Guild Wars 2

I like Elementalist a lot, especially most of the Water spells. But here come to my concern… (or complain!)

Water Trident, Shatterstone and Ice Shards… basically all 3 scepter Water spells need a serious buff or rework! Staff and Dagger Water have acceptable (maybe not perfect) spells. I understand Water are meant for supportive… it is okay to not have a burst, top fire damage. But at least give us the viable option to use Scepter Water!

The fact is… Anet made some nice Water damaging spells… such as Ice Spike, Vapor blade and Cone of Cold… from the look of it, Shatterstone “suppose” to deal some decent damage but it doesn’t! Shatterstone takes an age to go off and doesn’t do much damage to compensate!

Water Trident is probably the worse worse worse Water spells ever! Funny, this is the first water spell Anet first introduced, and it used to have “knockback” bonus, why does Anet took it off? Any apparent reasons? No this can’t be balance issue because Water Trident is extremely unbalance compare to rest of the spell now.

Everything in Water Trident is just a joke! (damage, healing, 20 cooldown? Fine 16 sec cool down with a waste of Aquamancer’s Alacrity trait… but that is basically a waste of trait if we are consider scepter water!). Trident used to be such a fabulous Elite back in GW1, I’m most disappoint this spell is completely a waste of spot now.

Some people may argued Water suppose to do weak damage? I don’t think it suppose to do weak damage, because there are traits like Piercing Shards to boost “20%” water spell damage! And the fact Ice spike deal very high initial damage… meaning water is suppose play versatile role in this game… you do “okay” damage, “some” healing spell and chill… (but hey we don’t have as many Chill as I originally expect it! Frozen Ground have super long recharge… Frost Fan you rely on conjure icebow, Ice Golem you can’t control their chill etc. )

Anyway… Scepter Water is really useless compare to other option… please don’t just leave it there. You’ve create the spell… please make it at some point a viable option for Elementalist. Can the skill develop team make a little change… such as (1) Lower Water Trident’s recharge time… rework its healing amount or damage… add back the initial knockback? Or make Water Trident hit muti-enemies? And why make Water Trident ground targeting?? (2) Add maybe 1 sec chill or a combo finisher for Shatterstone to compensate the lackluster damage? Or simply increase damage. (3) Increase Ice Shards damage… or if they completely buff Trident and Shatterstone then I guess its okay to leave Ice Shards.

I know there might be people who disagree with me, but this is just how I feel after 4 months of playing since last late summer.

Trident’s great. Pretty powerful heal actually. Shatterstone’s a different story.

Water Trident is excellent, and alondside with Cleansing Wave, the minor water’s master trait and the water dodge from EA, you get a pretty big heal burst. You can fully recover your health without using a heal skill this way.

Ice Shards is meh, and Shatterstone is terrible.

uhhh dude….water trident is probably the best heal an ele has via weapon sets.

2 cone of colds will still do less heals than water trident, and with cone of cold needing to be channeled to cast makes its very easy to interrupt not only by your enemy but by yourself if you need to dodge or cast another skill! When you channel as well you take away from your healing that you could be getting from your signet of restoration because you are channeling one long skill when you could cast water trident and about 4-5 other skills in the time it takes to cast 1 cone of cold!

Ice shards is ok, people always dis the auto attacks here and there on weapon sets but in all honesty what good ele spends his time autoattacking in one attunement and not stance dancing to others for the cooldown casts?

Shatterstone i believe is a very awful skill atm. The 2 second cast time with very low damage make it completely inviable in pvp atm; however, if something were to be done that made the stone a water or ice field upon completion of cast then i believe it would be a MUCH more viable skill to dps and bunker based builds.

-Pintresting

I’d have to agree with the Trident being great. I’ve been messing with Scepter/Dagger in WvW and having yet another group healing option for the people surrounding me while trying to hold down the Lord’s room of Stonemist is great.

Shatterstone is bleh. I just throw it down to force them into moving as an afterthought if I’m about to switch to another attunement. Sometimes it even hits, lol

^That’s how (when) I use it too. In theory it should be great before changing back to other attunements to spike for a little extra damage, but not only is the vulnerability too low for the effort it gets, it also takes too much out of your time.

An instant cast (but still with the delay time) with ~5-6 stacks of vulnerability would be interesting.

I love instant cast attacks, though I’m not sure how much sense it would make for a water spell rather than air, haha. More Vuln might help it, or even just a slightly shorter detonation time. Sometimes it’s even hard to hit PvE enemies with it. <_>

If it’s to keep the high casting time and the high delay time, then both the damage and the condition would have to go up. Something like 100-200% more damage and 10 stacks of vulnerability. To not make it too strong, make those stacks only last 5 seconds, so you need to switch immediatly to fire to take advantage of them. Would lead to interesting play.

Here the perfect solution:

- Ice shards= apply 3 stacks of vulnerability( one for shard) , 6s duration
-Shatterstone= 6s CD, 600 base dmg, 180 radius , 3s weakness

I main as water-atune dps and i can agree 100% with the Shatterstone fix, but Water Trident is a great heal even with 0 healing power. Ice shards is ok, but there isn’t a day that goes by that I wish it did more damage/projectile finisher maybe.

Shatterstone needs to be instant, and no “dead time” after casting. In its current form Shatterstone isn’t worth casting at all, even in aoe fights.

DiogoSilva.7089:

An instant cast (but still with the delay time) with ~5-6 stacks of vulnerability would be interesting.

That is, in fact, what it was in the betas.
A drastically shorter aftercast delay (so you could at least get the terrible autoattack in once between casts), and the cooldown began the moment the spell began, not when it exploded.
It almost resembled something useful.
As it stands now, there is absolutely no reason at all to remain in Water with a Scepter once you fire off the heals because the autoattack and shatterstone are so terrible.
Not that there’s really any reason to use a Scepter at all aside from the Earth and Fire autoattacks…

Vapor Blade and Water Blast are pretty terrible as well. 6 stacks of vulnerability on short duration is not worth halving your DPS. 6% damage for your teammates simply does not make up for it, and solo particularly it is not worth it.

Water non-heal skills in general need buffing, because otherwise we just go to water attunement, use the heals, and then switch out.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

DiogoSilva.7089:

An instant cast (but still with the delay time) with ~5-6 stacks of vulnerability would be interesting.

That is, in fact, what it was in the betas.
A drastically shorter aftercast delay (so you could at least get the terrible autoattack in once between casts), and the cooldown began the moment the spell began, not when it exploded.
It almost resembled something useful.
As it stands now, there is absolutely no reason at all to remain in Water with a Scepter once you fire off the heals because the autoattack and shatterstone are so terrible.
Not that there’s really any reason to use a Scepter at all aside from the Earth and Fire autoattacks…

I see no reason as to why the devs hit it with the bug-bat so hard………… they pick a bad ability and made it worse.

I still don’t think Water Trident has the potential “yet”. The long recharge and ground targeting just don’t seem like it. But I’m willing to keep my option open and test it again. However… I’d like to point out the fact… Anet add a little damage on Water Trident, the damage is almost negligible! Its confusing of what was there original intention on Water Trident. Because you might as well just not doing damage and going for a pure AOE heal, or give us an okay damage along with powerful healing. Cone of cold might heal less… but it does okay damage and don’t forgot the recharge time with Aquamancer’s Alacrity trait is much shorter!

I still think Anet should at least add back the knock-back properties Trident had when anet first introduced us!

Shatterstone… would be nice if it cause “chill” instantly when spell animation pop out… then deal damage plus vulnerability when the ice shatter! (Of course, we still need some damage buff!)

Ice Shards… definitely need damage buff. The more I test scepter Fire/Earth or even Air, the more I think Scepter Water need buff! I agree with one of the reply. If Anet don’t buff Water… it would make player only stay in Water when they need heal. (Then what’s the point of making Water Damaging spell and trait?) Its really boring just to stay in Fire/Earth for damage… please make Water spells a more viable choice in all pve and pvp!

Don’t underestimate vulnerability though. It ‘feels’ weaker than it actually is. In a 5 man team, a measely 5% vulnerability would require you to get a personal +25% increase just to match it (which is about 12 stacks of might). And of course you shouldn’t remain in water while it’s up. Ideally, you’re already back in fire once it actually goes off to take advantage of the extra vulnerability.