Guild Wars 2

Maguma got a massive point and morale lead from a few invulnerable keeps last weekend. One of them was the garrison on Ebay borderlands, so Ebay basically gave up this week numbers wise. I think Ebay had 5 people, total on Yak’s borderlands last night?

As far as we know, move-speed does not stack. You simply get the largest increase, and ignore the rest. This includes swiftness, which is 33% (or 40% with the Superior Rune of Speed).

My biggest gripe right now is that ele is unrewarded for going pure damage compared to other classes.

A general buff to the power ratios on some skills would be great.

Steam focus (Charr T1 cultural) has a neat glowing blue core that leaves a trail behind you.

“the fiery greatsword requires putting myself in Melee range”

You obviously haven’t tried it at all, because the 1 2 and 5 skill are ranged.

1 is also piercing; it is crazy damage.

Also, another point:

Ride the Lightning:
Updraft:
Burning Speed:
Ring of Fire:
Arcane Wave:
Arcane Blast:
Fire Grab:

This combo, which is considered our only direct damage combo (in fact I have seen it independently arise in a few communities), is actually proof that eles want (or even need!) more direct damage that scales off power/precision/critdamage.

If you notice, every skill there except ring of fire is a high cooldown, but also HIGH SCALING direct damage ability. Ring of fire is really only there for the might and to get burning to increase the SCALING of fire grab.

Every other class has reliable, low cooldown combos that are direct damage. Eles, instead, get a 30+second combo that uses two atunements and TWO UTILITY SLOTS, because we have no other direct damage that scales at all.

I still standby my opinion that what elementalist really needs is direct, non condition damage that SCALES, and is somewhere other than the fiery greatsword autoattack. The scaling is key; if an ability is direct damage, and scales well with power, then the power/precision/critdamage trifecta can multiplicitively interact, making glass cannons usefully powerful. (See heartseeker thief for a ridiculous example, or a ranged AD in LoL more generally) Condition damage scales linearly in damage, so condition damage is strictly lower in a glass cannon build as a consequence.

Look at our skills, and you will realize that water generally has low damage but good heals and control and earth has tons of bleeds and movement controls. Both of these are the basis of the only viable builds currently.

Fire has an identity crisis, where a ton of its potential direct damage is shunted to burning, which conflicts with any multilayer situation, since burns don’t stack. It at least still fits the bill for aoe generally, like it is supposed to.

Air, our “high damage” atunement, and the only one with no condition damage (or healing) is flatly the lowest damage we have outside water.
Lightning whip is melee, single target, and deals less than 2/3 the damage of dragon’s claw. (impale does slightly less, but then gets over DOUBLE the total damage accounting for the bleed!)
Chain lightning deals 2/3 the damage of fireball, even through it can hit the exact same number of targets
Scepter is even sadder, with ICE SHARD dealing literally double the damage of arc lightning, even ignoring the fact that arc lightning has a duration of 3 seconds! What about lightning strike? Even including it in the dps numbers puts ice shards ahead!

We can’t ignore the rest of the skills though, but right…… air gets the least number of damaging skills! 2 on staff, 2 on scepter/focus, and 3 on dagger/dagger. Fire gets 5, 4, and 5, water 2, 4, 3, and earth 4, 4, and 5. That’s right, air atunement depends on autoatacks the most, and it gets the weakest ones barring those with other effects like healing or cripple.

So THERE is our problem, our HIGH DIRECT DAMAGE atunement deals the worst damage out of the four……

Speed increases do not stack (including swiftness!).

IE you get the biggest increase and ONLY the biggest increase. Yes that makes a significant number of Ele traits and skills completely pointless.

I feel like ele’s main problem right now is that our direct damage abilities (IE, not condition damage) scale extremely poorly compared to other classes. This becomes a real problem when you consider the multiplicative effects of power+precision+crit damage, leading to the 3k vs 5k crit woes mentioned above. When you consider our low health pool, the difference only gets relatively larger.

I have no problem with being a squishy class, so long as it is possible for me to do massive damage if I spec for it.