Guild Wars 2

CallousEye.5018:

Diamond skin will only protect you for 1100 HP in that build and with the otherwise lack of condition removal, you’re unlikely to get your HP back up.

This. Also, I thought that Aquamancer’s Alacrity was moving up to master tier anyway. In any case, the only thing with which Diamond Skin is really going to help is a necro encounter, and it’ll probably only last for about half of the guy’s burst. You can zap yourself back to above 90% maybe once or twice with just healing yourself strategically, but you don’t really have much to sustain you there since it’s such a narrow hp window and you’re using D/D. Furthermore, should you fall below 90%, you might end up garnering a lot of conditions when you were below 90% that could quickly negate your Diamond Skin if you gained health back to full.

cheshirefox.7026:

can i get an elite called “jupiter storm” that nukes this entire area?   n_n

The most that I could wish for with regards to our elites would be for ANet to finally allow players to use the Elite Skill slot as an additional Utility Skill slot. I’d still probably end up taking [FGS] or [Tornado] (for silly [Meteor Shower] shenanigans), though. Still, slipping [Glyph of Storms] into my build would be really nice.

With regards to nuking an enormous area, that would take away the skill of aiming AoEs, predicting enemy movement and leading a target. I do, however, wish that the elementalist were the only profession to exceed the AoE hard-cap of 5 enemies per AoE (maybe ele AoEs could be raised to a maximum of 10 or 15 enemies).

Fasyx.9347:

Had the same problem. Solution: spawn fgs. Spam 1,3,4(for dps AND mobility) and kill this easymode(stealth + heatseeker spam requires so much skill :O ) class

90% of the thieves wont even touch you, because 90% of thieves are bad players.

FGS might actually be a pretty neat trick. It’s a bit of a shame to waste an elite on a thief, but that AoE 5 skill and the evasion dash 3 skill might even out the playing field vs stealth spamming if you’re playing a scepter main-hand.

As a staff elementalist, I have enough circles to draw on the ground that normally keep most thieves away or wreck them when they try to do something. From experience, I can say that [Lightning Flash] and [Arcane Shield] can help a lot. A nice trick is to cast [Meteor Shower] on top of yourself while [Arcane Shield] is up, follow it up with a [Lightning Flash] away when they waste the shield while you’re still in mid-cast, and then [Burning Retreat] back into the [Meteor Shower] area and throw down a [Lava Font].

If they’re like most thieves, they’ll probably still chase you into everything because they’re in burst mode. This kills the thief.

If they decide to break off, they’ll be sitting ducks for a bit wondering what to do which makes them prime targets for something like [Shockwave] or [Frozen Ground].

I normally just play pve and pvp so I’ll be getting zerker. I have a powerful need for that light chest piece skin, though.

This actually seems like a lot of fun. All I’ve been playing for a while now is zerker staff, but I’d love to be a part of this if you’ll have me.

Renuut is my elementalist.

I’ve been running runes of divinity (6/6) on my DPS staff elementalist in pvp for a long while now and I can’t help but wonder from time to time if there aren’t other viable options out there. I guess I’m most attracted to divinity because of the solid crit damage bonus along with the +60 all around. It’s just a nice, balanced power-up.

My only other thoughts are on maybe running Runes of Air (6/6) because that 6/6 proc is just plain ridiculous and I could still get a crit damage bonus. Also swiftness. Swiftness everywhere. I ran them on my Engineer because of the set’s final proc and it worked out pretty well, but then again an Engineer has more hp and armor.

tl;dr
Anyone care to share what runes they run in PvP for a staff elementalist?

CallousEye.5018:

Swagg.9236:

I stand by saying that scepter burst is face-roll. While there is more than one button to it, it’s still as brainless as mashing a single one over and over. There’s a clear rotation that isn’t that long, not complex at all, auto-aims most of it for you from range and it does stupid amounts of damage compared to how long it takes to activate. It’s pretty bogus.

Scepter burst isn’t even that bursty compared to other classes.

What skill is it that you think is bursty from scepter?

Air attunement —> [Lightning Strike] —> Fire Attunement —> [Phoenix] isn’t bursty? And then Fresh Air brings the lightning strikes back off of cool-down in 5 seconds. Now, here’s the thing, though: burst is fine, but being able to see it coming is the key to making it balanced. Elementalist scepter air burst is entirely instant, ranged and auto-aimed, and phoenix casts with the speed of an interrupt and inflicts its greatest damage with a large AoE. Combined with the rest of the skills on off-hand dagger and possibly arcane utilities, it’s a monster in melee range that goes off in under two seconds. At least a hammer warrior has to first leap at you, stay on you, and then plow through a bunch of skills with cast-times of half a second or above. You can at least avoid that. You don’t really get a solid chance to avoid a lot of ele scepter burst because it’s auto-aimed and happens so quickly.

Andele.1306:

No to everything, please go to the thief forums if you want to post further suggestions, they will like you.

That was constructive. These suggestions are all about layering abilities or aiming attacks, you know. It’s not the most outrageous petition.

reserved for future posts

reserved for future posts

NON-NECROMANCER FEAR-RELATED CHANGES

Runes of the Nightmare (6/6)

• Now inflicts 5 stacks of frightened.

“Fear me!”

• Now inflicts 1 stack of frightened at 400 – 600 range.
• Now inflicts 3 stacks of frightened at 200 – 400 range.
• Now inflicts 5 stacks of frightened at 0 – 200 range.

Fear (shark)

• Now inflicts 5 stacks of frightened.

Terrifying Howl

• Now inflicts 5 stacks of frightened.

Skull Fear

• Now inflicts 5 stacks of frightened.

Snarl (Become the Wolf)

• Now inflicts 5 stacks of frightened.

FEAR-RELATED NECROMANCER CHANGES
Doom

• Now inflicts 3 stacks of frightened at 600 – 1200 range.
• Now inflicts 5 stacks of frightened at 0 – 600 range.
• Now unblockable.

Wave of Fear

• Now inflicts 5 stacks of frightened.

Reaper’s Mark

• Cast-time reduced from ¾ second to ½ second.
• No longer immediately triggers if placed directly on top of a valid target. Upon cast completion, the mark will delay (no effect) for 1 second before it starts to automatically trigger when an enemy passes over it.
• Now inflicts 5 stacks of frightened.
• Now unblockable.

Spectral Wall

• Now removes 1 boon from foes that cross it.
• Now inflicts 5 stacks of frightened.

Corrupt Boon

• Now inflicts 5 stacks of frightened when ripping stability.

Well of Corruption

• Now inflicts 5 stacks of frightened when ripping stability.

Fear

• Cast-time reduced from 1¼ seconds to ¼ second
• Now inflicts 5 stacks of fear.

Fear of Death (Soul Reaping – I)

• Now inflicts 5 stacks of frightened to affected foes.

Reaper’s Protection (Death Magic – VIII)

• Now also dazes affected foes for 1 second upon activation.
• Now inflicts 5 stacks of frightened.

Terror (Curses – IX)

• Feared players that look at you while you are under the effects of frightful disposition take damage.
• Damage: 444

Master of Terror (Soul Reaping – XI)

• Frightful disposition that you gain lasts longer. You also gain might when frightening a foe (10 second cool-down).
  • Frightful Disposition: 50% duration increase
  • Might (3): 15 seconds

Fear – FUNCTIONAL MAKE-OVER

• The problem with Fear is two-fold: it takes away a player’s ability to control his/her own character (often for a long period of time); it’s typically instant-activation and therefore provides no real counter-play outside of pre-casting stability (which not everybody has all the time) just because you see a Necromancer. It’s not terror that’s broken. It’s fear being so fast-activating that it has no counter-play outside of pre-casting stability.

If instead, we slow that process of inflicting “RUN AWAY” down but still promoting the flee mechanic organically (forcing a player to choose to turn his character around to avoid something bad), the whole experience of inflicting and countering fear can become a lot more thoughtful and engaging than “I press button,” and “I run away.” To promote the organic retreat (getting a player primed for fear to run away of his own accord), boon-stripping can be added to fear’s base effects to hopefully undermine boon stacking and stability but still keeping the power to counter in the hands of the opponent.

Part 1: Activating a skill or an effect whose end effect aims to inflict Fear.

• Caster gains unique boon: Frightful Disposition (2 seconds).
  • A player with Frightful Disposition has the green and black image of the grim reaper above his/her head for its duration (same cue that appears when using [Doom]).
• A foe affected by the skill or effect is Frightened (1 second).
  • A frightened player is surrounded by a black ring visual cue for its duration.
  • Frightened is a unique debuff that cannot be cleansed, deals no damage and is unaffected by condition duration modifiers. Frightened stacks in intensity.
  • If a player is inflicted with more than 5 stacks of Frightened at any time, that player instantly gains 5 stacks of Fear.

Part 2: After 1 second, the black ring bursts around the Frightened player with the characteristic fear “scream effect.”

• This player is now inflicted with Fear (1 second). Each stack of Frightened converts to 1 stack of Fear.
• Fear now stacks in intensity but not in duration (up to 5 stacks). A player inflicted with Fear caught starting at a player with Frightful Disposition receives debuffs according to the number of stacks of Fear that a player has. This is effectively the Risen Priestess of Lyssa’s Corrupted Gaze effect.

Part 3: Player with Fear looks at a player with Frightful Disposition

• Fear (1): Stun (1 second); Weakened (5 seconds)
• Fear (2): Stun (1 second); Weakened (5 seconds)
• Fear (3): Flee (1 second); Weakened (5 seconds); lose 1 boon
• Fear (4): Flee (1 second); Weakened (5 seconds); lose 1 boon
• Fear (5): Flee (1½ second); Weakened (5 seconds); lose 2 boons
  • Boon ripping occurs before the CC.
  • Flee describes the function of the current Fear (run away in the opposite direction of the source of the Fear).

Spinal Shivers

• Foes targeted by [Spinal Shivers] are surrounded by a bright blue ring during the cast-time period. The ring bursts upon cast-animation completion.

Chilblains

• Cast-time reduced from ¾ second to 0.
• Now uses a ¾-second after-cast animation delay (skill cannot be used while activating another skill).
• Added delay: 1 second
  • Now, when cast, only the visual mark will appear (no red/white circle) and then linger for 1 second. During this 1-second period, the mark cannot trigger. After 1 second, a red/white circle will appear and the mark will trigger automatically if an enemy walks over it.

Putrid Mark

• Cast-time reduced from ¾ second to 0.
• Now uses a ¾-second after-cast animation delay (skill cannot be used while activating another skill).
• Added delay: 1 second
  • Now, when cast, only the visual mark will appear (no red/white circle) and then linger for 1 second. During this 1-second period, the mark cannot trigger. After 1 second, a red/white circle will appear and the mark will trigger automatically if an enemy walks over it.

Reaper’s Mark

• Cast-time reduced from ¾ second to 0.
• Now uses a ¾-second after-cast animation delay (skill cannot be used while activating another skill).
• Added delay: 1 second
  • Now, when cast, only the visual mark will appear (no red/white circle) and then linger for 1 second. During this 1-second period, the mark cannot trigger. After 1 second, a red/white circle will appear and the mark will trigger automatically if an enemy walks over it.
• Now inflicts 5 stacks of frightened.
• Now unblockable.

Dhuumfire (Spite – XI)

• Now, when this trait activates, it summons an invulnerable reaper NPC near the side of the Necromancer (possibly using the same summon detection as [Phantasmal Warlock]. This reaper then attacks the Necromancer’s current target with an orange-tinted [Life Blast] projectile. The projectile deals no damage, but does inflict the burning described in the trait. The reaper dies/vanishes after shooting the projectile.

CURRENT SKILL BALANCE/CHANGES
New Skill functionality: Delay

• Delay represents how long a skill takes affect after the initial cast-time is completed. Several skills already have delay periods. Adding such a tool-tip to those skills would make it clearer how they work. Adding delays and visual cues to instant-activation skills as well as ranged skill that don’t use projectiles would make them more fair in terms of game-play by providing more counter-playability to opponents and making pvp less of a face-roll across the keyboard.

Rending Claws

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ½ second
• Cast out a whirling blade that inflicts vulnerability and returns to you.
• Damage: 179
• Vulnerability (1): 7 seconds
• Range: 900
  • Bright green-tinted [Vapor Blade] animation.

Ghastly Claws

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 2¼ seconds
• Recharge: 12 seconds
• Channel a cone of spectral claws that strike foes in a quick flurry of strikes. You gain life force with each strike.
• Damage (8x): 808
• Duration: 3 seconds
• Life Force: 4%
• Range: 600
  • Strikes up to 3 foes.

Blood Curse

• Now uses a projectile.
  • Green-tinted [Ether Bolt].

Rending Curse

• Now uses a projectile.
  • Green-tinted [Ether Bolt].

Grasping Dead

• Cast-time reduced from ¾ second to 0.
• Now uses a ¾-second after-cast animation delay.
• PvP now inflicts the same amount of bleed stacks as the PvE version.
• Added delay: (1 second)
• Now produces a red circle with skeletal hands dotting the ground after cast completion. After one second, the animated arms that perform the grabbing animation trigger, signaling the damage and condition effects.

Feast of Corruption

• Foes targeted by [Feast of Corruption] are surrounded by a bright green ring during the cast-time period. The ring bursts upon cast-animation completion.

deathTouch.9706:

Swagg.9236:

Take a look at long-bow for instance. All but 1 of its weapon skills outside of the auto-attack are all 1/4-second long cast-times. That really just encourages spamming. If each weapon set had at least one long cast-time skill, the combat in this game would be a little more lively instead of so spammy.

It would have to be applied to all classes though, from a balance perspective.

I’m not saying that it shouldn’t.

deathTouch.9706:

One of the major downsides of war right now compared to other classes is its already telegraphed moves. There’s too many subtle animations/instant casts for other classes right now which is why war SHOULD hit harder and have more survivability than other classes. Not only do we not have great defensive boon access, access to stealth or other skill-based defensive mechanisms besides straight utility CDs like Stab and EP, but almost all our weapon abilities can be countered through a wide variety of options.

Warrior shouldn’t hit harder. It’s damage is honestly fine.

deathTouch.9706:

If we can manage to land a blow as a warrior, it SHOULD hit hard for punishing the opponent for not adequately countering it.

Not really anymore now that warriors can just walk through everything during an encounter’s opening moments without really worrying about anything. Like I said, though, if we just increase cast-times on some skills, it wouldn’t be so bad. Damage wouldn’t necessarily need a nerf; it would just come down to responsible skill usage. Longer cast-times on key skills would slow down combat and add keyhole moments during which keen players would either have to proc their dodges or defensive abilities (if its early on in an encounter) or just bite the bullet (if it’s later on in an encounter) in the case that an opponent saved his/her big hitters or they come off recharge.

deathTouch.9706:

Passive regen of war was the only possible issue right now. It was NEVER hammer damage. Hammer damage was never an issue back when wars had 0 sustainability and couldn’t continuously stay in the fight and earthshaker repeatedly without outside support.

Can’t say that I disagree.

It’s a passive proc that activates at range, without a projectile, and instantly.

It’s completely overpowered and a model of how not to design a skill in this game, just like fear.

deathTouch.9706:

1) That’s an ele problem, not a warrior problem. I’m not opposed to buffing eles in general.

Outside of scepter burst and offensive arcane utilities (that stuff’s nonsense), the Elementalist could actually be used as a viable pace-car for managing/balancing the current meta-game. This game doesn’t necessarily need any more buffs at this point. It needs nerfs and function changes. Any more buffs and PvP combat is going to be so lightning fast and face-rolly that nobody is going to have any fun. It’s already fast enough when facing some of the more overpowered specs.

Overall, not a bad patch, I guess. I’m actually sad that ANet is just nerfing damage (again) instead of considering adjusting cast-times on skills. Time is this game’s Energy mechanic, and by drawing out cast-times on some abilities, one can make them cost a lot more in practice or make a user think about when to activate them.

Take a look at long-bow for instance. All but 1 of its weapon skills outside of the auto-attack are all 1/4-second long cast-times. That really just encourages spamming. If each weapon set had at least one long cast-time skill, the combat in this game would be a little more lively instead of so spammy.

Before anything, I actually do want to say that I appreciate the debate here.

Taldren.7523:

It is a bad thing when a weapon that is only usable in a small fraction of the game gets the majority of the devs attention. In fact, every single dev video I have seen … guess what weapon they have equipped on the elementalist.

I stand by what I said. Staff has a distinct role. That role’s presence is a sign of good design and skill balance.

Taldren.7523:

It sounds like you don’t WvW very often. As someone that is always in WvW there are far more play styles than zerg warefare. You have roaming Havoc groups, roaming bloodlust groups, and gank squads. WvW gets put into a box and kicked around with the lazy excuse “Well its inherently imbalanced” … well yeah, unless everyone is max level with end game gear … then it plateaus. The problem is that the elementalist plateaus as an ant hill compared to the other classes. WvW is 1/3 of this game, disregarding an entire class because you don’t like that aspect of the game is not acceptable.

I keep telling you that I think from a PvP standpoint, not a WvW standpoint. WvW is inherently imbalanced. Plateau stats in WvW are fundamentally different than PvP in a bad way. While ele can bring a lot to the table in the PvP format because stats are more balanced in that environment, they’ll be bursted down in the blink of an eye or their attacks might ping off of enemies in WvW. That’s not an elementalist balance problem; that’s a WvW balance problem.

These suggestions are all PvP-oriented. By focusing major skill-balancing efforts within stat-balanced environment, those effects can then bleed over into WvW and have an effect there; and when I speak of skill-balancing efforts, I don’t just mean with the elementalist. Plenty of other classes and skills deserve nerfs.

Taldren.7523:

You are forgetting the fact that the elementalist’s dps time is the lowest of the bunch. We have to constantly stop DPSing / applying pressure to keep from being swallowed.
The design is flawed.

It’s not that the elementalist design is flawed; it’s that other professions have access to often several overpowered specs. [/quote]

Taldren.7523:

Breaking stun > a little bit of damage. 3k may seem like a lot, but breaking the stun and not taking the 10k+ damage is way better.

You use [Lightning Flash] to avoid being stunned by melee. It’s still instant-cast, so you can use it even in the case that you are stunned for quick repositioning. And you can KILL someone with your blink if you see the opportunity. Like I said, the two skills are different; it’s not a case of one necessarily being worse than the other. I just wish for the cool-down on LF to be lowered to 30 seconds.

Taldren.7523:

Worked really well in DAoC … which is a 13 year old engine and still going.

Except that this isn’t the Dark Ages of Camelot engine and ANet has often openly admitted to saying "It’s too hard to do “x” or “y,” so I don’t trust them to fundamentally restructure something like how AoE assigns damage within its radius. I’ll also still cite my previous reasons for why radial fall-off might be bad in general in GW2.

Taldren.7523:

How is showing the timeline of how the elementalists advantages have been eroded to dust while the disadvantages remain being construed into crying about other classes being overpowered exactly? I play a lot of level 80 classes in WvW and elementalist is the free lunch for every single one of them.

When every other class becomes the ‘overpowered’ class … its time to just accept that yours is underpowered class.

Elementalists are balanced because they can’t disintegrate targets in the blink of an eye, have to typically aim their attacks (except for most of ele scepter burst), and opponents can see most of their attacks coming (again, except for most of ele scepter burst) because of unique animations and particle effects. Elementalist should honestly be the benchmark for how classes appear and function on a battlefield. The fact that it may be “underpowered” in today’s meta-game is just evidence that balance has slipped away from most classes in favor of face-rolly, overpowered specs that speed up combat and remove clever positioning and timing from most encounters in favor of just inflicting as much raw damage as fast as possible without really thinking about anything (this includes ele scepter burst)

I never changed my position on anything. I’m saying that Elementalist could serve as a viable pace-car for a lot of the meta-game right now (arguably more so than any other profession) in order to reel the current, salient unbalanced specs back into reasonable states.

CallousEye.5018:

Scepter fire 1 needs changed badly, it’s so bad.

Staff Air 2 is also very poor, I feel like it should be turned into a leap to help with staffs low mobility.

I don’t get why people say [Lightning Surge] is so bad. It hits like a truck in full zerker (same base damage and damage coefficient as a [Meteor Shower] meteor), has a short recharge, inflicts blind and has a 180 radius (240 with Blasting Staff). It’s an amazing ranged opener (especially if it crits) and a great support skill with the blind. It’s cast-time could just use a little shave. But seriously, people who don’t use it really do miss out.

Mochann.5298:

Swagg, for the sake of technical discussion, I would like to remind you of the meaning of the word “faceroll.” Faceroll means you can use one skill, activated by just one button, such that it will destroy anything you face just by spamming that attack over Nd over. Such that you might as well bind that one attack to all the keys on your keyboard, then roll your face across it, and you would win by faceroll.

That is what we mean by Faceroll, and you can do close enough to this with warriors who can just autoattacj their way to victory. No elementalist can do this.

I stand by saying that scepter burst is face-roll. While there is more than one button to it, it’s still as brainless as mashing a single one over and over. There’s a clear rotation that isn’t that long, not complex at all, auto-aims most of it for you from range and it does stupid amounts of damage compared to how long it takes to activate. It’s pretty bogus.

Taldren.7523:

Swagg.9236:

Staff…

Let me just stop you here. Outside of Zerg warfare and PvE staff is not viable. I can beat a staff ele 10 out of 10 times with every one of my 80s if they don’t have a zerg or wall to hide behind.

You talk as if that’s a bad thing. Just because things have their place doesn’t signify imbalance. It’s in fact the complete opposite.

Taldren.7523:

Swagg.9236:

A whole bunch of other stuff about healing abilities that are very easily interrupted and don’t do anywhere near as much healing as equivalent damage abilities.

It sounds like you have been playing against people that you need to say L2P too. Been playing my mesmer more than my ele these last couple of weeks: Arcane Thievery to steal the stability and daze/stun to interrupt the heal … dead ele every time. I really is a joke how easy it is. Every time I play my ele I am surprised that they let me actually use my heal, let alone let me finish using it.

I prefer [Arcane Shield] over [Armor of Earth] when it comes to preserving long-cast skills. But more to the point, these again feel like 1v1 situations—or worse—situations in WvW. WvW is inherently imbalanced because of the inflated stats and zergs roaming about. Nothing really makes sense in those places except damage and stability. Everything else is just irrelevant. That’s why commanders can get away with screaming repeated orders in vent/mumble and actually see battle results. Zergs reduce everything to nothing and inflated stats speed up combat so much that it’s not really fair to call a lot of roaming encounters proper encounters.

When I look at skill change suggestions, I speak from a PvP standpoint, not WvW which is inherently imbalanced. Moreover, just because you can interrupt a skill’s cast does not negate its base abilities. My point about water being a strong support and self-heal weapon-set stands.

Taldren.7523:

Swagg.9236:

RTL

It wasn’t being used as “BAIL, I’VE LOST THE FIGHT!” it was used as “I have the lowest defense and hits in the game, so I need to back out, heal up, and let my rotations reset because Mobility is the only advantage I really have (HAD)”. This is as true for S/D as it is for D/D. It was never about gap closing outside of the initial hit.

If you look at my suggestions, that rotation issue is kind of thing that I was looking to fix (at least with scepter). D/D already has pretty strong consistent damage. Also, I’m still calling for a buff on this one. Furthermore, if you’re running scepter, mobility is not the only advantage you have. You also have blind just on the scepter. Utilities can come into play too. You’re putting too much pressure/forgetting the potential of weapon skills.

Taldren.7523:

Swagg.9236:

LF

No, its not Blink. Blink breaks stun, goes 1200 range (10 point trait), can do higher elevations, and has a shorter cooldown. Blink completely own LF.

[Blink] is 900 base range and it does no damage. [Lightning Flash] is 900 range and you can kill someone with it. And what are you doing using LF while stunned? Don’t do that. Use it to hit something for 3k damage or use it to avoid an attack.

These two skills are different; it’s not a matter of balance. I’ll give you the “teleporting to higher places” trick that [Blink] brings, though.

Taldren.7523:

The best solution would be no limit and have radial falloff of damage. That would end blobs which would be the best thing this game could do for itself.

Could be cool. Although radial falloff damage would make getting full damage out of things like lava font difficult since it’s often preferable to allow players to run through it a bit before snaring them. Making damage vary across a small radius could not only prove unfavorable for pvp situations, but also pve situations and furthermore prove hard to code.

It would be nice, however, if Elementalists were the only class without an AoE target hard cap or maybe the limit for eles were raised to 10 or 15. That would actually add a lot of flavor and functionality to the class.

Taldren.7523:

As I stated, and you ignored … every advantage that the elementalist had was nerfed while they left every disadvantage at full strength. The class is greatly inbalanced and hardly the best designed.

I didn’t ignore them. I only cited them as examples of proper balance. What you’re doing is looking at unbalanced aspects of other classes and then crying for buffs for an “underpowered” class instead of nerfs for the things that already are causing issues for the pvp environment. Your attitude makes the problem worse.

Seras.5702:

I don’t understand why you’ve added delays. It’s already hard enough to hit with Dragon’s Tooth and skills like it. More delays just mean more time for enemies to run/dodge away.

They already have delays. I’m saying to add a tool-tip that actually details that property when you mouse over the skill for its description.

It’s going to be really hard to reply to this without just saying “L2P, SCRUB,” but I’ll try.

Taldren.7523:

1. Great healing ability - War on soft trinity healing since beta (funny that healing was the only part of the trinity they attacked)

Staff still has great healing support with condition removal, water fields as well as just plain healing and regeneration. D/D has viable self healing burst. S/D keeps pace with [Water Trident]. I always run about with [Arcane Wave] because of the extra blast finisher. Combining blasts and [Ether Renewal] with [Geyser] is typically enough to get my hp back to full all while delivering about 4k hp (with 0 healing power) to allies by which I’ve placed the [Geyser].

Taldren.7523:

2. Great Mobility - RTL nerfed into a distant shadow of its former self. (While Rangers, Warriors, and Thieves continue) + LF nerfed

I’m not going to say that the nerf to RTL wasn’t brutal, but everyone puts so much pressure on that skill when crying for ele changes. With D/D, RLT isn’t going to help combat mobility because it either just brings you back to right where you were in the first place or it will shoot you off to a distance from which you can’t even hit anything (i.e. “BAIL, I’VE LOST THE FIGHT!”). However, as a gap-closer, it’s a fine tool where it is. I still think that the base recharge could be brought down, though.

With S/D, it’s almost superfluous because you already have 900 range to your attacks. You don’t need a gap-closer. Furthermore, since S/D burst is pretty much a ranged back-stab, you don’t need a gap-closer if you play your cards right. You just sneak up on something, face-roll through your rotation and its dead. In this case, it’s nothing but a run away tool or a way to finish a rotation because the damage is far from negligible. As a kill-rotation finisher or as an escape tool, a 40-second cool-down isn’t a bad set-up. After all, [Fire Grab] has a 45-second cool-down.

As for LF, that skill is a great mobility tool now as it ever was. It’s a blink. That’s an amazing tool. Also, you can kill people with it given the damage that it does. I still say that it could stand to get its recharge reduced to 30, but aside from that, it’s a great skill.

Taldren.7523:

3. Lots of powerful AoE - Limited to 5 players in beta and blocks/evade now eat the few hits we may randomly get.

Yeah, this wouldn’t be a bad thing to change. Maybe up it to 10, at least in that case you can still smite the field when MM necros and spirit rangers are clogging up the screen.

Taldren.7523:

Rofl, like being able to do the same damage as everyone if we work twice as hard without any sort of defense or gimmick like Stealth/Clones/Death Shroud could be taken any other way then being the worst design in GW2.

You must not like smiting foes head on and baiting or forcing them into your circles of death. Either you don’t like it, or you can’t do it. In either case you’re still playing elementalist. Truly, I pity you.

Now that I see the OP, I wish that I had taken screenshots, but I’ve been in 2 team-queue matches in the past three days in which my entire team aside from me has been rank 1.

I had a match that was a rank 28 (me) with four rank 1s vs a team that had ranks ranging from 10 to 32 with a mean in the low-mid 20s.

1) Balance/change/cull invulnerability, stability, unfair ranged abilities, passive effects and other salient examples of pvp combat nonsense (too many detailed changes to list here).
2) 1g, 5 t6 crafting material bags (the ones purchased for laurels) and 2 laurels rewarded each time you level up in PvP.
3) Remove Skyhammer and Spiritwatch from solo-queue.
4) Revert Skyhammer changes.
5) Change the greedy matchmaking algorithm that governs the often skewed team-queue match-ups.
6) Revert immobilize stacking change.
7) 2v2 queue death-match; capture points disabled; first team to 30 points wins.
8) Introduce a PvP map builder system that implements all of the mechanics of current maps thus far.

Mochann.5298:

Functionality Changes I’m for. Nerfs I’m not. Ele doesn’t need any more nerfs. Ele still deserves a few, though.

Not nerfs so much for ele, but rather for other professions.

Mochann.5298:

And what’s wrong with wanting a faceroll burst?

Because it’s braindead, muscle-memory action that doesn’t really involve any thought except to approach a target within a certain range.

Mochann.5298:

I don’t think Scepter is faceroll though. At least not in the same sense as Warrior face roll. You don’t just walk into a fight, spam a button, and auto-win with Scepter like you would with a Warrior. There’s a lot of switching and timing involved. That’s not face roll.

It’s exactly the same thing. Just because there are more buttons doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t face-roll. If you’re just running through buttons willy-nilly because you know that they do direct damage that nobody can typically avoid, it’s maximum face-roll. It’s no different than pressing all of the buttons on warrior hammer and stun-locking an opponent. Scepter burst is instant or near-instant, it’s homing, it’s ranged and an opponent has to completely play to your tempo because nobody can reliably interrupt or predict when it’s going to start and then hit. It’s effectively a ranged backstab. At least you can see a warrior leap in with a hammer before he starts spamming hammer skills.

Mochann.5298:

As for 1v1 and that, while I am thinking of some of the limitations of staff along those lines, I am not a Roamer by any stretch. I can’t survive in roaming, which is why I specialize in zerg vs. zerg destruction. Staff is very good at that… but only mostly in Fire. Air is pretty useless in this regard. I only use air when I’m lazy to switch to fire and just want to tag targets, and let my zerg do the rest.

I had wished that you were talking about actual pvp and not wvw. WvW is nonsense because of inflated stats and zerging. There’s nothing that proper skill balance can really do for it.

Mochann.5298:

If Elementalist Cooldowns were much faster (Warriors get Fast Hands to weapon switch in like 5 seconds) things would go a lot smoother and we’d be able to do more combos. As it stands, the prohibitively long cooldown (even with Arcana traitline) limits our options and forces us to do a lot of button pressing and mental math that distracts us away from focusing on the battle at hand.

I’m actually a little upset that they didn’t bring attunement cool-downs from 16-10 to 13-8 or something.

Don’t you want to be a bull-cat war shaman?

Mochann.5298:

When you take into consideration that we have lousy armor, whereas Warriors/Guardians have great armor and thus can afford to melee without much problems, and then take into consideration that their melee attacks cleave and serve as AOEs, then you see that there’s little point to really stick to Ele and tought it out, other than wanting to roleplay as a mage. But most of us are role players so that floats our boat, no matter how crappy the class is.

I like to roleplay as the guy that wins team-fights for his friends at the mid point in pvp.

The more that I read your thoughts on elementalist (staff specifically), the more that I think that your train of thought is focused on 1v1s and/or roaming tactics. Staff is not a roaming weapon. It’s a team-player weapon. I keep seeing people asking for staff buffs that would make them more viable as a 1v1 weapon-set, but that’s just not necessary. While it’s possible to kill opponents in 1v1 scenarios with staff with clever use of terrain and control/movement skills, it’s not optimized for that—nor should it be. It’s a very unique weapon in that it isn’t necessarily geared for a strong 1v1 showing.

Mochann.5298:

That’s well and good, but the thing is, every other class has weapon sets that are “Face roll” and Eles are the only class without one. I mean, we only have 3 weapon sets — Staff, Scepter and Dagger. If none of our weapon sets are “face roll” that really puts us at a disadvantage.

This is the most depressing thing I’ve read so far. This is such the defeatist attitude. You’re completely giving up on what could be a good design paradigm for ranged abilities in this game just because it’s too hard or because other classes have it easier/are imbalanced. Ele staff has a great thing going for it. I don’t think it would be fair to ruin it because “We want face-roll burst too!!” Also, I can’t believe that you don’t think that ele scepter is face-roll. That weapon set is pretty horrid balance-wise, which explains my suggested changes.

The solution isn’t more buffs, it’s mostly functionality changes and nerfs at this point. Combat is fast and unpredictable enough in this game.

Mochann.5298:

although swiftness is nice (but ultimately still has a too too long cooldown)

It’s strength comes from the condition removal. Adding something like super speed on top of that would make this skill a very utilitarian in-combat ability for staff since it really could use with more combat mobility.

Mochann.5298:

Chain Lightning has its uses, but dealing damage it isn’t particularly good at.

All it does is damage, so you’re just saying that it’s a bad skill. I guess that’s fine, but it still does well at clearing mesmer spam and DPSing rangers that only have their pet out.

Mochann.5298:

Air 2 is slow as hell, hits weakly, and only hits one target. It’s sad.

Slow maybe, but weak it is not. It hits with the same base power as a [Meteor Shower] meteor and it is in fact an AoE.

Air is indeed somewhat slow and more utility-oriented on staff, which is why I’ve made the suggestions that I’ve made. By redesigning [Gust], giving some more combat mobility to [Windborne Speed], shaving off some of [Lightning Surge]’s cast-time, and throwing some boon hate into the mix, the weapon set can really come into its own as a control and battlefield navigation set.

Mochann.5298:

Earth is generally a pretty sucky element, but is useful because it has our only combo finishers. It’s supposed to be our condi element, but frankly fire’s Flame Burst is better at condi than whatever earth has, mostly because it’s next to impossible to get Eruption to hit anyone, and that time is better spent just killing things outright in fire.

Earth staff has really come into its own as a control set with the change to [Unsteady Ground]. Slightly lowering the recharge on [Shockwave] (another very powerful control skill) can help give the staff elementalist more staying power by freezing up enemies in motion.

[Eruption] is less an “I’m going to hit you skill” than it is an “I’m going to mark off this area” skill. As it stands, it’s great as a combo finisher, it often goes unnoticed in heated team combat, and if people do see it, they’ll often steer clear, making it a great way to delay enemy progress, reposition or force them to switch range. It’s also a great thing to lay down behind an [Unsteady Ground] since the warding line vanishes roughly in time with [Eruption]‘s detonation given [Eruption]’s cast time.

Shadowfall.6543:

Swagg I hate to be a bit of a downer, but is there any precedent for Anet actually listening to posts like these.

You’re just being realistic. And while the answer to your question seems to be “no,” there is a precedent for me making plenty of these posts anyway in the Engineer forums.

Shadowfall.6543:

I also think Air staff needs some decent DPS, it is supposed to be one of the high damage attunements, but is one of the worst (it may not be so bad if water staff did not have the worst DPS of any weapon).

I still think that staff ele could get away with just a few minor tweaks, but given the arguments made against it, I guess I couldn’t really argue too much outside of quoting “balance” or something like that.

I just think that adding any more DPS to any part of staff is just catering to the super-burst/face-rolly meta that plagues GW2 PvP. The game could honestly stand to slow down a bit, or at least let ele staff serve as a pace car for a lot of combat.

Maybe a better way to approach this would be to ask, “What would you do to ele air staff to give it a badly needed DPS increase or whatever?” It’s a very solid weapon set by itself. Just because the auto-attack doesn’t wreck people like warrior axe doesn’t necessarily mean that its a true poor performer, and I’m not sure that restructuring the 2 skill would be a great idea (since I can’t really see 3-5 changing because they’re pretty good standalone skills in concept).

Shadowfall.6543:

Your rebuttal

Fair enough. They are lack-luster and the numbers prove them to be less viable DPS than melee, but isn’t melee inherently stronger than range in this game anyway? Also, you seem to point out that the main issue with staff ele auto-attacks is that you can’t sit in any single attunement except for fire and expect a strong auto-attack.

Is that really that bad? Is forcing the staff ele to use skills other than auto-attacks really a bad decision? I argue that that’s what makes staff ele one of the best composed weapons in this game. It’s so ingrained in support, range and target-lead play that it’s really defined as something apart from some of the other more “face-rolly” weapon sets that exist in this game. It really serves as a model for what weapon sets could be.

Going back and thinking about it, I think I lied a bit when I said that the Elementalist doesn’t really need any big changes. I think that it does in some ways, and to that effect it needs changes that other classes also need as well for the sake of balance (but I suppose those discussions are for another day). I guess I’ll just start with this:

An imbalanced ranged skill has two or more of these properties:

• No projectile
• Homing projectile
• Instant-activation
• Instant-effect after activation
• No red circle or outwardly expressed visual/audible cue except when inflicting damage

My scepter changes were about addressing this issue that plagues that typical scepter rotation. Furthermore, I went ahead to lower the cast time of and bring the damage up on [Shatterstone] (302 is [Lava Font] level base damage) while adding more damage and functionality to [Water Trident]. While the additional functionalities are maybe excessive and unnecessary, I think that the extra damage and added blast finisher would be a fair addition to the skill to bring it into its own outside of simply being a weak attack that the typical scepter elementalist casts on his/her own location for a quick heal. By making [Shatterstone] a more viable quick-cast ability to combine with the already rather powerful water attunement auto-attack could remove some of the pressure off of the air and fire attunements when it comes to DPS or burst. This also would allow for the more imbalanced skills in that rotation to be fixed and made more fair for pvp play without completely destroying their integrity as spike damage skills.

In essence, these changes adjust scepter ele into a mine-field sort of play-style. Mine-field play is loading the field with dodge bait to the point where an enemy has no more dodges/damage mititation while you still have plenty of mines. To make this fair, the enemy at least needs to see the mines coming. Delayed effect abilities allow for quick cycling through and stacking of multiple mines on the fly and promote a very organic and engaging play-style similar to staff elementalist skills.

Shadowfall.6543:

Interesting notes on staff ele DPS

This sort of analysis is too focused on single skills when staff elementalists are often chaining their low-recharge 2 skills to supplement their auto-attacks. I honestly don’t believe that it gives a good objective opinion on where staff stands. While it is true that the earth and water options deal rather low damage, the air and fire options both are not only strong as individual packets of damage, but all staff auto-attacks are often supplemented by an attunement’s low-recharge, AoE 2 skill. Even the water 2 skill hits incredibly hard (same base damage as a meteor shower strike) and also possesses a large AoE radius.

Back to the air and fire auto-attacks, though, [Fireball] has a base splash of 120 which can be increased to 180 with blasting staff. Furthermore, given that [Lava Font] casts nearly instantly and also has nearly the same base damage as [Fireball] (302 LF vs 314 FB), an elementalist can simultaneously strike a foe with these skills with good positioning and timing effectively resulting in a double auto-attack and serving to either nuke multiple opponents on the spot or drive them away from a specific location.

[Chain Lightning] is great because of the bounce. It fries rangers because it can double-hit due to the pet and can also help clear mesmer clones and phantasms.

Even though they may be lack-luster, they are balanced, effective and each one has a tangible impact in combat. However, I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing maybe the water auto-attack reduced to a 1/2 second cast-time. Again, though, I just want to be clear that there is nothing wrong with staff auto-attacks. By removing an emphasis on most auto-attack damage and skills that auto-aim for you, staff eles are forced to play around with the skills that they have in order to connect damage to foes. It’s very engaging, rewarding and fair.

Durzlla.6295:

Only thing I hate about ele staff is that our autos are lack luster, hell most the time I won’t even bother casting them because they’re so bad., they should just lower the cast time on them, or make them have A LOT faster travel time, either one (or both) would make me happy.

The auto-attacks on staff are incredibly balanced yet effective.

3000 power by means of equipment alone.

Accept no substitutes.

reserved for future posts

reserved for future posts

reserved for future posts

ELEMENTALIST CONT.
Shatterstone

• Cast-time reduced from 1 to ½ second.
• Damage increased from 252 to 302.
• Added tool-tip: Delay: 2 seconds
• Now counts as an Ice Field (Duration: 2 seconds).

Ice Spike

• Added tool-tip: Delay: 2 seconds

Eruption

• Added tool-tip: Delay: 3 seconds

THIEF
Infiltrator’s Strike

• Post-shadow step sword strike cast-time increased to ¾ second.

Shadow Shot

• Post-shadow step dagger strike cast-time increased to ¾ second.

GUARDIAN
Flashing Blade

• Post-teleport sword strike cast-time increased to ¾ second.

ENGINEER
Incendiary Powder (Explosives – VII)

• Now when this trait activates, it summons an invulnerable [Flame Turret] down beside the Engineer using a smaller [Supply Crate] animation. This [Flame Turret] fires a [Rocket] (old [Rocket] projectile used as the [Rocket Turret] tool-belt skill) at the Engineer’s target upon which this trait procced. The [Rocket] projectile deals no damage, but inflicts the burning described in the trait.

Shrapnel Grenade

• Added delay (1 second).
• The grenade projectiles now land on the ground and rest for 1 second surrounded by red circles before detonating.

Freeze Grenade

• Added delay (1 second).
• The grenade projectiles now land on the ground and rest for 1 second surrounded by red circles before detonating.

Poison Grenade

• Radius increased from 150 to 180.
• Added delay (1 second).
• The grenade projectiles now land on the ground and rest for 1 second surrounded by red circles before detonating.

Bomb

• Added tool-tip: Delay: 1 second

Fire Bomb

• Added tool-tip: Delay: 1 second

Concussion Bomb

• Added tool-tip: Delay: 1 second

Smoke Bomb

• Added tool-tip: Delay: 1 second

Glue Bomb

• Added tool-tip: Delay: 1 second

This next section is about repairing skills that are visually unimpressive or skills that provide no real counter-play outside of fluke dodges or blocks.

NEW SKILL FUNCTIONALITY: Delay

• Delay represents how long a skill takes affect after the initial cast-time is completed. Several skills already have delay periods. Adding such a tool-tip to those skills would make it clearer how they work. Adding delays and visual cues to instant-activation skills as well as ranged skill that don’t use projectiles would make them more fair in terms of game-play by providing more counter-playability to opponents and making pvp less of a face-roll across the keyboard. Furthermore, validating a delay mechanic with a formal tool-tip could set it in stone as not just a real mechanic, but also a mechanic that may be used again in the future for new skills or functional changes of old skills.

NECROMANCER
Dhuumfire (Spite – XI)

• Now when this skill activates, it summons an invulnerable reaper minion from the ground that casts an orange-tinted [Life Blast] projectile at the Necromancer’s target upon which this trait procced. The [Life Blast] projectile deals no damage, but inflicts the burning described in the trait.

Rending Claws

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ½ second
• Cast out a whirling blade that inflicts vulnerability and returns to you.
• Damage: 229
• Vulnerability (1): 7 seconds
• Range: 900
  • Bright green-tinted [Vapor Blade] animation.

Blood Curse

• Now uses a projectile: red-tinted [Orb of Wrath].

Rending Curse

• Now uses a projectile: red-tinted [Orb of Wrath].

Grasping Dead

• Cast-time reduced from ¾ to ½ second.
• Added delay (1 second)
• Now produces a red circle with skeletal hands dotting the ground after the cast. After one second, the animated arms that perform the grabbing animation trigger, signaling the damage and condition effects.
• PvP now inflicts the same amount of bleed stacks as the PvE version.

Feast of Corruption

• Foes targeted by [Feast of Corruption] are surrounded by a bright green ring during the cast-time period. The ring bursts upon cast-animation completion.

Spinal Shivers

• Foes targeted by [Spinal Shivers] are surrounded by a bright blue ring during the cast-time period. The ring bursts upon cast-animation completion.

ELEMENTALIST
Lightning Strike – named changed to Lightning Bolt (to diminish combat log confusion)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 6 seconds
• Strike foes at the target location with a lightning bolt.
• Damage: 403
• Delay: 1 second
• Radius: 120
• Range: 900

Arcane Blast

• Build up an orb arcane energy above you before sending it at your foe. It blasts your target for critical damage.
• Delay: 1 second
  • The delay represents how long the orb remains above the player before flying toward the target.
  • Projectile color adjusted to look more true pink.

Arcane Wave

• Build up a ring of arcane energy around you before detonating it, blasting foes in the area for critical damage.
• Delay: 1 second
  • The ring follows you around instead of simply having a delayed effect at the location at which you first activate this skill. Therefore, [Arcane Wave] will still have an effect directly atop the Elementalist.
  • Delay ring would be a true pink color.

Dragon’s Tooth

• Now uses ground-targeting.
• Added tool-tip: Delay: 2 seconds

Phoenix

• Cast-time increased from ¼ to ½ second.
• This skill’s audio cue now plays when the player first begins casting it.
• Now creates a red circle on the ground where the Phoenix projectile is targeted to explode and turn around back towards the caster.

Tyranids.1369:

So I ask you, my fellow elementalists, which class do you all like to play when you’re not rolling as the ele?

Elementalist was my second profession before I went to Engineer. I played Engineer for months and months but recently came back to ele. Engineer is a barrel of fun for what it can give you. I prefer power builds because they often come packed with a lot of CC from rifle and utility skills.

Tyranids.1369:

Or if this is too off topic, what further goals do you suggest for an ele that doesn’t want a legendary?

I’m waiting for ascended armor because fashion.

Staff ele is arguably one of the best-composed weapon sets in the game. It’s utilitarian, fair to opponents, and engaging to use.

While it can work in a 1v1 scenario, it requires all of the CC staff has to maintain damage on a target (and that can just be bypassed with stability), and all of those skills have long cool-downs. In PvP, 1v1s/light roaming can work out because of cover and terrain differences, but in WvW, it’s far less effective because the battleground is typically much more open.

Conncept.7638:

• Glyph of Elemental power, no, if you think it needs that big of a change you have never used it. However I will admit, it’s stunbreaker could be better placed on any number of other abilities. Secondly, this can put up to a 45 second cripple on any enemy, using ability with a RC of less than five seconds, why would you remove this and place a cripple on half a dozen different abilities across our weapon skills instead? Our utility skills need to have more broadly applicable utility, not be removed and tacked on to a few scattered weapon skills.

Fair point. I’m just illustrating what the skill would have to become to make sense as a skill that carries a stun-break. Also passive abilities are very unhealthy for this game’s pvp anyway.

Conncept.7638:

And how can you say ‘Ele doesn’t need really big changes’ after you took half the abilities players are happy with and completely changed their functionality or nerfed them, while updating little more than the tooltips on some of our worst abilities?

The way that ele plays (a lot of delays with large, powerful AoEs; you have to aim a majority of the AoE skills that you’re using either by positioning your body with PBAoEs or manually with ranged ground-targeting; ranged combat typically uses projectiles) is the ideal for pvp. The only thing that needs any real quality of life changes are a few staff skills and off-hand focus. The rest of the changes are supposed to cull the current plague in the GW2 pvp metagame: instant-activation skills, skills that are ranged but use no projectiles, large AoE skills that don’t use red-circles or have any real delay, and skills that combine two or more of those properties. Those types of abilities turn pvp into a face-roll instead of a proper encounter between two people with unique abilities. It becomes less of play and counter-play and more of who presses the most buttons the fastest.

So, in the end, ele is in a good place with how it plays and how people can counter-play its abilities. It just needs some more un-counterable abilities shaved off to make the game more engaging for both elementalists and their opponents. And they aren’t the only class in need of this either.

Conncept.7638:

My notes:

• Freezing gust needs to freeze foes and heal allies rather than tacking an immobilize on to the end. The focus needs healing, not more of what our MH and traits already have.

Freezing (block of ice freezing) is an extremely strong CC that can’t even be stun-broken. Immobilize is a very strong CC that could help a focus ele gain better positioning on a foe. Focus is a very selfish off-hand. It supports via tanking and CC rather than through straight healing.

Conncept.7638:

• Shatterstone and the scepter water auto-attack need a much bigger change than that, they are most awkward pair of abilities placed on a single weapon in the entire game. You stop outputting DPS for a significant amount of time for an ability so slow and telegraphed people can walk out of it while crippled. I’ve seen dozens of suggestions and I don’t know which is best, but a meaningless tooltip change doesn’t cut it by any stretch of the imagination.

More skills should put a pause on DPS. GW2 combat is already too fast as it is.

Conncept.7638:

• Flamewall crippling is a bad idea, besides being thematically nonsensical, falling under earth, the MH ele weapons are already full of cripples, immobilizes, and blinds. It just needs a really low recharge, this ability should have a CD as low as ten seconds, allowing nearly 90% uptime on a fire field would be both great for support and dueling.

Low recharge could be interesting, but it wouldn’t really matter if it just stays as is. It needs to do more than a baby-slap’s worth of damage and 1 second of burning because nobody really thinks twice about crossing this wall at the moment. The point of my changes was to force players to bite a bullet when running headlong into a [Flamewall]. The might would also provide allies with something to charge through to give their first few attacks in a salvo some extra power.

Also, by “full of cripples, immobilizes and blinds,” I assume you mean just dagger for the slows and scepter for the blinds because no MH ele weapon is full of both.

Conncept.7638:

• Fireshield, pretty much same as above, thematically weak and unnecessarily complicated. Give it a CD of 15 seconds maximum, this is our weakest elemental armor by a significant margin, it should have an uptime which matches that difference in power.

Just lowering a cool-down does not necessarily make a skill better. This is obviously the weakest aura-granting skill and so allowing it to have a bigger impact on the battlefield outside of “You have fire shield now” is necessary. After giving it some utility, then we talk cool-downs. This one deserves a longer one.

Conncept.7638:

• RTL, just revert the changes with a slightly higher CD. Their purpose was to nerf our bunker builds, which was accomplished when our cantrips were hit, this honestly did nothing to our bunkering and ruined our dueling.

First off, “Revert the changes with a slightly higher CD” doesn’t make any sense. Secondly, what you’re describing… is EXACTLY what I did for that suggestion.

Mash Hog.5672:

What is the point to all these changes?
All the changes need to be done to change the elementalist a certain way, what is that?

Elementalist actually doesn’t really need to be changed all that much. It’s arguably the best-made profession in GW2 by a large margin. These changes come part from wanting to correct some unfortunate design and part from adding some quality of life bonuses to some skills to allow them to better flow and contribute to their respective combat styles.

I’ll release a little podcast-esque vocal thing about my thoughts on each specific suggestion in a bit.

SCEPTER/OFF-HAND DAGGER CHANGES
The current s/d ele meta perpetuates a lot of bad pvp design in GW2: offensive skills that are ranged, instant-activation, have no projectiles, and/or don’t provide any real cue or red circle warning upon activation. These sorts of skills make pvp less of an exchange and more of a face-roll in which the winner is determined by pressing the most buttons the fastest when an opponent is not in a dodge frame. Instant-activation offensive skills aren’t bad, but they tend to become unfair when their effects are also instant. Add range to that and its pretty broken. Make them target-seeking, projectile-less attacks and you’ve got nonsense that shouldn’t really exist. Addressing this is one of the major issues for promoting a more valid and engaging pvp environment. It’s also the reasoning behind the arcane skill changes.

FOCUS CHANGES
Focus really is the odd-duck for elementalist weapons. It makes for an eccentric bunker build, but it’s not necessarily effective in any fight outside of a 1v1. The goal with these changes was to give focus more sway in team fights without taking away from its tankiness and strong utility. Updates to skills like [Flamewall] and [Freezing Gust] would make focus more of a battlefield hazard weapon that provides opportunities for teammates and present problems for enemies.

STAFF CHANGES
The staff suggestions’ origin lies in its combat style and what it can do to preserve that style in an actual fight. First, there are two types of damage mitigation: personal and CC. Personal damage mitigation is buffs and movement skills such as aegis, protection, retreat and evasion. Dodging also counts, but we’re going to focus on skills. On the other hand, CC refers to effects that one player affects on another such as knock-back, launch and immobilize. Staff is all about long-range damage. Allowing players to close in on you is typically a death sentence because of the staff’s damage pace in combat.

All that said, the only thing staff has in the way of personal damage mitigation is [Burning Retreat]. The rest of staff’s defense comes in the form of CC. However, with a stability-heavy meta, most opponents fighting a staff ele can simply negate for a long period of time all of the staff’s CC with a simple press of the button. Adding boon-hate to the air attunement in staff can help to mitigate this effect and also provide staff ele with another way to effect the outcome of a battle.

UTILITIES
Arcane Blast

• Build up an orb arcane energy above you before sending it at your foe. It blasts your target for critical damage.
• Delay: 1 second
  • The delay represents how long the orb remains above the player before flying toward the target.
  • Projectile color adjusted to look more true pink.

Arcane Wave

• Build up a ring of arcane energy around you before detonating it, blasting foes in the area for critical damage.
• Delay: 1 second
  • The ring follows you around instead of simply having a delayed effect at the location at which you first activate this skill. Therefore, [Arcane Wave] will still have an effect directly atop the Elementalist.
  • Delay ring would be a true pink color.

Arcane Shield

• Recharge lowered from 75 to 50 seconds.
• Duration lowered from 5 to 2 seconds.
• Explosion generated from exhausting blocks now also dazes adjacent enemies (180 radius; 2-second daze).

Glyph of Renewal

• Cast-time reduced from 3¼ to 2½ seconds.
• Recharge reduced from 165 to 150 seconds.

Glyph of Storms

• Recharge reduced from 60 to 50 seconds.
• Damage increased from 122 to 159 (same damage modifier).

Mist Form

• Recharge reduced from 75 to 50 seconds.
• Duration reduced from 3 to 2 seconds.
• Invulnerability reduced from 3 to 2 seconds.
• Now also cures immobilize, crippled and chill upon activation.
  • Now chains into another skill upon use: [Cold Front].

Cold Front

• Cast-time: ¼ second
• Recharge: 5 seconds
• Dash in a target direction, chilling foes that you strike along the way.
• Damage: 111 (0.3)
• Chill: 2 seconds
• Evasion: ¾ seconds
• Range: 450
  • [Whirlwind Attack]

Armor of Earth

• Recharged reduced from 90 to 50 seconds.
• Stability reduced from 6 to 4 seconds.
• Protection reduced from 6 to 4 seconds.
• Duration reduced from 6 to 4 seconds.

Lightning Flash

• Recharge reduced from 40 to 30 seconds.

Cleansing Fire

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Recharge reduced from 40 to 30 seconds.
• Cast-time increased from 0 to 1½ seconds.
• Channel a cleansing fire that pulses around you three times, damaging and burning nearby foes while cleansing 1 condition from yourself and nearby allies with each pulse. The final pulse knocks back nearby enemies.
• Damage (3x): 387 (0.5)
• Burning (3): 1 second
• Knock back: 240
• Radius: 240

DAGGER
Ring of Fire

• Cast-time increased from ¼ second to ¾ second.
• A ring of fire visual cue now appears around the caster during the cast-time period (a smaller, player-sized version of the mobile fire ring created by General Molradovich during his fight in p3 of Sorrow’s Embrace).

Ride the Lightning

• Recharge reduced from 40 to 30 seconds.
• Recharge reduction on hit reduced from 50% to 33%.

Updraft

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Gain swiftness and evade backwards on a gust of wind that cripples and blinds adjacent foes. After 1 second, this gust launches foes at its location, then vanishes.
• Swiftness: 10 seconds
• Blind: 3 seconds
• Cripple: 3 seconds
• Launch: 200
• Launch delay: 1 second
• Radius: 180
• Evasion: 1 second
  • Skill now creates a small AoE circle that uses a shrunken [Sandstorm] (180 radius) animation on activation and lasts for 1 second.
  • Base evasion distance increased from 180(?) to 240 range.

STAFF
Burning Retreat

• Now grants 5 seconds of vigor.

Ice Spike

• Now inflicts 2 seconds of immobilize if it strikes a chilled foe.

Chain Lightning

• Any second lightning bolt generated by this skill now inflicts 10% more damage than the initial strike.
• Any third lightning bolt generated by this skill now inflicts 20% more damage than the initial strike.

Lightning Surge

• Cast-time reduced from 1½ seconds to 1¼ seconds.
• Now grants might (3 stacks; 20 seconds) if you strike a disabled foe.

Gust

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1 second
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Channel a gust of wind that strikes foes twice. The first gust rips up to 2 boons from foes that it hits. The second gust knocks back foes.
• Damage (2x): 256
• Knock-back: 400
• Range: 600
  • [Healing Breeze] cone
  • Hits up to 5 targets.

Windborne Speed

• Now also grants Super Speed for 2 seconds.

Static Field

• Now also removes up to 1 boon from foes that it hits.

Eruption

• Tool-tip added: Delay: 3 seconds.

Shockwave

• Recharge reduced from 30 to 25 seconds.
• Bleed stacks changed from 1 stack for 20 seconds to 3 stacks for 10 seconds.

NEW TOOL-TIP: Delay

• Delay represents how long a skill takes affect after the initial cast-time is completed. Several skills already have delay periods. Adding such a tool-tip to those skills would make it clearer how they work. Adding delays and visual cues to instant-activation skills as well as ranged skill that don’t use projectiles would make them more fair in terms of game-play by providing more counter-playability to opponents and making pvp less of a face-roll across the keyboard.

SCEPTER
Lightning Strike – named changed to Lightning Bolt (to diminish combat log confusion)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 6 seconds
• Strike foes at the target location with a lightning bolt.
• Damage: 403
• Delay: 1 second
• Radius: 120
• Range: 900
  • Now creates a red circle on the ground.
  • [Lightning Strike]’s original functionality remains the same for passive triggers such as swapping to Air Attunement with 15 into Air Magic or the RNG proc on Runes of Air (6/6).

Dragon’s Tooth

• Cast-time reduced from 1 to ½ second.
• Now uses ground-targeting.
• Added tool-tip: Delay: 2 seconds

Phoenix

• Cast-time increased from ¼ to ¾ second.
• This skill’s audio cue now also plays when the player first begins casting it in addition to when the projectile explodes and turns around.
• Now creates a red circle on the ground where the Phoenix projectile is targeted to explode and turn around back towards the caster.

Shatterstone

• Cast-time reduced from 1 to ½ second.
• Damage increased from 252 to 302.
• Added tool-tip: Delay: 2 seconds
• Now counts as an Ice Field (Duration: 2 seconds).

Water Trident

• Casting animation increased in size by 50%.
• Damage increased from 168 to 252.
• Now counts as a Blast Finisher.
• Now, if this skill combos with a Frost Field, it also inflicts vulnerability (8 stacks; 10 seconds) and chill (2 seconds) with shattering ice shards.
  • Vulnerability and chill radius: 180 (same radius as the skill itself).
  • Uses a [Frozen Burst] animation.
• Now, if this skill combos with a Fire Field, it also blinds (5 seconds) and burns (3 seconds) nearby foes with a hot blast of steam.
  • Blind and burn radius: 180 (same radius as the skill itself).
  • Uses a 1-second-long [Boil] animation.

FOCUS
Flamewall

• Now also cripples (2 seconds) and blinds (2 seconds) foes that cross it.
• Now also grants might (2 stacks; 5 seconds) to allies that cross it.
  • The might works similarly to how swiftness is awarded to players crossing the Mesmer’s [Temporal Curtain]. If a player already has might, he/she won’t be granted might from the [Flamewall].

Fire Shield

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ½ second
• Recharge: 35 seconds
• Whirl in place, striking adjacent foes and gaining a Fire Shield. If you combo this skill within a fire field, you gain aegis and create a [Lava Font] at your location.
• Damage (2x): 258
• Fire Shield duration: 5 seconds
• Aegis: 3 seconds
• Combo Finisher: Whirl
• Range: 180
  • [Cyclone Axe]

Freezing Gust

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1¼ second
• Recharge: 25 seconds
• Create a freezing gust that whirls over target location for 3 seconds, chilling foes. The final gust of wind also immobilizes foes.
• Damage (3x): 255
• Chill (3): 1½ second
• Immobilize: 2 seconds
• Duration: 3 seconds
• Pulse: 1 second
• Combo Field: Ice
• Radius: 180
• Range: 900

Comet

• Now uses ground-targeting.
• Damage increased from 239 to 418.
• Now stuns (1 second) if it strikes a chilled foe.

Gale

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1½ seconds
• Recharge: 40 seconds
• Channel a cone of wind in front of you that blinds and cripples foes before knocking them down.
• Damage (4x): 350
• Blind (4): 1 second
• Cripple (4): 1 second
• Knock-down: 2 seconds
• Range: 600
  • This skill hits up to 3 targets.
  • The final damage tick is the tick that inflicts knock-down.
  • [Healing Breeze] cone