Noodle Ant.1605

if staff can find ways to complete a stationary 4s casting animation… surely spear can find ways to use 3 skills within a 360 radius leeway. in other words, spear is meant to excel when it is under minimal pressure (including not needing to move around a lot) and the etching mechanic does exactly that but with the way that you put it, the problem isnt that spear has negative synergy with itself… its that the etching mechanic is too much of a necessity and too punishing when spear cant find ideal situations to do it. the solution therefore isnt to change where the etches are placed with the hope that it works slightly better (and also all the flipover skills as well?), but to find ways to make the mechanic less binary

this was an intended weakness of spear. shaman touched on it earlier; its kit is inherently meant to be “comfortable at range” and fold “in the thick of combat” (see spear blogpost). its intended to be somewhat defenseless and not supposed to focus on area denial or otherwise keeping enemies away (which would undermine staffs identity)

i just feel like the rework doesnt really target the areas you supposedly wish to see improved if hitting things with etching skills is hard because theyre given too much time to react at long range, change the line skills into ground targeted lazers. if its because the enemy always walks beside/behind you, extend the hitbox to include a pbaoe that hits around the ele. i think volcano doing an explosion at the start is something most people can agree on i already think this should be baseline, but if charging is too difficult (because you get forced out of the etching or otherwise) then make the lesser skills more worthwhile. lesser skills being 70% as effective as charged skills will still make charged skills 40% better (vs current 100-300% difference) and worth pursuing if possible. letting the skill expire will then become more a fault of greed (or somehow getting chain cc'd for 7s) im not sure why youd talk about utility and offensive support when it doesnt appear to be any part of spears given identity. instead, id rather talk about improving spears ability to actually hit things with its big skills. add a immob to first target hit with earth #2. change twister into a hitscan attack that always centers on the current target. slip in an extra hit on ice beam to increase chill duration weaver needs ideas for actual dual skills? lets go further: air/earth pulls enemies into a line to be blasted with derecho/haboob. fire/earth locks enemies in place to be followed up with fire #4 or earth #4. fire/air can simply be a big damage skill that leaves a fire field(s) to interact with persisting flames if you really want ranged combo fields, then we could just take your suggestion to make etchings ground targetable and that you can throw skills into to charge. on the other hand, changing all flipovers and #3 skills to facilitate this seems rather arbitrary and unecessary (unless i missed the memo that this was not a totally serious suggestion?)

correct me if im wrong, but wouldnt the same issue occur if enemies simply move out of the etchings? unless etchings are invisible to enemies, an etching with nothing in it would be next to useless, while the current system still allows you to fire off something to some effect i dont see any real use for ranged combo fields outside of catalyst, maybe aside from coincedentally blasting might and heals on allies that happen to be in the area. post rework spear users may likely end up using etchings as pbaoes anyways to use these combos for themselves, which cancels both the orginal and intended ranged aspect i think what shaman was trying to say is that catalyst already has the tools to make ranged combos happen, hence changing spear to do so would change very little

i feel like less emphasis should be placed on the etching mechanic as it is horribly restrictive, predictable and punishing in its current form. the lesser skills are so inferior to their charged versions that allowing the option seems rather unnecessary and possibly more detrimental than beneficial id consider making the lesser skills at least 70% as effective as their charged counterparts, making the option more worthwhile and playing with the mechanic less of a necessity. after all, the skills are still limited by a 25s cd, and the ability to get less than half the payout seems wholly unnecessary part of spears identity does seem to be the fact how it involves quite a bit of precise ground targeting, therefore i think the line etching skills are actually fitting (vs area denial/huge aoes). however, i see no reason why they couldnt just hit the targeted area instantly instead of having to travel. this might actually allow the skills to hit intended targets at long range as the weapon was advertised as satisfying as it is to land a good volcano, the skill could transfer some of the damage to an immediate/undelayed, big initial strike to significantly reduce disappointment in using the skill. imo fulgor is also strange compared to the rest of the skills and could have more of its damage (if not all?) moved to the first strike as for dual skills, id argue that the consistency between #3 skills is already broken (ripple is much more than a fast-casting buffing skill), and that some of the dual skills could simply be turned into damaging ones. perhaps some skills could continue to synergize with the etching mechanic, while others could double down on the long range + precise ground targeting identity

i believe the projectiles/lava blobs are actually rng within the targeted area and hit the middle more often than the side. targets on the outer edge of volcano usually end up taking far less damage vs one that is smack dab in the middle a better indicator would be to reuse spear #4 center aoe, but the real problem is that it essentially takes a second to cast volcano, and then another second for the lava blobs to come out, and then another for them to hit the ground. by this time the enemies may no longer be where they were originally clarification: the projectiles do land in a ring, but they are not guaranteed hit sides equally while the aoe appears to be big enough to still hit the middle

volcano works in a similar manner as meteor shower. it shoots out 12 balls within the area, and a particularly small hitbox standing near the edge may only get hit 3 out of 12 times fire has the only damage focused etch. the other etches are really more utility based, dealing around half as much (total) damage and are not always worth accessing for their dps (consider it an amped up #2 skill). however, volcano is both delayed and rng, often failing to hit at all unless placed directly under a stationary target

the game isnt consistent across core/expacs. the current trend has spongier enemies that often last long enough to hit you a few times with weaker attacks that arent really worth dodging individually. not only that, but the game likes to swarm you with them, stacking on the pressure the weakness and prot spam doesnt make it friendly for the "kill them before they kill you" approach either. some of the mobs in janthir apply ~8s weakness on every single attack (no corruption needed) and generate so much prot they reach the 30s cap within seconds. they also like move around a lot for no apparent reason (unsurprisingly, ele isnt so great at those). dont expect to be easily bursting down trash that isnt already nearly dead world bosses have also changed in that they favor lots of difficult-to-avoid damage that make healers essentially mandatory if anyone wants to concentrate on doing damage. this makes it somewhat awkward to consider as players are not entirely responsible for their own survival anymore (outside the big avoidable attacks ofc) running a glasscannon ele in janthir is still very feasible, but id advise approaching encounters thinking a little less about damage and making sure you can heal back whatever damage you take

from my experience, volcano seems to bug out on platforms that can disappear. so far, ive seen it completely whiff on sab, xera and arkk. however, it still seems to work perfectly fine on paper thin platforms. so id assume its related to how terrain works in some way on top of this, volcano is a really difficult skill to use imo due to the combination of delay and rng. its a your typical “works really well on big stationary bosses” ele meteor shower skill that isnt worth casting in many situations and is biggest cause of grief since the weapon is balanced around it id question whether seethe (fire #3) is really all that worthwhile since it comes with a cast time (time spent doing nothing). without the boons, the main skill that sees any real benefit from the 20% boost is really only the unreliable volcano weaver is screwed until they realise that it relies heavily on its dual skills the way tempest relies on its overloads. afaik, weaver power hammer doesnt really work either, and power scepter was a flop because they were too conservative when buffing the dual skills

i believe water trident has this tech. however, it specifically requires a target to fire (and also fails to appear when targeting structures) which makes it a bit of unique case i wouldnt be surprised if there are unique or other similar skills that function similarly. however, in this case warrior and ranger spear #1 (ranged) does seem like it should be able to be body blocked

if you specifically want to enjoy spear, youll probably want to run core ele. tempest is just the usual overload spam but with spear and unless you know what youre doing, weaver and catalyst will end up in misery and hardly better than running core. id strongly recommend running water to support a glassier setup obviously it wont be doing amazing golem dps, but its open world “where everything works” and youre mainly concerned about dealing with 20-40k hp squishy trash mobs anyway. sometimes comboing some #2’s and #4’s is already enough and etching is not always required (particularly fire etch as it is very delayed and ineffective against small moving targets that are already about to die) spear has some impressive base sustain potential which only gets crazier with combos but seems to be massively overlooked. this really allows you to run full glass without caring, particularly in post-eod content where trash now does considerably less damage. there are a few other unique things in its kit (for an ele weapon) such as the ability to pull enemies together and keep them disabled for 7-9s straight without nuking your damage imo spear is actually a solid weapon by itself that gets screwed over/overshadowed by how the especs work. i would compare this to pistol which piggybacks hard off from tempest and other interactions, but is largely unimpressive by itself remember: always expect disappointment when attempting use volcano (fire etch)

im okay with gimmicks, it gives new weapons a unique feel/playstyle instead of being a core weapon 2.0. what im not okay with is when the same gimmick is on every. single. attunement. and then you begin to wonder if theres still an actual weapon behind the gimmick pve hammer is too centered on the grand finale loop while every other skill are simply filler skills and additionally made purposely weak due to the offensive orb bonuses being too strong the gimmick on pistol takes over every skill in its kit and then most of them are just shooting some form of a projectile at a foe spear is too centered on the etchings and could honestly be repuposed into an offhand in its current state. #3 being mostly nonskills additionally limits the filler space between etchings (leaving autoattack and #2). you could probably combine just the etchings with some existing mainhand weapons and end up with a more cohesive kit

might just be me, but i dont like the current skill layout on the spear. i am aware that it makes it easier to design and understand, but it feels very on the nose - particularly with the same damage spread and cds across skills. at the moment, its barely different from one skill bar copy pasted 3 more times with slight alterations skills #3 and #5 i can accept being mostly the same across all the attunements. i do think weaver dual skills should have proper skills attached however, because without them its like playing tempest where pressing the overload button instead simply gives a buff and does nothing else. skill #5 has issues but im sure people have already suggested plenty of possible changes to those skill #4 is perhaps the biggest culprit of the copy-paste skill design. while water & air #4 is understandable with the 20s cd being cc skills, fire & earth #4 makes hardly any sense with high cd as mostly pure damage skills. these 2 skills could have 15s or even 12s (or lower) cd. water #4 should just be a 240 radius pull and does not need a center bonus, and id also question if air #4 should be the same as well (it is a 20s cd after all) skills #1 (autoattack) and #2 serve as the main filler skills and are also very copy-paste. the autottack is pretty obvious in this case, but then most of the #2 skills are essentially just "an auto but better". i would propose the following to attempt to help differentiate them: fire #1: deal increased damage to burning targets. add long duration burning to fire #4 (and some to #5?) fire #2: change to use ammo, 1-2s count recharge and function similarly to dragons roar (consume all ammo available). its meant to be a barrage/volley after all water #1: deal (massively) increased damage to chilled targets. add chill to water #5. remove the heal, its a waste of time to camp water and spam autoattacks for it (rename to "shattering spear" or "shatterspear" or something) air #2: add generic damage so that the skill still does something even if the target has 60s of fulgor earth #2: this skill is quite literally a better autoattack. maybe make the skill more like a spammable pile driver/true shot (big windup for bigger payoff) adding pierce/bounce/aoe to autoattacks (and earth #2) should be considered as well

if its anything like hammer or pistol, its probably designed to push inexperienced eles towards a specific playstyle. theres really no reason why it couldnt just automatically charge, particularly if you have #1 on auto, and yes the fact that you need to use the flipover in the short window of time afterwards (or else it gets wasted) bothers me weaver does seem as though it wont synergize as well with the weapon. on the other hand, i wouldnt think theyd be terribly concerned about core and as a core ele enthusiast, it doesnt particularly bother me either. maybe its time to change pyromancers pussiance to not eat eles might stacks, then setups that dont use much fire fields might have something else to play with i know that these arent meant resemble proper coefficients, but id like to point out that its possible the fire #5 tooltip might be misleading and is actually 10.5 / 12 = 0.875 as the initial hit, which has damage reduction on the 11 subsequent hits they did use a funny setup during the stream, but fulgor is designed to work like the DoT on guardians binding blade (but it stack for very long durations). i dont think it crits

its difficult to say, warr/thief may have had better stats equipped and warr definitely had traits active while ele had 0. however, it is jarring when they say things like big damage or glass cannon and then use a setup that shows the opposite i feel like spear will be fit for a glass cannon setups (because of the range), but wont necessarily be any more damage than what we already have. my guess is that they might try to avoid invalidating sword. it could also the inexperienced ele perspective where dealing damage on spear might be more intuitive than other weapon options