Staff is our group support weapon. Daggers are our kill things weapon.
I support my group with AoE damage mainly as I’m built for it and do decent damage to groups and can help tip the balance to my side. However I kind of accept that I’ll get butchered if I get caught alone. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a fair share of 1v1 wins with my staff, but it’s usually by the skin of my teeth.
Daggers on the other hand is our direct burst set. It excels with superior damage, mobility, and to be feels like a more complete weapon set. Staff, though I love it, feels like there are four separate attunements that don’t mesh all that well together while daggers seamlessly flow from one element to the other without any clunky pauses or awkward clicks. Though I think that’s more because I have to ground target every other attack with my staff while daggers generally do not.
Basically, don’t expect to 1v1 a D/D ele with a staff. You’re essentially fighting a more specialized soloist version of yourself no matter what build you’re using.
I think you’re all missing the actual scope of the issue here.
This was obviously a stealth nerf to our strongest elite skill. TORNADO!
Now it has CONSIDERABLY less health than it normally would and lowers my crit chance by half, and drops my power making the damage output even more pointless!
Also, and perhaps a more pressing issue, every time I activate Tornado my game crashes o.o Is this only me?
Blasting Staff is a very useful trait because it increases the radius of Lava Font, Eruption, Geyser, Healing Rain, Static Field, Frozen Ground, and Ice Spike, making them vastly more likely to actually hit multiple targets (Why would you ever want to hit one guy and not hit all his buddies?). It also vastly improves staff’s 1v1 performance as it’s easier to get enemies to walk over a big lava font than a small lava font. And is the only thing that makes running staff in spvp bearable as a node assaulter/defender (Erupt is the EXACT size of the node the enemy has to stand on to cap it). Frankly I can’t imagine how you can manage running a staff build WITHOUT this trait. True it dilutes our Meteor Shower so it does less concentrated damage, but it spreads it out so more enemies are likely to get hit by meteors.
Though I do agree with the basis of your post. I dislike the idea of a 5 target cap on AoEs. Both damage and support. Almost all high difficulty content in GW2 is limited to five man groups anyway, so this only effects live world and WvWvW content.
I can see it as an issue as far as support. An ele aura sharing build for example would be insanely powerful in large zergs, but at the same time having more than one aura sharing ele would just be redundant as the benefits from the auras don’t stack as far as I’m aware. And the boons stack in duration, so at most it’d give the zerg perma swiftness and fury. Which is admittedly pretty powerful, but most zergs have swiftness up as a whole 80-90% of the time on average from my experience. And this game generally has damage > healing potential, so I doubt we’d see unkillable zergs fighting unkillable zergs. And it’d make support builds feel a little more welcome in WvWvW, as right now high damage builds seem to rule the roosts.
And honestly if a million people decide to bunch up and sit on my lava font, they all deserve to take the damage.
Charr because we’re just better at handling fire than the lesser races.
Plus Charrzooka isn’t a terrible way to deal with the range issue as a D/D ele in dungeons.
And Artillery Fire combined with Meteor Storm and Glyph of Storms makes for some intense AoE.
My burning speed’s burst happens at the start of the the trail rather than end about half the time. Makes my D/D set a pretty big handicap. But I believe my issue is already covered in the bugs list.
To Creslin.
It’s a matter of style, good sir. People who make their characters often go in with a specific style they want to bring to life, thus they pick the profession that they feel best fits the theme they have in mind and then create their build to better reflect it. I wanted to have a higher focus on fire, the other fellow up there wanted to be of the more lightningy persuasion.
It’s also a matter of diversity. By picking fire my playstyle would be fundamentally different than lightning man. I’d perhaps come out with explosions of fire that focuses more on raw AoE damage while he might come in with a flash of lightning and strike down enemies for massive single target damage. And as we fight in our respective elements we could stance dance to water or earth when we’re in need of healing or active defense. Or an earth user could gear himself toward being more of a tanky role and wearing the enemy down with condition damage and high defense, switching to air for a sudden surge of lightning for a surprise spike burst or fire to throw down a burning AoE to but a little more stress on the enemy. Or a water elementalist could sit in water attunement providing much needed boons and support to his team, switching to earth for emergency defense when things get too close or fire to throw down a damaging field to make enemies back off before they return to their watery ways.
Instead every ele more or less plays the same way. Whether you’re a bunker ele, a support ele, or a damage ele you’re still going to be cycling attunements and blowing all your hard hitting cooldowns quickly in pvp in much the same way as ever. While a bunker and damage ele are fundamentally different in their goals, they still play more or less similarly. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the playstyle and have become rather fond of the stance dancing mechanic. More than I thought I would. But I don’t think hoping for a little more specialization means I’m doing it wrong.
It’s more of a case of:
Game Dev: Hey guys, here is a class that you must switch between all four elements dynamically in combat, giving it flexibility in any situation!
Player: Sweet! Imma pick ai- Wait, what do you mean HAVE to?
Game Dev: Well… If you don’t constantly switch you’ll be vastly under performing and die a lot.
Player: Oh… Well… Okay. This is still fun! But hey, why is that warrior only using his greatsword? Why doesn’t he have to switch weapons every five seconds to remain viable? Broken class! Rabble! Rabble!
Honestly what I assumed the elementalist would be was a caster that, through traiting, focused on a specific element more strongly than the rest while using the other three elements to support and enhance the primary. Which is largely how I play. Fire is my “Resting” element. The element I’m in when I’m farming, sitting in towns, and generally my go to element in fights. However this is not optimal without a very specific fire build that is widely considered non-viable.
I was and am a bit disappointed that I have to use all four elements and switch attunements almost as soon as I enter one just to get off enough abilities to compete with other classes using the same five skills. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the playstyle and I love my elementalist. I was just hoping for a more specialized approach. Or at least the option to specialize.
I mean come on… We pick a primary element at the very start of the game in character creator! That was quite misleading.
They do not stack. They use the largest number as the passive effect. So if you took all our speed boost traits you’d max at 25% speed increase. That is, of course, if that trait actually did what it said it did. Which is does not. It’s broken. Which makes our greatest passive speed boost 15% from Windborn daggers which I THINK also doesn’t work as intended. So we’re stuck with the 10% increase from Zephyr’s Speed and Air Signet. So what I’m saying is, if you want any noticable passive speed increase roll a thief, who actually DO have a 25% speed increase available 24/7, not just when attuned to air, ala their signet.
You can get permanent Swiftness though. Grab quick glyphs and Inscription from the air line and you’ll be able to get 26 seconds of Swiftness on a 20 second Cooldown using Glyph of Elemental Harmony. And just like that your travel speed is the maximum speed in the game at 33% increase. And you get all the actual utility of having really strong boons and a strong, low cooldown heal all rolled into one!
Don’t waste traits on our passive bonuses. They are beyond pointless.
I feel Sunspot is where it should be, if only because the general “theme” for all our elemental lines seems to be a burst when changing attunements for the master minor trait. Changing Burning Rage to your idea (“Increase area of Sunspot to 360 and inflict burning”) however would make it vastly more useful. I always felt 5% more damage under certain conditions was rather underpowered for a grandmaster minor trait. What’s worse is that the WATER trait gives you a larger and more sustainable damage boost. I find I have three or more boons on me most every fight.
For major traits though, I don’t think FIRE is thematically the place for a fall damage reduction trait. But creating a lava font on fall would work.
I also find it odd that our cooldown reduction of a weapon set skills are just a bse weapon set cooldown reducer. Other classes have a trait like this paired with a secondary effect (Merciless Hammer, Forceful Greatsword etc.) And all in the Master tier as well. I’d combine Internal Fire and Pyromancer’s Alacrity. So you’d get 10% more damage in fire and 20% cooldown reduction for fire spells in one trait. Our elements are our weapon swap, and I don’t see why it should be treated differently than weapon sets of other classes. Beyond the fact a warrior can wreck things with his hammer and never really have to switch, while we can’t reasonably sit in one element forever and perform well at all. Any trait that requires us to stay in one attunement for it to work should therefore be a bigger benefit to us than the weapon enhancing traits of other classes, not weaker.
A few better adept traits would be nice too. It’s not that they’re all BAD, more so they are all just very much inferior to Spell Slinger. Maybe if the Burning on Burning Precision lasted a bit longer it’d be more worth it.
Our master and grand master traits are also alright in general. They just don’t have that pop that water or arcane has. I’d suggest a trait like..
Smoke Screen: Creates a burst of smoke on point at the start of a dodge roll, causing 3 seconds of Blindness to nearby foes.
Star Struck: Meteors from Meteor Shower dazes and cripples on impact for 2 seconds.
Solar Flare: Causes a flash of light that blinds nearby foes for 6 seconds when you take more than 20% of your health in one hit. (90 second cooldown).
Molten Armor: Armor of Earth now causes 3 seconds of Burning to foes within 190 range for it’s duration.
Burning Target: Increases Critical Chance against burning foes by 10%.
Just some ideas.
Indeed Zaviel.
I enjoyed the D/D playstyle for a while. Until my Burning Speed broke (About half the time the explosion happens at the START of the fire trail, not at the end. Meaning I basically just jetted toward an enemy and did zero opening damage, NOT GOOD. This also often ends in a wasted Fire Grab as my enemy won’t be burning when it hits.)
I’d like a more aggressive staff honestly. All that amazing AoE potential more or less ignored because if you’re caught alone you need to struggle to not die half the fight, as you’re just blatantly out damaged single target. That is the playstyle I made the elementalist to use. A ranged nuker that that throw down group support in a hairy situation.
I think we should try to get our damage trees up to par before asking to make our best tree even stronger by making it a DPS alternative.
Throw in some survival traits into Fire and Air. Tempest Defense is a good skill, but alone it’s not even close to enough to keep a high burst ele alive longer than a few seconds.
I realize the whole point of a glass cannon is to do massive damage quickly but have no defense. But with the game set up as it is now, glass cannon elementalist is more like a suicide bomber. You WILL die in seconds even to a balanced build opponent. Or even a bunker. Likely before you can even get your burst off if the enemies are even paying attention! This is especially frustrating when you see other glass cannons running around with loads of defense built into their very core mechanics.
With staff you really want to avoid 1v1 battles in the open. It’s not impossible to win, but you have to work much harder and hope your opponent has never fought a staff ele before to get the edge. However has the poster above me said, staff still has some vicious heavy artillery power. The whole point of conquest is to fight on the node to capture it. Use that to your advantage.
I usually sit away from the node, preferably on higher ground. Using the staff’s range as my advantage. True, I’m not contributing to taking the node. But with the Blasting Staff trait Lava Font and Eruption take up almost the entire node on most maps. And Meteor Shower covers almost all of the Graveyard node, which is by far the largest. The result? Everything standing on that node to capture it has to leave or die very quickly. So the enemies are either taking large amounts of damage or they forfeit the node to your allies. Either way with the exception of just being out numbered you’ll have effectively tipped the scales of power in your team’s favor.
Some players outright refuse to leave the node in spvp when you start showering them with pain. And by the time they capture it they’ll usually have blown a few defensive cooldowns and are around half health if not worse off. At which point you have a decent chance of actually killing something in a 1v1 and taking the node after!
But seriously. Better run with a team mate to keep the heat off you.
Staff does have bad single target. So it’s not a superb dueling weapon. But in Wv3 that shouldn’t happen often. And none of our weapon sets come close to having the same impact on the battlefield as a staff.
My current build for Wv3 (And spvp, though I wouldn’t recommend it) isn’t exactly what most would consider optimal. And it’s tailored more to my play style and personal preferences.
I actually DO go 30 into fire. Because I’m insane and a bit of a masochist. For Pyromancer’s Puissance. I rarely switch out of fire in Wv3 as has our strongest AoEs and best single target auto attack. Every fire spell gives Might, so I’m always sitting on at least 5 might stacks at any given time. Combined with Spell Slinger and good ol’ Blast Finisher: Fire it’s not uncommon for me to get to 10-15 stacks of Might under my own power. Plus Might from allies I’ve hit 25 stacks fairly often. Which leads to some devastating Meteor Showers and Lava Fonts. And Internal Fire for 10% more damage with fire spells because why not? Not like there’s any better choices in fire tree.
So obviously fire is my default element. I use earth mainly for eruption as a blast finisher, as well as Magnetic Aura for defense when on the walls.
Then I have 20 points in Water. Typical Cleansing Wave for condition removal. And Soothing Disruption so my cantrips grant regeneration and vigor when I use them. More boons the better! And it provides with pretty decent healing support, which makes water my second most used element. Comboing water blasts with geyser and healing rain gives me plenty of survivability when under a hail of fire from arrow carts and the meteor showers of some of our bunkyer cousins. Also Ice Spike isn’t bad for damage either since I’m already in this attunement. Why not throw it out?
And my last 20 goes to Arcane. Elemental Attunement is a must because I’ve grown addicted to the easy access to the various boons, and gives all the attunements a little added bite. And Blasting Staff for larger AoEs. This DOES dilute the concentrated power of Meteor Shower. But the larger Lava Fonts and Eruptions means they’re harder to avoid and hit more people. Which consequently makes 1v1s a bit easier in my experience (Hence why I’ve taken to using this build in spvp too from time to time).
As for Air attunement I make good use of it’s swiftness boon for traveling. And Static Field is good for cutting off escape routes and disrupting enemy movements in general.
My gear is mostly exotics from dungeons. A mix of rampagers and invader’s gear stat-wise. But I’m looking into getting a Knight set. Basically needs high power and decent crit chance, and some vitality/toughness to improve survival. My runes are a mix of monk/Baelfire runes because again I’m poor and need more gold for better stuff. But the sigil my staff has is Superior Sigil of Battle. I don’t switch often, but when I do I enjoy the stacks of Might to compensate for the time not spent in fire nuking things.
My fireballs are critting for upward 1.4K and Meteor Shower crits between 1.7K to 2.4K damage a meteor depending on the target. And Lava Font crits for about 1.1K a tick. With a 30% crit chance I find I get enough crits to bring enemies down fast and hard, enough to make them rethink spending any time at all standing on my lava fonts. Which I just so happen to have a habit of placing on downed players to prevent revives and stomps.
It’s far from an optimal build. But I enjoy it. And it’s effective at what it does. Burn things.
I am now level 80 and still no luck. This bug persists and is preventing me from doing anything with my story.
A bit of additional information:
When Steelbane comes down and promptly refuses to turn red, my quest log says I still need to tell him about the destroyed supplies, which of course is what you do when you begin this phase of the quest before the fights. So maybe it’s an issue with scripting? Maybe the quest log just isn’t updating properly. I dunno.
Still not fixed. I reported this bug a few weeks ago when my charr was level 4. He’s now level 71, and is still unable to continue with his personal story. This is starting to get annoying.