Staff ele have only one non-AoE damage spell. The #1 Earth.
The #1 Earth is fine, but is not intended for burst or high DPS.
Each time a staff ele is against a single foe, half is potential is lost.
Each time a staff ele is single against foes, half is potentiel is lost.
The second is fine, the first is not. It’s too much. And when 1v1 come, a Staff Ele have nothing. PvE and PvP.
It’s the meaning of the Fire/Air/Water #1 changement suggestions.
The #1 Water do very few damages but can heal allies. But when there are no allies to heal, this spell is the weakest of the game. It’s like a Magikarp Splash.
Lava Font, Ice Spike and Eruption are way too linear. Lava Font and Eruption are powerful, against static blind players. It’s easy to leave the AoE before you take serious damages.
By switching part of the damages in a Burning, Lava Font will do a little more damages against moving players.
Ice Spike is a highly telegraphed spell that do nothing special. If players will get Chilled by standing under the spell, they will try to avoid it. The Chilling haven’t to be long, just annoying enough to make players considering that a giant ice block fall from the sky.
Eruption have two “casting” time. The casting of the spell and the “blast casting”. During these four seconds, foes have already leave the area. Adding a small cripple effect at the sprung of rocks will help make this spell not a waste of time if people leave it. The bleed stack can be decreased a bit to not imbalance this spell.
Air is the worst element of the Staff and need some improvements to equal the others.
Lightning surge has a long casting time, but against a single foe it’s a waste of time. You lost your time applying Blind and the foe lose his time with a blank strike to remove it… A boon removal to the targeted foe will give an interest to both situation, improving Air Staff.
Gust is a special case. The spell currently knockback a foe from a big range. But it’s not when a foe is already away that you need to knockback him. Knockback nearby foes on the other hand is an ability that staff ele lack. In order to increase sustain & escape potentiel, revamp the spell to knockback nearby foes will help. When you think of the wind, you imagine an invisible thing moving even in the slightest crack. But even in Air attunement, staff ele are easily catchable. Who will loose time facing a foe to knockback him ? It’s a waste of time that can kill you.
Last part, the CD of some spells are way too long.
Unless other classes that swap weapon in order to do specific things, ele have to switch of attunement regularly to not be stucked with cooldown. But some cooldown are way too long and when you come back to an element, they’re not up and you have to wait a few seconds in order to do what intended or switch to another and give up what you planned to do. These “holes” kills you more than mistakes. GW2 is not a game of godly and almighty spells, it’s a game of this little spell at the right moment. Long cooldown doesn’t fit this gameplay well. Between a spell doing 10 000 damages every 30sec and a spell doing 1 000 damages every 3sec, I choose the second one, because a player can dodge one strike, but he can’t dodge ten strikes.
