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Ideas for improving scepter auto attacks


Josif.2015

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Hello everyone.

Something that I don't see a lot of elementalists talk about nowadays are the scepter auto attacks. It may seem odd, but I've never seen a single person bring up this topic for discussion. As much as I love playing core elementalist, one thing that always stood out to me were the auto attacks and how bad some of them are. So I took the time to come up with a few ideas on how to improve them:

Ice Shards

While I don't think that Ice Shards is a bad auto attack, I still don't think that it's a good auto attack either. The only use for this auto attack is to refill some health after leaving a fight if you're using Signet of Restoration. What I recommend is to slightly increase the damage and change the trait Piercing Shards so that every water skill applies vulnerability on foes.

Stone Shards

The cast time on this skill is what kills it, as well as the damage which is weaker than Ice Shards. Reduce the cast time from 1.5 seconds to 0.75 seconds like Ice Shards, increase the damage to be higher than Ice Shards and have it apply weakness for 2 seconds.

Flamestrike

Saving the worst for last. This auto attack may not have as long of a cast time like Stone Shards, but what makes it bad is both the damage and how clunky it feels overall. It is without a doubt the worst auto attack on the scepter. Both Stone Shards and Flamestrike have the worst power damage scale compared to the other auto attacks (FlameStrike 160 (0.45), Stone Shards 160 (0.45), Ice Shards 264 (0.72), Arc Lightning stage 3 660 (1.793)).

The best way to fix the auto attack is to make it attack enemies behind you. Also, reduce the cast time from 1 second to 0.5 seconds and increase the damage to be the 2nd highest right next to the air auto attack. The elementalist has very little options in terms of kiting his enemies, so it would be great if Flamestrike got changed like this as it will very useful for kiting enemies.

In conclusion, the elementalists' scepter is an amazing weapon, but half of its' auto attacks are worthless and underwhelming. Keep in mind, this is just me giving ideas on how to improve some of the auto attacks. I would really like to hear your thoughts and opinions on this topic.

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I feel like there was more discussion in the past regarding scepter autos, but then they updated fire auto and everyone was like whelp, okay then, no point in requesting any other changes if that is going to be what they do.

Honestly, I think fire could be much improved by just moving the second hit to the half way point of the auto attack while removing its delay and ground effect.

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For Ice Shards, I also see it lacking personality. Its only peculiarity is that it hits 3 times, so you take damage 3 times when hitting someone with retaliation. I would like it to build up something on the enemy as they attack that has synergy with the other water skills, so it's worth using more often. Maybe have the ice shards slowly stack on the enemy and if the enemy has enough stacks, they get bonus damage when hit by Shatterstone, or get chilled when hit with Water Trident, or make allies hitting the enemy with shards shatter the shards into a chilling mist that heals for a bit in melee range around that enemy, or to the ally who landed the hit.

For Stone Shards, I would prefer if this one didn't have such a long pause between casts, make it cancel its own aftercasts. Clearly meant as a condition skill, it's not something one will use much while going power, but it's not that spectacular at stacking bleeding either. It could use a mechanic that allows it to build up more bleeding under certain circumstances. For example, it could be renamed to "Stone Daggers", and it could throw just 2 daggers at a time with a short animation in which the elementalist swings the scepter up and down like necromancers swing an axe, but the daggers thrown got stuck on enemies, continuously causing bleeding for 6 seconds every second per dagger stuck. Stone Daggers attached to an enemy would last 10s, but they would be removed simply using an evade like Karka Effects, chak woop and awakened tar, and that would be clearly explained in the effect icon, forcing enemies to choose between letting the bleed pile up, or using up endurance to stop it. An elementalist can always use reasons to make people waste endurance between going for a Churning Earth.

The last change to flamestrike that made it create a secondary was nice to add a bit more damage in PvE where enemies do not move, but it doesn't do much for it in competitive modes. As an autoattack clearly meant to keep burning on an enemy, it's lacking a bit of Oomph, and the animation is rather awkward since it keeps raising its arm like "Hey, look at me, I have a scepter!". I would like to see it changed into a 3 skill chain, making the first two skills swing the scepter like necromancers and mesmers with their scepter autaottacks, dealing damage similar to flamestrike without the aoe (the second hit a bit stronger), then the third attack would be the one raising the arm, that hits for more direct damage than the previous 2, 2 stacks of burning, then 0.5s later produces a larger aoe, more damage and 4 stacks of burning for 3s. The elementalist would swing the scepter 2 times hitting with "Immolate" and "Flare", then raise the arm only for the Flamestrike attack, giving the animation a less awkward flow, and the increase of the size of the aoe on the third strike would help hitting moving enemies with the right timing.

I would also like to see Lightning Strike and Arc Lightning Swapping places, well not exactly, just their visual and behavior, not the intended damage. Making the air autoattack a 3-skill chain that hits with 3 separate lightning strikes, "Shock" and "Lightning Bolt" and finally ending with a "Lightning Strike".

Then change arc lightning into ground targeted line attack that shows a warning with a faint lighting that traverses the future trajectory of the skill, then after half a second creates the arc of lightning hitting up to 5 enemies on its path for considerable damage.

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I'd like to see something like this:

Fire - remove the second part of attack, but merge/buff direct damage (only 1-2 burn stacks though) or nerf direct, but increase burn stacks. Make it possible to cast behind you, since animation clearly allows that.
Water - add 3-5 second vulnerability per hit. It's already a decent auto, just lacks a purpose.
Air - add some effect at the end of the channel like 5 stacks of vuln, blind, 1 sec superspeed/quickness, brief daze, weakness or similar.
Earth - add 2-3 additional shards which do same damage/bleed and make last shard apply 2-3 second cripple.

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@steki.1478 said:I'd like to see something like this:

Fire - remove the second part of attack, but merge/buff direct damage (only 1-2 burn stacks though) or nerf direct, but increase burn stacks. Make it possible to cast behind you, since animation clearly allows that.

Water - add 3-5 second vulnerability per hit. It's already a decent auto, just lacks a purpose.

Air - add some effect at the end of the channel like 5 stacks of vuln, blind, 1 sec superspeed/quickness, brief daze, weakness or similar.

Earth - add 2-3 additional shards which do same damage/bleed and make last shard apply 2-3 second cripple.

I was thinking the same thing for the fire auto attack. Being able to attack foes that are behind you could help the Elementalist a lot when it comes to kiting. It would also be better if the fire auto attack had the 2nd highest damage after the air attunement as well as a 0.5 seconds cast time because the fire attunement is clearly meant to be used for damage.

For the water auto attack I did say in the list that the trait Piercing Shards would be better if it applies vulnerability on foes while you're attuned to water. It would work similar to the Engineers' Grenade Kit if it's traited to apply vulnerability per grenade for 5 seconds. So for every Ice Shard it would apply vulnerability, resulting in 3 stacks of vulnerability.

I think that the air auto attack is fine as it is. The minor trait Electric Discharge already applies vulnerability that lasts for 8 seconds, you can blind enemies with Blinding Flash, One With Air gives you superspeed for 3 seconds when you attune to air, Gale gives you a 3 second knockdown. The only way to apply weakness is by using the trait Arcane Precision, which is not very good since it relies on RNG from critical hits.

The earth auto attack should work similar to Ice Shards, only it deals more damage. As far as your suggestion on the auto attack applying cripple, I was thinking why not apply 2 seconds of weakness at the end of the cast time?

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