Guild Wars 2

Elixir gun creates a Light combo field with its number 5 skill, Super Elixir. To me, the skill feels as though it should be a Water field instead, given that it’s caused by a liquid elixir and is used for healing purposes. Here’s 2 questions to the engineer community:

1) Would changing the Super Elixir be either too powerful or too weak? Water fields tend to be rare, as they provide powerful healing potential. However, light fields provide easy access to condition removal and retaliation. In your opinion, would this change unbalance the weapon in either direction?

2) Ignoring balance, would you rather the skill be a Water field or a Light field? I personally like Water better in general, but I hardly represent the entire engineer community. Different people generally have different playstyles and preferences.

This is something I wondered about, too, however I am hesitant to change Super Elixir over to a water field for two reasons:

#1: Engineers already have two water fields. Healing turret overcharge and toolbelt skill. Changing Super Elixir to a water field really doesn’t give engineers something that they are missing.

#2: I’m not sure Super Elixir would be balanced if it was a water field. 10 second duration on a potentially 16 second cooldown… that is really powerful. Light fields have a stacking limit on retaliation, and retaliation only does so much. But that much of a healing field… just dang.

So for now, I’d keep it a light field. It’s a pretty good light field, too.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This is something I wondered about, too, however I am hesitant to change Super Elixir over to a water field for two reasons:

#1: Engineers already have two water fields. Healing turret overcharge and toolbelt skill. Changing Super Elixir to a water field really doesn’t give engineers something that they are missing.

#2: I’m not sure Super Elixir would be balanced if it was a water field. 10 second duration on a potentially 16 second cooldown… that is really powerful. Light fields have a stacking limit on retaliation, and retaliation only does so much. But that much of a healing field… just dang.

So for now, I’d keep it a light field. It’s a pretty good light field, too.

Basically, what Blood Red Arachnid said. The only Water field of similar parity in duration would be Ranger’s Healing Spring which occupies a Heal slot and is on a profession with a relatively few Blast Finishers.

That being said, what Water Fields we do have are laughably short in duration although their radius is ridiculous:

Cleansing Burst is a mere 3 seconds on a Healing Skill slot, but has 480 Radius (!!!)

Regenerating Mist again, has a 480 radius, but lasts for a paltry 1 second on a 25 second cooldown. This is post buff to its cooldown which was previously a ludicrous 60 seconds .

If anything, it is not Super Elixir that requires a buff, but Regenerating Mist. 1 second of a Combo Field warrants nothing more than spamming it for a Static Discharge Proc and the 3 second Regeneration boon. A nerf to its radius in exchange for a longer duration and additional utility; i.e. cleansing 1 additional Condition, would be far favourable to what we have at present.

As for Super Elixir, I know that there are still some in the Engineer community that are still sore about losing the double Super Elixir proc from Kit Refinement, after nerfs to Healing Power scaling and backloading much of the healing into the HoT component.

I wouldn’t mind if Super Elixir also cleansed 2 conditions in exchange for less healing.

MonMalthias.4763:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This is something I wondered about, too, however I am hesitant to change Super Elixir over to a water field for two reasons:

#1: Engineers already have two water fields. Healing turret overcharge and toolbelt skill. Changing Super Elixir to a water field really doesn’t give engineers something that they are missing.

#2: I’m not sure Super Elixir would be balanced if it was a water field. 10 second duration on a potentially 16 second cooldown… that is really powerful. Light fields have a stacking limit on retaliation, and retaliation only does so much. But that much of a healing field… just dang.

So for now, I’d keep it a light field. It’s a pretty good light field, too.

Basically, what Blood Red Arachnid said. The only Water field of similar parity in duration would be Ranger’s Healing Spring which occupies a Heal slot and is on a profession with a relatively few Blast Finishers.

That being said, what Water Fields we do have are laughably short in duration although their radius is ridiculous:

Cleansing Burst is a mere 3 seconds on a Healing Skill slot, but has 480 Radius (!!!)

Regenerating Mist again, has a 480 radius, but lasts for a paltry 1 second on a 25 second cooldown. This is post buff to its cooldown which was previously a ludicrous 60 seconds .

If anything, it is not Super Elixir that requires a buff, but Regenerating Mist. 1 second of a Combo Field warrants nothing more than spamming it for a Static Discharge Proc and the 3 second Regeneration boon. A nerf to its radius in exchange for a longer duration and additional utility; i.e. cleansing 1 additional Condition, would be far favourable to what we have at present.

As for Super Elixir, I know that there are still some in the Engineer community that are still sore about losing the double Super Elixir proc from Kit Refinement, after nerfs to Healing Power scaling and backloading much of the healing into the HoT component.

I wouldn’t mind if Super Elixir also cleansed 2 conditions in exchange for less healing.

I always felt that due to Regenerating Mist’s lengthy cast time it should cure at least 1 condition and if not that than removing the 1/4th second Casting animation would allow us more time to use its limited 1 second combo field. In my opinion having it instant would make for some very fun combo’s and be all that it requires to be a well rounded tool belt ability.

The problem with super elixir is you can kill your allies, wipe your zerg, kill your ram users etc with it, just by denying them water blast healing for 10 seconds.

The nerfs to super elixir were too harsh. Halve it’s duration, double it’s heal per tick, make it a 5sec water field.

Kalan.9705:

The problem with super elixir is you can kill your allies, wipe your zerg, kill your ram users etc with it, just by denying them water blast healing for 10 seconds.

The nerfs to super elixir were too harsh. Halve it’s duration, double it’s heal per tick, make it a 5sec water field.

This is true for every field that gets dropped before a waterfield, since it goes oldest to newest, and is not unique to super elixir. I will agree that it is not large zerg friendly (much like everything engineer in the current meta) because players try to use the skill in the incorrect fashion. While I would like to see us have some slightly longer lasting water fields I would rather see those changes in the fields we currently have, rather than lose out on a different field type which has much much better potential in anything other than zerging.

ShadowPuppet.3746:

While I would like to see us have some slightly longer lasting water fields I would rather see those changes in the fields we currently have, rather than lose out on a different field type

Agree. The light field is good for condi removal which IMO engis suffer from a lack of reliable ones unless you go elixirs.

I like the healing turret I use it in my support build and toolbelt short water field I use for escape with the rocket boots but I would like them to improve Cleansing Burst’s water field. It hard to see in between all the particle effects so some clearer animation would be better for that skill.

@Oblivious:
The only problem I see with Light Fields is that the current finishers do not support “selfish” finishers – only “support” type finishers help with condi removal.
What does that mean?
It means that only Whirl and Projectile finishers – finishers that generate the Cleansing Bolts – actually cleanse conditions. More than likely, it will be your allies and not yourself that would benefit from this kind of finisher.
As for Blast and Leap – they both grant Retaliation, and for only 3 seconds at a time at that.
This makes Light fields less than ideal when supporting yourself – although there are Balance issues to keep in mind – otherwise Guardian could simply Blast himself clean of all conditions.

That is why it would be objectively superior for Super Elixir to cleanse 2 conditions, or 1, then another for a single pulse – instead of changing it to Water field and all the balance issues a 10 second, 20sec CD (16 traited) Water field would engender. Balance is also the reason why Necromancers receive a Light field instead of a Water field for the Well of Blood – you don’t simply put down a 10 second Water field with 33% uptime.

Kalan.9705:

Halve it’s duration, double it’s heal per tick, make it a 5sec water field.

Super Elixir already impact heals for 700 + 40% of your Healing Power and pulse heals for 2040 + 100% of your Healing Power. You asking to have this pulse heal doubled/halved arguably makes it better, since you’re getting that 2040+ health back in half the time.

By making it a Water field, too, you’re substantially increasing the healing potential. Blasts and Leaps in Water fields heal for 1320 + 20% of your Healing Power, and Projectile finishers grant 2 seconds of Regeneration per proc.

With Fireforged Trigger, this gives you a skill that potentially gives back 4000 health every 16 seconds, and that’s with zero Healing Power. To you and anybody immediately around you. It would effectively be a second heal for Engineers, and I think that’s a bit too good for a weapon skill.

Besides, a Light field may not be proper for PvDoor situations, but it is immensely useful for both condition removal and Retaliation in other situations in WvW and elsewhere.

Additional area healing to all SD builds out there.

1. Place down rifle turret
2. Regenerating mist
3. Detonate turret
4. Thank me

Good thing about this technique is that you can do this while running ’cause the origin of the blast finisher from detonating any turret is your character itself.

Edit: I meant Regenerating Mist (HT’s toolbelt skill) rather than Healing Mist (EG’s).

MonMalthias.4763:

That is why it would be objectively superior for Super Elixir to cleanse 2 conditions, or 1, then another for a single pulse

It would be great if the Super Elixir cured more than one condition per pulse.

If does that for the group it would seem .. a bit OP but I would love it :p I

@oblivious:
To clarify, what I meant was for the single condition to be cleansed on impact, then another single condition to be cleansed with the first pulse. Right now Super Elixir only cleanses 1 condition on impact – which is still missing from the tooltip 12 months on.

As much as I would like Engineer to have Guardian-level condi cleansing on a kit, you and I both know that it would be the first against the wall when Necros and other condi classes play against it.

The reason why I would want Super Elixir to cleanse more than 1 condition would be because the Kit Refinement nerf destroyed more than just 100Nades – it nerfed multikit condi cleansing with the loss of Cleansing Flame proc on FT swap and free Super Elixir on Elixir Gun swap.

The Kit Refinement change is one of the reasons why I don’t even contemplate running FT/EG any more, even though I know that it could still be passable – or in Phineas Poe’s opinion, very much viable.

As for Elixir Gun being a Light Field, I can see where Arenanet was coming from by making it a Light field. The backloaded healing over time was intended to reduce the impact of conditions ticking away, whilst allies could Whirl or Projectile finish across the field to help those afflicted inside.

The problem with the Light Field is that the current implementation makes both Blast and Leap finishers give Retaliation – so Light Fields are utterly useless if you’re on your own and you need Cleansing Bolts. If Leap Finishers were changed to instead cleanse 1 condition upon Leaping through we might begin to see Guardians have some counterplay against the condi cleave meta.

In terms of Projectile Finishers that return to the user, if Shield’s Throw shield or Toolkit’s Throw Wrench actually maintained its Cleansing Bolt status and wasn’t destroyed before it could initiate its effect on return they might have been good. As it stands, Super Elixir is pretty much only good for its HoT and single cleanse effect. Any Combo Field support it provides is purely incidental and largely predicated upon allies.

yanchoy.9176:

Additional area healing to all SD builds out there.

1. Place down rifle turret
2. Healing mist
3. Detonate turret
4. Thank me

Good thing about this technique is that you can do this while running ’cause the origin of the blast finisher from detonating any turret is your character itself.

This is a good one, also never Jump Shot without using Regenerating Mist first.

But on that note I find there is sometimes a bug that makes detonating rifle turret not instant when using Regenerating Mist. It seems like it is not actually activating “instantly” but will only detonate after the end of the Regenerating Mist’s animation even after spamming the (also 0 cast time) Detonate Turret ability multiple times. It will seemingly ignore my inputs only detonating it after.. This is the only situation I’ve encountered this and it can be very frustrating.

Anyone else experience this issue?