Janthir Wilds Spear Beta Event Feedback: Elementalist

[Zack.1720]

I can't help but be a bit put off by the fact that the final etch skills aren't unique past volcano. Especially for what feel like are supposed to be the big buttons of each element, Volcano out performs the others in terms of fantasy fulfillment. Wave could match water, and a stormy gust can make sense for lightning but earth feels weird and a lightning storm seems like it'd be more fitting than the gust. Plus the duration of the time you have to cast the spells in each etch, while doable, feels very short.

[Batalix.2873]

Haboob is effectively just a windstorm in the dusty desert, so I'm not sure why it gets "earthquake/tectonic upheaval" effects when charged? It's a bit bizarre as someone who has actually experienced haboobs.

If only to add a little variety to the completed version of spells, three of which are just line attacks, I think Haboob would be better as a circle AoE, maybe centered on the player and pushing outward in all directions?

EDIT: actually, in the same vein, Jokulhaup could be a cone that fans out. Seems like it would make sense for a "healy" projectile.

Edited Friday at 02:22 AM by Batalix.2873

[OddFinrir.6801]

In PvP the damage is fine, but like everyone says, the time on skill 5 is too short and the slightest thing can make it worthless. It is completely useless like staff for a damage dealer for the same reason though; teleport spam of other classes but that's a whole other discussion to be had with the devs.

All the damage seems to be on fire for some reason, to the point it seems like it's over compensating? I can wack someone 10k and then 7k again with: 3 > 4 > 2.

Air 2 is just DoT because it casts an effect, so it doesn't match with the rest of the skills and might be an oversight. Air 3 also makes no sense because traits like that don't work unless you can keep activating it periodically with Valkyrie gear. Right now it's only good to use right before Air 5 as insurance and as a quick superspeed.

Water 2 doesn't do enough damage and is maybe 33% better than the other auto attacks, so it needs a damage increase. Water 3 makes no sense as well since it pushes you out of the circle and it's hard to not hit it. It's also close range, but doesn't really dash that far.

The weaver skills are obviously filler skills and aren't well thought out. They don't really do anything and arguably make it worse to play. Tempest and catalyst don't really synergize with it. Fire | Water | Air seems to be about the only traits to take to do what the weapon was intended for, so it might be a goal to at least try to get weaver to work well with the weapon since it's mechanics aren't locked to close range, but if core is working just fine I don't see the point unless you make it more focused on not using etchings.

[HotDelirium.7984]

I love the concept of skill 1 to 4.

The etching of skill 5 needs to be a bit longer for the upgraded attack OR the window for using the attack following after the requirement is made. Trying to do ALL within a 5 second window is rough and I'm speeding through it and not exactly enjoying the flow. The etching might need to be less intense since the visual covers everything ground related especially from bosses I think.

I think for fire and earth not letting the auto trigger the enhanced effect would be best since the majority of the time it will.

Having the earth, wind and water do similar rushing attack isn't super great but the haboob and wind especially look unremarkable. I think all 3 skills should be as wide as the etching.

Edited Friday at 12:33 AM by HotDelirium.7984

[Doggie.3184]

I hate single target ranged AAs. 

I can live with it for Thief and Ranger cuz they're mainly melee weapons but not for Ele.

[wolfer.7945]

All the abilities feel... week? for how much of a show they have.
Skill 5 is too short. completing all three casts should give like 3 more seconds to aim and cast.
It does feel smooth but lacking punch.  I get its range, but other range options feel like they do more damage.

[Jeyzer.1605]

Spear Air 2 does not crit, seems VERY strange considering that Air is all about crits, and that Air 3 ensure the next spell crits. 

 

Also, why does fire have 0 fire field for Persisting Flames? In PvP, Pyromancer's Puissance is useless since spear is a ranged weapon, and Blinding Ashes is very underwhelming. Fire has no good grandmaster trait for spear, which is very odd for a weapon that is designed to tech into fire / power.

Edited Friday at 12:53 AM by Jeyzer.1605

[crosknight.3041]

only had about half an hour to play the beta so far.
main issues i wanna point out is the etchings are way to short of a duration, a 2.5s-5s increase would be nice. water spear 3 evade is pretty long, good for mobility but it takes you out of your etching touching back to my first point, you need to be in your etching to charge it. biggest issue is the VFX on the etching completely covering enemy aoe vfx.

[OTGBionicArm.2417]

I think the animation work is top tier on the Ele spear. The skills themselves are fun and seem rewarding, especially with Weaver. The etching mechanic is great, but I agree with others that the time to maximize it is too low. I kept seeing it disappear before I cast the number of spells it wanted. I also feel the particles for the 5 skills for each element are a little *too* distracting for how massive they are.

[Minax.3284]

I'm echoing the sentiment that it feels weird to have no cleave and a 1 target cap on auto-attacks for a weapon that is designed as a "glass cannon DPS option". Fire or Earth could have a little blast area, and lightning could maybe zap between different enemies (like the AA on revenant's shortbow). 

The numbers on Etchings need a big look to be worth going through the hassle of utilising the mechanic when the payoff is barely any bigger than a couple auto attacks. Love the animations on the skill but there has to be a way to prevent them from destroying readability on mechanics. 

Spear needs bigger numbers in general if it's supposed to be this "glass cannon DPS + CC weapon". We have other weapons currently that provide both better damage AND more defensive options than the spear, so it's kind of failing to fill the niche it was designed to excel at. 

Other than that, I really enjoy spear on elementalist visually. With some tweaks, ironing out some bugs and a little numbers tuning, I'm hoping we'll get some good mileage out of it!

Edited Friday at 01:51 AM by Minax.3284

[Zinnia.1842]

Feedback upon testing Elementalist spear skills:

#5 Ability
- Circle size too large; prefer size halved or smaller.
- Remove rocks/ice that protrude when empowered.
- Etching ground effects overpower visibility of character and mobs.
- Etching color issues (too dark/bright).
- Immersion broken in tunnels/caves (walls painted).
- Character visibility issue.
- Image references: https://imgur.com/59VmXXV  https://imgur.com/Nj0g7QS

#2 Fulgor Lightning
- Nimbus circle spins erratically when hitting objects.
- Image references: https://imgur.com/0I1nhB9 https://imgur.com/OxNrBSw  https://imgur.com/Jft7jiQ https://imgur.com/WMCqbGi  

#4 Undertow Water
- Slow down center spin animation; causes eye strain.

#1 Stone Strike and #2 Earthen Spear
- Animations too similar; lacks impact compared to other elements.

Stuttering Issue
- Character "stutters" backward when knocked by elite mob in water attunement.

Conclusion
- Appreciate art effects but concerned about connection to character and world immersion, at normal zoom of character etching takes up 50% of game screen when placed.

Edited Monday at 11:49 PM by Zinnia.1842
format/corrections

[Archwizard.1603]

First off I just like to say this weapon is very fun and some of the best weapon effects in the game. There are a few things though.

Firstly some weapon skill notes. For Water skill 3 the effect doesn't work with skill 5 to lower the cool down. Etching could use an extra second or two as it stands if we get cced even once we miss getting the 3 charges needed.

While I love the design of skill 5s these do block visibility of enemy AoE. I do have a thought I haven't seen mention yet though. Is it possible that instead the effect persisting the entire duration could the effects flare or pulse when activated, using skills to charge and then when finally charged then fade in between. This way we still get the visual effects notifying each stage of the skill but not completely blocking enemy AoE the entire duration.

Here are some of the trait that are not interacting right with weapon. Persisting Flames in Fire isn't working on skill 5 in fire nor is the extended fire field duration increase. I know the etching is part of the skill but the field could remain for the extra 2 seconds when this trait is active. Also Superior Elements trait in Weaver can't activate it's adding weakness. This is interesting as Swift Revenge trait still works to give swiftness on dual attack despite not hitting a target. Could the dual attacks have some kind of damage component so this skill can activate the weakness condition.

[Kirevey.5079]

I'll start with saying this is a WvW perspective. Given that ...

It has some potential for nice utility and CC, but at the same time I don't see it competing with staff at all. At most, I'd consider it some kind of weird long range dueling weapon lol.

* Lets start with the number 4 skills.

The mechanic of doing something when enemies are in the center of the skill are pretty much useless in a fight. Unless you are really good at precasting and guessing where your enemies are gonna be, anyone with swiftness or super speed is just gonna run right past that small ring and negate the effect. The only times it works a bit is when enemies are static, which in WvW translate to really bad players.

Compare this to the CC on staff: Unsteady Ground, Frozen Ground, Static Field, Gust, hell even Shock Wave, are way better at doing CC because they have a BIGGER are of effect.

The only solution I see for this is to get rid of the outter component of the skill and make the center component baseline, and keep all the radius the same size at 240.

* Number 2 skills.

In staff these are your bread an butter, the skills that put the most pressure in a fight and the ones you fin yourself casting the most.

For spear these are skills that just miss. A LOT. FULGOR doesn't crit, and does not apply the dot effect on downs. Blazing barrage has nice damage but a very little area of effect which again, in WvW, can be very easily dodged. Ice beam seems ok, but the radius of the beam should at least compete with the Mesmer GS beam. And lastly, Earthen Spear is so slow it won't hit anybody with a brain. For how slow it is, at least make it a knock down.

* Number 3 skills.

These is the only part I'm kind of OK with from an utility perspective. The problem is when we use Weaver.

Weaver number 3 skills on spear feel SO BAD. Compare to any other weaver number 3 skill and you can inmediatly see the problem. Where is the damage component? where is the big themeatic effect of the Ele using two elements at the same time for a really potent spell ? Is not there, all that utility, again, feels like is made for some kind of duelist, which the spear is not even good for tbh.

 * Etchings.

This is the worst part of the spear. Duration of etchings is too little given that every single thing on Ele has some kind of cast time, and once you manage to get the charged skill, you have very little time to actually use it. We don't even get the option to wait to use it. 

Next part is how the interact with Weaver. For example, I'm on Fire/Air, cast Etching: Derecho, charge the skill, swap to fire (Fire/Fire) then I can cast the charged Derecho on Fire ???? How is that supposed to work? Clearly it needs some fixing and overlook on how the interaction with Weaver should be.

Now, for every Etching:

Volcano: The area of effect of the damage part is way too small. The AoE cast ring seems big, but so far the actual dmg radius seems to be around 240 units only. It also does very little dmg for the amount of work we have to do to cast it. Also, please stop with the dmg reduction per hit on Ele. You guys already gutted Metero Shower to the ground, don't do this to us again.

Jokulhlaup: is a wave from the Ele towards the enemy. The Ele wants to be at range, for it to hit a significant amount of ppl, the Ele needs to go in a closer range, which defeat the purporse of the "1200 range" meme that Cmc kept memeing about. The wave length is also too short and won't hit any moving target in WvW in general.

Derecho: Is a decent CC skill but as it acts as proyectile, it has too much counterplay. Length of the proyectile fired again is too small. It also works on only 5 targets. Please make it hit anything on its path instead.

Haboob: Again is a wave, with a too short width, hits only 5 players and forces the Ele into closer quarters to be more effective.

---

What I'd do to make it better:

* Rework Etchings the following way:

First, rework all the etchings to be AoE skills that work like Volcano, instead of coming out from the ele on a line.

Second, Each number 5 skill starts as the Lesser version of the damage skill, and as you cast other skills, you charge the number 5 skill into the final version. The final version of the skill will be there until casted, or until we swap elements. 

This would give freedom to the player in two ways: we no longer have to stay inside the Etching to charge the spell, and we can choose when to use the skill once charged. 

To not lose all the work on the art of the skills, use the same effect that Fulgor has, and on the sky we would see the Etching art and on the bottom we would see the area of effect like Volcano.

* Put some love into the number 2 skills:

Blazing Barrage could leave a small fire field in a hit success.

Fulgor needs to work on downs and be able to do crit damage. Maybe reduce crit chance coefficient to half of the player crit chance ?

Add a hard CC component to Earthen Spear or reduce the cast time.

* Make the center mechanic of the number 4 skills baseline.

Thats it, just merge the mechanics of each skill and remove the inner radius condition.

* Rework the number 3 skills on Weaver and make them damage skills.

Give some identity to the dual skills on Weaver and let them do damage, as other weapons do. The extra effect of the skills can just come from traits.

---

Lastly I will say:

I'm very disappointed with the Ele Spear. From a fantasy perspective I feel like we could be mages that embody some elemental God and could be throwing elemental rays at people like Zeus would do, raining destruction over the battlefield. Instead I feel like a trash mage who just learnt how to do magic and struggles to master basic spells, having to cast lesser versions of everything and rely on support magic.

Please make the spear feel better and be actually useful.

 

 

[rwknoll.7824]

I wonder how much of the issues raised by players could be a matter of lack of experience so far with using the weapon versus actual issues with tuning on the spear and its power coefficients. I agree that actual sustained DPS feels lower than some other weapon sets, but I also saw a few individual hits at times that were much larger than I'm used to in some of my other setups (e.g., saw 25k on a single hit once). That kind of damage would straight up OHKO me in WvW if I don't have Protection or higher Vitality.

I also wonder if other people are forgetting that you can use utility skills as part of your rotation to build up Etchings? When I wove skills like "Feel the Burn!" and Arcane Blast into my rotation, I had no problem instantly charging a skill 5, especially since so many of the weapon skills and good utility skill options out there on a power DPS build don't have a cast time. If you do go into melee range, pulses of hits from overloads on Tempest like Overload Fire also count towards casting requirements. Essentially, anything that activates the passive effect of Signet of Restoration counts as a "cast" or action for charging Etchings.

I did find Water 3 (Ripple) to be very counterintuitive and had multiple times where I got into a groove with a rotation, only to accidentally pull myself away from the Etching while in Water because I forgot that it pulls you forward through a target even if you have a target selected and you're in melee range. One idea would be to treat the leap more like a gap closer a la Burning Speed, so if you're in close range and have a target selected, it stops once you strike the target, and then let it add some effect like Chill or Vulnerability. I would also really like to see Vulnerability somewhere on one of the Water skills in addition to the Air skills, because it really would open up options for the Water trait line using traits such as Piercing Shards and Flow like Water as an alternative to Fire.

I am slightly amused at critiques raised about the rotation being "boring" or too similar across attunements. Ele mains have been raising concerns that so many other builds have complex rotations or very high APM requirements to optimize damage, and yet here they give us parallel skill designs across the attunements -- which reduce cognitive load with remembering all the skills at your disposal and simplify rotations -- and people are now complaining that weapon skill effects are too similar! I, for one, really appreciate the simplicity of that.

I really love the animations and artistic design of the weapon. I think some of them are really evocative, and my jaw dropped the first time I saw the Etching on the demo. Kudos to the art design team for their work on making some neat looking effects. However, I can understand the issues with etchings blocking other important effects. One solution would be to make the background color more transparent or remove it, while making the glyph-like effect of the etching more prominent. For example, on "Feel the Burn!" for the Tempest utility skill, there is a red-gold effect that emanates from you but it's easy to see through it because there's no darker color underneath all of it. You could even have the various parts of the etching like the runes, the spinning circles, and so on appear as you power up the etching.

I would also like to echo requests surrounding the skill tooltips. By the final release of the expansion, I would love the tooltip to include both the lesser and the full versions of the etchings so you can see the difference between them and help you understand what you're working towards. This is especially helpful for skills like Haboob, where some of the conditions you apply are only on the full version rather than the lesser version.

I will emphasize that I really only tested the spear so far on Tempest, and I feel for Weaver players who are encountering a whole host of bugs or possible design flaws with trying to use etchings with that specialization. This weapon really highlighted how much I wish we could somehow get a trait or alternative option to ground target our overloads, because the only way to reasonably include Overload Fire/Air/Earth in a DPS rotation is to be standing in melee range, which defeats the whole purpose of having a 1200 ranged weapon.

Overall, I think this weapon has incredible potential and I'm excited to see how it looks with some extra love and polishing between now and its release. I'm really hopeful that with some tuning, it could become one of my favorite weapons on the Elementalist.

[Santo.2419]

(moved this from my response in another post, so is in the feedback)

First off, liking the weapon... I think it has potential and could really flow better. Etchings look awesome and love the thought around it all.

I would have liked there to be damage skills in the 3 skills on weaver also, which has been a fairly constant thing for weaver. 

Skill 5 feels a bit frantic and limiting, all working to getting that 5th flip off and making sure you stay in the element to be able to use it. Half the time I'm not even certain I got it to the 3rd power. (mainly in competitive scenarios, which is faster paced with pressure)

 

I wonder if getting rid of the triggering of the etchings all together would free up much of the problem in having to camp an element till 5th skill flip (or second option below).

Maybe just a 3 second charge (or keep the 5 or whatever works) up once etched and it releases the built-up skill while you can flip to other elements and start another etching building, but the main thing is that you can focus on other combo's as they charge. Could involve something else like proximity to etching to make sure it charges up also. If you reach further than a given proximity of where you laid it (maybe half the range of the flip skill?), then it fizzles out before finishing. This would really free up other skills and allow for some combinations. As far as targeting goes it could just hit current target and if not one chosen the nearest (I'm sure other skills have this sorted in the game).

For weaver (or maybe even just the weapon) I would have loved to see them of built in some weaving of all four etchings , something similar to self weave elite. Where you lay all four etching in a certain time (and all charged?) and you get an elemental weave etching combo one (this is not really a suggestion, more an 'Ooo that woulda been cool').

When I play weaver, it's all about quick twisting in and out of elements, having the etching just charge would help weaver a lot. Not having to stay in element and wait for the icon to flip so you can use the 5th skill damage will allow for a more normal weaver playstyle.

 

Second Option:

The other way is having the etching main damage skill go automatically as above, but have the 3 triggering skills be needed still to charge it.

If you have two etches up, and u use a skill then it gives a charge to both of them. This could keep the triggering part but allow for more planned combinations through layering etchings and getting enough skills to fire within time frames to have multiple etchings fire and timed for when you need them.

It's the having to be in the element to click the charged flip skill that is the problem, imo. 

anyhow, just spit balling

 

Edit* if this idea has already been said my apologies. I have not read the full feedback yet.

Edited Friday at 07:29 AM by Santo.2419

[Shaman.2034]

[PvE]

The spear has a solid foundation for something that could be great, but if it released in its current state, it would be a strictly worse version of staff in all cases. The power coefficients are too low across the board, but it needs more than massive numbers buffs. I agree with the vast majority of feedback given so far, and I doubt I can add anything new, so I'll just stress the things I personally think are the most important, or what I would personally like to see.

It's too easy to double-cast into the Lesser version of the 5th skills. I find myself accidentally queueing the Etching into the Lesser far too often. You can say skill issue, sure. I just think with how important and central these skills are, it should be very hard to accidentally waste them. My suggestions:

1. Increase the time between when the Etching is cast and when the Lesser version can be cast.
2. Make the Lesser version require 1 skill to be cast in the Etching instead of 0, and buff it accordingly.
3. Remove the Lesser version altogether. This introduces higher risk into the weapon, because if you can't charge up the Etching, you get nothing. The full versions would need to be buffed a lot to compensate (they need buffs as it is anyway).
4. Remove the entire idea of Etching and charging it up to gain access to the big spells. Make all of the 5th skills just the fully charged big spells.

All four autoattacks need piercing. They should all pierce at least 3 targets, with the water autoattack granting reduced heals on targets beyond the first. And they all need huge power coefficient buffs besides. Earth 2nd skill needs piercing as well, should be 5 targets to make it better than the autoattack.

The AoEs are too small. The radius and width of all AoE skills in the kit should be bumped up. This is especially true of the 4th skills, the bonus effects just aren't rewarding enough for how tiny of an area it is. Instead of making the bonus effects more rewarding, the entire AoE should be scaled up: the whole thing should be 360 radius, with the center radius being at least 180. The Water, Air, and Earth 5th skills are too narrow and should be made much wider. Volcano should also be 360 radius, same as Meteor Shower.

Fulgor is extremely weak for what it is. It's just a plain DoT with no fancy behavior or extra synergies or gimmicks, so it should be quite strong DPS when aligned with the prevailing balance philosophy that DoT playstyles should end up doing slightly more DPS than power/burst playstyles. A target for fully buffed PvE DPS from only refreshing Fulgor should ideally be like 8-9k, to reward you for maintaining it as part of your rotation. Currently it maxes out at like 2k DPS. My suggestions:

1. Make it able to critically strike, without nerfing its power scaling. It may still need a large power scaling buff even after this change.
2. If it can't critically strike, just massively increase the power coefficient. It would need to go up by like 400% at minimum.

Again, just buff all of the power coefficients on all of the skills by a lot. I spent a lot of time desperately trying to find any situation where spear would be at least equal to an existing power damage weapon, but it's always better to take any other weapon. Spear has the least utility of all elementalist weapons, and the highest risk because of its Etching gimmick, so it should do more damage than all other weapons in nearly all cases. This necessitates extreme power coefficient increases. Not just 20% here and there, but like literally doubling the power coefficients on all skills.

Elite spec synergy leaves a lot to be desired. But I don't think this is necessarily something that should be addressed with spear. Rather, spear is just highlighting the issues those elite specs have with ranged weapons in general. My suggestions:

1. Remove Catalyst Energy, and change nothing else about Catalyst except for the one Adept trait that gives you Energy when swapping attunements. This would enable the low-hit-rate ranged weapons to use Catalyst just as effectively as the high-hit-rate melee weapons.
2. Increase the range of Catalyst Spheres to 1200. Casting them at range already comes with a severe drawback that you can't get the boons and bonus effects of your Augment skills, so they should be able to be dropped at 1200.
3. As with Mechanist that gives the option to trait for a ranged version, Tempest should have a trait that changes Overloads to 1200 range ground-targeted spells. And they don't need to do less damage or anything funny like that, because like with Catalyst, you can't benefit from your own Overloads if you drop them at range, nor can you reposition them while channeling. Also regardless, please increase Overload Fire to 360 radius, damage and boons and all. It should not be the size of a Lava Font.
4. Weaver itself is fine, but it would be nice if the spear dual skills sent out a little damage packet, to be able to benefit from Superior Elements. Otherwise, Weaver feels pretty okay, if a bit clunky and hectic to take advantage of the attunement cooldown resets.

Edited Friday at 06:49 AM by Shaman.2034
specify gamemode

[Batalix.2873]

3 hours ago, Kirevey.5079 said:

I'll start with saying this is a WvW perspective. Given that ...

It has some potential for nice utility and CC, but at the same time I don't see it competing with staff at all. At most, I'd consider it some kind of weird long range dueling weapon lol.

* Lets start with the number 4 skills.

The mechanic of doing something when enemies are in the center of the skill are pretty much useless in a fight. Unless you are really good at precasting and guessing where your enemies are gonna be, anyone with swiftness or super speed is just gonna run right past that small ring and negate the effect. The only times it works a bit is when enemies are static, which in WvW translate to really bad players.

Compare this to the CC on staff: Unsteady Ground, Frozen Ground, Static Field, Gust, hell even Shock Wave, are way better at doing CC because they have a BIGGER are of effect.

The only solution I see for this is to get rid of the outter component of the skill and make the center component baseline, and keep all the radius the same size at 240.

* Number 2 skills.

In staff these are your bread an butter, the skills that put the most pressure in a fight and the ones you fin yourself casting the most.

For spear these are skills that just miss. A LOT. FULGOR doesn't crit, and does not apply the dot effect on downs. Blazing barrage has nice damage but a very little area of effect which again, in WvW, can be very easily dodged. Ice beam seems ok, but the radius of the beam should at least compete with the Mesmer GS beam. And lastly, Earthen Spear is so slow it won't hit anybody with a brain. For how slow it is, at least make it a knock down.

* Number 3 skills.

These is the only part I'm kind of OK with from an utility perspective. The problem is when we use Weaver.

Weaver number 3 skills on spear feel SO BAD. Compare to any other weaver number 3 skill and you can inmediatly see the problem. Where is the damage component? where is the big themeatic effect of the Ele using two elements at the same time for a really potent spell ? Is not there, all that utility, again, feels like is made for some kind of duelist, which the spear is not even good for tbh.

 * Etchings.

This is the worst part of the spear. Duration of etchings is too little given that every single thing on Ele has some kind of cast time, and once you manage to get the charged skill, you have very little time to actually use it. We don't even get the option to wait to use it. 

Next part is how the interact with Weaver. For example, I'm on Fire/Air, cast Etching: Derecho, charge the skill, swap to fire (Fire/Fire) then I can cast the charged Derecho on Fire ???? How is that supposed to work? Clearly it needs some fixing and overlook on how the interaction with Weaver should be.

Now, for every Etching:

Volcano: The area of effect of the damage part is way too small. The AoE cast ring seems big, but so far the actual dmg radius seems to be around 240 units only. It also does very little dmg for the amount of work we have to do to cast it. Also, please stop with the dmg reduction per hit on Ele. You guys already gutted Metero Shower to the ground, don't do this to us again.

Jokulhlaup: is a wave from the Ele towards the enemy. The Ele wants to be at range, for it to hit a significant amount of ppl, the Ele needs to go in a closer range, which defeat the purporse of the "1200 range" meme that Cmc kept memeing about. The wave length is also too short and won't hit any moving target in WvW in general.

Derecho: Is a decent CC skill but as it acts as proyectile, it has too much counterplay. Length of the proyectile fired again is too small. It also works on only 5 targets. Please make it hit anything on its path instead.

Haboob: Again is a wave, with a too short width, hits only 5 players and forces the Ele into closer quarters to be more effective.

---

What I'd do to make it better:

* Rework Etchings the following way:

First, rework all the etchings to be AoE skills that work like Volcano, instead of coming out from the ele on a line.

Second, Each number 5 skill starts as the Lesser version of the damage skill, and as you cast other skills, you charge the number 5 skill into the final version. The final version of the skill will be there until casted, or until we swap elements. 

This would give freedom to the player in two ways: we no longer have to stay inside the Etching to charge the spell, and we can choose when to use the skill once charged. 

To not lose all the work on the art of the skills, use the same effect that Fulgor has, and on the sky we would see the Etching art and on the bottom we would see the area of effect like Volcano.

* Put some love into the number 2 skills:

Blazing Barrage could leave a small fire field in a hit success.

Fulgor needs to work on downs and be able to do crit damage. Maybe reduce crit chance coefficient to half of the player crit chance ?

Add a hard CC component to Earthen Spear or reduce the cast time.

* Make the center mechanic of the number 4 skills baseline.

Thats it, just merge the mechanics of each skill and remove the inner radius condition.

* Rework the number 3 skills on Weaver and make them damage skills.

Give some identity to the dual skills on Weaver and let them do damage, as other weapons do. The extra effect of the skills can just come from traits.

---

Lastly I will say:

I'm very disappointed with the Ele Spear. From a fantasy perspective I feel like we could be mages that embody some elemental God and could be throwing elemental rays at people like Zeus would do, raining destruction over the battlefield. Instead I feel like a trash mage who just learnt how to do magic and struggles to master basic spells, having to cast lesser versions of everything and rely on support magic.

Please make the spear feel better and be actually useful.

 

 

Not every weapon needs to be PvP/WvW appropriate. Ele spear feels VERY open world/raid-oriented (damage tuning aside).

Also, don't remove Catalyst's energy, it's a good job fantasy concept that just needs to be made better.

 

 

Edited Friday at 06:52 AM by Batalix.2873

[Shaman.2034]

4 minutes ago, Batalix.2873 said:

Not every weapon needs to be PvP/WvW appropriate.

All weapons need to be appropriate for all game modes. This is why they do split balancing. There should be no such thing as a "PvE weapon" this, or a "PvP elite spec" that. It's not an impossible or impractical achievement, it's very doable.

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

6 minutes ago, Batalix.2873 said:

Not every weapon needs to be PvP/WvW appropriate. Ele spear feels VERY open world/raid-oriented (damage tuning aside).

Also, don't remove Catalyst's energy, it's a good job fantasy concept that just needs to be made better.

 

 

Yay, another PvE weapon right after pistol! I'm so happy for another layer of complexity for content that can be botted! Woo hoo!
I logged on other classes to see how the skills look like and I must say, I'm very impressed by double-standard here after using Guardian spear. The "Symbol of Luminance" is what Etchings should look like, no additional gymnastics to get whole effects, you just plant it and it gives you everything, what a meme...

[PrivateWilson.7142]

Having tried it a bit I'd like to bring up the following points:

• Visually the spear skills are incredible and among the most satisfying to use out of all of the Professions
• The primary feature (Etch) is great, as it gives you an internal mechanic to play with, but it does have some shortcomings
  • Most notably, the visual makes it hard to notice other area effects on the ground, such as RaidBoss AoE's
  • The window for triggering your big super spell feels too short; the idea of carving out a big domain and then building a superspell inside it is great, which makes it a shame when it's over in a few seconds
  • The final super spells could stand to be a bit more distinct from one another. Sending out a wave or dropping an explosion of elemental energy is of course functional, but one of the main things that makes the Elementalist appealing is the distinction in visuals, area-types and "purpose" that each element entails. Giving a more distinct super spell at the end of the big Etch for each element would play to that theme more, I think.
• The skills here work incredibly well for the Weaver, but I didn't have that much success with the Tempest or the Catalyst. The Tempest is very melee-oriented and this is primarily a ranged weapon, so the big Tempest feature (Overloads) is somewhat wasted. Catalyst in general is so tied up with its Hammer skills IMO that I can't really see it working as well as the Weaver. This might make spear a viable choice for Core Ele, which frankly I applaud. In general though, I think it's important to note that these skills work better with some Elite Specs than others.

Overall I wanna say that I had a lot of fun with these new skills. A lot of the spear skills for other professions feel like they're copies of one another, but for Ele I did not have this.

[Batalix.2873]

1 hour ago, TrollingDemigod.3041 said:

Yay, another PvE weapon right after pistol! I'm so happy for another layer of complexity for content that can be botted! Woo hoo!
I logged on other classes to see how the skills look like and I must say, I'm very impressed by double-standard here after using Guardian spear. The "Symbol of Luminance" is what Etchings should look like, no additional gymnastics to get whole effects, you just plant it and it gives you everything, what a meme...

Eh I do agree Ele pistol sucked, but then again SotO generally was a disappointment, weapon-wise.

In general, Ele has a hard time designing good weapons, because of how oppressive the attunement system is. I wish we could just have an espec that limits your attunement options to only one or two, which would allow for more focused kit design and less of this "oooooo NOW you're in air attunement" signalling BS.

Edited Friday at 08:24 AM by Batalix.2873

[Awn.1327]

The damage numbers on the etching skills in WvW are way too low for anything other than the volcano. Please consider tweaking the numbers on earth or air etchings.

The duration of the etching is too short for how long the cast times of the other skills are. Please either dramatically shorten the cast times (and aftercasts) of pretty much all other skills or increase the etching time by two seconds.

This is amplified in WvW where there's currently so much AoE CC spam that even the slightest interrupt will make you lose all your (significant) damage for the next 20 or so seconds. That is neither fun nor effective.

[Batalix.2873]

1 hour ago, Shaman.2034 said:

All weapons need to be appropriate for all game modes. This is why they do split balancing. There should be no such thing as a "PvE weapon" this, or a "PvP elite spec" that. It's not an impossible or impractical achievement, it's very doable.

Except it clearly isn't, because WvW pushes support into boonballs and PvP pushes every weapon/job into being speed- and DPS-forward. And that's not even addressing the effect of raids versus open world.

Simply retuning numbers does not introduce enough variety across all three game modes. There are a lot of other aspects of game design: casting time, recharge speed, range, AoE, even the general designs of the skills themselves and how the kit comes together, that do not change across game modes because in many instances they *can't* vary game mode design that much.

Not every job can do everything in every mode, at least not without reducing the game to kitt-lazy Mechanist and Virtuoso spam. It's a delusional idea, frankly.

Edited Friday at 07:58 AM by Batalix.2873

[Puinhoop.3194]

I won't complain about all the Etching, as a lot of people already had.

I just noticed 1 "bugg" or intented thing. With fire skill 2 "Blazing Barrage", if you are slightly lower or at the same level as your target, your skill does not always reach the target as it clips in terrain.

[mond.8439]

Skill-order:
Why can't the order of skills be changed for spear overall. The 4-Skills could be switched with the 3-Skills. In weaver this could lead to damage-orientated weave-skill-3s. Also the "piano-feeling" would be a little bit better because you could go: 5-2-3-4-5 instead of 5-2-4-3-5.

Radius:
Every skill should have a bigger radius for the "center radius". Why not increase the center to 240 and the overall to 360? It would help alot with aiming skills. 

DMG:
The PvE-DMG would be nice for WvW. The WvW is so undertuned. 

Fire:
I can't see anything when i use Vulcano. It should do heavy dmg up front and a minor fire-field afterwards. 

Air:
Air-2 should be a proper DMG.
You could also switch the effects of Twister and Derechio. The Etching should feel like an proper AoE-impact. Use the usal Twister and the "Minor Version" and an improved one WITH DMG for the "Full Version". If you do this, use the "full version" animation for air-4.

Earth:
The Earth-2 should pierce.