Staff air 3, staff earth 5 unreliability. Proposed changes.

You have been there, you cast either air 3 or earth 5, you are in the mid point of Battle of Kyhlo (treb map) and there is downward terrain between you and the opponent, and suddenly the skill just continues downwards into oblivion. You are in pretty much ANY map and the enemy is about 300 units away from you and again you fire these skills, only to see the enemy simply continue walking sideways (completely unaware that you even casted those abilities) while the ability simply "misses" (and in some hilarious cases, the ability shoots up into the sky, literally shoots up into the sky). Enemy is about 800-900 range from you, the abilities have 1200 range, however, every little up and down between you and the enemy counts as units traversed, which not only "slows down" the projectile, increasing the chances it misses, but at the range of 700-800 it simply disappears....

Proposed change: increase projectile speed, make it be unaffected by the Y axis, and make it track enemies. Another proposal for air 3, make it a cone, similar to dagger fire 5 or rev's glint elite.

Air 3 is already fast enough, earth 5 does need speed increase. Y axis is actually pretty good because you can use it from above to "extend" the range, pretty useful in wvw, especially on weaver's dual skills.

What they do need is wider hitbox. They are way too narrow, including air/water and fire/air dual skills from weaver. Fire/air one still can't properly hit downed targets unless they are hit by explosion at the end.

@"steki.1478" said:Air 3 is already fast enough, earth 5 does need speed increase.

Gust being fast enough? You need point blank range to even hit reliable, that's how bad and slow it is. It is even mentioned in the wiki: "The projectile moves very slowly, making the skill unpractical against moving enemies; it is only reliable at point-blank range." Wiki:Gust .I made allready a comment here: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/Comment_446046But to sum it up I think Gust should be like Mesmer GS 5 with a smaller cone but wider range. For shock wave I am still not sure how to make this in a usable skill. And their visuals are bad too, but that is another topic.

@Mithos.9023 said:

@"steki.1478" said:Air 3 is already fast enough, earth 5 does need speed increase.

To be honest the only reason why you'd use gust is to push people away from you in melee range so you can keep kiting or run away easier. It's pointless to use it when someone is 600-1200 range away from you and pretty pointless to initiate fight with it because you dont have good followup like ranger does with rapid fire. So if they are moving sideways, you have no reason of hitting them because they are still far away (all the skill does is knock back so why would you push them away even further?). Cone has good and bad sides, but wider aoe on gust is easier solution.

Other skills I mentioned have to hit at any situation and it's quite unreliable because of both slow projectiles and narrow hitbox.

@steki.1478 said:

To be honest the only reason why you'd use gust is to push people away from you in melee range so you can keep kiting or run away easier. It's pointless to use it when someone is 600-1200 range away from you and pretty pointless to initiate fight with it because you dont have good followup like ranger does with rapid fire. So if they are moving sideways, you have no reason of hitting them because they are still far away (all the skill does is knock back so why would you push them away even further?).

Well, sometimes you just need to CC them or push them off, like for example, the map where you have to capture that buffs that doubles your points, if you can push them to the lower level, you can secure the objective. I mean, imagine having a skill that does what it is supposed to, wouldnt that be, idk, like, GREAT? Idk man, i like having functional skills, I will find uses for it. Also, just because they arent melee doesnt mean you cant interrupt them, also, its ok to push people away even more; a warrior coming at you, air 5 into air 3 oh whoops they walked sideways and now they are running towards us, etc etc. I'm of the opinion that if the skill is not working as intended, then it needs to be changed. It has received changes to that extent in the past, I think the problem is a tech one, since DH's LB #3 behaves the same way, so they are using old tech that can't ignore Y axis. It is an outdated engine, but that shouldnt be getting in the way of strong abilities that are pivotal to ele's survival.