ThiBash.5634

Staff is actually quite well designed in how the skills on the various attunements can work together. For example, just look at how Lava Font can be double blasted with both Ice Spike and Eruption. That shows quite a lot more thought than some other weapon designs that have setups like 'auto attack, stronger damage skill, charge leap, cc) setups. And while we're at it: if cripple/weakness/chill/poison actually DID something, it'd do a lot for build viability. Stoning isn't a bad skill, but if any enemy that matters has a breakbar and becomes immune to it, then the whole skill is pointless.

Funny, because I'd prefer the exact opposite: dps shouldn't be low, but changing tactics on the fly is what I like best about ele. It's nice to be able to deal damage, but it's even better to change to a different attunement and spend a few seconds support (giving up some dps of course, it should still be balanced) and then go back to full dps. Glpyhs, combo fields/finishers and traits like Arcane Precision and Elemental Attunement is what I like most about ele.

I love this style of game play and I use that combo pretty often. However, I feel that these days it's too much effort for almost no payout. Some classes can generate 25 stacks of might for doing less. The balance is really out of whack here. Agreed. I feel that's the real issue though. The fact that a druid can stack 25 might for 10 people just by using their regular healing skills is a bit insane. I feel that 6 might stacks (plus fury) should be a nice reward for making a tricky combo work...6 might and fury shouldn't feel 'meh'. Also, the 5 stacks chill cap makes any sort of comboing (especially projectile finishers) with Frozen Ground pointless. I'd really like to see that adressed as well.

Oh, and I'd also change Elemental Bastion to give barrier instead of healing. That would make it a lot better as a proactive healer and give it some self defense in PvP/WvW.

A lot of suggestions are aimed towards narrowing the focus of specific traitlines, or the elementalist in general. While I understand what those suggestions are trying to accomplish, I personally find the versatility and lack of focus of the elementalist the most appealing thing about the profession. The main issue in PvE is, in my opinion, is that the ele's versatility is outclassed by the way raid and fractal meta groups are setup. Sure, the ele can provide a lot of boons, but because the druid and chrono already supply the max stacks of everything, those boons are wasted. When playing with non-meta pugs though, the ele really shines. Whatever boons are lacking can be supplied by the ele, there's snaring, healing or blindness available if required and if you're not stacking max of everything, the added conditions can really help fill the gaps. Skills like Glyph of Storms (Earth), Geyser (with ress buff) and Healing Rain can be quite useful even to full dps builds. The problem however is that in a lot of situations, they're completely useless (bosses with breakbars come to mind). One thing I like in particular about staff ele, is the whole combo field/finisher mechanic. You have that 1 blast finishers that you can use to either heal, or stack might, or give swiftness, or add an aura, but you can only pick one of them. That gives the ele a ton of versatility, but balanced by the fact that you only can get 1 of those effects at a time. The added fun is that when playing with others ,you really have to place your combo's carefully to make the most of them (an extra challenge, but it also adds more potential combo's). The downside is that a lot of combos are effectively useless these days (projectile finisher/ice field/chill stack max comes to mind). Another important thing I'd really like to emphasize is that Weaver and Tempest shouldn't have to be different just by making the first a dps spec and the second a support spec. The playstyle of both specs are vastly different due to how attunement swaps function and that could be their defining difference. So instead of making the spec's traits do a single thing with minor variations, why not make the traits determine if the build is support or dps? Harmonious Conduit vs. Invigorating Torrents is a good example of how the spec could be turned either to support or dps. Let the player decide what kind of Weaver or Tempest they want to play, rather than forcing them to dps or support. tl;dr My changes would focus on decreasing power creep like druid's 10-man might and chrono's all boons stacking to make the ele's versatility more relevant. The ele itself should get trait choices that allow both elite specs to be played as either dps or support, depending on the individual trait choices rather than the trait line as a whole.

That can be done while keeping the ele's unique playstyle though. I'd rather not they scrapped all of the potential ele has to offer, simply because certain meta builds are very popular. There's so much things an ele can do that are, at the moment, simply underpowered. If tuned correctly, they could open up a ton of fun gameplay. For example, I know people hardly use it, but there's a fun little combo in staff where blasting Frozen Ground with Ice Spike and/or Eruption casts an AoE Frost Aura. Instead of removing Frozen Ground in favor of some random dps or healing skill, I'd rather see that combo become a viable option during regular gameplay (getting auras to stack in duration would and/or mimic ranger spirit buffs would be one way to achieve said goal).

I would keep it the way it is now. The elementalist has its own unique flavor of gameplay, with its perks and challenges. Maximizing your strengths while compensating for your weaknesses is the whole idea behind the concept of having different professions. On elementalist, the distinct flavor is having both more and less options within the same weaponset, which really opens up a different style of gameplay. Most of the suggestions I see here are 'turn the ele into another profession, because I like that one better'. My solution would be to suggest to those people to play that other profession instead of changing the ele. The variety is what makes the game fun for everyone and changing a profession, that clearly works well for a large number of players. At such, changing it isn't something that should be done on a whim, because you'd end up disappointing a large number of players that really enjoy the way things are now. But I guess that goes for any profession. TL;DRKeep what makes the ele unique and only make alterations that allows for its playstyle to remain the way it is.