Guild Wars 2

Hmm, this is interesting. I don’t think I have played long enough yet, still only level 70 to say that the elementalist staff skills are underpowered, but I do actually feel that save for one or two, they are fine.

As a condition damage/critical elementalist, my main focus is on earth. Now, I understand that the first skill’s damage is noticeably low, stoning, and I do actually feel that something should be changed here. A slight damage increase or a better effect (Possibly even a change to weakness itself). Everything else about the earth attunement I really like.

Stoning – Just a note, this is the elementalist’s only staff combo projectile finisher, and it is a basic attack. This alone saves this skill, for me, from being useless and you can initiate your own combos but in team fighters give a lot of people extra healing, defence and the enemy more damage.

Eruption – This does a lot of damage over time, and in a really large area! It was worse in the first few days of the game as they actually increased the size of a lot of AOEs a few days after. I love this skill in PvE and WvW. in PvE, it is nice to be able to kill several enemies at the same time while doing nothing but dodging and placing more eruptions, but in WvW, this is where the ability really shines!

Yes, I do think it is quite easy to avoid, which perhaps a tiny adjustment could make it feel a little bit better, but when it does hit, especially defending forts, it does a lot of damage that the enemies don’t even notice.

When attacking however, it is still just as useful. You can place it on the walls of a fort, and have it hitting a large amount of unsuspecting attackers causing them to flee, and with the earth staff cooldown trait, you can literally spam the skill. It is really really awsome.

Just remember, that what this skill has in area and cooldown, it loses in eruption time. It feels mostly balanced.

Magnetic Shield, as you have said is a really good skill. It has saved me so many times in PvE and PvP. I only wish there was a way to increase its duration. Seeing the enemies projectiles bounce harmlessly off you is really fun to watch, especially magical projectiles.

Unsteady Ground is what it should be. A great slow in a rather large area. You can place it down infront of running enemies, both player and computer and find yourselves catching up faster than using windborne speed. In PvE, my earth elemental is usually tanking and I place it down under the enemy along with eruption and shockwave since it is effectively a damage over time then. (Its significance while low is better with critical chance)

Shockwave finally is an awesome skill. The shear length it travels to is amazing in WvW and PvE, not only does it apply a medium bleed, it has an amazing crowd control. Invaders chasing your team to the fort? Push 5 and stop a good line of them in their tracks.

The finish I should mention the importance of switching between earth and fire as a condition elementalist. The enemy goes down quite fast with your earth’s bleeds, but when you slap that burn from flame burst, which I stress is also an AOE, you’ll find that most enemies will drop extremely fast. Combine it with lava font and event meteor shower then your damage output for AOE and DOT is still really high even though you built condition damage.

The way I see it, is that criticals benefit this build for instant extra damage. If you ask me, power is not strong enough to make much of a difference as a condition elementalist, but being able to deal 50%+ extra damage of most of your skills helps immensely.

I think you have outlined a good number of issues that I feel the same as you about.

While I am really fond of the difficulty found in dungeons, as it does make it interesting, I don’t think it is the correct difficulty, bosses need see-able strategies that work (Don’t get me started on keeping the lovers apart in Ascalonian Catacombs). Also, it seems to be that every non-boss enemy, especially in high numbers is extremely powerful, too strong even and it sort of makes the bosses feel weak in comparison, as some are really easy to kill.

I should also add, as a nitpick, I have been a little disappointed graphically speaking with the dungeons I have played. They feel very underwhelming and not very special at all. =(

I also agree entirely about the dynamic event issue, even world bosses, though I think that is a matter for another thread. The problem I see however, is fixing it. I feel that this sort of issue would require a large design of the system which I don’t think Arenanet would want to do so early on.

What I would like to see, is better scaling. Events with 20-30 people are incredibly boring and hard to participate in, and more story threading. Or even better stories in general. If we also talk about tasks here, I feel that the entire “Questing System” needs to be looked at. If you ask me, every zone should have one story, and even multiple zones having one story. That story should be realized with the tasks and events.

For example, Queensdale and Kessex Hills has a centaur problem. Rather than splitting everyone asking for help for their own little, irrelevant, lazy and boring things, put everyone into an overarching story about fighting and stopping the centaurs. This could include, making or looking for plans/equipment that would help against them, defending places from their own attacks and plans. (Creativity would have to ensure that the enemies are versatile, or if it really cannot be done include a few, and I mean a few sidetasks.)

If you ask me, there is nothing more boring in a game than not doing something for the story. Now in an MMO it is very hard to get people to care about helping people with little things than in other games, especially when those little things are usually finding objects, or clearing areas.

Lastly, I am not saying that Arenanet have not tried to do this. Yes, there a few subtle links between tasks, events and stories but those links are just not enough to feel grand and epic. I hate to say, that this is still coming from a level 70 player. Perhaps simple, lazy story-less tasks can be forgiven for the first 10 or 20 levels, but it is unforgivable this late into the game that it still feels the same. In-fact every zone feels identical to tasks and events. Just reskins.