacking when my aoe is on cooldown. They cast to slow, by the time someone runs at me i can get 1 1/2 shots off. and if they are ranged they just run side to side or jump and my autos miss causing my only source of pressure to be ground target spells.

I feel your pain and I too did everything I was possible to make staff a viable weapon other than for group play. I’ve come to accept that, staff just isn’t good for much other than group play.

I’ve had conversations with Elementalist who claim they have used staff other than for just group play and used it well. That may be true, I’m just not able to do it lol.

Ele was my first character and my main. It was hell levelling to 80, and everything you said is true. But!

WvW is where Ele shines. Screw being a water field generator. I’m no support, I’m a freaking massacring machine! Went full zerk, all exotics, and rained ungodly death n enemy Zergs with Meteor Storm, Lava Font, Flame Burst and the auto attack.

With this kind of “who cares if I die when they sneeze on me” build I get 3,400 base power with relatively ghetto exotic gear, and I can smash enemies with about 2k per auto attack, 3k per meteor and 2k per tick on lava font. Enemies melt fast.

Been on a killing spree since last Sunday… I completed wvw season 1 Avenger kills earlier today with 500 kills in a week. I’m sure others can kill faster, but we are no pushover in WVW.

This same build decimates dungeon bosses too, as long as you can survive long enough.

Mochann.5298:

Ele was my first character and my main. It was hell levelling to 80, and everything you said is true. But!

WvW is where Ele shines. Screw being a water field generator. I’m no support, I’m a freaking massacring machine! Went full zerk, all exotics, and rained ungodly death n enemy Zergs with Meteor Storm, Lava Font, Flame Burst and the auto attack.

With this kind of “who cares if I die when they sneeze on me” build I get 3,400 base power with relatively ghetto exotic gear, and I can smash enemies with about 2k per auto attack, 3k per meteor and 2k per tick on lava font. Enemies melt fast.

Been on a killing spree since last Sunday… I completed wvw season 1 Avenger kills earlier today with 500 kills in a week. I’m sure others can kill faster, but we are no pushover in WVW.

This same build decimates dungeon bosses too, as long as you can survive long enough.

Sigh… running full zerker as a staff ele in wvw might be fun, but in the end your real class with that build is Rally Bait.

Bhima.9518:

Mochann.5298:

Ele was my first character and my main. It was hell levelling to 80, and everything you said is true. But!

WvW is where Ele shines. Screw being a water field generator. I’m no support, I’m a freaking massacring machine! Went full zerk, all exotics, and rained ungodly death n enemy Zergs with Meteor Storm, Lava Font, Flame Burst and the auto attack.

With this kind of “who cares if I die when they sneeze on me” build I get 3,400 base power with relatively ghetto exotic gear, and I can smash enemies with about 2k per auto attack, 3k per meteor and 2k per tick on lava font. Enemies melt fast.

Been on a killing spree since last Sunday… I completed wvw season 1 Avenger kills earlier today with 500 kills in a week. I’m sure others can kill faster, but we are no pushover in WVW.

This same build decimates dungeon bosses too, as long as you can survive long enough.

Sigh… running full zerker as a staff ele in wvw might be fun, but in the end your real class with that build is Rally Bait.

He’ll find out once he encounters a bigger blob than his. A zerg who is outnumbered can still win against a bigger one easily, but not when you have rally baits among your group.

All of Staff auto attacks are so boring and underwhelming. I could eqip guardian staff 1 instead of my any elite skill.

I would prefer they nerf the autoattacks into the ground and balance with buffing the cooldown powers.

Staff ele is arguably one of the best-composed weapon sets in the game. It’s utilitarian, fair to opponents, and engaging to use.

While it can work in a 1v1 scenario, it requires all of the CC staff has to maintain damage on a target (and that can just be bypassed with stability), and all of those skills have long cool-downs. In PvP, 1v1s/light roaming can work out because of cover and terrain differences, but in WvW, it’s far less effective because the battleground is typically much more open.

Retsuko.2035:

Bhima.9518:

Mochann.5298:

Ele was my first character and my main. It was hell levelling to 80, and everything you said is true. But!

WvW is where Ele shines. Screw being a water field generator. I’m no support, I’m a freaking massacring machine! Went full zerk, all exotics, and rained ungodly death n enemy Zergs with Meteor Storm, Lava Font, Flame Burst and the auto attack.

With this kind of “who cares if I die when they sneeze on me” build I get 3,400 base power with relatively ghetto exotic gear, and I can smash enemies with about 2k per auto attack, 3k per meteor and 2k per tick on lava font. Enemies melt fast.

Been on a killing spree since last Sunday… I completed wvw season 1 Avenger kills earlier today with 500 kills in a week. I’m sure others can kill faster, but we are no pushover in WVW.

This same build decimates dungeon bosses too, as long as you can survive long enough.

Sigh… running full zerker as a staff ele in wvw might be fun, but in the end your real class with that build is Rally Bait.

He’ll find out once he encounters a bigger blob than his. A zerg who is outnumbered can still win against a bigger one easily, but not when you have rally baits among your group.

This hasn’t been my experience so far. Maybe in Gold or Silver tier servers the game is a lot tighter; I’ve only fought Fergusson’s Crossing, Gate of Madness and Anvil Rock so far, and I have a surprisingly high survivability rate.

We are used to fighting outnumbered in Eredon Terrace, and I’ve been doing relatively well. As long as the enemy zerg isn’t more than twice ours we usually do pretty well. Though latey I’ve been noticing Anvil Rock’s tactics have been getting better — but I’m still racking in the kills so I’m not particularly worried so far.

More concerned with completing my other achievements for Season 1 right now.

I really was only complaining about auto attacks miss rate. Just seems that 1 outta 2-3 cast will hit a moving target, while other classes seem to be able to pluck you away with autos while you try to kite around. So instead of people just running side to side or straight at you, they may try to kite back instead of the elementalist being the one running away.

Only thing I hate about ele staff is that our autos are lack luster, hell most the time I won’t even bother casting them because they’re so bad., they should just lower the cast time on them, or make them have A LOT faster travel time, either one (or both) would make me happy.

I find staff Ele to be quite good the way it is now (WvW-wise), especially in group play. I think it’s got incredible potential but requires a bit of brain and good key-binds so you can quickly lay down your spells. It’s all about the combos. You’ve seriously got a kitten-ton of combos you can do o.O. That’s what makes the weapon hard/fun to use, in my opinion. Reminds me a lot of staff Necro :P

Durzlla.6295:

Only thing I hate about ele staff is that our autos are lack luster, hell most the time I won’t even bother casting them because they’re so bad., they should just lower the cast time on them, or make them have A LOT faster travel time, either one (or both) would make me happy.

The auto-attacks on staff are incredibly balanced yet effective.

Swagg.9236:

Durzlla.6295:

Only thing I hate about ele staff is that our autos are lack luster, hell most the time I won’t even bother casting them because they’re so bad., they should just lower the cast time on them, or make them have A LOT faster travel time, either one (or both) would make me happy.

The auto-attacks on staff are incredibly balanced yet effective.

Eh, i’m just not a fan of them, earth and water are the only ones i feel are strong enough to spam, all the others i might throw out once or twice before i swap and use my other skills, which are significantly more useful imo.

Swagg.9236:

Durzlla.6295:

Only thing I hate about ele staff is that our autos are lack luster, hell most the time I won’t even bother casting them because they’re so bad., they should just lower the cast time on them, or make them have A LOT faster travel time, either one (or both) would make me happy.

The auto-attacks on staff are incredibly balanced yet effective.

Let’s look at the Auto Attacks of the Staff (data taken from http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki)

I decided to calculate the base DPS of every auto attack and see how ours stack up (48 auto attacks including Engineer Kits). Damage was calculated by Damage / attack cycle time (this includes the after cast). This is the Single target DPS, since it would be difficult to normalize for multiple foes.

Note that Raw Damage is the physical damage, Total Damage is raw damage + full condition damage (i.e. from bleeding, etc.)

• Water Blast is the worst DPS of any weapon at a total DPS of 82. This can match the Mesmer’s Winds of Chaos if it puts Vulnerability on a mob instead of bleeding or burning. I think we all knew how bad Water Blast was though.

I would like to note that it is one of two auto attacks that heal (excluding the Engineer if they invest in healing explosives). The Guardian’s True Strike heals for 335 every 3.26 seconds and has a DPS of 330 (about 1.5 * the DPS of Fireball).

• Stoning is the next worst with a Total DPS at 137 DPS and is the worst of skills that inflict weakness. The Elixir gun has a higher base DPS at 157 and inflicts 4 stacks of bleeding (4 Sec) for a total of 361 DPS. The Warrior mace smash has a DPS of 347 and inflicts weakness for 5 seconds. and the Thief Sword Slice inflicts 387 DPS with Cripples (2 Sec) and Weakness (2 Sec).

• Chain lightning is the 7th worst total DPS (It does beat out the Rangers Axe at 168 DPS and 900 Range).

Interestingly Chain lightning has slightly higher DPS than Arc Lightning 174 vs 161 DPS.

• Fireball is the 17th worst overall DPS at 224. This is actually virtually tied with Vapor blade at 222 DPS.

To put things into perspective most Warrior DPS’s are 347 – 490 with the longbow being an outlier at 178 DPS, and the Sword at 804 DPS (due to 2 * 8 second bleeds).

The Guardian’s Staff is at 222 DPS and the scepter is at 280 (although ranges from 414-420 with their melee weapons.

The Ranger’s DPSs are 248 – 485 (with the short bow, if they flank their target for bleed). with an outlier of the axe at 168 DPS.

I think you get the picture though. Our Best Staff DPS is on the low end for any other class, and the other three are setting low scores. There is a reason why there are a lot of D/D Ele’s, and why Staff Ele’s can virtually never win 1 on 1 duels.

All of these numbers are just for Auto Attack though. Other skills can affect the total DPS (along with Traits, equipment, etc.). But this gives a good idea on where our weapons stand.

On a side note the dagger DPS range from 378 – 488 with vapor blade an outlier at 222. and the Scepter has a good Fire an Earth Attack at 482 and 492 respectively (but have the lowest raw damage of any skill at 66 and 79 damage respectively) (and Air and Water are at 161 and 180 respectively).

Well, I’m a little disappointed by Staff autos too, not because of the damage (however earth could do more, and even chain lightning should be stronger on single-target), but mainly because of AAs missing a lot. To be honest, when an Ele tries to hit me with fireball on longer range (let’s say 900+) I can outstrafe all fireballs he throw at me without being hit at all….

Morderger.6298:

I really was only complaining about auto attacks miss rate. Just seems that 1 outta 2-3 cast will hit a moving target, while other classes seem to be able to pluck you away with autos while you try to kite around. So instead of people just running side to side or straight at you, they may try to kite back instead of the elementalist being the one running away.

Yeah, I also noticed not only do auto-attacks in staff miss, it sometimes also show LoS issues even though there clearly ain’t nothing between me or the target. I’m not sure if this is a bug or I don;t know.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Morderger.6298:

I really was only complaining about auto attacks miss rate. Just seems that 1 outta 2-3 cast will hit a moving target, while other classes seem to be able to pluck you away with autos while you try to kite around. So instead of people just running side to side or straight at you, they may try to kite back instead of the elementalist being the one running away.

Yeah, I also noticed not only do auto-attacks in staff miss, it sometimes also show LoS issues even though there clearly ain’t nothing between me or the target. I’m not sure if this is a bug or I don;t know.

Unfortunately, a lot of skills shows Obstructed even if there’s nothing in the path, probably some collision problem…

Chain lightning at least should be attacking faster. It’s freakin lightning for crying out loud.

I wish Anet would try buffing staff sometime, it can get pretty pathetic.

Their design/balance team doesn’t seem to get how important it is that autoattacks, if they’re going to have them at all, be carefully balanced with each other. Currently, they’re all over the place and that’s a problem that causes a lot of sets to be less usable than they should be.

Shadowfall.6543:

All of these numbers are just for Auto Attack though. Other skills can affect the total DPS (along with Traits, equipment, etc.). But this gives a good idea on where our weapons stand.

Which is exactly why I disagree: it’s not a good indication of where our weapon stands. I dunno about you guys but I barely use my auto-attacks, as there’s almost always something else to cast that deals a lot more damage. There’s also the range issue: warriors deal a lot more damage but most of it is melee. Your own research showed that our fireball is actually stronger than the warrior’s longbow (and has an aoe to boot). The elixir gun outclasses stoning, but has other disadvantages like not being a full projectile finisher and having less desirable fields to combo with. Finally, there’s our boon stacking, which means that most eles will have at least a few stacks of might and/or fury, which can also act as a balancing factor.

I’m not saying things are fair or that the staff has no problems. But looking at the auto-attacks alone doesn’t seem very plausible for eles, as we simply function a little different.

Water Blast isn’t bad, it’s just more of a situational healing spell than an attack spell.
Fireball is good due to its ranged cleave (huge aoe for an autoattack with Blasting Staff).

In comparison, Chain Lightning and Stoning feel like they lack direction. Staff already has one aoe autoattack making Chain Lightning kind of superfluous and Stoning doesn’t provide bleeding despite that being one of the defining themes of the Earth trait line.

Either way, even if these autoattacks were buffed you still wouldn’t be able to fight anyone 1on1 with the Staff.

Shadowfall.6543:

Interesting notes on staff ele DPS

This sort of analysis is too focused on single skills when staff elementalists are often chaining their low-recharge 2 skills to supplement their auto-attacks. I honestly don’t believe that it gives a good objective opinion on where staff stands. While it is true that the earth and water options deal rather low damage, the air and fire options both are not only strong as individual packets of damage, but all staff auto-attacks are often supplemented by an attunement’s low-recharge, AoE 2 skill. Even the water 2 skill hits incredibly hard (same base damage as a meteor shower strike) and also possesses a large AoE radius.

Back to the air and fire auto-attacks, though, [Fireball] has a base splash of 120 which can be increased to 180 with blasting staff. Furthermore, given that [Lava Font] casts nearly instantly and also has nearly the same base damage as [Fireball] (302 LF vs 314 FB), an elementalist can simultaneously strike a foe with these skills with good positioning and timing effectively resulting in a double auto-attack and serving to either nuke multiple opponents on the spot or drive them away from a specific location.

[Chain Lightning] is great because of the bounce. It fries rangers because it can double-hit due to the pet and can also help clear mesmer clones and phantasms.

Even though they may be lack-luster, they are balanced, effective and each one has a tangible impact in combat. However, I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing maybe the water auto-attack reduced to a 1/2 second cast-time. Again, though, I just want to be clear that there is nothing wrong with staff auto-attacks. By removing an emphasis on most auto-attack damage and skills that auto-aim for you, staff eles are forced to play around with the skills that they have in order to connect damage to foes. It’s very engaging, rewarding and fair.

Swagg.9236:

Shadowfall.6543:

Interesting notes on staff ele DPS

This sort of analysis is too focused on single skills when staff elementalists are often chaining their low-recharge 2 skills to supplement their auto-attacks. I honestly don’t believe that it gives a good objective opinion on where staff stands. While it is true that the earth and water options deal rather low damage, the air and fire options both are not only strong as individual packets of damage, but all staff auto-attacks are often supplemented by an attunement’s low-recharge, AoE 2 skill. Even the water 2 skill hits incredibly hard (same base damage as a meteor shower strike) and also possesses a large AoE radius.

Back to the air and fire auto-attacks, though, [Fireball] has a base splash of 120 which can be increased to 180 with blasting staff. Furthermore, given that [Lava Font] casts nearly instantly and also has nearly the same base damage as [Fireball] (302 LF vs 314 FB), an elementalist can simultaneously strike a foe with these skills with good positioning and timing effectively resulting in a double auto-attack and serving to either nuke multiple opponents on the spot or drive them away from a specific location.

[Chain Lightning] is great because of the bounce. It fries rangers because it can double-hit due to the pet and can also help clear mesmer clones and phantasms.

Even though they may be lack-luster, they are balanced, effective and each one has a tangible impact in combat. However, I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing maybe the water auto-attack reduced to a 1/2 second cast-time. Again, though, I just want to be clear that there is nothing wrong with staff auto-attacks. By removing an emphasis on most auto-attack damage and skills that auto-aim for you, staff eles are forced to play around with the skills that they have in order to connect damage to foes. It’s very engaging, rewarding and fair.

I focused on Auto attacks since they are the easier to compare against the classes (cool downs can make it a bit more difficult). I have not had time to go through all of the different class skills and compare them (48 * 4 more plus multiple combinations).

Fire: if your target stews in Lava Font it will get hit 4 times over 5 seconds (with cool down, but I have not taken into account the time to cast lava font and aftercast affecting Fireballs dps). That is an additional 242 DPS. That is at most 464 DPS. which is still less than the warrior’s axe at 900. My guess is it is practically closer to 400, which is good, but still a warrior or guardian is going to attack more damage (which cleaves so you only get the advantage with >3 enemies).

Air: you may like air, but the truth is its DPS is terrible and Lightning Surge is not going to make up for that. Even if there is a second target to hit, its DPS is weak. And for some reason it is the only chain skill I am aware of that has a built in 20% decrease in damage on the third strike. Air has no other attacks, so in the staff Air is just there for you to attune to grab swiftness or put up lightning field and push them out it before switching. It is not set up to let someone be an Aeromancer like you could with D/D or even D/F. (In a dagger build I switch to air when skills are on cooldown because the auto attack DPS is one of the best).

Water: This is a great healing skill, and if they had gave it to the monk class I think it would be great. I still do not see why our DPS is the lowest when another class has something similar with 1.5 times the auto attacking DPS of fireball. Even if you are dropping Ice Spike on someones head (540 damage every 4 seconds (1 sec cast with some casting delay) that only adds 138 DPS and that takes 1 second to cast so takes away 1 full casting of Water splash at a whopping 82 DPS, so it increases your DPS by about 15. This should confirm anyones suspicion that it is tedious to kill anything when attuned to water. this demotes water to either “quick we need healing” or another fly over attunement to pop in drop an ice spike/ chill field.

Earth: well, Earth has the only blast finisher in our staff line-up convienently timed so we can cast it then switch to another field. Eruption is very powerful and it adds about 92 raw DPS and the condition DPS is harder to count since it is 12 seconds and can stack with itself (somewhere between 250-500 depending on how many stacks you can get on the target). It is also stupidly easy to dodge in PvP and only works in select cases of WvW (and that is assuming no one brings a condition removal for it’s 12 second bleed). I will concede that eruption may atone for its miserable DPS, because as a lazy Ele in PVE sometimes I will pop this and just run around a few seconds waiting for targets to die, PvP and WvW is a whole different story though.

Swagg.9236:

Shadowfall.6543:

Interesting notes on staff ele DPS

This sort of analysis is too focused on single skills when staff elementalists are often chaining their low-recharge 2 skills to supplement their auto-attacks. I honestly don’t believe that it gives a good objective opinion on where staff stands. While it is true that the earth and water options deal rather low damage, the air and fire options both are not only strong as individual packets of damage, but all staff auto-attacks are often supplemented by an attunement’s low-recharge, AoE 2 skill. Even the water 2 skill hits incredibly hard (same base damage as a meteor shower strike) and also possesses a large AoE radius.

Back to the air and fire auto-attacks, though, [Fireball] has a base splash of 120 which can be increased to 180 with blasting staff. Furthermore, given that [Lava Font] casts nearly instantly and also has nearly the same base damage as [Fireball] (302 LF vs 314 FB), an elementalist can simultaneously strike a foe with these skills with good positioning and timing effectively resulting in a double auto-attack and serving to either nuke multiple opponents on the spot or drive them away from a specific location.

[Chain Lightning] is great because of the bounce. It fries rangers because it can double-hit due to the pet and can also help clear mesmer clones and phantasms.

Even though they may be lack-luster, they are balanced, effective and each one has a tangible impact in combat. However, I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing maybe the water auto-attack reduced to a 1/2 second cast-time. Again, though, I just want to be clear that there is nothing wrong with staff auto-attacks. By removing an emphasis on most auto-attack damage and skills that auto-aim for you, staff eles are forced to play around with the skills that they have in order to connect damage to foes. It’s very engaging, rewarding and fair.

I don’t agree that they are balanced and effective. Fire is okay, the rest are much worse than they should be. Unsurprisingly, because of this, you pretty much always see solo Staff Eles in Fire the majority of the time.

Shadowfall.6543:

Your rebuttal

Fair enough. They are lack-luster and the numbers prove them to be less viable DPS than melee, but isn’t melee inherently stronger than range in this game anyway? Also, you seem to point out that the main issue with staff ele auto-attacks is that you can’t sit in any single attunement except for fire and expect a strong auto-attack.

Is that really that bad? Is forcing the staff ele to use skills other than auto-attacks really a bad decision? I argue that that’s what makes staff ele one of the best composed weapons in this game. It’s so ingrained in support, range and target-lead play that it’s really defined as something apart from some of the other more “face-rolly” weapon sets that exist in this game. It really serves as a model for what weapon sets could be.

Chain Lightning is next to useless. It needs to attack faster, and shoot faster. Actually the entire Air Tree is pretty bad, although swiftness is nice (but ultimately still has a too too long cooldown) from Air 4, and Static Field has its uses. But skills 1-3 are just terrible. I disagree with Swagg’s statement that Air does great damage with AA and Air 2. No, just no.

Chain Lightning has its uses, but dealing damage it isn’t particularly good at. Air 2 is slow as hell, hits weakly, and only hits one target. It’s sad. The only use Chain Lightning has is for tagging targets in zerg events. And even then, it’s not particularly good at it because you can do something similar with Fire using Lava Font and Flame Burst — and Flame Burst is faster.

Fire Ball as noted is awesome. It’s the only awesome AA we have. It’s not great, but it’s not bad. Fire in general is a good skill tree, where all the skills are useful or good.

Water is great. It’s not gonna deal damage, but water fields can really make a huge difference in a big fight, or even against PVE bosses.

Earth is generally a pretty sucky element, but is useful because it has our only combo finishers. It’s supposed to be our condi element, but frankly fire’s Flame Burst is better at condi than whatever earth has, mostly because it’s next to impossible to get Eruption to hit anyone, and that time is better spent just killing things outright in fire.

Now, while it’s true that Ele Staff attacks are ranged and as such enjoy and avantage over things like Warrior and Guardian melee attacks, the truth is they aren’t all that effective due to thing like slow projectile movement, slow cast time, and how you can’t maximize them as opponents can easily dodge (like out of a lava font).

When you take into consideration that we have lousy armor, whereas Warriors/Guardians have great armor and thus can afford to melee without much problems, and then take into consideration that their melee attacks cleave and serve as AOEs, then you see that there’s little point to really stick to Ele and tought it out, other than wanting to roleplay as a mage. But most of us are role players so that floats our boat, no matter how crappy the class is.

Is that really that bad? Is forcing the staff ele to use skills other than auto-attacks really a bad decision? I argue that that’s what makes staff ele one of the best composed weapons in this game. It’s so ingrained in support, range and target-lead play that it’s really defined as something apart from some of the other more “face-rolly” weapon sets that exist in this game. It really serves as a model for what weapon sets could be.

That’s well and good, but the thing is, every other class has weapon sets that are “Face roll” and Eles are the only class without one. I mean, we only have 3 weapon sets — Staff, Scepter and Dagger. If none of our weapon sets are “face roll” that really puts us at a disadvantage.

WvW

I am not the eagle but the vulture. I am not the lion but the Hyena. In a Zerg fight, I am not about the initial blow but about the finishing blow.

Outside of our CCs and water heals my target is the weak, the damaged. In large battles you do not want downed players being revived or rally. Finishing them is what I do best.

Eruption, by itself, is wonderful on a downed player; along with those trying to revive them; now add in a combo. Chain lightning allows you to target two down players at once who may not fall within any of your AOEs.

If you are a glass cannon stay away from my group. Yes, you may do damage but once you drop, and you will, you will rally a number of the enemy; which has changed the tide of multiple battles.

Mochann.5298:

although swiftness is nice (but ultimately still has a too too long cooldown)

It’s strength comes from the condition removal. Adding something like super speed on top of that would make this skill a very utilitarian in-combat ability for staff since it really could use with more combat mobility.

Mochann.5298:

Chain Lightning has its uses, but dealing damage it isn’t particularly good at.

All it does is damage, so you’re just saying that it’s a bad skill. I guess that’s fine, but it still does well at clearing mesmer spam and DPSing rangers that only have their pet out.

Mochann.5298:

Air 2 is slow as hell, hits weakly, and only hits one target. It’s sad.

Slow maybe, but weak it is not. It hits with the same base power as a [Meteor Shower] meteor and it is in fact an AoE.

Air is indeed somewhat slow and more utility-oriented on staff, which is why I’ve made the suggestions that I’ve made. By redesigning [Gust], giving some more combat mobility to [Windborne Speed], shaving off some of [Lightning Surge]’s cast-time, and throwing some boon hate into the mix, the weapon set can really come into its own as a control and battlefield navigation set.

Mochann.5298:

Earth is generally a pretty sucky element, but is useful because it has our only combo finishers. It’s supposed to be our condi element, but frankly fire’s Flame Burst is better at condi than whatever earth has, mostly because it’s next to impossible to get Eruption to hit anyone, and that time is better spent just killing things outright in fire.

Earth staff has really come into its own as a control set with the change to [Unsteady Ground]. Slightly lowering the recharge on [Shockwave] (another very powerful control skill) can help give the staff elementalist more staying power by freezing up enemies in motion.

[Eruption] is less an “I’m going to hit you skill” than it is an “I’m going to mark off this area” skill. As it stands, it’s great as a combo finisher, it often goes unnoticed in heated team combat, and if people do see it, they’ll often steer clear, making it a great way to delay enemy progress, reposition or force them to switch range. It’s also a great thing to lay down behind an [Unsteady Ground] since the warding line vanishes roughly in time with [Eruption]‘s detonation given [Eruption]’s cast time.

Mochann.5298:

When you take into consideration that we have lousy armor, whereas Warriors/Guardians have great armor and thus can afford to melee without much problems, and then take into consideration that their melee attacks cleave and serve as AOEs, then you see that there’s little point to really stick to Ele and tought it out, other than wanting to roleplay as a mage. But most of us are role players so that floats our boat, no matter how crappy the class is.

I like to roleplay as the guy that wins team-fights for his friends at the mid point in pvp.

The more that I read your thoughts on elementalist (staff specifically), the more that I think that your train of thought is focused on 1v1s and/or roaming tactics. Staff is not a roaming weapon. It’s a team-player weapon. I keep seeing people asking for staff buffs that would make them more viable as a 1v1 weapon-set, but that’s just not necessary. While it’s possible to kill opponents in 1v1 scenarios with staff with clever use of terrain and control/movement skills, it’s not optimized for that—nor should it be. It’s a very unique weapon in that it isn’t necessarily geared for a strong 1v1 showing.

Mochann.5298:

That’s well and good, but the thing is, every other class has weapon sets that are “Face roll” and Eles are the only class without one. I mean, we only have 3 weapon sets — Staff, Scepter and Dagger. If none of our weapon sets are “face roll” that really puts us at a disadvantage.

This is the most depressing thing I’ve read so far. This is such the defeatist attitude. You’re completely giving up on what could be a good design paradigm for ranged abilities in this game just because it’s too hard or because other classes have it easier/are imbalanced. Ele staff has a great thing going for it. I don’t think it would be fair to ruin it because “We want face-roll burst too!!” Also, I can’t believe that you don’t think that ele scepter is face-roll. That weapon set is pretty horrid balance-wise, which explains my suggested changes.

The solution isn’t more buffs, it’s mostly functionality changes and nerfs at this point. Combat is fast and unpredictable enough in this game.

Shadowfall.6543:

Fire: if your target stews in Lava Font it will get hit 4 times over 5 seconds (with cool down, but I have not taken into account the time to cast lava font and aftercast affecting Fireballs dps). That is an additional 242 DPS. That is at most 464 DPS. which is still less than the warrior’s axe at 900. My guess is it is practically closer to 400, which is good, but still a warrior or guardian is going to attack more damage (which cleaves so you only get the advantage with >3 enemies).

You’re ignoring boons and the fact that melee won’t always be within range. Also, if you really want to crank out dps as an ele, you can summon 2 fire elementals that add even more might and auto attacks.

Used to laugh at staff ele, but rolled one up today and went fire, 4.6k fireball in spvp… I think I’ll tough it out and learn how to survive o.O

Swagg.9236:

Mochann.5298:

When you take into consideration that we have lousy armor, whereas Warriors/Guardians have great armor and thus can afford to melee without much problems, and then take into consideration that their melee attacks cleave and serve as AOEs, then you see that there’s little point to really stick to Ele and tought it out, other than wanting to roleplay as a mage. But most of us are role players so that floats our boat, no matter how crappy the class is.

I like to roleplay as the guy that wins team-fights for his friends at the mid point in pvp.

The more that I read your thoughts on elementalist (staff specifically), the more that I think that your train of thought is focused on 1v1s and/or roaming tactics. Staff is not a roaming weapon. It’s a team-player weapon. I keep seeing people asking for staff buffs that would make them more viable as a 1v1 weapon-set, but that’s just not necessary. While it’s possible to kill opponents in 1v1 scenarios with staff with clever use of terrain and control/movement skills, it’s not optimized for that—nor should it be. It’s a very unique weapon in that it isn’t necessarily geared for a strong 1v1 showing.

Mochann.5298:

That’s well and good, but the thing is, every other class has weapon sets that are “Face roll” and Eles are the only class without one. I mean, we only have 3 weapon sets — Staff, Scepter and Dagger. If none of our weapon sets are “face roll” that really puts us at a disadvantage.

This is the most depressing thing I’ve read so far. This is such the defeatist attitude. You’re completely giving up on what could be a good design paradigm for ranged abilities in this game just because it’s too hard or because other classes have it easier/are imbalanced. Ele staff has a great thing going for it. I don’t think it would be fair to ruin it because “We want face-roll burst too!!” Also, I can’t believe that you don’t think that ele scepter is face-roll. That weapon set is pretty horrid balance-wise, which explains my suggested changes.

The solution isn’t more buffs, it’s mostly functionality changes and nerfs at this point. Combat is fast and unpredictable enough in this game.

Functionality Changes I’m for. Nerfs I’m not. Ele doesn’t need any more nerfs. And what’s wrong with wanting a faceroll burst? I don’t think Scepter is faceroll though. At least not in the same sense as Warrior face roll. You don’t just walk into a fight, spam a button, and auto-win with Scepter like you would with a Warrior. There’s a lot of switching and timing involved. That’s not face roll.

As for 1v1 and that, while I am thinking of some of the limitations of staff along those lines, I am not a Roamer by any stretch. I can’t survive in roaming, which is why I specialize in zerg vs. zerg destruction. Staff is very good at that… but only mostly in Fire. Air is pretty useless in this regard. I only use air when I’m lazy to switch to fire and just want to tag targets, and let my zerg do the rest.

Otherwise, if I switch to fire I get much better results all round whether I’m tagging players, killing them, or finishing off downed opponents.

Eruption is indeed good for finishing off downed opponents, but I prefer to just use Lava Font. Reason being that switching to Earth locks me out of Fire for a good 10 seconds — and those are seconds I could better be spending using Fireball or Flame Burst or another Lava Font, than waiting in Earth for Fire to cool off.

If Elementalist Cooldowns were much faster (Warriors get Fast Hands to weapon switch in like 5 seconds) things would go a lot smoother and we’d be able to do more combos. As it stands, the prohibitively long cooldown (even with Arcana traitline) limits our options and forces us to do a lot of button pressing and mental math that distracts us away from focusing on the battle at hand.

Maybe that’s why a lot of Ele’s can’t survive as glass cannons. Me, I keep it simple and go Air when I’m not in combat, go Fire when I’m in combat. Simple. So I can dodge and most importantly position myself properly, where a lot of other eles are saying they go down.

feliscatus.1430:

Used to laugh at staff ele, but rolled one up today and went fire, 4.6k fireball in spvp… I think I’ll tough it out and learn how to survive o.O

Wow, that’s strong, I should check out what the stats look like in sPVP with the PVP gear. I only do 3k tops with Fireball in WvW with Exotics. I should get Ascended Gear.

Mochann.5298:

Functionality Changes I’m for. Nerfs I’m not. Ele doesn’t need any more nerfs. Ele still deserves a few, though.

Not nerfs so much for ele, but rather for other professions.

Mochann.5298:

And what’s wrong with wanting a faceroll burst?

Because it’s braindead, muscle-memory action that doesn’t really involve any thought except to approach a target within a certain range.

Mochann.5298:

I don’t think Scepter is faceroll though. At least not in the same sense as Warrior face roll. You don’t just walk into a fight, spam a button, and auto-win with Scepter like you would with a Warrior. There’s a lot of switching and timing involved. That’s not face roll.

It’s exactly the same thing. Just because there are more buttons doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t face-roll. If you’re just running through buttons willy-nilly because you know that they do direct damage that nobody can typically avoid, it’s maximum face-roll. It’s no different than pressing all of the buttons on warrior hammer and stun-locking an opponent. Scepter burst is instant or near-instant, it’s homing, it’s ranged and an opponent has to completely play to your tempo because nobody can reliably interrupt or predict when it’s going to start and then hit. It’s effectively a ranged backstab. At least you can see a warrior leap in with a hammer before he starts spamming hammer skills.

Mochann.5298:

As for 1v1 and that, while I am thinking of some of the limitations of staff along those lines, I am not a Roamer by any stretch. I can’t survive in roaming, which is why I specialize in zerg vs. zerg destruction. Staff is very good at that… but only mostly in Fire. Air is pretty useless in this regard. I only use air when I’m lazy to switch to fire and just want to tag targets, and let my zerg do the rest.

I had wished that you were talking about actual pvp and not wvw. WvW is nonsense because of inflated stats and zerging. There’s nothing that proper skill balance can really do for it.

Mochann.5298:

If Elementalist Cooldowns were much faster (Warriors get Fast Hands to weapon switch in like 5 seconds) things would go a lot smoother and we’d be able to do more combos. As it stands, the prohibitively long cooldown (even with Arcana traitline) limits our options and forces us to do a lot of button pressing and mental math that distracts us away from focusing on the battle at hand.

I’m actually a little upset that they didn’t bring attunement cool-downs from 16-10 to 13-8 or something.

Swagg.9236:

I had wished that you were talking about actual pvp and not wvw. WvW is nonsense because of inflated stats and zerging. There’s nothing that proper skill balance can really do for it.

Sadly actual PvP absolutely does not fit staff. It is a 5v5 fight over 3 spots, leading to many 1v1 or 2v2 duels. Imho staff is really lackluster for theese small fights as it is really geared towards team fights. I feel staff becones ok at 3v3 and gets better from there on.

terminatorkobold.6031:

Swagg.9236:

I had wished that you were talking about actual pvp and not wvw. WvW is nonsense because of inflated stats and zerging. There’s nothing that proper skill balance can really do for it.

Sadly actual PvP absolutely does not fit staff. It is a 5v5 fight over 3 spots, leading to many 1v1 or 2v2 duels. Imho staff is really lackluster for theese small fights as it is really geared towards team fights. I feel staff becones ok at 3v3 and gets better from there on.

Assisting those 1v1 and 2v2 duels at max safe range as a zerker staff ele is not that lackluster. The critical word here is assist. You just have to avoid the spotlight every time encounters happen and you’re free to nuke like a classic mage. That, I think for me is how staff as well as any other ranged weapons was designed to be played.

Although I’m not saying the weapon set needs no changes at all. Air 3 I occasionally use, Air 2 I do not use at all since by the time I needed to blind the enemy, I’m already dead. These are two totally unreliable and lackluster spells in the staff kitten nal that need improvement.

Morelia.6835:

Water Blast isn’t bad, it’s just more of a situational healing spell than an attack spell.
Fireball is good due to its ranged cleave (huge aoe for an autoattack with Blasting Staff).

In comparison, Chain Lightning and Stoning feel like they lack direction. Staff already has one aoe autoattack making Chain Lightning kind of superfluous and Stoning doesn’t provide bleeding despite that being one of the defining themes of the Earth trait line.

Either way, even if these autoattacks were buffed you still wouldn’t be able to fight anyone 1on1 with the Staff.

I liked the idea i saw for lightning where you channel it (like scepter 1) except it then arcs out to 2 people near that person, each chain damaging people who cross through it making it into a huge network of lightning chain that wouldn’t hit as hard as the fire one, but would hit a lot more people and get a lot more prods off.

For the earth one, if it applied bleeding TOO (i don’t wanna lose my weakness that thing is boss) i’d be very very very happy with it.

Swagg, for the sake of technical discussion, I would like to remind you of the meaning of the word “faceroll.” Faceroll means you can use one skill, activated by just one button, such that it will destroy anything you face just by spamming that attack over Nd over. Such that you might as well bind that one attack to all the keys on your keyboard, then roll your face across it, and you would win by faceroll.

That is what we mean by Faceroll, and you can do close enough to this with warriors who can just autoattacj their way to victory. No elementalist can do this.

Mochann.5298:

Swagg, for the sake of technical discussion, I would like to remind you of the meaning of the word “faceroll.” Faceroll means you can use one skill, activated by just one button, such that it will destroy anything you face just by spamming that attack over Nd over. Such that you might as well bind that one attack to all the keys on your keyboard, then roll your face across it, and you would win by faceroll.

That is what we mean by Faceroll, and you can do close enough to this with warriors who can just autoattacj their way to victory. No elementalist can do this.

I stand by saying that scepter burst is face-roll. While there is more than one button to it, it’s still as brainless as mashing a single one over and over. There’s a clear rotation that isn’t that long, not complex at all, auto-aims most of it for you from range and it does stupid amounts of damage compared to how long it takes to activate. It’s pretty bogus.

Swagg.9236:

I stand by saying that scepter burst is face-roll. While there is more than one button to it, it’s still as brainless as mashing a single one over and over. There’s a clear rotation that isn’t that long, not complex at all, auto-aims most of it for you from range and it does stupid amounts of damage compared to how long it takes to activate. It’s pretty bogus.

Scepter burst isn’t even that bursty compared to other classes.

What skill is it that you think is bursty from scepter?

Swagg.9236:

Mochann.5298:

Swagg, for the sake of technical discussion, I would like to remind you of the meaning of the word “faceroll.” Faceroll means you can use one skill, activated by just one button, such that it will destroy anything you face just by spamming that attack over Nd over. Such that you might as well bind that one attack to all the keys on your keyboard, then roll your face across it, and you would win by faceroll.

That is what we mean by Faceroll, and you can do close enough to this with warriors who can just autoattacj their way to victory. No elementalist can do this.

I stand by saying that scepter burst is face-roll. While there is more than one button to it, it’s still as brainless as mashing a single one over and over. There’s a clear rotation that isn’t that long, not complex at all, auto-aims most of it for you from range and it does stupid amounts of damage compared to how long it takes to activate. It’s pretty bogus.

Yeah, scepter burst is not a faceroll spec, I’d argue that no glass ele build is faceroll because of how kittening squishy you really are and how you’d have to make sure to balance your burst with staying alive since bursting to full effect tanks your survivability.

Faceroll would be the old Warrior 100b build and spirit ranger, they are literally kitten proof.

CallousEye.5018:

Swagg.9236:

I stand by saying that scepter burst is face-roll. While there is more than one button to it, it’s still as brainless as mashing a single one over and over. There’s a clear rotation that isn’t that long, not complex at all, auto-aims most of it for you from range and it does stupid amounts of damage compared to how long it takes to activate. It’s pretty bogus.

Scepter burst isn’t even that bursty compared to other classes.

What skill is it that you think is bursty from scepter?

Air attunement —> [Lightning Strike] —> Fire Attunement —> [Phoenix] isn’t bursty? And then Fresh Air brings the lightning strikes back off of cool-down in 5 seconds. Now, here’s the thing, though: burst is fine, but being able to see it coming is the key to making it balanced. Elementalist scepter air burst is entirely instant, ranged and auto-aimed, and phoenix casts with the speed of an interrupt and inflicts its greatest damage with a large AoE. Combined with the rest of the skills on off-hand dagger and possibly arcane utilities, it’s a monster in melee range that goes off in under two seconds. At least a hammer warrior has to first leap at you, stay on you, and then plow through a bunch of skills with cast-times of half a second or above. You can at least avoid that. You don’t really get a solid chance to avoid a lot of ele scepter burst because it’s auto-aimed and happens so quickly.

Funny to see how far off topic everyone got from original post.

Anyone who would argue this point should first accept an Auto-attack duel. You take a staff ele, n other player picks pretty much ANY character/weapon set of your choice, see how it turns out for you. Any character can just walk a little back n forth constantly and never be hit by you.

Been playing the staff ele since day 1, and the OP is 100% correct. As one player in this post mentioned, all the staff auto attacks have the lowest dps ratings in the game for the most part. Add this to the fact that aside from Lighting1 they all also constantly miss and fire too slowly on top of the lackluster damage makes them useless.

Since the game came out, people have been calling for some changes, and often if forums, others reply:
“But they are great in WvW, where you hit hordes of players at a time with AoEs…”
Seriously? You mean they Finally work in WvW because there are so many targets you just can’t miss! That’s a terrible justification! They are just running targets in PvP, not matter how you build them. Add to that the fact that the amulet choices make your choices so condensed(Can’t build say, P, Crit%, Toughness), there’s no way to work even a little survivability(remember, you have lower starting health then Every Other Class) into a build and kill something. Even if you forego all survivability, and go into a match with Full Berserker gear etc, some heavily toughed up characters will literally just take your hits with no sign of damage, then smack you once to twice and your down.

“There just not good in 1v1, they do better in group fights” I don’t really understand how one specific weapon happens to be improperly equipped to evenly fight every other weapon set in the game and that’s supposed to be ‘balanced?’….. But by the will of magic, they will suddenly become more useful in these magical large battles in PvP? not how it turns out, unless other pvpers simply ignore you like fools.
If it’s just you and a Staff Ele going 1v1, whatever your class, weapon set, etc, don’t worry, cause it’s not like Staff Magic in this fantasy roleplay universe would be like powerful or dangerous to you in any way.

Well, I signed in recently, and my the PvP zone in my world looks like a ghost town. Funny thing, whatever anyone says, this is a Roleplay Game. It has it’s roots in fantasy, and a huge % of the people that like and invest time/money in a game like this want to play a Classic Old School Wizard with a Staff. Sure people can sign in, choose a warrior/necro/assassin and just wander into PvP first time they’ve ever played, press buttons repeatedly, n kill people. But no one that cares about this kind of game long term stuck around, obviously. Talk about awards n accolades all you want, where is everyone at when i sign into Heart of the Mists? 3 minutes load times, when games take ten minutes? seriously…… LeagueoLeg free to play, looks like crap, has mean player base, still has mad more players at any given minute online.

What’s up Anet? Can’t ignore Ele class, that’s your bread n butter, n silly to do so.
Fix:
Make Fire, Water, n Earth Skills like the scepter attacks where they just hit automatically, not like projectiles, n make a tad faster. Perhaps even just make them tagetable AoE attacks just like the rest of Staff, SO WE COULD AT LEAST HAVE ONE FORM OF SYNERGY IN WHOLE UNIVERSE Leave lightning alone, or at least leave bounce effect. Why? This way, attacks actually hit. Long range Ele pecking at you is at least as effective as other long range staffers/bow fighters etc. this way. Also, KEY: Eles’ have super low health, and again as it stands, with any damage built in at all, they are Ultra-Squishy. At least this way, they have an extra half a second or so before someone figures out where they are attacking from sometimes(I.E – they can’t see the attacks).
Lightning 2 – been terrible since day 1. Unimaginable that an attack could cause blind and high damage and still be terrible, but well, anyone who’s ever played staff knows: just. not. worth. it. Replace this with a push/blowback AoE on self, or a knockdown oldschool GW1 style(or fix Air3 maybe, which is still kittened hard to hit with, compared to say the mesmer sword sweep skill. why is the air skill not the best for blowing people back? Seriously?)
Water 3 n 5 – If my health bar is the size of a Snickers Bar, they should at least do enough healing so that I can see the effect on my peanut-sized healthbar.

I get kills, points, n wins with the staff All the Time, don’t get me wrong. But only after mad practice, and only in Sole Que in games where people ignore me raining down chaos on them till it’s too late.

Only fix staff ele need in my personal fully ascended, roaming wvw staff ele no alts build. is good 1v1 capabilities. ele staff can kill stuff 1v1 on equall skill level. except thief-invisiblespam-builds and condi-necros.

Or you need to specificly spec to defeat those.

1 dodge btw on a big cooldown spell = insta lose sadly.

So get rid of huge cooldowns noone needs and the class can actually do stuff.