scerevisiae.1972

dude, spear is equal top for finishers amongst ele weapons: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Table_of_elementalist_combo_skills agree spear is a bit weaker than it should be but one thing it's not is short of finishers

just noting i also had same problem. no special action key.

Choice in weapons. All the expac weapons for Ele suck in varying degrees, only the original 3 weapons released ***12 years ago*** are actually viable outside of PVE. The balance team are MIA and recently have been buffing weapons that are already good.

You also forgot hammer and to a lesser extent, warhorn. Sword was ok there for a while for solo but then was nerfed into irrelevance. I don't think current anet devs are capable of designing good/fun WVW ele weapons. And I don't think they GAF either cause no attempt has been made to improve them. Hell, they just buffed dagger and it was already ele's strongest WVW weapon so go figure.

Volcano isn't even worth casting in wvw; spear in general is just considerably weaker than staff across the board full-stop.

actually if i could change anything about fire sword it would be to double the leap range.

you're definitely not a roamer cause you don't know what you're talking about. right now with current cele i have roughly 40% power builds, 40% cele hybrid builds (usually mix of cele + X pieces), and 20% pure condi builds (trailblazer/ritualist/plaguedoctor) across 100+ characters x build tabs. less condi only cause i don't super like the condi playstyle. WVW is the only thing i play. i hate the PVE and sPVP in this game. my roamer friends likely have a similar breakdown. if they nerf cele, that's 40% of builds eliminated as those builds are cele specifically because of both the hybrid power/condi damage and boon/condi duration. realistically nerfed cele might still be worthwhile for 10% of those builds but that's still 1/3rd of WVW builds killed. for no good reason other than Anet is kinda clueless about WVW and is only listening to WVW commanders who only zerg cause they are bad at the game and can only blob. the real issue is boon v strip balance is broken, not cele.

WTH, buffing cele created way more build diversity. before cele was made viable by the addition of conc/expertise, there was only power builds, condi builds and minstrel, and if your class didn't have a great power or condi build you were SOL. Cele created build options that didn't exist before.

Weaver is getting a small buff this coming patch with 5->3CD on the GM trait condi cleanse. For sceptre, the recent nerf to earth/air i think was probably unnecessary, it's a 1-shot spec and often can't 1-shot anymore, which is a bit rough considered Sc weaver has no real sustain, stealth etc like a thief would have. That said it's certainly still playable. The biggest issue with weaver IMO is how much of a restriction the 4sec attunement CD imposes on weapon choice and playstyle. Sword weaver is in a bad place as the game has been heavily mobility powercrept so it can't keep up, literally. Still ok versus specs that can't kite it. Hammer weaver is still as bruisy as ever, just very slow and easily kited. Hammer just needs either more ranged skills or another mobility skill to be more generally viable in WVW. Overall weaver is just mid to average overall and definitely not meta. I think the stance nerf (barrier->protection) hurt a lot and was fairly unjustified as weaver wasn't that strong before the change anyway. If I could choose what to change I would definitely be directing attention to making the really terrible (in WVW) weapons relevant -- hammer (more ranged skills, or mobility), pistol (full rework, it sucks), spear (more damage or more utility, pick 1, cause staff beats it in both areas), and maybe sword (make the fire 2 leap be 600 range).

maybe it's you not playing the game? most roamers run power, condi and cele builds in varying amounts, it's totally naive to say cele is always best, cause it isn't. cele is only a viable stat choice if your build self-generates a lot of might. I even get whispers from clueless players along the lines of "you only won cause cele" when i am using a full power build (or trailblazers).

Nerfing cele is naive and reactionary. For years supports have been running minstrels, yet minstrels has never been nerfed. All of a sudden, some WVW commanders started runing a few supports as cele and all of a sudden cele is a problem? Moreover if you were going to nerf, why not start with 20% nerf instead of 100%->0? Anet has to stop listening to thse clueless WVW commanders who only know 1 aspect of the game - faceroll boonballing (cause they are actually terrible at the game, hence why they _need_ to zerg).

* make every weapon a feasible choice in WVW, no more of this BS "we're making this weapon just for PVE" like Ele has gotten for the last 5 straight expacs. * make a 3rd BL map, maybe a fully/mostly underground/dungeon map? having 2 copies of Arctic 12 years after release is super lame and frankly embarrassing. * nerf the kitten out of infinite boon stacking in boonballs, it's ridiculous. a simple solution would be applying boons to a target that already has that boon adds the lesser of (<current-boon-dur>, 1sec) to the current duration. eg: target with 5sec prot receives another 5sec prot but adds only 1sec, making 6sec prot instead of 10. then revert last boon strip nerf. zerging success should require dodging and strategy not facerolling PVE rotations.

> even replacing minstrel on some supports. isn't that a GOOD thing? every support in WVW was running minstrel but now SOME supports have switched to cele. Why is that a problem? even if we stipulate it's a problem that needs addressing (i don't think so), why nerf 100% of the boon duration and condi duration? why not try nerfing 20-50% rather than 100%->0?

I roam on ele regularly on a variety of different specs and can hold my own against the best thieves in the game. I get pinged by WVW commanders to join their zergs as staff weaver artillery. Staff weaver still the best class/spec for DPS vs large blobs in a constricted area. Ele does have a very high skill floor but it definitely still works just fine when played well. I think Ele does need buffs (in WVW) but only to its weak/unusable weapons: hammer, pistol, spear and to a lesser extent, warhorn & sword. Staff/dagger/sceptre are pretty much fine.

i think it strongly depends on the class/spec. losing 45% boon duration is huge for ele/engi for example. also think more generally peole don't realise how much damage they will lose from loss of stacked might... but maybe this will take some time to sink in. as above, there is a good reason why pre-buffed cele was not widely used and why they buffed it to its current state. I still think cele stats are being heavily scapegoated here when really it's excessive boons and nerfed strips that is the real issue. at the very least, nerfing to 50-75% of current boon/condi duration seems like a better first step rather than 100%->0%...