Guild Wars 2

Please, make Earth more useful for staff users.
Make Shock Wave ground targeted. This way it cannot only be used in a more effective way for groups, but can also be cast behind the Elementalist (like Vine Surge).
Reduce the delay of Eruption to 1 or 1.5 seconds. This way, it will finally be a reliable source of a blast finisher for staff Elemantalists.

OMG yes, please reduce Eruptions delay time! It’s Staff’s only blast finisher, and it’s really limiting with that excruciating delay. With Frozen Ground, you have to cast Eruption immediately or else you won’t get the AoE Frost Aura. It’s a bit better with Healing Rain since that field lasts a couple seconds longer. However, if you want to blast a fire field, you have to cast Eruption first and then Lava Font or Burning Speed. And I would be fine if you kept it requiring coordination like that if other blast finishers were like that too. It’s probably the best finisher to have and so many other professions and skills (including Ele ones) just crap out blast finishers with no effort. But reducing the amount of blast finishers in the game would have massive balancing consequences, so just buffing Eruption is the easiest and most practical solution. It’s kind of weak anyway aside from the finisher.

What I would like to see with Shock Wave is an actual shock wave. Right now it’s just a projectile that immobilizes foes. Pretty poor for a 30 second CD that can only reliably hit in melee range (assuming you’re not interrupted by the zillion CCs because Armor of Earth and other defensive skills have obnoxiously long CDs). My idea is to make it blast out (and also making it a blast finisher since we clearly don’t have enough of those) and daze for 1 second.

Now we really shouldn’t be asking for too many buffs. Instead, HoT powercreep should be brought down so that there aren’t so many CCs and so much damage. Then maybe we can finally spec into an actual offensive trait line. But we know Anet won’t do that. So let’s ask for buffs to staff! And note, these are just what I would like to see. Most of these changes are likely terrible ideas, but I’m just throwing them out there because that’s what I do.

- Fireball should burn! You’re getting hit by a fall of fire. Don’t you think that would burn a little? It’s power damage is fine because it hits an area around its impact, but a little burning would be just right for it. 1-2 seconds is ok and it doesn’t have to hit hard. This is more a flavour change really.
- Flame Burst requires a half second cast but only does 2 stacks of burning and has a 10 second CD. And again, it’s AoE, but either reduce it’s CD to 8 seconds or give it a third stack or something.
- Ice Spike still doesn’t hit hard for something that hangs in the air for a couple seconds, giving plenty of time to move out of the way. Reduce the delay just like with Eruption or make it hit really, really hard, preferably the latter in order to create contrast from Eruption. The two are too similar, but eruption imo, is better (even though it’s slower and does less damage) because of its blast finisher.
- Frozen Ground imo, has just a tad too long of a CD for what it does. Reduce it to 35 seconds. In my experience, it’s just the one skill that needs a few seconds off its CD to be perfect.
- Lightning Surge cast time reduced by either 1/4 or 2/4 of a second. For a 1.5 second cast time, it’s lacking. The damage boost was nice, but it’s still an issue of being too slow. That’s actually an issue with a bunch of Ele skills. They’re so slow.

This thread is already going through Earth CDs. Eruption and Shock Wave are the only issues imo. Everything else about Earth is great!

AllNightPlayer.1286:

Please, make Earth more useful for staff users.
Make Shock Wave ground targeted. This way it cannot only be used in a more effective way for groups, but can also be cast behind the Elementalist (like Vine Surge).
Reduce the delay of Eruption to 1 or 1.5 seconds. This way, it will finally be a reliable source of a blast finisher for staff Elemantalists.

They will make shockwave work like “Vine Surge” when they make RTL work like “Ancestral Grace” its called balance

Eruption is the only thing that needs fixing on staff IMO. Everything else has a cast time so it gives opponents time to react.

Shock wave is pretty unreliable too but I much prefer immob to a knockdown.

Giving ground targets to all one shot cone effect spells would be nice. It would help out WH a lot and staff.

Earth is missing a good condtion remove or an condtion dmg -%. Its a def line that only cover physical attks atm it realty should have an effect that deals with condtion dmg.