AzuritaBlues.3206

pretty much this. One advice I can give you tho is that Arcane Traitline is the most helpful during the leveling process because it gives you a lot of sustain with boons and healing and faster attunement recharge. As a Core Ele there's no reason to not run it. Scepter/Dagger can build for condi or power. Condi Gear usually comes with better defensive stats (toughness and vitality) which makes you beefier. Power usually kills mobs faster during the leveling process (1-80), but it is squishier. In my personal opinion, I think this pair of weapons works really well with Water Traitline, due to Scepter's Shatterstone + Water Trident and Dagger's Frost Aura + Cleansing Wave. With Scepter/Dagger most of your sustain is locked behind water attunement, which makes Water a great traitline to run alongside it, since the trait line reduces the attunement weapon skills cooldown and boost your healing and strike damage capabilities. If you choose to run Water, you're better of building for Power Damage tho. Fire Traitline gives you raw power (both Power and Condi), Might and Condition Cleanses, while Air boosts your crit rate, Crit damage, Movement Speed and CC. Earth gives you condi damage and sustain via barrier, protection and strike damage reduction. Runes and Sigil are very important, but for the leveling process I would stick with what fit your playstyle the most and only really worry about it when you hit 80 and get a full set of exotic gear. Just for guidance: For Condi Damage you could try Fire/ Earth / Arcane with Dire, Rabid or Carrion's Gear (when you hit 80, you can also try Trailblazer's or Viper's). For Power, try Water/Air/Arcane or Water/Fire/Arcane or Fire/Air/Arcane with Berserker's gear (at lvl 80, you can try Marauder's and Dragon's for more vitality) And to finish, Glyph of Lesser Elementals is a super useful Utility Skill during the leveling process, because the elemental's can tank and buff you while they deal damage to mobs. It's a fun utility overall, but not very Mount friendly, since the Elementals die when you mount.

Don't listen to all the negative comments, Ele is so much fun to play! And you arrieved just in time to enjoy the brand new post-balance Scepter, which is a nice and fun dps ranged option now! Scepter/Focus is a super begginer friendly combination, specially when paired with Glyphs Utilities such as the glyph of Elementals and Glyph of Storms. If you enjoy swapping between ranged and melee, you can slot conjure weapons like Lightning Hammer. You can build power gear with vitality to balance the squishiness and, being ranged, Scepter/Focus let you kite Mobs with ease. If you have EoD, a lvl 10 Jade Core allows you to go Full Berserker's in PvE with enough survavibility to not be a downstate meme. It's a fun playstyle, you should def try it, i'm sure you'll like it 😄 oh, and I just noticed this part: Scepter/ Focus Weaver can cycle through the attunements the most. Dual skills create a nice flow of DPS due to the Scepter's #2 short cooldowns, which allows you to add Water, Air and Earth to your rotations as much as you like (Just make sure to build it with your preferences in mind, since Trait Lines can add a lot to the gameplay)

But to be fair tho, smothering auras was changed in 2018. and even tho they buffed cata, they recently nerfed it a bit in oct 4 patch Fortified Earth: Reduced base barrier from 3,000 to 2,520 in PvP only. Increased cooldown from 25 seconds to 30 seconds in PvP only. Rocky Loop: Reduced damage reduction from 10% to 7% in PvP only. Staunch Auras: Reduced stability duration from 3 seconds to 2 seconds in PvP only. Obviously not enough considering the previous buffs, but to some extent I wasn't THAT wrong with my statement. Still, I missed all that Cata and Tempest changes, so thank you for your input 😄

oh yeah, I was thinking Core changes. Thx for pointing that out! totally forgot about those lol And here, take some syrup to your coughing 😅

Don't worry, I take it as a healthy discussion. I agree with a lot of points in your reply actually Earth Shield has shared cooldowns between cast and picked up shield, I still think that increasing the cooldowns could proper balance it, make it so you could only use one invul per cast, no matter if you pick the second shield. Keep the barrier on skill #2 and remove on skill #4 etc etc, they really need to look at it since other conjures are lacking in comparision and overall they need a rework Stone Heart is a stupid trait and it should be replaced with something else, it's borderline Broken on few builds (mostly Tempest), but too niche to most Ele builds, so IMO not balanced at all. Earth traitline itself is very stituational and 90% of times you're better running Arcane instead of it. I don't think they should mess with the invul skills just because Stone Heart exists, just delete the trait and call it a day. Aura Share is at a weird place, it's a cornerstone of Tempest gameplay but Catalyst generates so much Auras that it can be abused in 2x2 and 3x3 just like you stated (Aura Share Catalyst is a meme in conquest tho). I think the addition of an ICD to it in competitive modes could probably make it less obnoxious, make it so you can't spam the same kind of aura to your allies over and over again, or shove down Shocking and Magnetic auras (which are the problematic ones)or even move the trait to Tempest trait line, something between these lines. But I don't often see the trait being run in builds other than Support Tempest we also have to be fair and also recognize that Ele's can't afford to run only stunbreaks as utilities, like ranger and warrior can. Our port is not a Stun Break, like Thief's and Mesmer's. We don't have channeled blocks in our weapon skills , we don't get Aegis, we don't have a second health bar and we don't have access to stealth. Sure, we can have mobility: if we run Off-Hand dagger, Fresh Air or Fiery Greatsword (which is 180sec cooldown to mimick a Warrior's Greatsword Mobility). Dagger's 600 range Leaps with aftercast aren't enough to survive the chase, specially considering that we have to blow out attunement cooldowns to chain them together. I'm talking scpecifically of core Ele features here, which Invul also is. If the Elite specs are overperfoming (and TBH I don't think Weaver is close to overperforming), then it's more than reasonable to adress their features that need a nerf. Thinking about it, other than Transmute Aura and Off-hand dagger water skills, nothing else changed about Ele sustain recently, and the only complaints I've heard about Ele's sustain before were due to Earth Shield. Cata became prominent after the Nerf to other EoD specs and Tempest due to the projectile nature of EoD specs + nerfs to Core Guardian support. Idk, just trying to add to the discussion, broken things need to be adressed, but fairly. I also get super annoyed fighting Virtuosos lately, but that's because they have access to Stealth on top of all that Invul.

I mean, Mist Form and Obsidian Flesh also locks the Ele into a defensive animation. Same thing with Earth Shield Invul and Fortified Earth's block. Arcane shield is the only utility that let Ele take actions while blocking, but it only blocks three hits and it's not even as annoying as Aegis spam IMO. All of those skills have high cooldowns already, but if a balance pass is needed, I would vouch to further increase the cooldowns instead of shoving the skills completely, because Ele do need those tools to survive outnumbered situations, it's to vulnerable to getting focused. But I do agree that projectile reflects/denial should have more counterplay and more sources of unblockable should be added to PROJECTILE skills SPECIFICALLY. We def don't need more unblockable CC's 🥴

Off hand dagger packs more damage and mobility, while Focus packs more Damage Denial and CC. Both of them work well with scepter, choose what suits with your playstyle

I think Earth auto probably didn't get buffs because they don't want you to camp Earth attunement while running the Stone Heart trait 😐

why would you want to tag mobs with dragon's tooth? the cast time is so slow that the mobs would probably be dead by the time it lands. Tagging with scepter is more efficient with Flaming Strike and Arc Lightning, and now you can also tag them with INSTANT Shatterstone 😄 I found it easier to use against thieves and mesmers now because it can track them while they're in stealth. No good thief or mesmer would stand in it's AoE circle anyway... And snapping the AoE circle to the target is different from the skill tracking your target. It's much better now, for real.

I mean, you could just walk away from dragon's tooth AoE before, now you HAVE to dodge it. If you want to combo it for the blast, just cast it without a target (sure the combo field should be on your feet, but to get the blast effects you should be near the field anyway). And in PvE you can always place the combo field in your targets foot, since Mobs are much more predictable moviment wise. Phoenix stayed the same in PvE, but it was buffed in PvP. Shatterstone lost it's Vuln, but it was given to Air #2. The chill on cast is amazing, and two hits break Aegis and makes it easier to generate energy to Cata. Air skills being AoE is a HUGE change. Instantaneous cast AoE Vuln + Blind + Weakness with these last two having 2 ammo is just chef kiss, so much value packed in such low cooldown skills. The only thing I kinda agree with you is about the lost support of trident, but I'm loving the damage coefficients and the ammo tho Scepter is competitive with dagger now in PvP and WvW. It already had more DPS in PvE, it's just better now, play with it a little more and you'll see 😄

If it was instant, I think swapping the order of placement would probably solves this issue, cast the field first and then eruption next. Staff has 3 Blast finishers and two of them are placed in Earth Attunement anyway, it would just make it more reliable I'm all in favor of increasing casting/activation speed of staff skills heh Tbh the changes they did to staff were nice already, but with those extra tweaks it would be perfect

oh, didn't notice the text change! super nice, thx for the clarification 😄

I've felt this too! Don't know if it's intended, but felt nice ngl It always has been AoE with a tiny radius hehe. It's noticeable when cleaving down bodies that are being ressed by someone, it hits both players

Been playing around with scepter weaver in pvp since the patch came out and boy I'm loving it The flexibility of the rework version of shatterstone, dragons tooth and hurl is amazing, I didn't even need to run Fresh Air because every attunement has reliable damage now, which is great IMO. Played around 10games with Scepter Water Weaver and it was so much fun! Dragon's tooth following it's target is hilarious! super helpful at securing kills and biting dodges. Water attunement with Scepter + Focus can be very aggressive with the amount of chill it provides now pairing Shatterstone and Freezing gust (even more chill if you include Glacial Drift). I didn't get to use Trident, Blinding Flash and Dust Devil much because of dual attunements, but the rework sure added more value to fully attune as a weaver

I think the targeted DT will actually makes it easier to focus the backline since it follows the target now, so you don't have to plan ahead where the target will be when DT lands, but it sure will suffer from Line of Sight issues now that it didn't had before, It's more reliable to single target but you lose the control over the AoE. I still think the Pros are more relevant than the Cons tho The changes to #2 and #3 will soon become muscle memory, so don't worry about it. If you're on fire att while using scepter you probably would want to fit some autos in the rotation anyway (and if the target is already burning you won't have to). You won't need to auto attack on earth to get the cripple, because you can shoot your Rock Barrier for these bleeds without the need to be locked into the autos animation (which you shouldn't because the auto is terrible). Air #2 and #3 have instant cast, so it's not really a biggie having to cast one before the other to get extra value (and I kinda thought it was a standart move to cast #2 followed by #3 when attuning to air, but maybe thats just my experience lol). Same for shatterstone and trident, it's already usual to cast Shatterstone the very first thing when attuning to water.

I'm super happy with the scepter changes, looking forward to see how catalyst performs with all the buffs. Scepter+focus plus fire trait line should generate enough auras and it's not THAT hard to upkeep the buffs by yourself. I wonder if these changes could make scepter competitive with hammer. I think it maybe could damage wise, but not with the energy generation. We'll see.

???? that's exactly where hammer shines in WvW. Sword lacks range and staff AoEs are usually too slow to hit several players at once in small/mid scale fights. Hammer is also great at taking camps by yourself and overall Cata has a boon output that makes it a super helpful addition to small roaming groups seizing towers and alike (with hammer being the best weapon to generate energy)

PvE STAFF AND SCEPTER BUFFS!!! FINALLY so satisfied with this patch, tempest is going to be a beast

Transmute Magnetic Aura is also a Blast Finisher and Earth auto is a 100% projectile finisher. And water 2 and earth 2 are blast finishers with low cooldown, which should be considered. But overall I agree with the other points and staff needs a PvE buff, no question that. Just adressing this minor thing in specific 🙏

Indeed, it would also make other weapons such as Scepter see more play in catalyst. Imagine the burst of 10stacks of burn from comboing Hurl in a fire field lol But I guess it could easily become broken when talking Water Fields in pvp modes. I agree EE mechanic could be deleted. It would be great if instead we had a trait line to improve the Jade Sphere offensive side, giving up the boons while increasing the Damage and making it pulse condis. Turning it into the counter part to Spectacular Sphere to better differenciate DpS Cata and Support Cata without the need to punish every single source of it's damage in order to bring quickness into play, while also making it less frenetic without all the EE stacking. Looking at Harbinger and Mechanist trait lines, which are so cohesive in the way they differentiate cDPS/pDPS/Support, makes me wonder why they didn't take the same approach with cata. And I also agree Weaver is harder to learn and perform well than Catalyst.

Only two things really bother me in catalyst at the moment: the 10% damage penality from spectacular sphere and how hammer outclasses every other weapon in PvE due to it's design, energy generation and damage output. But it's the Ele's Elite Spec that I enjoy playing the most, never really dig up Tempest and Weaver didn't fit my playstyle due to attunement lockout. Catalyst has this core ele feeling to it which I love. But I can understand the negative feedback towards it when we have things like Harbinger and Mechanist in this expansion.

yes, the problem is the 10% damage reduction, so obnoxious and is destroying build diversity. Open world builds suffered the most, other weapons damage and energy generation were already bad compared to hammer's, now it's simply not worthy to run quickness on these builds in PvE. It feels like a lazy solution, tho it should be acknowledged that the quickness/fury swap was a step in the right direction. And i'm loving the increased radius, made team fight cata much better in spvp.

I think that the Harbinger interaction with new rune of sanctuary+Blook Bank trait rework have potential to be nasty, but we will see.

ugh, i mean not having baseline quickness anymore is already a big nerf. One of the selling points of cata was Ele finally being able to apply self quickness and now you can't do that without losing 10% of all your damage. You already had plenty access to fury by running either Energized Elements os Spetacular Sphere. Fire #2 on hammer and the spheres damage will also be nerfed ( and so is going to be the damage of DpS cata, rain of blows buff alone cant make up for the damage loss) The update is completely focused on group play and cata is probably going to be ok in that environment, but for solo play it is a nerf, no doubt.

Yeah I know, I meant to increase it proportionally. Sorry if it wasn't clear 🙂