Guild Wars 2

Hi! I really love dagger as a weapon set for ele, but a few of the skills seem like they could be better.

Lightning Touch (dagger 2, air) – I don’t find this skill very useful. I think it would be a lot better if it were either instant or activated in a radius.

Magnetic Grasp/Leap (dagger earth 3) – Ranged immobilize + leap? Fantastic! Unfortunately, the leap animation is so slow, by the time you reach the target they’re already moving away again. Further, if you do it on an incline, it over/under shoots the target! How about changing this to either a pull or a teleport? Or even a double pull – like magnets coming together, both the caster and the target move toward eachother at high speed? Bonus points if you can trigger it while charging up Churning Earth (dagger earth 5)!

Cone of Cold (dagger water 2) – This skill is just sort of slow and weak. Any chance it could be improved by adding chill the way Drake’s Breath (dagger fire 2) applies burning?

Fire Grab (dagger fire 5) – It’s a powerful ability, but I feel like the cone is too narrow. It misses a lot, even when targets appear to be in range. It almost forces you to run directly at your target to land it. Any chance we could make it a little wider?

That’s all I have for weapon skills. On to utilities!

Aftershock! – Amazingly useful skill! It’s powerful both offensively and defensively. If I had one complaint, it’s the 45 second cooldown. I realize it’s a powerful effect, but this seems a bit long even so. Any chance we could get a reduction? It made a huge difference for arcane shield, which is now another of my favorite utilities.

Rebound! – Another strong skill, albeit situationally. However, I find this ability to be a little too niche. Could we spice it up a bit by making it instant (in fact, apply that to all shouts – they should all be instant) and perhaps applying the aura on the front end regardless of whether it saves the player from death? This would give it more purpose outside of trying to guess when you’re about to die (and failing to land it because of the cast time!).

Tornado – The only use I’ve found for this skill is knocking enemies off of points in PvP. It’s too slow, low damage, and leaves you pretty vulnerable. I have no suggestion for how to change it at this time, but I would like to see this skill become something more generally usable.

AliamRationem.5172:

[…]
Magnetic Grasp/Leap (dagger earth 3) – Ranged immobilize + leap? Fantastic! Unfortunately, the leap animation is so slow, by the time you reach the target they’re already moving away again. Further, if you do it on an incline, it over/under shoots the target! How about changing this to either a pull or a teleport? Or even a double pull – like magnets coming together, both the caster and the target move toward each other at high speed? Bonus points if you can trigger it while charging up Churning Earth (dagger earth 5)!

Problem with this is that if its a pull instead of a jump it will be canceled by stability.
Also, if its a pull you will loose the combo with ring of fire for the fire aura.

Dagger does not need more buffs right now. Other weapons need to be looked at instead. Staff is getting there but has a way to go yet, and scepter is still too slow or weak outside of air. Dagger is already mandatory with most specs across the game, so buffing it will only make a mandatory weapon more mandatory.

I only agree with Fire Grab… Since it has long CD and the requiriment of have burning applied to the enemy to do full damege, It really Need to be easier to Land, idk if increase the cone or the range, but something should be done about it

Zintrothen.1056:

Dagger does not need more buffs right now. Other weapons need to be looked at instead. Staff is getting there but has a way to go yet, and scepter is still too slow or weak outside of air. Dagger is already mandatory with most specs across the game, so buffing it will only make a mandatory weapon more mandatory.

Yeah, I guess you’re right. But honestly, the abilities I listed for mainhand dagger are complete garbage with the exception of earth 3, which is almost painful to use because although the effects are quite useful the leap animation is so ridiculously slow.

The other abilities listed aren’t mainhand dagger. Fire grab is off-hand dagger, which tons of ele mains show love for, but isn’t meta for anything. Again, fire grab deals great damage, but the cone/range is so narrow you basically only hit with it if you’re standing right on top of a stationary target. Strafing targets are just way too difficult to land this against and missing it greatly reduces the burst potential of off-hand dagger in PvP.

lucadiro.4519:

I only agree with Fire Grab… Since it has long CD and the requiriment of have burning applied to the enemy to do full damege, It really Need to be easier to Land, idk if increase the cone or the range, but something should be done about it

Thanks for the support on fire grab!

But you don’t think ele elite skills could use some sprucing up?

And 45 seconds for Aftershock doesn’t seem a bit long to you? I mean check out “Wall of Reflection” on guardian. It’s a 10 second reflect, albeit non-moving and doesn’t have additional effects, but it’s on a 30 second cooldown. Or “Defense Field”, 5 second area reflect that moves with the caster also on a 30 second cooldown. I would tend to agree that Aftershock! is more powerful in terms of its effects, but that is somewhat balanced by a shorter duration (4 seconds). Still, is it so much more powerful that it deserves a 50% longer cooldown?

Fire Grab lets make a hard to hit long cd skill that hits as hard as 1 thief vault.

Aftershock btw is very strong. Its damage is decent, it hits the enemy once before an immob so blind cant kitten u over. I 100% recommend it for ppl that need some reflect. I’d take a 30s cd and remove the blast finisher to compensate.

Lightning touch is very useful in 1v1. I can tell how good a d/d ele is by how often this skill gets utiliized.

If you really want d/d to be viable its gonna need some ranged hate. I’d sure love to use those air and fire trait lines anet. hint hint.

I agree, fire grabs damage should be better with that CD, specially because -even if it is easy- it has a condition to max its damage (burned enemys)

The other 2 changes I would make to daggers are:

- 20 Secs for Ride the lightning (15 secs if you hit you opponent)
Reason: d/d mayor weakness is to not having a real counter-play to ranged damage, so reliable mobility is needed to compensate, specially when the game has now far more pushes/space negation skills than when it launched and ele still has very few ways to have reliable stability.

- 3 condi cleanse for cleansing wave on less CD (25)
Reason: You are melee forced and that limits the places where you can move to attack, so even if you play with hit & flee tactics you will eat area dmg and tons of non targeted conditions. Focus still has the better defensive option, but now off-had dagger has a decent alternative.

1. Quickness that improves cast speed instead of just movement.
2. 10% healing to myself, not others.
3. More than just blind procs for dps specs (in pvp/wvw)
4. On crit sigils back in spvp.
5. Ability to gain resistance instead of always have to cleanse/heal.
6. Incoming corruption to not match the stacks of buffs I have on. This one shots you in WvW. Combat log won’t tell you that either.

katniss.6735:

1. Quickness that improves cast speed instead of just movement.

So, normal Quickness?

List of potentially OP wishes:
Scepter
1. Ability to finish a previous overload after swapping attunments.
2. Bouncing lightning on scepter air 1 (like we had for that 1 week).
3. Dragon tooth animation to complete in 1s instead of an hour later.

Dagger MH
1. Instead of air 2 that misses all the time and applies weakness, have it daze someone up to 600 yards away.

Focus
1. Earth 5 invuln gives added resistance. Right now when you swap to earth you need to hit 4 and 5 and you can still die with how obnoxious condis are.

Lightning flash 1200 yards, 30s cd, remove damage component. (This actually isn’t OP at all.)

I really want this class to be better than it is right now. Condies are just stupid. I can’t put it any better than that. You got to pray just to make it today.

Everything sounds pretty good to me, except the water dagger 2 and the magnetic leap suggestion. They look rather unneccesary.

InsaneQR.7412:

Everything sounds pretty good to me, except the water dagger 2 and the magnetic leap suggestion. They look rather unneccesary.

I didn’t think the magnetic leap suggestions through. I just hate how slow the leap animation is and would like to see that changed somehow.

AliamRationem.5172:

InsaneQR.7412:

Everything sounds pretty good to me, except the water dagger 2 and the magnetic leap suggestion. They look rather unneccesary.

I didn’t think the magnetic leap suggestions through. I just hate how slow the leap animation is and would like to see that changed somehow.

Maybe revert it back to how it was originally, and re-merge the 2 skills? Having this skill in 2 equally unimpressive parts just sucks. I have no idea why they even changed it to begin with.

My wish is go back to the beginning of hot. Any nerf core ele recieved that could have been adjusted to tempest instead reverted with tempest eating the nerf

Scepter buffs
Fire 2 lower the cast time so it can hit a target or make it a direction AE hitting the first target.
Air 3 reduce cd (it has a long cd for a low effect in comparison to Air 2 staff).
Earth 2 rework it to block when not in earth reduce cast time.
Water 2 increase crit dmg to vulnerable targets or add a burst effect to it like an extra detonation to vulnerable targets.
Off-Hand Dagger
Earth 2 increase its AE then reduce its damage or make its damage build up doing 50% of its damage at the end.

Staff fire 2 first damage tick is at the beginning of the animation
Air 1 slightly increased damage and explodes on first hit
Air 2 aoe pulsing damage
Earth 2 aoe pulsing damage and cripple
Earth 5 earth version of meteor with spikes coming up from the ground.
Still be a viable support tool but glass staff ele would have more options than camping fire. And fits the classic aoe mage fantasy