Guild Wars 2

I still have blast finishers on my Evasive Arcana. You get to keep them if you never patch.

I don’t even play staff in PvP, I play D/D. But in dungeons, I love(d) staff. Very action packed. Actually fun to support with. I get why it may have needed to be adjusted in sPvP, but did it really need to be nerfed in PvE as well? Heck, I’d even be fine with a 10 second cooldown covering all attunements, instead of a 10 second cooldown for each attunement.

Edit: And yes, still no stealth rendering fix. I scoured the patch notes three times looking for this.

This patch made it apparent that Anet is all for adjusting skills for PvP only. I think this is a great thing to keep them separate, so you don’t screw with PvE when you are really just looking to adjust something in the PvP meta. So what confuses me, is why Evasive Arcana was adjusted the way it was. A few weeks ago, the devs stated they were looking at bunker builds because they were too good, Ele and Guardian in particular. This is why Evasive Arcana was nerfed, because staff Ele’s could bunker so well.

So my question is:
With all these PvP-only changes, why was Evasive Arcana nerfed outright? Why not “the blast finishers were removed for PvP only”?

A tanky guardian is awesome to have in the party. Also, a tanky warrior. I have a small guild, so I am recruiting pugs every run. I see the warrior class most of all. But what you get from most pugs is dps HERNDERD BLERDDDDS signet warriors all the time. A tanky warrior with some shouts, a shield, and a hammer is much much more helpful to the party IMO. I thought warriors were just mediocre, until I grouped with a warrior with something/shield, hammer, and all soldier’s gear. He was absolutely indestructible. I play a super tanky staff support ele, and find it works out very well. People love heals, might, and CC for sure. I would love to comment on thieves, but I NEVER see any wanting to run dungeons. They’re all in PvP having too much fun ruining people’s faces. So my perfect party would be this:

1. Tanky Guardian
2. Tanky shout Warrior (soldier’s runes would be amazing)
3. Staff Support Ele
4. Mesmer
5. Well Necro

I know this probably isn’t the perfect comp for every dungeon, just an opinion. Again, I never get to play with thieves, but I think their shadow refuge would be really useful.

I agree with you, and would like to add something about trash mobs being too easily skipped. I have never played an MMO aside from GW2 where in an instance you can just keep running and the mobs will leash. This is just bad design. Instead of punishing players for speed running, why not make it so they have to actually fight the trash mobs? Players will always take the path of least resistance. Would you like to: a) Waste time fighting these worthless mobs, or b) Not do that? The answer isn’t putting up more gates/barriers/etc, but just making it so mobs in dungeons don’t de-aggro. It’s as simple as that. Then we can stop this punishment of players who run the dungeon quickly and efficiently. I mean, currently in AC, there are very very few trash mobs that you have to actually fight, and a couple bosses you can completely skip as well. Often, people actually yell at you for fighting them.

Leeain,

I would definitely be fine with a little improvement on healing, but just wanted to show that what you want to do is achievable. Increasing the healing coefficient would be great, but it would need to not affect the blast heals, as they would become overpowered.

I use Soldiers armor and weapon, along with Cleric’s jewelry. This is because I do not need any additional healing to get my party to full. Plus, since traits pigeon-hole us into a bunker build, bunker stats like Toughness and Vitality are needed. Dungeon-wise, I find that building tanky is a huge asset to the party. As the class with the least health and the least armor, I believe having Toughness and Vitality is pretty much required. I run with pugs a lot, as my guild is very small. People are almost always glass-cannon spec, because that’s what they used to level and they think that’s what will be good in dungeons. And that’s fine. I tank, I heal, I give might, I CC dangerous mobs and bosses, I rez people many many times, I DPS, and I have them moving at max speed whenever out of combat. And because I have Soldier’s gear and Cantrips, I almost never go down. What more could you ask for?

Yes, the cooldowns are still not on a DPS-like level. But I definitely do not agree that you are swapping attunements to pass the time. Healing is not ALWAYS needed. I swap to Water when it is. And I do not believe 10 stacks of might, which equals 350 power to the entire party is a waste of time. Our CC is very very helpful in many fights as well. On top of that, you can perma-swiftness your party, which makes runs go a lot quicker. Sometimes friends need heals. Sometimes they don’t. And when they don’t, there are plenty of extremely helpful ways you can support them.

I realize that your complaints are about Guardian, and I sympathize. This is why I recommended Elementalist if you want a straight healer, and it’s great that you are giving it a try. Yes, bunker Ele is considered a “tank”. But the difference between a bunker Guardian and a bunker Ele, is that all those heals that you are putting out in order to tank can also be applied to your teammates (I know Guardian is like this too, but their cooldowns are atrocious as you have stated, and they don’t have access to Water fields). Which is exactly what you want. If you are guarding a point alone, you will do well. Throw a buddy in there with you, and you got it made, especially if they can blast your fields too.

^This. Soldier’s armor/weps, Cleric’s jewelry, 10 Earth, 30 Water, 30 Arcane. If you like healing, Evasive Arcana is your new best friend.

To set the stage, here are what the current fields do:

Dark Field
Blast: Area Blindness
Leap: Blindness
Projectile: Life Stealing
Whirl: Leeching Bolts

Ethereal Field
Blast: Area Chaos Armor
Leap: Chaos Armor
Projectile: Confusion
Whirl: Confounding Bolts

Fire Field
Blast: Area Might
Leap: Fire Armor
Projectile: Burning
Whirl: Burning Bolts

Ice Field
Blast: Area Frost Armor
Leap: Frost Armor
Projectile: Chilled
Whirl: Chilling Bolts

Light Field
Blast: Area Retaliation
Leap: Retaliation
Projectile: Remove Condition
Whirl: Cleansing Bolts

Lightning Field
Blast: Area Swiftness
Leap: Dazing Strike
Projectile: Vulnerability
Whirl: Brutal Bolts

Poison Field
Blast: Area Weakness
Leap: Weakness
Projectile: Poison
Whirl: Poison Bolts

Smoke Field
Blast: Area Stealth
Leap: Stealth
Projectile: Blindness
Whirl: Blinding Bolts

Water Field
Blast: Area Healing
Leap: Healing
Projectile: Regeneration
Whirl: Healing Bolts

And here is my proposal:

Earth Field
Blast: Area protection
Leap: Protection
Projectile: Bleeding
Whirl: Bleeding Bolts

I think the Protection and Bleed fit perfectly with the theme of Earth, and as you can see, there are currently no fields that provide either of them.

As for what abilities would be Earth Fields, I think Unsteady Ground is a great possibility. Make it into a circle (something I always thought it should be anyways) the same size as Frozen Ground. As for dagger offhand, I think that Churning Earth looks very Earth-Field-life, but the fact that it is a blast finisher and would be able to blast itself would be a problem. So I would suggest Earthquake leaving an Earth Field behind after it has been activated, making it possible to blast with Churning Earth, or make Churning Earth an Earth Field without being able to blast itself (have the Earth Field expire right before it detonates). This way you could still use Arcane Wave if you wanted, or have a buddy blast it for you.

Other, more far-fetched possibilities for Earth Fields:

Ring of Earth (MH Dagger)
Obsidian Flesh (Focus) (On creation or expiration, could create a non-damaging Earth Field)
Rock Barrier (Scepter) (On creation or expiration, could create a non-damaging Earth Field)

And of course, this is not necessarily limited to the Elementalist. I’m sure that other classes have some abilities that could be easily Earthified, such as the Engineer. Thanks for reading.

Leeain,

I agree with a lot of what you say, but have some things to share that might interest you. I play a staff Elementalist in dungeons. I know this is in the sPvP section, but much of this applies. What you want is to be able to heal your teammates efficiently, but think it is not possible/effective. This is because to heal effectively, you must blast Water fields.

I use Soldier’s (power/vit/tough) armor and weapons, along with Cleric’s (power/heal/tough) jewelry. All exotic. I am able to heal my entire team up to full with no problems. This is because I can blast my Water fields multiple times. My spec is 10 Earth (Earth’s Embrace) 30 Water (Cleansing Wave, Aquamancer’s Alacrity, Cleansing Water), and 30 Arcane (Elemental Attunement, Blasting Staff, Evasive Arcana). Here are the things I can do for my team:

Triple Blast Geyser: Likely anyone in range is at full HP.

Quadruple Blast Healing Rain : Everyone in range is at full HP and loses all conditions.

Triple Blast Lava Font: We all get 10 stacks of might.

Blast Frozen Ground X times: We all get Frost Armor, very situational.

Blast Static Field X times: Usually an out-of-combat thing to give party swiftness, so will probably be 1-2 blasts as Evasive Arcana can only be used while in combat.

On top of that, I end up tanking a lot because mobs and bosses seem drawn to players with high toughness. I also do good damage, especially AOE, because of a high power stat. And don’t forget that staff also has great CC.

As far as cooldowns go, yes, the healing cooldowns tend to be pretty big. But with the trait Aquamancer’s Alacrity, the cooldowns are lowered by 20% to 16s for Geyser and 36s for Healing rain. This still seems high, but you will be switching attunements a lot to give other things to the party, as well as switching to CC as needed. By the time you get back to Water attunement, Geyser will be up. And the next time you come back to Water, Healing Rain will be up.

As far as being able to effectively hit your party with the heals, know that the trait Blasting Staff increases the size of your AOEs, and also consider that they don’t even have to be standing in the Water field to receive the blast heal. Just near it. And with Blasting Staff, the radius of Healing Rain is absolutely massive. And if some of your ranged players are too far from your blast to get the heal, they can still shoot through it for regen, and can still get all their conditions removed. Also remember you’re not the only one who can blast your fields. Throw in a hammer Guardian for a whole lot more fun.

As far as sPvP goes, Geyser can cover a regular sized point, and Healing Rain can cover a large point. “My” build (probably switch Aquamancer’s with Soothing Disruption) is one of the things people complain about in sPvP as far as bunkers being bs. This and Guardian bunkers. Yeah, we probably won’t kill anything there, but we can hold a point very well due to blasted Water fields and Cantrips.

Just something to think about.

TLDR: If you want to heal, you are playing the wrong class.

Love the new video man. Are you using soldier’s gear with cleric’s jewelry like you planned to? Or are you using the original Carrior/Cleric’s mix? Using Divinity’s now or still Dolyak’s? Looks like fun running around with other d/d Eles in WvW. Lots of knockdowns and the fact that you don’t have to worry about leaving them in the dust like other classes (aside from thief, of course). I can’t play any other class because they’re either too kitten slow, too kitten boring, or both.

Loco, Don’t forget about Zephyr’s Boon. Thats another 20% crit when you need it most. I use runes of Divinity to boost it a little more, as well as the fact that we benefit from every single stat the set grants.

I would highly, HIGHLY recommend all Soldier’s gear with Cleric’s jewelry. 4 Rampager’s and 2 Valkrie is a death sentence, especially at melee range. Without Toughness, you’re going to have a bad time.

Yes, Elementalists have lengthy attunement-swap cooldowns, while the Engi has very low cooldowns. But consider this: The Ele can equip cantrips/stun breakers, which are incredibly important. If an Engi chooses to equip a stun breaker, he essentially loses out on an entire “attunement” worth of abilities. This, combined with the fact that they cannot benefit from swap sigils, are the main reasons an Engi friend of mine rerolled to Ele. I do not want this flawed system on my Ele. However, I would be more than ok with lowering the attunement-swap cooldown to 10 seconds or so, and changing the Arcane line to no longer affect swap cooldown. I think it pigeon-holes Ele, and lowers the amount of possible trait builds dramatically when you need to always have 30 points in one specific tree just to have the class play the way it was meant to.

I like almost all of your changes. I have some comments on a few things.

Fire’s Embrace: I don’t think increasing it one second will help much. As you said, it’s is really only selected for an aura build, and even so, it it too far in to really pick. My suggestion would be to keep it the same, but put it at Adept so it can be more easily picked up by an auramancer.

Persisting Flames: I think it would be fine as is if it only worked will all the fire fields. It does not work with Lava Font. If it did, you would be able to keep a Lava Font up all the time, which would make this trait desirable.

Pyromancer’s Puissance: I like your idea, but it would be overpowered. I would change it to add 2 stacks of might for 5 seconds or 1 stack for 10 seconds, only while in Fire. Or you could do something like “whenever you crit in fire, you get a stack of might” but that would be kind of Air-ish.

About speed increases: Completely agree. Unless they play nice with swiftness (and actually work) they are worthless.

Zephyr’s Focus: Instead of endurance regenerating faster while channeling, I would like to see just a flat increase to endurance regeneration. However, that might warrant being moved up to a Master Trait, depending on the percentage.

Grounded: Grounded is good. Glass just doesn’t have enough other good traits to support this.

Salt Stone: I did some leveling as a S/D condition build, and what bothered me about this trait is it didn’t actually affect condition damage. I assume that it’s twin in fire, Ember’s Might, functions the same way. I would like it if both traits worked with ALL damage. It would make them a lot better, and form a great synergy for condition builds when getting both traits.

Stone Splinters: I like your suggestion a lot, but at 10% I think it would need to be moved up to a Master Trait.

Geomancer’s Freedom as a fall damage trait: Love it. I would switch it with Stone Splinters into the Adept Tier.

Rock Solid: LOVE it.

Acidic Wash: I would take this a step further. Certain mobs in Orr use Geyser. However, theirs both heals and damages. I have always been jelly. It would need to be moved up to Grandmaster.

Soothing Wave: Love the change. Adds great synergy with Cleansing Water.

Powerful Auras: I would switch this tier-wise with my version of Acidic Wash.

Lingering Elements: I wouldn’t change this.

Arcane Precision: I would make it apply a different condition depending on attunement (like Surge), at a 33%-50% chance.

Arcane Energy: I would change this to apply to any utility and stay at 25%.

Evasive Arcana: I would be so angry if this trait were nerfed, but I would understand why. It’s just too bad that PvE will have to suffer for PvP’s sake. I use this to quadruple blast heal my party (if needed) in dungeons. Works wonders. I think being 8 seconds makes it not SO bad, but I don’t think ANet would be nice like that. I think they would just keep the internal cooldown at 10 seconds.

Elemental Surge: It’s not terrible the way it is now, it is just outshined by Evasive Arcana. However, I would increase the durations a bit.

Overall, some very good suggestions. It’s a great thread with great ideas, and I hope people actually read it and comment.

@daphoenix

Thank you for the reply. I agree with your points about Elemental Shielding. I don’t want to lose the Evasive heal (CD too), and I don’t want to lose the Healing Ripple when I pop into water along with either losing Cleansing Wave or Soothing Disruption. The loss of Cleansing Wave could be alleviated by taking Cleansing Fire as a utility, but yeah you would still lose the Healing Ripple. I’ve been thinking of just straight out replacing Earth’s Embrace with Elemental shielding. You would probably want to take Armor of Earth as a utility in that case, but yeah, not too keen on losing Earth’s Embrace.

Anyways, to address your gear question posed to Vanillea, you cannot get PVT gear on the AH. However, it’s not that hard to get. Here’s how:

Weapons:

Ascalonian Catacombs- Super easy dungeon. All 3 paths are quick. Looks like crap but you can just skin it.

Honor of the Waves- Easy dungeon, but a bit harder to find a group for it. The gear looks very good IMO and very “frost mage”-like.

Sorrow’s Embrace- Never ran it, and can’t find a group for it. It has PVT though.

Armor:

You can get the armor in the same dungeons as the weapons, but in addition you can purchase pieces with karma from the Temples in Orr.

Jewelry:

You can only get PVT exotic jewelry from WvW for massive amounts of badges. You can get rares for karma though. Also I’d like to add that to the right of the entrance to the bank in Lion’s Arch, you can purchase a guild backpack, which is rare (don’t think there are exotic backpacks yet, but could be wrong). It has 20P 14V 14T, and you can slot it with a soldier’s crest which also has 20P 14V 14T.

You can still get rares of everything for karma from WvW, but Ascalonian Catacombs is so easy and quick, there’s really no reason not to just run it once a day. You’ll have your set in no time.

@daphoenix

I love your videos. You are truly an inspiration. I have been working on a variation of your build that leans a bit more towards auras, as it takes Elemental Shielding along with Earth’s Embrace. Choosing whether to take 10 from arcane and lose Evasive as well as have longer attunement CD, or losing Cleansing Wave has been a hard decision to make. I would like to hear your feedback on this.

My main question, however, is about gear. I have been farming dungeons for power/tough/vit gear (soldier’s). I’m trying to get a full set of weapons, armor, and jewelry. Armor and weapons can be gotten from AC/HotW/SE, as well as WvW (too many badges required to be efficient), or armor from Temple Karma. Jewelry can only be gotten from WvW to my knowledge (can get rares with karma, exotics require badges), and I already have the soldier’s guild backpack with soldier’s crest.

I’m about halfway done with the set, and I wanted to know if you thought it was worth it. I would not have any extra condition damage aside from the 20 points in earth, and would not have any extra healing aside from the 10-20 points in water. And I see you use a mixture of Carrion and Cleric’s.

Also trying to decide on rune set. Divinity looks great overall, but Earth seems better suited for an aura build as it provides an extra aura. Forge seems very good overall combined with Earth’s Embrace, and 2xEarth/2xWater/2xMonk looks amazing for just raw boon and protection duration, but suffers from low stat gains.

Thanks to anyone who answers, especially daphoenix.

Xhaiden.3891:

Ele is the GW2 equivalent of an 80s training montage.

I love you.

@Godmoney. Cleric’s armor has +Healing, +Power, and +Toughness. Putting 30 into water adds vitality, which evens out defensive stats nicely. But, as I stated, the gear I want is +Power, +Vitality, and +Toughness.

@Lucas. WvW is definitely zergy at times, but there are plenty of small-scale battles as well, in my experience. I think gear with Power, Vit, and Toughness would cover both scenarios very well, as is evident with the gear you can actually purchase in WvW. I also look forward to monday’s changes, but would much rather run with guildies as I believe my wallet will suffer much less. Oh and I am a healer, if I want to spec to be one. I can be a damage dealer if I want to spec to be that, or even a tank (lol). However, I can’t be all three at the same time.

@Hayden. I appreciate your input and your attitude. I would just like to say that with Power/Vit/Toughness gear, my damage would still be good. I mean, I would never use all Berserker’s gear in an explorable, that’s just suicide, but to each their own. What limits capabilities most is traits. To do good damage I would need to have points into fire, and as I mentioned to Lucas, you can do a lot of things, but not all at once. Guild wars 2 is supposed to do away with the holy trinity, and allow you to choose which role you fill, whether it be tank, dps, or support (to an extent, of course. I don’t expect to be able to tank as well as a Guardian regardless of spec). I choose to play support, which for some reason, people posting have a problem with. My group seems to like my heals very, very much.

@Everyone. This thread got derailed very quickly. Please, instead of attacking my playstyle, spec, or gear preferences, try to stay on topic. This thread is not about the Elementalist and how one should play/gear them for dungeons.

I have a problem with dungeons. This thread isn’t about the time/reward ratio, the difficulty of dungeons, bugs, or anything like that (even though those things are an issue). My problem is that my group of guildies can’t agree on a dungeon to run, and it’s going to inevitably split us up. This is because of the stats on gear. Allow me to elaborate.

I play Staff Elementalist. The gear I’m after is gear with Power, Toughness, and Vitality. This is because we are so squishy, and I think these stats would be good in WvW and even in dungeons. WvW gear actually has these stats but requires a ridiculous amount of badges. It should also be noted that gear with these stats cannot be crafted, for whatever reason. The dungeons with these stats are AC, SE, and HotW. However, not everyone in my group needs the same stats. Some want Berserker’s stats, some want condition stuff, etc. We can’t agree on a dungeon to run because for some of the people the run will be an absolute and complete waste of time. Who wants to run a dungeon if they know they won’t get anything for it but repair costs?

I heal in dungeons. I like it, and I find it to be my biggest way to contribute to the party’s success. So after realizing we all were after different stats, I decided to re-visit the dungeon gear vendors. I wanted to see if maybe there was a Cleric’s set I could get, so that when I run a dungeon I don’t really need, I could at least get something that could help myself and my group out. Turns out that dungeon gear with Cleric’s stats does not exist. At all. What in the world?

I have a few possible solutions to this problem. Three in fact:

Meh Solution: Make gear with all stat-spreads craftable. This solution is just meh, because it would help myself and others out, but would still leave the real problem un-addressed. It might actually stop dungeon running altogether if farming for mats is easier than running the actual dungeons.

Ok Solution: Make all dungeons drop the same universal token. This would solve the problem of dungeons being anti-social because of gear preferences. The problem is that players would just choose the easiest dungeon to run and the other 7 would literally never be played.

Good Solution: Make each dungeon specialize in what slot it provides. Here is what I mean:

AC: Gives tokens for hats
CM: Gives tokens for shoulders
TA: Gives tokens for coats

And so on, and so forth. This would make all the dungeons desirable to run no matter what class you play, what spec you are, or what stats you like. Thank you for reading.

Ok, I’m sorry but I can’t just post one. I will keep it as concise as possible.

1. Bugs
This is, of course, priority one. Check out the bugs and glitches thread. There are a lot.

2. Long Animations
Dragon’s Tooth, etc. By the way, Dragon’s Tooth should be ground-targeted, and Phoenix should be player targeted (swap them).

3. Arcane Required
As someone stated before me, needing 30 points in a tree for the class to work correctly is ridiculous. How many different builds can Elementalist have if each one requires such a huge investment in Arcane? Not a lot. I’m also not crazy about needing to throw 20 in to get Blasting Staff.

4. Downed State
This has been talked about by previous posters in depth.

5. Bad Traits
Elementalist traits are just bad, especially Fire.

6. Underwater
Our underwater is also just bad. I wouldn’t even know where to start. Better wait around for that elite to come off cooldown folks.

7. Offhand Dagger Cooldowns
Offhand Dagger is limited by extremely long cooldowns. To kill a single player or mob in D/D, you need to RTL, Updraft, switch to fire, Burning Speed, Ring of Fire, Arcane Blast, Arcane Wave, and Fire Grab. With S/D, remove Burning Speed and add Dragon’s Tooth (ugh) and Phoenix both after the Ring of Fire for the might stacks. Updraft cooldown is 40 seconds, Earthquake and Fire Grab are 45 seconds, and Arcane Wave is 30 seconds. If these abilities are on cooldown, you are completely useless. Compare this to a Hundred Blades Warrior, who will be doing more damage than your entire combo with one ability on an 8 second cooldown. (All cooldowns listed are before 20% decrease traits, including the Warrior’s)

8. ST Staff
Staff desperately needs a good single target damaging ability. No idea why it doesn’t have one. Replace or modify Air 2 to just hit a single target, for good damage, at 1200 range. Right now the only way to even have a good single target damaging ability is to take Arcane Blast. From a class with the lowest health and armor, who benefits the most from being at range, but does not have a single good ST range attack. I have a Warrior alt like many Elementalists who posted here. This is because I wanted to know what it was like to do good ST ranged damage. I didn’t even know some attacks had 1500 range before playing Warrior. Unbelievable.

9. Conjured Weapons
Conjured Weapons go against everything that is Elementalist. “Hey I got a great idea for some Ele abilities! You know how Ele is all about swapping between 4 attunements to use the right skills for the situation? Well how about some abilities that make them NOT do that? Wouldn’t that be great?” I applaud all of you who have been posting your ideas about how to improve them, but seriously, just get rid of these. And replace them with what? I’ll pull some new abilities completely out of my butt right now that would be better in every way:

Fire TURBO LASER: Shoots a TURBO LASER at a target, damaging anything in it’s path. Causes Burning.

Air TURBO LASER: Shoots a TURBO LASER at a target, damaging anything in it’s path. Causes Stun.

Earth TURBO LASER: Shoots a TURBO LASER at a target, damaging anything in it’s path. Causes Immobilize or Bleed.

Water TURBO LASER: Shoots a TURBO LASER at a target, damaging anything in it’s path. Causes Chill.

10. Elite Abilities
The Elementalist seems to have a theme. Ranged damage (mostly being AOE), CC, and healing. None of the Elites reflect this or feel Elite in any way. I will pull some more great abilities out of my butt for you:

Meteor: Calls down a Meteor, dealing AOE NON-RANDOM damage.

Good Gust: PBAOE pushback. (why don’t we already have an ability like this?)
Taze: Tazes a bro, stunning for a long time.

Earth Shield: Obsidian Flesh from Focus, or if that’s too redundant,
Earth Shield: Creates a protective rock barrier/bubble around yourself and nearby allies, negating damage for a short time, or giving protection for a good amount of time.

Freeze: Freezes single target for a long time, like #5 on Frost Bow.
Good Heal: A big heal that doesn’t require a blast finisher to not suck.

Thank you very much Scourge. It will still be hard to convince them, but I’m going to try my best.

Hello everyone. I have been wanting to WvW with with my guild, but due to long ques, I haven’t been able to get them into it. It’s hard enough for one person to get in, but to get 10-20 people in is a nightmare with 2-3 hour ques. But I’m not here to complain about long ques. I want us all to transfer to a lower population server, so we can actually all get in. The problem is, they are telling me that our guild will lose all its influence and upgrades when we transfer. Is this true? Thanks in advance.

@Srondon. I agree about Lava Font. The first tick actually used to be there, but they nerfed it in one of the Betas (3 I believe) and got rid of it. I believe they did the same with the first tick of Healing Rain as well. And apparently, according to Wildclaw, the damage of Lava Font was grealy decreased. About Flame Burst. I agree that it’s not terrible, but for people who use Staff for conditions as well as raw damage, which surprisingly is quite a few, the only condition attacks available are Flame Burst, which I still think is mediocre and would be best replaced with a good strong full range single target attack, Burning Retreat, which is bad for burning but great for the gap opener and dodge, Eruption, which we’ve talked about ad nauseum, and Shockwave, which is a bad bleed but is really for the immobilize. For condition, Staff is just bad compared to Scepter, which is good and would be great with a tweak to Dragon’s Tooth. I did a substantial amount of leveling as Scepter/Dagger, and I found it to be the fastest killing weapon set for single mobs. Again, Dagger/Dagger would be the best were it not for it’s terrible cooldowns. I agree with your other points and I also agree that Staff is probably in the better shape than most builds, It just shines more in groups.

@Otiz. I know you were talking about PvP, even though my post is almost entirely about PvE. You, apparently, only care about sPvP, and that’s fine. So when you just make a troll blanket statement like “Staff is teh suck”, I show you a video of someone using Staff effectively in sPvP. I don’t know what you want from me. You say the Elementalist has room for improvement. I agree, and in fact, it’s why I made this thread.

@Toxification. I like your ideas, especially the one about the 30% cooldown reductions. That would make much more sense. Another thing that could be done is to leave them at 20%, but put put them at the beginning of the trait lines so you would just need 10 points to grab one. About Meteor. Wouldn’t it be great if they replaced Lava Font with Lava Bomb, then made Meteor the same mechanic as Lava Font? Just a big Font that ticks. No random meteors, just if you’re in it, you take damage. I can dream.

@Fiontar. Thank you sir. And I would love to hear more from you, even if it’s just a few quibbles. The more discussion and opinions, the better.

@AcOrP. Believe me, I have tried kiting mobs into my Lava Fonts. If Ice Spike is slow because it’s powerful, then make is less slow and slightly less powerful. I realize the same about Eruption. I know the damage of these skills would have to be adjusted if the animation times were sped up. I talked about it in the OP. I just happen to think it would be absolutely worth it, and from what I can see, most people posting here agree with me aside from a few who use Eruption as a delayed blast finisher.

@Oliin. I’m sorry I spelled your name wrong sir. And you are right about Flame Burst. It has the same up time as Signet of Fire and affects multiple foes, so I stand corrected. I know Eruption being slow is useful for doing a delayed blast finish right now, but if it activated faster, and if the attunement swap cooldowns weren’t so severe, you could just swap to earth after you lay a field and blast it with the faster Eruption, instead of swapping to Earth first to lay the Eruption, then swapping to another attunement to lay the field. It’s just reverse order. The faster animation would also help you land it in PvP, which you said it was bad for (and I agree). Nothing really changes except it becomes easier to land.

@Toxification. You can increase the area of of Lava Font with Blasting Staff, but I agree it is still too small. Increasing the size of it is the other possible approach to fixing it, because it would be easier to kite the mob around in, like Necromancer’s excellent Well of Suffering skill. About Phoenix, I also think the travel time is a bit slow. It’s a great move with great damage and effects, but it’s just so strange in it’s execution. About Trident, oh man don’t even get me started on water combat.

About attunements, remember other classes can swap weapons and achieve vastly differing playstyles. For example, Greatsword/Rifle on Warrior. The thing with Elementalist is that all of your attunements are very similar. You aren’t getting an insane swap like great melee to great range, because you can’t swap Dagger/Dagger to Staff. If each attunement were more different and “specialized” I belive a long attunement swap cooldown like the current base 15 seconds would be warranted. That is because it would be more like an actual weapon swap, and since we have four of them, a cooldown longer than 10 seconds would be necessary.

As to the 20% woes, I do see what you’re saying. This is the problem though. For the Ele to have it’s 1-5 abilities receive 20% cooldown reduction, you need 4 traits, spread out over 4 trees. Investing 20 in Fire, 20 in Air, 20 in Earth, and 10 in Water is required. That is all your trait points, so no points get to be spent in Arcane to lower those nasty attunement swapping cooldowns, or give you Elemental Attunement/Blasting Staff/Evasive Arcana, or to lower the cooldowns of your Arcane abilities. How about that GS/Rifle Warrior I mentioned earlier? For all of his 1-5 abilities to be 20% cooldown reduction, he needs 30 points in a single tree, which is the Arms tree. I realize Warrior is probably not going to have that weapon setup, but the point is that reducing the cooldowns for all of your abilities isn’t difficult at all, unless you are playing an Elementalist. The fact that we need twice the amount of traits for cooldown reduction is made even more unpleasant by the fact that we receive no other bonuses from these traits.

Imagine a trait like this for Elementalist: “Staff and Trident skills recharge 20% faster”. Can you imagine? But we have 4 attunements, so that would be overpowered. What would be balanced is something like this: “Fire and Air skills recharge 20% faster”.

@Brian. Thank you for posting. I find your build very interesting, and am going to try out a variation of it. I’m just glad I’m Asura. Meteor Shower is great for big groups of players or mobs. I agree. The problem is that if you don’t have someone tanking those mobs for you, then you are tanking the mobs, and it’s startup animation and casting animation keep you standing still for a very long time. If you could just drop it like a Lava Font I would be all for it. On Earth, I know some people want the bleed to stay. That’s fine. I just want a faster cast. If it had a faster cast, and the attunement swapping wasn’t so limited, you could use it to blast your fields like you already do, just blasting the field after you cast it, instead of laying the Eruption first and then the field. I kind of agree on Gust about other targets getting in the way. It would be nice if it affected everything in a line. I still find it useful to stop rezzes and stomps, though. I realize that lowering the cooldown for attunement swapping would cause problems with the Elemental Attunement trait in Arcane, but all that would need to be done is to either give that trait a cooldown (can only occur once every X seconds), or make it so the boons granted by the trait overwrite eachother.

I just want to say one more thing about your AOE build Brian. It does sound good, but for all those combos, all those abilities cast, all that planning and execution, a single Hundred Blades would do it better, faster, more safely, and with a much lower cooldown. Radiation Field is 60 seconds and Glyph of Storms is lowered to 48 from 60 with trait. Hundred Blades is 8 seconds lowered to 6.5. I know I have been over this, but for the extra effort to accomplish what you do in what a Warrior could do in one button press, what do you get? What is your compensation? Nothing. In fact, you get less than nothing because you have less armor and half the health.

@Taikanaru. I’m glad Eruption works for you and does great damage. I just want it to activate faster. Surely that would only help you if you are using it for damage.

@Icarium. I love my Elementalist too, and Staff is my favorite weapon by far. I just think we need some help. You say you slow groups and AOE nuke them down. The only nuke you can be referring to is Lava Font, and my changes to it would help you out in a big way. About Arcane, yes I do the same. I put 20 points in to get Elemental Attunement, Blasting Staff, and to lower the attunement swap cooldowns. But that is because I am forced to, and I don’t like that. The Arcane tree has killed more Elementalist builds than all the Elementalist nerfs put together, and that is saying a lot because they were nerfed every single beta as well as every single stress test.

Ryld.1340:

Munchkin.4137:

Ryld.1340:

Munchkin.4137:

@Ryld. Try Arcane Wave. You can thank me later. Bro.

I do.

But I like having another way to do it.

I don’t want to take away the fact that Eruption is a Blast Finisher. I just want the animation sped up.

That’s what I’m saying. If you do that, then it’s a lot harder to cast it, switch attunements, then lay down the combo field.

If the cast speed was fast, you could lay the combo field you want to blast, then switch to Earth and still have time for the field to be blasted, since Eruption has a faster cast time. It’s the same end result. Your field gets blasted. It would just take some slight playstyle adjustments to reverse the steps. Keep in mind that I am also pushing for attunement swap cooldowns to be reduced to a base of 10 seconds, like a weapon swap.

Ryld.1340:

Munchkin.4137:

@Ryld. Try Arcane Wave. You can thank me later. Bro.

I do.

But I like having another way to do it.

I don’t want to take away the fact that Eruption is a Blast Finisher. I just want the animation sped up.

@Qwert. I agree. Our high damage attunement (single target at least) somehow does the lowest damage. It has turned into some sort of weird utility attunement. I can’t say it is a bad thing though, as I am particularly fond of Air Staff. But yeah, damage-wise it’s bad.

@Chronologist. Definitely. Warrior Rifle is part of the reason I rolled Warrior. I wanted to know what it felt like to do good single-target ranged damage. Volley at 1200 and Kill Shot at 1500 absolutely blow anything the Ele can do out of the water.

@Erawys. I definitely agree that 1500 range would be amazing. I’m not crazy about having to get Blasting Staff though, for reasons I mentioned in the article. And yes, the squishiest class should do the most damage, or do the most SOMETHING. Agree on Meteor Shower, just wouldn’t touch it for reasons I mentioned to Selo. Whining mainly. Your idea to speed up the animation so it hits less randomly is a great one though. I agree that Earth Staff 1 should have a bleed, as I mentioned to Westley.

@tclark. I agree that the slow-casting abilities are definitely a main issue. The only thing I disagree with you on is the only thing you disagree with me on, and that is Churning Earth. I would much rather have it do less damage but have a faster cast, making it more accessible for it’s great burst or bleed. If you are just using it for a finisher, it’s great bleed and cripple won’t even matter. Imagine it not casting so slowly and being able to throw it into your Scepter/Dagger condition build for some sweet AOE bleed, or throwing it into the Dagger/Dagger burst combo for another step of good burst. Right now it’s mechanics just don’t allow for this.

@issac. I wish you luck, and encourage you to try every spec and keep tweaking til you find something that works. But just know that since you use Staff, you pretty much have no choice but to invest 20 points into Arcane to get Blasting Staff. So your 30 Fire 30 Earth build is not possible. I hate the Arcane tree because of this issue, and the fact that in order to swap attunements and rotate through whatever skills you may need at the time in an efficient manner, you need to lower that swap cooldown.

@Ryld. Try Arcane Wave. You can thank me later. Bro.

@Taikanaru. Agree on Unsteady Ground. They just need to make it a circle. But yet another person who doesn’t want Eruption changed because they like it as a Blast Finisher. I’m telling you, try Arcane Wave. Eruption is an attack you know. It is supposed to hurt things. In it’s current state it is only going to hurt things if you are standing still, face tanking the mob. About that Churning Earth thing, I will say using Lightning Flash is very cool, and something I did not know about. The problem is that I would never be able to fit Lightning Flash into a build, no matter what weapon set I use. I just don’t have the room. But hey, that’s just my problem, and may not be yours or any other person’s.

@Zarron. Could not agree more. The Elemental Attunement trait in Arcane is absolutely necessary in my opinion. And if you are playing Staff, you have no choice but to invest at least 20 to get Blasting Staff as well.

@Tyrel. I agree about the health pools. I’m absolutely fine with having different armor classes. Thats a part of these type of games. But these health pools are just too much. They add a second layer of suck to the Elementalist they do not need. I think every class should have the same 15k health pool, but still have the different armor classes. Having both variables is just too difficult to balance. Just have the armor difference and tweak from there.

I could not possibly agree more with your section on damage. Mobs just don’t stand still, and move extremely fast especially at later levels. Might as well just Lava Font your own feet and face tank the mob. Oh wait, my bad, thought I was playing my Warrior for a second and could do that. This is why I’m pushing so hard for Flame Burst to be changed to a good single target (not ground target arghhh) non-condition damage ability. All glass and no cannon, for sure.

Agree on the Traits. While leveling my Warrior I came to the conclusion that what made it so good was not just abilities such as Hundred Blades. It was that their traits were absolutely great, and has such a great synergy with eachother. You can literally spec any way you want, and use whatever weapon you want. Greatsword is just the best for just raw PvE killing speed.

As far as the Weapon Choices, I never understood why they would even consider making the class with the lowest armor and lowest health be in melee to do any kind of burst damage. You want to be at range, preferably 1200, whenever possible. It’s just bad design to force the Ele into melee. And that burst you get for being in melee with a Dagger/Dagger build is still not as much as a single Hundred Blades from a class with the highest armor and health.

In your general section, I definitely agree with what you said about burning. Bleed is my condition of choice, but in Scepter/Dagger your only good bleed is single target. So when facing multiple mobs your only choice is to switch to fire for Dragons Tooth and face tank the mobs (lol) because that’s the only way you’re going to get it to hit unless you have someone tanking for you.

@Elric. Thank you for posting. These are the type of discussions we need to be having. I agree with you that you can spec Staff for condition damage. However, about the burns and bleeds. Flame Burst is not even half as good as Signet of Fire. Burning Retreat’s burn damage is also underwhelming and would only work in PvE against a melee mob, but like I said in the article, it’s more about the gap opener and dodge for me anyways. As for the bleeds, Eruption would be amazing with a faster animation time. Shockwave’s bleed is just bad, but again, it’s more about the added effect of immobilize. Scepter’s bleed is amazing, and with a Dagger OH, churning earth would be amazing with a faster animation. Every move in Fire Scepter/Dagger is amazing, aside from Dragon’s tooth being a bit slow. You say Staff is chock full of attack abilities. To that I say show me a good reliable non-condition damage ability. You cannot, as I stated in the article. You can either play Lava Font dancing games, or rely on the very subpar damage of Lightning Surge or something.

@Castor. I encourage you to try another class at least for a little while. Pick absolutely any class and level it to 20-30 or so. I’d love to hear what you think.

@Selo. I would agree on your points about Meteor Shower. it was actually changed once upon a time to “Meteor”, doing it’s damage all at once. But people wailed and moaned and it got changed back. The problem is, it’s great in huge battles like in WvW, but terrible otherwise. I don’t want to open that can of worms. Like you said, Barrage is a much better ability since it is not completely random like Meteor Shower.

@Seraskus. Like I said to Elric, Flame Burst compared to Signet of Fire is just bad. I realize you can use both, and if it’s working for you then by all means stick with it. If you actually use Eruption, well you are a better man than I. I agree on Stoning. The only thing you posted that I majorly disagree with is on Gust. Gust is amazing for when an enemy is trying to rez someone. Just blow them away. Or blow them off a cliff It’s 1200 range too. Oh and the Auras are amazing, like Westley states. Just the Fire one I really don’t like.

@ Flennel. It’s great to hear from someone who plays so many different classes and keeps them all at the same level. That’s what I did with my Warrior. I agree with everything you said. Every fight is a complete hassle and huge risk. On my Ele I would avoid any fight I didn’t absolutely need to engage in like the plague. On my Warrior, I killed absolutely everything in sight. I couldn’t believe how many items and money I was raking in.

@Westley. I like that idea of casting Stoning through ice Field. The only problem is the steep cooldown of Frozen Ground. 40 seconds reduced to 32 with trait. If Stoning was a bleed, and if there was a Water trait to increase the DURATION of Frozen Ground, then we’d really be in business. the damage of Stoning is just so terrible. But anyways, another thing you could do for that build is to use Glyphs of lesser and greater Elementals. You could throw up more frost fields when Frozen Ground is on cooldown with ice Elementals. Just something to try I suppose. As far as what you said about unstable Ground, I find Frozen Ground accomplishes the goal of slowing mobs much more efficiently, and keeps them slowed for a longer period of time. It is all due to it being a circle instead of a line, which I mentioned in the article. If unstable Ground was placed like Burning Retreat, in a vertical line instead of a horizontal line, that would be absolutely god-like.

@Olinn. I am aware that Eruption is a blast finisher. That is why whenever I am using Staff, I make sure to equip Arcane Wave. As to Flame Burst, like I said to Seraskus, Signet of Fire is vastly superior. You could use both, by all means. However, you would have to give something up. Signet of Earth for CC and landing Lava Fonts, Arcane Wave for having a blast finisher that is actually good, Mist Form for…living, Armor of Earth for Prot/Stability/Stun Break, Lesser Elementals for soloing or for healer duty. Seriously though, Flame Burst compared to Dragon’s Tooth (when tweaked), Drake’s breath, or Signet of Fire is just bad.

@Clackerr. Judging by your utilities and trait distribution, you are really really trying to make Ele work. I salute you. let me know how The Dagger/Focus works out.

Otiz, I’ll feed your fat troll mouth one more time before I go to bed. For someone who likes WvW, Staff is definitely not crap. For someone who likes to run dungeons, Staff is definitely not crap. And if it’s sPvP you’re concerned about, I would direct you to this video of Super Squad vs. Team Paradigm. The PoV is of a Staff Ele. They win by the way. So I’m gonna go ahead and say definitely not crap.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUjW6m7_qvY
And before you say the video is too old, here is his build. You can still trait the same way. There have been no significant changes since then, except perhaps the increased cooldowns on Arcane Blast and Wave, which he does not use.
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.7.0.0.0.27.0.0.0.2.9.11.17.24.1.6.8.0.0.0.18.0.0.33.0.0.48.46.0.64.65.68.0.10.10.20.30

Otiz, I don’t poorly manage attunement, I don’t get locked out, and I don’t wildly swap. I burned Staff cooldowns into my brain permanently. I don’t have an issue managing them, but an issue with the limiting cooldown length, and the way having to invest points into Arcane limits the amount of builds we have available to us. I don’t need to look up builds, because I have tried all of them in search of not sucking.

I would respect your opinion more if you had waited for me to actually post my entire article instead of trolling me halfway through without reading.

Thank you Razarei. I rolled my Warrior purely as a comparative experiment. it was definitely illuminating.

EDIT: @ Westley. I definitely agree with you on Air attunement. That’s the way it SHOULD be. However, since I find each of the Air Staff abilities so insanely useful, I could not justify changing them. After all, Staff is for support. But I could definitely handle Lightning Surge (the blind) doing a bit more damage, as well as our auto-attacks traveling a bit faster. The Fire one is very slow as well.

EDIT: @Marz. I actually considered making Dragon Punch a knockback. Whether it pushes you back or them back does not matter, as long as it puts you at that sweet spot for Blazing Speed. I don’t think ANet would go for another knockdown or knockback though, which is why I tried to make the ability have as little impact as possible CC-wise. I also wanted to utilize the under-used Earthquake (in the PvE burst combo at least). All of my changes are basically quality of life improvements to make leveling smoother and have as little impact on PvP as possible. After all that writing, I think the one change that would have the biggest impact would be a faster animation on Dragon’s Tooth. But if they adjust the damage accordingly, it will not be a problem.

This is the end of my list of 6 changes that would help the Elementalist greatly. Thank you for reading. I just wanted to touch on a couple things outside of the list before I finish up and post the TLDR.

A. Risk vs. Reward.

Elementalist has the lowest armor and lowest HP of all the classes. My Warrior has the highest armor and highest HP of all the classes. My Warrior will outdamage my Elementalist without even putting any points into traits. No matter what build I use with my Ele, weapons/traits/gear/utilities, doesn’t matter. If I trait and gear my Elementalist to be as tanky as possible, with 30 points into Water and 30 into Earth, I will still die much quicker than the Warrior, again without any points in traits. All glass and no cannon. If I’m going to be so fragile, and if my class takes so much more skill and micromanagement than other classes to play, there needs to be some kind of reward for that. Currently there is not. If anything, there is just punishment for picking the wrong class. I would be better off playing literally ANY other class. Good thing I got my Warrior.

B. Don’t Nerf Warrior.

In my list you heard me say things about Warrior traits, Hundred Blades, the Warrior’s killing speed, and I mention them in the Risk vs. Reward section above. That being said, I DO NOT want Warrior to be nerfed. This game feels like it was designed and balanced around Warrior. Leveling as one was an absolute joy and just felt right. You felt like a hero, and the PvE speed seemed very similar to other MMORPGS. I firmly believe that other classes need to be brought UP to this standard instead of the Warrior being brought DOWN. While leveling both characters, I came across maybe 5-6 Arenanet employees. Every one of them was playing Warrior. It’s just plain fun, and other classes need to be just as fun.

TLDR:

1. Some Ele abilities have animations that are WAY too long.

2. Attunement swapping is too punishing. The Arcane tree limits builds.

3. Traits that lower cooldowns by 20% have other bonuses on other classes. Ele does not.

4. Dagger/Dagger is crippled by long cooldowns.

5. Staff is cumbersome due to Lava Font mechanics and a lack of a good single target attack.

6. Some weapon abilities don’t fit the focus of the weapon and are either dead or subpar.

A. Highest Armor/Highest HP should not outdamage Lowest Armor/Lowest HP.

B. Don’t nerf Warrior. Use it as a standard to bring the other classes up to.

Thank you again for reading. I would love to hear from any fellow Elementalists on these issues, even if you do not agree with me. I won’t give up on the Elementalist, and neither should you.

6. Abilities that don’t fit weapon theme.

Each weapon set has a theme. This theme, or focus, is based on the abilities in that weapon set’s toolkit. Here is what the focus of these weapons are:

Staff: Long Range. Support, AOE, and CC

Scepter: Mid-Range. Condition damage

Dagger MH: Melee Range. Burst damage

Dagger OH: Extra melee burst, knockdowns, and travel

Focus: Pure defense

This is what the weapons focus on. However, many abilities in the weapon’s toolkits do not fit the theme. You have probably heard Elementalists say things like “well yeah we have more abilities because of the 4 attunements, but half of our abilities are garbage”. This is what they mean. Here is a list of abilities for each weapon that do not fit the theme and an explanation why.

Staff:
Flame Burst – Condition damage
Eruption – Condition damage

Burning Retreat and Shockwave are also condition damage as mentioned earlier, but as condition damage is not their purpose, they should be left as they are. I talked earlier about Flame Burst and Eruption in the Staff section, and don’t forget that Eruption is one of the slow animating abilities.

Scepter:
Scepter is different, because the only attunements that have condition damage are Fire and Earth. That being said, Phoenix is the only ability that doesn’t fit the theme. However, it should be noted that Scepter builds tend to focus on both power and condition damage. This is because Dragon’s Tooth does good chunks of both regular and condition damage. Also, Scepter condition builds tend to use Dagger offhand. This means Fire Grab for high non-condition damage, Ring of Fire for both regular and condition, Earthquake for regular damage, and Churning Earth (if it weren’t so incredibly slow) for high regular damage and high condition damage. So, as you can see, Scepter condition is a mixture of regular damage and condition damage, and needs both power and condition damage. Carrion gear is good for this. All that being said, it would be nice if Phoenix had a burn to it, but it is still a very useful ability with high damage when aimed correctly.

Dagger MH:
Drake’s Breath – Regular and condition damage
Burning Speed – Regular and condition damage
Ring of Earth – Regular and condition damage

It would benefit Dagger greatly if the condition damage were shifted over to regular damage. Dagger needs to focus more on power, precision, and crit multiplier to get a good burst.

Dagger OH:
Dagger OH is going to be used by both Scepter and Dagger builds, so it needs both regular and condition damage. It has both types of damage, has two knockdowns, and has the almighty Ride the Lightning. It manages to fit both themes very well while still having great utility, and in my opinion is probably the best designed weapon the Elementalist has access to. (for now)

Focus:
Focus is all about defense. Comet does fit the theme, as it has a daze bult in, but is one of the abilities with a slow animation as was mentioned in the first section. The only abilities that don’t fit the theme are the Fire abilities, which are decidedly lackluster:

Flame Wall – Make it so you can’t walk through it and we’re in business
Fire Shield – The lowest damage burn I have ever seen, plus the enemy gets to be right next to me, hitting me? That doesn’t sound very defensive. Or legit.

Lava Font normally has a 6 second cooldown, but can be lowered by 20% when traited to 4.8 seconds. It has a duration of 4 seconds. With 30 points into fire, you can get a trait that increases the duration of fire fields by 30%. So that bumps The duration up to 5.2 seconds. (keep in mind that you won’t be able to trait this until level 60) So that means with the 4.8 second cooldown along with the 5.2 second duration you will be able to have a Lava Font up all the time, right? Wrong! There is a “startup” to Lava Font. It is hard to explain, but it puts a gap of 1-2 seconds where there is no lava Font down. Well, so much for that.

This “startup” to Lava Font messes with killing efficiency in a big way. And here’s why. You need to immobilize your target to get the most out of Lava Font. You have two possible ways to immobilize. One is Shockwave in Earth Attunement. This is a 2 second immobilize, and if you have 30 points into Fire, it gets bumped up to 2.6 seconds. I bet you can already see the problem. With lava Font’s “startup” time, you would be lucky to get one second’s worth of Lava Font damage. Well, how about our other option? That would be the utility skill Signet of Earth. This immobilize lasts 3 seconds, and with 30 points in Fire it would last 3.9 seconds. This one is a little better, but you would still only get about half a Lava Font. If you combine both immobilizes, you can get off a full Lava Font. However, both of these are 30 second cooldowns each, and with two separate traits can be lowered to 24 seconds apiece. To get both these traits would require 20 points in Earth. So 30 points in Fire and 20 points in Earth to land a single Lava Font. Sounds legit.

This is why I propose a change to the Lava Font skill. My change is extremely simple, but would help Staff Ele in a BIG way. And here it is. Lava Bomb. This would look like Lava Font and be placed like Lava Font, but it would be, in essence, a proximity mine. Instead of dancing around a mob to get them to walk on Lava Font (after you’ve given up on your immobilizes) for a tick or two of damage, you would kite the mob to the mine and it would detonate. Not ticking for damage, but exploding and doing it’s damage all at once. I’m sure the damage would have to be retuned, but you understand what I’m getting at. It would still do good damage like Lava Font can potentially do. It would still be able to AOE multiple mobs/players. And it would still be a deterrent and a tool for “zone control” in WvW and structured.

Now I said I would talk more about Unsteady Ground. Essentially I would change it to be a circle instead of a line, be a 240 radius, which is the same size as Frozen Ground, and have it cripple for 1 second instead of 2, since it has much more surface area. I would make it tick for damage like the old Lava Font, but not as much since it has the cripple element. It’s Damage would be somewhere between the current Unsteady Ground and Lava Font. That would make this ability much more useful, as well somewhat fill the role of Lava Font “ticking” for damage. Also, having cripple being applied would help keep the target in the field.

The last ability I will talk about is the Fire 3 skill, Flame Burst. This is a single target long range crappy burn. As a Staff Ele, what was really missing from the toolkit was a long range single target damaging skill. It’s sad, but aside from auto-attacks there are none whatsoever. Staff needs one badly, so that’s what I would put in place of Flame Burst. I would make it an attack very similar to Fire auto-attack (Fireball). It would be single target, explode in a small AOE on impact, have a 5-8 second cooldown, and be about 3 times as powerful as Fireball. You could even use the same animation as Fireball, just sized up a bit. I wouldn’t even care.

So to fix Staff three things are needed:
A. Lava Font changed to Lava Bomb
B. Flame Burst changed to Fireball 2.0
C. Unsteady Ground changed from line to circle with better ticking damage

A and B are absolutely imperative. C would be great but is not nearly as important as A and B.

5. Staff Issues.

I love using Staff on Ele. I leveled from 1-60 using only Staff because I wanted to program it’s cooldowns into my brain for WvW. At 60 I couldn’t take it anymore, and had to explore other weapon setups and builds to find a more efficient way to level. So let’s talk Staff attunements for a moment.

Air: Air is perfect. Every ability is extremely useful. It’s a great mix of support and control, and I wouldn’t change a thing.

Water: Water is nearly perfect. The only thing I would change is the number 2 skill, Ice Spike. It is one of the slow animation skills I mentioned in the first section. Other than that, I wouldn’t change a thing. A ton of support with a little control too.

Earth: Earth has Eruption, which is another one of the slow animating skills. God is this thing slow. Plus it’s almost completely bleed damage. This would be great on a Scepter, but not a Staff. Staff isn’t about conditions. I will talk more about why in the next section. I would change eruption to do regular damage, plus a knock back. It is an Eruption, after all.

Magnetic Aura is great, as is Shockwave. The fact that Shockwave has bleed damage doesn’t bother me because it is more about the immobilize than anything else.

Unsteady Ground I am not a fan of. In PvE the mobs get through it too quickly, and in PvP it’s very easy to just roll past. In fact, it seems almost fun for people to roll past it like a limbo contest or something. I would make it a circle instead of a line, and adjust the cripple if necessary. I would also make it tick for a decent amount of damage, like Lava Font, but more about that after we get through these attunements.

Fire: Lava Font I would absolutely change, but I’ll get to that. Flame burst is a crappy burn. I would replace it completely. More on that next. Burning Retreat is burn damage, but it doesn’t bother me because it’s a gap opener, plus it has invincibility frames like a dodge. Good ability. That brings us to Meteor Shower. This ability is awesome in WvW, and terrible in pretty much every other aspect of play. I would just leave it.

Ok so what you need to realize about staff is that the heals are great, the CC is great, but the damage is terrible. This makes killing mobs a huge hassle. The problem is that Staff just doesn’t have any good reliable damaging abilities. Your best bet is Lava Font. This is your highest damaging ability. The problem is, you need to get the mob to stay on the Lava Font and take all the ticking damage. This is tricky to do because of the mechanics of Lava Font.

So, as you can see, the cooldowns are pretty severe for killing mobs. If you had a killstreak buff up, you would not be able to do this combo to kill a mob every 30 seconds because of the cooldowns of Updraft and Fire Grab. The Arcane abilities actually used to be on lower cooldowns but were nerfed in beta for whatever reason. It doesn’t make sense because the burst of this build is not limited by the cooldowns of the Arcane abilities nearly as much as the cooldowns of Updraft and Fire Grab.

I would also like to talk about the Fire 2 skill, because I believe changing it could provide an opportunity to not only replace it with a better skill, but provide another combo utilizing Earthquake, your other knockdown. First of all, why is Updraft used over Earthquake?

It is because:
A. To start the combo, a knockdown is needed. Ride the Lightning helps you get close to knock down with Updraft and start it. Ride the Lightning and Updraft are both in Air Attunement.
B. Updraft has you do a little backflip away from your target when you execute it. This puts you at the perfect distance to follow up with Blazing Speed and the rest of the combo.

Dagger/Dagger is about burst, not conditions. More about that later. Here is my proposal for a change to Drake’s Breath.

Dragon Punch
Punch the ground beneath you (or the target) for medium PBAOE damage and propel yourself backwards a short distance. (setting you up for Blazing Speed)

Ok let me explain why this would be good. Say you have already done the combo I listed earlier which uses Updraft. You want to kill something else but updraft is on cooldown. Normally using Earthquake would be less than optimal because it doesn’t set you up for Blazing Speed like Updraft does, But with Dragon Punch propelling you backwards after Earthquake, you would be able to follow up with Blazing speed. Here is the Updraft combo listed above:

“Your combo for killing something with daggers is as follows: Start in Air. Ride the Lightning to the mob and Updraft to knock it down. Switch to Fire. Burning speed to the mob (Updraft moves you back, Burning speed moves you forward the right distance), use Ring of Fire, Arcane Wave for the damage and might, Arcane Blast for more damage and possibly catch the projectile on fire from your Ring of Fire depending on mob/ring orientation, and finish it up with a Fire grab, which will do more damage if your enemy is on fire, which it will be from the Burning Speed.”

And here is the alternate combo using Earthquake in place of Updraft:

“Your (alternate) combo for killing something with daggers is as follows: Start in Air. Ride the Lightning to the mob. Switch to Earth and knock down with Earthquake. Switch to Fire. Dragon Punch back and Burning speed to the mob (Dragon Punch moves you back, Burning speed moves you forward the right distance), use Ring of Fire, Arcane Wave for the damage and might, Arcane Blast for more damage and possibly catch the projectile on fire from your Ring of Fire depending on mob/ring orientation, and finish it up with a Fire grab, which will do more damage if your enemy is on fire, which it will be from the Burning Speed.”

Dragon Punch would allow for a lot more versatility and cooldown independence without lowering the cooldown times of our knockdowns, which could lead to potential balance issues. If Dragon Punch were implemented, the only things needing to be tweaked would be the cooldown of Fire Grab, which is your finisher and an extremely important part of both combos, and the cooldown of Arcane Wave brought down to 20 seconds from 30.

So to fix Dagger/Dagger three things are needed:
A. Dragon Punch
B. Lower Fire Grab cooldown to 20 second base
C. Lower Arcane Wave cooldown to 20 second base

3. 20% woes.
Hey non-Elementalists. Does your class have traits to lower cooldowns with certain weapons by 20%? It does? Do one or more of those traits have some other bonus to go along with that 20% cooldown reduction? They do? Let’s look at some warrior traits, shall we? All of these traits lower the cooldown of their respective weapons by 20%. I am just going to list the extra effects.

Great Sword and Spear: Might on crit (Hundred Blades a group of mobs and see what happens)
Rifle: Shots pierce multiple mobs (insane)
Mace: +10% damage to weakened foe
Shield: +90 toughness
Hammer: +25% damage to disabled foe
Warhorn: Converts a condition to a boon

Remember folks, those effects are on TOP of the 20% cooldown reduction of their respective weapons. The Elementalist’s cooldown reduction traits aren’t aimed at weapons though. Aside from Arcane, they are aimed at attunements. Understandable, right? Let’s take a look at the bonuses of those traits, shall we?

Fire:
Air:
Earth:
Water:
Arcane:

Not a typo. There are no bonuses. Gotcha. Joke’s on you, and totally not on me, the Elementalist. I would also like to add that since you are switching between 4 attunements, and not 2 weapon sets, you are getting even less for each of the already lackluster cooldown reduction traits, half as much, in fact. And it’s not even possible to trait all your attunements like another class would be able trait both weapon sets. To get all 20% reduction traits for Elementalist you would need 90 trait points.

4. Dagger Issues.
Daggers have good burst. The problem is the cooldowns of key abilities are too long. This makes you useless in between kills, or if you aggro more mobs between combos. This would be the best spec for leveling and killing mobs efficiently, except the cooldowns make it inefficient. I will explain how.

Your combo for killing something with daggers is as follows: Start in Air. Ride the Lightning to the mob and Updraft to knock it down. Switch to Fire. Burning speed to the mob (Updraft moves you back, Burning speed moves you forward the right distance), use Ring of Fire, Arcane Wave for the damage and might, Arcane Blast for more damage and possibly catch the projectile on fire from your Ring of Fire depending on mob/ring orientation, and finish it up with a Fire grab, which will do more damage if your enemy is on fire, which it will be from the Burning Speed.

That is a lot of things happening all at once, and that whole combo is executed in just a few seconds. If you have the right traits, gear, and execute it properly you will likely kill the mob. Try not to think of how a Warrior will just have to press “2” for Hundred Blades and do just as much, if not more damage. You need to stay strong. The problem with this rotation is that Hundred Blades has an 8 second cooldown (6.5 seconds with trait) and the dagger/dagger rotation has these cooldowns:

Ride the Lightning: 15s (12s traited)
Updraft: 40s (32s)
Burning Speed: 15s (12s)
Ring of Fire: 15s (12s)
Arcane Wave: 30s (24s)
Arcane Blast: 20s (16s)
Fire Grab: 45s (36s)

Hello everyone. My name is Munchkin, and my main is an Elementalist. I have been playing Ele since beta and I love the class, but it needs help. I see that even more clearly after playing Warrior extensively. I propose to you this list of six changes that would help the Elementalist greatly and be very simple to implement. I will post a TLDR at the end, because even though it is a short list of only six changes, I try to explain exactly why the changes are needed and how they would be implemented. Let’s get started.

1. Long animation abilities.
There are some Ele abilities that would be good but have animations that are WAY too long. I would recommend cutting the animation time in half at least. If damage needs to be adjusted to account for the faster animations, so be it. The abilities are Dragon’s Tooth (Scepter), Shatterstone (Scepter), Ice Spike (Staff), Eruption (Staff), Churning Earth (OH Dagger), and Comet (Focus).

2. Attunement Swapping.
The cooldown on attunements when swapping to another is WAY too severe, and lowers the amount of viable trait builds that the Elementalist has. Here is what I mean. Say you were in Fire attunement. You swap to Air. That puts your Fire attunement on a 15 second cooldown, regardless of whether or not you are in combat. On classes with a weapon swap, there is no cooldown when out of combat, and in combat the cooldown is 10 seconds.

But wait, isn’t there a way to lower the cooldown? Why yes, there is. Putting points into the Arcane tree does two things, as do all trees. It increases boon duration, as well as lowering that nasty 15 second cooldown. How much, you ask? Well if you put a whopping 30 points into the Arcane tree, you will lower that cooldown to 10 seconds, the same as a weapon swap. This is a problem. Just to “break even” you need to put 30 points into a tree that you may not necessarily even want to put points into. Lowering the cooldown is THAT important. This is why Elementalists have so few viable builds. I don’t like the Arcane tree at all, but I won’t even consider a build that doesn’t put at least 20 points into it.

The necessity for every build to invest heavily into the Arcane tree is extremely limiting. My suggestion for this would be to make it a base 10 seconds just like weapon swaps. This would open up many more builds.

A confirmation dialogue when put in overflow is not necessary. Just tell me.

Please allow equipment previewing from the trading company.

Enough with the death camera. If I am dead, and have not released, it is because I am waiting to be resurrected. I am watching what is going on, and what other players are doing. I don’t need the camera to be readjusted to focus on my corpse and rotate literally every 5 seconds. Infuriating.

Knockdown time is incredibly inconsistant. My knockdowns are short, very short. Some mobs are the same. Other mobs are medium, and some have agonizingly long knockdowns. I would suggest normalization for sure.

Please prioritize looting over talking to an NPC, especially if the NPC does not have a relevant function when talked to.

I don’t want to rez Ranger pets. Please. Stop.

I would like to see credit given for healing in WvW. As far as loot and exp goes. I think it’s a good thing to encourage.

An option to display HP bars of friendly non-party members would be great. Right now you can see them but need to mouse over each person. Can you tell I’m a healer?

When using an ability and not having the target in your field of view, or having the enemy move out of your field of view, or being obstructed by an obstacle, the ability is used up and put on full cooldown. I think a short cooldown would be less severe, such as 1-2 seconds, since the ability did’t even get used.

Right now, gear that you can buy from Renown heart vendors for karma is not worth purchasing. This is because any sigil, rune, or jewel (or other item such as gems from mining or those squares) you slot into the gear is lost forever, as you cannot salvage the gear. I can understand why the gear should not be sellable to merchants, but the gear needs to be salvagable or it is garbage.

Equipment profiles would be amazing. Only swappable out of combat, but allowing to swap sets of weapons/armor without having to drag and drop every piece. With hotkeys of course. This Would not imbalance anything, but would just be a quality of life improvement.

Right clicking selects things, and selects mobs all the time. I use right click almost all the time to move the camera. The fact that right clicking selects things makes it feel like I keep losing target, when it’s just the fact that “right click clicks”. Please change this.

I would love an option where I didn’t have to hold right click all the time. Like have mouse look on unless a toggle key is pressed, at which point it would switch to cursor. Then press toggle again to switch back to mouse look. Tera had a system like this. I know some people have made macros/mods for this, but I haven’t used them because I’m afraid of getting banned.

The whisper menu is awkward. The different fields you need to tab or click between are unnecessary. /w name message is the way to go.

The WvW map is cumbersome. I suggest having multiple tabs for the different maps, so that one big map of your current battleground can be displayed that shows all location names when zoomed fully out.

Boss monster events scale very well depending on how many players are present. Events that spawn multiple regular mobs are killed so quickly by larger groups that it is sometimes impossible to even tag a mob. I suggest scaling health of these mobs like is done with boss mobs.

I like the auto attack option, but it gets me in trouble when traveling places with abilities such as Ride the Lightning and Rush. Auto attack is very useful during Dynamic Events especially. I would like an option for auto attack just on your #1 skill. This option would be so amazing for me.

GW2 is supposed to allow friends to play together nomatter their level, and this is the case. However, they are limited by renown hearts. Just like any other MMORPG, you can only quest together if you are at the same or similar point in quest progression. What I mean is if I am half done with a zone, and my friend has not done the zone, I am not going to want to quest with him because I gain nothing by redoing renown hearts. The solution for this is very simple. Partial credit (half seems about right) for redoing renown hearts. I have solo quested two characters even though I am in a guild because of this very issue. This fix would bring people together.

WvW ques are ridiculous. 3-4 hours waiting is not acceptable. Trying to get 5-10 of my guildies in a BG is a nightmare.

Getting disconnected during WvW should not kick you out. There needs to be a grace period to get back in so I don’t have to wait another 3-4 hours.

Since Orr Karma has been nerfed to have harsh diminishing returns, players have been turning to WvW for Karma. This would not be a problem were it not for the fact that they are not helping. I’ve seen large guilds going all over the map, killing veteran mobs, killing centaurs and skritt and all the PvE nonsense, and not every helping attack or defend any location whatsoever. This keeps people out of the battleground who actually want to fight, hurts the server, and contributes to the large aforementioned ques.

Please display the affected area of renown hearts on the map.

Sometimes the sound of your abilities cuts out temporarily. I have had this happen on multiple classes.

Since the last patch, many Dynamic Events have become broken, most of them being escort events. I think every single escort event I have seen since the patch was broken. A few Renown hearts and Skill Point Challenges were broken that functioned prior to the patch.

Since the last patch, I have noticed missing voiceovers, both in the personal story dialogue screen, as well as just in the normal world. Chunks of voice acting just seem to be missing.

Equipment that has been hidden is still displayed in character select.

When you AFK and are timed out to character select, your character level is displayed as the level you were at the beginning of your play session.

The Warrior Greatsword ability “whirlwind” has a targeting arrow when casting. This stays up after the ability has been used.

Abilities that move you to a mob or location such as “Ride the Lightning” and “Rush” have a tendency to just not work correctly. They have trouble tracking target, and sometimes get stuck and just sort of “hover” there.

Sometimes the cursor will disappear when using ground target AOEs and when salvaging items.

Mist form is supposed to be a stun breaker. Sometimes it does not break stuns at all.

If you are in an overflow and press B to see the different WvW maps, you cannot see the names of them. It will say “unknown borderlands” x3, and eternal battlegrounds.

I did three dragon fights yesterday on my elementalist. I attacked the dragons the entire time, did not die, and even healed people. However, I did not receive any credit whatsoever. No exp, no treasure chest. All three times.

After a dragon dies, players in the area are kept in combat long after the dragon is gone.

When reading mail sent for completing a Renown Heart, sometimes the mail will not mark as read even though it has been read.

In the Vigil personal story quest where you check out the sewers beneath Lion’s Arch, Forgal and mobs will swim through the tunnel walls.

When a quest has a special ore that must be mined, outside of regular ores that would yield copper or iron etc, your character swings their pickaxe the wrong way.

Elementalist will randomly attack nearby mobs when switching attunements or using some abilities.

The Elementalist Lightning Attunement Scepter ability “Arc Lightning” has a tendency to stay activated even when switching to other attunements.