[Can we please improve water attunement?]

"Lets make water a less effective air attunment surly this will be awesome guys we swear!!!!!"

No, having an access to flat out healing skills on the weapon slot is one of the most unique things about ele, only other classes that can do that on base class are staff rev and staff guardian, Why are people all of a sudden demanding ele to be de-ele-ified, if you hate attunment swapping and attunment themes just play other classes with weapons that got elemental death animations and you will be happy.

 

 

[R.I.P Catalyst]

7 hours ago, ScottBroChill.3254 said:

That -10% damage on SS or whatever trait it is for quickness is totally unnecessary because you are already trading out for traits that increase damage.

 

as i ALREADY SAID, without the -10% dmg nerf, SS will be so much higher value than empowering aura to the point where you be told joining squad to either switch your power cata to qcata or be kicked, and outside 10man content where you are guaranteed a quickness source SS dps increase of the instant 5 might + quickness is more than 45% more dps than empowering aura, even pre patch outside 10man content SS> empowering aura " singing strike base deal 745 (power+burn), (+empowering aura x5 = 819) or (+Spectacular Spheres(x5might burst) =872)"

 

 

7 hours ago, ScottBroChill.3254 said:

I Just don't get the point then. They need to stop making complicated professions and specs that don't get compensated for their difficulty.

Here were we simply differ, you are a player that think the journey and effort is only worth it if the reward worth it, I think the reward is the journey itself, its not that you are wrong or i am wrong, we are just different types of players and get enjoyment differently.

[R.I.P Catalyst]

20 minutes ago, soulknight.9620 said:

And you almost have to get arcane now to reliably (yes-yes, that is a metric too you know) get quickness.

Arcane is not mandatory its optional, fire air +3 accessories is still 100%q uptime,

1 hour ago, soulknight.9620 said:

Now about the "slack". You do realise that in real scenario (not golem bashing) you will have to move/kite/phase/heal/change roations and even go down at some point

Nah, perfect q uptime is doable in real scenario and i only say this cuz i tested it and did it on 2 strikes and a raid wing, players will adapt and be better at it with time

 

1 hour ago, soulknight.9620 said:

we get 22k dps which has been reported by multiple people here.

thats the lower bound, its actually between 22k-26k, and the FB numbers are outdated they too took a dps loss from the global dps loss too.

 

You want an easier qcata? its your right to demand it, but to say that qcata is 100% dead undoable RIP etc.. is simply misinformation it still doable its just really hard, and there is nothing wrong with super hard classes for some of us its fun actually

[The unfinished job (june28 missing changes)]

This is not a patch whine thread, if you want one please i'd like you to go back and leave this thread and enter one of the 4 fresh thread for you to vent there.

This thread is for clearly missing changes that simply does not go in hand with the new ele changes

 

Catalyst:

• Elemental Celerity: This elite while recharging the current attunment weapon skills, it also function as a mini Spectacular Sphere giving the same boon as the trait depending on what attunment it been activated on, problem is the elite hasn't been updated to the current Spectacular Sphere and still gives fury on air instead of the current Spectacular Sphere's air boon which is quickness
• Energized Elements: This trait give fury on attunment swap which was only accessible through the old Spectacular Sphere, now that we have fury on base jade orb (Air) this trait has no reason to have a fury boon, and should be changed accordingly to either quickness to mirror the fury quickness swap (also fits the name) or any other boon the balance team deems fit.

 

Tempest:

• Lucid Singularity: A welcome addition to the tempest arsenal, while i wont give any thought on the trait itself, i see it being way too close in design space to the (Transcendent Tempest) trait, which also is a on-overload mechanic and also lower cooldowns (of overloads), either remove the dmg bonus from Transcendent Tempest and make it the new Lucid Singularity, or remove it entirely and give back the old Lucid Singularity in another name.

[R.I.P Catalyst]

On 6/27/2022 at 8:45 AM, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Your reasoning is complete nonsense. Going runes of the FB removes easily like ~12.5% dmge and arcane over air/fire costs another like 7.5% dmge. Add to that another 2.5% loss of dmge due to that diviners amulet and the 20% dmge loss in the Cata major traitline and you're down 42.5%. which would mean you get ~30k dps in a fully optimized golem benchmark. 

Your reasoning is Just full of kitten.

Actually no, now that i tested it post patch, in group content where alacrity is present you only need 20% concentration, so you can run fire air + 2 diviner rings 1 amulet only to reach 100% quick uptime to beat the orb cd of 12sec any more concentration is slack window and higher dps rota window, with zero slack you should give up on fire GS and go glyph of elementals instead for faster rota, or just run arcane with 1 amulet for 100% q uptime with no alac needed.

So nah, still in group content qcata is good.

[GW2 "balance philosophy" is fundamentally flawed]

You use the word "fundamentally" wrong, a fundamental flaw is a flaw that follows the logic of the solution to contradict its goals, what you mean is that you think that balance distract from fun, which is another topic.

Don't conflate the two

[All "balance" patches should be thoroughly tested and given feedback by the community on a test server before going live]

No, i don't trust the community to give 2 cents about balance and will instead cry a nerf every time they die to class in pvp or cry a buff everytime they die to a boss in pve

I agree players-dev communication channels should be improved but this would be much worse

[R.I.P Catalyst]

9 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

 

I struggle to see how the difference is 20%. Taking the quickness trade results already in a 10% dmge loss. Not being able to take the dmge trait on aura's is another 10% (so already -20% dmge). Last but not least you're gonna have to take sphere specialist which results in another ~15% dmge reduction. And some extra boon duration Gear for another ~5% dmge loss. That means in Total you're looking at a -40% dmge loss which puts ele at the Bottom of the barrel.

And after all that shite you got one of the most unreliable sources of quickness since it requires your group to Stay in the circle for the full duration

 

Nope rn you can with arcane reach 100% q uptime with only a single diviner amulet or 2 rings using FB runes, without them its an amulet + accessory + 5 piece diviner but i think it has higher dps due to using fire line instead of arcane and scholar runes instead (which should be nerfed tbh they are both easy to run and too OP)

with arcane you only need 2.75 seconds of quickness in the old pre patch cata because the arcane trait line reduces cooldowns on jade orbs to 13 sec, So no qcata was braindead quickness bot prior to the patch and i bet 10 golds it would be also a braindead quickness bot post patch with the arcane setup

Also when will this myth of "magical bench number" die? no in real raid situations qcata was benching  higher than half of the power DPS classes, it needed a nerf, if you disagree then you just want to turn ele into another broken unfair spec like mech or FB

[R.I.P Catalyst]

11 minutes ago, Ganathar.4956 said:

 does is nerf quick cata even more than dps cata. 

yeah now the dmg disparity between qcata and pcata is 20% dps, which imo should be even higher around 25%, also the hammer on pcata was no nerf, pcata doesnt use autos in rotation, i use autos even before the nerf it was a dps loss.

Again read my reply in full

[R.I.P Catalyst]

On 6/25/2022 at 9:41 AM, Serephen.3420 said:

I don't think you know the difference between buffs and nerfs.

If they didn't add the "-10% outgoing dmg" it would be a HARD NERF to power dps cata, the value prospects of power cata competing against quick cata would be a quick cata win every single time in every single encounter, simply put u will be told as power cata to either run quick or be kicked from the squad.

 

[R.I.P Catalyst]

1 minute ago, Joswi.2635 said:

Yes, currently if you use Spectacular Spheres and you place an air sphere you get fury and quickness, that doesn't change in the new version you still get both boons but you also lose 10% on all outgoing damage dealt. That is a nerf plain and simple.

it would be only a real nerf if the duration of the quickness required you to run full diviner, which won't happen because sphere specialist increase 100% the base boons of  the orb AND the Spectacular Spheres boons too.

So nah its not really substantial, in fact over all still hybrid quickness cata is higher value than DPS cata by a long mile.

[Upcoming Alacrity Tempest, concerned about healing]

Just now, Ganathar.4956 said:

It is perfectly fine because it lacks barrier, CC, stab, aegis, bubbles etc. Look at the actual meta specs bring and you will realize that you would not have brought alac tempest even if it retained full healing.

No, in group content tempest has highest CC from all support due to lighting aura share to 5 targets which total to 1k-2k defiance bar dmg with staff, 2k-4k if u run dagger and get it from both overload and air dagger 3, and with staff you got 20% mag aura uptime, meanwhile engie bubbles are also 20%, they are matched 1:1 its just the stab that makes bubbles meta and the bigger size

so no tempest is no underdog and auras in themselves with no boons are legit god tier utility  

[R.I.P Catalyst]

11 minutes ago, Joswi.2635 said:

Doesn't that example right there just prove that it is a nerf? You say Spectacular Spheres right now has more value for solo play, plus that is also a source of fury without going into air/arcane. After the patch if you use that same trait you'll get quickness instead of the fury, so just flipping those around but you'll also have the 10% reduced damage. So the new version of Spectacular Spheres would be worse than Empowering Auras which is worse than current version of Spectacular Spheres according to your example. Now throw on top of that losing another 7% due to the sphere damage being nerfed as well. Seems like quite a bit of damage lost, not sure how that isn't a nerf and where it's a buff. 

from the balance patch "In PvE only, it causes Deploy Jade Sphere in air attunement to additionally provide quickness and reduces all outgoing damage dealt by 10%"

No there is no trade off between em, you get them both, (25% crit chance and 50% higher dps quickness + -10% out going dmg), and thats how it should be, i'd rather have empowering aura being the DPS trait, rather than Spectacular Spheres outclassing it in every situation outside organized pve, also imo even post patch Spectacular Spheres is still better than empowering aura 90% of the time if you are not raid DPS, resistance on earth and quickness+fury on air is really good.

[Upcoming Alacrity Tempest, concerned about healing]

3 hours ago, Crashdown.7419 said:

Why is a tempest being forced to choose between being a hybrid alac dps or just a normal healer? Its perfectly fine if people wanna play an alac hybrid dps but why take it away from healing? Almost all other heal classes are allowed to heal and gives boons but we have to choose. Always loved tempest healer in raids but always gets frowned opon cause it only heals. This changes nothing and is not what they said they were going to do. 

No its not perfectly fine to be highest heal per second class in the game AND be an alac source, if they want to give tempest free alac i will be the first to post a thread demanding the healing in tempest kit to be much lower.

And role diversity beats single role bloat 

[R.I.P Catalyst]

3 hours ago, talesbfftt.4596 said:

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 Spectacular 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.

 

 

Having baseline quickness while powerful meant u had to get your fury from some other source, mostly air/arcane, and since you talk about solo cata, on solo cata rn before the patch spectacular spheres is higher value than empowering aura, spectacular spheres gives around 15% higher dmg, while empower aura only gives 10%, unless you going for hybrid condi/power dmg cata that already runs high might generation elsewhere, heres the proof:

singing strike base deal 745 (power+burn), (+empowering aura x5 = 819) or (+Spectacular Spheres(x5might burst) =872)

So no solo cata was never nerfed, group cata dps isn't nerfed either cuz he runs empowering aura anyhow, hybrid group quick cata gains a higher dps from the innate fury and is now an extra boon he can provide on top of quickness so its also buffed despite the -10% outgoing dmg since quickness is 50% more dps resulting in 40% over all + the superior might of spectacular sphere to the  empowering auras meaning its only a 5% nerf, and in group content power cata is higher than quick cata by only 15% which is a reasonable trade off

 

as for jade orbs dmg nerfs in all honesty they shouldn't even pulse dmg and the tragic dps loss is only 10% MAXIMUM, with jade orb being fire deployed with the fire GS power condi bonus, so realistically its much less than 10% perhaps around 7%max not taking into account the fury and zephyr speed crit buff so its even lower than that.

 

[Make Spectacular Sphere provide Quickness in all attunements]

No, Arcane prowess but with quickness is OP and even worse boring.

Spectacular Sphere system is much better one since now your quickness would be paired with other boon which is better tbh

[R.I.P Catalyst]

Catalyst was buffed what the hell you talking about? the dmg nerfs were on autos which are not part of the meta rotation or any rotation for that matter, now u get fury without arcane or lighting, or SS as a base, meaning you can run a defensive trait lines instead and still get your fury and might protection etc tanky cata is buffed, power cata was buffed cuz rain of blows buff and the crit chance buff from new fury, AND YET u ppl say RIP cata?

You people even like play the game?????????????

 

[Upcoming Alacrity Tempest, concerned about healing]

Alac tempest isn't meant to be a heal tempest buff, its an entirely new role for tempest to choose and thats 100 times better than just buffing heal temp with another boon, now u can play tempest as a hybrid alac dps hybrid and that the best thing ever, a new way to play.

[Game Update Notes Preview: Profession Skills]

I saw the crys and screams that cata and ele is dead in the ele general, Came here to see the ele catastrophe only to see ele buffs

I will never understand how the forum poster brain is wired, Thank god balance isn't in your hand people.

Chrono is legit buffed, thief is legit buffed where are the nerfs you talking about, you people even play the game????? im literally at a loss of words lmao 

 

[Weaver Training Wheels Build?]

This thread here is a horror show unfolding bit by bit and should be pinned on the forum as an example on how to NOT help new players and we should do better as a community than this.

 

Our precious fellow here is asking for a "Training" build with open world in mind, and instead you people give him either meta or LI builds which are complete opposite of what a new player or training build should do or be, LI builds simply fail at teaching you how to play a certain class and lock him into the lowest intensity and thus lowest class interaction possible, You gave him builds with viper gear or marauder (which is waaay too expansive as a training gear), and highly highly reliant on boons that the build itself doesn't provide, with rotations instead of combos, and those rotations are pure DPS rotation that ignores an entire attunment (water) that ele has.

 

How will an LI ele build teach this lad that on weaver there is a heal combo in dagger that starts on water/fire and ends on earth? or sword water field combos, or might generation? or evade skills? grantees on long channeling skills? set ups?

 

10 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Lots of helpful information, thanks!

I appreciate you all taking the time to write it out.

Now i will have 2 builds for you, one assumes that you used your 80lvl booster and got your self a gear with "celestial" stats which are balanced all around stats that works really well with ele, if not you can choose between 2 cheap alternatives, If you like fast paced playstyle go with Marshal, it has healing power which Signet of Restoration can take advantage of since it heals you on every action you take including trait activated skills (as a bonus the cheap marshal armor comes with Rebirth runes already for a free immediate self resurrection and death ignore), If you wanna go with a more relaxed playstyle then Carrion its cheap and easy to put a buy order in the trading post for 50silver or less a piece giving you much needed Vitality which increases your HP and maybe go with a rune of Balthazar (which not only give you much needed burn duration, it also gives you 10% more health) or rebirth

 

For a dagger dagger weaver this is the best Training build i could come up with.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGABgix3lZwSYRMImJOSXrvbA-zxIY1wDA-e

I went with Arcane power + Elemental surge to make sure you understand the value of your damage skills and only activate it on a burst combo which will reward you with 4 guaranteed critical hits and extra conditions and ferocity on top.

With fire i made sure to reward your Aura generation with Smothering Auras which will reward you for timing your aura combos

Unravel is a skill that turn your weaver into the good ole normal ele for couple of seconds to make sure you get faster access to your double attunment 3 skills, and to correct for mistakes while you are learning the class

And Signet of restoration is there to reward you for actively playing the class and using your skills correctly

Now with gearing the 3 versions all of them maintain high burn duration and has a celerity rune to teach you and insensitivize you to interrupt enemies with CC to gain quickness as a reward:

Carrion (highest HP and burn duration): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGABgix3lZwSYRMImJOSXrvbA-zRIUb0zPIs5EpQ4KwxA-e

Marshal (highest healing power and action per minute training and low speed punishment, the weapons are dragon stat type perfect and cheap for this build): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGABgix3lZwSYRMImJOSXrvbA-zRRUuhfO6hDBXcCShwUB2dA-e

Celestial (All rounder, for if you used the lvl80 boost on ele and got the lvl80 boost gear only the dragon stat daggers are dirt cheap and perfect for you): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGwAgiZlZwSYRMImJOSXrvbA-zRRUVRE/c0AFDgcCJQYFQEhQFRgmDA-e

If you play on EU server, add and whisper me im more than happy to help with anything you want.

[A future nerf prediction to either soulbeast or untamed in the summer patch [Merged]]

So we know that in summer core ranger (& core warrior) will get access to either quickness or alacrity as a boon, and its about time tbh having it on core ranger also open the space up for core support

However there is couple of problematic interactions that might arise from it on ranger's E specs

If ranger gets quickness, soulbeast will be bit broken cuz essence of speed exists, So perma boon soulbeast could become a thing..

If ranger gets alacrity, Untamed would be kinda in the OP territory because of the already strong synergy between quick draw and fervent force

So what do you think? will they get nerfed? will they stay as is? is the interaction not really that OP and is just a nice thing to have? Im really curious how will the summer patch look like for ranger.

[A new ranged spec for Ele is simply both undoable and boring.]

2 hours ago, Avatara.1042 said:

Fresh Air Sceptre will last much, much longer than the equivalent Hammer build.  Also, there is no such thing as an 'earth field', earth F5 is a POISON field.

Stop trying to be some weird pseudo-intellectual, like some first year uni student.  It is sad.

... Its clear by earth field i mean earth jade orb that gives protection which is sustain, and if we count weakness as sustain the earth jade orb's poison field can dish lots of it with combos

Also didn't think that talking about game classes is what pass as "trying to be intellectual" guess i gotta smoke a pipe and wear a one-eye glasses before posting in this thread then

 

4 hours ago, scarlettmoonbabe.6932 said:

HAMMER IS BORING, I WOULD HAVE PREFERED GREATSWORD XD

...Again please read the thread, if you think hammer is bad on the basis of aesthetic thats your own taste and by god no one has the right to say no to you lmao, we are here in this thread talking about weapon gameplay design

[A new ranged spec for Ele is simply both undoable and boring.]

4 hours ago, Avatara.1042 said:

Sceptre + offhand >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Hammer sustain.

Please stop pretending you know how Hammer works (and staff), it is really sad.

Wow didn't know fresh air ele was a tank class!!! thanks bro!, in all seriousness lets see first we will see quantity, then we will switch to quality of these sustain options:

Quantity:

Scepter+focus: (A heal, 2 blinds, Vigor, toughness bounce) + (2 projectile mitigation, an Invuln, an aura if speced) + combo finishers resulting in a heal when water field is active (2+2)

scepter+dagger: (A heal, 2 blinds, Vigor, toughness bounce) +(an evade, a heal condi cleanse, an aura)  + combo finishers resulting in a heal when water field is active (2+2)

Hammer: (A heal that scale with target number, a condi cleanse scaling with target number, earth orb bonus, water orb bonus, a block resulting in barrier and aura, 2 projectile mitigation) + projectile finishers resulting in a heal (4)

 

Quality:-

Scepter: 1.8k heal with regen(meaning condi clenase if speced), toughness bonus is nice, the 2 combo finishers cannot heal you while ranged unless you sacrifice their dmg or sacrifice the range so you get both the dmg and the healing

Focus: The de facto sustain off hand weapon, invuln and nice anti projectile skills, other than that not much 

Off hand Dagger: 1.5k heal that cleanse condis which is nice, ice arua is good and can be transumated for 0.05k healing and regen

Hammer: ahem A 4,659 HEAL + 776 FOR EACH TARGET STRUCK + A LEAP THAT COMBOS INTO A WATER FIELD FOR 1300 healing, at 20sec cooldown, good anti projectile mag aura on E4 and projectile block on E2, earth and fire blast combos are melee and thus no sacrifice in dmg or range to get the healing out of them

 

At this point i doubt you know what water combos are tbh because you don't take into account water combos at all..

7 hours ago, Forgotten Legend.9281 said:

1- steam was suggested way back before torment was changed.... 

1b- staff is so focused on control that it's not fun for people who just want to DPS at range, and this particular variation of longbow brainstorming is focused on damage. the steam effect is to provide synergy in groups, and allows more damage when grouped up with party members who bring immobilize. just like combo effects. they are better when you have large groups contributing to the combos. the concept behind this iteration of the longbow is damage first, everything else second. btw, ranger longbow works just fine as a "one-shot" soulbeast build, even though many people call it gimmicky.

2-the "unblockable bounces" as you misnamed them, are alternate damage when the main damage of the skill is blocked. and generally speaking, is less than the main damage of the skill when said skill is not blocked. it's based on GW1 skills that ANET made. you may call it gimmicky, but it's something that's different and "new" to GW2. i can call hammer 3 a gimmick, too, as matter of fact, i can call the entire Catalyst e-spec a gimmick, but that doesn't change that Anet made a third frontline espec for elementalist.

3- prevention stacks, but each stack is removed from a single damage pulse, unlike certain warrior and herald heal skills, that convert all damage for a time-period into healing.

 

since you seem to call everything a gimmick, i think i'll just block you now and ignore anything else you have to say. please feel free to continue your melee-only rant. just don't expect me to listen or care.

1- I called it a gimmick, because it is and you yourself in your own thread did so as well so no need to get offended, there are not many blocks in the game to justify block bonus gameplay, where is the gimmick in catalyst? All its kit works all the time it doesn't rely on mechanics that are rare it rely on combos which is a core gameplay function of gw2 combat. 

2-DPS only ranged weapon is undoable on ele due to the fact "unlike ranger" that you don't have any other weapon to pair it with, even ranger longbow has a push back to control its distance, cripple aoe to make the ranged portion of the fight last longer and a stealth, and most importantly ranger has a second weapon to swap to that can have sustain in its kit, so even on ranger, longbow isn't purely DPS

3- Again this boon design space already been taken by aegis+pure of heart

See you space cowboy

7 hours ago, scarlettmoonbabe.6932 said:

hammer is boring 🙂 would have prefered greatsword 

Read the thread, its not about aesthetics or how cool another weapon is, by saying greatsword you already agree with the thread that a pure ranged weapon is not doable.

[A new ranged spec for Ele is simply both undoable and boring.]

 

On 3/10/2022 at 7:15 AM, Avatara.1042 said:

New?  We do not even have a current one...

The ele whining thread is two blocks down, read the thread opening post before you reply.

On 3/9/2022 at 10:46 PM, pallas.8150 said:

Would have loved an elemental archer. 😕

Like the one in Dragon's dogma? same but then i remembered that i really only used the daggers on it, and the elemental bow was nothing but a fire exploding arrows machine... even in dragon's dogma it was meh at best

 

On 3/9/2022 at 10:26 PM, lLobo.7960 said:

It's very simple...

Staff is a slow cast, power focused, long ranged AoE weapon. It works best by stacking multiple fields and effects in an area and hitting multiple opponents to maximize dmg (or heals). It's the only ele weapon that is crap at condi dmg.

Scepter is a burst (slow cast big effects with some fast cast low dps fillers) mid range weapon, can be used as power or condi. It has some AoE on it, specially for burst (phoenix, shatterstone, dragons tooth).

 

How to make a different weapon? Here it goes:

Longbow - A fast casting, single target focused, long range burst weapon, with some AoE (hail of arrows style skill 5). Arcane archer style with imbued arrows in each attunement.

 

Pistol - A single target focused, fast casting, mid range weapon with some burst (unload style skill 3).

Spellslinger style.

 

Also, with the number of attunments skills and core ele weapons, you could remove attunement-unique skills and create new weapon skills for core weapons as part of a new elite spec and it would be the same number of new skills as a new 2h weapon... This could make a new elite spec that would bring ele a really new playstyle:

Already replied to this one at:

On 2/12/2022 at 8:12 PM, FrownyClown.8402 said:

Make skills ranged aoe that can be shot from behind and make earth melee and use the bow to bash enemies. Next question.

 

My idea from 2 years ago

 

 

 

On 3/9/2022 at 7:03 PM, Forgotten Legend.9281 said:

with respect to the Q: how will a new ranged spec differentiate itself from old ones? how does hammer really differentiate itself from dagger-dagger besides the gimmick of hammer 3? So far, all i keep seeing about hammer is that it's boring and clumsy, and is competing directly with weapons that already fill the same role, like dagger-daggert? and Augments feel just like stances, except they get an extra buff if cast in a jade-orb-combo-field (another gimmick), and the only people who really asked for hammer are PvPers (so like less than 1% of the elementalist community?) If the range of the ranged hammer skills was 900 or 100, maybe i'd give it a go, but as it stands, it's just a slower version of dagger-dagger, and feels like a complete waste of time.

 

Those of us who want a new ranged spec have been ignored for 3 expansions and all elementalist e-specs so far. our patience is running thin. and by the way, 2 fire skills on staff don't make it ranged DPS weapon. Anet themselves called it a support weapon at launch, and have never changed publicly that designation.

 

one old example of a longbow spec, based on GW1 skills:

Yes, that was one of mine, but there are many other good ideas from other posters here, including pistols, rifles, summoners, wards/wells, and many others.

Couple of huge problems turning this Spec into an anti synergy nightmare:

1- And this is the killer for me, steam which is how Torment currently working require you to immobilize the target to get maximum damage, and your kit lacks any sources of immobilization or long stuns and knock downs, meaning that you have no way to get the higher damage from steam, and here already you are not outside staff's design space, Staff flat out does much better job in this, instead of steam staff has small high damage AoEs which hurt more if the target is immobilized and stunned, which staff has access to many such immob and stun distance control skills like E5 E4 A5 A3 E2 W4 etc.. not only that, this distance control is both its defensive run and gun style but also the way lava font and W2 do their dmg through sniping the already immobile target

2-The unblockable bounces while maybe fun is the pinnacle of gimmick, not many players have blocks let alone enemy mobs, so you have a class entirely built around interacting with a small small sliver of gw2 block-able mobs and classes

3-Prevention is Aegis + pure of heart trait from the guardian, and is even more OP by the fact it it stacks.

On 3/9/2022 at 6:08 PM, Infusion.7149 said:

No it does not have to do way less damage than scepter when the whole weapon is used including hammer orbs. It would only need to do less damage than scepter if you camp fire+air. To insinuate that a weapon with both "ranged skills" and half melee skills needs to do less than a fully ranged weapon is baffling. A radiance DH for example with scepter or longbow loses maybe 2K DPS total versus using sword + greatsword, power virtuoso with 1200 range greatsword or 900 range daggers loses <1K, a sword holo gets no penalty from grenade kit, axe+axe with longbow or axe+axe with greatsword soulbeast gets no massive penalty, scourge is fully 900 range and so is harbinger except for pulsing PBAOE damage (which is similar to how hammer orb works , shocking) , condi rev uses a 900 range shortbow, condi berserker is played with a longbow as part of rotation , specter is 900 range with scepter dagger. You're thinking solely in the elementalist context when it is clear the hammer is made to replicate a weaponswap with a 900+ range. The baseline standard is 33K at 900 range, see condi soulbeast for a very long time ; scourge changed this paradigm by putting out 37K+ benchmarks at 900 range ; uncertain on shortbow condi renegade but prepatch it was 33K-36K depending on single or double shortbow.

Keep in mind the only single target portion of scepter is air and auto attacks. Dragon's Tooth/Shatterstone are not single target at all and are kept in check by delays.
If you look around there's a 37K Catalyst staff benchmark because jade sphere does a great portion of the damage to the tune of 20% on official benchmarks. A scepter grieving tempest with only fire attunement can push 32K+ , scepter condi weaver pushes 39K last I checked.

There is no "jumping between melee and ranged" when your gap closer is 20s cooldown even in PVE and is a heal. The mobility is shoddy and worse than daggers. Especially in WVW where 900 range is death from COR/Inspiring Reinforcement/guardian symbols/wells the 600 range makes it (catalyst on hammer) effectively melee at all times. 600 range is the leap on a spellbreaker with a hammer for CC.

The orb is indeed a gimmick in PVE. If you wanted to play it as a dual attunement or triple attunement then the orb timing is extremely tight. This could easily be rectified by extending orb default duration to 8s. Multi-hit doesn't really help if you have a channel time.

In the given timeframe for Rain of Blows you could get more hits from auto-ing and especially if you hit 5 targets instead of 3. From my testing stonestrike actually is the highest untraited autoattack of all 4 attunements.

1- Comparing ele's ranged vs melee with other specs is fundamentally wrong headed due to the fact that ele's weapons are 4 weapons in one and its meta game is entirely different

a- In your examples, Mesmer defensive metagame is all about generating clones to dupe players into attacking them and distort, and virtuoso generally reducing the survivalbility of mesmer by taking away their clones and distort for a block bladesong that can be bypassed with unblockable skills and getting their distort by sacrificing utility slots and dmg traits allowing less DPS gap between ranged and melee due to lack of sustain.

b- DH doesn't lose much damage because the weapon has not much utility out side of CC, and most of the big numbers come from its symbol not true shot, a symbol with a boon that DH lacks "due to F2 not giving endurance like core" and a healing "if speced" so a DH to achieve its dmg has to choose to either use the symbol at range to gets it range DPS or at melee to get the boon and healing without the dmg, or use it while the enemy is in melee range for all sacrificing the long range itself

c- Condi slb sacrifice sustain in the form of having no pet sacrificing half of its HP and a second target for enemies for it to gets its dmg, etc.. etc..,

d- Ele unlike all of these cannot and should not sacrifice its sustain in the kit itself, because it would be boring, 4 dps attunment ele is BORING, Even our most glass cannon kits like scepter-dagger and dagger-dagger (excluding weaver) they got at least 5 sustain skills in each set between evades, blinds, weakness or vigor, healing etc..  and thats fun


2-The hammer isn't dealing the same DPS at range the same as Scepter because hammer has waaaaaaaay more sustain than scepter, scepter depending on how you count it has 5 sustain skills"E3, E2, A3, W3, F3", while Hammer has 6 NOT COUNTING any combos into jade orbs water and earth fields "E2, E4, E3, A5, A4, W5, W4, W3", with water field into account we add "F5, E5" not counting traits stability or hardened auras or aura effects in general, its safe to say that having access to 2 mag auras is kinda neet

3-which bring the other topic, the "no gap closer" and "" no jumping between melee and ranged"",

a-Hammer earth has many long range shutdowns by having it entire purpose built for the utter inhalation or projectiles with its E2, E4, E4-aura and any E5 combo for another mag aura, granted not all ranged DPS is projectiles based

 

b- For that there is another 2 gap closers, aboutface A4 and W4 and stability to make sure you reach there unhindered, and having your gab closer being a heal is perfect for catalyst because its a leap and water fields exists, its meant to be used at a low HP to keep its unique identity of being the only sustain bruiser weapon in ele's hands, evident by the fact that it heals for 4500ish base with 700ish FOR EACH foe struck, add to that a good 1300ish water field combo through water jade sphere and you looking for AT LEAST 6500 healing which is on par with a healing skill WITH ONE ENEMY ONLY, with 5 enemies the number jumps to 9300 which is higher than all other ele's weapon heals not counting other water field combos or signet/sootheing water augment etc..

The fact that melee is rewarded with higher DPS because you put yourself at risk using air and fire doesn't mean using them at range is a meme, it means much like the DH longbow symbol, that you have a choice between choosing the melee risk or keep safe at distance, all fully ranged weapons can still do their max DPS in melee, what makes them ranged is the fact that they have the ability of dealing the same dmg at lower risk from afar

[EoD and DE meta is the moment GW2 turned from a solo RPG to a true MMO, and it must be defended.]

On 3/10/2022 at 6:41 PM, DragonMoon.6098 said:

People keep saying "you need good dps" but I haven't seen anywhere stating what exactly good dps is in the realm of things (and no, I'm not talking about what some min/maxing elitist snob thinks is good dps). My Condi Druid puts out about 8k on average in a longer fight, but I've seen it hit 11k...her primary damage is from bleeding, so her damage is definitely not front-loaded like a lot of people push for. But she still pumps out 8k on average for a boss according to ArcDPS (about 4k on trash mobs)...and she's got the survivability that I like. Some people don't like playing glass cannon builds. I have a mind-numbing GS/LB/ROAR BEAR ROAR!!! build...I hate it. She hates it. 

GW2 has always been about accessibility for all player types. I couldn't have said it better than darkwarrior.6102...this extroverted mentality of "everybody needs to just join guilds and deal" is so tiresome...because that attitude is sadly not limited to gaming. Thankfully, in some places, it's changing. I work in corporate finance, which for the longest time was hard to succeed in for introverts...anything corporate is all politics and who you know. That's changing. 

And being introverted doesn't have to mean being anti-social. I love doing pugs and meta events. I love helping players with HP's and bounties. I don't even mind joining discord for a pug if it's necessary...if that tag is not toxic. For example...I've seen a full-on man-child having a temper tantrum in WvW because people weren't actively engaging with him in discord...even though he posted in game-chat that he was tagging for an open squad. Listen, as a female player, some of us don't want to jump on voice chat...for very valid reasons. I will not put up with that toxic bullpoopy. But if I find a tag who is positive and helpful and doesn't demand people to participate, and only to listen, then that's awesome and I'm more than willing to comply. Sadly, you never know what kind of group you're going to jump into. These are all reasons why I do not raid, and I do not do dungeons, or strikes. I even avoid fractals unless I have to get something for a leggy collection. 

1-You confuse being a soloist with being an introvert, firstly no they are not the same, there are introverted social players that find MMOs to be a safe non exhausting place to socialize unlike real life, secondly 11k is above the calculated DPS needed for the event to be successful which is 7k, the door for you to play whatever build you want is wide open.

 2-Not having a guild in guild wars is more inconvenient than LFGing, in LFG strangers meet and there is no sense of "Us" that bind you together and so more fertile ground for frustration kicking etc.., while having a guild is literally the best most sure way to clear any content, just type in guild chat i want X and we social players are more than ready to drop everything and help, i once taughed -500 AP players everything they needed to clear the Manor dungeon, and i mean everything from the dungeon mechanics to the engie stealth combos, took me 4 hours, made sure after the clear they had guilds i think i talked to [Cat] to accept them, trust me we are more than happy to give soloists everything they need to enjoy their time the way they want.

3-Non of my social play EVER was on a voice call or discord, i like to keep all my game interactions well in-game... no need for discord, i cleared the DE without it, all strikes too, as well as my raids, the only place i think VC is too hard to avoid is WvW but even then you can train with other 5 people for a havoc squad and give short one letter signals for action u want.

4-Again your complaints are all born from the LFG, and the best way to avoid all that toxic headache is to go for well a GUILD.