Staff Fire #3 and Epidemic

[Sunshine.5014]

If you're not familiar with Necromancer. One of their utility is Epidemic, which allows them to copy all conditions on the target to 5 other enemies within 1200 range at half the original duration on a 20s cooldown. This allows Necro to handle many situations in Raids/Strikes/Fractals way better than Ele. The whole squad can just focus on DPS the boss, and the Necro can casually cast Epi once in a while to kill all the trash mobs or mechanics (like Gors Orbs or Fractal CMs).

Ele is 100% outclassed by this. As the defactor AoE archetype, Ele actually can't compete with Necromancer on AoE! In other words, Epi from Necro is irreplaceable, and it's bad for the game.

Suggestion:

• Staff Fire #3: Copy Burning on the target to 5 other enemies within 1200 range on a 20s cooldown.
• This is not even OP. Necromancer copies all conditions, while Ele only copy Burning. Hell, I'd even accept 30s cooldown 😞 because we know Necro always get nicer things.
• This allows us to not having a required slot for Necro in certain end-game PvE content, allow people to possibly bring a squishy Ele (but at least somewhat more useful).
• It make Staff slightly more relevant again.

Thoughts?

Edited February 18, 2022 by Sunshine.5014
Staff Fire #3 not #4

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

No. There's a reason why Epidemic was nerfed in the first place, aka copying conditions in WvW from lords was pretty much instant death sentence.
Another thing Staff Fire #4 is one of survival skills on that weapon, turning into some pepe downgraded epidemic just so it can "compete" in some bottable pve content is unaccaptable. 
Elementalist as a class wasn't created to be some form of "aids spreader" like necromancer in the first place, so such mechanic makes no sense in the slightest.
The staff Ele should simply have much higher output of raw damage from skills, but it was nerfed to the ground because A-net thinks that highest possible DPS between classes should be almost the same.

[Sunshine.5014]

18 minutes ago, TrollingDemigod.3041 said:

No. There's a reason why Epidemic was nerfed in the first place, aka copying conditions in WvW from lords was pretty much instant death sentence.
Another thing Staff Fire #4 is one of survival skills on that weapon, turning into some pepe downgraded epidemic just so it can "compete" in some bottable pve content is unaccaptable. 
Elementalist as a class wasn't created to be some form of "aids spreader" like necromancer in the first place, so such mechanic makes no sense in the slightest.
The staff Ele should simply have much higher output of raw damage from skills, but it was nerfed to the ground because A-net thinks that highest possible DPS between classes should be almost the same.

I made a mistake while typing. I meant Staff Fire #3 not Fire #4

[Infusion.7149]

They could just up the PVE burning duration on the Staff fire 3 (Flame burst) as it isn't a field. It's 2 stacks for 6s on par with Symbol of energy (1 stack for 12s before any symbol ticks are counted) , spiritcrush which has 4 stacks for 3s (which also has 2.0 power coefficient), when it could easily be equivalent to 3 stacks for 5s as Fan of Fire on cBS. On a power focused weapon such as staff, the duration would be more beneficial than stacks and in competitive modes duration generally isn't cut down whereas high stacks usually are.

You're also comparing a weapon skill to a utility skill.

In addition, without meteor shower hitting multiple times it isn't amazing to run staff but mostly that comes down to the skills if you don't use weaver spec. Numbers without traits:
 

• Lava font = 6s cooldown 0.525 coefficient per tick in PVE and total 2.1 or 3.15 traited with persisting flames ; in WVW/PVP it is 0.454 coefficient per tick. After the initial nerfs it has been improved in 2018 to its current state and I don't see this changing further.
• Ice Spike = 6s cooldown 1.5 coefficient in PVE , 0.91 coefficient in WVW/PVP. Is this okay? Probably if it wasn't massively delayed in PVE but using water usually doesn't result in damage in general so I would not focus on this.
• Eruption = 6s cooldown 1.5 coefficient in PVE , 1.25 coefficient in WVW/PVP plus 6 stacks of bleeding for 12s. It is held back by the delay and cast time. As the stacks are more than Grasping Dead on necro scepter or revenant shortbow Bloodbane path I would be wary about changing it other than the delay/cast time.
• Chain lightning (air auto) could have its animation sped up to emphasize air is supposed to be quicker than fire, water, or earth. Notably even on a single target someone benchmarked air auto to be something akin to 7K with full boons on meta staff weaver in 2020 as opposed to 10K or so for fire (which was inline with DH on longbow or scepter , power reaper on axe , condi pistol engi , grenade auto on holo, hammer on herald). It's worse than longbow auto on condi berserker.
• Lightning Surge = 10s cooldown 1.44 coefficient in PVE , 0.91 coefficient with 6s cooldown in WVW/PVP. Since PVE mobs with defiance bars generally can't be blinded I don't think a 6s cooldown would be a poor change for PVE since it streamlines the cooldown to be consistent between modes.
• Gust = no damage , if you want elementalist to have a push role in PVE you want this to match longbow 4 on druid so it would need cooldown reduction from 25s to 12-15s before traits
• Static Field = a worse version of Thunderclap on scrapper these days in most cases : have it affect breakbars again so you get 200 CC bar damage from 2s stun
• Unsteady Ground = no damage, if you want this to compete with other classes' abilities you make it work on breakbars to the tune of 150 knockback * 4 = 600CC on 30s cooldown. The advantage here is since it is not part of DPS rotation it is CC you can use any time you are able to swap to earth.
• Shockwave = hasn't been changed for years and 2s of immob (= 100CC) and one stack of 20s long duration bleeding never impressed anyone and I'm not sure why this is projectile when it follows the ground

If staff were to have four #2 skills with 1.5+ coefficient on <8s cooldown it would effectively be equal to 4s cooldown on a two weapon class.
For example a WVW DH has the following ranged damage from its weapons (don't count sword of justice which is a utility):

• scepter 2 , on 10s cooldown after nerfs ; the WVW coefficient is actually lower than lava font at 0.33 per tick over 4 seconds (total coefficient 4.2 in PVE)
• torch 5, on 15s cooldown and 3 targets but high power coefficient (2.8 in WVW/PVP and 4.0 in PVE) to make up for cast time and 400 range
• staff 2 , on 8s cooldown (0.91 coefficient in WVW and 1.25 in PVE and PVP)
• staff 3 , on 15s cooldown with 1.5 coefficient (12s in PVE with 2.5 power coefficient across 5 ticks)

Power renegade in GvG/WVW has the following ranged AOE from weapons (don't count Inspiring reinforcement "road") :

• hammer 2 (COR) which is 4s cooldown only in PVE with 1.75 coefficient , 8s in WVW with 1.15 coefficient
• hammer 3 (Phase Smash) which has a long cast time but has an evade and 1.75 coefficient / 8s cooldown in PVE and 1.2 coefficient , 12s  cooldown in WVW
• shortbow 2 , 3 target with 3s cooldown and projectile with 1.2 coefficient + bleeding
• shortbow 3 (Sevenshot) , traited for piercing is projectile with 2.17 coefficient but in PVP it has 1.68 coefficient plus torment --- also expect this to be nerfed with EOD launch
• shortbow 4 (Spiritcrush), which for some reason is not split between modes has 2.0 coefficient and 9 cooldown along with 4 stacks of burning on 9 cooldown --- I fully expect this to be split at EOD launch due to lack of competitive split

Power scourge in WVW / GVG has the following AOE from weaponset:

• scepter 2 which is 10s cooldown and mostly bleed/cripple , mere 0.6 power coefficient in WVW (0.8 in PVE)
• scepter 3 which is 10s cooldown with 1.16 power coefficient
• axe 3 which is 600 radius PBAOE on ~10s cooldown traited and 1.0 power coefficient

Catalyst staff is 34K + on large golem if you can get meteor shower off:

(Meteor shower accounts for 16% of DPS so realistically below 30K DPS)

32K  base ele:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCteEhrtytA
(21% of DPS comes from meteor shower meaning without meteor shower it's more akin to 25K)

Someone decided to meme on condi staff weaver if you want to see that play out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX2DwmDtP3o

 

Edited February 18, 2022 by Infusion.7149

[Jski.6180]

Well eles wepon skills are its aggressive utility the ele utility are often its def skills. It was always a odd point of balancing anet did with the ele class.

Fire 3 and earth 2 should do more condi dmg maybe a 2 fold hit a birst hit at the start and a 2ed hit after a sec delay. Both hits doing condi dmg. I do not think change fire 4 will help the class but for sure the staff needs more means of applying condi now that the ele class needs the targets to burn to do more power dmg for some odd reason at least anet could make the condi on all of the eles weapons worth something.