Guild Wars 2

I feel i need to bring up this topic again since nothing substantial has been done to focus to make it good.

Gale: The cooldown is way too long for what it does. A more reasonable one would be 38 sec.

Freezing Gust: Freeze the target for 2 sec. (similar to frost bow 5 )

It seems too weak to just chill one target especially for a short duration.Obviously they would need to fix the deep freeze effect so you can use stun breaks to escape it but this would give the skill its own niche w/ out being a similar or better version of ice burst. Having it freeze would also allow set up for comet which would mean they wouldn’t need to buff it (or at least not as much)

Flamewall: removes a boon each second and grant 2s stability to allies the first time they cross it

Fire Shield: When attacked, your attacker loses 1 boon and is burned.

The idea behind the auras seems to be discouraging the enemy from attacking you but the burning isn’t enough to do that. In this way, burning wouldn’t have to be touched and the enemy won’t attack as much.

Water Blast: Make it ground target-able.

Ice Spike: Make a blast finisher, increase cooldown to 8 sec.

Conjure Earth Shield: Make a stun breaker. Remove the self-rooting effect on Magnetic Shield and Fortify, Make Crippling Shield a projectile finisher

Conjure Flame Axe: Make explosive lava axe a blast finisher, Make Flame Leap cleanse movement conditions. Skill 1 20% projectile finisher

Conjure Lightning Hammer: Make Static Swing and Thunderclap not count towards charges used. Lightning Storm steals 1 boon from each enemy hit.

Conjure Frost Bow: Make Water Arrow ground target-able and fix its’ tooltip, remove the self-rooting effect on Deep Freeze and lower its duration to 3 sec

Conjure Fiery Greatsword: Remove the self-rooting effect on summon and on Fiery Eruption

Signet of Fire: Grants 2 sec of quickness

I guess the burning is okay but it seems very redundant w/ every version of fire attunement, flame axe, glyph of elemental power and many fire traits. Quickness would make it unique and make more options for eles since they can get normally slow skills off quickly (ether renewal, churning earth, etc.)

Diamond Skin: Each stack of might gives you 60 toughness

The current version would require you to stack a lot of toughness just to get a small condi dmg bonus. This would make it use-able and create a way to tank w/out protection or reflection

Flame Barrier: Should be a 20% chance to trigger on all attacks in all attunements.

Glyph of Elemental Storms: Also removes 1 condition each time it hits

There seems to be no way to remove non-movement conditions w/ glyphs, this would be a chance to cleanse a full bar but there are ways to counter it, the enemy can avoid the area or interrupt you

Tornado: Keep access to healing skill and utilities, breaks stun if you manually exit
add bleed to dust tornado.

Burning Precision: Increase chance to 40%

Sunspot: Blinds for 2 sec

Burning Fire: Should grant reflection for 2 sec instead of burning

Fire’s Embrace: Also grants protection for 3 sec

Persisting Flames: Blast and Leap finishers you apply to fire fields grant stability for 2s

Strength of Stone: Damage taken reduced by 7% when attuned to earth
the original is very similar to internal fire except that I.F. is a adept trait

Obsidian Focus: Gain 200 toughness when you wield a focus

Soothing Winds: Gain 80 Healing Power when you have swiftness

Zephyr’s Focus: Endurance regenerates 60% faster in air attunement

Serrated Stones: Gain 30 condition damage for each boon on your target

One with Fire: Transfer 1 condition whenever Flame Barrier triggers

Ice Shards: 20% projectile finisher

Dust Devil: Whirl Finisher

Shatterstone: Creates a shatterstone that applies vulnerability to nearby foes each second until it is destroyed by damage or secondary activation.

Swirling Winds: Ethereal Field

Gust: Lower Cooldown to 24s

Flame Burst: Blast Finisher

Chain Lightning: 20% projectile finisher

Flame Wall should have a secondary use that detonates it for massive damage, and Fire Shield just needs its cooldown substantially reduced, and maybe to be a blast finisher on use.

Super Riceman.8702:

Freezing Gust: Freeze the target for 2 sec. (similar to frost bow 5 )
I think a second daze or stun would be redundant. I’d say give it a bit of direct damage increase the chill duration a bit

Flamewall: removes a boon each second -OR- grant 3s stability to allies the first time they cross it
That gave me the idea of another way to make it a supporty move: it grants (the new) fire aura (+ trait effects) on allies passing through. Problem is, that fire aura is already on focus =/

Water Blast: Make it ground target-able.
No. No no no. No ground-targeted “auto” attack. Healing and damage is laughable anyway. Maybe make it a 100% projectile finisher to give it some niche use?

Conjure Lightning Hammer: Make Static Swing and Thunderclap not count towards charges used
I’d rather see that the auto-attacks don’t use charges on any conjured weapon

Glyph of Elemental Storms: Also removes 3 conditions
Seems as random as the stun breaker on GoEP. I like it as a satire, but I would rather not have it on my skill bar.

Tornado: Keep the stability when exiting the transform
I know, that was the only use of tornado in the past, but I want the actual tornado to be useful.

Good ideas overall (especially the Diamond Skin), I just added a few comments in bold

TGSlasher.1458:

So, I want to make a push on the focus to make it a better bunker weapon. Currently the offhand dagger is the main bunker weapon. Why is that?

Lets look at the skills:
Ride the Lightning: An escape, or a gap closer, when things don’t go your way you can flee
Updraft: A blowout ability, usefull for keeping your foe on the ground while you heal up, or proceed to mole station
Earthquake: A second interrupt ability, again, stick you foe in the ground and do as you wish
Cleansing Wave: No good bunker goes out without his heal.

The offhand dagger has many good options to open it as a bunker weapon. The problem here is that the skills get nerfed, making other uses (S/D damage for example) suffer as well. While Ride the Lightning makes a good escape skill, having it combined with these other bunker type skills means that glass cannons trying to get away before their imminent death can no longer do that as often (due to the 40 sec nerf). Cleansing Wave also saw a nerf in its time, I think (if I recall correctly it had its healing coefficient toned down).

The Diversity patch was a step in the right direction. Now we see S/D Fresh Air builds as well as some of the vets sticking to the D/D build. I currently run a S/F build myself. The focus however, doesn’t have all that much love, or use within our Elemenalist brethren. It lacks movement, it lacks damage, its only advantage are the defensive skills.

Skill Breakdown:
Flamewall: A nice fire field, though not as coverage as our other weapon fields.
Fire Aura: Grant a fire aura (way to long cd on this guys)
Gust: A ranged chill and some damage, short enough cd
Comet: A predictive interrupt (don’t use in an emergency), give a 2 sec aoe daze
Swirling Winds: Projectile destroy, this skill is situational, not everyone takes projectiles with them
Gale: One of our best KDs, not much of a “tell” on this skill
Magnetic Wave: Reflect, condition removal and a blast finisher. What more could you want, while the reflect is situation, the rest of the skill can be used when not fighting projectile enemies, overall, my favourite ele skill.
Obsidian Flesh: Invulnerability, situational in pvp (don’t want people to cap the points on you, do you?).

The focus has some nice defences build in (more on the anti projectile side) but to really draw the crowds as a bunker weapon it needs something more. I have mentioned several times that if you were to move Cleansing Wave from the /D and stick it on the focus you would have a good bunker weapon.

How would this change work?
Step 1: Remove Cleansing Wave from Dagger and replace it with Gust (chill 3 sec 20 cd)
Step 2: Put Cleansing Wave as focus water 5 and move Comet to water 4
Step 3: Revert changes to Ride the Lightning, remake it a 20 cd skill but 1200 range

This allows the /D to maintain its damage and movement, whilst moving bunker to the Focus (the eles defensive weapon). Originally I thought of taking cleansing wave away from the /D and replacing it with a lesser heal. Today I thought of swapping with Comet, but that would give /D 3x interrupts and leave the focus with none. So unless creating some new skill, looks like Gust is up to the challenge.

Old quotes from trying to push the same idea

hide spoiler

TGSlasher.1458:

Why don’t we just move some bunker abilities to the focus (cleansing wave mainly) and make the off dagger better for dps (adding some kind of other heal to water 5 dagger that is not a 2.5k heal)? Then bunker eles will use the focus which has 0 movement skills but good bunker skills and the off dagger is now a movement weapon with good damage skills

^https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Elementalist-Balance/first#post1470819

TGSlasher.1458:

Rework the weapons so that focus is bunker and off dagger is damage? Because bunker + movement is a bit silly

^https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Balancing-Ele-s-From-an-Ele/first#post1464569

TGSlasher.1458:

Take cleansing wave, put it on the focus. Take Comet, put it on the /Dagger. Revert RTL, bunker and movement issue solved.

^https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/RTL-can-t-be-how-it-was-but/first#post2380136

Feel free to discuss these proposed changes, or ideas of your own to push some love into the Focus.

TL;DR
How would this change work?
Step 1: Remove Cleansing Wave from Dagger and replace it with Gust (chill 3 sec 20 cd)
Step 2: Put Cleansing Wave as Focus Water 5 and move Comet to Water 4
Step 3: Revert changes to Ride the Lightning, remake it a 20 or 25 cd skill but 1200 range

This allows the /D to maintain its damage and movement, whilst moving bunker to the Focus (the eles defensive weapon).

Original Topic: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Focus-rework-the-new-bunker-weapon/first#post2380780