Guild Wars 2

Lampshade.7569:

Staff is fine
if mobs you kill,
all this whine
takes zero skill.

Esport dreams now come around,
sparked by petty greed,
but we rise and stand our ground,
so our warning heed:

Take a dagger,
get stuff done,
but don’t rush
to ruin our fun.

A lot of changes proposed do not even affect PvE. PvE rotation is Lava Font, Fireball and Overload Fire.

reikken.4961:

hammer has more dps than shield by my tests. but only slightly.

and lighting whip has higher dps than either…

Speaking of designs. It seems to be more randomly effective or ineffective than intentionnal.

reikken.4961:

they’re “ineffective” intentionally

I think you put anet designer too high in your esteem. Weapons have not been looked at for a very, very long while. Just look at Conjured Weapon auto-attacks for instance.

Lightning Hammer would seem to be designed to have a better auto-attack than any conjured weapon. But it is not true. Earth Shield auto-attack dps is higher when counting aftercasts and true animations. I don’t believe that Earth Shield was designed to have a higher dps than Hammer.

As for staff being “designed to be ineffective”: it has never been stated as such, or I missed the statement. It just happened to be inneffective and was never fixed because the support side of it is fine.

Are those numbers bugged?

Indeed. I am noticing enormous drops of health for pulmanory strikes.

Timelord.8190:

The skill is bugged, it’s supposed to have insta cast, if you look at the tooltip. But there is a hidden timer on it, and also cancels out alot when you cast other things after.
It’s rly clunky.

Made a thread about it a year ago. Got only one reply, so ofc the devs won’t bother with it. :P

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Skill-which-cancels-out/first#post4430781

You need to give more details when reporting a bug, or give a video when it is complicated. Otherwise, it is hard to understand, especially when the bug breaks the common sense.

Earth 4 needs to keep it skillful component, so I do not agree with that change.

I do not agree with the gust change either. A line of air seemed reasonable.

Earth 3 should send condition away instead of granting resistance.

Air 5. The static charges could be an extra tick of damage upon being struck while inside the field, though, I would be careful when adding too much stuff.

Pick one : Either improve usability of the Ice Spike and Eruption, or improve usability of auto-attacks.

Please do note that Tempest Defense only works on Dazes, Knockdowns and Stuns.

Tornado is neither of them and does not benefit from Tempest Defense, nor does the Lightning Rod following it.

Additionnally, the Hammer 2’s leap Finisher inside a Air field will not benefit from the Daze’s damage increase for the attack itself, but it will do for the Lightning Rod following.

Consider Earth Shield instead of the garbage hammer. And Tempest + Conjures have a good synergy. Keep going with your build; leave Tornado behind and it will be viable (but not meta). Lightning Hammer is a big gamble and you cannot move while casting the Static Field (also centered on you).

Sigil of Impact is not as good as you think. Don’t break your head and go for Blood Sigil.

Diamond Skin was greatly helping Tempests against Reapers. Without Diamond Skin, it was very difficult to beat Reapers of equal ability; or near impossible (I know that; I did not use Diamond Skin). Tempest got some nerfs and Reapers got some buffs. So that’s the situation.

I am fine with Lava Font having the small AoE.

I have never thought of having this “Executioner” feel to Lightning Surge and I think that I like it. Could it grant additionnal conditions depending on how low the target is? Under 75%, 5 vulnerability in the area; under 50% weakness for 4 seconds, and 5 vulnerability in the area; under 25%, 10 vulnerability, weakness for 4 seconds in the area. Downstate are considerated under 25%.

reikken.4961:

staff is a support weapon. the damage skills are not good on their own in pvp settings, but it has nice utility

No it is not. “Staff is a support weapon” because the offensive parts of it, which are significant, are simply flawed and ineffective, hence why it is called a “support weapon”.

I observe that Elementalists are dependant on their offensive trait lines to commit into a damaging role. This works for Staff and Scepter I believe. For staff, which I know perfectly well, the damage option available is Lightning Rod. Don’t expect to deal damage with Lava Font, Eruption or Ice Spike and auto-attacks since players move out of these.

The difficulty to deal upfront damage, at least with staff, always forced elementalist into a supportive role. Supportive roles on staff did not have this issue because the kit is good at that: water fields, AoE crowd-control abilities. The supportive abilities always concealed the major flaws in that weapon set.

There are a few quality of life and improvements to do for staff. Some cooldowns are too long for the power of the abilities. Some skills feel empty and have high cooldowns (Frozen Ground, Windborne Speed, Gust, Magnetic Aura).

Here is a few solutions that may be implimented.

1. Lava Font: Immediate first tick of damage instead of a 1 second delay.
2. Windborne Speed: Make it cleanse Slow; remove the cast time; reduce the cooldown by 5 seconds.
3. Gust: Reduce the cooldown; Improve velocity and width of the skill; increase the duration of the crowd control. Allow targets pushed toward Unsteady Ground to be knocked down upon contact of the line as it does for Static Field.
4. Lightning Surge: Reduce the cooldown to 5 seconds from 10 seconds to better match the cooldown with Fresh Air. Cast time feels rewarding as it is.
5. Ice Spike: Is it too much to ask for a Blast Finisher?
6. Frozen Ground: Increase duration to 6 seconds, up from 5 seconds to allow more time for Eruption to blast on the field.
7. Healing Rain: Reduce cast time to 3/4 seconds down from 1.5 seconds. Reduce cooldown to 40 seconds from 45 seconds.
8. Magnetic Aura: Reduce cooldown to 25 seconds from 30. Send one condition back to foes in a 300 radius upon casting.
9. Shockwave: Reduction cooldown to 20 seconds, down from 30 seconds. Greatly reduce the aftercast to allow continuous casting after casting Shockwave. Improve the power ratio of the ability. Change the bleeding stacks to 3 from 1 while reducing the duration to 8 seconds, down from 20.
10. Unsteady Ground: Allow targets pushed toward Unsteady Ground to be knocked down upon contact of the line.

Another big issue with the Elementalist is that the old premise of “having many weapons skill that are doing less than other classes weapon skill” is not unique anymore. Just look at Revenants who never runs out of cooldowns when it cycles through abilities. This could be adjusted by giving a few more utilities to spells.

Tempest Defense grants increased damage (20%) to Stunned or Knocked-Down foes (works with Daze too, but not on tooltip).

1.There might be some issues. Warhorn has no source of Stuns or Knock-Down. In fact, it only has Pull or Knockback. As a result, these sources of damaging CCs do not benefit from this trait; nor does Lightning Rod on their case. Earth Shield pull

2.Additionnally, Lightning Rod damage is not increased when target is knocked-downed by Unsteady Ground (Earth 4).

3. Dazes from Air Leap Finishers do not apply the damage increase on the ability doing the Leap (lightning hammer 2, Flame Axe 5), but it does increase the damage on Lightning Rod.

So, to conclude.

Tempest Defense does increase damage of Lighting Rod (nor does it increase the damage of the ability causing the disable) when procced fromn the following spells : Gust, Unsteady Ground, Magnetic Shield, Updraft, Tidal Surge, Cyclone, Tornado…

There are a few bugs on Blinding Ashes that make the trait stronger than it is intended to be. Blinding Ashes is the Fire Grandmaster trait on Elementalist that Blinds when burning a foe (8 seconds ICD).

1. Blinding Ashes applies blind in AoE to multiple targets when those targets are burned simultaneously by the same ability. For instance, Flame burst hitting multiple foes, or Ring of Fire hitting multiple foes at the same time.

On the video, I will be using Flame Burst (Staff 3). 5 of the golems will be applied burning from it then blind from Blinding Ashes, which is an unintended feature. Following that, I will be using “Feel the Burn!” to confirm that this Blinding behavior is unintended. In fact, only one golem is affected by blind.

Video: http://www.twitch.tv/aleriedespins/v/38120077

2. The Blind from Blinding Ashes is longer than on the tooltip. The blind condition is supposed to last 4 seconds, but it actually lasts 4 additionnal seconds for every stacks of burn of the ability. Flame Burst applies 2 burn, so 8 seconds of blind. Feel the Burn applies 1 burn= 4 seconds of blind. Cleansing Fire = 12 seconds of blind.

I also reported the bug on the /bug report application in-game. I am simply sharing it with the community.

Which existing builds are you trying to compliment with those changes?

You do know that Burning Fiend’s 3 stack of burning for 0.25 seconds is the equivalent of 1 stack for 1 seconds, right?

What are you tryin got achieve with 1.5 seconds of quickness on elementalist due to a random proc every 25 seconds?

major grandmaster tier: Magma’s Link
Grant Fire Aura when you gain Magnetic Aura.
Apply blind at location to foes at last thick of Fire Aura. 8s cd.
Apply weakness at location to foes at end of Magnetic Aura. 16s cd.

^You have removed the might gains from One with Fire; what’s the point of wanting Fire Aura?

Your traits are too focused on a burning “mini-game”. Elementalists don’t have time to do this in combat.

Tempest was only there because it could heal bunker mesmers and viper revenant on last mesmer. And they were easily replaced by Scrappers in that matter.

And in WvW, they are good because of water and fired fields and CC without target limits.

In PvE, they are good because fields with AI staying immobile or barely moving out of the fields.

Yeah. Would make the staff more dynamic.

Not working with Warhorn CCs. (Pulls and Knockbacks)

Unsteady Ground, Gust, Magnetic Shield (pull) are not considered in the damage increase of Tempest Defense (When target is Stunned or Knockdowned) upon landing Lightning Rod.

It works on Daze, Knockdowns and Stuns for now.

I can post video if needed.

“Overload Earth: Fixed a bug that caused this overload to deliver extra protection per pulse rather than the intended 1 second per pulse. Fixed a bug that caused the lingering damage to follow the elementalist around after the overload had completed.”

… Maybe it is time to buff Hardy Conduit to at least cover the full channel with protection? But honestly, everyone hates Tempest now and everything goes into deaf ears when claiming that those are over-nerfs.

Sunshine.5014:

Alekt.5803:

bumping for visibility

Good job Alekt! Everyone loves to see what you had been pushing got fixed!

Hey. I never thought it would result in a 80% protection uptime loss.

Hammerguard.9834:

I don’t remember Druids being able to give 40 seconds AoE protection before a match even started.

It’s not about what you remember. Now, it’s not giving any lasting protection to allies.

Tempest protection uptime went down the drain with the bug fix of Earth Overload, down to 7 seconds protection (full channel; full stay on AoE) from 25. Though, the protection uptime of Druid was kept untouched. What is this about?

Putting this back to the conversation.

Unblockable Gale, what?… That’s broken.

Overload Earth’s protection duration for reduced drammatically from 20+ seconds to 8 ish seconds (Protection is gone when overload is at 12 seconds cooldown).

Please don’t be surprised if you cannot maintain a proper amount of protection without Elemental Shielding or Arcane.

Let’s not forget how Overload Earth’s protection duration for reduced drammatically from 20+ seconds to 8 ish seconds (Protection is gone when overload is at 12 seconds cooldown).

Please help us with buffing duration of Hardy Conduits.

Disregard anything that I may have said about Diamond Skin. It is “when struck”, making the trait garbage tier. To keep a threshold, you do not want to get hit, so the trait is dangerously inneffective and counters itself.

I have this.

http://www.twitch.tv/aleriedespins/v/37680678

One thing is sure: don’t expect to bunker elementalist anymore once the patch hit.

If pets are doing so much from the result of hitting (Bristle being ranged; Smokescale having a blink attack), maybe the other pets should be have reworks to get to their level.

Gust is a multi-hit actually. It’s just extremely small. Though, there was a time when it would be a single target and would never miss (homing projectile).

I would trade stoning for Stone Shards anytime. You also need to consider the chance to hit on the auto-attack, the auto-attack rating, the speed of the projectile, is it even a projectile?

Eurantien.4632:

You can just kill the bristleback… then you don’t have to fight it for a full minute. You can kill a druid in a minute… this is a learn to play issue.

I tried to reflect the bristleback spike barrage. Sadly, it only reflected to deal 60 to 90 damage (crits), down from 1200 on me. I also tried the Air Overload (I am marauder Tempest), and, it would not cleave down the pet either. And if I try focusing the pet, I am worried that I won’t be able to ‘block’ the Smokescale’s knockdown (which deals 6k crits and is unblockable). Hey, most of the time, the druid simply recalls the pet, and I lost so many cooldowns that I need to bail out.

Recalling pet is not too hard. It’s instant just like swapping to Earth Attunement.

I only play staff; not interested with the other weapons.

I agree with that message. It is silly to have Devs openly encouraging to report for “Botting” when the player is obviously doing something else.

Yashuoa.9527:

[u]
3.
Make Ferocious winds in air specialisation, give a lot more ferocity from precision in pvp than pve. From 7% to 40% or so (can cap it so that you cant get over a certain number combined with amulets and such, if one were to use Marauder for example).

7% is clearly not enough. At 7% conversion, it never beats Assassin’s Presence (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Assassin's_Presence), which grants 150 ferocity to nearby allies at 600 radius when in combat. Additionnally, Ferocious Winds is a trait inside the offensive line of a tier 3 hp + light armored class; technically the most squishy you can be. Ferocious Wind is without a doubt a lackluster trait. But, to push it to 40% conversion (while giving a slap to the face to the players who play marauder amulet) is not the way to go. 10 % conversion seems good enough for ferocity; then I another 10% conversion could be added where precision turns into additional healing power.

I am not a fan of elementalist deviating from their main elements; burning and bleeding.

A few considerations.

Look at the trait Earthen Blast. It was arguably weaker than Sunspot before Sunspot got redesigned to grant a Fire Aura. Yet, Earthen Blast has remained the same over time. I say that they should add a unique effect. High bleeding on a short duration for burst condition. 3 bleeding stacks for 3 seconds; or 5 bleeding stacks for 2 seconds.

Serrated Stones. The idea about Cripple and Bleed seems to have catched up. When bleeding(ICD), apply cripple; when crippling, apply bleed (ICD). Increased damage on bleeding foes, increased critical chance on crippled foes. Cripple and bleeding duration.

Strenght of Stones will need some rework with the removal of settler amulet. Thematic conditions to earth is bleed, cripple, weakness. I’d also like to see more power oriented traits on earth. Such trait could even give a power ratio to bleed.

Fluffball.8307:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Don’t get your hopes up, kid.

It’s not polite to refer to people as “kid”, particularly when they’re likely twice your age. The more you know…

Better listen anyway. It’s probably going to be 99% of the changes.

Seems very interesting and brings a rewarding “mini game” to the water attunement. Especially Ice Spike, which can deal an interesting amount of vulnerability.

Though, I do not like the problems faced when swapping out of water during cast will block the passive.

Though, greatly reduce the number of stacks to balance the on-hit ratios. Otherwise, dagger 1 becomes way stronger than ice spike.

1. Reduce Stack amounts to at least 5.
2. 80 or 60 healing power per stack.
3. Does stack refresh each other, or do they have an individual duration?

In addition, Weak Spot (Air Grandminor) needs to be 100% chance per crit to apply vulnerability, or apply 2 stacks of vulnerability at the same time.

Serious Thought.5394:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoYhcMokh1MwnB8RsIAYFby2wZIIAMBeAup2Z7tF-TJRBABgVGw/9Ha+BAAwJAAA
This is my preferred version. Its more smooth, more focused, and does not have too many flashy effects. Problem is its more one-trick pony than not. For the base set (because I take tempest simply to fire tornado downed people and walk off/forget em) you’d want air line with – air=superspeed, stun=shock aura, stun=weakness. I’ve found more success with air than tempest, but I use tempest because most teams needed me to bail them out in teamfights. If I have a competent team and they lemme roam, I absolutely swap to fire/air/arcane.

For utilities- you can take whatever you want to be completely honest, all you really need is the Arcane Blast and Arcane Power for the projectile+5 free burn keeping in mind using power into blast gives an instant 2 stacks of burn and if you do ArcanePower->Fire3->Fire4->ArcaneBlast+EarthAttunement->Earthquake people usually just die if they have no out or free response. The helpful bit is the initial burst breaks through most classes free condi cleanse traits and thresholds while the follow-up burn stacks do the rest.
For Runes/Sigils- I don’t like flashy, but if you REALLY hate the set up then you can easily swap for Rune of Flame Legion, Fire, or something along the lines of an aura or burn duration. Sigil wise, probably your preference again.

:) Anywho, enjoy this in unranked and on the 26th, in ranked. >:D I know I will.

That cannot be viable. You have no condition clear and need to be in melee.

Solo queue only; marauder staff tempest.

Sigfodr.9576:

Can I assume you are speaking from a PvP perspective?
Since in PvE, tempest generally use 2 overloads, Fire overload —> stay in fire and continue rotation untill fire overload is up again. And Air overload --> go into fire —> fire 5 --> use Fresh air trait to go directly into air again..

Yes. PvP Perspective.

Serious Thought.5394:

I found that an arcane kamikaze worked quite well on Carrion. Not that it will work well with 1.8 million bunkers, but would you like the build so when bunkers get booted from the game you have something to test?
I know it will sound better on paper, but when everyone was playing the dps meta/roam meta I found myself constantly destroying 1v1’s and 1v2s. Curiously, against standard duels (the /bow type) most people didn’t react in time despite me doing the same combo… some did and I died horrendously though…

Anywho, you want it or not? Not denying Ele dps needs more, but I’d be WAY careful in how we do “more”.

Sure. Go ahead. You are not allowed to show me a build using Focus, though.

Electro.4173:

I’m sure plenty of people will agree with you, but personally I view the “problem” you describe as the cost of playing a Tempest.

Some classes lose or have their existing skills completely altered by their Elite Specs. Tempest doesn’t have that limitation, but what it does have is an “opportunity cost” to use its overload skills. You need to be mindful of which ones you use and when, not just use them willy-nilly every time they come off cooldown, or you run into issues like this.

Of course. Cost of staying on the attunement while Overload recharge is one to look up to. Overload means you will not be able to go back to the atunement for a moment after it. But, I doubt that the design goal was to eventually run of of damage attunements to fight, which is exactly what happens upon pressuring with max dps.

ArthurDent.9538:

My opinion is there is too much of both hard cc and too much stability. Everything seems to have just so much cc flying around now that even slick shoes feels minor by comparison to druid daze spam, eles aura sharing shocking aura, engi tripple leap finisher through lightning field, draggon hunter trap daze spam, longbow 5 and passive longbow knockback, chronomancers with many things, etc etc etc.

So to counter this basically every meta/near meta build has a crap ton of stability uptime. Traditionally guardian was the class utilized the most stability with stand your ground and traited virtue of courage giving about 30% stability uptime. Now reapers are pushing around 40% up time on pulsing stability with a class that was meant to be weak to cc just for using the reaper traitline. This is just the area of the game where I feel the power creep is by far the most obvious and it goes both ways.

Luckily, CC is going slightly down with Static Aura getting a 4 seconds treatment. CC on DH trap to 0.5 seconds down from 1….

But where is druids CCs reduction?

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Alekt.5803:

With On-Crit Sigil, it could be standardized to 5 seconds ICD, but with On-Hit, I don’t think it could.

But I’d like to see two iterations for the same sigil.
60% chance on critical to remove a boon (5 seconds ICD) (up from 10 seconds ICD)
30% chance on hit to remove a boon (5 seconds ICD)

why not both?

60% chance on critical to remove a boon (5 seconds ICD) (up from 10 seconds ICD)
30% chance on hit to remove a boon (5 seconds ICD)

the first one will replace the current one.

Well yeah. As proposed, both should be there. But should share the same ICD.

If Anet wishes to give new identities to elementalists and tempest as damage dealer, condition clear should also be available to damage trait lines.

For instance,
Conjurer : Combine One with Fire and Conjurer together as a single trait.

New trait to replace One with Fire: Element of Purification : Applying Fire Aura cleanse 1 damaging condition and increases damage dealt by condition by 5% and damage by 5 % for the duration of the Aura.

“Auras – duration and overall availability of auras too much since HoT. Overall uptime too high. We are reducing all the auras activated from skills/traits to 4s.”
http://dulfy.net/2016/01/15/gw2-balance-preview-livestream-notes/

So is it a Conjurer nerf?

And a One with Fire nerf while we’re at it? Probably the most wasteful synergies getting the nerf bat.

With On-Crit Sigil, it could be standardized to 5 seconds ICD, but with On-Hit, I don’t think it could.

But I’d like to see two iterations for the same sigil.
60% chance on critical to remove a boon (5 seconds ICD) (up from 10 seconds ICD)
30% chance on hit to remove a boon (5 seconds ICD)