Guild Wars 2

Added and changed a couple of things in the OP:

Staff

Arcana

• Evasive Arcana - Currently there is no internal recharge on the blast finisher from this trait (it triggers in every attunement). This is one of the problems with staff support because it can quickly put out 3 AoE healing blast finishers for ~3k more healing than it should be able to. I feel adding an internal recharge of 10 seconds to the blast finisher would help mitigate most of the problems with staff support.

Actually, re-read what I wrote, I was talking about blast finishers only.

Well you seemed to be implying D/D had more finishers than Staff, which it doesn’t.

D/D Has two blast finishers and the staff only has one and the scepter has the most blast finishers when coupled with dagger.

Actually Staff has 3 finishers, 2 Projectile (Shockwave and Stoning) and 1 Blast (Eruption) where as D/D only has 2 Blast finishers (Earthquake and Churning Earth (which isn’t really going to be sued as a blast finisher in a fight))

Leo G.4501:

Don’t think there was much comment on combos. I like that Elementalist has that to play with moreso than other damage classes. I just wish they had a bit more variety to them.

Most of my experience comes from Staff and Dagger/Dagger but with the Staff, your main blast finishers are the slow-effecting Eruption and Arcane Wave/Blast. I actually think that’s fine since you have the option of creating lots of combo fields. Dagger feels like it’s missing more fields or finishers. You’re basically looking at Ring of Fire and Burning Speed as your only field and Churning Earth or Earthquake as your finishers and I think Vapor Blade is a projectile finisher.

Yeah, I’d either try to give it a balance like Staff which has 2 finishers and 6 fields by adding some fields to Dagger or make Dagger the ‘finisher’ weapon combo and lopside its ratio of finishers/fields from 3/2 to something like 5/2.

Some candidates:
Water #5- Cleansing Wave = a good choice for a Blast Finisher that also heals allies.

Water #3- Frozen Burst = could be a blast finisher or an Ice combo field if you boost the duration of the ice patch a bit.

Air #4- Ride the Lightning= could be a jump finisher since we don’t get any of those outside of conjured weapons, if I’m not mistaken.

Air #5- Updraft= another place for a jump finisher perhaps?

Earth #3- Magnetic Grasp= jump finisher? Why not?

Yeah, these are mainly focused on Water and Air because both have neither finishers (Vapor Blades?) or fields.

I’m sure more could be said about other weapon abilities but I mainly use Dagger for general play and staff for when I want to hang back.

Honestly I think that it’s fine the way it is finishers wise (though I’d like to see a leap finisher on Burning Speed). D/D is very much about burst and close combat where as staff is more a long range drop AoE fields so it’s understandable that it would have more fields (and finishers).

Also Magnetic Grasp is already a leap finisher o.o

Eurosdown.6072:

Glyph of elemental power is fine as is. With all the attunement switching we have to do, if the condition changed with attunement you might have to sacrifice a useful condition (weakness/chill) for the sake of using an earth/fire cooldown which would suck. Proc rate could be a tad higher.

The main problem with this one is that often in specs you’ll be running you might want say burning on your attacks for a burst (D/D) but that means you have to pre cast it in fire switch to air and wait for the cooldown to come back up on fire before you engage which not only makes it harder to jump into a fight without people noticing it also means you’ve used a fair chunk of the glyphs duration.

Eurosdown.6072:

Eruption is not fine just because you can use instants. Being rooted for that long, especially as d/d, is just asking for pain. That and the cast is so obvious anyone can easily avoid it, essentially wasting it.

You’re thinking of churning earth not eruption <3 churning earth is fine where it is considering it’s useful for forcing a dodge as well as being area denial and forcing focus on you

Haette.2701:

Ice Shards: I’m not fond of healing, it sounds too much like the staff. Making it a 20% projectile finisher would be nifty, it spams faster than any other spell we have and would be good at that.

I think it’s fundamentally different from the staff because it’s not a PBAoE heal and it only heals you when you’re hit, though having it as a projectile finisher would be nice

Haette.2701:

Arc Lightning/Lightning Strike: These two work fine and are an interesting trick, I’m just not a fan of having two skills that do basically the same thing. Doesn’t seem right to have an autoattack that requires two buttons.

I enjoy the way it works but that might just be me o.o

Haette.2701:

Fire Shield: Needs to last longer. No other aura is weaker than the version of it you can get for free from performing a combo.

I have to disagree with the length increase just because of how many Fire Aura’s you can get

Haette.2701:

Burning Speed: Fine as is, but I wouldn’t mind an evade effect like Burning Retreat has. I’d even be willing to trade the explosion damage for that.

afaik they added this in the betas but it may not be functioning =/

Haette.2701:

Ride The Lightning: Detonate option or better pathing, that’s all.

I dislike the idea of having a detonate button personally and the pathing is fine currently, it just needs to detonate when it reaches where they would be

Haette.2701:

Magnetic Grasp: Just fix the “magnetic hug” glitch.

Yup

Haette.2701:

Burning Retreat: This is totally fine, it’s got a free evade attached to it and there’s plenty of other damage in the bar.

I think it would really benefit from a small AoE when you use it because right now it doesn’t really feel too useful

Haette.2701:

Ice Spike: Why isn’t this a blast finisher?

There could be problems with blast finishers + water fields but I’d like to see it tested really

Haette.2701:

Eruption: I don’t mind the delay, but the cast time is pretty horrendous. A shorter cast time with the same explosion delay doesn’t strike me as overpowering, and would be far more comfortable to use.

As I’ve already said I think this skill is fine where it is since it hits like a truck and the area denial on it is massive

Curring.9752:

I agree with almost everything, though there are a few things;

• Water trident: I was thinking it could be turned into a 1 second water field, so the trident would come out of the ground then do a pulse heal, I just feel like the scepter was missing a water field. Would this be too much?

Since scepter isn’t as support focused as staff I don’t think this would be appropriate

Curring.9752:

• Flamewall: I feel that it might become too much if everything was changed like that maybe keep the C/D the same but change everything else.

Probably but without testing I’m on the fence about this one

Curring.9752:

• Magnetic Grasp: I just want the bug fixed where if you cast it you’ll do the animation but will get stuck at the target for a second or two unable to do anything.

Yup would love to see that bug fixed

Curring.9752:

• Ice Spike: Shouldn’t this be a blast finisher? It acts the same as dragons tooth in a way.

Yup definitely agree

Curring.9752:

• Unsteady Ground: I think it should apply a more prominent cripple, it is very easy to avoid and is only 2 seconds, maybe buff it up to 4 second cripple too.

Agree on this one as well

I’m briefly going to go over a few utility skills and traits that I think need changing but I’ll make a more indepth post about them at a later date

Utilities

• Glyph of Elemental Power - Right now this applies conditions based to the attunement you cast it in, I would like to see it cause conditions based on the attunement you are when you use a skill, for example in water your skills cause chill and in fire your skills cause burning whilst the glyph is up
• Arcane Power - Currently bugged to only allow 2 attacks to crit, however I’d like to see it increase critical damage whilst active (by say 15-25%) to make I a viable pick for burst specs
• Lightning Flash - Compared to Blink this is currently subpar so I’d like to see the recharge dropped to 35 seconds
• Cleansing Fire - Would like to see a 40 second recharge on this

Traits

Fire

• Fire’s Embrace - I would like to see this moved to the adept tier and the trait Burning Precision to be moved to the Master tier and boosted to a 50% chance with a 2-3 second burning.

Air

• Grounded - This doesn’t apply to updraft because it’s a launch effect
• Zephyr’s Boon - Currently there’s an anomaly with this skill giving 10 seconds o fury and swiftness when you use Shocking Aura but all the other auras only give 5. I would like a 7-8 second duration per aura.

Water

• Powerful Aura - I would love to see this trait get an extra addition to it, originally I wanted reduced aura cooldown but that would conflict with the attunement cooldown traits so I settled on increasing the duration of auras by 20% (this means Shocking Aura has a 6 second duration and Frost Aura an 8.4 second duration) just to make it more desirable.

Arcana

• Evasive Arcana - Currently there is no internal recharge on the blast finisher from this trait (it triggers in every attunement). This is one of the problems with staff support because it can quickly put out 3 AoE healing blast finishers for ~3k more healing than it should be able to. I feel adding an internal recharge of 10 seconds to the blast finisher would help mitigate most of the problems with staff support.

Something related to the Arcana tree that could do with changing is the attunement recharge rate. Right now it’s 15 seconds base with ~9 seconds with 30 in Arcane. Because of how powerful the passive benefit from the Arcana trait line it’s pretty much mandatory in most builds to take 20-30 points into it. I would like to see a base recharge of 12 seconds with the Arcana passive being cut in half meaning it’s no longer mandatory but in builds where you want to be switching lots it’s still strong

Staff

Dagger (Main Hand and Off Hand)

Focus

I would like to preface this post by saying that although Elementalist could do with some improvement I do not believe they are in the dire state that seemingly the rest of this sub forum do <3 This post will need to be split over a lot of comments because I’ll be covering pretty much everything about Elementalist weapons, due to its length I will be splitting it up with spoilers to stop I being a complete wall of text (if enough people say the spoilers make it hard to read I’ll turn it into normal text)

I have mostly been running Dagger/Dagger Elementalist personally however I feel I have enough experience with the profession to comment on the other weapons.

Scepter

DiogoSilva.7089

Crunch Rest.2945

Don’t expect fixes anytime soon = don’t expect me to play or recommend this class anytime soon

It’s for the best that those changes are properly tested and polished, instead of getting rushed and then either being useless, or overpowered and nerfed right after.

What that person said <3

Aether McLoud.1975

Lightning touch should be instant and a blind IMHO. Dagger/Dagger setup really lacks a blind.

I think that would essentially just be replicating the #3 skill of Scepter a bit too closely

Karl McLain

We do have some improvements in mind for the elementalist’s main-hand dagger, along with reworking the downed state a bit. Keep in mind that you might not see this for a bit, but it is in the works.

Tyvm for the response <3

Eicherjw.3926

ETA?

Right now I imagine they’re more focused on getting the PvP (private servers, ranking, paid tournaments etc) parts sorted and letting the meta continue to develop (for example retal guardians have only popped up in the past 1-2 weeks)

Tarkaroshe.8370:

Dragons Claw: This relies on the player being as close as they can get to the target in order to do maximum damage. Which isn’t a good situation for a supposed “glass cannon” to be in. If the “arc” was smaller, then maximum damage could possibly be achieved without having to be practically stood on top of the mob (assuming a small target).

I have to disagree with this one because as D/D you’re not meant to be glass cannon and it’s useful if you’re sure you won’t be hit.

Tarkaroshe.8370:

Dragons Breath: For me, is mostly ok because I’ve learned to NOT use it when kiting sideways, but to use it when the target and myself are running either towards one another or away. The same goes for Fire Grab.

I can agree with this but often that just can’t happen in PvP, also would there be anything wrong with being able to hit it when strafing in PvE?

Tarkaroshe.8370:

Vapour Blade: This is one thing I find odd about the OP’s comments. They want to change Dragons Breath because it misses, but think that Vapour Blade is fine even though that misses too for the same reasons.

That’s the intended behaviour of Vapor Blade it’s a projectile that moves in a straight line rather than a cone skill that is having reliability issues with targeting

Tarkaroshe.8370:

Cone of Cold: As mentioned earlier (see DB above), CoC doesn’t apply any vulnerabilty buff or chilled effect on target. Unlike Water 1 and 3 respectively. Surely it should apply a debuff to the target?

It would be nice for it to but it does quite a bit of damage and some healing so it’s not needed

Tarkaroshe.8370:

Last note: Give us the option to weapon swap, but have the weapon slots bound to specific attunements. For example: Slot 1 could be fire attunement with D/D in it. Slot 2 could be Earth attunement with S/D. This way, the Elem is given the flexibility of weapon swapping, but is bound to a specific set of weapon abilities linked to a specific attunement.

So, in other words, Elem’s should be given 2 options that are only changable out of combat:

Option 1: Just as it is now. Benefit: More flexibility in attunement swapping. Drawback: No weapon swapping during combat.

Option 2: Benefit: Weapon Swapping allowed. Drawback: Each slot is locked to an attunement of the player’s choosing.

Personally I think that you already have a massive amount of flexibility with Ele just from the ability to switch attunements and both of the suggestions would be hard to balance. The way Ele works skill wise is you gain far more flexibility in one range (more so than anything else) but lose the ability to be effective at a different range.

“Impale – Fine with this skill as well though it could do with some more range”

I’m I delusional? I don’t think so. I hope though that they can somehow bring about weapon swap while balanced.

Being locked as a D/D mele type with no option to switch to range with decent damage is a disadvantage.

As a Warrior I can be upfront and in your face and when I want to take it easy and safe I can switch to my Rifle/Bow and pew pew from afar.

Ah ye i forgot about Impale o.o that was more a something that would be nice to see rather than something that is needed. It would also only be a 100 range increase so it has the same range as Dragon’s Claws so not exactly what I’d call a ranged option

Ukaei.8694:

I think D/D is missing weapon swap. I noticed how you mentioned how certain skills need more range; I agree.

Hence I think they should add weapon switch like all other classes in the game while balanced.

I didn’t suggest more range, I think their current range is suited to D/D it’s just they’re unreliable when it comes to hitting.

On the note of weapon swapping for Ele’s, just no lol it would completely break them. They’re hard enough to balance as it is with 20 abilities with 40 it would just be absurd.

Personally I have 18% base but have perma fury so usually 38% crit, I guess with berserkers amulet it’s already really good I just dislike how squishy it leaves you. Maybe a nice rework would be to give it a 100% chance on crit but an internal cooldown?

ye it’s great with Lightning Flash <3 I don’t want it changed personally I like it just where it is

aye that’s why i said it’s something I’d like but isn’t needed

Earth

• Impale - Fine with this skill as well though it could do with some more range
• Ring of Earth - Would like to see 3 bleed stacks with 6 seconds rather than 1 with 12 seconds to make this skill feels more meaningful but not needed by any means
• Magnetic Grasp - The pulling is still quite clunky but other than that it’s a great skill
• Earthquake - Great skill overall
• Churning Earth - Often this skill isn’t worth using but it does have it’s niche for example when you have no interrupts and want to punish people for ressing an ally or to try and force a dodge. I noticed on the bug compilation thread that there was a bug listed that this skill goes on its full cooldown if you cancel it/it’s interrupted, that’s intended behaviour because you aren’t casting, it you’re channeling it and all channel spells that are interrupted mid duration get full cooldowns

That wraps up the skill changes and that’s pretty much everything I wanted to cover apart from 2 traits i would like to see improved to help Dagger/Dagger as well.

Water
Powerful Aura - I would love to see this trait get an extra addition to it, originally I wanted reduced aura cooldown but that would conflict with the attunement cooldown traits so I settled on increasing the duration of auras by 20% (this means Shocking Aura has a 6 second duration and Frost Aura an 8.4 second duration) just to make it more desirable.

Arcana
Renewing Stamina - Personally I feel that this trait could do with a boost from 33% to 50% to allow Elementalists to stay in close combat more reliably because of dodges but once again it’s not needed

If you made it this far tyvm for reading <3

TL;DR – Mostly quality of life changes with a few buffs

I would like to preface this post by saying that although ele’s could do with some improvement I do not believe they are in the dire state that seemingly the rest of this sub forum do <3 Also I have to split it into a comment because of the character limit

I have been having quite a bit of success running a Dagger/Dagger ele in sPvP (and tPvP) recently with around 200 games using it but currently I feel there could be some improvements made the weapon set (mainly Main Hand Dagger)

Fire:

• Dragon’s Claw - Personally I like this skill it promotes you being near your target (as you should with Dagger Main Hand) but doesn’t punish you over much for being at a longer range
• Drake’s Breath - Right now a problem with this skill is that when both you and the target are moving it can be a bit unreliable with when it hits so I’d like to see the hit box expanded (but the same range) so it’s a bit more reliable.
• Burning Speed - This skill is overall in a good place damage wise imo but one thing it could do with is having an extra second of Burning added to the explosion so you can reliably hit a Fire Grab that benefits from the Burning because right now without condition duration the burning is over before your Fire Grab hits
• Ring of Fire - In a good place right now
• Fire Grab - This suffers from the same hit box problem that Drake’s Breath does, often when it looks like a Fire Grab has hit you will get a miss so expanding the hit box or if there is another way of reliably making it hit would be appreciated

Water

• Vapor Blade - In a fine place
• Cone of Cold - Suffers from the same problem as Drake’s Breath with reliably hitting foes, it would also be nice to have the healing co-efficient boosted from 0.36 —> 0.5 but it isn’t needed
• Frozen Burst - Right now this skill deals around half the damage of Sigil of Hydromancy which also has a 9 second cooldown. Frozen Burst does have the benefit of you being to choose when you want to trigger it without any side effects (i.e. switching weapons) however it has a ~50% longer cooldown and half the damage. In light of it being more reliable I would like to see the damage boosted by 20-30%
• Frost Aura - Currently Fine
• Cleansing Wave - I would like to see it remove 2 conditions but right now it’s in a good place so doesn’t need a change

Air

• Lightning Whip - Since the buff last patch this is really nice
• Lightning Touch - Probably the worst skill on Dagger currently, it hit’s for about 40% of the damage of Lightning Whip (when both parts hit) and suffers from the same targeting problems as Fire Grab. I’d like to see the damage doubled and maybe an increase in the weakness duration because currently you’re just better off auto attacking than using it
• Shocking Aura - Really love this skill and think it’s great
• Ride the Lightning - I love this skill but right now it has the problem of stunning you in certain circumstances. The way it works currently is it predicts where the enemy is going to be when you would hit and sends you in that direction. If they change direction then you reach where they would have been, you stop moving and Ride the Lightning continues until it has completed its 2 second duration (1 second per 600 range) so for example if you fire it and someone would have been 600 range away where it predicts then it will lock you in place for 1 second until it completes it’s 1,200 range timer. This would be easy to fix by making it so Ride the Lightning automatically detonates/ends when you reach where they would be regardless of if an enemy is hit or not.
• Updraft - Love this skill as well but it would be nice to have a timer for the knockdown in the tooltip

Siveon.8759:

I don’t know how they expect to make any money from this because it’s way too easy to get them with gold.

In the beginning I was wondering about getting the extra char slots(800 gems for 10$ or 10€ each), but now I got all 3 extra slots in a few days.

I was expecting the price to be at least 5 times higher, but 25-30 silver per 100 gems you can get 800 gems for a couple of gold, so as much as I want to see GW2 succeed I foresee that no one will ever want to waste real money on that shop.

Also the Gems-to-gold conversion is even worst which unfortunately makes gold sellers more viable way to get gold than with gems through Anet.

It’s also worth noting that the only way gems get into the economy is by people buying them with real life cash, if no one buys gems then they rocket in price as well as eventually (highly improbable ofc) running out of stock and no one can get them from gold