Guild Wars 2

Am I the only one that feels water strident needs some buffing? Don’t get me wrong, Ilove scepter now, and am even enjoying s/f or s/d on occasion in both pve and wvw (i only use it in wvw when doing camps or moving from towers or keeps across the map since my build is mainly staff support for the hungry zerg) but the one pet peeve I have with it is the water trident skill. The damage is a joke and the healing is low. It has no finisher associated with it, or other beneficial effects. So much could be done with it. Wasted potential imo. If i recall it used to do knockdown just like the gw1 skill. I’m sure we’ll never get that back, but it could be a blast finisher or heck just increase the healing some so it’s actually noticeable. Discuss.

All of Scepter’s water skills need work, the autoattack is useless, Shatterstone and Water Trident are afterthoughts.

How about something like this… increase the channel time and add 3x vulnerability to the autoattack (analogous to the the earth auto), increase the radius of Shatterstone and have it cause chill instead of vulnerability, and increase the heal and radius of Water Trident. A projectile finisher chance for the auto and/or a blast finisher somewhere in there wouldn’t hurt either.

Water trident is a good weapon skill heal: it is about half more efficient than cone of cold and twice as efficient as cleansing wave (d.w5) in terms of healing.
It is very far from the potency of the staff heals, but it is more convenient to use.

Alys Florent.1359:

All of Scepter’s water skills need work, the autoattack is useless, Shatterstone and Water Trident are afterthoughts.

How about something like this… increase the channel time and add 3x vulnerability to the autoattack (analogous to the the earth auto), increase the radius of Shatterstone and have it cause chill instead of vulnerability, and increase the heal and radius of Water Trident. A projectile finisher chance for the auto and/or a blast finisher somewhere in there wouldn’t hurt either.

Shatterstone should go back to its beta version (hitting faster and harder).

Well since we’re on all of the scepter water ones, might as well keep the convo going lol. As for shatterstone, I don’t mind the delay, I use it kind of like a trap, cast it behind them, kite them to it, or put it behind me to make them go around. Now I do think it needs more “oomf” I think adding chill to it’s effect along with the vuln would be nice, with maybe a tiny increase in recharge to compensate, or adding more vuln stacks per hit and slightly more damage (or longer duration vuln so that you could more easily get more benefit from piercing shards trait). Wouldn’t mind bleeding tacked on while it’s “charging up” for the pop at the end. I don’t mind the auto on water honestly, it’s always worked pretty decent for me, but I rarely use water solely for damage anyway. I think the earth skills for scepter are borderline op, and in a perfect spot. I hope they never touch them. The air is a “meh” in my book. The blind is very useful, but unless you’re specing for high crits the channel and burst seem a little weak to me (yes I know there are builds that can capitalize on the scepter air and do insane damage, but unless you spec for those the air just doesn’t have the punch some of the other lines do) and fire, of course is pretty decent. I know lots of people complain about how slow DT is, but you just need to set up for it better, I land it on people all the time and pheonix has always been a favorite skill of mine. To touch on what lupercaleb said, while I would so very much love shatterstone to be the GW1 version, remember that skill was an elite and would be ridiculously overpowered as a weapon skill even if it was toned down some. I think they kind of went the right direction with it, but read above for my suggested changes.

I’m so glad some other ele player agree with me! I’ve post it long time ago that Water Trident is terrible… Both Shatterstone and Water Trident can go back to GW1 style. (To think they were two of my favorite Water Elite spells back in GW1 days, Big damage from Shatterstone, Water Tridents spammable, KD runners… becoming AoE in the later GW1 years!)

Back to GW2. With almost 700 healing power, I fail to see what’s so good with Water Trident… terrible terrible long recharge even with Traits reduce, weak almost joke like damage… (whats the purpose of this weak dmg? some bonus when we self heal? then why make this a range spell? So you can heal-shoot at your frontline warriors/gaurdians allies?) The healing amount still don’t impress me at all… (I’m not saying Cone of Cold is impressive either, but at least shorter recharge with stronger power!) Healing Rain with AOE, able to created a water field its much nicer.

I don’t understand the logic of taken away Water Trident’s push-back bonus from the beta preview… It should have less then 10 sec recharge, if its weak damage fine, at least adding up a KD or push back like we seen in beta, so people have the option to either use it to KD, or self Heal. Or consider shooting muti-tridents for AoE will be worthy.

Shatterstone, I only use it for the sake of liking water spells… but its terrible, I’ve never seen ELE player liking any of the Water Scepter skills and the two guys who work in skill balance never bother to buff Water skills at all. Shatterstone in my opinion… should deal much higher damage, or at least a finisher… some chill condition etc. I like Ele a lot but most Water element spells just need more buff! (Same thing happened back in GW1… they make crappy water spells at the beginning then slowly buff it through out the years.)

I like it. Maybe I’m weird.

If A-net read this theard it’s will be happen or not

Thrashbarg.9820:

I like it. Maybe I’m weird.

Can you explain what about it you like? I’m not looking to troll, I honestly want to know what good points you find in it that I might have overlooked.

lupercaleb.6041:

shatterstone should go back to its GW1 version

That would be awesome. However, it was an elite skill, so for a normal weapon ability it might need toned down to something like “hits for small amount of dmg, chills for 2 secs and hits for small amount of dmg again”. Seems like since they removed hexes(curses) the variety of skills is very bland.

They could go for a combination of the GW1 and GW2 skill. Just make water trident act like Rock Barrier>Hurl. Once cast the recharge starts counting down and you have three water trident charges to use. If players want to spam it they can spread the three shots out to last through until the next three are available. Of course the healing/damage would need to be split between the three, as even this skill would become ridiculously overpowered if tripled.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Thrashbarg.9820:

I like it. Maybe I’m weird.

Can you explain what about it you like? I’m not looking to troll, I honestly want to know what good points you find in it that I might have overlooked.

It has a fairly short cast time, scales well with healing power, and fits the need of a single-cast burst heal in small group highly mobile combat.

Geyser heals better if you can stand in it for the full ticks AND have at least one blast finisher available (big IF there in a fast moving fight). Cone of cold hits multiple times so in practice I often find I take as much retaliation damage as I get healing.

When I use a scepter I generally run a burst build so my only healing power is from a few points in water, every single point there benefits a bit (1.0 scaling). Cone of cold only gets 1/3rd healing power (0.3 scaling) and requires 30 points in arcane to have access to it off cooldown (to make it’s healing match water trident, that is).

Shatterstone needs work, for sure, but I think water trident is in an alright place.

Thrashbarg.9820:

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Thrashbarg.9820:

I like it. Maybe I’m weird.

Can you explain what about it you like? I’m not looking to troll, I honestly want to know what good points you find in it that I might have overlooked.

It has a fairly short cast time, scales well with healing power, and fits the need of a single-cast burst heal in small group highly mobile combat.

Geyser heals better if you can stand in it for the full ticks AND have at least one blast finisher available (big IF there in a fast moving fight). Cone of cold hits multiple times so in practice I often find I take as much retaliation damage as I get healing.

When I use a scepter I generally run a burst build so my only healing power is from a few points in water, every single point there benefits a bit (1.0 scaling). Cone of cold only gets 1/3rd healing power (0.3 scaling) and requires 30 points in arcane to have access to it off cooldown (to make it’s healing match water trident, that is).

Shatterstone needs work, for sure, but I think water trident is in an alright place.

The cast time is about the only thing I will agree with you on. It does not, however, scale well with healing compared to virtually every other weapon based healing skill ele’s possess. I like the general idea behind it, cast at a ground target, damage and heal in the area, only the actual execution is weak. The damage is nearly non-existent, a single shard from the water scepter auto attack does more dmg most of the time, and the healing is weak too. Cleansing wave is higher healing, cures a condition, and has larger range, and as for geyser, while the scaling coefficient is lower, it has a duration and per tick heals for just about as much, so overall it heals for much more. Healing rain and cone of cold, yeah no need to go into those because again, both have durations and heal for far more (cone of cold damages for much more too). That along with the recharge on it and the lack of any other beneficial effects is why I don’t like this skill (in it’s current state). I would so love to see it reworked to be more viable because the skill itself, and it’s general idea, feel, and execution, are pretty fun. But, everyone is entitled to their own opinions so if you can make it work for you, more power to ya.

Water Trident is actually the only Scepter Water spell I think is pretty good as-is. The healing isn’t spectacular, but combining it with the other heals from Water adds up to a lot. Adding more healing would push S/D’s sustain overboard, I think. It also has good range, so I can heal my allies without having to stand next to them.

I wouldn’t be opposed to a 1-second Chill or maybe increasing the damage, but overall I think it’s fine. Shatterstone and the autoattack need substantially more work.

It heals for quite a lot, water trident is fine.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Thrashbarg.9820:

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Thrashbarg.9820:

I like it. Maybe I’m weird.

Can you explain what about it you like? I’m not looking to troll, I honestly want to know what good points you find in it that I might have overlooked.

It has a fairly short cast time, scales well with healing power, and fits the need of a single-cast burst heal in small group highly mobile combat.

Geyser heals better if you can stand in it for the full ticks AND have at least one blast finisher available (big IF there in a fast moving fight). Cone of cold hits multiple times so in practice I often find I take as much retaliation damage as I get healing.

When I use a scepter I generally run a burst build so my only healing power is from a few points in water, every single point there benefits a bit (1.0 scaling). Cone of cold only gets 1/3rd healing power (0.3 scaling) and requires 30 points in arcane to have access to it off cooldown (to make it’s healing match water trident, that is).

Shatterstone needs work, for sure, but I think water trident is in an alright place.

The cast time is about the only thing I will agree with you on. It does not, however, scale well with healing compared to virtually every other weapon based healing skill ele’s possess. I like the general idea behind it, cast at a ground target, damage and heal in the area, only the actual execution is weak. The damage is nearly non-existent, a single shard from the water scepter auto attack does more dmg most of the time, and the healing is weak too. Cleansing wave is higher healing, cures a condition, and has larger range, and as for geyser, while the scaling coefficient is lower, it has a duration and per tick heals for just about as much, so overall it heals for much more. Healing rain and cone of cold, yeah no need to go into those because again, both have durations and heal for far more (cone of cold damages for much more too). That along with the recharge on it and the lack of any other beneficial effects is why I don’t like this skill (in it’s current state). I would so love to see it reworked to be more viable because the skill itself, and it’s general idea, feel, and execution, are pretty fun. But, everyone is entitled to their own opinions so if you can make it work for you, more power to ya.

Numbers, not just opinion:
(from wiki)

Water Trident:
Cast a water trident that damages foes and heals allies.

Damage: 168 (0.50084)?
Healing: 1,448 (1.0)?*
Radius: 180
Range: 900
20 sec recharge, 0.5sec cast
*healing power scaling, this bears out with my testing at +200 healing power I get heals of 1,648

Cone of cold:
Spray an icy blast in a cone that damages foes and heals allies.

Damage: 168 (0.50084)?*
Healing: 740 (0.32)?
Range: 400
10 sec recharge, 2.25sec cast time
Notes:
The healing is separated into 4 small heals which added up to the amount stated in the tooltip.
*wiki doesn’t note but damage is also dealt over all 4 ticks to reach this total

With 1,000 healing power, trident outheals cone by ~16hp/sec (for example) and doesn’t require any investment in arcana to utilize it fully (cone needs 30 arcana or you lose healing/sec due to attunement cooldown exceeding skill cooldown).

According to the wiki, they have exactly the same damage. Feel free to verify in the mists.

Geyser is just a different animal, it does no damage, heals for more but requires standing still for a couple seconds, provides a water field, and scales terribly with healing power (0.25 scaling, meaning anything over 1,000 healing power will push trident to near or over it’s power and heal all at once, granted, damage is terrible with that much healing).

Scepter was the weapon of choice for point bunker elementalists back before they removed our profession from tPvP. Water trident is the reason (well, and rock barrier).

Yes the paper math looks better, but in practice it’s not as good of a heal as any of the other spells. When you have lower recharge and ticking heals (which can be used while moving, thereby spreading the heals over a larger area too as well as stacking those ticks on top of regeneration), it outshines a single heal in a small area. The math doesn’t always show how it functions in actual use, sorry. Were trident to be a blast finisher, or remove a condition or two at it’s target area that would be different, or ideally get the knockdown effect back, but that’s not going to happen. I suppose if you’re set up solely for support this single burst heal in a small area would be beneficial, but not many support eles use scepter for a main weapon. And just so you know, it wasn’t just “opinion” what I said. I had the numbers right in front of me the whole time, have them up right now actually. Just because I don’t feel the need to break out the math every time I post doesn’t mean I’m spouting off nonsense. I use this skill in practical applications every day and see the drastic differences in effectiveness when comparing to the other water heals. I never said it was so far behind them to be unusable, but it needs something more to be on-par with them and I’m not going to rehash everything everyone has already said in this thread, just scroll up.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

When you have lower recharge and ticking heals (which can be used while moving, thereby spreading the heals over a larger area too as well as stacking those ticks on top of regeneration), it outshines a single heal in a small area. The math doesn’t always show how it functions in actual use, sorry.

You’re right, and even in practice, I prefer Water Trident.

In terms of healing/cooldown, Water Trident strictly wins. Twice the cooldown, sure, but also twice the base healing and three times the scaling. Being able to “spread the healing over a wider area” is a nonsense argument. Whether I’m giving 500 healing to three spaces or 1500 to one, it’s the same amount of healing. In terms of damage, Cone of Cold wins hands-down, so there’s part of the trade-off.

However, the two advantages that put Water Trident over the edge are the casting time and the range. Cone of Cold requires you to be right up next to your target for 2.25 seconds. That’s 2.25 seconds when you have to stand there, unable to cast other spells and unable to dodge. Water Trident, conversely, is .5 seconds, and you only have to fire it off half as often to get the superior healing. If you take even one teensy hit from anything during the 4.5 seconds you’ll be spending channeling Cone of Cold (which is likely given that you’re probably in melee range of something), Water Trident’s healing skyrockets in comparison. You’re also giving your foe far more time to interrupt you, canceling both the healing and the damage. Either way, you get 4 more seconds out of every 20 or so to dodge or cast other spells.

The difference between two 2.25 channeled melee-range spells and one .5-cast-time 900-ranged spell mustn’t be swept under the rug.

To summarize, Water Trident is half the (modest-to-begin-with) damage, slightly more healing, requires significantly less time spent casting, and has a significant range advantage. At best, that’s a draw.

Scepter has really bad autoattacks on all its attunements, making for poor sustained damage and only good mid-high cooldown burst.

Ele has bad autoattacks on most of his weapons outside lightning whip, period. It’s why his only viable sustained dps spec in pve is lightning hammer and not any of his mainhand weapons.

Zenith.7301:

Scepter has really bad autoattacks on all its attunements, making for poor sustained damage and only good mid-high cooldown burst.

Ele has bad autoattacks on most of his weapons outside lightning whip, period. It’s why his only viable sustained dps spec in pve is lightning hammer and not any of his mainhand weapons.

I think you may be in the wrong thread…

Nay of the Ether.8913:

The cast time is about the only thing I will agree with you on. It does not, however, scale well with healing compared to virtually every other weapon based healing skill ele’s possess. I like the general idea behind it, cast at a ground target, damage and heal in the area, only the actual execution is weak. The damage is nearly non-existent, a single shard from the water scepter auto attack does more dmg most of the time, and the healing is weak too. Cleansing wave is higher healing, cures a condition, and has larger range, and as for geyser, while the scaling coefficient is lower, it has a duration and per tick heals for just about as much, so overall it heals for much more. Healing rain and cone of cold, yeah no need to go into those because again, both have durations and heal for far more (cone of cold damages for much more too). That along with the recharge on it and the lack of any other beneficial effects is why I don’t like this skill (in it’s current state). I would so love to see it reworked to be more viable because the skill itself, and it’s general idea, feel, and execution, are pretty fun. But, everyone is entitled to their own opinions so if you can make it work for you, more power to ya.

Cleansing Wave does not heal more then water trident.

Cleansing Wave:
Heal yourself and nearby allies, curing a condition.
Healing: 1,302 (1.0)?
Radius: 240

Water Trident
Low Damage
Healing: 1,448 (1.0)?
Radius: 180
Range: 900

So with no CDs, water trident can heal for 220% more then Cleansing Wave, but does not remove a condition. For additional comparison, it heals 97% as much as 2x cone of cold but scales much much better.

This skills is not meant to be used as an offensive ability (despite the damage on it). The damage is a little bonus for when people get too close while you heal yourself. Btw 1x Trident does the same damage as 1x cone of cold (so cone of cold wins as you can get 2 off in the same time period).

I much prefer Trident to Cone of Cold and Cleansing Wave. The only other pro I will throw to Cone of Cold is that it can still heal you for a bit if is interrupted (depending on when) and its shorter cd can change the tide of a fight. The shorter cd is more worked toward D/D builds that invest heavy into arcane, as without a 9 second cd for water that 10 sec cd would go to waist. The 20 / 16 cd of Trident I find suits Scepter builds more as you don’t need to invest heavy into Arcane (esp with the new Fresh Air trait). With that said, the Scepter heal is a nice burst heal, if you don’t get interrupted you know it will give you quite a bit of health back, it also doesn’t suffer from a term I call “Channel Interrupt”. Channel Interrupt is when a channel skill is interrupted, it goes on full cd (as the skill has been considered to have taken effect) not interrupt cd (5 seconds).

As to staff, Geyser has a pretty low heal with even lower scaling. To best use geyser is when it is utilised with blast finisher. The same can be said for healing rain, as it applies its healing in regen from (healing rain does not provide an actual heal unless used with finishers). Staff Eles used to be God Mode OP, however, as many eles influxed when D/D was popular there are few that remember the super staff bunker builds that got super nerfed to the point that many would argue that Staff is useless in PvP.

TGSlasher.1458:

Btw 1x Trident does the same damage as 1x cone of cold (so cone of cold wins as you can get 2 off in the same time period).

Except that 2x cone takes 4sec longer to cast than 1x trident, preventing you from casting anything else. To get back to it fast enough it also requires 30 arcana, significantly limiting damage builds (and lowering it’s damage). It’s possible that it does more damage as a skill but lowers your dps, unless you only use it when everything is on cooldown.

There’s also the retaliation issue. Cone can hit multiple targets multiple times per cast, causing multiple ticks of retaliation damage, further reducing the effectiveness of the healing. (3 targets)x(4 ticks of retaliation damage)x(2 casts per 20 seconds) is far greater than 5 ticks of retaliation per 20 seconds maximum.

Thrashbarg.9820:

TGSlasher.1458:

Btw 1x Trident does the same damage as 1x cone of cold (so cone of cold wins as you can get 2 off in the same time period).

Except that 2x cone takes 4sec longer to cast than 1x trident, preventing you from casting anything else. To get back to it fast enough it also requires 30 arcana, significantly limiting damage builds (and lowering it’s damage). It’s possible that it does more damage as a skill but lowers your dps, unless you only use it when everything is on cooldown.

There’s also the retaliation issue. Cone can hit multiple targets multiple times per cast, causing multiple ticks of retaliation damage, further reducing the effectiveness of the healing. (3 targets)x(4 ticks of retaliation damage)x(2 casts per 20 seconds) is far greater than 5 ticks of retaliation per 20 seconds maximum.

True, and as I mentioned it is a channel, thus going on full cd if interrupted, unlike trident’s 5 second interrupt cd.

I much prefer trident to all other heals. Currently running S/F with my only heals being Trident or Trident and Healing Ripple.

With all the detail math, Water Trident might look okay… and I suspect this is what the developing team think! But in real battle? No! I was in game for 3 hrs, both open world and dungeon. When I switch on my Tsunami scepter, I just don’t heal as well as when I am with my Monsoon staff. (I only brought these weapon name up because they both have +healing power! nice skin too!)

Water Trident isn’t as easy to use as self-heal. Geyser / Healing Rain / both have AoE, along with the water field. Combine nicely with blast finish from arcane skill or arcane grand-master trait. Cleansing Wave heal less but still its easier to use with removing condition. (You can’t miss the heal!)

Water Trident… you have to aim carefully or else you’d miss the heal, and with 700 healing power (about 19,000 health), I still don’t see the healing potential. I’m talking about the actual HP pool. (Definitely not for group heal, and self heal I still fail to see any real usage in real situation)

Cone of Cold, I didn’t do all the math but when I use it in the real situation, it just work much better then Trident overall. (Maybe its also with Vapor Blade’s help you kill mob faster)

I’d really want to love and use more of Water Trident for the sake of its former glory in Gw1! Anet develop team has to see past all these on paper numbers and play the scepter Ele, stick longer and longer in Water attuntment, check the actual HP POOL in all kind of situation… Water Trident need at least one improvement, either cut down recharge time, or improve healing, or I like one of the suggestion… having muti-tridents for heal or damage, even add back the knock back property in beta would do the trick.

I rarely complain much, but would really want develop team to buff Water spells more.

Nikaido.6739:

When I switch on my Tsunami scepter, I just don’t heal as well as when I am with my Monsoon staff.

Staff and Scepter are radically different weapons with radically different purposes. Their heals are hardly comparable.