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The main reason why I feel it’s NOT viable in PvP is due to the way Eruption currently works (i.e. you’re never gonna hit stuff with it). You can have a fair amount of burning on staff, but without a reliable second condition (i.e. at least some bleeding) it’s just not gonna work. Compared to dagger and scepter, which both have spammable bleeds as well as other skills that cause bleeding, staff is just severely lacking.
I’ve proposed a partial fix for this in another thread, but keep in mind that it won’t make full condition staff a viable option. It’s merely there to make conditions not completely useless.
Link to the thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Eruption-change-to-make-cond-staff-viable/first#post3164321
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You can always swap to air for an instant single target skill. That way you can at least tag the lord before it goes down..
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Being a staff ele, I’m having a hard time trying to figure out how to make Diamond Skin work for my build. My main issue isn’t the traits, but rather the condition damage being (nearly) useless. Eruption’s trigger delay pretty much ruins all hope of hitting with it.
Now, while I know this is a trait rebalance, I still propose to add the following change to Eruption:
New Eruption:
Duration: 3 seconds
Damage: 154 per second (0.417 modifier)
2 stack bleeding per second: 12 s (3060 damage total)
Radius: 240
Combo Finisher: Blast after 3 seconds
Range: 1,200
Basically spread the effect over 3 seconds, with just 1 blast finisher of course. The first and second tick would start respectively 2 and 1 seconds before the final tick, with the final tick being the blast finisher at the same instant that the whole skill triggers now.
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It could work I think but I Eruption is very special because the animation starts before the cast time has even ended. So does your sugestion make the power an almost instant use ability or does the cast time remains the same, delaying the damage spread over a longer period of time?
Good question. What I intended to say was to make the 3rd tick trigger as it triggers now, and then the 2nd and 1st ticks trigger 1 and 2 seconds before the third respectively. Basically it should trigger earlier, and then tick its damage until it ‘pops’, which is then a blast finisher.
I wouldn’t object to making the first ticks weaker, and the final tick stronger though (say 25%,30%,45%).
In general, I just think eruption would be more useful if the damage started earlier but the exact implementation doesn’t concern me as much. Note that I have no issues with delayed triggers in general (Ice Spike is fine imho), it’s just that this particular skill being delayed pretty much destroys all the staff condition damage plans.
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(edited by ThiBash.5634)
with the upcoming insane cd decrease to tempest defense and other trait changes, there will probably be more aura builds around and that’s something i’ve always wanted to run, especially magnetic wave and the higher procs of shock aura.
Making a staff aura build would certainly be interesting yes.
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Thank you. Keep up the good work.
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The condition ele would still suffer from the same problems that it currently does in pvp.
True, but at least it would make condition damage not totally worthless on staff. I fear it’s intentional design that the ele cannot do everything quite as well as another profession when specializing though. The devs seem to want you do to everything rather than focus on a specific thing. However, when it comes to damage conditions, the staff falls short atm and I feel this change would mend that somewhat. Your concern however is valid: full condition spec still wouldn’t do as well as other professions. But it’d be better than what it is now.
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It’s the only tier 1 AOE cleanse in the game is the main reason
We’re also the only profession in the game with weak armor and low health…
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It’s nice yes, though maybe a bit technical for starters…
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If the statement from ArenaNet is to be believed, the problem lies in the fact that the server has to track all the boon/condition stacks separately. The 25 stacks cap is to avoid performance issue.
As a temporary fix, I propose condensing all bleeds for PvE into single stacks for skills. That way, more players can take advantage of bleeds before the cap. If you take Eruption for example, that skill causes 6 stacks. The damage could be condensed into a single bleed stack and suddenly, 6 more players can cast eruption. While it wouldn’t solve things for huge zergs, it’d still be nice for dungeons because even as a party, you’d be unlikely to reach te cap.
All damage would remain the same of course. The only thing that would change is the server load.
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I think you are just using improperly the word OP.
You could want to look at other profession elites before maybe…
Some issues I can think of are using the same weapon set twice and resetting the cooldowns, or combining focus and staff’s anti-projectile skills to become immune to projectile users for around 20 seconds total. Or using magnetic aura in addition to the daggers aura in a powerful aura build. Or just stacking fury/protection in an on demand ice field.
Why complicate things with an elite when a simple out-of-combat swap would be much simpler and work just as well?
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Like the game, like the way balance and collaboration is going now. Shows promise.
Dislike the story, and can’t wiat until Scarlet’s a thing of the past. Still find it funny that Mad King Thorn and his son are better developed lorewise in a single patch than Scarlet over the course of a year.
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I’m missing dps…
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I’ve played with about everything but I think I found my calling with 0/30/10/30/0 dagger/dagger. The traits I take are Tempest Defense, Zephyrs Boon, Air Training, Elemental Shielding, Soothing Wave, Soothing Disruption, Cleansing Water) with 6 divinity. It’s a bit high risk of a spec but if you can get down your aura timings as well as cantrip use for cleansing, it’s devastating. It’s a very high damage spec in sPvP.
Sounds cool, thanks for sharing. I think I might give it a try.
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With the upcoming change to Diamond Skin I’ve been mulling about new builds. For staff, the main thing I kept running into was that for staff, condition damage is basically a wasted stat. The main culprit seems to be Eruption not being able to damage players reliably. So I was wondering what the other players would think about the following suggestion:
Current Eruption:
Damage: 462 (1.25 modifier)
6 stack bleeding: 12 s (3060 damage)
Radius: 240
Combo Finisher: Blast
Range: 1,200
New Eruption:
Duration: 3 seconds
Damage: 154 per second (0.417 modifier)
2 stack bleeding per second: 12 s (3060 damage total)
Radius: 240
Combo Finisher: Blast after 3 seconds
Range: 1,200
(basically spread the effect over 3 seconds, with just 1 blast finisher of course)
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A lot of things are changing and from the internal testing I’ve personally done with ele (2000+ tournament games played on live on top teams) ele is looking really strong. I’m beating most everything 1v1 right now with the spec I’ve been running.
Would you mind sharing that spec please? It’d be interesting to know what the developers run (even if just for testing).
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An elite with 1 second rooted cast (and Aegis)with a proper CD would prevent OP stuff.
No it wouldn’t.
Sure beeing able to swap staff/x would’t make us any op.
Yes it would. Stop underestimating staff please, and especially stop understimating the combos you could pull of if you could use the staff’s fields as a D/D ele.
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When the party leader leaves, the group gets kicked from the dungeon/fractal. I just now lost a daily fractal chest again because of some impatient moron that couldn’t wait 5 more seconds. Of course, when whispered, he DID recieve his daily chest.
But anyway: when will this finally get fixed?
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It’s a new bug, that occurs after the change to Tab targetting. It’s quite annoying really, because I used to rely on it a lot.
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If you PvP a lot, you could try combining Geomancer’s Freedom with Rune of Melandru. It’ll give you a lot of defense agains conditions and stuns.
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they wouldn’t want weapon swapping because it would be “too complicated.”
The complication lies not with the playstyle, but with the balance. Instead of having to look at 20 skills for potential overpowered combinations, you’ll get 40. For example, just imagine an ele blasting away with daggers at their own staff water fields for massive healing. Which, incidently, is why I think the Ice Elemental only has an ice combo field and not a water one.
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If you used the signet fighting 1v1 against a condi class the could never touch you. My guess is it would heal close to 300 per attack with that much healing power. Might be decent enough sustain against power builds too. who knows?
Funny that you should mention that. I’ve been dabbling with a Fresh Air/Signet build comperable to your suggestion for PvP the other day. I combined Geomancer’s Freedom and Rune of Melandru to combat stuns and conditions with it. So far, it’s survivability has been quite decent, and the damage isn’t half bad.
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After a lot of theorycraftign and testing, I came up with a staff build that had good damage output while still providing the minimal amount of survival skills I deemed the ele couldn’t do without. It runs 25 Air, 15 Water and 30 Arcana. It runs like a dream to me.
With cleansing wave moved to master, the new build will be 20 Air, 20 Water and 30 Arcana. I’m gonna switch my backpack so my overall stats will be almost the same. And I’ll still be able to play pretty much the exact same build.
Diamond Skin looks like an interesting trait and I would love to spec into earth, but condition damage just isn’t viable for staff right now. So I’ll just stick to what I have, balance patch or no.
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Someone puts 30 into earth, 10 into water for cleansing wave, Then where do they go for damage with 30 points left over? 20 in fire to grab even more condition removal long with +200 power, where to next? 10 in air for mobility with zephyr’s boon or I go a full 30 into power and blast finish to maintain fury while stacking crazy might. Load utility bar with cantrips to include cleansing flame, maybe throw on signet of water also. A ele doesn’t necessarily have to spec deep into precision.
I think that is the kind of builds they worry about.
Which is why I’m not liking these new changes. Already the whole trait system has to be thrown in upheaval because of 1 potentially overpowered anti-condition trait.
I’d rather have adept cleansing wave than overcomplicated Diamond Skin.
Well you got to have some way to kill an ele you cant have an never ending answer to deal with a counter to the ele class. I guess you could make it so ele could never be rooted and no one could keep up with them but then they will become the first class on the chopping block. Every class MUST have something they need to avoid as best as they can.
I get that, I’m not an idiot. It’s currently rediculously easy to take down an elementalist: snare ‘em or stun ’em, and they go down. Period. No other professions have that kind of vulnerability. Where’s the spammable hard counter to warriors? What do you do to take down a necro in 2 seconds?
I don’t mind the ele being vulnerable to snares and stuns. I’m just pointing out that because they are so vulnerable to snares and stuns, not bringing condition removal and survival (a.k.a. Water Magic) is mandatory to at least have a chance to survive in PvP. The only way that’s gonna change is when either all traitlines get some way to combat conditions that’s at least half as good was Water’s, or our base health is increased so we don’t die to the first net that gets thrown at us.
The current state of the ele is: we stand still, we go down. Therefore it’s only logical to bring things that help us keep moving. Move the trait and the people will thus move after it.
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I knew builds like these would start appearing sooner or later.
As for the build, maybe you’d be better off taking something other than Ether Renewal seeing as how you’ve got plenty of anti-condition in Diamond Skin. Although it does work nicely with Rock Solid…
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On average, it nets me 2 stacks of vulnerability…which is nice in teamfights of course (effectively +10% damage in dungeons). I can use the extra water slot for Vital Striking though.
If eruption were pulsed instead of delayed I might have given the new earth traits a try. Pity condition damage is so weak on staff.
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It does seem a little bit complex for what it tries to convey though. The main issue with GW2 is that it’s so much more active than other MMO’s. Where a WoW tank could pretty much predict how a fight will turn out, GW2 is more about reaction times, dodging at the right times and ultimately, has too many factors for theories like these to hold up. It’s nice to be able to compare the effects of heals but it’s easily thrown off by the actual game. For example, if you are skilled enough to dodge the strongest hits instead of random weaker hits, your toughness will be less useful because the reduction per hit you take is less. Same goes for dodging while protection is up vs. while it’s not up. Then there are of course conditions, which go directly against the long-term survivability effects (i.e. invest in healing/toughness instead of vitality for long term survival works against conditions) and finally, being a team game means that sacrificing a little self heal for the group can be much more effective.
You just can’t theorize all, no matter how complex you make your theory.
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I just don’t see how this trait will get us out of Water…I mean, it just screams ‘stonger heals and more hp’ to me.
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For next patch it’s simple. It’s about making mandatory skills harder to get and somehow depend on getting lots of heals, so everyone will eventually get back into 30 water again. Because that’s what Diamond Skin will accomplish: need more heals.
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Currently, I run a build with 25 points in air and 15 points in Water for the minimum heals, including cleansing wave. I also use a soldier’s ascended backpack because back when I made it, I figured it would go well with any build.
So guess what my solution to the patch is? I simply drop 5 points in air, get a zerker back item and now I have pretty much the exact same build as before!
The reason I’m posting this is to show Jon that if he makes the decision, it really won’t change anything…at least not for me.
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The thing I just don’t get is why the Elementalist’s defense must be nerfed in the first place. I haven’t seen any complaints about it recently, quite the opposite.
oZii.2864The all around cleaner regardless of how you spec is Ether Renewal that is what puts Ele over the top of Guardians. for personal condition management. Though it has a extremely long cast time but is extremely good if you can get it off.
When you get immobilized, you need an instant cleanse, not somethign that may or may not work over the next few seconds. Immobilize is pretty much a death sentence for eles an it’s getting spammed around for free. An engineer can spam immobilize every 8 seconds (without the turret even) while Cleansing Wave has a cooldown of 10 minimum. There’s no good reason to move it up a trait and Jon knows it, because he’s admitted as much. But it still goes through even though we all know people will bring more water, not less.
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(edited by ThiBash.5634)
If there’s a champion or legendary nearby, target closest no longer works. Instead it keeps selecting the champion instead.
Please fix this soon, because closest target was the only way I had to get around the buggy auto-target mechanics.
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@Jon:
The thing is Jon, because of our low base defense and no stealth or clones, we Elementalists are crazily vulnerable to immobilize and stun. Until that changes, condition removals and stunbreakers are a neccesity on elementalists. Thus any plans you have to make water less attractive will fail because we don’t take it because we want to, we take it because we must.
You may not like the idea of increasing our base health, but it seems to be the only viable option. Traits like Diamond Skin won’t solve the issue, if anything, they will force people into Water even more just so they can keep their health up.
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ELEMENTALIST
- Arcane Resurrection is going up to master tier instead of Renewing Stamina.
- Windborne Dagger is going to function outside of combat.
All good choices, I can support these.
- Soothing Disruption is moving to master tier.
- Cantrip Mastery is moving to adept tier.
Not sure what you’re trying to do here, I was under the impression that these traits were only used in cantrip builds and I don’t see what swapping them would accomplish.
- Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incmoing critical hits. 10s recharge.
Given that most of the time, we already have regeneration, I doubt anyone will pick this trait. If you want to see it used, change it to a flat heal so regen builds can benefit from it. Otherwise, it just won’t do anything meaningful.
Cleansing Wave will still become a a master trait.
Again, I am strongly against this. It’ll force me to spec more into water, not less, because I need this trait. If you really want to nerf cleansing wave, make it target the elementalist only and keep it adept.
Diamond Skin makes ele invulnerable to conditiosn while at 90% health.
This will make people spec into water more just so they can keep their health up.
This is useless for staff eles because it forces them into condition damage, which staff eles cannot properly use. Please consider altering Eruption to pulse instead of dealing delayed damage, so Earth will become a viable choice staff eles too.
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EA shouldn’t be inherent, but should take up 5-point minors. Now you have to trait to get each one you want, and they are all pretty decent. The water 5-point minor could be an adept trait, and the rest are terrible and can disappear anyway.
Both the earth blast finisher and the air blind are quite useful too. :-)
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It’s not that great on individual skills, true, but stacking burn is quite easy for the ele. Maybe it rounds poorly, but a second additional burning to most burning skills seems ok for an adept trait.
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ThiBash.5634,
You and TheGameSlayer.7632 have been oozing negativity all week. What happened to you? I write an upbeat and nerdishly funny post in response to a mean poster just to read your reply calling me condescending to the meanie. If you were seeking attention, then here you go. I notice you.
My apologies, I didn’t get the jest in your post, probably because I didn’t read the whole thread. I’m sorry.
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The idea behind the glyph is that you use it in combination with your other condition skills to fill in the gaps. having said that, snaring is a big deal for eles and constantly having a chance to cripple or chill foes is huge…especially when you consider it can proc off things like meteor shower too.
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The main problem I feel is with the lack of motivation for people to try. Recently, a few threads have gone up introducing dps builds rather than arcana support, and they slowly seem to be accepted as viable. But popular belief is working very much against ele variety.
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Melandru’s Gaze works very well for me as an Earth themed staff, mainly because Melandru is the goddess of earth. It helps that my ele’s a human of course.
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If you go for overall dps instead of spikes, and switch attunements at least once every 10 seconds, then Sigil of Battle does very well. For spike builds, people tend to pick Sigil of Flame but that’s mostly to make the fight as short as possible. If the fight drags out though, Battle will win out.
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I enjoy helping people learn to think critically, so that arguments can become constructive debates. Not everyone can be helped, but I like to think of everyone as having the potential to be a great thinker.
Is it possible to make this sound even more condescending, when what follows is basically an opinion?
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I’d say percentagewise, the Mage and Warrior in WoW move as much relatively as the Warrior and Elementalist do in GW2.
Have you ever played a WoW mage or Warrior? Because WoW mages turret, they don’t move much except on certain boss fights, the only mobile mage would be arcane and even then you channel a lot so you’re not moving. Moving = cancel spell cast. Also warriors can just charge mob to mob on WoW. So I’m not trying to be rude but GW2 Ele moves around a whole more more than any WoW class every does, except maybe a hunter when kiting.
My apologies, I wasn’t clear. What I meant to say is that if the WoW warrior had to move 10 paces per minute and the mage 20 to avoid damage, in Guild Wars 2 the warrior has to move/dodge 100 per minute and the elementalist 200. That kind of relativity.
But the bottom line is: I have no problem with the active, mobile playstyle. I welcoem it, makes the game a lot more interesting than ‘stand still and go afk while auto attacking’.
I really would like to see that in fotm 80. You either lack damage or stay at range which is nothing to be proud of.
We were obviously talking about PvE, and I didn’t mention it to brag, I merely intended to say that it’s very possible for a staff ele to survive in melee for at least a short while. People seem to think that just because you have 1200 range you must remain at 1200 range at all times and that’s just not true. My average range during dungeons is between 200 and 700 so everyone can make the most use of my boons, heals and combos.
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(edited by ThiBash.5634)
What you forgot to mention is that Evasive Arcane is fun. It turns your passive staff into an active, quick reflexes weapon with a lot of extra (combo) options because of the extra blast finisher, heal and blind.
To me, it’s mandatory simply because I like the playstyle that comes with it. I don’t mind if it was inherent, but it may be better to keep it the way it is, because it represents a playstyle choice as much as a signet or conjure build would be.
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The fact is that behind all of this is math, so, yes, you CAN compare any skill to any other skill. When you talk about so many factors that it cannot be calculated, what you are talking about is called a math function. Each function acts as something called a variable. We even have math that allows us to graph the results. That is called Calculus. What is amazing about computer games is that billions of calculations go on per second to calculate these formulas in the millions.
What they mean to say is that you cannot create a model to accurately predict how powerful a skill or trait will really be, because there are too many variables, one of them being the human factor.
You can use math to make predictions and assumptions about skill balance though, and if properly used it’s useful. However, people quickly forget things in comparisons like these. In the vigor on crit example, the elementalist has Evasive Arcana where the Mesmer gets a clone. That affects the outcome of ‘how powerful is vigor on crit’.
Also, if the mesmer had say another trait that gave them +50% endurance regeneration, suddenly the vigor on crit would only be half as powerful for them. Even though it’s the exact same trait.
So no, math isn’t the answer to everything. It’s just a (very useful) tool.
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P.S. bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov. 26th as well.
Awesome!
can anybody answer? Will it work with all traits or just with the 5P ones?
Ideally, it’ll work with all traits AND make our glyphs trigger multiple times. ;-)
But seriously, if it only worked for the minor traits, it’d be plenty powerful.
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Tonight I had an epiphany regarding the elementalist. My wife has a low level elementalist alt and she got thrown into the story again when she tried to enter Kessex Hills with it. My initial thought was ‘ok, just hand over the mouse and keyboard and I’ll show you how the ele works’ but that quickly changed.
It was downright hard. I could barely damage them and they still hit me like a truck. Her alt was far from optimized, but she had progressed into the Evasive Arcana style and her gear was decently enough. It was doable, but it took a lot more effort than I was used to on my fine-tuned optimized main. I realize that for inexperienced players, it’s thus nigh impossible.
So I get it now. People are experiencing this all the time and it turns them off the elementalist, and I cannot blame them. It’s been nearly a year since I had experienced playing like that. The elementalist can be great, but it takes a lot of experience, finetuning and knowing all skills, combos and traits from memory. It explains why there’s such a huge rift between the two sides of the discussion. A rift I didn’t know was that large until I once again experienced the other side again. Honestly though, I’m not sure I’m ok with the learning curve being THAT steep. But I would like to apologize for coming across as an elitist: you guys have every right to complain, because levelling an ele is certainly no picknick. But if it’s any consolation, if you do stick with it, in the end it’ll be great. But I no longer blame you for going warrior and shaving 5 months off the learning curve.
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Look at this post where Jon directly adresses our major concerns:
They do listen. They don’t always agree, but they do listen.
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Summation of high risk concerns for elementalist.
…
Thanks, Jon
Looks good. I’m glad our concerns are taken seriously. I still feel the health gap between 20k and 10k is too large, but I suppose this isn’t the place or time to discuss it. Keep us informed please. :-)
P.S. bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov. 26th as well.
Awesome!
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