Guild Wars 2

Salazan is the only one I can’t deal with so far. His attacks take me to 25% health each time, so there’s literally no room for error. And I’ve tried to Invuln out of the ring and teleport out with lightning flash, both times I ended up dead the second I reappeared outside the ring without anything apparently hitting me. I’ve tried scepter/focus and scepter/dagger, neither worked.

Did Anet really say they have no intention of balancing staff for pvp or pve? If so… They need to seriously reconsider. Staff is the iconic weapon of the elementalist profession. There will always be those who want to use it as their lead weapon. And elementalists have the fewest number of available weapons short of engineer and no weapon swap. It’s many times more important that we can find value in each weapon available, as we simply don’t have options.

I like the idea of giving Flame Burst a base damage to it. Mainly because having a skill dedicated 100% to conditions is pretty lackluster for non-condition builds, and with only two reliable, damaging conditions elementalists will never be a heavy condition profession. Give us Torment, Poison, or Confusion and we can talk. I’ve always felt the Burning and Bleeds should be additional damage to keep up pressure, but not the front of a staff ele’s damage.

Burning Retreat having a burst at the starting location is something a lot of people have been asking for. Very valuable as it’s another burst we can deliver in close range, provides a free dodge, and then a combo field. Though it might need a longer cooldown if this was added, I would still find it better than the skill as is. Our fire needs more upfront damage.

Geyser giving vigor is great. We need more boons for our support weapon anyway.

There are many ways to improve lightning damage. From making it instant cast blind applier or giving it a higher burst at the end of the channel. Gust being an AoE Knock-back would be a huge help in keeping melee off our grill. Something the current Gust really doesn’t do at all.

I actually feel Earth is pretty solid. If Unsteady Ground had a few more seconds of Cripple on walking over it, it’d be a perfectly fine skill.

Also, more traits that synergize with the staff. Daggers are our best heavy damage, sustained set with decent support and defensive tricks. Scepter is our best burst set. Staff is our ranged AoE nuke stick with a focus on support. Some more traits that buff our fields would do wonders to make staff more powerful. Maybe something in Fire that applies Might when our field gets blasted that’d let us maintain our Might stacks even as we go through a chain heal in an emergency or when our team is blasting Static Field for Swiftness. Or a trait in the Earth line called “Dirty Water” Where blasting our water fields while in Earth attunement spreads poison to nearby enemies. Persistent Flames was a step in the right direction, we just need to keep going.

Stronger than an elder dragon? No. Not even remotely close. Some of them are pretty tough, sure. Certainly more powerful than asuran golems from what I’ve seen. But I wouldn’t even put them on the same level of the Shatterer or Jormag’s Claw, let alone the Elder Dragons themselves.

Far from 100% loyal if the Aetherblades can take control of them so easily. That’s a pretty huge flaw in the design.

Likely not mass produced as we see no factory to build them, and human technology has always been based around individual craftsmen and artisans. They haven’t mastered industry on a large scale yet. Jennah has likely been having these built one by one for a very long time, or has hundreds of engineers working diligently somewhere.

A focus.

But on a serious note, swords and torches are the most obvious. We’re the most fire-centric of all the professions, but we can’t use a torch? And I’d be so, so happy if I could wield the legendary Rodgort torch along with my HoM Fiery Dragon Sword as an elementalist throwing fire blasts in every direction.

I also think a rifle might make an interesting elementalist weapon. Use it like a normal rifle firing elemental shots, but also like a staff when we’re conjuring larger scale AoE spells. After all, what else is a rifle if not a staff that shoots hot lead out of one end?

I remember Mist Form heals. It made my sustained offensive build somewhat playable. Those few seconds of uninterrupted healing was a God send when you’ve given up going heavy water in favor of fire.

For staff’s air attunement to be worthwhile it needs to fullfill the one thing air attunement is meant to do. Single target damage. Making air auto attack do more upfront damage to the first person struck would help with that. Lightning Surge needs to be reworked. Lose the blind completely and give it a sizeable boost in single target damage. Air already has two crowd control effects, it needs the damage.

Give Lightning Surge about double the damage it has now and it should be sufficient.

Gust I’d like to see given a considerably wider hit box, and changed into a skill shot. Being able to aim it in the direction we want would let us anticipate where our enemies will be, and at least give the skill a small chance to hit our target provided we used the skill.. Skillfully. It’d be massively more valuable to aim it toward a general direction than a target, as targets are always moving. Plus, being able to do a knock-back on 3-4 enemies all crowded around a downed ally would be a tremendous boon to any staff elementalist.

I often feel like the damage output is far too high. If I’m not bunker then I die in seconds, but if I’m not glass cannon I’m borderline useless damage-wise. Anet said they wanted elementalists to be more middle of the line so we can fullfill every role at once, just to a lesser extent. That isn’t viable with the current set up because the disparity is just THAT large.

I can go middle ground and get a firegrab for 4K damage and get three shot by a thief or decimated by a ranger in a few seconds, or I can go full glass and do 12K damage and maybe kill something, and I die to one hit from a thief. The difference between three hits and one hit is all of a second, the difference in damage output is tremendous.

I too wish our teleports functioned like teleports. As already mentioned, warriors and engineers can clear gaps with their jumps. It makes no sense that our teleports can’t do the same, and honestly it kills a whole dimension to class design and make jumping puzzles a bit more skill dependent. Being able to quickly use a teleport to fix a bad jump would be amazing.

Charr are cat-like. They are not cats. So there’s no guarantee it’d effect them the same way it effects cats.

draxynnic.3719:

So the question is… Do they have chest-mounted machine guns?

Well of course they do. I don’t see how that’s even a question!

dunnberry.2964:

Counter to that… Pre-emptive strike…hard to establish a choke point when you are dead before you know what’s happening

Implying any nation is dumb enough not to have the gates under watch? C’mon man. Kryta and the Charr Legions have been at war with something or another for most of their history.

The norn and sylvari might be inclined to leave the gates unattended. If only because sylvari are extremely trusting and norn don’t believe in a militaristic mindset. Though I wouldn’t expect either of those two races to be especially easy to invade, even with the gates.

Clearly Queen Jennah was worried she’d be infiltrated by Austin Powers.

“Bring in the FEMBOTS.”

Tuomir.1830:

Hardly an empire, when there is no emperor. Empire is, by definition, multiple nations ruled by a single leader, emperor. The charr have three separate legions, which could be seen as acting as nations working together, however, in the absence of Khan-Ur, no single charr rules over them all. None of the nations of Tyria apply, either. Norn and asura don’t even really have a nation, and with sylvari it’s arguable. Technically, the sylvari live in anarchy, as they have no ruling body, not counting advice and direction from the Pale Tree and the firstborn. Interestingly enough, even without a ruler or government, they still have armed forces keeping order.

I know. That’s why I mentioned the fact they are three separate entities working toward the same goal. Still the closest to an empire though. Just one Khan-Ur away.

Fox Soul.4809:

Anything is better than tornado. Any ele with tornado should be tied up

use tornado. See enemys dying by fall. Lot of laughs.[/quote]

If you can even do that. Tornado flings enemies almost entirely at random half the time. I find if devilishly hard to aim where I’m sending them.

At most you can set your build up so you use certain attunements more than others. Fresh Air builds means you’ll be switching back to Air almost every 5 seconds and using the others as supplements. My staff build revolves around juggling fire and earth to stack Might and Fury while doing AoE damage around me. Both cases the rest of the elements are switched to for quick utility before returning to the preferred element.

But yes, you do have to use all the elements.

Fafnir.5124:

One thing id like to point out is how can any race have an empire when each only controls one city? empires usually span multiple countries which in turn have multiple cities.

Kryta has one capital city but a large number of towns, not all of which you can visit ingame due to space issues. Though Kryta I’d really consider a kingdom, not an empire.

The charr have three major capital cities. Remember, what we can go to is only Iron legion territory. There’s also the Blood Legion and Ash Legion reasons, which are just as large as the Iron Legion territory we see ingame, further north and east. They are a legitimate Empire, only thing really stopping them is the fact they are technically three government bodies working toward the same goal. That and the enemies in every possible direction.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

So as far as we know, vampires are simply a concept in Tyria, but they do not exist. The skill names indicate that people know what a vampire is, but it is probably simply folklore, just like on our world.

Not quite. The word Vampiric means something that takes energy or blood from something else. A parasite can be described as vampiric. Mosquitos can be vampiric. Using the word doesn’t mean the people of Tyria have myths or legends about vampires.

Also we’ve never seen nor heard about a myth about vampires.

No vampires and no werewolves. Closest thing you could get would be a necromancer specializing in blood magic and a norn who’s very close to the wolf spirit.

Keep in mind a necromancer doesn’t drink blood and has no issues with daylight.

And a norn wolf shaman has no problem controlling his wolf identity. It’s a change of flesh, not of mind. In fact the only norn we know of that lost control of his transformation was Svanir. And he was the result of an Elder Dragon’s curse.

Armed I might lean toward norn. They are larger than charr on average and possess an unnatural strength even for their size. They also have a human body, which is more flexible and more agile than a hunched over battlecat.

Unarmed I’d go for the charr. Nearly as large as a norn, but the charr has long claws, teeth, and horns. There’s a reason a human can be taken down by an attack dog despite the human being larger.

However if the norn invoked the power of the bear, I’d give it again to the norn. Norn from a lore perspective shouldn’t have a time limit on their transformations. It’s just something they can do.

Flame Shamans use to stand on their hind legs to show superiority. Most modern charr won’t do that because it’d be emulating the Flame Legion.

On the subject of the Infinity Ball story line, it should be noted that isn’t proof the asura can take over the world. It’s proof the PC can take over the world. In each of our personal stories we are this super awesome indispensable mega-important figure that is destined to help Treaharn save the world, and is incapable of failure.

Any PC can probably take over the world given enough time. Asura just have the silly sci fi theme to make it make sense to see it happen.

Bluefox.9580:

It’s an interesting argument to buff your team with Might and Fury, as I find generally most pugs I run with simply don’t make use of the extra DPS because they themselves are also tank builds. This means when they pop the support for me instead of vise verse, it’s the equivalent of the entire group gaining buffs from my DPS output increase alone. An unfortunate reality with puging dungeons.

Actually I’ve found a lot of PUGs I’ve ran with are mostly high damage builds that benefit a great deal from suddenly getting 15+ stacks of Might and 30+ seconds of Fury at the start of a fight. And even if we do have bunkers, it’s not like they DON’T benefit from an increase in damage and 20% higher crit chance.

It’s also pretty strong in spvp group fights, as I said. That’s a considerable damage boost for anyone on my team fighting on point, and I can sit there keeping up my Might rotation on point with Blasting Staff and punish any enemies that try to cap it with decent damage, burns, bleeds, and any crowd control I feel like throwing down.

Technically any spellcaster can be a shaman. Though we have never seen a flame shaman in heavy armor, nor using guardian magic. We don’t see any mesmer or necromancer shamans either, for that matter. All elementalists that only use fire and earth.

It seems like under Bealfire’s rule the Flame Legion has become even more closed off and specialized than it use to be.

I also use a heavy fire build geared for damage. I keep a mix of knight/soldier with zerker trinkets so I can survive more easily however, so my damage isn’t even in the same ballpark as you.

My build uses 30 fire and 30 arcane for triple blasting my lava font every 9 seconds to mass produce might and fury to my team and myself. My personal damage can hit pretty hard, between 1.5K and 2.2K fireballs and lava font ticks that match. 2.2K to 2.6K eruptions. Some 3K meteors. While also giving my team a dramatic damage increase in a very short amount of time.

I’ve even ran this in spvp to decent effect. Still do fairly poor in duels, only managing to beat the odd warrior now and again. But I can generally last long enough in a 1v1 for help to arrive. Only classes that give me a really hard time are necromancers and rangers. Rangers mostly because they hit from a distance and I can’t get them in my AoEs at all. Necromancers because well… 10K vitality.

I find that a lot of thieves, zerker warriors, and pretty much any melee zerker build will either rip through me like tissue paper or kill themselves trying. Kinda fun to see a warrior use the old, cheesey 100B build and rush in, stand on top of my lava font, eat my eruption, take an arcane wave to the face, and then pop my arcane shield all in the span of a second and go under half health, if not go down.

Simplicity.7208:

@Ehecatl – Diehard Charr fan maybe? Believing the Charr have the ability to withstand an assault better than the other races is one thing. Completely disregarding Asuran magitech is something else entirely. If every Charr thought like that, then the Charr would be a pathetically easy race to wipe off the planet. Ever hear of something called “underestimating a foe?” You should look up the American war of Independence. See how that worked out for Great Britain.

Fortunately, not every Charr does underestimate their opponents and as such we have things in place like the explosives on the bridge. I’m not about to argue “Oh yeah, the Asura would or would not win X at Y” because that’s pointless, I was just curious as to why they’ve never tried it yet. Of all the races, I feel like the Asura would have the best chance at winning a war against the others.

Not underestimating the asura. It’s knowing the difference between ten thousand and one hundred thousand. And there are a few key differences between this scenario and the American Revolution.

The Americans were not the ones invading England. England was invading the colonies. So it was on England to send troops over a several month long voyage to America, and to somehow provide proper provisions and supplies for their troops within these logistic constraints. England was by a large margin the more powerful force. If America had invaded they would’ve been crushed. Severely. In this scenario you have a much smaller nation invading the much larger one.

America also had help from outside forces in the ways of supplies from France. Something the asura don’t have in this hypothetical scenario.

And magitech is a nice advantage. But it’s not nearly enough to make the asura a genuine threat to the charr. The day the asura get the hang of mass producing their inventions is the day they might start posing a militaristic threat. But for now, they have to build just about everything by hand, with only a few facilities that mass produce anything. Usually their golems, which are, as I said above, not that big of an advantage. I’m pretty sure an elementalist’s earth elemental could go toe to toe with the mass produced asuran golem.

Then you take into account the charr also have highly effective technology. And honestly, I have my doubt that the asuran magitech is more effective than charr steam engineering in a war scenario. The asura have teleporters, energy weapons, forcefields, and laser cannons. The charr gave us automobiles, airships, helicopters, and long range, high caliber artillery cannons. The asuran technology may be more advanced, but charr technology can be mass produced with extreme speed and efficiency.

You posed the question of why the asura haven’t taken over the world. This is my answer. They can’t. They don’t have the mentality for war, nor the experience as a society for it.

As a charr light armor user I feel extremely limited to what I can wear. I want to find a good outfit that looks like something I’d wear on a battlefield. Was thinking of mixing charr cultural with Sorrow’s Embrace light and what do I get? Tail clipping. And the helm… Rraze looks like someone chopping off his head if you view him from behind, no mane or horns.

I’d go for the light cultural sets, but… Well. How do I say this… I don’t want to see my character’s nuts every time I view him from the side. Or no, maybe I DO want to see his nuts. It’s one thing to know your character is a ken doll because computer game. It’s quite another to get VISUAL CONFIRMATION.

Seriously. Tighten that loin cloth a bit more to the legs so it’s not flashing me all the time.

The asura are not nearly as dominating as people like to believe. There is no way they’d be able to take on the Citadel in a full scale war.

An invasion of Black Citadel would fail miserably for the reasons already stated. The Asuran Gate is suspended over a sheer drop with explosives rigged to take it out the second something starts to emerge that isn’t suppose to. First day of the asuran Blitzkrieg everyone going through the portal at the times dies.

The Waypoints might work, but I feel those can’t move anything especially large or large numbers of people at a time. Otherwise the Gates would have no purpose at all. So the asura likely get picked off as they steadily appear through those. You’d be fooling yourself if you think the charr don’t have all of them monitored in some way, shape, or form. Speaking of Waypoints, ever wonder how there can be so many of them in far off places in the world with no one to maintain and protect them? Why hasn’t Zhaitan crushed the ones around Orr? Sometimes it seems like Waypoints aren’t actually a thing in lore. At least not to the extent they are ingame.

So that leaves the asura having to travel across the Shiverpeaks and invade the old fashioned way. Invading a much larger, stronger species that has ten times or more your own population is a hilariously bad idea. And while asuran magitech is impressive, good ol’ charr engineering has proven to be just as effective in it’s own rights. Asuran golems aren’t anything to be especially afraid of either. We destroy plenty of them like anything else. Even in WvW. Know what we don’t get a chance to fight very often? Full sized charr tanks, that are more like mobile castles with functioning artillery.

As I mentioned in another thread, new elemental themed utilities! I want to be a fire elementalist. Can’t do that with the attunement system, but I could still load by bar with fire spells and have access to fire utilities even in water attunement.

Speaking of creative spells. Know who can get real creative with spells? Anet.

Mark Spells

Mark of Rodgort
Casts a mark upon target enemy and enemies within 180 radius of target. Targets hexed by this spell have 4 seconds of Burning applied when targets take direct damage.
Duration: 10 seconds
Cooldown: 40 seconds

Glimmering Mark
Casts a mark upon the target enemy that inflicts moderate damage to target and enemies within 120 radius of target each second. Targets effected also suffer 1 second of Blindness per second.
Duration: 5 seconds
Cooldown: 50 seconds

Hex Spells

Incendiary Bonds
Target foe is hexed for three seconds. At the end of the duration, foe explodes with fire dealing high damage and inflicts 4 seconds of Burning to enemies within 240 radius of the target. Also triggers of the foe goes down or is defeated.
Duration: 3 seconds
Cooldown: 30 seconds

Deep Freeze
Target foe is hexed and chilled for three seconds. At the end of the duration, target foe is frozen solid, unable to move or act for 2 seconds. Frozen state activates early if chilled is removed prematurely or if enemy goes down.
Duration: 3 then 2 seconds.
Cooldown: 50 seconds

Enchantment Spells

Splinter Armor
Cast an enchantment on target ally or on self of there is no ally targeted. Target character gains armor of rock splinters, getting a 25% chance to block incoming attacks. Apply 3 stacks of Bleeds to foes in melee when an attack is blocked in this way. This skill breaks any stuns the enchanted character is in when cast.
Duration: 10 seconds
Cooldown: 60 seconds

Double Dragon
Cast an enchantment on target ally and yourself. Both enchanted characters now inflicts 2 seconds of Burning with all attacks and do moderate fire damage per tick to enemies within 240 radius of either character. Does double damage if target is in both character’s radius. If no ally is targeted, cool down for Double Dragon is halved. This skill breaks any stuns the enchanted character is in when cast.
Duration: 10 seconds
Cooldown: 60 seconds

Wards

Ward Against Foes
Place a ward on the ground with a 300 radius. Foes within the ward move 50% slower for the duration.
Duration: 10 seconds
Cooldown: 75 seconds

Ward Against Melee
Place a ward on the ground with a 300 radius. Allies within this ward have a 25% chance to block melee attacks.
Duration: 10 seconds
Cooldown: 75 seconds

Ward of Stability
Place a ward on the ground with a 300 radius. Allies within this ward gain stability.
Duration: 10 seconds
Cooldown: 75 seconds

Ward Against Harm
Elite Skill. Place a ward on the ground with a 300 radius. Allies within this ward gain Regeneration and Protection, and gain a 25% chance to block incoming attacks.
Duration: 10 seconds
Cooldown: 150 seconds

Destroying projectiles at least is needed. An elite skill shouldn’t make you more vulnerable than before you used it.

I’m also not a fan of people using stability to get in my face and and melee my tornado form into the ground. We need to be more punishing to the enemy when they get inside our hitbox.

Furthermore, Moa Morph should not be able to shut down our elite transformation. I know you could consider it fair as they use an elite skill to shut down our elite, but the fact is we as a class are already completely devastated by this spell, as we absolutely need to continuously cast spells to stay alive. Having it shut down our elite transformation and turn us into a defenseless animal for ten seconds is too much.

cheshirefox.7026:

spirit bomb                   

That’s a Kamehameha. The spirit bomb is formed when Goku raises his hands over his head to gather spirit energy. Then he throws said giant ball of spirit energy. The Kamehameha is the beam he shoots from his palms.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Field Expert could be reworked to work with Blast Finishers instead of with entering combo fields. It would probably be better that way anyway. The goal was to create synergy between Fire Magic traits and all attunements, which is why I reduced the effect and made it apply bonuses to all combo fields. The reason I didn’t originally write is as a Blast finisher trigger is that a likely result would have been the need to create boon bonuses for all combo field types – not just those the Ele has access to.

I rather like the idea of swapping Cauterize and Burning Agony, though I was more afraid of Cauterize being OP in combination with current sustain options than I was about Burning Agony – worst case scenario is that Burning Agony could be given a 1s cd to prevent Burning Precision crits with a scepter triggering frequent double stack Torments.

That would be an interesting trait then, giving all our fields a little extra boon associated with it’s blasts. Though the duration extension reduction might hurt. At 30% my fire fields last juuust enough that I can cast Lava Font and then switch to earth, throw on Eruption, dodge roll into it with Evasive Arcana, and then finish with Arcane Wave just as eruption blows. Getting me upward 15-20 stacks of might and a good 30 seconds of Fury in a few seconds, that is then given to my whole group. And then 9 seconds later I can throw down Eruption and go back to fire for more Might and Fury. Having all those extra boons would be great, but would it compensate for the sheer intensity I get from all those combos? It should also be mentioned that fire fields are the only field that every single weapon an ele can equip has access to, making Persisting Flames potentially good for any weapon set. It’s just the rest of the line that needs to be reworked so getting it isn’t so costly.

And while Cauterize would be quite powerful, I don’t think anyone trying to bunker would go 20 points in fire just for that. It would however be an option for Burst and Sustained Damage builds that want to leave water. Say, 20/30/0/0/20 perhaps. At most you might see 20/0/0/20/30. But the fire line doesn’t have anything a bunker would want other than Cauterize so Earth would still likely be preferred.

I personally feel stealth isn’t our cup of tea. Our fire trait line should focus more on damage and offense, not escape tools.

All fire really needs is a few good, impactful damage traits and a couple traits increasing condition effectiveness and it’d be golden. 5% on burning and 10% in fire attunement is not nearly impactful enough.

Air changes seem mostly good, though a grandmaster trait to move 10% faster than normal seems like a massive waste of a grandmaster trait. Even if it does stack with speed effects.

I like some of your fire suggestions like noxious fumes and pyromancer’s puissance becoming a minor trait. Sun Spot being a blast finisher especially as it leads to more interesting elemental combos. Though completely changing Persisting Flames would utterly wreck my heavy fire build. Honestly Persisting Flames is a pretty solid grandmaster trait overall, it gives access to loads and loads of Fury in a trait line that normally doesn’t have it. And while I could still get Fury with your change, I’d have to physically run into my Static Field, and this is a skill I typically want to use on a ranged group.

Field Mastery might also be a bit awkward, as it’d stack with traits that also reduce said skill’s cast time. Might be prudent to give it an effect instead, like perhaps what you had for Field Expert minus the extended field duration?

Your other fire changes would certainly make it an effective condition line however. Combining Burning Precision and Burning Agony would give us near constant Argony up time, which is only made stronger with the line’s access to fury. Cauterize and Burning Agony could be switched in position though. Give Fire a grandmaster condition trait similar to the necro’s Dhuumfire. And give offensive support eles an option in the master tier to increase their own survivability.

Pretty much all of staff’s pvp issues could be solved if air attunement worked like air attunement is suppose to work. Air is our single target burst element. But the only weapon where it performs this role is the scepter.

Change air 1 into a single target high damage auto attack (Since this attunement can’t do damage with skills 3, 4, and 5) and remove the blind on Lightning Surge and make it do a LOT more damage for it’s charge time. A long channeled blind is next to useless. A long, channeled burst is not.

I’d like to see torches for elementalists. Also some sort of long ranged damage weapon that we can reliably duel with. A rifle might be an interesting choice, since I doubt we’d get a hammer, greatsword, or bow.

The main problem with balancing around 1v1 scenarios is the very fact we have trait set-ups and builds at all. No matter what there will always be different ways to build a character that are of varying degrees of effectiveness in 1v1 fights. One person might have a build that focuses heavily on condition damage, another comes along with a build designed to counter it. This will not be a fair fight. So in order to make it fair you have to make both builds have an equal chance to defeat the other, which in turn makes the counter build entirely irrelevant as it’s intended purpose was to counter the condition build.

However these two builds meet in a group environment. The counter build does it’s job to counter the condition build, limiting the condition build’s contributions to the team. But the condition build isn’t completely shut down as it has allies to take out the counter build to allow the condition build to do it’s thing. The counter build is perfectly balanced in a team fight and both builds are viable to play.

Balancing a game entirely around 1v1 combat results in a loss of counterplay and forethought before each fight, makes group composition irrelevant, and limits the level of customization and potential builds that would be allowed to be made.

I’d love to see a lot of skills from GW1 make a return. More specifically, I’d like to see some elemental spells from GW1 return as utility skills similar to our current cantrips. I may not be able to sit in fire attunement and use fire spells all day, but with a few more fire-themed utilities I could have a whole utility bar of fire spells and still get that sweet, sweet elemental specialized flavor without it effecting how I use our class mechanic.

Rodgort’s Invocation would be an excellent one as someone above mentioned.

Double Dragon might be interesting as it gives yourself and an ally a boon/aura that causes burning on enemies near the two of you and gives all your attacks the chance to cause burning. Honestly this could just be a replacement for the current fire aura.

Flame D’jinn’s Haste would be pretty nice too. Possibly rework it’s name but keep the effect. A source of Swiftness for the player that also causes fire damage/burning when it’s being used. Damaging foes with it reduces it’s cooldown, so it’d be better off as an in combat skill than escape so Anet doesn’t lose it for giving us more mobility. It’d make a fine stunbreaker too.

Incendiary Bonds is fun too. Someone already mentioned Hex spells, which would add an interesting new dimension to elemantlists. It’d be a good way to prevent an enemy from rallying by throwing this on him so he explodes hurting the people trying to save him.

Inferno, which is just a really, really strong AoE blast centered around the caster to punish those close to you. Could be made a stunbreaker or a blast finisher. Maybe even a knock-back.

Mark of Rodgort which causes targets to take burning damage when hit with fire spells. Though for GW2 it could be flipped, and make fire skills do 20-50% more damage to the target if they are burning. This would greatly benefit heavy burst builds. Imagine getting off a fire grab on a target that had Rodgort’s Mark on him. Or the scepter burst combo. And it’d add more of a skill cap to getting off that high burst. Throwing on the Mark, getting the enemy burning and to stay burning, and then landing our hardest to land bursts. Counterable by just removing burning right before our combo lands.

Starburst or a skill like it might be interesting. A high damage spell that restores energy for each foe hit. Translated to GW2 it could restore endurance for more dodges, or even make our attunements recharge faster for a certain duration.

There are a LOT of amazing skills from GW1 that I’d like to see imported. But perhaps just as importantly, I’d like to see torches as a possible weapon for elementalists in the future, so I can wield the Rodgort Legendary and have a utility bar full of Rodgort’s skills. And proceed to Burninate the countryside!

I’ve also mentioned before that I think rifle might be an interesting ranged damage alternative to staff.

I run staff in Orr and do pretty good overall. The first kill takes the longest but is usually quite dead after a couple fireballs after my Eruption + Lava Font + Arcane Wave all going off in it’s face at once.

After that I just keep accumulating Might and Fury, killing things faster and faster as I go. And since everything I do is AoE groups of melee go down very easy. Only real snag is fighting groups of ranged. But at least Magnetic Aura helps with that.

I can solo most veterans easily enough, along with a few extra mobs that usually die on accident from my AoEs. And I have soloed Orrian champions before, though it’s usually a long, drawn out process where one mistake means I lose.

Small idea. What if we took the charges and effectively made it into an Initiative thing similar to what thieves have. So you conjure your weapon and you have so many charges to use, and stronger skills need more charges per cast. So you could go in, blow a few stronger moves, then it disappears. Or you can manage the weaker moves to keep your weapon for a longer duration, depending on how you intend to do it.

Keep certain skills from stacking of course. No spamming Ice Bow 5 for a perma freeze on a single target for example.

I too would enjoy to have my tail not pass through my leggings as if my tail were a ghost.

Rraze Heartsmolder. Because lore is important to me.

I run an offensive staff build for WvW with heavy fire. 30/0/20/0/20. With Knight/Soldier armor and berserker accessories/rings/amulet etc. And while it isn’t spectacular for defensive support it still supports the group well by more or less spamming Fury and Might for my zerg. And I hit pretty hard with my AoE, often downing people up on walls because they stood in my lava font a bit too long. More importantly it’s still pretty tanky with high toughness, and Ether Renewal tends to deal with conditions just fine so long as I don’t get condi-focused by four or five people.

And of course, no matter how you build you do still have access to water fields and static field. It’s literally impossible to spec out of your support abilities while keeping your ranged damage, so always remember to use them as often as needed.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Grenth allowed undead and resurrections, not necromancy and resurrections.

Necromancy does more than make undead, so it was likely around before Grenth took over. They just weren’t allowed to make minions – those that did were hunted down (or at least their creations were), same going for those who were resurrected and those who managed to escape a should-be fatal situation (injury I’m guessing). Basically a situation of “if you should have died, or if you did die, Dhuum would ensure you stayed dead.”

But nothing says there was no necromancy before Grenth.

I was using necromancy as a general term for raising the dead. Not necessarily the entire magical school involving the life leeching and such, sorry. I am aware you could use various spells used in necromancy still, just not raise minions as you said.

Point being, one does not raise someone from death that the god of death wants to remain dead. Necromancers don’t have the power to break Grenth’s laws, just work within the parameters of said laws.

You will get wrecked 1v1 unless your opponent is very bad. There’s not much you can do about that.

But generally yes, power would do you better than conditions because staff is slow and hard to maintain bleed stacks with.

If you want an offensive staff build you should be thinking more AoE and team based damage, because the staff has next to no single target attacks and most of your high damage attacks are ground targeted. No sane person will stand in your ground targeted AoEs unless they are very much distracted or are trying to stand on point during a team fight.

Basically with a staff in spvp your role is to sit off point when you can (When you have allies already on point to cap it) and spam AoEs on that point to severely punish enemies who are trying to stay on point. In WvW your role is to sit in the back lines and use your AoE and to pressure the enemy zerg/defenders/invaders into breaking and to limit their maneuvers with your crowd control options like Static Field. In both scenarios you’re effectively a living piece of siege equipment. So keep that in mind.

SinerAthin.2374:

SpeedFiend.4521:

Zhaitan has successfully “stolen” Grenth’s own priest, I’m pretty sure if he can raise things the god of death doesn’t want raised then he’s probably got a good hold on his own minions and anything else that’s dead where he has influence.

Not really.
Zhaitan relies either on his plague, himself or his minions to reanimate bodies. Things within his domain don’t just come back to life automatically under his command.

If you strike down one of his followers, reanimating it should be more than possible. Most of Zhaitan’s minions, except a few, have a tendency to stay dead after being undone.

I’m not too impressed that he managed to steal a priest of Grenth.
After all, in Necromancy, the hard part is killing the person/acquiring the body, the reanimation part is simply a matter of time and energy.

Your necromancer can only do necromancy because Grenth allows it. When Grenth defeated Dhuum and took over as god of death he changed the laws of death so it wasn’t the ultimate finality it is in real life. He made it so necromancy and ressurection is possible. But if he changed his mind necromancy on Tyria would cease to be a thing.

Zhaitan being able to resurrect someone against Grenth’s wishes is actually a huge deal.

This happens for my elementalist’s conjured earth shield too.

Not an especially difficult one to deal with since I never use that skill. But it’s there.

The charr will likely shoot the asura and take the laser pointer to reverse engineer it into a more lethal weapon.

The charr don’t eat sentient species anymore as the above poster said. Plus skritt are skinny and have no meat on their bones.

The charr will maul you for the sweet satisfaction of killing an insulting bigot who thought a soldier of the Legions would stoop so low as to be treated like a common pet.

Charr are not in any way cats. Biologically or mentally speaking.

Also they have horns. So there’s that.

PinCushion.7390:

Burning Retreat -> Eruption -> Dodge

Eruption -> Lava Font

Arcane Wave on cooldown

It’s always nice when you’re ramming a door in WvW, get interrupted, and half your team already has 10-20 stacks of Might and Fury on them.

Indeed it is! Love the playstyle Persisting Flames offers. Basically serving as a mini battery of offensive boons for your entire party.

Working with 30/0/20/0/20 now. Kind of lacking for high crit damage, but I get 10% extra damage on burning foes, 10% more damage in fire attunement, and 10% more damage when enemies are within 600 range (Good for when something does get close to me or for small scale skirmishes). I just wish I could drop 5 from arcane to earth so I could get 10% more damage when my endurance is full without losing Blasting Staff. That’d be a full 40% damage increase under the right conditions.

And Obsidian Focus so I take a little less damage when channeling meteor shower under heavy enemy fire. That plus switching to Earth as I start the channel for Earth’s extra toughness and the Protection from Elemental Attunement makes me pretty tanky just long enough to get it off and dodge roll away.

I do doubt we’d get a greatsword specifically, since we already have a greatsword conjure. The appeal of conjures is to use weapons we can’t normally use, so if we do somehow get another weapon set, it won’t be a weapon we can already conjure.

More than likely we’d get maces, swords, or rifles. I’ve seen people suggest torches, which I think would fit fantastically as an offhand or even dual wield-able weapons.

I could see torches being a condition focused set. Having burning on each of the four attunements plus extra conditions for each attunement. Maybe with bleed stacking in earth AND water, with vulnerability shared between water and air and weakness shared between air and earth. Fire could be all about burns with some blindness for defense maybe…

For the long ranged nuker role I’d prefer if we just made staff more capable of fullfilling it. But if one MUST have a new weapon, rifle might not be a bad candidate.

I imagine rifle as being wielded much like a staff in terms of animations. Raising it over your head and swinging it around to call down AoE blasts and such. But for auto attacks and some single target attacks the rifle would be fired like a normal rifle, sending out bursts of elemental magic from the barrel with great speed and accuracy. From a lore perspective it’d make sense as well, as while the staff is just calling down raw power it’s not very focused, hence all AoEs. But a gun is well designed to deliver a single shot of explosive damage to a single target. So rifle would be the best weapon for single target nuking and have decent AoE pressure to make it the flip side of the staff’s great AoE pressure and support.

Fire attunement could involve big AoE bursts on target, punishing enemies for getting too near your target. Auto attack could be like a faster moving fireball with a smaller AoE radius. Give it some AoE burst spells, the required fire field, and maybe a long, channeled shot that when released will send out a fireball into the sky that explodes and makes it rain blasts of fire that hit randomly along the ground like the charrzooka ability, effectively carpet bombing the place. Not unlike meteor storm but more all at once damage making it harder to ignore. Or maybe give it a skill jump where you make the ground erupt into fire, leaving a fire field and crashing back down in your designated area for a blast finisher.That would make us choose between getting a fire blast finisher for might, escaping a dangerous situation and giving up the might, or using it to engage/disengage. Maybe even forsake our own finisher to jump into a water field.

Water attunement would likely be about chill and vulnerability. More condition oriented and meant for hampering the enemy so our burst skills hit harder. Auto attack could be ice bullets that cause vulnerability. Calling down a snowstorm over an area to spam chill for it’s duration would be a cool addition. Or an ice sheet on the ground that makes enemies that walk over it fall over and gain a short duration weakness.

Air attunement I’d like to be more about wind than lightning. Though the auto attack shooting bolts of lightning from our gun would be pretty neat. Focus air on a combination of single target damage, mobility, and crowd control. An AoE knockback to anyone near the caster would be neat. Or maybe an air oriented burning speed that causes knock-back on enemies we rocket past rather than sheer damage. Another skill jump for this one might be neat too, letting us fly into the air for a greater distance than our fire one would allow, but without the field of blast finisher. And of course a single target heavy damage burst skill with a long cooldown. The kind of skill you save to finish the enemy off, or start off with to get the enemy on the defensive early. Maybe we hold our rifle in the air and call down a series of quick lightning strikes for heavy damage. A channeled and interuptable effect so you gotta be crafty with it.

And earth… I’d like earth to be a sneaky defensive attunement for this weapon. Turn us into a commando. Auto attack could be a channeled minigun of rock bullets that stacks bleeds on the target from a distance. Throw down smoke fields we can blast for stealth or exploit to blind enemies. Give us a cripple ability and possibly access to some damage mitigation in the form of protection, projectile destruction, or block and we’re golden.

And thus we’d have a solid heavily offensive ranged weapon with low support and all the crowd control and movement skills we’d need to stay at range. Something the staff fails hardcore at. And it’d have the quirky “Going against tradition” flavor Anet loves to include in everything. A mage with a gun!? We are doomed!