[PvE] Control and Burst—Staff Just Need to Fulfill Its Own Identity

[Virtuality.8351]

Edit: Thank you for all the feedbacks! Many changes has been added accordingly and will continue to be over time!

Staff has an interesting identity for Elementalist.

The weapon is densely packed with control skills, such as Gust (air #3), Static Field (air #5), Unsteady Ground (earth #4), Shock Wave (earth #5) and Frozen Ground (water #4), providing excellent area denial potential. On top of that, it also provides means to disengage with Burning Retreat (fire #4) and Windborne Speed (air #4).

And at last, you have a ton of ground-targeted AoE skills.

One could therefore easily imagine how the weapon is suppose to work:

1. Maintain a safe distance from your foes.
2. Control your foes.
3. Burst down your foes with AoE while they are controlled and unable to move.
4. Repeat.

The problem is that, there's just not much burst potential at all.

• We have only one burst damage skill (#2) for each attunement.
  And non of them are significantly better than auto-lobbing Fireballs in Fire, which has a 1.4 power coefficient.
• Meteor Shower is unimpactful.
  While supposed to be the most destructive skill for this weapon, in practice, the 180-radius impact areas spread across a 360 radius ring means unbearably inconsistent damage output against foes with small hitboxes.

And then you have defiant foes and all the mobility creeps introduced with each expansion, both heavily restrict the usefulness of your control skills.

The design of the weapon is thus largely obsolete nowadays.

So, here I'd like to propose some changes that could be easily implemented to address the issue, at least partially.

• Enhance damage against controlled, movement-impaired or defiant foes.
  All #2 skills (Lava Font, Lightning Surge, Eruption, Ice Spike) deals 1.5x damage against controlled, movement-impaired or defiant targets.
  Reduce cast time of the last 3 above, so that they can consistently exploit on controlled foes.
  Reduce the delay of Eruption to 1.5 s.
  Movement-impairment includes crippling, chill and immobilization.
  Reduce the recharge time of the following skills to 12s to 16 s in PvE only: Gust (air #3), Static Field (air #5), Unsteady Ground (earth #4), Shock Wave (earth #5) and Frozen Ground (water #4).
• Enhance survivability against defiant foes.
  Eruption (earth #2) grants you Protection/Barrier upon hitting a controlled, movement-impaired or defiant foe.
• Enhance all #1 skills
  Projectile speed of all #1 skills are increased.
  Change Chain Lightning (air) to how Mirage's Split Surge functions to better mirror the lightening arc and to deal better damage against multiple foes, and increase its power coefficient to do better against single target.
• Enhance Unsteady Ground and Static Field
  Allow these skills to consistently control stationary targets if placed right on top of them.
• Make Meteor Shower more consistent against small hitbox foes/single target and burst better.
  Meteor Shower knocks down enemies for 1 s in PvE only, as it used to during beta.
  Reduce the number of impacts from 24 to 18.
  Reduce the duration from 9 s to 6 s.
  Increase power coefficient from 1.6 to 2.1.
  Increase the number of target from 3 to 5 in PvE only.
  Increase the impact radius from 180 to 240 and bring back the good old big meteor drop animation.
  Reduce skill radius from 360 to 300.

This way you can actually exploit on all the control skills effectively during their time frame, and on top of that, rewards switching between attunements instead of camping fire to lob fireballs.

This will also make pDPS much more effective on staff. (Currently only cDPS variation works.)

Edited March 30, 2023 by Virtuality.8351
Added "movement-impaired" condition to #2 skills as Noodle Ant suggested. Added changed to skill #1 as MarzAttakz, Infusion and Noodle Ant suggested. Various changes after Infusion's feedback.

[MarzAttakz.9608]

If you're gonna do that to Meteor Shower I'd like a reduced cast time too. And 5 targets in WvW please.

Static Field control on placement would be awesome. Earth 5 travelling faster would be awesome.

Damage boost to #2's on control or disable - drooling. NGL.

Then that only leaves the kitten poor cast and projectile speeds for all #1's to deal with. PS Anet - it's 2023, not 2012 anymore...

[Infusion.7149]

All the skills are either delayed or DoT. I would not call Ice Spike, Eruption, or Lava font "burst". The only thing remotely burst is Lightning Surge which could probably have its competitive mode recharge merged to PvE and that has 1s cast time. Blind isn't that amazing in PvE when things have defiance bars: aegis is generally superior.

The best change that can happen for PvE is if meteor shower was able to be cast while moving and hit the single target if only one target is present. For people that want to actually swap to air attunement then air needs to do more autoattack DPS against single targets. The fastest way to change it is to speed up projectile speed.

As far as CC goes, static field doesn't do proper defiance bar damage and neither does unsteady ground.

You state cDPS works so I am assuming this is PVE related. Burning was not added in WVW/PVP.

Edited March 25, 2023 by Infusion.7149

[Noodle Ant.1605]

i dont think that staff wants power damage buffs (passable) as much as it wants a rework in how it delivers its damage. a lot of it ends up coming from lava font, a smallish static aoe that also locks the ele to camping fire (or weaver) so that it can be pressed off cd. another part is just how sluggish the weapon is and how theres significant windup for any damage skill: fireballs 1.4s cast time which cancels out its 1.4 coeff, lava font not having an initial tick, meteor shower with its 13s investment, etc.

im not sure if the controlled/defiant foes bonus would work well for staff. i see it as mainly a pvp-to-pve conversion tool to make stunlock heavy weapons relevant, and for ele staff (more disruptive than stunlock) it would only make it more lopsided towards defiant bosses/instanced encounters vs general use. a different type of bonus, like the ones fire grab/cauterising strike/water trident use might be more preferable (maybe +x% on weakened/vulnerable/movement impaired/per vuln stack instead)

then chain lightning (air auto) probably needs to lose its ability to bounce back to the intial target, so that it can be buffed to match fireball/stoning and might be worthwhile using against anything other than exactly 2 targets

[Virtuality.8351]

On 3/25/2023 at 7:33 PM, MarzAttakz.9608 said:

If you're gonna do that to Meteor Shower I'd like a reduced cast time too. And 5 targets in WvW please.

Then that only leaves the kitten poor cast and projectile speeds for all #1's to deal with. PS Anet - it's 2023, not 2012 anymore...

Glad you like the idea! I am a bit concerned bout 5 target cap in WvW though, but since I've long stopped playing in this game mode, I could very well be wrong here.

Definitely agree that projectile speed of all #1 skills could use a buff. I have updated the post.

On 3/26/2023 at 2:21 AM, Infusion.7149 said:

All the skills are either delayed or DoT. I would not call Ice Spike, Eruption, or Lava font "burst".

...if meteor shower was able to be cast while moving and hit the single target if only one target is present.

Yeah, actually that's the point. Staff desperately needs to be able to burst well, just in order to exploit all the control skills pack in itself.

I am not so sure about the 'casting while moving' part. Some reduction in the cast time would most likely suffice. And I agree that the skill should hit single target more consistently, hence the increase of impact radius of individual meteors and reduction in overall skill radius, with the latter limiting impact spread, as proposed in the original post.

On 3/26/2023 at 9:52 AM, Noodle Ant.1605 said:

i dont think that staff wants power damage buffs (passable) as much as it wants a rework in how it delivers its damage.

...like the ones fire grab/cauterising strike/water trident use might be more preferable (maybe +x% on weakened/vulnerable/movement impaired/per vuln stack instead)

I agree with you on this one! Staff skills really need to be reworked to reflect the environment we are now in, and a power damage buff, as I proposed here, would only serve as a temporary fix at best. Still, a temporary fix is still better than nothing.

I have also added a new condition to the 1.5 damage bonus in the post. Now the proposal reads as the following:

All #2 skills (Lava Font, Lightning Surge, Eruption, Ice Spike) deals 1.5x damage against controlled, movement-impaired or defiant targets.

Regarding the air auto skills, I would suggest the developer remove the bouncing part and instead implement something similar to Mirage's Split Surge to better mirror the lightening arc. I've also updated this part to the post:

Enhance all #1 skills
Projectile speed of all #1 skills are increased.
Change Chain Lightning (air) to how Mirage's Split Surge functions to better mirror the lightening arc and to deal better damage against multiple foes, and increase its power coefficient to do better against single target.

Edited March 27, 2023 by Virtuality.8351

[Infusion.7149]

@Virtuality.8351 The problem is if a target has a breakbar all the control skills are moot as they become essentially breakbar skills. This is especially true on staff since immob is a soft CC in the sense of breakbars, static field doesn't work on a stationary target whatsoever, and chill is a soft CC on Frozen Ground. Designing staff around a controlled foe when PvE targets and WVW/PVP targets cannot be controlled with one CC (due to stability having ICD 0.75s) is a bad idea. The skills that have delayed response are 6s cooldowns or less, while even if you use every control skill you would not remotely match that.

[Virtuality.8351]

On 3/28/2023 at 2:21 AM, Infusion.7149 said:

Designing staff around a controlled foe when PvE targets and WVW/PVP targets cannot be controlled with one CC (due to stability having ICD 0.75s) is a bad idea.

The point to design around control effect is to retain its current usefulness in PvP setting, and to provide a solution that is relatively easy for the developers to implement instead of a complete overhaul—which might just be to costly for the studio. It is a compromise that I do feel ambivalent about though.

Yes, one can bypass control effects with Stability, Stun Break and or even Teleport (as I mentioned—the mobility-creep), but then at the same time one can only have so much of those that control skills remain an indispensable tool to peel for allies for Staff Support Tempest in sPvP.

When it comes to WvW, while Firebrand and Herald provide an abundance of Stability,  you also face boon corruption by Scourge. Coordinated with Shades, you could still find some lockdown potential with Static Field or Unsteady Ground.

The biggest problem is the defiant foes in PvE—there's just no way around that.

I earlier proposed to treat defiant foes the same as controlled foes, just like how Untamed does. At least the damage bonus would be applicable.

Still, a defiant foe can not be locked down with control skills, making Elementalist much more vulnerable. To actually make control effect a practical mean to actively defend yourself, the best approach I can think of is to grant boons upon successfully chaining skills. For example:

• Eruption (earth #2) grants you Protection boon upon hitting a controlled, movement-impaired or defiant foe. 

On 3/28/2023 at 2:21 AM, Infusion.7149 said:

This is especially true on staff since immob is a soft CC in the sense of breakbars, static field doesn't work on a stationary target whatsoever, and chill is a soft CC on Frozen Ground...The skills that have delayed response are 6s cooldowns or less, while even if you use every control skill you would not remotely match that.

Hence several changes I previously added to my post:

• Shortened delay of #2 skills.
• Bonus damage against movement-impaired foes as well as controlled or defiant ones.
• Allow these skills to consistently control stationary targets if placed right on top of them.

And maybe we could also reduce the recharge of control/movement-impairing skills of Staff in PvE only, and add more source of control/movement-impairment.

• Meteor Shower knocks down enemies for 1 s in PvE only, as it used to during beta.
• Reduce the recharge time of the following skills to 12s to 16 s in PvE only: Gust (air #3), Static Field (air #5), Unsteady Ground (earth #4), Shock Wave (earth #5) and Frozen Ground (water #4).

Overall, still not better than what a complete rework could be, but still, I think we are making some progress?

Anyway, thank you for the feedback—always great food for thought!

Edited March 30, 2023 by Virtuality.8351