Guild Wars 2

Hey all,

After playing an Elementalist for a while now, and focusing on an Air Element single-cast Asura, I have noticed a few changes that might be useful to the second staff skill – Lightning Surge. I feel that as it is now with the 5 target bounce and Blind, it’s just a charge up group Blinding Flash on Scepter three for Air Elementalist, and so could probably be more useful as a finisher/sniping skill for more damage.

Therefore, I would propose the following changes to the skill:
- Increased damage (not sure on the percentage, help?)
- Keep the Blind?
- Change to single target OR two target with significant reduction on bounce?
- Longer charge up time (2.5 sec max?)
- On full charge have a guaranteed critical chance (sniping/finisher part)
- Have as an addendum, “Combo Field Projectile” for aftermath

Cheers for reading! ^.^

Phyrak.7260:

- Have as an addendum, “Combo Field Projectile” for aftermath

Important things to note about this skill:

- it’s not a projectile
- it’s not ground AoE

These two factors make it different to all but one other Staff skill: Fire #3, Flame Blast (which is primarily AoE burning, rather than AoE direct damage).

Turning it into yet another projectile (see: all AAs, Earth #5) or hard-to-land ground AoE (just about everything else) is something I object to – unless it maybe became a very fast cast and fast-travelling lightning bolt?

I believe, if it’s seen as underpowered right now, the best change is to slightly lower the cast time. It’s got a high recharge for a #2, at 10s, and I’d even be alright with that getting upped to maybe 12s if it was a more reliable skill to land in battle (with 0.75-1s cast time).

Alrighty, take out the combo finisher then. It wasn’t a big deal for me anyway.
Isn’t it already a fast travelling lightning bolt? Between end cast and hitting the target is quite short.

I understand that lowering the cast time would work for the way the skill currently operates, however I am proposing a rather different skill to what is currently used, and so a longer cast time makes sense because of the other changes that I am proposing.

It’s not a projectile at all - so it can’t be reflected - and doesn’t rely on a ground-targeted red ring during cast (which is very easy to spot and dodge). This is also true of our utility signets, and things like Mesmer GS AA and many of the Necro attacks on Scepter/Focus/Axe/Daggers (though not the Dagger AA chain).

Your changes seem... pretty drastic, but spike damage *is* part of what Air Attunement is meant to be about. I don’t see the skill getting its functionality completely changed, though - particularly not to a single-target ’sniper’ shot, when the Staff is all about AoE madness rather than stealth attacks from range.

Then perhaps an AOE blind at first target and the charged shot pierces to allow for a bit more chaos to ensue

The AOE would work like the fire staff attacks where it does the area around it rather then ground placement

It already hits pretty hard for the type of skill it is, I think it’s fine.

Phyrak: applying the blind at the start of cast would actually be pretty great - it’d make it harder to rupt the cast in time, and generally give us improved sustain.

It would probably then just end up as an instant-AoE-blind, though, and never get fully charged - I guess it’d need to have a channel that couldn’t be cancelled or some major drawback to not finishing the full cast if the blind was stuck on at the start rather than the end.

It could work like any skill that has an effect at the beginning of the casting time: It goes on full cooldown if interrupted (even by yourself). There would be no reason for not fully casting it.

But an instant AoE blind each time you’re in Air Attunement? That’s very powerful, and I expect everyone would cancel the cast every time so they could get on with other skills that hit more reliably.

Unless its CD was pretty long (20s+), I don’t see this being accepted by anyone - and I’d really rather not add another horrible cooldown to Air.

Maybe something about the surge backfiring on the caster if it’s not released at foes? Some damage and stacks of vuln (or even some weakness or another debuff?) on the Ele - so that the instant blind can still be used to good effect (safestomp etc.) but it can’t just be tossed about willy-nilly in fights.

There’s a difference between an instant blind and a blind at the beginning of the channel/casting time. You couldn’t do all the fun things with the “new” Lightning Surge that you can do with instants:

• The skill would probably still have some small windup and an aftercast
• You can’t activate it while casting another skills/during aftercast of another skill
• You can’t activate it while stomping
• You can’t activite while stunned/KD’s/any other hard cc.

Just think of Churning Earth. Churning Earth applies a cripple at the begin of the channel time. Try to use that as “insta cripple”. I think that moving Lightning Surge’s blind to the begin of the casting time would be a nice quality of life improvent but nothing that really buffs (or even breaks) staff ele.

Think about Lava Font and Frozen Ground – both have very short cast times (0.2s I believe; definitely below 1/4s because they don’t have a cast displayed on tooltip but aren’t instant). The animations, combo fields, and FG’s chilling ticks all start to appear… pretty much instantly. This is after windup and cast time.

Unless it had a really horrible windup, a blind at the start of Lightning Surge would certainly happen quickly enough to be used in split-second situations – sure, it wouldn’t have the advantages of true instants (i.e. can cast at times you can’t use non-instants; no aftercast), but an AoE blind at that range and with that cooldown – on a weapon skill, too – is still hella strong.

I’m all for this skill getting this buff, but I really feel that without some incentive to complete the cast there’d be a lot of (possibly justifiable) complaints about it getting cancelled after the blind – the only way to really find this out is testing with a modified version of the skill, which sadly we can’t do.

Possible ways to encourage full-cast:
- debuff if it’s not fully cast – one or more of vuln/weakness/damage/special debuff applied to caster
- long aftercast if it’s cancelled, short aftercast if not? Iunno how well this could be implemented
- the RTL treatment, but more reasonable (due to shorter base cooldown) – if you deal damage with this primarily damage-dealing attack, it goes on normal cooldown. If you don’t deal damage, increased cooldown. I think this is currently actually my favourite, to discourage spamming it once every time you’re attuned to air but still allow it occasionally.
- others?

I like your thinking