Guild Wars 2

Glyph of Elementals and Glyph of Lesser Elementals should have their cast times reduced. Each carries a 1.25 second cast time. I find that the Elementals are most useful when brought up simultaneously. This means a full 2.5 seconds spent trying to bring them up. Not so much of a problem if you pre-cast them but it’s a little tricky mid-combat.

Thoughts?

Good points everyone, thanks for feedback! I suppose I was making the mistake of assuming I needed staff for combo fields and d/d for aura sharing, thus my need to determine which provided better support. I just didn’t realize that auras and combo fields are quite accessible on both weapon sets.

In your opinion, which provides better group support?

Erebus.7568:

becouse the question you ask is so incredibly obvious thakittens CLEAR that you didnt post it to get actual answers but simply drag attention to it.
while i am completely for buffing/changing the staff of ele (becouse of its pethetic state compared to any other weapon for any class), i dont see the point in simply dragging attention to the staff without any suggestion or any idea or any claim etc. everyone is aware thakittens very up so saying “hey staff up, why not buff it?” isnt gonna be of any help at all, since its something every one (with any experience) is well awared of and forsee a buff of some sort… idea’s of how this could be done and why/effects, could be helpfull though

For someone who disagrees so vehemently with the nature of my thread, you sure are doing a good job of proving its merits.

We can agree that a game developer’s number one goal is to create profit. The most likely course to follow in order to achieve profit is to maintain a happy player base. So how should players broadcast their feelings to a developer?

Why not suggestions?
If you think our developers are refraining from making changes because they lack ideas/suggestions, you need assistance beyond the scope of this post. ArenaNet receives such a wide variety of suggestions that most of them probably go unnoticed.

Why is Q_Q more effective than criticism?
It stands out. While constructive criticism is always different and relies on the critic, Q_Q tends to be the same thing over and over, and over again. Q_Q allows an entire player base to speak about a specific problem, rather than multitudes of players posting suggestions in the form of text walls that get skipped over with an emphatic TL;DR.

Through this reasoning, creating Q_Q posts with clever titles that draw attention is in fact the most effective way to become visible.

Which brings me back to you. You’re so tired of reading Q_Q posts that you took the initiative to call my thread stupid. It may be a stupid Q_Q post, but it compelled you to take action, which is something that random text-wall-suggestion-box threads do not accomplish as easily.

Erebus.7568:

there is no good reason -.- which makes this thread topic kinda stupid.
…

I can’t figure out why you would post such innovative ideas in my stupid thread.

We can’t have faster velocity -or- cast time on auto attacks. Any and all explanations are welcome. The reason could be something obvious that I am missing.

I think the idea behind the cripple was for staff eles. Movement debuffs help to keep your target inside your AoE, etc. I’m not in favor of one way or the other as I usually do not slot this skill.

IceTwenty.6957:

Allow us to attach an armor dye setup to each attunement so that our armor changes color as we change attunements.

My Elementalist currently has a very fiery color scheme, but I’d like to be able to change to cool, electric, or earthen colors depending on my attunement.

You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. This is brilliant, ANet should hire you.

Fresh Air DPS

http://www.gw2link.com/654

-or-

PTV Staff

http://www.gw2link.com/656

-or-

Neither.

Crossplay.2067:

xbaunx.6438:

ThiBash.5634:

Why would you want chill if you already have an ice combo field, an ice elemental elite and some random skills to makeup the gap (if the projectile combos don’t do that first)?

Hanging out in the AoE would be much easier if everything you were kiting was slowed. I just really like the idea of “good for me bad for enemy” aspects in AoE.

That’s your inner mesmer speaking. You should answer it.

LOL I love this!

ThiBash.5634:

Why would you want chill if you already have an ice combo field, an ice elemental elite and some random skills to makeup the gap (if the projectile combos don’t do that first)?

Hanging out in the AoE would be much easier if everything you were kiting was slowed. I just really like the idea of “good for me bad for enemy” aspects in AoE.

Would it be too OP if these skills chilled enemies through their duration?

The Old Master Yoda

Also when you consider it—smaller bodies, smaller weapons, smaller skill animations. That can be advantageous.

Fortus.6175:

I have been playing staff elementalist since release…

I’ve played staff almost exclusively since I started and I always seem to come back to it.
I think the reason I like staff better than anything else is because it provides the best group support when compared to our other weapons.

I recently ran a dungeon with 4 staff Eles and we had everything locked down in almost permanent CC—our dps wasn’t that bad either. I think a lot of players forget that they are allowed to dps 5 targets at a time. A 1k tick from lava font becomes a 5k tick.

In PvP, standing back watching a team fight, if the staff Ele is able to take down 1/5 of each player’s health—that in and of itself is a very potent form of group support because you’re putting the other team at a 1/5 disadvantage.

There’s probably all kinds of flaws in that logic but I prefer to stick to it because it helps me appreciate staff.

It’s weird because I find myself frustrated with Ele sometimes as well but I can’t seem to shelf it and reroll. I don’t even have any alts. For some reason I can’t bring myself to play any other class.

TL;DR- questions are bolded

I’m a long time staff player who has just picked up the scepter with a serious effort to apply it in all modes of play. S/D seems like the only answer to the Elementalist problem of combining long and short range.

Considering PvE, PvP and WvW, in your opinion, is scepter our most versatile main-hand weapon?

The only weakness I can see is the lack of AoE. Not that scepter is completely bereft of AoE, but it doesn’t compare to staff’s and d/d with its pbAoE. How do you compensate for lost AoE?

Lastly, the auto attacks in fire and earth are almost entirely condition damage. I find myself not even using them in most situations because we have enough direct damage elsewhere. In S/D, is it worth it to build anything into condition damage to make use of earth/fire auto attacks—or should they just be ignored/used circumstantially?

I appreciate any and all advice!

I’m all in favor of an in-combat weapon swap, heck I’d even be happy with an out-of-combat weapon swap.

Riondron.1069:

And to maintain game balance and keep ele’s from becoming OP, allow only 2 opposing attunements per weapon slot. For example, slot 1 staff, with fire and water spec usage, and slot 2 with d/d air and earth spec.

^But this? Could you clarify? Seems like having access to just 2 attunements on a weapon would throw off its synergy to the point of being unplayable.

I like the idea of weapon size being scaled up on Asura for two reasons:

Legendaries… obviously

Over-sized weapons would fit well with the eccentric style of Asura, tiny warrior wielding a huge sword, etc.

Solkard.5136:

The issue is did you intend to do all that at the same time, or did most of that just happen as a side effect of you going through a rotation that a macro button on a gaming keyboard/mouse could have done?

Doing a bunch of a stuff is cool, but being able to do something when and where you actually need it, is better. In most instances, inflicting conditions is better than not inflicting conditions, but how many of those stuns, blinds, cripples were actually used at max potential and how many were tossed out “just because”?

If ever there was an encounter that required you to not inflict blindness, chill, or dropping a combo field, could you manage it without severely crippling your performance? The class has effective variety, it lacks controlled versatility.

You just described the problem of massive attunement swap cooldowns perfectly.

Sabull.5670:

Cmon, don’t be ridiculous. GW2 should not be about facerolling in 1.5k range out of all harms way.
You need to be part of the battle, sometimes using 1k range and sometimes jumping in there for a blast/waterdodge/waterswap.

IMO, we must be given either a weapon swap or a staff that is competent at <300 range.

Autumn Man.6852:

It’s really sad to almost never see a single elementalist these days, it’s all just mesmers with their ridiculous mobility and damage that makes it possible to solo everything.

Mesmer mobility? I haven’t played one, but I thought they were one of the slower classes to move around on.

As an aside, I agree that many of our individual skills are lacking big numbers but we do have access to more of these skills at a time than other classes. I’ve been a long time staff ele but I’m considering moving to d/d because I’m finding it evermore difficult to rely on PUGs to get things done while I back-line.

I suppose I accept sub-warrior dps because I love being loaded with condi removals, heals all over the place, perma swiftness, and just being able to zip around maps in general. A certain Ele was invincible before recent nerfs—now it’s just nearly invincible. I don’t tend to involve myself with the LFG 4warr 1mes 7 minute COF crowd so IMO,

invincibility>warrior dps

I’d take a 50% reduction in cast times. Maybe 35% increased projectile speed as well.

Since we’re comparing Ele to other classes, imo, staff makes us the very best within certain roles. I run staff everywhere in all game modes. The secret is sticking to your role and not trying to be an x/d Ele that uses staff. PvP in this game in a team sport; if you are doing your job and your team is still losing—you need a better team.

The thought came to me because I run staff; and so many times I find myself having to move from 1000+ range to 900 so that I can start off my attack with a storm.

Sandstorm is excellent, I love throwing it down on a point in sPvP during a team fight.

I wish more than anything that Ice Storm would work like Frost Bow #4.

Glyph of Storms makes a decent area denial and supplement to our DPS if we are running staff. It’s an AoE that has a lot of potential—just needs some love.

biofrog.1568:

I was thinking about this yesterday during game-play actually, and thought it would be really nice if we could have a trap-mechanic added. Allow us to lay down a target area, but only have it trigger when someone walks into it.

YES! I love this idea. Would help us map out our attack before battle which is very important when running staff.

Glyph of Storms should be 1200 range.

Thoughts?

nearlight.3064:

When you say 2.4K toughness do you mean armor? I don’t know full PVT stat numbers, but toughness does get diminishing returns in armor if you get too much of it.

While the might-building options offered by fire seem alluring, I feel like pyromancer’s puissance is kinda bad because when you leave fire the might stacks fade, which can be hard to rebuild if you have to go back into water/earth for defense. I think that you’d be better off putting 10 in Earth for Stone Splinters, and then either putting more points in air for extra crit DPS options, or 20 in water for condition removal and extra healing/Vital Striking.

To be honest fire right now seems most worth it in a might/fury-stacking conjured weapon DPS build, which is immensely powerful yet susceptible to interrupts.

Yes I meant armor, sorry—fixed. I agree that it’s mostly a build that tries to make something out of nothing with the fire line.

When I threw it together, it seemed interesting because you can run it exactly like you run a 0/10/0/30/30 as far as game-play. You have to be a little more observant of conditions because you only have Ether Renewal as a significant cleanse. Having zero healing power is not my favorite thing either. However it was fun seeing 7k fire grabs without having to go out of my way to set up might stacks and vulnerability + crits.

Does anyone run d/d like this?

30/10/0/0/30
VI, IV, XII
VI
V, IV, XI

Ether Renewal
Lightning Flash
Armor of Earth
Mist Form

100% everything PTV w/beryl orbs and jewels; sigils battle and bloodlust

Chocolate Omnomberry Cream
—-
I’m getting up to 22 stacks of might (if I use all all 3 cantrips); sitting at ~4300 attack after bloodlust is charged and 19.7k health / 2.4k armor.

You hit really, really hard when built like this. With all that vit/armor and defensive utility you certainly are not glass.

Opinions?

Is 100% berserker gear a bad idea for a staff Ele in PvE?

Edit: Obv need to add more info-

0/20/0/20/30
III, VIII
I, V
V, VIII, XI

ARM.3912:

IMO, the lack of response is a clear response from the devs saying “People still play ele’s???”

Could be, but I prefer to think that they have a clear design drawn up for the future of Ele. If the devs are sure about where they are taking the class, it would explain why they don’t engage in discussion about changes.

I’ve always felt like Ele is just a couple small tweaks away from being overpowered. Perhaps this is why we’ve been seeing nothing but major nerfs and minor buffs. They are prepping the class for a new direction?

Arheundel.6451:

ThiBash.5634:

The staff is actually in a pretty good place right now (yes, even for PvP). The main issue is that most people don’t use it to its fullest and then complain that it’s too weak…

Nice attempt..now I know that you never played ele

Actually, he’s been supporting/discussing staff for a while. I know because I post threads on staff and he usually provides input. If you want to rally players to your cause, which is the only way you’ll ever get ANet to notice you, don’t insult their experience without addressing your difference in opinion.

I don’t think staff is good enough in 1v1. In my opinion, faster casting/projectile speed of our auto attacks would be a fantastic place for them to start.

I posted a build in this thread that I run everywhere:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/PvE-Staff-Ele/first#post2063402

It’s balanced and quick around the map. I almost never change it because staff has a role in everything except remote 1v1s against other players.

What about the current RtL in combat, the old RtL out of combat? I mostly miss it for QoL, not trolling people in W3.

Baladir.2736:

imo this change to enhance the Air trait line is a far cry from a move to eliminate attunement swapping. If it was, and this is as far as they have progressed in a year, I think there is going to be a real long wait. If so, I can’t wait to see what they are going to do to keep the arcane trait line viable.

I don’t think anyone wants to eliminate attunement swapping itself, just reduce the base swap cooldown. A 60% reduction in swap cooldown is only part of the attraction of Arcana. Some would argue that +30% boon duration and the exceptional traits are more important.

Baladir.2736:

That’s funny to hear you say that. Above you responded to me saying:

“Yes, it would have an impact on skill combos. Would a reduction upset the balance so much that the class would need to be reworked? I don’t think so, our DPS is still average and our best skills do in fact have cooldowns already.”

I would add. Seriously? You can’t think of new skill combos that would fundementally change the use of skills as we know them and the balance of the class?

Right, I was saying that the new accessibility to skills via a reduced swap cooldown wouldn’t cause so much imbalance that the class would need to be reworked.

Shockwave.1230:

These two comments I whole heartedly disagree with. As an ele besides a Lightning Hammer build, optimal efficiency comes from having access to any one of your skills at any given time. Our skills are gated twice, once by the skill recharge and a second time by the attunement cooldown.

The attunement cooldown has one sole purpose, to not allow the elementalist to use whatever skills they want that are on cooldown. Why create something with that purpose? Because you haven’t spent the time to balance the way the skills interact with each other.

I see Fresh Air as an attempt by ANet to slowly work towards reducing or getting rid of the Attunement cooldown, because it gives Elementalists access to Air attunement whenever they want to use it. That’s 1/4 attunements that they are potentially reviewing for reducing/eliminating the cooldown.

We all want the attunement cooldown gone, the only thing standing in the way is balance. Once ANet figures out how to balance it, we should see the cooldown on attunement recharge reduced.

And this. It’s good to see some thoughtful responses since some of the above forumers are only interested in arguing semantics.

teonimesic.1403:

Oh. he switched to fire, so he is probably going to run to me and then area blast. Oh, he switched to water and then out. I have around 12~15 seconds to kill him before he can do any big healing again. And so on. It would be a lot more interesting if he could swap at any give time into water, use 1 healing skill and then just swap to to dps, and then to air to get some distance.

This.

The Game Slayer.7632:

21 second cooldown? Did you even think that through? You DO understand that skills keep on recharging even if a player is not inside that attunement, right?

You missed the point. Try to think staff in 1v1. You can’t play as reactive without adding X amount of seconds to low-cd skills or skills that are coming to the end of their respective cds. Waiting around for X skill to come off cd so you can blow it before leaving X attunement is bad. A ~21 second fire 2 was just a more extreme example. A reduction in base swap cd would mitigate this problem. If staff is just bad in those situations then maybe a weapon swap would solve it all.

/thread

Baladir.2736:

If we did not have attunement swap cooldowns, we would be able to put together skill sequences and combo fields and finishers that we cannot now. The result would fundementally change the way the class is played and its balance. The class would have to be totally reworked.

Yes, it would have an impact on skill combos. Would a reduction upset the balance so much that the class would need to be reworked? I don’t think so, our DPS is still average and our best skills do in fact have cooldowns already.

Baladir.2736:

We don’t have to have to take arcana for attunement swapping reduction. Many players do not.

In PvP? 60% swap reduction, 30% boon duration and the best traits we have are located in this line. Build variety outside of Arcana is pretty sparse imo, especially before Air XII.

Baladir.2736:

Essentially you are asking why we have cooldowns at all. heck, lets make every button available at any time. There is no diff if its a attunement or weapon swap or skill or trait or sigil cooldown. They are all cooldowns. Pick your favorite. Start a thread on that. Oh, I guess you have.

Not exactly. A swap reduction wouldn’t change the fact that we have to wait X amount of time to use a skill after triggering it. On-swap internal cooldowns are already present in the game so obviously they are necessary to prevent limitless stacking of whatever your sigil provides. Trying to equate attunement swap cooldowns to every other cooldown in the game is over-generalization.

We don’t have a single attunement that can stand on its own regardless of weapon set. The skills aren’t set up that way. Some players have suggested changes that would allow us to specialize in one element. I personally enjoy ANet’s concept of using every attunement available to us. It isn’t like a swap cooldown reduction is going to allow us to blow through 20 burst skills instantly. We don’t have 20 burst skills.

Alpha.1308:

this is a poor choice of words
“attunement swapping is a bad class mechanic”
Attunement swapping = good
Arcana reducing it = good
the problem isn’t with Arcana being so “required” for an elementalist,the problem is that the other trait lines don’t offer anything MORE reliable to make us WANT to stay in an attunement,picking traits for that attunement,making Arcana just more convenient,and desirable,while the others just look like a poor choice because of the actual “poor choices” we get for traits
a few stacks of might in fire doesn’t equal a cleanse + regen + burst heal from water under 15,and a dodge roll in water healing and cleansing AGAIN
and it DEFINITLY cannot even come CLOSE to being worth “10% toughness becomes condition damage”
so we’re forced into wanting to be able to swap quickly for the most effectiveness
attunement swapping is good,the other trait lines just need more work

but as with the 30 earth trait,it’s no surprise to me
i’ll just leave this here and let people soak this in for a bit when they think GW2 has some poor choices of skills that don’t get fixed
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Smiter%27s_Boon_

Organizing your skills based on attunement makes attunement swapping (in its current state) bad.

As a staff player, the following draws on experiences with the nature of staff skills:

When is the right time to engage an enemy with 100% offensive DPS skills with no CC or sustain (Fire)? When is the right time (since GW2 has no trinity) to support your group, or yourself, with healing and very little to no DPS (Water)? When is the right time to drop CC and boost your mobility, apart from trying to run away from the fight you just lost (Air)? When is the right time to have a mediocre amalgamation of the qualities from the previous three attunements (Earth)?

Okay so staff might be a bad weapon comparatively, but the point remains the same. You can’t synchronize your skills and be said to have access to all 4 attunements and their 20 skills when attunement swap limitations give you:

5 | 5 | 5 | 5

Edit: The interesting part is, reduce the swap cooldown and suddenly those attunement based skills I discussed above become infinitely useful and rather adequate because now you have more depth of strategy.

Edit 2: As a side note, Fresh Air is actually a diluted attempt at eliminating swap cooldowns by allowing us back in to an attunement when we crit. So far it seems like many players love it and it’s even brought about further variety of builds.

I agree that everyone has been asking. It just seems like the lack of justification leads to much zanier suggestions to compensate for the limitations imposed by this kind of mechanic.

Having skills within an element that are over 15s cooldown doesn’t mean that the player is always going to use that skill before leaving the element. That’s the whole problem. So many of our skills work best (or in Staff’s case work at all) only when specific circumstances are present.

Take lava font, untraited this skill has a 6s cooldown with an additional 15s cooldown if you aren’t playing “fire mage” which everyone knows doesn’t work. 21s cooldown on a skill like lava font is insane because lava font is worse in DPS and targeting than some auto attacks.

Not to mention, our combat has to be totally linear every time because we can never switch back to an element in time once we leave it. There’s no reason why an Elementalist shouldn’t be able to spec into the fire and air lines for damage-oriented play without being kept out of his damage dealing elements when trying to combine other attunements with his attack.

We can’t be reactive in a PvP environment without 20+ in Arcana, period. That’s a problem that needs solved before looking at how we can change this trait and that trait or what have you.

Can someone explain the need for a 15s base cooldown on attunement swap? Also, why is the cooldown reduction part of a specific trait line? We’re talking about a class that is required to swap attunements, therefore required to take that trait line.

Those are two basic questions that seem to remain unanswered. If anyone can link me to something that explains why this is necessary I’d appreciate it.

If it just comes down to “that’s the way it was designed”, then maybe a dev could explain further?

JuniorSB.7089:

I was messing around with the skill builder and the fact that Tornado gives a massive boost in Power, Precision, and Vitality, and wanted to make a build that abuses that fact…

I hope they don’t nerf this

My opinion:

Anywhere in WvW or sPvP if you have a competent ally staff is great. You don’t need a whole zerg to perform well with staff. You just want to avoid any and all 1v1s against other players.

With staff, you can solo champions in PvE using the correct build. Staff Ele is an all-star in PUGs. When left unattended and facing an opponent with predictable movements, staff Ele can bring out strong sustained DPS.

Staff is great for slinging fireballs at Claw of Jormag, SB and others alike. In sPvP you can tag kills on 5 or more players if your team wins the fight.

I use staff everywhere and can’t find a compelling reason to use anything else. Just avoid 1v1.

I posted a build here a couple months ago that is still by far the most balanced and effective experience I’ve had on Ele.

The ONLY thing I can’t do with this is 1v1 another player (show me a staff that can).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/PvE-Staff-Ele/first#post2056603

Staff can do everything except PvP 1v1s. It also offers more combo fields and long-range AoE DPS than any other class/weapon in the game.

I feel like x/D and x/F (F?, what’s that?) can be played very well but don’t offer anything that can’t be matched or outmatched by another class.

If staff allows us to be the best at something, doesn’t that make it our premier weapon? I’ve always built around staff because otherwise I felt like I was only providing mediocre versions of everything to my group, be it PvE, WvW or sPvP.

Have I made too many assumptions? Anyone have something to say in favor of our other weapon sets (apart from staff’s inability to 1v1)?

Can you talk about dueling with staff? 1v1 is such a huge part of this game and we have no weapon swap. Can you explain why we can’t have a reduction of base attunement cooldowns? Is there any hope for a 0 Arcana Ele?

Chaotic Storm.2815:

…your there with a quick spell to help out.

I agree with you but we do have a considerable problem—nothing about staff is quick. Clutch CC is a magic trick when you’re in Slo-Mo and everyone else is at full speed.

whillie.7451:

Welcome to the cc game. As an staff ele your job is to blind/immobilize/chill/stun/knock back and cause vulnerability while punishing the people who have fell in to your traps. the next thing you have as an staff ele is in kit combo. We have so far 3 ways of blasting in our own fields arcane blast, eruption and evasive arcane. this makes us the best support or cc tank in the game (imo). what a-net should do with the staff is make:

IMO, if you want the community to take your suggestions seriously don’t start off by insulting the community.

You forgot about Arcane Wave—it is also a blast finisher.

When you say “cc tank” you imply that staff ele excels at drawing aggro and staying alive in melee combat while providing support/CC for the team. You should reconsider that.

The players you refer to as “all the QQ staff eles” are players that understand the shortcomings of using staff in an organized PvP envrionment. Most agree that it works in PvE and does well in WvW provided you have a zerg/keep to protect you.

The cast times are too long to be able to coordinate attacks with a teammate. You touched on that in your suggestions but imo removing the cast times entirely would be unbalanced.

The nature of our DPS prevents us from performing well in 1v1. Removing the delay on lava font is a tiny step in the right direction, but a revision of our auto-attacks is also needed.

Having no escapes hinders our ability to provide off-point pressure. Giving Fire 4 1200 range would be a good start here. Adding a mid range escape to Air 4 would also help.