Reimagining Meteor Shower to balance across all game modes.

So I was thinking to myself, hmm this meteor shower business. At times its the most op damaging skill in the game, and others its useless. This makes it a balancing and wvw commanders nightmare. Since the game launched, its rocketed Ele into god tier damage in pve, been pretty useless in pvp, and another god tier for wvw. How to make it good to great for these modes? Some of you might have already guessed... change it to hit one spot continuously. The trick is to get the number of meteors just right so its not op or up.

My suggestion is to have it pulse 4 times, once right away then once every second for a 3 second cast time. Maybe change the radius to 240. I'm guessing this will hit pve damage pretty hard, but at the same time make balancing a lot easier so buffs elsewhere would be more feasible. For pvp this would be a god send, since right now its pretty useless because you cant stand in your meteor shower aoe as a form of both offense and defense. This duality is what makes staff ele viable imo. Wvw damage overall would get hit hard but it would ultimately be a buff since its all about concentrating all your damage into one spot to down baglings fast. An unorganized zerg would not be able to take advantage of this change as they would unload all their damage into one spot, thus negating the potential of bombing multiple spots for multiple downs. Another idea is to have it pulse 8 times, once at the very beginning then once every 2 seconds.

Well that's it. Hopefully this will spark some decent conversation, because yes meteor shower definitely needs some kind of change if the version history is any indication. It be broke yall.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Meteor_Shower

How about no?!?How about we leave one of the more interesting skill as it is and not turn it into another boring, predictable useless pulsing aoe?And when we are at it changing it to 240? Are you serious? Even arenanet didn't destroy a skill in such a devastating manner yet. These changes offer nothing but a huge Nerf, but not stopping at it, it also destroys the feeling of this skill completely and takes all the fun out of it. Just for an example, ele became my main class as I found nothing as satisfying as letting death rain on my enemies in WvW. But these changes would take that all away.I am complete against any of this. This would change it to another lava font and I couldn't think of something more boring.

what you're describing is basically lava font with a bit bigger radius but requires channeling and has a longer cd. no thanks

Ele issues are not aoe, so changing meteor will not change anything beyond making spamming wvw thingies and npc meat groups slightly more fun. In fact trying to balance a class around AOE is fundamentally flawed because a class cannot be powerful at aoe and single target dmg at the same time (i.e where the real issues are - 1v1 or 1vx play)

Make it pulse burn for each meteor that hits the ground.So its a variable amount of power dmg, but a consistent condi pulse.While you are at it, make lava font burn so it recovers some of its lost dmg. Why is it the only fire field that does not burn?!!And with that you have a more viable hybrid or condi staff ele.

lava font should burn AND bleed. Like lava.

And MS? The only thing I would change: make cast-on-the-go.

Here's the changes I'd make:

• Make it 2 ammo skill, 30-35 sec cd per charge, 10-15 sec between charges.
• Cut the cast time to 1.5/2 sec and remove rooting while casting
• Reduce number of hits to ~15
• Reduce duration to 5 seconds
• Meteors start falling after half sec of channel rather than after ~2
• Reduce total radius by 10-20% and slightly reduce radius on each hit
• Remove damage decrease on hit (revert damage back to previous state, around 10% less damage)

Who needs ANet devs when you have players with terrible ideas? I'm kidding.

Bring back original version with knockdown on hit.

Edit: would work amazingly with New sigil of celerity.

@Usagi.4835 said:Who needs ANet devs when you have players with terrible ideas? I'm kidding.

ouch

@Mithos.9023 said:How about no?!?How about we leave one of the more interesting skill as it is and not turn it into another boring, predictable useless pulsing aoe?And when we are at it changing it to 240? Are you serious? Even arenanet didn't destroy a skill in such a devastating manner yet. These changes offer nothing but a huge Nerf, but not stopping at it, it also destroys the feeling of this skill completely and takes all the fun out of it. Just for an example, ele became my main class as I found nothing as satisfying as letting death rain on my enemies in WvW. But these changes would take that all away.I am complete against any of this. This would change it to another lava font and I couldn't think of something more boring.

boring and predictable is the exact opposite of useless. youre thinking of random hits over a large area so most of the meteors are not actually guaranteed to hit in a lot of scenarios. it would make sense to change the radius of each meteor to 240 or keep it at 180 cuz keeping it at 360 would make 0 sense... I get that you don't like it and youre entitled to your opinion. lets leave it at that.