I don't understand Staff and Conjures on Elementalist

[SponTen.1267]

Apologies if this has been answered; please let me know if there are threads/posts on this.

But... what exactly are Staff and Conjures supposed to be for on Elementalists in PvE? Is ANet happy with their current states?

It's definitely not damage. All other weapons, both Core and Elite, offer significantly more dps. It's not like 20%, 30%, even 50%... but closer to 100% more than Staff. Conjures can have some reasonable dps output, but the 30 second time limit + 30-60 second cooldown after that, without being able to switch to and from them, kinda makes them very niche.

Staff has some reasonable cc and utility spread throughout the 4 Attunements. The idea of comboing things like Static Field + Lava Font/Meteor Shower at 1200 range seems really cool. You have the option for Knockback with Gust and Unsteady Ground to keep enemies at bay, with Burning Retreat if they get close. There's some reasonably good healing in Water, though Geyser and Healing Rain have pretty high cooldowns. Throw in some of the options with Conjures and there are just so many options and so much potential.

It all seems like it syncs quite well together until you actually try to make use of it all. The skill ceiling is high, which is fine, but Staff just doesn't have the dps to really do anything even if you play it well. While it's fun for a while seeing how much you can cc, how much aoe you can hit with Meteor Shower, how many combo fields and finishers you have, and actually playing an Elementalist at a decent range... by the time you've done the hand acrobatics to pull everything off, basically any other set of weapon skills would've defeated the mobs you're fighting long ago. You can't even benefit from a lot of the combos anyway because you're at long range. So either you use the combos on yourself, or the enemy... or you go into melee range to hit both, but then you might as well use another weapon.

I don't... get it? Elementalists have the lowest Defence and Health of all classes. The 1200 range of Staff doesn't make up for the dps it's sorely lacking, and Conjures can be so much fun until they suddenly run out and you're stuck without them for a pretty huge cooldown. Yes I'm definitely not as good with them as I could be, but surely ANet is either looking into how they can be improved, or there is some secret sauce to how they are now that I'm missing?

Edited April 7, 2022 by SponTen.1267
Clarified PvE, not PvP

[Puck.3697]

Staff was susposed to be a hybrid weapon but now only really used as a support weapon on tempest in PvE content. It lacks modernisation to rly fundamentally work it's also swallowed so many damage nerfs it's not all the viable anymore.

Conjures were suspose to be elementalists answer to a lack of weapon swap to ensure you wouldn't be completely cut off from access to melee / ranged options. But was over nerfed over time and rendered worthless. 

 

[Downstate.4697]

I have used staff on my support tempest in pvp for over 100 games this season.  Its a great utility weapon, but the damage does feel weak

[SexyMofo.8923]

A couple of years too late. 

[Jski.6180]

Staff is an field combo wepon sadly fields and combos are just weaker and harder version of support skills after HoT added in an 3 class system.

Conjures are throw away effects that give very weak buffs at the closet of losing your atument and wepon of chose. If some one else wants the effect they can pick it up but they too giving up a lot to do so. The cast time / pick up time is always too long to be of real use and the skills them self are not well enofe made to be worth giving up wepon skills effects for any one.

[Fueki.4753]

Staff used to be a a fairly good ranged AoE weapon for Elementalist at launch, but then Arenanet started to nerf it into obsolescence over nine years ago. The end result is what Staff is today.

Likewise, conjured weapons used to be useful (at least some of them), but are mostly unused these days. The Frost Bow used to be a great tool to destroy the Graveling mounts in Ascalonian Catacombs, but power creep and the obsolescence of dungeons dropped this application into irrelevance. The Fiery Greatsword also saw repeated nerfs.

I believe, only the Lightning Hammer and the Magnetic Shield see some use these days.

Edited April 8, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

Elite specs were too strong against golems, so they decided to nerf core weapons and skills.

Flawless logic.

[Coldtart.4785]

Staff is in dire need of updates. Take a look at a skill like healing rain as an example. Three conditions removed over a six second period, twelve total seconds of regen applied and a 480 radius water field. Back in ye olde days just having that planet sized water field was pretty useful since a lot of people could blast it for a lot of healing but these days you have heal builds that throw out stronger heals than water field blasts with nearly every button pressed.

Conjures should really get the spirit weapon treatment I think. Just take a useful skill from each and give it ammo.

[Dadnir.5038]

Staff suffer from many things.

1. In general, the evolution of the support in the game made it's high combo potential obsolete.
2. Fire have had it's damage tuned down heavily due to abuse in the vanilla game. The diminishing return on meteor shower was the wrong solution to a true issue that left the fire skillset crippled.
3. Air skills were already weak and slow at release of the game yet have never been significantly improved. It doesn't mean that the Ar skillset wasn't useful as it can provide swiftness and CCs over an area but it always felt lacking greatly.
4. Earth skills are good yet aren't. The skillset offer CCs, bleed, blast, weakness and strike damage but none are really impactful in the current game where players will heavily specialize into either strike damage or condition damage.
5. The water set is surprisingly good as it offer one of the highest healing potential of all the weaponset in the game.

The CDs can seem long but the elementalist is designed in such a way that it want to promote attunment swaping and "long" CD are one of the tools the devs have to push players to go look into the other attunments.

 

Conjures are tools of the past to which the devs tried to add needless elements in order to catch the player's attention after they nerfed the things that made them strong. One thing is sure, the elementalist's playerbase was never truly satisfied by the conjures' design.

1. Conjure earth shield could be exceptionally good if only it worked like an engineer's kit. However, the way conjuring a weapon work make it cumbersome to use and the CD to get it back is just aweful.
2. Conjure lightning hammer is just like Conjure earth shield. on top of that, the low ferocity bonus compared to other conjured weapon bonus always bothered me.
3. Conjure frostbow once was the very best dps tool of the elementalist. Now it's a crippled wannabe support weapon with some frost arrow stacking nonsense and an expertise bonus. There is not enven an ounce of coherence left in this conjure skillset.
4. Conjure fiery axe is probably the hardest, least intuitive and least rewarding conjure skillset. The only thing it got for it is good stat boost (even if you can't really exploit them). Prejudices apart, the intended gameplay for this skillset is ambitious but suffer from some fatal incoherences.
5. Conjure fiery Greatsword is a nice skillset that would be awesome if it worked like engineer's kits. The radius on skill#2 is a bit short and skill#5 suffer from the fact that it does have diminishing return thought but the mobility it offer can be lifesaving.

Edited April 9, 2022 by Dadnir.5038

[Junkpile.7439]

Core staff ele is good at wvw because nobody care about you. You can freecast meteor shower and nobody try to kill you. Tried to staff catalyst and half of zerg tried to kill me whole time.

[Xaylin.1860]

3 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Conjures are tools of the past to which the devs tried to add needless elements in order to catch the player's attention after they nerfed the things that made them strong. One thing is sure, the elementalist's playerbase was never truly satisfied by the conjures' design.

I think Conjures would easily see way more play if they synergized with the corresponding Attunement properly (even if that means you can't cheese damage modifiers anymore) and had a significantly lower cooldown (like a weaponswap) even if it means losing the second weapon. 

 

I don't think that kit-style-swaps will ever happen for core Elementalist.

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 hour ago, Xaylin.1860 said:

I think Conjures would easily see way more play if they synergized with the corresponding Attunement properly (even if that means you can't cheese damage modifiers anymore) and had a significantly lower cooldown (like a weaponswap) even if it means losing the second weapon. 

 

I don't think that kit-style-swaps will ever happen for core Elementalist.

A normal swap CD would be fine and obviously some reworking of individual skills and their cooldowns to go along with that adjustment.  They need to start with the idea that at least some of these weapons should act as compensation for the inherent drawbacks of lacking a weapon swap.  This means at a minimum we need at least 1 solid ranged DPS and 1 solid melee DPS weapon appropriate to both condi and power builds and worth taking up a utility slot and rotating into in place of the standard skillset.

It's okay to have strong niche weapons as well like earth shield that brings a great defensive kit to the table, but something as useless as frostbow simply needs to be reworked.

[Infinity.2876]

There could be a new skill some thing like guardian's renewed focus which resets the cool down on all conjured weapons

[Dadnir.5038]

3 hours ago, Xaylin.1860 said:

I don't think that kit-style-swaps will ever happen for core Elementalist.

Still, one can dream...

That said, while I say that it would be great if they worked like an engineer kit, I also point out that some of the weapons cruelly lack coherence while other need QoL and the shared weapon thingy is more of a bother than anything.

- Frostbow is neither a "healing" weapon nor a "condi weapon". If they could drop the healing thingy on the AA and replace the "increase HP" bonus, it would have a good foundation for the Ice themed dps weapon that many would be happy to see after the 10 frustrating year of "water is for healing" that GW2 force onto this element.

- Fiery axe is the worst weaponset to use of all this game and it's mainly due to it's AA somehow being ranged in a skillset designed for melee. Just give the elementalist a fiery axe that feel like warrior's axe. I want to feel like a whirlwind of fire not like someone that hop everywhere looking like he is burning his own feets.

- Lightning hammer need a buff to the pathetic 75 extra ferocity when every other bonus are at 180 and above and a change of fonctionality to invoking lightning (which is crippled by the diminishing return per hit).

- Earth shield, like I said, would be somewhat ok if it work like an engineer kit. Because that's basically it's level of power. If it's gonna have a 60s CD then it would deserve to be quite a bit stronger than it is right now.

- Fiery greatsword is a good mid range weapon but the CD of the conjure is simply to high for what it allow the player to do and the only thing that justify this CD is the "shared weapon" that very few people want or even make use of nowadays.

[Eaglebach.7593]

Don’t bother to understand them. Those are overly nerfed and only show up in trash builds. Either play another class entirely or practice getting 4 orbs as catalyst 

[SponTen.1267]

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

It's quite sad to see a lot of "old" content just go to waste. One of the big reasons I got into GW2 was because of ANet's design philosophy that things won't be "phased out" like they are in other MMOs, such as WoW. And sure, it's not like Staff or Conjures (among many other things) are completely useless I guess...

But is there any chance ANet is working on some balance changes for older weapons and skills? Or are they looking to reduce the power of the really over-performing ones, to sort of bring everything more in line? I know there are Elite specs like Catalyst and Untamed that need to be looked at, but there's also content that's existed for many years that's kind of been forgotten. People are already theorising about the next expac's ranged weapon for Ele... yet we already have several in the form of Staff and Conjures; why not just buff them?

[Opopanax.1803]

32 minutes ago, SponTen.1267 said:

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

It's quite sad to see a lot of "old" content just go to waste. One of the big reasons I got into GW2 was because of ANet's design philosophy that things won't be "phased out" like they are in other MMOs, such as WoW. And sure, it's not like Staff or Conjures (among many other things) are completely useless I guess...

But is there any chance ANet is working on some balance changes for older weapons and skills? Or are they looking to reduce the power of the really over-performing ones, to sort of bring everything more in line? I know there are Elite specs like Catalyst and Untamed that need to be looked at, but there's also content that's existed for many years that's kind of been forgotten. People are already theorising about the next expac's ranged weapon for Ele... yet we already have several in the form of Staff and Conjures; why not just buff them?

I think they are working on a skill update patch for May... but I wouldnt get too excited.  Most of the times these are tooltip updates with one or two skills addressed.  Keep your expectations low...

[bluberblasen.9684]

Most elem skills are overnerfed.

Fire great sword was the best damage tool on the game, you could abuse it to deal 100 times the damage it was intended.

 

Frost bow 4 was to high damage you could kill all pillars alone in the dungeons ( was nerfed 2014) long before raids were added to the game.

Staff was the zerg bomb in wvw, back in the old days we used 10 or more staff elem to kill the "melee train" long before every one played pirate ship with 10 necros ++

Dagger skills all over nerfed in the last years (the last balanced patch reverted some of the nerfs after 8 years)

Scepter was only a 25 might generating tool, to switch back to your other weapon set. After all classes could give 25 perma might it was obsolete.

 

Elem needs more balanced patch to revert all the nerfs.

Edited April 12, 2022 by bluberblasen.9684

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

my two problems with staff:

1) the CC's are basically ground-targetted, and very easy for the enemy to avoid by not moving, or simply going around. the enemy has to choose to be CC'd by it, which defeats the purpose of CC.

2) elementalist in general has been overly limited in conditions it can throw. for example, why can't an Ele poison someone by injecting sand into their blood when they're bleeding? why can't an Ele torment their foes when they chill them? and further. there's so much of the useless CC described above on staff, that there's no room for conditions.

3) i guess i have 3: Anet originally said they designed staff as a long range support weapon, which means that elementalist doesn't have a long ranged damage weapon. (and no lava font + meteor shower don't make staff a dps weapon. if you count all 5 fire skills as decent DPS skills, then staff is 25% a DPS weapon) so, this isn't really a problem with staff per se, but with elementalist in general.

4) only because it's related, and i've probably over-said this on the forums: the master-minor traits of 3 out of the 4 elements are melee range, which are totally useless for long range targets. if they were cast on target instead of cast on the elementalist, (with water and earth acting like siphons that healed / buffed the caster) then ranged combat wouldn't feel so bad on elementalist.

Edited April 12, 2022 by Forgotten Legend.9281

[Coldtart.4785]

21 hours ago, Forgotten Legend.9281 said:

 

2) elementalist in general has been overly limited in conditions it can throw.

The unwritten rules about what boons and conditions ele can use are baffling. Between the four elements you could reasonably justify every single boon and every single condition yet it's always just might and burning, regen and chill, swiftness and vulnerability, protection and bleeding.

[Xaylin.1860]

On 4/9/2022 at 2:57 PM, AliamRationem.5172 said:

This means at a minimum we need at least 1 solid ranged DPS and 1 solid melee DPS weapon appropriate to both condi and power builds and worth taking up a utility slot and rotating into in place of the standard skillset.

It probably won't be possible to offer options for evey set up (Power vs. condi and range vs. range and support/healing vs. damage) but there certainly is room for improvement. For example, I think power melee is covered pretty well by LH and if you need more mobility you can go for GS. If you lean more towards condi, ES isn't that bad, honestly. All would be mostly fine with adjustments to CDs.

On 4/9/2022 at 2:57 PM, AliamRationem.5172 said:

It's okay to have strong niche weapons as well like earth shield that brings a great defensive kit to the table, but something as useless as frostbow simply needs to be reworked.

My issue with Frostbow is that it lacks clarity of purpose. Personally, I actually like the healing aspect, but it not being a heal I'd probably lean into damage and CC. The most random is the bleeding... The issue I see, while it's range isn't as good, this kind of overlaps with Fiery GS (ranged damage). So CC with support might actually be the way to go for Frostbow.

 

I think the Axe is the worst by far. But if it became melee condi as Dadnir suggest, we would kinda lack a ranged condition option.

 

On 4/12/2022 at 6:42 AM, SponTen.1267 said:

But is there any chance ANet is working on some balance changes for older weapons and skills?

There is a chance and they done it in the past. But basically general reworks have been scarce since HoT. I won't hold my breath until they actually announce it because it is a big financial commitment. Players often underestimate how much work goes into it which otherwise could be directed into other tasks that earn (more) money. 

 

On 4/12/2022 at 11:34 AM, Forgotten Legend.9281 said:

1) the CC's are basically ground-targetted, and very easy for the enemy to avoid by not moving, or simply going around. the enemy has to choose to be CC'd by it, which defeats the purpose of CC.

Not 100% true imho. It is right that Elementalist has fewer "direct" CCs when compared to, for example, Thief or Mesmer. But I think it is important to realize differences in how CC skills are supposed to be used. Thief probably has the broadest spectrum but while many are quickly cast, they usually don't last long. Meaning, they are supposed to be used to interrupt your enemies rather than shutting them down. Elementalist CC is more focussed on controlling and area. This is also So even if people are not interrupted because they avoid those skills, they still served a purpose as long as you blocked of their way. This is also displayed by traits. Elementalist CC traits are eadier to make use of because they are "on CC". Thieves and Mesmers got plenty "on Interrupt" traits which is way harder to achieve on purpose (by coincidence in large fights is a different topic). Additional differences are that Mesmers mostly focus on Dazes and Stun that don't move their target around while Elementalists, Warriors and Engineers got way more CC that control the movement of their targets.

 

So I disagree on "defeat their purpose" when it comes to Elementalist CC. They very much successfully do what they are supposed to.

On 4/12/2022 at 11:34 AM, Forgotten Legend.9281 said:

4) only because it's related, and i've probably over-said this on the forums: the master-minor traits of 3 out of the 4 elements are melee range, which are totally useless for long range targets. if they were cast on target instead of cast on the elementalist, (with water and earth acting like siphons that healed / buffed the caster) then ranged combat wouldn't feel so bad on 

Highly debatable. I don't like it when skills or spells are classified based on their range without context. The only pure melee trait is in Earth. Fire can be traited to cleanse conditions. Water and Arcane very much work at range because they are defensive. This is exactly one of those cases where solely looking at the range is highly misleading.

 

On 4/13/2022 at 8:38 AM, Coldtart.4785 said:

The unwritten rules about what boons and conditions ele can use are baffling. Between the four elements you could reasonably justify every single boon and every single condition yet it's always just might and burning, regen and chill, swiftness and vulnerability, protection and bleeding.

That's hardly an Elementalist thing. There are common "pairs" when it comes to conditions and boon which are somewhat displayed by what those turn into when converted. Regardless, in the end Water being associated with Chill and Regen just makes common sense which means the game is more intuitive. Fire, Water, Lighthning/Electricity and Earth are mostly linked to certain effects across all classes. 

[AliamRationem.5172]

43 minutes ago, Xaylin.1860 said:

It probably won't be possible to offer options for evey set up (Power vs. condi and range vs. range and support/healing vs. damage) but there certainly is room for improvement. For example, I think power melee is covered pretty well by LH and if you need more mobility you can go for GS. If you lean more towards condi, ES isn't that bad, honestly. All would be mostly fine with adjustments to CDs.

My issue with Frostbow is that it lacks clarity of purpose. Personally, I actually like the healing aspect, but it not being a heal I'd probably lean into damage and CC. The most random is the bleeding... The issue I see, while it's range isn't as good, this kind of overlaps with Fiery GS (ranged damage). So CC with support might actually be the way to go for Frostbow.

 

I think the Axe is the worst by far. But if it became melee condi as Dadnir suggest, we would kinda lack a ranged condition option.

 

There is a chance and they done it in the past. But basically general reworks have been scarce since HoT. I won't hold my breath until they actually announce it because it is a big financial commitment. Players often underestimate how much work goes into it which otherwise could be directed into other tasks that earn (more) money. 

 

Not 100% true imho. It is right that Elementalist has fewer "direct" CCs when compared to, for example, Thief or Mesmer. But I think it is important to realize differences in how CC skills are supposed to be used. Thief probably has the broadest spectrum but while many are quickly cast, they usually don't last long. Meaning, they are supposed to be used to interrupt your enemies rather than shutting them down. Elementalist CC is more focussed on controlling and area. This is also So even if people are not interrupted because they avoid those skills, they still served a purpose as long as you blocked of their way. This is also displayed by traits. Elementalist CC traits are eadier to make use of because they are "on CC". Thieves and Mesmers got plenty "on Interrupt" traits which is way harder to achieve on purpose (by coincidence in large fights is a different topic). Additional differences are that Mesmers mostly focus on Dazes and Stun that don't move their target around while Elementalists, Warriors and Engineers got way more CC that control the movement of their targets.

 

So I disagree on "defeat their purpose" when it comes to Elementalist CC. They very much successfully do what they are supposed to.

Highly debatable. I don't like it when skills or spells are classified based on their range without context. The only pure melee trait is in Earth. Fire can be traited to cleanse conditions. Water and Arcane very much work at range because they are defensive. This is exactly one of those cases where solely looking at the range is highly misleading.

 

That's hardly an Elementalist thing. There are common "pairs" when it comes to conditions and boon which are somewhat displayed by what those turn into when converted. Regardless, in the end Water being associated with Chill and Regen just makes common sense which means the game is more intuitive. Fire, Water, Lighthning/Electricity and Earth are mostly linked to certain effects across all classes. 

They already said they will be going back and revamping weapons one at a time with a focus on updating underutilized sets.  While I expect that refers to actual weapon sets rather than conjures, there's no reason they need to limit themselves and conjure weapons are an extremely outdated group of skills that could really benefit a class that has been bottom of the barrel for years.

It's time for elementalist to get some love and conjure weapons are one area that needs more than most.

[Xaylin.1860]

1 hour ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

They already said they will be going back and revamping weapons one at a time with a focus on updating underutilized sets.

They did but I don't want to get to excited before seeing what they do with Spirits and Banners. To get a feeling on how far they are willing to go. 

[Bunny.9834]

Staff and core ele has been stuck in 2012. ANET really doesnt want you to have big DPS as a range caster because the current meta revolves around “stacking.” 

Core ele needs a major overhaul to give it some kind of benefit over e-specs. 

Idk, this is a crazy idea but give core Ele the ability to trait ALL 4 Elements. If you pick Arcane, you automatically can only have 3 trait lines. I know crazy idea, but right now every e-spec has no real trade-off. 

 

[Bunny.9834]

As for Conjures. 

Lightning Hammer and FGS are still part of a high DPS rotation. 

Earth Shield is used by a lot of Ele roamers in WvW cause of the insane defensive capabilities. (They should make is a stun break tbh). 

The other two conjures are pretty much useless unless you wanna use it for RP.