Guild Wars 2

I would like to preface this post by saying that although Elementalist could do with some improvement I do not believe they are in the dire state that seemingly the rest of this sub forum do <3 This post will need to be split over a lot of comments because I’ll be covering pretty much everything about Elementalist weapons, due to its length I will be splitting it up with spoilers to stop I being a complete wall of text (if enough people say the spoilers make it hard to read I’ll turn it into normal text)

I have mostly been running Dagger/Dagger Elementalist personally however I feel I have enough experience with the profession to comment on the other weapons.

Scepter

Focus

Dagger (Main Hand and Off Hand)

Staff

I’m briefly going to go over a few utility skills and traits that I think need changing but I’ll make a more indepth post about them at a later date

Utilities

• Glyph of Elemental Power - Right now this applies conditions based to the attunement you cast it in, I would like to see it cause conditions based on the attunement you are when you use a skill, for example in water your skills cause chill and in fire your skills cause burning whilst the glyph is up
• Arcane Power - Currently bugged to only allow 2 attacks to crit, however I’d like to see it increase critical damage whilst active (by say 15-25%) to make I a viable pick for burst specs
• Lightning Flash - Compared to Blink this is currently subpar so I’d like to see the recharge dropped to 35 seconds
• Cleansing Fire - Would like to see a 40 second recharge on this

Traits

Fire

• Fire’s Embrace - I would like to see this moved to the adept tier and the trait Burning Precision to be moved to the Master tier and boosted to a 50% chance with a 2-3 second burning.

Air

• Grounded - This doesn’t apply to updraft because it’s a launch effect
• Zephyr’s Boon - Currently there’s an anomaly with this skill giving 10 seconds o fury and swiftness when you use Shocking Aura but all the other auras only give 5. I would like a 7-8 second duration per aura.

Water

• Powerful Aura - I would love to see this trait get an extra addition to it, originally I wanted reduced aura cooldown but that would conflict with the attunement cooldown traits so I settled on increasing the duration of auras by 20% (this means Shocking Aura has a 6 second duration and Frost Aura an 8.4 second duration) just to make it more desirable.

Arcana

• Evasive Arcana - Currently there is no internal recharge on the blast finisher from this trait (it triggers in every attunement). This is one of the problems with staff support because it can quickly put out 3 AoE healing blast finishers for ~3k more healing than it should be able to. I feel adding an internal recharge of 10 seconds to the blast finisher would help mitigate most of the problems with staff support.

Something related to the Arcana tree that could do with changing is the attunement recharge rate. Right now it’s 15 seconds base with ~9 seconds with 30 in Arcane. Because of how powerful the passive benefit from the Arcana trait line it’s pretty much mandatory in most builds to take 20-30 points into it. I would like to see a base recharge of 12 seconds with the Arcana passive being cut in half meaning it’s no longer mandatory but in builds where you want to be switching lots it’s still strong

I agree with almost everything, though there are a few things;

• Water trident: I was thinking it could be turned into a 1 second water field, so the trident would come out of the ground then do a pulse heal, I just feel like the scepter was missing a water field. Would this be too much?

• Flamewall: I feel that it might become too much if everything was changed like that maybe keep the C/D the same but change everything else.

• Magnetic Grasp: I just want the bug fixed where if you cast it you’ll do the animation but will get stuck at the target for a second or two unable to do anything.

• Ice Spike: Shouldn’t this be a blast finisher? It acts the same as dragons tooth in a way.

• Unsteady Ground: I think it should apply a more prominent cripple, it is very easy to avoid and is only 2 seconds, maybe buff it up to 4 second cripple too.

i love elementalist, i only use staff so i don’t know about the rest, everything you said with it makes good sence to me apart from the static field dodgy thing. in my opinion if they dodge into it then the moment they’ve stopped (and they are still slightly in it) should be stunned. if you’ve dodged through the whole of it then i agree with you

Curring.9752:

I agree with almost everything, though there are a few things;

• Water trident: I was thinking it could be turned into a 1 second water field, so the trident would come out of the ground then do a pulse heal, I just feel like the scepter was missing a water field. Would this be too much?

Since scepter isn’t as support focused as staff I don’t think this would be appropriate

Curring.9752:

• Flamewall: I feel that it might become too much if everything was changed like that maybe keep the C/D the same but change everything else.

Probably but without testing I’m on the fence about this one

Curring.9752:

• Magnetic Grasp: I just want the bug fixed where if you cast it you’ll do the animation but will get stuck at the target for a second or two unable to do anything.

Yup would love to see that bug fixed

Curring.9752:

• Ice Spike: Shouldn’t this be a blast finisher? It acts the same as dragons tooth in a way.

Yup definitely agree

Curring.9752:

• Unsteady Ground: I think it should apply a more prominent cripple, it is very easy to avoid and is only 2 seconds, maybe buff it up to 4 second cripple too.

Agree on this one as well

While I want to see bugfixes before any balance passes, I do have a few thoughts and responses to your ideas.

Don’t think there was much comment on combos. I like that Elementalist has that to play with moreso than other damage classes. I just wish they had a bit more variety to them.

Most of my experience comes from Staff and Dagger/Dagger but with the Staff, your main blast finishers are the slow-effecting Eruption and Arcane Wave/Blast. I actually think that’s fine since you have the option of creating lots of combo fields. Dagger feels like it’s missing more fields or finishers. You’re basically looking at Ring of Fire and Burning Speed as your only field and Churning Earth or Earthquake as your finishers and I think Vapor Blade is a projectile finisher.

Yeah, I’d either try to give it a balance like Staff which has 2 finishers and 6 fields by adding some fields to Dagger or make Dagger the ‘finisher’ weapon combo and lopside its ratio of finishers/fields from 3/2 to something like 5/2.

Some candidates:
Water #5- Cleansing Wave = a good choice for a Blast Finisher that also heals allies.

Water #3- Frozen Burst = could be a blast finisher or an Ice combo field if you boost the duration of the ice patch a bit.

Air #4- Ride the Lightning= could be a jump finisher since we don’t get any of those outside of conjured weapons, if I’m not mistaken.

Air #5- Updraft= another place for a jump finisher perhaps?

Earth #3- Magnetic Grasp= jump finisher? Why not?

Yeah, these are mainly focused on Water and Air because both have neither finishers (Vapor Blades?) or fields.

I’m sure more could be said about other weapon abilities but I mainly use Dagger for general play and staff for when I want to hang back.

Mostly agree- staff specialist so no comments on other weapons. I have some comments to OP and others but quote isn’t working so I’ll pile them in.

Ice Spike Blast Finisher: This would make OP heals sine there are 2 water fields in the same attunement.

Eruption Cast Time: The cast time is effectively instant; you can cast another ability or attunement immediately and the explosion will still go off.

Glyph of Elemental Power: Casting in a different attunement is it’s only appeal (weakness on fireballs? I’ll take one of those, thanks). The problem is it’s low proc rate, low duration of conditions, and internal cooldown mean that an on-crit weapon sigil will proc more reliably then a skill taking up a slot- that’s pretty bad. At least one of those things needs to be seriously relaxed.

Water Blast: Good suggestion. Alternately (or concurrently), it’s heal radius should be increased. Currently it’s useless for both damage and healing, especially since mob’s hitbox sizes vary and even melee classes will often not get the heal.

Gust: The pushback is a nice interrupt, but otherwise this skill is identical to shockwave. It fires a slow projectile along the ground that’s used to create a gap. This should be changed to something like a PBAOE knockdown. This would be a good way to put a finisher (whirl) in the lightning line as well.

Good point on Ice Spike.

About Eruption, I know you can change attunements just like with any other channel/cast time, but breaking the cast does stop it from exploding.

Glyph of elemental power is fine as is. With all the attunement switching we have to do, if the condition changed with attunement you might have to sacrifice a useful condition (weakness/chill) for the sake of using an earth/fire cooldown which would suck. Proc rate could be a tad higher.

Eruption is not fine just because you can use instants. Being rooted for that long, especially as d/d, is just asking for pain. That and the cast is so obvious anyone can easily avoid it, essentially wasting it.

Haette.2701:

Ice Shards: I’m not fond of healing, it sounds too much like the staff. Making it a 20% projectile finisher would be nifty, it spams faster than any other spell we have and would be good at that.

I think it’s fundamentally different from the staff because it’s not a PBAoE heal and it only heals you when you’re hit, though having it as a projectile finisher would be nice

Haette.2701:

Arc Lightning/Lightning Strike: These two work fine and are an interesting trick, I’m just not a fan of having two skills that do basically the same thing. Doesn’t seem right to have an autoattack that requires two buttons.

I enjoy the way it works but that might just be me o.o

Haette.2701:

Fire Shield: Needs to last longer. No other aura is weaker than the version of it you can get for free from performing a combo.

I have to disagree with the length increase just because of how many Fire Aura’s you can get

Haette.2701:

Burning Speed: Fine as is, but I wouldn’t mind an evade effect like Burning Retreat has. I’d even be willing to trade the explosion damage for that.

afaik they added this in the betas but it may not be functioning =/

Haette.2701:

Ride The Lightning: Detonate option or better pathing, that’s all.

I dislike the idea of having a detonate button personally and the pathing is fine currently, it just needs to detonate when it reaches where they would be

Haette.2701:

Magnetic Grasp: Just fix the “magnetic hug” glitch.

Yup

Haette.2701:

Burning Retreat: This is totally fine, it’s got a free evade attached to it and there’s plenty of other damage in the bar.

I think it would really benefit from a small AoE when you use it because right now it doesn’t really feel too useful

Haette.2701:

Ice Spike: Why isn’t this a blast finisher?

There could be problems with blast finishers + water fields but I’d like to see it tested really

Haette.2701:

Eruption: I don’t mind the delay, but the cast time is pretty horrendous. A shorter cast time with the same explosion delay doesn’t strike me as overpowering, and would be far more comfortable to use.

As I’ve already said I think this skill is fine where it is since it hits like a truck and the area denial on it is massive

Eurosdown.6072:

Glyph of elemental power is fine as is. With all the attunement switching we have to do, if the condition changed with attunement you might have to sacrifice a useful condition (weakness/chill) for the sake of using an earth/fire cooldown which would suck. Proc rate could be a tad higher.

The main problem with this one is that often in specs you’ll be running you might want say burning on your attacks for a burst (D/D) but that means you have to pre cast it in fire switch to air and wait for the cooldown to come back up on fire before you engage which not only makes it harder to jump into a fight without people noticing it also means you’ve used a fair chunk of the glyphs duration.

Eurosdown.6072:

Eruption is not fine just because you can use instants. Being rooted for that long, especially as d/d, is just asking for pain. That and the cast is so obvious anyone can easily avoid it, essentially wasting it.

You’re thinking of churning earth not eruption <3 churning earth is fine where it is considering it’s useful for forcing a dodge as well as being area denial and forcing focus on you

Leo G.4501:

Don’t think there was much comment on combos. I like that Elementalist has that to play with moreso than other damage classes. I just wish they had a bit more variety to them.

Most of my experience comes from Staff and Dagger/Dagger but with the Staff, your main blast finishers are the slow-effecting Eruption and Arcane Wave/Blast. I actually think that’s fine since you have the option of creating lots of combo fields. Dagger feels like it’s missing more fields or finishers. You’re basically looking at Ring of Fire and Burning Speed as your only field and Churning Earth or Earthquake as your finishers and I think Vapor Blade is a projectile finisher.

Yeah, I’d either try to give it a balance like Staff which has 2 finishers and 6 fields by adding some fields to Dagger or make Dagger the ‘finisher’ weapon combo and lopside its ratio of finishers/fields from 3/2 to something like 5/2.

Some candidates:
Water #5- Cleansing Wave = a good choice for a Blast Finisher that also heals allies.

Water #3- Frozen Burst = could be a blast finisher or an Ice combo field if you boost the duration of the ice patch a bit.

Air #4- Ride the Lightning= could be a jump finisher since we don’t get any of those outside of conjured weapons, if I’m not mistaken.

Air #5- Updraft= another place for a jump finisher perhaps?

Earth #3- Magnetic Grasp= jump finisher? Why not?

Yeah, these are mainly focused on Water and Air because both have neither finishers (Vapor Blades?) or fields.

I’m sure more could be said about other weapon abilities but I mainly use Dagger for general play and staff for when I want to hang back.

Honestly I think that it’s fine the way it is finishers wise (though I’d like to see a leap finisher on Burning Speed). D/D is very much about burst and close combat where as staff is more a long range drop AoE fields so it’s understandable that it would have more fields (and finishers).

Also Magnetic Grasp is already a leap finisher o.o

Never realized Magnetic Grasp was a jump finisher…guess because even though it’s a nice option, it’s still a poor one. MG is sort of slow and still has its bugs and it doesn’t do much damage either…basically, I use it for the utility of its immobilize and distance closer than for a finisher. But it’s nice we have that option.

And I still don’t think Dagger is quite where it needs to be primarily because it’s lack of fields or finishers in 2 of its elements (do Air and Water have any fields or finishers?) while Staff or pretty much any of the weapons will have fields in it.

Just to clarify, I’m not asking for more fields and finishers in Dagger, I’m asking for more fields OR finishers in Dagger…and any weapon combo that currently lacks in either. This is all primarily for utility as Elementalist is suppose to have lots of it.

Shadow Dragon Ad.2409:

D/D is very much about burst and close combat where as staff is more a long range drop AoE fields so it’s understandable that it would have more fields (and finishers).

Also Magnetic Grasp is already a leap finisher o.o

D/D Has two blast finishers and the staff only has one and the scepter has the most blast finishers when coupled with dagger.

D/D Has two blast finishers and the staff only has one and the scepter has the most blast finishers when coupled with dagger.

Actually Staff has 3 finishers, 2 Projectile (Shockwave and Stoning) and 1 Blast (Eruption) where as D/D only has 2 Blast finishers (Earthquake and Churning Earth (which isn’t really going to be sued as a blast finisher in a fight))

Shadow Dragon Ad.2409:

I have to disagree with the length increase just because of how many Fire Aura’s you can get

Ah, I don’t mean to increase the duration from all sources, just the one from the focus spell.

Shadow Dragon Ad.2409:

I dislike the idea of having a detonate button personally and the pathing is fine currently, it just needs to detonate when it reaches where they would be

It may or may not be a pathing issue, but I meant the problem where it sometimes stops moving for no reason and you’re stuck in place with no way to cancel it. A detonate option is just the easy fix for that, ideally it never happens at all. Having it miss or overshoot if juked seems like a natural trade for that much mobility.

Shadow Dragon Ad.2409:

D/D Has two blast finishers and the staff only has one and the scepter has the most blast finishers when coupled with dagger.

Actually Staff has 3 finishers, 2 Projectile (Shockwave and Stoning) and 1 Blast (Eruption) where as D/D only has 2 Blast finishers (Earthquake and Churning Earth (which isn’t really going to be sued as a blast finisher in a fight))

Actually, re-read what I wrote, I was talking about blast finishers only.

Actually, re-read what I wrote, I was talking about blast finishers only.

Well you seemed to be implying D/D had more finishers than Staff, which it doesn’t.

I play mostly staff as well. I agree that the base cool down switching attunements should be reduced by a most 2 seconds. My spec is 30 Fire, 10 Air, 10 Water, 20 Arcana and my rotation is long but fairly simple. I try to keep a perma stack of 6 might using my personal combos, keeping the earth DoT up on CD, and all my fire skills on CD. There is usually a moment in between rotations that im forced to just auto attack for a few seconds because everything is literally on CD. I think that with a short reduction this would help smooth out a rather common dps rotation.

Added and changed a couple of things in the OP:

Staff

Arcana

• Evasive Arcana - Currently there is no internal recharge on the blast finisher from this trait (it triggers in every attunement). This is one of the problems with staff support because it can quickly put out 3 AoE healing blast finishers for ~3k more healing than it should be able to. I feel adding an internal recharge of 10 seconds to the blast finisher would help mitigate most of the problems with staff support.

Evasive arcana: The fact that it can activate in every attunement is what makes evasive aracana good. It probably wouldn’t be worth taking if the 10sec cool down applied to all attunements, Finishers is its most important purpose on a staff, since you don’t want to be rolling into your enemy. Besides, you have to remember that its a grandmaster trait and doing that much dodging also sacrifices all of your stamina. All that being said, a 5 sec cooldown wouldn’t be too unreasonable if the burst heal is that much of a problem.

I also think 4x damage on flamewall would be OP, 2sec burning would be and/or a smaller damage boost is ok.
I’d rather give ice spikes a damage boost or utility than a heal
Unsteady ground needs a cripple buff rather than damage
Fractional healing for things water strike travels through is an awesome idea
Definitely agree with flame aura buff. Something like apply 1sec burn to foes within 120-180 radius each sec would by nice.
I agree on a small radius for freezing gust (120ish), since its only 3sec

Shadow Dragon Ad.2409:

Added and changed a couple of things in the OP:

Staff

Earth

hide spoiler

• Stoning - Currently has a duration of 3 seconds not the 1 listed on the tooltip

Arcana

• Evasive Arcana - Currently there is no internal recharge on the blast finisher from this trait (it triggers in every attunement). This is one of the problems with staff support because it can quickly put out 3 AoE healing blast finishers for ~3k more healing than it should be able to. I feel adding an internal recharge of 10 seconds to the blast finisher would help mitigate most of the problems with staff support.

Yeah I completely disagree with your Evasive Arcana suggested change. Agree with Navzar, if that sort of burst healing is a problem then a small cooldown should suffice. Again this is why I dislike skills not being split for PvE.

It’s currently an awesome trait in PvE (and it actually feels like a Grandmaster Trait, it’s one of the best that the ele has, especially for staff users). Bear that in mind too, it is a Grandmaster trait.

Otherwise I think Dragon’s Tooth and Icespike could use a faster drop time…

This is just Staff from WVW DPS perspective

Frozen Burst needs more than just a 20-30% damage buff. At level 80 with some 1400 power, it hits for 200 damage. 200. I don’t think there’s a damaging skill out there that hits for less. It needs to deal 5-10x as much damage to be even marginally worthwhile.

MrQuizzles.6823:

Frozen Burst needs more than just a 20-30% damage buff. At level 80 with some 1400 power, it hits for 200 damage. 200. I don’t think there’s a damaging skill out there that hits for less. It needs to deal 5-10x as much damage to be even marginally worthwhile.

Imo the chill it gives means it doesn’t need much more damage, on a dummy in heart of the mists i was hitting ~300 with it. a 30% damage boost would put it at ~400 damage along with a 3 second chill a 1/4 cast time and a 15 second cooldown which means it’d definitely be worth casting

But there’s just a dearth of damage-dealing in water attunement in mainhand dagger. Dagger is supposed to be the high-damage weapon, but water attunement just doesn’t play along with that. Neither off-hand weapon can add very much damage to it, and Frozen Burst deals virtually no damage at all. That just leaves Vapor Blade and Frost Breath, which aren’t spectacular damage dealers.

Regardless of whether or not water is supposed to be the support attunement, the state of water for daggers just doesn’t gel with what daggers are supposed to be doing.

Reliability of many skills is just too low, thus the performance of the profession as a whole suffers. Many skills honestly do enough damage, its just the reliability of getting that damage out is so poor, it gives the impression of ‘underpoweredness’. Of course, I’m not saying that no skills at all need damage boosts, but the issue of skills being so unreliable should be addressed before mucking about with damage values.

Examples:
Drakes Claw (mainhand dagger, fire attune) needs all 3 claws to hit for it to be worthwhile. If you are standing at any distance not point-blank, you are only doing a third of the potential damage.

Vapor Blade (mainhand dagger, water attune) does half of its potential damage if and when the blade fails to return for the second hit due to hitting environmental blocks.

Breath skills all have horrible hitbox issues when you and/or targets are moving. Same with Fire Grab, Lightning Whip & Lightning Touch.

Arc Lightning (Scepter) does pitiful damage leading up to the last stages of its damage packet. If you need to dodge at any time during the skill channel, you lose the bulk of its damage.

Condition removal is pretty much everywhere, and capable of clearing entire stacks/durations of conditions, making condition builds less viable. Or even not viable at all.
The way Burning works from multiple sources is also problematic.

If making some of these gimmicky skills reliable is too difficult (like the Vapor Blade back and forth) just drop the gimmick. Using Vapor Blade as an example again- just have it detonate at the end of its animation for the return damage. Bingo, now you don’t have to try and fix the issue of environmental blocks that cripple the skill.

Lots of great stuff in this thread, I can hardly believe the overall rationality of most suggestions here.

Anyways:

Flamewall I’d love to see a CD reduction, and have it strip boons. That’s just my personal preference, but this skill seriously needs some help.

Fire shield Perhaps add might or retaliation to this. It’s extremely lackluster in its current state.

Lightning touch Vulnerability? 2-3stacks? I think that’d be an acceptable addition.

Ring of Earth I completely agree with splitting this into 2 stacks of 6s each. It’s not a terrible skill currently, but I do wish it brought a little more punch.

As far as the debate over blast finishers, namely Ice Spike goes, I don’t think that it should be a blast finisher right now. Evasive Arcana builds already put out an insane amount of burst healing (and will probably be nerfed because of it) and adding a blast finisher to staff’s water skills will only compound the issue.

Well, vaporblade does offer 2 stacks of vulnerability per cast and I find the breath attacks are pretty decent because of their range and arc usually allows me to attack from some range whereas most of my dagger skills force me closer.

Some of the quirks I can understand are problematic and should be changed but others are fine how they are. The channel on breath attacks and such, for instance, a lot of people don’t care for and usually cut it short but I think capitalizing on channeling, like having more and better traits for channeling (+channeling speed, more toughness while channeling, chance of retaliation for a successful channel the longer the channel is, etc) would give those abilities a bit more utility breadth-wise which is probably what is best rather than I-win skills that just pwn things when you click them.

Lightning touch should be instant and blind IMHO. Dagger/Dagger lacks a blind.

Also I think we should get some combo fields besides fire in our other weapon setups besides staff. Sure let staff be the best combo weapon with having access to ice and lightning fields, but at least give water fields to dagger and/or scepter too.

Updated the list and will do post patch as well <3

For a moment there I thought someone just necroed a thread :p Guess I’ll give it another read ^^
Could you perhaps show which parts where updated?
Edit: why do you want geyser nerfed?

Rhyse.8176:

Mostly agree- staff specialist so no comments on other weapons. I have some comments to OP and others but quote isn’t working so I’ll pile them in.

Ice Spike Blast Finisher: This would make OP heals sine there are 2 water fields in the same attunement.

Eruption Cast Time: The cast time is effectively instant; you can cast another ability or attunement immediately and the explosion will still go off.

Glyph of Elemental Power: Casting in a different attunement is it’s only appeal (weakness on fireballs? I’ll take one of those, thanks). The problem is it’s low proc rate, low duration of conditions, and internal cooldown mean that an on-crit weapon sigil will proc more reliably then a skill taking up a slot- that’s pretty bad. At least one of those things needs to be seriously relaxed.

Water Blast: Good suggestion. Alternately (or concurrently), it’s heal radius should be increased. Currently it’s useless for both damage and healing, especially since mob’s hitbox sizes vary and even melee classes will often not get the heal.

Gust: The pushback is a nice interrupt, but otherwise this skill is identical to shockwave. It fires a slow projectile along the ground that’s used to create a gap. This should be changed to something like a PBAOE knockdown. This would be a good way to put a finisher (whirl) in the lightning line as well.

if you compare dragon’s tooth and ice spike ice spike is worse than dragon’s tooth without the blast finisher. so how would making ice spike a blast finisher OP?

Atomic, its because it would buff ele bunkers even more by allowing them to add yet another blast combo to their water fields.

Navzar.2938:

For a moment there I thought someone just necroed a thread :p Guess I’ll give it another read ^^
Could you perhaps show which parts where updated?
Edit: why do you want geyser nerfed?

Personally I want geyser nerfed a small amount because of how easy it is to get the full healing out of it, not a major nerf or anything but around 10% reduction just a little tweak

One more thing that I think should be changed in Utilities is the magnetic shield. I think it’d be a lot more viable if it gave a boost to toughness.

As for the auras, I think they need a minor buff, either in duration, or in effect. frost and shocking aura in particular.

Other than that, the changes said here are all solid

I think shocking aura is perfectly fine. Fire shield is what needs buffing. Suggested change: buff duration to 5sec, additional effect: apply 1 second burn to foes in melee range every second.