Guild Wars 2

So I’ve come back from a hiatus from GW2 due to guild drama (It’s the best), and I’ve been gone for a couple months. I’m glad to see that Anet has still been on the train of nerfing Ele’s. With this most recent patch, I see necro’s in literally every single sPvP match. Usually, an Ele would have no problem because they’re known for being great bunkers with good condition removal; however, we can’t do Ether Renewal + Mist Form anymore. Cleansing Fire isn’t a stun breaker anymore. Standing in Water Attunement and healing 1 condition at a time is counter intuitive because you’re taking too much damage casting. (Are necros OP?)

Presently, I’ve been playing a glass-ish D/D or S/D Ele utilizing the Fresh Air trait, and conditions just tear me up. I think most Ele’s can agree with me that Ether Renewal is useless without Mist Form because of the 3+ second cast time. How are we supposed to deal with these mass condition builds?

This patch has nerfed Ele’s significantly, mainly because of other classes being buffed and torment, a condition that counters the Elementalist’s main source of survivability, movement.

Since I’ve been for for a while and a little behind on the meta build, I think I have a good grasp on the situation. Izzy’s livestream was newbie-friendly. Really no new advice/information for better WvW / sPvP players. I appreciate the effort, but am worried by Anet’s understanding of the profession. Ele’s have no problem in PvE, why are you showing PvE tactics? Explaining what sigils and runes do is nothing new. We know we are the jack of all trades, master of none. But why does it feel like we’re the Jack of all trades, worst at everything? Why does Anet push towards making us specialize in one attunement?

I dont know, maybe I’m blind and not seeing a viable build, what do you guys think? How do you deal with condition engies, condition rangers, and the minion master condition necros? I’m thinking about rerolling… Anet, I am dissapoint.

Well, guess a full team of 5 Eles can win against a full team of 5 Necros. If you are Bunker Build, you can still 1v1 Necro, but if it 2 Necro, instead of lasting for a while, you melt instantly. That is my lesson from last SOAC tournament match when our team Eles vs Necro team.

That’s the thing, in a 5v5 situation, the cleanses are shared, therefore there is more condition removal. But it a 1v1 situation, if you’re D/D they just place wells on top of them so if you want to deal damage, expect the condition spam. Same goes with S/D, although you have more range, you still need to be close to the target, within range of their wells.

Because you’re on the elementalis sub-forum. Go to the warrior sub-forum and you’ll see Anet hates warriors. Go to the ranger sub-forum and you’ll see Anet hates rangers. Rinse and repeat for each of this game’s professions and you’ll realize things aren’t as bad as you’re thinking they are.

Really? I’m sure Necros are laughing their butts off at their new minion master condi build. Any class that wants to melee them gets condition spammed, any class that tries to outrange them gets, guess what? condi spammed. People like you ruin the balance of the game, insisting it’s fine when it really isn’t. Things are bad when Ele’s are being kicked from WvW guilds because they have no role. Things are bad when Warriors beg patch after patch after patch for viable builds and are still not competitive in tPvP.

Yeah PVP at the moment is made up of necros and their minions. It’s insane.

Don’t know but to me, I still have an easy time dealing with Necro as a Bunker using 0/0/10/30/30 build on 1v1 . I will not be able to kill him post patch (bf I could) but I also not going down and can prolong the fight until reinforcement come. However, pre-patch, I can still tank 2 Necro a fair bit long but post patch, I just be melt away…

EchenSketch.9142:

Really? I’m sure Necros are laughing their butts off at their new minion master condi build. Any class that wants to melee them gets condition spammed, any class that tries to outrange them gets, guess what? condi spammed.

Browse back past the first few pages. Sure, they’re happy now; but they felt neglected, abused, and at times outright hated before the last patch. And they’ll feel the same way if any of their new skills or traits get nerfed.

EchenSketch.9142:

People like you ruin the balance of the game, insisting it’s fine when it really isn’t.

People like me? What kind of person am I? And you’re putting words in my mouth. I didn’t say everything was fine. The game will NEVER be in a state where everything is fine. Perfect balance in an mmo is an unattainable goal.

EchenSketch.9142:

Things are bad when Ele’s are being kicked from WvW guilds because they have no role. Things are bad when Warriors beg patch after patch after patch for viable builds and are still not competitive in tPvP.

And things are bad when rangers can’t get a spot in CoF speed runs. And things are bad when two necromancers can’t run a dungeon together because of condition stack limitations. And things are bad when thieves get hit with reveal. And things are bad when guardians have no +Movement Speed passives. And things are bad when rangers’ pets can’t survive aoe spam because they can’t dodge enemy attacks. You starting to get the picture? I’m not saying everything is fine; I’m saying every profession feels they need some love.

PS – Anyone who says elementalists don’t have a role in WvW doesn’t know what they’re talking about. And if anyone is getting kicked from WvW guilds, that says a lot more about the people running the guild than it does the profession the kicked person is playing.

darkace.8925:

Go to the warrior sub-forum and you’ll see Anet hates warriors. Go to the ranger sub-forum and you’ll see Anet hates rangers.

That’s simply not true. I never saw this amount of complaints in any other forum due to a balance update. The lack of elementalists in PvP since then proves my point.

Many, many good arguments were made about this subject including a petition. Anet ignored all of em. I couldnt adjust my playstyle to it and lost interest so my consequence was that i played less and less. Last time i played was a month ago. Today i’m just here to check the new balance update just to see that nothings changed.

Runnin 0/30/0/20/20 having np with necros, I burst them down like a charm, you need to be extremely aggressive when playing s/d ele, so aggressive that the enemy must go defensive 2s after meeting you and at the same time know your steps and mitigate dmg in order to maintain the upper hand

Sid.4609:

darkace.8925:

Go to the warrior sub-forum and you’ll see Anet hates warriors. Go to the ranger sub-forum and you’ll see Anet hates rangers.

That’s simply not true. I never saw this amount of complaints in any other forum due to a balance update.

You haven’t been to the ranger sub-forum lately, have you? Go on, take a peek.

Sid.4609:

The lack of elementalists in PvP since then proves my point.

Anecdotal evidence doesn’t prove anything. Ever.

Arheundel.6451:

Runnin 0/30/0/20/20 having np with necros, I burst them down like a charm, you need to be extremely aggressive when playing s/d ele, so aggressive that the enemy must go defensive 2s after meeting you and at the same time know your steps and mitigate dmg in order to maintain the upper hand

On 1v1 and being fast, you can burst Necromancer down, but if a Necro know how to prolong the fight, you will go down. Act fast or being killed fast.

All Balance reasons aside (seeing as the game was extremely well balanced at launch and only got worse with every patch I for one have lost all balance faith in arenanet):

For the last year, with every single patch, Arenanet has systematically nerfed, destroyed, punished or otherwise obliterated every single thing that elementalists were good at or that made them fun to play. Also whenever some balance change arises they ALWAYS, ALWAYS take the easy way out of nerfing the thing into the ground instead of doing it the hard way and ACTUALLY BALANCE it.

How they can even think that this is a good approach to a business/game/community is way beyond me. On top of that they prance around making tutorial videos 1 year after launch (lol) or actually go out and say stuff like “the top 2 eles in the world are actually so good at playing that we will nerf the class for everyone because kitten you that’s why” (paraphrased).

Anecdotal evidence doesn’t prove anything. Ever.

said the pope to Galileo Galilei and died believing that the earth is flat…

Aether McLoud.1975:

For the last year, with every single patch, Arenanet has systematically nerfed, destroyed, punished or otherwise obliterated every single thing that elementalists were good at or that made them fun to play. Also whenever some balance change arises they ALWAYS, ALWAYS take the easy way out of nerfing the thing into the ground instead of doing it the hard way and ACTUALLY BALANCE it.

If you’d actually bothered to read the patch notes you’d know staff elementalists got a buff.

darkace.8925:

If you’d actually bothered to read the patch notes you’d know staff elementalists got a buff.

Here, choke on your own words:

darkace.8925:

Anecdotal evidence doesn’t prove anything. Ever.

Sid.4609:

Anecdotal evidence doesn’t prove anything. Ever.

said the pope to Galileo Galilei and died believing that the earth is flat…

Empirical evidence and anecdotal evidence are not the same thing.

Do this, go trough some servers and count the Eles compared to other classes like thiefs or guardians or necs for that matter. There you find your emperical evidence

Aether McLoud.1975:

darkace.8925:

If you’d actually bothered to read the patch notes you’d know staff elementalists got a buff.

Here, choke on your own words:

darkace.8925:

Anecdotal evidence doesn’t prove anything. Ever.

I…don’t think you know what anecdotal evidence is. The patch notes are numbers from the game, not something I observed while playing. Assuming the changes listed in the patch notes work as intended, there is no way to deny the fact that the elementalist’s staff was buffed. That makes your statement, “Also whenever some balance change arises they ALWAYS, ALWAYS take the easy way out of nerfing the thing into the ground instead of doing it the hard way and ACTUALLY BALANCE it” a false one.

Actually it doesn’t.

Aether, two points:
1) staff eles really did get buffed. A large number of staff skills were given shorter cast/aftercast times, and Healing Rain no longer requires standing still. The nerfs given were the two cantrips that no longer stun (which aren’t “staff”, and whose stuns were spread to other skill types – maybe now you won’t see everyone wearing three cantrips) and the Bountiful Power nerf – which in organised groups could give you like 16% extra damage most of the time, in a healing/vit specced build, without losing any of that healing or vit.
2) Yeah anecdotal evidence is nothing to do with what the update did. Read the update notes, note the skills that have been changed. No staff skills at all were nerfed, you can read this for yourself, so it’s not anecdotal at all. Should I say “I once saw a staff ele running about and think that their skills had maybe been nerfed” or even “yeah my staff ele doesn’t play as well now” without any supporting evidence… that’d be anecdotal.

EDIT: didn’t at all say what I meant to, in part of this. Wooo clarification.

Giving the staff a buff doesnt make much of a difference if any other classes get buffed in a similar way.

Necros now reminds me of spiritmasters from Aion. While feared, they do massive condition dmg. Necros are still a piece of cake for burst build eles.

cheese.4739:

Aether, two points:
1) staff eles really did get buffed.

I never said anything otherwise. My points still stand.

Sid.4609:

Giving the staff a buff doesnt make much of a difference if any other classes get buffed in a similar way.

Um, yes it does? The way that an ele wielding a staff will play is entirely different from the way a mesmer with a scepter/focus will play. Buffing that mesmer’s skills as well as the ele’s doesn’t mean that either of those buffs is somehow meaningless – if at all balanced it makes both more interesting/fun to play – and hopefully more viable against other builds that are currently considered to be OP to them. If every class had the same skills and weapon sets, then yes buffing them all at once wouldn’t really count as balancing – but that just isn’t the case; they are all different so tweaking the skills of one weapon can’t really be compared to those of another.

cheese.4739:

Sid.4609:

Giving the staff a buff doesnt make much of a difference if any other classes get buffed in a similar way.

Um, yes it does?

No it doesn’t. Staff still isn’t close to a viable pvp weapon. It never will be unless it gets either a HUGE damage boost or completely redesigned. And that’s exactly why staff changes in the patch notes don’t even matter.

cheshirefox.7026:

 
i feel that walking into the main headquarters of ArenaNet
there must be a huge banner with the caption
this is what we want for elementalists

Fixed that for you. (Was tempted to add a noose to slot four ;p)

darkace is a strong vocal minority and should be ignored.

Yes, MMO’s will never be perfectly balanced, but similarly to the saying “Life isn’t fair”, that doesn’t mean we can’t strive to make it fair.

And things are bad when rangers can’t get a spot in CoF speed runs. And things are bad when two necromancers can’t run a dungeon together because of condition stack limitations.

This is PvE related, which has nothing to do with what I brought up. Anet has the power to restrict their balances to sPvP, WvW, and PvE, so let’s ignore that

And things are bad when guardians have no +Movement Speed passives.

Guardians have heavy armor, they aren’t meant to be mobile classes. You want to bring up mobility? Tell me why Ele’s have the lowest health pool and lowest armor yet have less escape than Mesmers and Theives, AND their mobility is being nerfed (RTL and Lightning Flash).

I’m saying every profession feels they need some love.

At the moment, not Mesmers, not Necro’s, not Guardians, not Engies, in fact, people who main those classes have actually posted threads about nerfing themselves. You keep saying to go the the subforums. Guess what? Minimal complaint threads compared to Warriors and Ele’s.

Anyone who says elementalists don’t have a role in WvW doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

Elementalists are being kicked because why would you run them in a party when you have warriors for DPS, guardians for CC and support, necros for conditions, etc. You want to run a roaming party? Thieves.

If you’d actually bothered to read the patch notes you’d know staff elementalists got a buff.

Cast time reduction isn’t significant. If you played Ele you would know their suitability comes from mobility; staff, having the least. Staff Ele is not a viable build in sPvP because once again, a Necro or Mesmer would be more useful to the team.

To everyone else posting on this thread. I appreciate your comments and am glad to see this isn’t just me. Anet has most likely heard are concerns and will hopefully step up to the plate and listen to the community. Or maybe not, I’m looking at you, warriors.

Aether McLoud.1975:

cheese.4739:

Sid.4609:

Giving the staff a buff doesnt make much of a difference if any other classes get buffed in a similar way.

Um, yes it does?

No it doesn’t. Staff still isn’t close to a viable pvp weapon. It never will be unless it gets either a HUGE damage boost or completely redesigned. And that’s exactly why staff changes in the patch notes don’t even matter.

The staff has large range, can have pretty great AoE and lays down movement-impeding conditions and CCs all over the place – and in my re-reading of the patch notes the now, I note that Gust is actually multi-target now, which is a pretty serious buff to it. If you want to deal lots of damage, go with your one-handed weapons – the staff is a large-scale weapon, not a spiking tool.

Staff eles are not nearly powerful enough to do many 1v1s… but a decent staff should be able to at least hold out against most foes until support arrives from either team, and maybe use their CC and mobility to neutralise (or even cap) the point they’re fighting at while they’re at it.
And if you’re at all organised, or even just have a half-reasonable randomly assigned team, you can be wonderful with an ally – the staff ele has the control and support to keep another ally or two up in a larger fight, and deal consistent (if minor compared to, say, spike/burst builds) damage while they’re at it.

If you’re desperate to deal lots of damage to one target… you shouldn’t go for an AoE weapon. There just isn’t any way to give them the damage output that you want without either shrinking down the AoE (to, uh, single-target) or making it stupidly overpowered.

EchenSketch.9142:

darkace is a strong vocal minority and should be ignored.

I’m assuming you have some sort of statistical data showing the majority of elemetnalists feel ArenaNet hates the profession? Because without that data your claim is a baseless one. And baseless claims should be ignored.

darkace.8925:

EchenSketch.9142:

darkace is a strong vocal minority and should be ignored.

I’m assuming you have some sort of statistical data showing the majority of elemetnalists feel ArenaNet hates the profession? Because without that data your claim is a baseless one. And baseless claims should be ignored.

It’s a title of a thread meant to grab people’s attention. Obviously it worked. If your argument has degraded to questioning the wording of a title, clearly you’ve lost this debate.

Also, if that’s what you got from my comment, thank you for ignoring the meat and picking at the bones.

cheese.4739:

Aether McLoud.1975:

cheese.4739:

Sid.4609:

Giving the staff a buff doesnt make much of a difference if any other classes get buffed in a similar way.

Um, yes it does?

No it doesn’t. Staff still isn’t close to a viable pvp weapon. It never will be unless it gets either a HUGE damage boost or completely redesigned. And that’s exactly why staff changes in the patch notes don’t even matter.

The staff has large range, can have pretty great AoE and lays down movement-impeding conditions and CCs all over the place – and in my re-reading of the patch notes the now, I note that Gust is actually multi-target now, which is a pretty serious buff to it. If you want to deal lots of damage, go with your one-handed weapons – the staff is a large-scale weapon, not a spiking tool.

Staff eles are not nearly powerful enough to do many 1v1s… but a decent staff should be able to at least hold out against most foes until support arrives from either team, and maybe use their CC and mobility to neutralise (or even cap) the point they’re fighting at while they’re at it.
And if you’re at all organised, or even just have a half-reasonable randomly assigned team, you can be wonderful with an ally – the staff ele has the control and support to keep another ally or two up in a larger fight, and deal consistent (if minor compared to, say, spike/burst builds) damage while they’re at it.

If you’re desperate to deal lots of damage to one target… you shouldn’t go for an AoE weapon. There just isn’t any way to give them the damage output that you want without either shrinking down the AoE (to, uh, single-target) or making it stupidly overpowered.

So you said all this just to prove my point? Nice.

Prove your point that staff isn’t useful in 1v1? Well YES. It’s just not a 1v1 weapon!

If every weapon was good in 1v1… what would be the point in having any AoE at all?

Would you please make it clear which ‘point’ it is that I’ve ‘proved’ of yours? You’re being far too vague, especially with a one-line contentless reply to a post that I mentioned several things in.

he needs empircal evidence :P

Did you check some servers for Eles yet Darkace?

EchenSketch.9142:

darkace.8925:

EchenSketch.9142:

darkace is a strong vocal minority and should be ignored.

I’m assuming you have some sort of statistical data showing the majority of elemetnalists feel ArenaNet hates the profession? Because without that data your claim is a baseless one. And baseless claims should be ignored.

It’s a title of a thread meant to grab people’s attention. Obviously it worked. If your argument has degraded to questioning the wording of a title, clearly you’ve lost this debate.

Also, if that’s what you got from my comment, thank you for ignoring the meat and picking at the bones.

I’m pretty sure that the thing that darkace was saying about baseless claims was with regards to their being the “vocal minority”, and the title of the thread has nothing to do with it. You’re making a claim that by saying this about darkace, that of all the elementalists out there, the majority of them don’t agree with darkace – but you really don’t have sufficient data on this to back your claim up. <10 people making at all meaningful comments in a thread really isn’t a sufficiently large sample size to say that the opinions presented and the proportions of folks holding those opinions are at all representative of the community as a whole.

cheese.4739:

Prove your point that staff isn’t useful in 1v1? Well YES. It’s just not a 1v1 weapon!

If every weapon was good in 1v1… what would be the point in having any AoE at all?

Would you please make it clear which ‘point’ it is that I’ve ‘proved’ of yours? You’re being far too vague, especially with a one-line contentless reply to a post that I mentioned several things in.

You’ve proven that staff isn’t a pvp weapon, and therefore all the little tweaks it got this patch don’t do kitten for overall ele balance.

Sid.4609:

he needs empircal evidence :P

Did you check some servers for Eles yet Darkace?

Um. How exactly is one supposed to do this? There isn’t any way that we can check at all fairly for ele numbers – unless you want to spend the tens of thousands of gems to swap between every server and spend a few weeks mapping each of them and checking with every person whether the character they’re on is their main, whether they play an ele, whether they specifically don’t play ele because they think it’s kittene?

You are making broad, vague claims rather than presenting real arguments. Try stating actual facts or maybe even hypothetical situations in which an ele is completely useless, and I’ll listen to what you have to say about it. Shouting “this is bad this is bad I want more damage!” and “hey stop nerfing my skills!” really isn’t at all constructive.

darkace.8925:

If you’d actually bothered to read the patch notes you’d know staff elementalists got a buff.

i play almost exclusively to staff. all those aftercast cooldowns were not buffs. they were improvements to our quality of life, but not buffs. reducing the aftercast down by 0.1-0.6 seconds is not a buff

these are buffs
- gust passing through multiple enemies
- meteor shower cast time decreased
- moving while casting healing rain

do bear in mind that gust deals no damage, so if someone has stability up then you effectively do nothing, they don’t even enter combat.
each meteor hits for an area the size of a non-blasting staff lava font or geyser (or lightning flash), while randomly distributed over a radius of 360

moving while casting healing rain was the only good thing for a skill that is already good

Sid.4609:

he needs empircal evidence :P

Did you check some servers for Eles yet Darkace?

Why would I? That’s not empirical evidence. That’ still anecdotal evidence. You should learn the difference between the two before you try to call me out on it.

SilverUniverse.7103:

darkace.8925:

If you’d actually bothered to read the patch notes you’d know staff elementalists got a buff.

i play almost exclusively to staff. all those aftercast cooldowns were not buffs. they were improvements to our quality of life, but not buffs. reducing the aftercast down by 0.1-0.6 seconds is not a buff

these are buffs
- gust passing through multiple enemies
- meteor shower cast time decreased
- moving while casting healing rain

do bear in mind that gust deals no damage, so if someone has stability up then you effectively do nothing, they don’t even enter combat.
each meteor hits for an area the size of a non-blasting staff lava font or geyser (or lightning flash), while randomly distributed over a radius of 360

moving while casting healing rain was the only good thing for a skill that is already good

Aha, thank you for actually acknowledging the real buffs, I keep forgetting to bring them up – the Gust and Healing rain ones really are useful to note (woo, more control and mobility!), and meteor shower being better is nice.
If somene has stability up, you should really be taking note of this and just not casting gust until it’s down – if you’re wasting your control effects on the stable, you shouldn’t complain about them… and you have another hard CC that you can use once their stability runs out or is removed by someone.

The aftercast/casting time improvements… do count as buffs. Notably Eruption, which is great for laying down then plonking a combo field on top of. You now have enough time (due to a load of aftercast getting removed) to pull off several other skills before you need to lay down your combo field for your blast. You can use another skill, get it interrupted, and still sometimes manage to place that important field. Most of the time this field will be a water one, but 3 stacks of might isn’t to be sniffed at, especially when there’re other allies around that would benefit who /do/ focus on straight-up damage.

Aether McLoud.1975:

You’ve proven that staff isn’t a pvp weapon, and therefore all the little tweaks it got this patch don’t do kitten for overall ele balance.

It’s not a 1v1 weapon, is all I’ve been saying. And even then, it can still be good if used well, just often outmatched by other classes/builds – which is true of most things. They all have counters.
Staff rules for supporting and controlling groups, that’s the entire purpose of the weapon. If you’re trying to repurpose it into doing something else, you’re trying to fit a square peg into a round hole – using a rubber chicken instead of a hammer.

SilverUniverse.7103:

darkace.8925:

If you’d actually bothered to read the patch notes you’d know staff elementalists got a buff.

i play almost exclusively to staff. all those aftercast cooldowns were not buffs. they were improvements to our quality of life, but not buffs. reducing the aftercast down by 0.1-0.6 seconds is not a buff

How is the ability to chain skills together quicker not a buff?

SilverUniverse.7103:

these are buffs
- gust passing through multiple enemies
- meteor shower cast time decreased
- moving while casting healing rain

You conveniently forgot:
– Eruption cast time decreased
– Unsteady Ground duration increased
– Lava Font cast time decreased
– Geyser cast time decreased
– Frozen Ground cast time decreased

SilverUniverse.7103:

do bear in mind that gust deals no damage, so if someone has stability up then you effectively do nothing, they don’t even enter combat.

And if Lightning Surge deals 100 billion damage and it’s dodged or blocked you effectively do nothing. I fail to see what bearing Gust doing no damage has to do with anything.

SilverUniverse.7103:

each meteor hits for an area the size of a non-blasting staff lava font or geyser (or lightning flash), while randomly distributed over a radius of 360

Okay?

SilverUniverse.7103:

moving while casting healing rain was the only good thing for a skill that is already good

For the sake of argument let’s say you’re right. Let’s say the only buff to staff was the ability to move while casting Healing Rain. Were there any nerfs to staff? The answer is no. And if the answer is no, then the staff was buffed. And if the staff was buffed, then assertion that Anet only balances through nerfs is a false statement.

EchenSketch.9142:

Everyone just ignore the troll. He stopped providing any valid arguments, and is just arguing for the sake of it.

I provided valid arguments. I provided undeniable facts. You just chose to ignore them. And that’s why I won this debate. And because I won, you call me a troll? How mature of you.

cheese.4739:

SilverUniverse.7103:

darkace.8925:

If you’d actually bothered to read the patch notes you’d know staff elementalists got a buff.

i play almost exclusively to staff. all those aftercast cooldowns were not buffs. they were improvements to our quality of life, but not buffs. reducing the aftercast down by 0.1-0.6 seconds is not a buff

these are buffs
- gust passing through multiple enemies
- meteor shower cast time decreased
- moving while casting healing rain

do bear in mind that gust deals no damage, so if someone has stability up then you effectively do nothing, they don’t even enter combat.
each meteor hits for an area the size of a non-blasting staff lava font or geyser (or lightning flash), while randomly distributed over a radius of 360

moving while casting healing rain was the only good thing for a skill that is already good

Aha, thank you for actually acknowledging the real buffs, I keep forgetting to bring them up – the Gust and Healing rain ones really are useful to note (woo, more control and mobility!), and meteor shower being better is nice.
If somene has stability up, you should really be taking note of this and just not casting gust until it’s down – if you’re wasting your control effects on the stable, you shouldn’t complain about them… and you have another hard CC that you can use once their stability runs out or is removed by someone.

The aftercast/casting time improvements… do count as buffs. Notably Eruption, which is great for laying down then plonking a combo field on top of. You now have enough time (due to a load of aftercast getting removed) to pull off several other skills before you need to lay down your combo field for your blast. You can use another skill, get it interrupted, and still sometimes manage to place that important field. Most of the time this field will be a water one, but 3 stacks of might isn’t to be sniffed at, especially when there’re other allies around that would benefit who /do/ focus on straight-up damage.

Aether McLoud.1975:

You’ve proven that staff isn’t a pvp weapon, and therefore all the little tweaks it got this patch don’t do kitten for overall ele balance.

It’s not a 1v1 weapon, is all I’ve been saying. And even then, it can still be good if used well, just often outmatched by other classes/builds – which is true of most things. They all have counters.
Staff rules for supporting and controlling groups, that’s the entire purpose of the weapon. If you’re trying to repurpose it into doing something else, you’re trying to fit a square peg into a round hole – using a rubber chicken instead of a hammer.

Again, pvp is made up of 5v5, and staff never has and probably never will be a viable weapon there.

EchenSketch.9142:

Everyone just ignore the troll. He stopped providing any valid arguments, and is just arguing for the sake of it.

Who’re you saying is the troll? darkace? They are requesting that people present valid points rather than wishy-washy statements with no basis in fact (and ridiculous, entirely unverifiable ones at that), or the world’s biggest hyperbole (ha ha I’m hilarious). It’s hard to discuss something when the counters all consist of ‘this isn’t true and I’m not going to provide a counter-argument that makes sense’.

Nore does Izzy provide us with hard facts trying to sugarcode us about how flexibel and potential the ele really is. I would’ve loved to see him just join a server and put his money where his mouth is.

Aether McLoud.1975:

Again, pvp is made up of 5v5, and staff never has and probably never will be a viable weapon there.

Would you mind explaining what about the staff is horribly bad in a 5v5? Most of what I can garner from what people are saying really does sound like they want it to just deal lots more damage and pwn in 1v1s.
Sure, ele isn’t as good at bunkering as guardian or as bursty and spiky (and annoying) as the thief, but they can assist in so many different ways – they just need to be aware of their surroundings and their skills more than someone who throws a reliable chain of attacks and doesn’t need to pay attention to do damage.

cheese.4739:

It’s hard to discuss something when the counters all consist of ‘this isn’t true and I’m not going to provide a counter-argument that makes sense, and we should all just ignore anyone who doesn’t agree with us’.

Fixed that for you. And I’m glad to see at least one other person on this sub-forum is reasonable and rational.

Sid.4609:

Nore does Izzy provide us with hard facts try to sugarcode us about how flexibel and potential the ele really is. I would’ve loved to see him just join a server and put his money where his mouth is.

Now, this is the part of the line between anecdotal and factual evidence that gets blurry. The facts are that eles have so many more weapon skills available to them, with a variety of uses – this is solid fact. They can use these skills in many combinations, due to having lots of them and the ability to switch between whichever attunements they want to (provided the cooldown isn’t active). This is also fact, though there’s argument about attunement cooldown/arcana trait speccing that I won’t try to go into because this is about staff rather than attunements.

Whether someone makes good use of the skills available is opinion. Whether someone enjoys using the skills/build is opinion. It’s hard to have any weight behind the statement ‘this thing is bad’ without a lot of people playing in a lot of situations with it – and we just don’t have access to that data. However, a few people arguing for and a few arguing against the viability of staff really isn’t sufficient to be able to say ‘yes, this thing actually is bad’ and justify making changes. Once one has access to Anet data and has studied how matchups in large numbers of cases fare… then they can make more reasonable decisions and statements as to what is over and underpowered and what could do with buffing.

darkace.8925:

EchenSketch.9142:

Everyone just ignore the troll. He stopped providing any valid arguments, and is just arguing for the sake of it.

I provided valid arguments. I provided undeniable facts. You just chose to ignore them. And that’s why I won this debate. And because I won, you call me a troll? How mature of you.

Yes, past tense, did. Now you’re arguing over empirical vs anecdotal evidence. Your response to all of my points was questioning the wording of a title. Your “undeniable” facts had counterarguments and you ignored them.

And to you cheese. The staff ele has no place in sPvP because a necro or mesmer is more useful and better fills the role. A necro has long range AoE, can apply more pressure with his minions, and adds condi to fights with his wells.

darkace.8925:

cheese.4739:

It’s hard to discuss something when the counters all consist of ‘this isn’t true and I’m not going to provide a counter-argument that makes sense, and we should all just ignore anyone who doesn’t agree with us’.

Fixed that for you. And I’m glad to see at least one other person on this sub-forum is reasonable and rational.

<3

I really do appreciate the folks arguing against the staff’s usefulness when they’re presenting reasonable cases by the way – it’s just a shame that there are several people just sticking their fingers in their ears and going ‘la la la’ like my older sister did when we were like 5 and 6 years old and she was losing an argument about a toy or who would be best at climbing trees, a tortoise or antman.