Guild Wars 2

I personally feel the air attunement on the staff is lacking a little in the impact it has. I consider myself an Air dominant elementalist and very much enjoy running with daggers, scepters and the focus. I even rotate though the elements but I spend most of my time in Air.

The problem comes when I am wielding the staff and pop on Air. I feel a bit sad as it feels most of [staff-air] powers are very dependent on the situation or maybe the just don’t meld well. I may cast one power and then switch attunements with the feeling of why did I even pop into air in the first place.

Maybe I am just spoiled by the dagger and scepter.

What do you all think? Does anyone else feel the air attunement on the staff is lacking a little something?

It definitely feels low. could be because it’s more precision (crit) dependent and if you’re not stacking it you won’t get the benefits. A staff is going to hit slower and harder, so if you don’t hit hard with a crit, it’s gonna suck.

I mostly use air staff attunement while running for the speed boost. :P

It’s somewhat lacking, but don’t underestimate the auto-attack in air. That chain-lightning bounces far between enemies and can be used to effectively AOE a couple of MOB’s who aren’t packed tight enough to use regular AOE on (e.g., lava front, eruption, ice spike, etc.)

Air provides a lot of utility however w/ speed boosts, impairment breaker, stun field, and blind (yes, skill #2 is a fairly long cast time, but you can move while doing so, so it doesn’t break the skill). Air is great for kiting after you’ve put up a couple bleeds/burns.

Many of the abilities on staff air are either situational, lacking in damage or do no damage at all. #2 is channeled and without a crit is lacklustre. The auto attack hits very poorly.

The blowback does absolutely no damage, compared to other knockbacks in the game. While #4 is nice to stop anti-kite, it can hardly count as a form of combat mobility when WvW and sPvP is considered. Very quick, long range movement abilities are considered mobility: RTL, or shortbow teleport. Not swiftness.

You’re not supposed to really sit on one attunement all day, more so as a Staff Ele because Staff can do so many different things. Like Bsquared said, there are a lot of great skills in the Air attunement. You pop into it when you need them and then switch out to something else. Speed boost is nice and it also breaks you and teammates out of movement impairing effects. Chain lightning hits multiple targets. Air 2 is a blind so very useful, especially when mixed in with all the other CC a Staff Ele has. Air 5 is not only a stun which is by itself nice (again, mixed in with all the other control effects a Staff Ele can offer), but it’s also a combo field that produces a lot of vulnerability (switch to Earth 1 to produce your own finisher and many classes attacks are projectile finishers that will create vulnerability with this as well).

I would much rather the auto attack on air be a single target thunderbolt type spell. Chain lightning seems redundant with all the aoe on fire, and it does poor damage compared to fire (even if it double hits).

Eclipses.7152:

Many of the abilities on staff air are either situational, lacking in damage or do no damage at all. #2 is channeled and without a crit is lacklustre. The auto attack hits very poorly.

The blowback does absolutely no damage, compared to other knockbacks in the game. While #4 is nice to stop anti-kite, it can hardly count as a form of combat mobility when WvW and sPvP is considered. Very quick, long range movement abilities are considered mobility: RTL, or shortbow teleport. Not swiftness.

You’re thinking about it in the wrong way, though. It’s not about damage. Staff Ele’s offer a lot of support and if they want to do damage, are going to switch to Fire (or arguably Earth if you want bleeds) to do it. The knockback doesn’t need to do damage, it just needs to knockback the opponent and that it certainly does. Staff 4 is useful because it offers swiftness to everyone in the group and it also clears slows/immobility without having to waste a cleanse skill. Number 2 is a blind so I really don’t care about the damage there, either because it provides me with a multi target blind.

If you want damage, Staff is not the weapon for it. We have Scepter MH and Dagger MH setups that both offer more damage. The point of having different weapons is because they do different things and are useful for different purposes.

Agreed. Every other Attunement for staff has a reason to stay and feels like a sacrifice to leave: Fire for AoE damage, Water for healing, Earth for weakness. The only time I stay in Air is Twilight Arbor for easy plant killing :\

Seems Lightning Surge (#2) is the issue. Halve the cooldown maybe?