Guild Wars 2

Strange, without posting, it wouldn’t let me view page 1.

stale.9785:

Thor Rising.7850:

1200 range knockback on gust would be extremely op. I would be fine with it as is, just make it easier to land.

Giving the squishiest class in game a range maker that actually forces the enemy out to max range is OP?

Remember, ele’s can’t weapon swap in combat, and have no melee utility on staff.

Or possibly you’re still content with the idea of rolling full bunker, and dropping all your AoE at your feet, then running away. My goal is to make ranged combat viable for one of the two classes that ought to be good at it, but aren’t.

What about having the same mechanic as the mesmer’s KB. This would make it a cone to hit multiple attackers and also give you a tool to knock thieves out of refuge.

Tsai.8216:

stale.9785:

Thor Rising.7850:

1200 range knockback on gust would be extremely op. I would be fine with it as is, just make it easier to land.

Giving the squishiest class in game a range maker that actually forces the enemy out to max range is OP?

Remember, ele’s can’t weapon swap in combat, and have no melee utility on staff.

Or possibly you’re still content with the idea of rolling full bunker, and dropping all your AoE at your feet, then running away. My goal is to make ranged combat viable for one of the two classes that ought to be good at it, but aren’t.

What about having the same mechanic as the mesmer’s KB. This would make it a cone to hit multiple attackers and also give you a tool to knock thieves out of refuge.

Took a second – think you mean Illusionary Wave – that’d work. Hadn’t thought of it for multiple people – just wanted it to connect, and give us the maximum stave working room.

Agree with you 100%, and this needs to be done now since they nerfed the hell out of everything else

Da Spooky Ghost.6371:

Agree with you 100%, and this needs to be done now since they nerfed the hell out of everything else

Well, anyone have any clue how to get a dev’s attention then? I’ve been trying to keep this on the front page, but I have no clue if anyone but myself and the commenters have paid it any attention.

I haven’t yet commented but this is probably my favorite thread. If I could could get a dev to post on any recent thread, it would be this one. This needs more attention than it’s getting.

Myself and many others rolled Elementalist for the staff. That said, I really enjoyed seeing D/D at it’s peak and I felt like this was our build for solo play. With the recent nerfs I feel like the devs are trying to send a message that the bunker D/D is more exploit than build, which I think is ridiculous. There are a lot of players who claim to be able to beat the D/D pre-nerf, my opinion is that if it can be beaten by a balanced build, then it too is a balanced build.

However, this is about staff. I don’t believe that staff was created as a group-only weapon. This is because with some very minor tweaks (OP’s suggestions) you could run solo as effectively as anything else in the game. I can’t understand why such a brilliant weapon set has fallen so flat in so many situations.

My opinion on the 4/30 nerfs:

They say that Elementalist has a high skill cap. If players begin to reach that skill cap they should look overpowered. It takes a lot to run an Ele successfully, but when players do it they should be able to take down every profession under their own skill cap with ease.

It’s silly to take a profession that is difficult to master and put it on the same level as one that is easy to master.

If X Profession must be equal in power to B Profession then both professions must also be equal in skill cap. There is no point in mastering a higher skill cap if the reward is not also higher. Unless you just enjoy APM

Thanks for the goodwill, xbaunx!

I really like the suggestions in the OP, and would love to see them implemented.

That said, seeing as all we managed to get out of them in the State of the Game was pretty much, “Yeah, we wanna do something for the staff,” followed by a change of topic, I don’t exactly have high hopes.

Fire
1 – faster projectile and reduce the cast time to match the tooltip (1 second)
2 – add an instant damage tick
3 – instant cast and increase the initial damage on cast to 0.75 damage modifier. Staff is a power weapon.
4 – add an initial AoE blast at the origination point. A reverse of burning speed.

Water
1 – should always heal the ele, even if he isn’t by the target
4 – should have a 30 second cooldown. It’s good. it’s not 40 second CD good.
5 – castable while moving

Air
1 – increase projectile speed and reduce cast time to match the tooltip.
2 – make it instant
3 – this skill never lands against moving targets. Make it a frontal cone launch
5 – should have a 30 second cooldown. It’s good. It’s not 40 second good.

Earth
1 – faster projectile
4 – should act like a guardian line of warding
5 – should be instant with a 3 second immob. Increase projectile speed.

Traits
Blasting staff – increase range of staff skills to 1500 similar to Eagle Eye

Just wanted to add my support to this thread. I’ve always hated the idea of d/d on an Elementalist. If I wanted to use two daggers I’d play thief. I’m drawn to the idea of a ranged nuker using some sort of awesome staff as a weapon. The staff needs some serious love in my opinion.

I have recently come back from a break and felt like playing my ele. I was hoping that in my absence something would be done to improve the staff, so i’m kind of disappointed most eles are still regarding d/d as the best build (recent nerfs aside).

I feel the staff skills either need more damage or quicker execution, as it is right now the usefulness of the weapon besides being an annoyance to an enemy zerg (which is already situational) the staff is kind of meh.

At the very least, our non-fireball damage auto attacks should be increased a bit. They just do too little damage atm. Fireball is barely acceptable and the others might as well deal no damage.

Caffynated.5713:

Fire
1 – faster projectile and reduce the cast time to match the tooltip (1 second)
2 – add an instant damage tick
3 – instant cast and increase the initial damage on cast to 0.75 damage modifier. Staff is a power weapon.
4 – add an initial AoE blast at the origination point. A reverse of burning speed.

Water
1 – should always heal the ele, even if he isn’t by the target
4 – should have a 30 second cooldown. It’s good. it’s not 40 second CD good.
5 – castable while moving

Air
1 – increase projectile speed and reduce cast time to match the tooltip.
2 – make it instant
3 – this skill never lands against moving targets. Make it a frontal cone launch
5 – should have a 30 second cooldown. It’s good. It’s not 40 second good.

Earth
1 – faster projectile
4 – should act like a guardian line of warding
5 – should be instant with a 3 second immob. Increase projectile speed.

Traits
Blasting staff – increase range of staff skills to 1500 similar to Eagle Eye

I agree with this and most of what is already posted in this thread. Also sorry for the long post.

Something else I would like addressed is the ability to run a condition staff ele. Right now you have earth 2 and 5 to apply bleed. Why doesn’t earth 1 apply 1 bleed? Ranger short bow 1, Warrior rifle 1, and mesmer staff 1 all apply bleed and have 1200 range. I would rather take the bleed off Earth 5 and give it to Earth 1 for stacking. Earth 2 is good but kitten if you are going to hit someone that is actually paying attention. So you can try to root or stun but any competent player has one or more stun breakers, teleport or just dodge it. It has a long cast time and a long animation before it hits.

Granted people use it as a blast finisher for boons and I do as well but it is the only real way to really apply bleeds with staff. The idea to be able to be able to explod it on demand sounded good. Similar to cluster bomb on the thief short bow. Make it if you explode it early you only get the damage/condi stat and no blaster finisher. Only if you allow the full animation will the finisher go off.

Earth 2 – 6 stack of bleeds for 12 sec, 6sec CD
Earth 5 – 1 stack of bleed for 20 sec, 2 sec root, 30sec CD
Fire 3 – 5 sec of burn, 10sec CD
Fire 4 – 1 sec of burn applied in field for 6 sec, 20sec CD

That is about it for damage dealing conditions with staff. Fire signet is pretty good burning and Earth signet for a root but using them puts you down 2 utilities with no stun breaks in them. The passives did get a small buff this patch at least. And they do have pretty long cast times as well, but at least you can move and cast them.

I agree, Elementalist staff should be one of the most powerfull , in terms of damage ingame, but compared to certain mesmer, warrior weapons not to mention current builds, ‘Tis very poor indeed.
I see the elementalist as fallen back from it’s Guild Wars (1) place, in 250 years it seems the elementalists lost some of its power, some of the skills are completely useless specialy compared to their original guild wars versions, do I have to mention some of the Shatterstone or Searing Flames Earthquake builds from the original? Now even searing flames is a damnation of a guardian trait.

I’ve got a few ideas as well, imagine that! First would be to recognize that Ele is supposed to be a ranged AoE death dealing machine. Given that, it should have the potential to hit more targets than anyone else. Change Blasting Staff to:

Battle Mage – increases size of AoE as per Blasting Staff, increases AoE cap to 10. Then make this a GM trait in Arcane, and move Elemental Surge to Master level. This would then give EA a run for its money.

As for the Staff skills themselves:

Fire:
Fireball – increase size of AoE. It should be at least the radius of some of our PBAoE attacks, so around 200-240 here.

Lava Font – as others have said, no delay on damage.

Burning Retreat – either make a sequence skill with a forward charge component that has a blast finisher at the end, or at the very least make it a full 1200 range.

Water:
Water Blast: change it to a channeled jet, like the skill says that heals the Ele for the duration, heals any friendlies in the jet, and damages any enemies caught in the jet. Basically a dual duty pierce, and would work almost exactly like Cone of Cold

Ice Spike: Shorten duration, should probably be a blast finisher.

Frozen Ground: change it to pulse every second, change duration to around 8 seconds, allowing chilled to stack if they pass through the field

Air:
Chain Lightning: instead of a bouncing attack, change this to work just like Wave of Wrath, except with a lightning graphic. Should affect a fan of enemies in front of you, perhaps make it a channeled spell, be Emperor Palpatine.

Lightning Surge: should also apply Weakness.

Gust: either change the knockback to at LEAST 900 if not 1200, or make it apply Launch instead, just like Updraft. Give it a wider profile too.

Static Field: apply damage to people inside the field, everything else fine

Earth:
Stoning: increase projectile speed

Eruption: shorten cast time to 3/4, keep the 3s delay, introduce a sequence skill allowing immediate detonation. Would allow for “tactical trapping”

Unsteady Ground: definitely needs to be an AoE not a line, about the same size as Frozen Ground, make it into a Smoke combo field which gives Earth a combo field and makes it similar to Trident with Murky Water

Shockwave: changed to a PBAoE skill and blast finisher, does damage and causes Weakness, Blind and Vulnerability, making it much more like its GW1 counterpart.

That’s what I’ve got for now.

I’m going to go through the thread Friday and add any of the changes from follow-ups that I liked to the OP.

Hopefully keeping a cohesive OP will help, in the event a Dev ever looks at this.

I don’t main ele so if you wish to disregard my thoughts go ahead.

Staff is a group slanted weapon. It is that way for all professions that use one. Ele staff has the most available fields. That and healing appear to be its niche amongst the staff wielding professions. This is the reason you lack finishers.

I am working on a staft ele for part time spvp for fun and the discrepancy that I noticed with staff is that it is predisposed toward power/crit over condition damage. If they were to make changes I think the first step is balancing that out.

Give some usefull auto attack skill which doesnt require a target to hit like guardian staff

djtool.8372:

I don’t main ele so if you wish to disregard my thoughts go ahead.

Staff is a group slanted weapon. It is that way for all professions that use one. Ele staff has the most available fields. That and healing appear to be its niche amongst the staff wielding professions. This is the reason you lack finishers.

I am working on a staft ele for part time spvp for fun and the discrepancy that I noticed with staff is that it is predisposed toward power/crit over condition damage. If they were to make changes I think the first step is balancing that out.

Necro staff isn’t utility. Every skill is an attack. Let’s say you’re right though. The difference is that ele only gets one weapon at a time. Other classes can combine utility weapons with damage offhand sets to have a balance. Ele needs to have both in one weapon.

Yep, leveled an Eles to 80. Wanted to use staff but its terrible. Never really played him since.

Added some more stuff to the OP – removed others. Blatantly ignored some suggestions because they would be overpowered. I want a viable staff, not an engine of absolute destruction at range. (combining all the suggestions in the thread would result in an ele that could solo a wvwvw map – which would be fun, but seems impractical.)

I have got a similar thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Rework-Elementalist-skills-Staff/first

Maybe you like some of the ideas mentioned in there. Since I don’t play GW2 too much anymore I won’t update the rework but feel free to use some of the ideas for your thread if you want to.

I especially like the rework for earth 2. Being able to let the eruption explode whenever you want instead of a delay reduction sounds better to me.

I like this thread, so I’ll just leave this comment.

Staff plays very much like it was designed to force people to choose whether to eat damage or dodge. The skills are all very telegraphed, and have a lot of delayed effect. They also cast slow.

If that’s the intention of the weapon, then it should hit harder but keep the delay. Make the choice to eat my staff damage matter. If the damage isn’t going to change then they should reduce the delay, because it serves no purpose other than crippling a fairly interesting weapon set.

Henge.3907:

Yep, leveled an Eles to 80. Wanted to use staff but its terrible. Never really played him since.

Gotta disagree here. I feel less useful if I play anything other than staff in group play. The combo fields by themselves are pretty awesome, and it has a lot of fun tricks.

ThiBash.5634:

Henge.3907:

Yep, leveled an Eles to 80. Wanted to use staff but its terrible. Never really played him since.

Gotta disagree here. I feel less useful if I play anything other than staff in group play. The combo fields by themselves are pretty awesome, and it has a lot of fun tricks.

Pretty sure an ele’s staff is the only weapon in the game which destroys all solo capability when selected. Engis and necros don’t need to sacrifice solo survivability to be effective in zerg battles, either.

Staff is obviously not intended to be a 1 vs 1 weapon. It can function as a 1 vs 1 weapon but is weaker than other options. However it also has much more AOE power. You can’t have both. I’m sorry it doesn’t sPVP well, there are two other thirds of the game it does fine in though.

I carry scepter/dagger around for when I expect small scale engagements in PVP but I’ve held my own well with staff in numerous 1 vs 1 situations I’ve encountered. Yes someone specialized in 1 vs 1 will beat me most likely if I’m caught in staff, but I also contribute far more to team fighting than them.

I disagree that staff should be terrible and is not intended to be used in 1v1. “Jack of all trades” should be able to handle 1v1 pretty well even if using a primarily aoe-weapon. The problem lies in air. Air should be single-target damage specialty that could give a staff ele some teeth in a 1v1. Right now, your best bet is to pray they can’t outpace your control/delays as you run for help. It would really help if most skills had to be dodged with an actual dodge-roll rather than a casual stroll.

Ralathar.7236:

Staff is obviously not intended to be a 1 vs 1 weapon. It can function as a 1 vs 1 weapon but is weaker than other options. However it also has much more AOE power. You can’t have both. I’m sorry it doesn’t sPVP well, there are two other thirds of the game it does fine in though.

I carry scepter/dagger around for when I expect small scale engagements in PVP but I’ve held my own well with staff in numerous 1 vs 1 situations I’ve encountered. Yes someone specialized in 1 vs 1 will beat me most likely if I’m caught in staff, but I also contribute far more to team fighting than them.

1: Why do eles have to be the only class that can’t select an AoE/support option without giving up solo capability? (You can heal through damage with a staff, but you’re not going to kill anyone decent.)

2: We don’t have any other weapon that is effective at range (unless you consider taking the scepter and spamming air #1 and #2 with Berserker’s gear “effective”), so what sense would it make to intentionally design the staff to be terrible 1v1?

While some of the changes are not reasonable I agree that fire and especially air attunement need some improvements, the ele needs a high damage ranged weapon and reworking the air staff would the best bet (right now it is completely useless after the lighting field).

Spiuk.8421:

While some of the changes are not reasonable I agree that fire and especially air attunement need some improvements, the ele needs a high damage ranged weapon and reworking the air staff would the best bet (right now it is completely useless after the lighting field).

Tell me which changes in the OP are unreasonable, and I’ll take a stab at editing them.

I tried to balance between what I want, what the staff needs, and what all the various comments in this thread want, without making us OP.

Note: if you want the staff to be pure support, I’ll ignore you.

Chaosky.5276:

Ralathar.7236:

Staff is obviously not intended to be a 1 vs 1 weapon. It can function as a 1 vs 1 weapon but is weaker than other options. However it also has much more AOE power. You can’t have both. I’m sorry it doesn’t sPVP well, there are two other thirds of the game it does fine in though.

I carry scepter/dagger around for when I expect small scale engagements in PVP but I’ve held my own well with staff in numerous 1 vs 1 situations I’ve encountered. Yes someone specialized in 1 vs 1 will beat me most likely if I’m caught in staff, but I also contribute far more to team fighting than them.

1: Why do eles have to be the only class that can’t select an AoE/support option without giving up solo capability? (You can heal through damage with a staff, but you’re not going to kill anyone decent.)

2: We don’t have any other weapon that is effective at range (unless you consider taking the scepter and spamming air #1 and #2 with Berserker’s gear “effective”), so what sense would it make to intentionally design the staff to be terrible 1v1?

1. Because it’s the only class with anything even approaching that much AOE capability, much less from range. AOE damage of significant degrees, alot of AOE CC, AOE healing. No other class even comes close to the amount of AOE ele’s have.

2. Your right, we have middling single target effectiveness at range with staff and scepter, but incredible effectiveness up close and great AOE power.

Overall we have greater capabilities than all other classes in select areas, so we give up a little capability in a few areas. It’s not like we are overly bad at range either. We are not, we are just moderate at range instead of good or great. We certainly are more capable than Guardian at range by far, so I’d say we are not the only class.

The problem isn’t that staff cannot be made to be better at 1 vs 1 mind you. The problem is that if staff becomes good at 1 vs 1 without giving anything up staff will undeniably become overpowered. If you nerf other aspects to give it 1 vs 1 power you have just screwed over countless people for your own personal desires and that is quite frankly selfish and hypocritical. They matter as much as you after all.

Ralathar.7236:

1. Because it’s the only class with anything even approaching that much AOE capability, much less from range. AOE damage of significant degrees, alot of AOE CC, AOE healing. No other class even comes close to the amount of AOE ele’s have.

Grenade Engineers have more area damage from a greater range. They can poison, blind, bleed, and chill from 1500 distance. Now I’m not saying that they are OP, but since grenades work against single players at a shorter range too, why can’t the staff be like that?

Edit: Of course, it leads to what you said – giving the staff more 1v1 power will eventually lead to it becoming overpowered. However, it just sucks at 1v1 (or smaller fights) right now. Most of the heavy hitting spells like Earth, Fire, and Water #2 can be avoided by simply walking out. The CC skills, while all area effects, have long cooldowns and do not really do very much.

It is only effective in zergs because there are so many people that nobody bothers to avoid your attacks. A buff here or there would not make it overpowered.

Ralathar.7236:

Chaosky.5276:

1: Why do eles have to be the only class that can’t select an AoE/support option without giving up solo capability? (You can heal through damage with a staff, but you’re not going to kill anyone decent.)

2: We don’t have any other weapon that is effective at range (unless you consider taking the scepter and spamming air #1 and #2 with Berserker’s gear “effective”), so what sense would it make to intentionally design the staff to be terrible 1v1?

1. Because it’s the only class with anything even approaching that much AOE capability, much less from range. AOE damage of significant degrees, alot of AOE CC, AOE healing. No other class even comes close to the amount of AOE ele’s have.

True enough, but doesn’t such a limitation seem like a poor design choice when the goal for the Elementalist class is versatility? I’d much rather have the option to make a half support and half solo build.

Ralathar.7236:

2. Your right, we have middling single target effectiveness at range with staff and scepter, but incredible effectiveness up close and great AOE power.

Overall we have greater capabilities than all other classes in select areas, so we give up a little capability in a few areas. It’s not like we are overly bad at range either. We are not, we are just moderate at range instead of good or great. We certainly are more capable than Guardian at range by far, so I’d say we are not the only class.

I’m utterly baffled as to what advantages we have over other classes other than healing. It’s certainly not damage, nor mobility. …Engineers and necromancers have comparable AoE damage, guardians possess comparable CC and survivability, and possibly superior support capability…

Ralathar.7236:

The problem isn’t that staff cannot be made to be better at 1 vs 1 mind you. The problem is that if staff becomes good at 1 vs 1 without giving anything up staff will undeniably become overpowered. If you nerf other aspects to give it 1 vs 1 power you have just screwed over countless people for your own personal desires and that is quite frankly selfish and hypocritical. They matter as much as you after all.

I have a difficult time imagining that the changes to the staff in the OP would suddenly make it a great solo weapon. Nonetheless, this is a fair point, and I would hardly be the first to suggest a trait a bit like Blasting Staff that would weaken the staff’s AoE capability in exchange for more effectiveness against single targets.

Chaosky.5276:

True enough, but doesn’t such a limitation seem like a poor design choice when the goal for the Elementalist class is versatility? I’d much rather have the option to make a half support and half solo build.

There is a difference between viable 1 vs 1 and top tier competitive 1 vs 1. Staff is viable, it is not competitive. You can’t have everything. No class does even with versatility.

I’m utterly baffled as to what advantages we have over other classes other than healing. It’s certainly not damage, nor mobility. …Engineers and necromancers have comparable AoE damage, guardians possess comparable CC and survivability, and possibly superior support capability…

Condition damage is easily mitigated and countered with cleansing, this is actually a critical weakness of necro in WvW. Otherwise they have to be a much riskier well bombing build to achieve AOE. Engineers die horribly to retal even worse than ele’s do, without the option to avoid it via AOE selection like we have.

As well to beat us in some specific areas both of those classes have to give up more support and CC, meaning we now have a significant advantage over them. Don’t be too narrow in your focus, you must consider the entire situation and all counters.

Ralathar.7236:

The problem isn’t that staff cannot be made to be better at 1 vs 1 mind you. The problem is that if staff becomes good at 1 vs 1 without giving anything up staff will undeniably become overpowered. If you nerf other aspects to give it 1 vs 1 power you have just screwed over countless people for your own personal desires and that is quite frankly selfish and hypocritical. They matter as much as you after all.

I have a difficult time imagining that the changes to the staff in the OP would suddenly make it a great solo weapon. Nonetheless, this is a fair point, and I would hardly be the first to suggest a trait a bit like Blasting Staff that would weaken the staff’s AoE capability in exchange for more effectiveness against single targets.

Such a trait would be fair, balanced, and provide the ability to satisfy both sides if implemented correctly.

Guys, I know you’re having a great time debating whether or not staff should be 1v1 viable or not, but could I please get you to start that discussion in another thread, so this one doesn’t get “moderated” (moderation = lock and deletion here, which would suck.)

stale.9785:

Guys, I know you’re having a great time debating whether or not staff should be 1v1 viable or not, but could I please get you to start that discussion in another thread, so this one doesn’t get “moderated” (moderation = lock and deletion here, which would suck.)

Fair enough, I heavily disagree with most of your changes.

Fire: All the fire skills are fine and work well, they do not need a buff. They are powerful and easy to land used correctly. Damage should be avoidable just like 95% of ranged damage in the game. That is how the game is designed, I am sorry.

Water:

Water Blast: Could use a bigger radius on the heal to make it reliably hitting melee, no need to heal more than it does. This is supplemental healing to everything else you get.

Ice Spike: This is a good skill, a lesser delay would need a damage nerf. I regularly hit 2-3K in full rampager’s. I would hit harder with a straight power build. The ridiculously low cooldown on this skill makes it spammable.

Frozen Ground: LOL this skill is already GOLDEN. Lets not horrendously overpower it please. 2 seconds per second in the larger field is 4 seconds with condition duration. By asking for 8 seconds you open up the door to 16 seconds of chill per second applied 5 times. It’s already good as is, especially if you play smart and cripple or immobilize people in it.

Air:

Chain Lightning: Full Rampager’s it’s hitting from 700 to 1,300+ regularly. With bounces this means 2,100 to 3,900 from a single autoattack. I’m not even built for pure power damage. This is great for small scale and much more difficult to dodge than fireball. Don’t ask for instant’s when this game is built around being able to avoid nearly all damage.

Lightning Surge: It does 2k-3k+ with a Rampagers build to people in a small AOE with a short cast time and it blinds. Radius is buffed by blasting staff. I wouldn’t cry about a shorter cast time but it certainly does not need it to be a pretty good skill. Nothing below 1 second for any reason though. That would be way too short.

Static Field: First Frozen Ground and then Static Field? You want to buff two of the best crowd control skills in the game? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. In fairnes it’s not like a small amount of damage would make people use it for any other reason, but it’s not needed and the skill is already extremely powerful.

Earth:

Stoning: Projectile speed seems to match the feel of the spell pretty well. Honestly if I was to buff this anywhere it’d be in the damage and the effect because there isn’t much reason to use stoning in general when Fireball and Chain Lightning are better. The weakness is nice but doesn’t feel like it’s enough to make this consistently usable when you will be using so many better skills.

Eruption: Does good damage when it lands, works as good area denial and dodge burning when it doesn’t. Works very well in combination with the other earth skills to force dodges or land.

Unsteady Ground: I wouldn’t mind a 3 or 4 second cripple, but 8 is completely overkill. This is a thin line so it would be harder to abuse than frozen ground so it has a little room to be buffed, but being able to apply 16 seconds of cripple for 1 hit on somebody would be broken. Condition duration yo.

Also you want to remove the 5 person limit? WTF lol. Don’t be bad. With a single salvo I can down an entire mass of people. I don’t know what you are doing wrong but if you cannot do the same you might work on your rotation. Let me give you a start rotation to help.

Staff AOE damage rotation: Meteor Shower > Flame Burst (optional) > Glyph of Storms (Optional: also Fire or Earth depending on situation) > Eruption/magnetic aura (instant cast while casting eruption) > Shockwave (Optional: use if able to hit multiple people), Static Field (Optional: depends on need for utility vs dps), Ice Spike > Frozen Ground (Optional: use if able to hit multiple people). Ice bow’s Ice Storm can also be added to the rotation for a large amount of additional damage.

You’ll notice I end with Water attunement. I will stay in this attunement using my supportive abilities until I judge that meteor storm is available again. Ice Spike is an extremely low CD AOE move allowing you to keep AOE DPS/area denial going and you can gain the benefits of soothing mist for your group as well as the other supportive abilities.

Of course in zerg vs zerg situations most of the time the CC takes priority so you would open with Static Field or Frozen Ground and possibly throw shock-wave/unsteady ground in. For added defense Glyph of Storms can be thrown in while in earth attunement

Rotation dynamically adjust to the situation so it’s never the same, but this gives you a base idea of chaining together multiple aoe’s quickly. Also depending on situation you cluster or spread the AOE effects.

@Ralathar

In regards to Frozen Ground and Unsteady Ground as changed in this version, the condition applied would only occur the first time a player walked through the field and could not be re-applied until the original condition wore off. This would function similar to the necromancer’s Spectral Wall in regards to the protection it grants. (if i understand correctly)

@stale
The first thing i would like to see in regards to staff changes is a fix to the current bug involving Ice Spike and Eruption in which if you are hard cc’ed during the hang time (not the cast time) the ability will deal know damage or have any other effect despite the visual still playing.

On this topic, the necromancer forums recently had some luck regarding their too low downstate health being identified as a bug after someone analyzed it with video evidence, we might try addressing some of the many bugs in the outdated bugs list to get some actual fixing going on.

Ralathar, you’re welcome to disagree – the moment that any of the other classes telegraphs every skill the way ele does, I’ll be on board with you. As it is, there’s no excuse to be hit by anything from a staff ele, other than fire 3 and air 1. Our AoE is slow enough you can walk out of them, not dodge. Our projectiles suffer from the same issue lonbgow 1 has – you can avoid them ALL by tapping a-d-a-d (except for air 1, which at least homes.)

As for the whole “ranged damage has to suck”, well, that’s fair enough if you roll a warrior, or a guardian. Even theives. What I’m tired of is being the softest class in the whole game, and being told to bunker or not play.

As it is, staves are not a viable offensive weapon in anything other than PvE. Every suggestion I’ve made aims to change that. My explanations for the changes (which are in the thread) address this, but I’ll say it again.

I have 0 problem being beaten down because I’m squishy and someone managed to close the gap and wail on me. What I do have a problem with is the fact that you cannot, on your own, kill someone, nor even keep them away, with the staff.

If I wanted to play pure support, I’d roll the bunker spec, and drag a staff around, watching as I heal 5 people at a shot. Yippee. I want to kill. I want to see blood and guts and gore and veins in my teeth.

If this was meant to be melee wars, then they may as well delete the ele class, and force us to all roll warriors.

EDIT: The rotation you suggest, well. 1 dodge roll, and the targets are ALL safe. I’m not sure if you’re the guy earlier who suggested we always hit for 10k per hit, but we don’t. Staff damage is pitiful when compared to our other sets. Hell, it’s pitiful when compared to our bunker spec.

The five man cap, as it stands, means your AoE can hit (absolute max, with duration and the way things ping) 20 targets in a zerg. Meteor storm has a slight advantage, because every meteor counts separately. You do realise the safest thing for people to do when confronted with AoE is to bunch up, right? If you gathered the whole zerg into the AoE field, you may hit 20 people for 1/5th their hp. Removing the AoE cap would change that.

dukevonart.2691:

@Ralathar

In regards to Frozen Ground and Unsteady Ground as changed in this version, the condition applied would only occur the first time a player walked through the field and could not be re-applied until the original condition wore off. This would function similar to the necromancer’s Spectral Wall in regards to the protection it grants. (if i understand correctly)

16 seconds of chill/cripple upon touching it once still does not provide counter-play with proper placement.

stale.9785:

Ralathar, you’re welcome to disagree – the moment that any of the other classes telegraphs every skill the way ele does, I’ll be on board with you. As it is, there’s no excuse to be hit by anything from a staff ele, other than fire 3 and air 1. Our AoE is slow enough you can walk out of them, not dodge. Our projectiles suffer from the same issue lonbgow 1 has – you can avoid them ALL by tapping a-d-a-d (except for air 1, which at least homes.)

In a large group vs group encounter this is not an option with properly placed AOE’s. Like I said depending on situation you group them up or spread them out. I can cover a huge swath of land with copious amounts of death hitting 5 people at a time. The initial opener Frozen Ground/Static Field + other thing keeps people there for my teams damage and already AOE denies and/or limits their ability to avoid my stuff.

Dumb groups melt ridiculously fast. Smart groups still eat plenty of damage because I don’t pile all my AOE’s in one area and I actively predict and lead and block with my AOE’s.

If you are talking small scale S/D, D/D, or D/F is better.

As for the whole “ranged damage has to suck”, well, that’s fair enough if you roll a warrior, or a guardian. Even theives. What I’m tired of is being the softest class in the whole game, and being told to bunker or not play.

That might apply to sPVP, sPVP shuns most builds not just yours. It flat out does not apply to WvW or PVE.

I have 0 problem being beaten down because I’m squishy and someone managed to close the gap and wail on me. What I do have a problem with is the fact that you cannot, on your own, kill someone, nor even keep them away, with the staff.

If you are regularly getting beat down during large group vs group confrontations early then your positioning skills need work. I’m almost always one of the last of my group alive even in wipes and I’m built full glass rampagers.

If I wanted to play pure support, I’d roll the bunker spec, and drag a staff around, watching as I heal 5 people at a shot. Yippee. I want to kill. I want to see blood and guts and gore and veins in my teeth.

You are DPS/Support. Most weapons/builds for most professions are. Alot of people forget the support aspect and lose effectiveness. If you are not leveraging both roles you are doing it wrong.

If this was meant to be melee wars, then they may as well delete the ele class, and force us to all roll warriors.

This is far from melee wars. Melee is very important in group vs group confrontations as they take the front line and initial engagement which takes pressure off of the backline which does alot more damage overall.

EDIT: The rotation you suggest, well. 1 dodge roll, and the targets are ALL safe. I’m not sure if you’re the guy earlier who suggested we always hit for 10k per hit, but we don’t. Staff damage is pitiful when compared to our other sets. Hell, it’s pitiful when compared to our bunker spec.

Again don’t stack them all in one spot if people are moving, spread them out. Predict, lead, block, cut off. Learn to be a better player instead of complaining about a quite capable weapon set.

Though again, if you are talking small scale staff is not built for that and if you are talking sPVP countless builds are left in the cold.

The five man cap, as it stands, means your AoE can hit (absolute max, with duration and the way things ping) 20 targets in a zerg. Meteor storm has a slight advantage, because every meteor counts separately. You do realise the safest thing for people to do when confronted with AoE is to bunch up, right? If you gathered the whole zerg into the AoE field, you may hit 20 people for 1/5th their hp. Removing the AoE cap would change that.

If 20 people bunch up and let me AOE them I will down a minimum of 5 and heavily injure the rest.

But lets look at your scenario, you think that a single player doing 1/5th of the hp of 20 is BAD? WTF? That means 5 would utterly wipe 20. The problem of no AOE caps is apparent in your very example, because no AOE caps would lower that number to 1-2 people to wipe 20.

Ralathar.7236:

Though again, if you are talking small scale staff is not built for that and if you are talking sPVP countless builds are left in the cold.

But lets look at your scenario, you think that a single player doing 1/5th of the hp of 20 is BAD? WTF? That means 5 would utterly wipe 20. The problem of no AOE caps is apparent in your very example, because no AOE caps would lower that number to 1-2 people to wipe 20.

These are the parts that I don’t understand. We’re being told that staff is built for large scale combat. We don’t have a weapon swap. Our AoE is limited to 5 players. So our weapon that is designed to specialize in large battles is in fact limited to large battles of 5 or less opponents.

Being able to take on a zerg is not what most players are looking for in my opinion. My biggest issue with staff is that I can’t use it unless I know ahead of time that I’m not going to be involved in 1v1 or 1vX. I can’t setup trait lines that would work with staff but not d/d or s/d because I may have to swap and re-trait while in the field.

If you try to solo roam with staff and you are caught by a solo roaming specialist, you are dead. If you are a solo roaming specialist involved in a group fight where there is a staff Ele (who supposedly specializes in group combat), you close gap and 1v1 them. That’s a big problem.

IMO, it’s as simple as this: IF we are being locked into a weapon/trait set THEN that weapon/trait set should be able to manage all facets of play, including 1v1. Don’t give us a circumstantial weapon and no weapon swap.

Ralathar.7236:

But lets look at your scenario, you think that a single player doing 1/5th of the hp of 20 is BAD? WTF? That means 5 would utterly wipe 20. The problem of no AOE caps is apparent in your very example, because no AOE caps would lower that number to 1-2 people to wipe 20.

Or they could just, you know, casually walk out of the AoE, and take zero damage. The problem has nothing to do with a cap or lack thereof, it has to do with game design and player behavior.

Players know that there is an AoE cap, that standing in a meteor storm does much less damage than 100 Blades, and that because of the AoE cap the more the merrier. Hence zergs. Now, if that was changed, and AoE had no cap, then players would quickly learn not to clump up in red circles, just like every other area in the game.

The AoE cap is a crutch for mind numbingly bad play design. If WvWvW played out more like multiple PvP engagements or dungeon groups, then an AoE cap or lack wouldn’t matter, as the size of the individual parties would be around five. But because the herd/mob playstyle and mentality supports weak players (just look at fish schooling behavior to understand this), and the majority of players in WvWvW are bad to mediocre, you’ll always have a vocal segment of the population crying with zero logical justification on how removing the AoE cap would destroy game balance. In point of fact it wouldn’t affect it at all, it would simply force groups to no longer be comfortable standing in wells of death magic or under flaming meteors hitting their heads.

I won’t even be responding to you two further because there is no point. You are self-defeating. Go out and learn how to play instead of asking the system to cater to your lack of understanding. That’s the best advice I can give yall.

Ralathar.7236:

I won’t even be responding to you two further because there is no point. You are self-defeating. Go out and learn how to play instead of asking the system to cater to your lack of understanding. That’s the best advice I can give yall.

If by “self-defeating” you meant we defeated yourself, then yeah. No one is asking for a system overhaul, merely balancing that makes logical sense, consistent even with just the rest of the game.

Theorizing on a staff rebalance makes perfect sense given that its a terribly underused weapon, and should be our long distance nuking set, not the “lay down fields for guardians and warriors to play in” set. Scepter and Focus as well need looking into, to bring all the weapons to parity with Daggers.

Ignoring this issue, or calling it a L2P and GTFO if you don’t like it defeats the purpose of having forums in the first place dedicated to class discussion.

The removal of the AoE ca kitten omething a lot of people agree on, it’s not just a staff ele thing. As it is, a small group will have their damage artificially lowered against a large group due to the AoE cap, while the large group suffers far less; the removal of the cap would force zergs to spread out and maneuver intelligently rather than run straight into danger.
I’d worry more about stacking Kill Shot warriors than staff eles, even if the staff’s attacks become harder to avoid.

However, I believe a dev has commented that the AoE cap is in place due to technical limitations, so there’s that.

• “Cap <is> something” is censored. Wow.

Chaosky.5276:

The removal of the AoE ca kitten omething a lot of people agree on, it’s not just a staff ele thing. As it is, a small group will have their damage artificially lowered against a large group due to the AoE cap, while the large group suffers far less; the removal of the cap would force zergs to spread out and maneuver intelligently rather than run straight into danger.
I’d worry more about stacking Kill Shot warriors than staff eles, even if the staff’s attacks become harder to avoid.

However, I believe a dev has commented that the AoE cap is in place due to technical limitations, so there’s that.

• “Cap <is> something” is censored. Wow.

My experience is different. What you describe already happens IMO. If me and my guild hit a group twice as large we automatically roll around to avoid AOE damage. We do not spread out because that limits our ability to support each other and results in people being picked off 1 by 1. But we do intentionally move collectively to avoid as much AOE as possible and even retreat temporarily if needed.

Groups we face that do not do the same get mercilessly destroyed up until the break point of numbers. Once groups get to be about 3 times as many as us it becomes difficult to wipe them unless they are disorganized.

While the element of surprise and coordination can be used to justify killing groups larger than 3 times your own size, I believe this is a good limitation for game play reasons. It rewards good play but still allows people to fight back.

Much as we would like to cater to only “pros” a game is for everyone and if skilled people can ruthlessly destroy everyone else with impunity we would soon find a very unpopular game populated only by a much smaller amount of hardcore people.

Some people would still like that idea, but it would be much less profitable and likely kill the game. So some balance between skill and numbers is needed to let the average person play and have fun even vs “pros”.

Game design is by necessity providing fun for everyone. Rewarding skill and allowing everyone to still play and have fun is a constant balance and tiers cannot do all the work alone.

One thing people consistently seem to overlook is the fact that most of the staff fields are combo fields. That is what makes the weapon powerful. Frozen Ground by itself doesn’t cause a lot of chill, but combined with stoning or shockwave it does a lot more. Combine it with your team and suddenly you get near-permanent chill on a dungeon boss by using just 1 skill. Also, combos are unaffected by the 5-man cap.

So keep that in mind when you ask for buffs. Unless you’re actively using your combos, you’re not using the staff correctly and there will be room for improvement on your side before you call for the buff bat.

ThiBash.5634:

One thing people consistently seem to overlook is the fact that most of the staff fields are combo fields. That is what makes the weapon powerful. Frozen Ground by itself doesn’t cause a lot of chill, but combined with stoning or shockwave it does a lot more. Combine it with your team and suddenly you get near-permanent chill on a dungeon boss by using just 1 skill. Also, combos are unaffected by the 5-man cap.

So keep that in mind when you ask for buffs. Unless you’re actively using your combos, you’re not using the staff correctly and there will be room for improvement on your side before you call for the buff bat.

Ele’s have 1 (one) reliable projectile finisher. Since the combo we can most reliably pull off is blast finish, and none of them are offensive in nature, this fails to address the point of the thread – to make the staff a viable offensive weapon.

Also, I covered combo fields earlier in the thread, had you bothered to read the whole thing.

stale.9785:

Ele’s have 1 (one) reliable projectile finisher. Since the combo we can most reliably pull off is blast finish, and none of them are offensive in nature, this fails to address the point of the thread – to make the staff a viable offensive weapon.

Exactly my point. You’re overlooking the fact that other players also have combo finishers. Meaning if you buff the ele to the point where it’s viable 1v1, it will be overpowered in group play.

An 8-second frozen ground that’s still a combo field is grossly overpowered. That’s not perma chill on bosses, that’s perma chill for the next 2 dungeon runs as well.

You’d have to remove the combo fields before 8 seconds would be viable.

The only thing that should be improved about staff is the base damage of the #1 abilities specifically fire #1 it should be a bigger hit then it is currently and Earth #1 should stack 1 sec of bleed imo like it does underwater Water #2 could use a small dmg increase as well or even just increase the stacks of vulnerability it applies perhaps Staff works fine with eles, I can hold choke points like a mad man with my ele, so I see very little wrong ith ele atm.

Parktou.4263:

The only thing that should be improved about staff is the base damage of the #1 abilities specifically fire #1 it should be a bigger hit then it is currently and Earth #1 should stack 1 sec of bleed imo like it does underwater Water #2 could use a small dmg increase as well or even just increase the stacks of vulnerability it applies perhaps Staff works fine with eles, I can hold choke points like a mad man with my ele, so I see very little wrong ith ele atm.

I disagree on fire #1. It hits pretty hard for an autoattack with a small AOE. Stoning DOES need the bleed or something, nice weakness but no real reason to use it. Underwater #2 is a bit tricky to get the most out of by using the projectile damage and then detonating it to get both damage hits. But it fits well in the overall Water Attunement underwater giving us a strong and versatile power/support option underwater.