Swagg.9236

Thief passive playstyle? Eh. There is no arguing possible because Vault is not it simply IS NOT in any way or universe, a dangerous or annoying skill, it is easily avoidable, easily interuptable skill that locks thief in to "punish and delete thief now" state/animation that can not be canceled or even ported from, it even has a kitten glowing aura to shout outloud when to do it. Doesn't matter what you tell yourself about it, it is a joke of a skill. Ever stop to think how silly it must seem for someone to throw a tantrum about how a skill has some remote attempt at being fairly telegraphed (despite still being relatively easy to land and giving its user a free damage negation period)? It speaks a lot about how damaged the GW2 playerbase is at this stage of the game's lifespan.

Attack that deals spike-level damage and also evades during its attack animation.Extra dodges for zero investment.A protracted block that breaks stuns when it is activated.All this on top of the already "zero-timing and zero-positioning necessary" Thief frame. Just because it doesn't rule PvP with an iron fist doesn't mean that it isn't a cancer-inducing opponent with a brutally straightforward and very passive playstyle. A Weaver PvP playstyle is literally just a PvE-level rotation; the moment that they are engaged in a fight, they instantly start using the same series of skills entirely sustained by passive evasion. It's incredibly predictable. It's no less brainless than any other meta build on the market regardless of how effective it is in any given encounter. Your comment falls into the same category as the guy crying about how Daredevil can be considered a frustrating opponent: it's an incredibly frustrating playstyle because it effortlessly and consistently takes away the agency of an opponent by simply pressing some attack buttons at any given time. Just because it doesn't slam everyone in PvP with just a glance doesn't mean that it isn't derived from an awful, generic design which contributes to an unhealthy PvP environment. But then there's the problem of WHAT OTHER BUILD CAN WE PLAY? You can play whatever you want, but they're all basically the same build with the same sort of problems: every optimal PvP build for each class in GW2 is one which does its best to passively deny opponent agency by insulating the user from risk while he/she engages a target. There is no such thing as a "playstyle" in GW2. The term "playstyle" typically refers to how a player can self-express using a few fundamental elements of a game (most of which are often movement based). GW2 skills only allow one to do what they say one can do; players are locked into predictable patters and openers (which is why GW2 PvP design has caved to passive risk insulation via the inclusion of passive damage negation in every build viewed as "good"). Also passive evasion? Where? Actually where? Ele had their passives gutted back in HoT and Twist of Fate, from what I remember, is an ACTIVE skill. Twist of Fate is possibly one of the least egregiously unfair actives which provide a form of perfect damage negation in all of GW2, but again, since it is an instant-cast which is often employed in tandem with passive and rapid attack spam, it mostly just contributes to the overall problem playstyle which every class in GW2 features: minimap-centric, super passive, low risk turtling until a player finds the right rock-paper-scissors situation in which they come out on top with very little effort. At the end of the day, Weaver is just another spammy build which allows a player to deal damage while self-healing and evading if necessary. Just because it doesn't kill everything in under a second doesn't mean that it doesn't feature a playstyle which attempts to passively steal the agency away from opponents.

Attack that deals spike-level damage and also evades during its attack animation.Extra dodges for zero investment.A protracted block that breaks stuns when it is activated.All this on top of the already "zero-timing and zero-positioning necessary" Thief frame. You mean that attack that has a telegraphed animation that locks you in interuptable state, can be walked away from and even makes thief character glow bright blue colour to even further help you interrupt it?It's still an attack that is insulated by a protracted evasion duration. That aside, Thief, regardless of weapon selection, is a wholesale passive playstyle which never takes any risky engagements against targets which have any real recourse against most actions (i.e. you'll probably never see a Thief use more than 1-2 melee-range skills on a player who is full up on cooldowns before teleporting away or stealthing). Players who take Vault will typically attack targets who have whittled through their panic buttons and passives or Vault users will employ stealth in order to get in a huge free hit or make an opponent waste dodges guessing when the Thief will attack. As someone who mostly played staff Ele in PvP, a 180 radius is super easy to hit (particularly in a game mode focused around capture nodes which aren't much bigger than 240 range units in diameter). You and I can go back and forth about this, but the fundamental fact remains that the skill itself (along with Thief in general) is not a fun class to fight because it denies an opponent's agency with damage negation while attack paired with instantaneous travel which can effortlessly negate opponent positioning at the press of a button. It's singularity as a "useful" skill doesn't mean anything with regards to how cancerous it is as an ability. I'll admit that Vault technically requires more timing than full-on d/d evasion spam or sw/d teleports, but seriously: it's a 180 radius on the tiny capture points supported by allies which will be pouring on pressure by face-rolling across a keyboard while having a selected target (if you're going to complain about Vault not hitting, you can't really immediately go to d/d 3 spam as a better option since that can also be pretty easily avoided with manual movement). Regardless of build, every Thief in a team fight or +1 situation just waits in a corner until combat progresses beyond a point at which a focused team-fight target can reply to damage with instantaneous damage negation. At that point, anything hits. You can argue that maybe Vault is perhaps the least optimal skill choice in this situation, but you can't really deny that it follows a design paradigm which is congruent with the kind of braindead PvP gameplay which GW2 has hamfistedly fostered since 2014.

Attack that deals spike-level damage and also evades during its attack animation.Extra dodges for zero investment.A protracted block that breaks stuns when it is activated.All this on top of the already "zero-timing and zero-positioning necessary" Thief frame.Just because it doesn't rule PvP with an iron fist doesn't mean that it isn't a cancer-inducing opponent with a brutally straightforward and very passive playstyle. A Weaver PvP playstyle is literally just a PvE-level rotation; the moment that they are engaged in a fight, they instantly start using the same series of skills entirely sustained by passive evasion. It's incredibly predictable. It's no less brainless than any other meta build on the market regardless of how effective it is in any given encounter. Your comment falls into the same category as the guy crying about how Daredevil can be considered a frustrating opponent: it's an incredibly frustrating playstyle because it effortlessly and consistently takes away the agency of an opponent by simply pressing some attack buttons at any given time. Just because it doesn't slam everyone in PvP with just a glance doesn't mean that it isn't derived from an awful, generic design which contributes to an unhealthy PvP environment.

This game's lore has been ravaged until all that remains is a shattered, feeble husk of its former self.There is a 0% chance that this game has 13 million players, and anet only uses inflated numbers like that as ad bait. It's not right to count throwaway or single-use trial accounts as part of the playerbase, but anet will do it just to desperately garner attention.This game's engine is an absolute spaghetti dinner, and the only remotely interesting mechanics are confined to mount movement, the pre-nerf Spectral Walk and Ride The Lightning respectively, that one Jump Shot attack that players use to reach that island skill point in Lion's Arch, and that one charge-up ice bow attack in the Wintersday arena. Risk-reward and movement are what make engaging "action combat." Since GW2 doesn't deal in raw movement mechanics for PvP, the potential is nonexistent.If you want a good story and a quality MMORPG, play FFXIV. If you want positioning-based combat with a high risk-reward, play fighting games or a soulsborne. GW2 offers very little to nothing at all in terms of technical play, role-based strategies or self-expressive playstyles.

Lmao, just lower the HP values of end-game content to compensate, and give high boon stack maintenance to classes on a 1-to-1 basis (one class gets high/max fury stacks if they devote a build to it, etc). If they can't do this, then anet is objectively less competent that the Tree of Savior team which sports a far more dead game than even the crippled Guild Wars franchise and still managed at one point to do a sweeping restructuring of mob HP values and player damage.

Boons worth deleting on principal: quickness, slow, resistance (even if conditions have always been a cancerous mechanic), alacrityBoons which are braindead strong and hamper role specialization because they don't utilize the stacking feature: protection, furyBoons which could easily be replaced by skill changes and/or mechanics which are already present in the game: vigor, regeneration, swiftnessBoons which are too easy for anyone to access and dilute any sort of class role due to their sheer overabundance: every single one of them Real good game you got there.

Revenant isn't a real class; it's a marketing tool used to sell a half-backed expansion. It's deserves only deletion; turned into scrap for other professions to use.

Honestly, you will never fix this game without just outright culling and revamping 90% of skills and stat bonuses (i.e. runes, amulets, traits, sigils) until you end up with actual class roles with independent support presences and approaches to combat. If you can't fix this game, it will never see increased play; only degeneration. I remember making a thread outlining what fair and varied combat would look like in GW2, and everyone basically replied with "but this wouldn't be GW2." The truth is that nobody who actually still plays this game wants it to change for the better at all. You are a broken playerbase with no mind for anything but what you have already experienced within this franchise's latest section of its thoughtless developmental pipeline.

The fact that a good portion of Anet leadership got busted, wiped and restructured by NCSoft for trying to work on a secret project while still benefiting off of GW2 revenue speaks to probably how deep the fundamental design issues of GW2 truly run. Also take note of how so many core developers from GW1 ended up leaving Anet either prior to GW2's launch or early on during its lifetime. With this in mind, it's not difficult to assume that those of Anet responsible for the secret project's creation were probably already meddling with GW1 and GW2's respective developments long, long before the game even released. I've always said that GW2 was doomed in 2010, mostly because we saw bloat classes like Thief, Guardian and Engineer receiving spoilers around then and leading into 2011; point is that it takes time to compromise a game's core so greatly. It's important to note how many classes, skills and features made it into the launch-state game despite how the playerbase progressed to utilizing only a very small handful of those options in order to completely smash apart the entirety of GW2's respective PvE and PvP scenes. This points to a distinct lack of defined leadership and priority during development. Clearly, GW2's developmental direction was never properly focused, its staff pools were never adequately communicative due to their structure, and the game was probably in full "FFXIV Stormblood mode" during its entire life span: meaning that it was being developed by a company who was simultaneously siphoning (secretly in this case) a huge pool of its resources into a different project (FFXIV's Stormblood expansion, which was described as mediocre to sub-par within the franchise, was developed while SquareEnix was putting most of its efforts into Final Fantasy XV). After launch, the game received very little when it came to renewable content (particularly during the initial "Living World" phase which took months to add tiny shreds of content only to remove them after two-week periods). There was definitely no real, long-term plan for the game, which is why we saw so much content drought and developmental flailing from Q2 of 2013 onward. What little crew was left for GW2 ended up desperately padding the void with terrible story-writing, transient content and PvP powercreep.' Basically, GW2 was most likely critically compromised even during the early alpha stages. The franchise's core group of developers had mostly jumped ship by launch, with many others following suit just a year or so afterward. This, combined with the reality of how NCSoft had to step in and stop development of a secret project which was funded via GW2's revenue points to a deep vein of conflict within Anet's leadership and staff that probably stemmed far back before GW2 as an IP was even ready for public reveal (maybe as far back as GW1 Utopia, but ultimately, we just don't have the details to assume too much).

GW2 lacked profession roles and drawbacks long before elite specs existed. Right after launch, GW2's main PvE meta was comprised entirely of 3 classes (which didn't really change, by the way, until HoT). The only reason anyone brought Thieves along was for stealth spam, and even that class was utterly unnecessary until anet nerfed consumable items. PvP found itself in the same situation: ruled by a small oligarchy of classes which just did better damage and had better passive/instant defenses than the others. Classes such as Warrior, Mesmer, Ranger, Engineer and Necromancer ran the gambit from sub-optimal to worthless in nearly every PvP encounter; matches were ruled by Thieves and Elementalists. Whatever they were saying about Magic's color wheel and its relation to GW1 might have been somewhat true, but whenever they stepped toward relating that to GW2's development, everything just became outright lies. GW2 is just generic damage and generic, mostly passive, defenses. And I'm pretty sure that the terms "duelist" and "roamer" respectively were invented out of thin air by the GW2 PvP playerbase just to prevent their fragile minds from shattering due to cognitive dissonance.

Damage. /15 chars

GW2 1v1s are more passive and rock-paper-scissors than even GW1 1v1s.

Because GW2 is basically Runescape once players enter into each other's respective ranges. Nobody can use manual movement as a means to consistently mitigate damage, and nobody has enough baseline defenses to go around when players are supposed to somehow manage 2 dodges over 20 seconds as a means to negate another player's short list of a half-dozen "evade this or you will die" buttons. This means that after dodges are spent on opening strikes, GW2 combat will quickly devolve into two (or more) people, distanced by arbitrary ranges, slapping each other until someone dies. However, instead of correcting this fundamental flaw toward a more Dark Souls end of the spectrum (more universal damage mitigation--such as dodges--and more emphasis on putting one's self at risk while making attacks), Anet just powercrept passive defenses in order to allow players to continue to slap each other with low-risk attacks from arbitrary ranges. There is no room to feel out another player for a play-style or tactic: GW2 is entirely copy-paste combat. A player loads up a build, uses the minimap and F4 to rotate toward easy fights, and then more or less presses a mental execute button when a suitable target is located. Since universal self-defense doesn't hold up against the tide of generic, lethal-damage skills available to any given player, GW2 PvP fights have to either end quickly, or a player has to always have stealth or some scripted movement gimmick in reserve for a free escape (since raw movement saves nobody in GW2). It's more rock-paper-scissors rather than "action combat" (which is why the game is so "rotation heavy" as the players might put it), and the easy, low effort way to try and trick someone into thinking that GW2 featured "action combat" is by just making everyone passively immune to damage while attacking by slapping on some form of perfect damage negation or instantaneous movement onto attack rotations (i.e. teleports, evade, block, invuln). That way, players get to press their buttons and wiggle around without outright dying immediately: it gives the impression that active movement matters in a game determined by targeted teleports, instant casts from max ranges, and damage negation without any counters; and that illusion is good enough for both Anet and the people who somehow take GW2 PvP seriously.

Took a bunch of feedback to heart and updated the top post. In short order: I feel like the proposed buffs to fire were enough to cut some damage and utility from earth.Frozen Ground no longer applies an anti-stab/resi debuff with every pulse, but instead it just removes resi and stab on cast. This effect was also added to Shockwave's middle and closest impact. By spreading this effect out between two skills on two different attunements, it provides a lot of active CC support (CC being the strongest feature of staff ele in PvP) without it being too overpowered in huge team environments like WvW.Stoning got a re-worked secondary effect because the boon removal aspect was refocused into Shockwave. Might be overpowered or worthless, but it's something a bit different; feel free to criticize it.A simpler suggestion for a more easy-to-use Ice Spike.I really appreciate the discussion produced from this thread, and I welcome any continued commentary if anyone feels like throwing up some more responses. There were a lot of good ideas here, and it's not like the edit button will stop existing any time soon.

And people keep asking me what I'm on about when I call rev "Thief with Defiant Stance." Both classes are equally castles built on sand, through: Revenant, the "other, other Thief" and Thief, the "beta-test stealth showcase." As for the main gripe of this thread, Thief is inherently broken because it has no weapon CDs in a game that is exclusively balanced by CDs. Now, is balancing a game's unique abilities entirely by cooldowns a good idea? Absolutely not. Would GW2 have benefited from the implementation of a more universal resource system for skill use management? Truthfully, the fact that Initiative, on GW2, is confined to Thief is an egregious crime of game design. That said, Thief was never balanced because it was always the worst offender of "haha, I'm evading and teleporting repeatedly while attacking" and no class had any means to stop it. Thieves never truly have to commit to a fight, and that's why its a hollow "playstyle" which ultimately does nothing but harm to a PvP environment. Fighting a Thief is basically just a slow game of whack-a-mole unless the Thief player knows that your CDs will constantly cycle over his windows during which he can spam evades and teleports while attacking (at which point, he just spans shortbow 5 in the opposite direction). If a Thief dies, it's never really the fault of the opponent because the "meta" Thief has always had a means of free escape. The only reason that the class underperforms now is because anet gave every other class (all with higher HP pools) basically the same sort of meme cancer that had kept the Thief in every PvP game prior to HoT. Thief was never a skill-based class: it was a "know hard counters for free kills and watch the minimap" class. In fact, its combat paradigm, once exported to every other class in GW2, only further saddled the game's skill ceiling to claustrophobicly low heights. No class requires skillYes, but plenty of people seem convinced (or deluded) of the contrary.

And people keep asking me what I'm on about when I call rev "Thief with Defiant Stance." Both classes are equally castles built on sand, through: Revenant, the "other, other Thief" and Thief, the "beta-test stealth showcase." As for the main gripe of this thread, Thief is inherently broken because it has no weapon CDs in a game that is exclusively balanced by CDs. Now, is balancing a game's unique abilities entirely by cooldowns a good idea? Absolutely not. Would GW2 have benefited from the implementation of a more universal resource system for skill use management? Truthfully, the fact that Initiative, on GW2, is confined to Thief is an egregious crime of game design. That said, Thief was never balanced because it was always the worst offender of "haha, I'm evading and teleporting repeatedly while attacking" and no class had any means to stop it. Thieves never truly have to commit to a fight, and that's why its a hollow "playstyle" which ultimately does nothing but harm to a PvP environment. Fighting a Thief is basically just a slow game of whack-a-mole unless the Thief player knows that your CDs will constantly cycle over his windows during which he can spam evades and teleports while attacking (at which point, he just spans shortbow 5 in the opposite direction). If a Thief dies, it's never really the fault of the opponent because the "meta" Thief has always had a means of free escape. The only reason that the class underperforms now is because anet gave every other class (all with higher HP pools) basically the same sort of meme cancer that had kept the Thief in every PvP game prior to HoT. Thief was never a skill-based class: it was a "know hard counters for free kills and watch the minimap" class. In fact, its combat paradigm, once exported to every other class in GW2, only further saddled the game's skill ceiling to claustrophobicly low heights.

Remove weapon swap CD entirely. Give weapon swap a 0.75s cast.Elementalist and Engineer kits retain instant swap.All other profession-based "form changes" (i.e. Photon Forge, pet merge, Berserker mode, Druid mode, etc) all receive a 0.75s activation respectively.

Those boons are too powerful, and there isn't really a consistent way to remove them throughout the game. There should always be a strong tug-o-war system at play if we are going to constantly have to deal with people just mindlessly walking through obvious or well-placed CC. Two and a half seconds is not oppressive, considering that players would still have dodges, evades and blocks available to them even if they were stripped of resi and stab. Moreover, pulsing instances of such boons would only be disabled for that short time, which means that the Frozen Ground debuff is more of a brief window for offensive coordination than anything oppressive like Rampage, Boonbeast taking 0 damage while attacking or any Mesmer doing anything with a full bar of CDs to blow. My only issue with it is Winds of Disenchantment would be kind of useless as the only boon left would be Protection, and that's nothing compared to the other 2 boons. We're no longer that much of a thing in PvE either, but my only concern is for SpB players.If spellbreakers are your only concern, then they still have a load of blocks and evades on their weapon bars as well as passive stun breaks, a huge HP pool, regular dodges and rampage to reposition. They should really be fine without stab or resi for 2.5s at a time. If it ever gets too bad, then they just bring some more passive cleanse or swap a utility. It wouldn't be a difficult adaption, and it would only serve to increase the skill ceiling on an egregiously low skill cap rotation class. I mean, Alacrity shouldn't have existed in the first place, it caused 3+ years of Chrono only and continuing, with only its providers being viable in PvE. Weakening and Slowing down attacks while on the worst dueling weapon would be quite good imo, but to each their own. For the auto attack, Mesmer only has access to boon removal and its only useful as a boon bot in PvE on a melee weapon, so boon removal from 1200 range is quite broken. I don't know what else to put into this auto attack to make it worth using, but boon removal is strong, and Slow seems to not be good. The boon removal on this thread's stoning rework only applies if the melee-range staff attack strikes a target that already has weakness. The ranged projectile component only applies weakness for 1.5s. That said, it doesn't mean that we should just cave to the passive, boon/condi spam meta. Giving a slow-inflicting cleave to any class, no matter how "weak" you think the debuff is, is unconscionable because it means that you're just throwing darts at a board to see what might stick rather than thinking of a valuable and fair mechanic with risk and pay-off involved. It's inconvenient and frustrating to fight at against a melee auto which inflicts slow, and yet the skill user might encounter situations where it would be useless. You're just making a skill into Deadeye. Don't do that. And in truth, chrono was the first real role in GW2 that wasn't just a basic DPS. It's not the chrono or alacrity's fault that this came about, but rather anet and GW2's lack of depth as a game which allowed a single class to have every valuable buff in the game fit comfortably onto its bar. Given all that, I also agree that alacrity never belonged either.

Leave dead the mistake.

Those boons are too powerful, and there isn't really a consistent way to remove them throughout the game. There should always be a strong tug-o-war system at play if we are going to constantly have to deal with people just mindlessly walking through obvious or well-placed CC. Two and a half seconds is not oppressive, considering that players would still have dodges, evades and blocks available to them even if they were stripped of resi and stab. Moreover, pulsing instances of such boons would only be disabled for that short time, which means that the Frozen Ground debuff is more of a brief window for offensive coordination than anything oppressive like Rampage, Boonbeast taking 0 damage while attacking or any Mesmer doing anything with a full bar of CDs to blow. This game needs means to disable stab and resi for brief windows in order to bring more variability to combat. As of now, everything is so locked into PvE-tier skill rotations, that there isn't much difference between PvP combat and fractal runs outside of juggling capture points. Simply stripping the two boons at the outset with no further boon suppression is not enough to fight that paradigm. Players can't keep getting reward for ultimately making bad decisions. Freely earned boons shouldn't carry players like this. It wouldn't knock people around so absurdly, at the very least. Considering that it's a linear, greatsword spin attack, it would hit targets only twice at the very most. It would also be nice to have a movement option on the Elementalist staff kit outside of Burning Retreat. I don't think that anybody needs an auto-attack access to slow. I personally don't even believe that slow belongs in the game. It's just an arbitrary, flavor-based addition to mirror quickness; and the fact that it's just a flavor addition shows in its overall prevalence and in how little impact it generally has on combat across all player modes in GW2. I do, however, like the idea of moving boon removal to Shockwave and then increasing the amount of boons removed (considering the longer cooldown). I'd be open to other suggestions for "making up" the loss of conditional boon removal from Stoning (although, giving it a potential double-hit effect along with a re-worked projectile for more consistent application of weakness seems like a pretty strong re-work already).

After reading a lot of the thoughts in the thread, I went ahead and tried developing some changes for Ice Spike and Gust as we as some alternative ideas for Eruption and Frozen Ground. If people find them acceptable, I'll probably just put them in the OP. WATER[ice Spikes] (2a) [Frozen Ground] (4) AIR[Gust] (3) EARTH[Eruption] (2)

I mainly just wanted to free the skill from the GW2 targeting system, but ultimately I came back to, yes, how underwhelming and bloaty the skill feels sitting next to titans like evade roll, meteor shower, persistent AoE damage field and fireball crits; so I gave it the delayed explosion for more field threats. Yeah, the point was basically to just make it a standalone damage threat in PvP, but turn it into a huge DPS rotation booster in PvE (with the right teammates: even something like a Scourge would boost the DPS pretty substantially, so it wouldn't really require a dedicated flame boi like a burn Guardian or something; Banner Berserker is also still pretty meta, I think). You know, considering how many people have brought it up, it's funny how I hung up I was over Ice Spike and Eruption while making this list. I originally had an Ice Spike re-work slated for this as well as a different Eruption one, but I just kept thinking, "This is just turning into another Lava Font." I don't disagree that they could each use something different about them (particularly Ice Spike). Gust is super strong with a Lightning Rod build, but yes, you are right in saying how it sort of flops about without much potential on its own. I had thought of turning it into an AoE, mid-range cone, but I also hate losing out on a 1200 range, linear push (a super strong effect). I personally don't really see an absolute need to buff it, but I could maybe think of a few ways: Reduce recharge to 20s or 15s.Turn it into a 2-stock ammo ability with a 5s skill recharge and a 30s count recharge.Add a very short-range cone to the skill (maybe 200 range; hits up to 5 targets) which applies its effect concurrently with the Gust projectile itself and launches struck foes (600 range launch). At least, the melee-range cone would give the skill some more utility with positioning-based risk or reaction as well as giving the Elementalist a way to possibly mitigate the issue with the projectile hitting a target (i.e. burn a Lightning Flash and follow up with Gust for a more guaranteed forced-movement CC).I still feel like the third buff idea is super redundant, though, because I never have trouble hitting Gust now if I just Lightning Flash into melee range (and I don't really think that slapping an Illusionary Wave on top of the most favorable aspect of the skill--a 1200 range push--would be all that balanced). Furthermore, the skill's hitbox has been enlarged considerably since its original iterations back from around 2012-13, and it can simultaneously strike multiple players standing in file next to each other (I even have some evidence of its lenient hitbox detection in a video I made something like 2 days ago). I still hold by the strongest aspect of those skills is how they apply a sort of danger threat to a designated area for a prolonged period of time: either players will have to avoid the area or play in it knowing that they will have to burn a dodge or some other cooldown just to avoid a big hit later on. It's a risk factor, which is something I want to see more of rather than just resorting to GW2 meta prescriptions like "faster damage" or "CC with damage" or "being immune to incoming effects." I had exactly the same idea at one point, but then I also thought of inverting that same idea: like a Reaper Nightfall in reverse. The reason why I liked the inverse better (start as a big AoE and shrink to a smaller one over the course of a fixed duration) is because one could inherently give the increasingly smaller AoEs respectively stronger and stronger effects without them being too unfair (considering that they are losing size and are therefore easier to avoid), but also because Elementalist staff has a metric ton of area control via hard and soft CC. Something like a reverse Nightfall with a huge, ending pay-off would fit right into the same weapon bar as Unsteady Ground and Shockwave while also just serving as a big AoE threat without hard CC present. Like I said, I did want to avoid "another Lava Font," but something like "multiple Ice Spikes" might not be a bad idea. I could almost still go for the idea I suggested up in response to the person who was worried about having a Water auto heal for WvW: just re-work one of the 95% of trash traits in order to outright change it to a full-on heal cone. As for re-working the current one, I'm also sort of at a loss.

Considering that ele can get a free fire aura just by attuning to fire along with all of the aura generation on tempest, I think that I would rather give a leap to a utility skill with some value rather than just slap it onto Burning Retreat.if you run fire, which support ele doesn't do.That's why I would rather re-work a utility skill into a strong ability with a combo finisher which would allow any ele build to get a fire aura. I just want to reduce as many "gimmies" as possible. If you want to spam heals, you can just unlock from a target and free-aim your water autos at the ground. They will still apply healing even if they strike no targets. This same tactic can be used with fireball in order to snipe stealthed targets. Splash properties on skills is a super utilitarian aspect because it frees players from being bound to this game's horrid targeting system (and its also the reason why I also thought about giving the same property to earth autos).this is so water auto cant get reflected in wvw fights. could also just remove the damage since its puny anyways, but that would be wonky imo. Ah, right, yeah, I could imagine that WvW is coated in Feedbacks and reflect walls. Maybe just re-work a worthless trait into something which would just outright swap Water Blast with something like the Engineer Healing Kit auto? That's just more of what the meta provides. It isn't really a fair or creative effect. Getting hit by an ice spike is punishment enough considering that it deals full-power meteor damage. If anything, it could maybe get an unlockable trait or even a 2 ammo count with a 10s count recharge, but any other change would probably just be better off as a total skill rework.don't disagree. its to help with 1v1s which staff is horrid at.I personally don't feel that every weapon set has to be good at everything. In fact, following that paradigm removes any sort of identity or playstyle from the game (which is why the current GW2 PvP metagame is basically just 6 versions of the same build in different flavors). This would be super cancerous. It already deals ludicrous damage (nearly on par with Ice Spike), and it's very easy to land. It also blinds. It requires at least a 1s cast time in order to be fair.air 2 takes forever to cast for how much it does. so what if it does a lot of damage? nerf the coefficient a bit then. air is supposed to be the "fast cast" element anyways.As anecdotal as this is, I have to absolutely stand firm on how many Lighting Surges I land in ranked matches. Once a user has an on-the-fly grasp for 1200 range, they become incredibly easy to land, and I often use them as an opener or while following opponents who don't necessarily know that I am tailing them from nearby. It's also pretty effective if the cast is started and then the user jumps into the air, allowing the cast to resolve while mid-air. No real need. Maybe, MAYBE a 5s CD reduction, but ultimately it's not entirely necessary (especially considering how my suggestion adds more CC options to earth).i guess. its a very underwhelming skill.I run fire-air-arcane staff in PvP, and having Gust that inflicts weakness and 4k damage on a 25s CD is absolutely nuts. It used to be a lot worse to use, but at least it hits somewhat reliably now: its hitbox is pretty meaty, and it's quite valuable for interrupting desperation stomps. It's also a near-instant knock-back in melee range which can be fired directly behind the user while running in the opposite direction. It could maybe use a buff, but I'm not sure what it would get which wouldn't just make it more insane that what I already experience when using it. I mean, I outright kill dudes with Gust. I kill people with the wind fart which everyone considers worthless, man. It's absolutely insane. Basically same complaint that I have with the Ice Spike suggestion. It threatens a huge area for 3s already, and it hits hard. It doesn't need to daze, and the 1200 range means that it doesn't need a 0.5s cast-time.same as water 2. it also takes forever to activate, most people just walk out of it.Since you are speaking from a WvW perspective, I can see where you're coming from with a lot of these thoughts. Although, if you noticed, I did move the cripple to the front of the skill's total resolution time. At the moment that the cast resolves, the skill would inflict cripple. Moreover, I would personally rather try to balance these skills from team-limited instances such as PvP (or even PvE) rather than trying to balance around a mode which not only features insane player statlines but also inherently imbalanced participation numbers among teams and combat encounters. That's not a knock against the WvW players, it just a worry about what it would mean to apply balances made to open-field, no-objective combat to places with more restricted combat spaces and limited team participants.

That latter part was the reason for the conditional damage amplification: it brings up ele's DPS in a team environment while also just being a consistent field hazard in practice. As for the 2 stacks of 6s burning, they would still contribute to a 20% damage increase, which is pretty substantial and something which I consider built into the skill (and it would put the base damage on a 2-stack burning target up to somewhere around Eruption range). Perfectly fair point. Ultimately, the point of the low-recharge, ammo designs in this collection of suggestions was mostly be to allow players to be extremely flexible with their usage of said skills, but it might end up just being a bit too much spam potential in some cases. That said, it's not like a 5s recharge isn't still very accessible if a player has 2 charges in the tank. Conditions in GW2 nowadays are effectively just damage: a horrendously bloated, mechanical dead-end of the game. Yes, they carry some powerful bonus effects, but the only thing that stacks is just damage, which has ultimately become their main feature. So, yes, I can honestly say that I forgot about poison (especially when things like revive traits just raise downed HP straight through whatever sort of pressure is applied anyway; I can attest to that as someone who frequently uses the Arcane Resurrection trait). That said, an additional revival penalty which could stack on top of poison would be a neat flair to an otherwise somewhat under-performing skill. Inflicting stab and resi on placement seems like a very interesting compromise, but I still hate how this game seems replete with consistently renewing sources of immunity buffs like stability (either via forms, un-strippable, passive buffs or traits). If Frozen Ground provided a persistent debuff which constantly kept stab and resi off of targets within its AoE, it would be a temporary safety zone and huge field hazard without resorting to something as super cheesy and low effort as Rampage, block chains or instant burst. It would be a huge theat, but a threat around which players on both sides could still make moves, and that's the paradigm that I'm trying to preserve and enhance with the current Elementalist staff kit. The ammo at least has a CD of 50s, which either means that someone paces their usage of the skill, blows it both because a team really needs to lock down a particular target, or perhaps even chooses to use one Frozen Ground entirely for its chill-application purposes but is still allowed an extra Frozen Ground in the tank for perhaps stopping a target bathed in stability. The goal is flexiblity; not overpowered memery. To that end, I'd still be willing to make some concessions if people feel that it's too strong. I mentioned earlier in the thread about maybe reducing the AoE down to 180 (Lava Font sized), but reducing the duration down to 3s is also something to consider; raising the ammo cooldown to 60s might also be an option, but I would really like to keep the ammo count just because of how incredibly utilitarian it makes the skill without resorting to GW2 meta designs like full-blown lock-downs with simultaneous damage. Reasonable power reduction. It would be a physical projectile; no piercing. I had considered suggesting that it behave like Fireball (splash on impact; small AoE), but I'm not sure that AoE, multi-target weakness (even if it were 1.5s with a 120 max radius) would be all that fair for opponents. That said, I feel that the melee aspect of the skill provides enough cleave potential. The biggest point, however, is that the Stoning projectile would just need to be replaced. It's arc is huge and the projectile tends to wander off into low orbit against any moving target; it would be better if it flew along the same trajectory as something like Ranger's Long Range Shot or something (but not with the stupid 1800 range).