Guild Wars 2

Staff Ele should be able to stand in its own AoE circles and get buffed. I’m not talking about combo fields, I’m saying it should happen passively as well. It should be only for us, not our allies.

Fire: increases power
Water: increases vitality
Air: grants quickness (yes, static field should apply quickness through its duration)
Earth: increases toughness

As far as the exact values go, they need to be noticeable and benefit us enough that we can build strategies around them.

If you leave your AoE (willingly or by force), the buff ends immediately. You cannot regain the buff by reentering your AoE. If you are in your AoE when it ends, the buff lasts +4 seconds after the AoE has expired (except for quickness which will end when Static Field does). The buff will not stack (neither intensity nor duration), i.e. if you use lava font to buff, meteor shower will not stack the buff—it will only extend the duration until +4 seconds after meteor shower ends.

Staff needs something like this to make it more effective in close-quarters 1vX. We can’t swap weapons in combat and nearly any situation that first invites staff can quickly evolve into a situation that staff isn’t meant for.

I’d be cool with this, but vitality buff for water attune? Maybe something a bit more helpful… healing power or something

http://pics.livejournal.com/kulebyako/pic/00001yd4

Shikron.1243:

I’d be cool with this, but vitality buff for water attune? Maybe something a bit more helpful… healing power or something

I was considering healing power but then I thought it would be easy to spec that into being OP unless the buff was very small. We have 4 AoE circles in water attunement, 2 of them heals. Match that up with evasive arcana + blast finishers and you could have a lot of burst healing on relatively low cooldowns.

A solution could be for the mechanic to only apply to combo fields. We would lose the buffs from meteor shower, eruption and ice spike but that may not be much of an issue.

I think our AoEs being “good for us, bad for them” adds more dimension to staff play style—would love to see something like this.

How exactly would any of that (besides the quickness) help? If anything, it seems to force you into a small predictable area, and for what exactly? Some minor inconsequential utility stats while hamstringing the effect of the skill by neglecting part of its other utility (i.e. its range)?

Not that I don’t think staff could use a bit more bite, but that suggestion doesn’t do much.

A suggestion that I thought of recently was just adding opposite combos for combo fields. That is, if an enemy fires projectiles or leaps through/past your fire field, it produces an effect (up for suggestion) or if someone whirled in your lightning field or blast in your ice fields, etc etc. It could be a beneficial effect to whoever it targets…so, like a Ranger shoots at me while I stand behind a fire wall or with a lava font between us, his shortbow shots apply damage and bleeds but also a ‘cleansing fire’ combo on me that buffs me (with -condition duration on me)…

…or it could be a negative effect on the foe, like leaping through enemy fire fields applies a ‘melted armor’ debuff effect that increases duration of conditions on themselves.

Results: You can better place fields and skills strategically to stifle foe’s skills because you can shield yourself with your attacking skills in melee range or at range.

This would affect Staff elementalist more because they’d have far more combo fields at their disposal.

Leo G.4501:

This would affect Staff elementalist more because they’d have far more combo fields at their disposal.

You’re right, and your suggestion would certainly provide more benefit. However, we have to consider where staff is already good—providing long distance DPS, support and combo fields. Wouldn’t adding more utility/debuffs to this aspect of play make us OP? There’s already talk of an incoming AoE nerf.

My thinking was only to find a way to make staff work better in melee combat because that is where it suffers. You can’t 1v1 against a competent player and stay at range, they will close on you and we don’t have enough gap creators. Staff will never be the weapon of choice for 1vX but we shouldn’t be a free kill either.

Of course this mechanic won’t help much if your opponent stays at range—but think about it, they’d be at range which where we want them as a staff Ele.

xbaunx.6438:

You’re right, and your suggestion would certainly provide more benefit. However, we have to consider where staff is already good—providing long distance DPS, support and combo fields. Wouldn’t adding more utility/debuffs to this aspect of play make us OP? There’s already talk of an incoming AoE nerf.

It’s possible it could be OP. It’d really depend what kind of combos would be created for each field/combo type. For instance, getting shot by foes through your own fire field decreasing conditions on you/allies by -15% for 8 sec (with duration that refreshes) doesn’t seem too strong compared to something like Mesmer Feedback bubble completely negating attacks in a huge AoE.

My thinking was only to find a way to make staff work better in melee combat because that is where it suffers. You can’t 1v1 against a competent player and stay at range, they will close on you and we don’t have enough gap creators. Staff will never be the weapon of choice for 1vX but we shouldn’t be a free kill either.

Of course this mechanic won’t help much if your opponent stays at range—but think about it, they’d be at range which where we want them as a staff Ele.

I think the main problem I have with your suggestion is that it encourages you to be in melee. IMO, you should be encouraged to keep foes away in some manner. How to accomplish that I honestly can’t pinpoint. If a foe has closed in on you, either restricting their attacks via discouraging certain attack patterns or altering how your attacks work (like you suggest) might help. -shrug-

This is actually a really interesting suggestion. It would really go a long way towards making the staff a decent 1v1 weapon without going overboard for what it’s currently good at.

Leo G.4501:

I think the main problem I have with your suggestion is that it encourages you to be in melee. IMO, you should be encouraged to keep foes away in some manner.

You already have sufficient encouragement to keep your foes away. This change would help when you don’t have the option.

I’m actually a big fan of ranged weapons that give you melee options. The Mesmer’s Greatsword and Staff are excellent examples of this: the GS has an AoE knockback to help keep foes away while their staff is actually mostly a melee weapon to begin with (you CAN use it from 1200 units away but you’re rewarded with a significant number of boons if you use it in close quarters). The Necro’s staff is another example of a good ranged weapon you you still might choose to use in melee range: if you’re facing off against a thief, for example, you might lay down your marks and just stand on them to give yourself a fraction of a second more warning before the backstab.

The Ele’s staff is always going to be great at range but because the Ele doesn’t get a weapon swap, it would be nice if they were punished a little bit less for fighting with it in closer quarters.

Blaine Tog.8304:

You already have sufficient encouragement to keep your foes away.

It seems to me, if you get sufficient buffs from standing in your AoEs, it just turns staff into a melee weapon. You get max advantage by running to your enemies and cycling AoEs while dancing inside.

Yeah, you can still shoot at range until foes get close, but you’re simply waiting until they get close, not actively trying to keep them at bay.

Leo G.4501:

It seems to me, if you get sufficient buffs from standing in your AoEs, it just turns staff into a melee weapon. You get max advantage by running to your enemies and cycling AoEs while dancing inside.

If it’s too much, yeah. To an extent. But at the right amount, this could work. The channel time on Meteor Storm will prevent melee from being the optimal range. Actually, I’d be on board with making all 4 Attunements give some sort of small defensive bonus just to make sure you never want to be in melee (range is pretty much always the best defense) but have some of the hurt defrayed if you happen to end up there. The staff otherwise has no defensive steroids for dealing with melee, so this would accomplish the goal adequately. It could even be a trait you have to take, just to make sure you don’t want to do this automatically all the time.

Leo G.4501:

It seems to me, if you get sufficient buffs from standing in your AoEs, it just turns staff into a melee weapon. You get max advantage by running to your enemies and cycling AoEs while dancing inside.

Yeah, you can still shoot at range until foes get close, but you’re simply waiting until they get close, not actively trying to keep them at bay.

I agree with you on both parts here and I think we’re actually aiming for the same goal. I’d love to have a staff that could actively keep my opponent at range but right now staff does not do that well enough. I wouldn’t make the buffs so strong that we would be better off charging in and trying to face tank Warriors—but if played right, we should be able to soften melee players from a distance and then stand toe-to-toe with them when they close in.

Staff Ele already has what it takes to do good damage from long distances but we don’t have anything that we can use once the enemy closes in on us.

I suppose the method behind the suggestion is to provide a very subtle change that ANet could implement without completely re-working the weapon set. The way things are going, it feels like ANet is trying to nerf everything into balance (which I believe would work given enough time/patches) but I have a hunch that staff Ele is pretty far down on the list of balance priorities.

This suggestion is way too complex. Adding new mechanics to solve failing mechanics is seldomly a good idea.

xbaunx.6438:

I’d love to have a staff that could actively keep my opponent at range but right now staff does not do that well enough. Staff Ele already has what it takes to do good damage from long distances but we don’t have anything that we can use once the enemy closes in on us.

That’s because we don’t need to keep them at range. Our spells work just as well in melee as they do at range, and all other professions have ranged attacks too so it’s not like we can avoid all damage by avoiding melee.

In fact, you could argue that stuff like Stoning becomes better at closer ranges because it’s harder to avoid.

ThiBash.5634:

That’s because we don’t need to keep them at range. Our spells work just as well in melee as they do at range, and all other professions have ranged attacks too so it’s not like we can avoid all damage by avoiding melee.

In fact, you could argue that stuff like Stoning becomes better at closer ranges because it’s harder to avoid.

When I mentioned the prospect of ‘keeping them at range’, it also encompasses ‘keeping them inside your AoEs’. Because if you can push a foe to run a certain path, or stifle an escape, you’re likely predicting where to put your spells so they keep doing damage if not at the very least forcing the opponent to eat cooldowns to get at you/away.

Leo G.4501:

When I mentioned the prospect of ‘keeping them at range’, it also encompasses ‘keeping them inside your AoEs’. Because if you can push a foe to run a certain path, or stifle an escape, you’re likely predicting where to put your spells so they keep doing damage if not at the very least forcing the opponent to eat cooldowns to get at you/away.

Ah, I see. I use Glyph of Elemental Power for that. You’d be surprised how much easier it is to land hits when all of your spells have a chance to cripple the target.

I’d like to see lava font break out into smaller lava fonts if it hits something.

I put a bit more thought into about negative combos for Elementalist.

Considering Auras are kind of suppose to be Ele’s special gift but anyone with an elemental combo field can get auras, negative combos would play a unique role that manipulates the enemy’s attacks inside your combo fields. It’s not just used for range, but melee as well since the effects become more severe if you don’t properly avoid them. It also bring in another form of counterplay as you can cover for enemy Ele combo fields by using combo fields yourself which the game prioritizes ally fields before enemy fields.

Broken up into 4 categories, you have projectile combos, leap combos and whirl/blast combos. Whirl/blast create the same effect, generating more ‘bolts’ the bigger the blast or longer the whirl is.

Fire Combo Field
Projectile Finisher

• Cleansing Flame: Projectiles fired at you or your allies through your field burns off conditions faster.
• -15% Condition duration for 8sec. Refreshes duration with repeated application.

Leap Finisher

• Melted Armor: Leaping through an enemy elementalist’s fire compromises armor, making you more susceptible to conditions and burning.
• +15% Condition duration and +33% Burning duration on self for 10sec. Refreshes duration with repeated application.
• This is Lemongrass Poultry Soup type condition augmentation here, i.e. this is calculated after the foe condition duration.

Whirl/Blast Finisher

• Wildfire: Balls of flame erupt from the point of impact. These explode to do damage and create small burning patches at random.
• Each Wildfire deals 180 damage in a 90 radius AoE upon impact, burn patch applies 1sec of burning ever 3sec and patch lasts 9sec.

Water Combo Field
Projectile Finisher

• Envigorate: projectiles fired at you/allies restore 10% Endurance.
• If 10 projectiles hit you through a friendly Ele water field, you can go from 0 Endurance to full.

Leap Finisher

• Water Torrent: leaping through an enemy ele water field fatigues you and reduces Endurance by 25% and caps your Endurance at 75% for 12sec.
• Basically means you cannot double dodge until the effect wears off as you’d only have enough Endurance for 1.5 dodges and since you can half dodge…

Whirl/Blast Finisher

• Puddle: Spread puddles of water that heal the enemy.
• Each puddle heals for 80*0.1 healing power every 2sec.
• To be healed by a puddle your enemy made, you still have to walk over it.

Ice Combo Field
Projectile Finisher

• Freezing Touch: projectiles fired at you/allies through your field enhance your damage by 10% for 12sec.
• Duration refreshes with repeated application.
• This is like Ranger’s Frost Spirit buff. You have a 50% chance of 10% bonus damage on your attacks.

Leap Finisher

• Frostbitten: leaping through an enemy elementalist’s field freezes you to your core and lessens your attack damage by 25% while increasing your cooldowns by 33% for 8sec.
• Duration refreshes with repeated application.
• Inverse Frost Spirit debuff, it gives you a 50% chance of lowering your damage by 25%.
• The increase to cooldown does stack with the Chill condition’s…so don’t leap though ice fields…

Whirl/Blast Finisher

• Blocks of Ice: arcing chunks of ice fly in random directions, freezing your allies.
• Similar to Deep Freeze, encases victim in a block of ice, freezing the victim for 3 seconds and applies chill every 1sec.

Lightning Combo Field
Projectile Finisher

• Armor Discharge: projectiles fired at you/allies through your field charges your armor with a jolt of lightning for 20sec. Any foe that gets close will be shocked and forced back.
• The jolt is a 1 time charge and repeated applications refresh its duration. Once expended, the effect disappears.
• The jolt triggers when a foe is within 300 range, does 350 damage and knocks back 250 range.

Leap Finisher

• Defective Grounding: leaping through an enemy elementalist’s field damages grounding and overloads systems, removing Stability and lessening other boons.
• If you manage to leap through Static Field, you sacrifice your stability and decreases boon duration by 15% for 12sec.

Whirl/Blast Finisher

• Zap: bolts of electricity arc from the point of impact, dealing damage to allies and charging foes’ armor with a discharge.
• Zaps can hit all targets and depending on who they are they deal 350 damage (allies) or grants Armor Discharge (foes).

No one has anymore ideas about positive effects for AoEs? I thought this’d be a good ticket to helping staff considering how many AoEs they have. This needs more collaboration, IMO.