Janthir Wilds Spear Beta Event Feedback: Elementalist

[Markus.6415]

6 hours ago, SheenaMalfoy.8079 said:

There's so much trait anti-synergy I can't help but laugh. There's no damaging fire fields to trigger Persisting Flames.

That is a big misinformation that somehow spread since the spear livestream because everyone believed it. Vulcano triggers Persisting Flames. It won't be possible to have 100% uptime of course, but "no skills to trigger it" is just wrong.

 

6 hours ago, SheenaMalfoy.8079 said:

Why does Jolulhlaup, Derecho, and Haboob have a target cap of 5 but Volcano only a target cap of 3?

Huh, didn't even pay attention to that. But now I'm thinking about it... does every one of the 10 small meteors apply it's damage on the whole Volcano area, or just a smaller ring where they land? So every Meteor has the cap of 3 wich means it can definately hit more targets then 3?

 

6 hours ago, SheenaMalfoy.8079 said:

Edit: Knew I was forgetting things. Twister's visual is wayyy too short compared to the Float effect it creates.

Anet: Say no more! Float effect reduced to 1s 🙃

6 hours ago, SheenaMalfoy.8079 said:

Fulgor needs to be able to crit, this is a power weapon for crying out loud. It also needs to be able to stack, so multiple Elementalists aren't screwing each other over with this skill like the Venoms you all just fixed.

This is... can you test the things actually before complaining? It does stack if more than 1 Elementalists apply the effect. But the rest of Fulgor needs immediate help. No crit and no scaling with damage multiplyers is bad.

[MagicBot.1570]

Cumulative damage reduction for subsequent hits needs to gooooo...

This is terrible, it feels terrible, remove it forever 

[Josspai.4356]

I don't know if you guys remember but in the beta version of the Catalyst spec, Jade spheres changed when you changed attunements (so if you deployed the one with the phoenix while attuned to fire but then you changed your attunement to earth, it became the tortoise one).

It no longers works like that, but that got me thinking, perhaps we could get something like that for etchings on spears? That way we wouldn't have to choose between been locked in an attunement until fully charging the etch or losing a half-charged etching when changing attunements (this is specially a problem with weaver right now).

[Markus.6415]

1 hour ago, Josspai.4356 said:

I don't know if you guys remember but in the beta version of the Catalyst spec, Jade spheres changed when you changed attunements (so if you deployed the one with the phoenix while attuned to fire but then you changed your attunement to earth, it became the tortoise one).

It no longers works like that, but that got me thinking, perhaps we could get something like that for etchings on spears? That way we wouldn't have to choose between been locked in an attunement until fully charging the etch or losing a half-charged etching when changing attunements (this is specially a problem with weaver right now).

Weaver has a bug where it resets the etching when you dual attune (and the previous etching is still on skill 5) and you can't do the final skill. I think it will be better when it's fixed. On the other hand, sometimes you might want to dip into earth, put the etching for the pulsing stability and then swap back to a more damaging attunement and start that etching. I'd prefer it this way.

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

i forgot to mention that water is too focused on healing again.... very little damage... this is supposed to be a glass canon weapon, if i want more healing i can take tempest (water overload)  and utility skills, like water signet, lesser elemental glyph, tempest elite, .or elemental glyph elite.

PS: speaking of glyphs, where's the cooldown you took away from the trait? for OTHER utility traits where you took the cooldown buff away, you rolled the cooldown buff into the base skills, but NOT with glyphs. the cooldown was the only reason i took the trait (for more elementals), because the other buffs based on attunement are pure garbage, boring, and more of the same as all the other traits that buff based on attunement.

[Xaylin.1860]

I tested all Spears in a rather casual PvE setting. So this is more of a first impression than a thorough assessment.

The whole etching overlapping mechanic issue aside: I enjoyed the weapon, mostly on Weaver. I loved the interaction with #3. Spear has some cool skills and the Etching mechanic is probably more in line with how I wished Tempest (or Catalyst) would have been. Charging up spells a bit like Warrior Adrenaline and then unleashing powerful effects. My main critique is: #5 durations are too short. Yes, it is possible to charge them when you stick to a rotation (or sacrifice utilities). But there is close to no possibility for responsive gameplay. As soon as you press #5, you need to hit the 3 casts as fast as you can. It feels way too limiting. Also, Persisting Flames didn't appear to work for Volcano. Pitty.

In general, I wished there was an additional visual indicator when 3 charges are reached. Maybe Mantra-esque ontop of the player.

For Tempest, I wished finishing an Overload counted as 3 casts to instantly ready the etching.

[Gaiawolf.8261]

3 hours ago, Xaylin.1860 said:

For Tempest, I wished finishing an Overload counted as 3 casts to instantly ready the etching.

Oh this isa great idea! Make it happen, Anet!

[Vooksa.2941]

Finally weighing in. For starters: like almost every other spear I tried, I actually greatly enjoyed Elementalist spear as a Core Ele, having the flexibility of Air/Water/Arcane for self-sustain, boons, and vuln damage. This was, of course, largely because Elementalist spear seems violently at odds with all the things Tempest, Weaver, Catalyst, and many core traits want from a weapon, which would be a nice change of style, if Elementalist hadn't languished for a decade with very little in the way of playstyle-defining trait introductions.

As many others have said; 1) Fire etching doesn't proc [Persisting Flames], 2) There needs to be burning uptime on the weapon to maintain [Pyromancer's Training], because pDPS is still inextricably linked to condition duration, 3) [Superior Elements] doesn't inflict weakness on account of not being an attack, 4) The etchings are too short and have no bonus to finishing them if you go off-element, so longer duration and an on-completion bonus could be nice. But there are many other issues going on here.

[Persisting Flames] is only an issue because the alternatives are [Pyromancer's Puissance], which cannibalizes your might for a melee-range blast, and [Blinding Ashes] for... one blind every 8s. Yyyeah. Not only for burning, but Earth needs bleeding every hit to maintain [Serrated Stones]'s whopping +5% bonus damage, in a list that is completely devoid of any kind of pDPS bruiser trait like what Ranger got for Wilderness Survival with [Carnivore] or [Survival Instincts], which is a shame, because [Written in Stone] could be a shoe-in for the fact that this is the fifth Ele weapon with no transmute on it, or even any direct way to gain or grant an aura without using water3 to leap the fire or dark field, a leap finisher that takes you OUT of the etching most of the time. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if the water etching was an ice field, to blast or leap for an ice aura, but for some reason we needed to have a Fire, a Water, and a Lightning field, just like Catalyst does. This lack of aura generation shoots Catalyst and Tempest in the foot, who have fire fields that CAN proc [Persisting Flames], but not with full uptime on Catalyst, and only BARELY on Tempest, with no non-weapon option for Weaver at all, short of Lava Axe, of all things. Catalyst specifically has a hard time, since it has to look for sources of multi-strike to maintain energy uptime, and damaging fields isn't gonna be it, but Tempest also has to sacrifice any range advantage to furiously pirouette in melee range using Overloads.

Speaking of blind, though, spear has the 18th source of Ele blind, with no meaningful trait for it. It's also the 26th source of chill, with lots of cripple, with no meaningful trait for it or "movement impairment" benefit at large, other than a lackluster Weaver superspeed trait that competes with the [Superior Elements] trait that doesn't work. Spear has the 11th and 12th source of superspeed, which is actually on Weaver, Tempest, AND Catalyst utilities, plus a core Air trait, but the only thing that uses it are two Weaver traits where superspeed doesn't compound with swiftness, the way that Scrapper's [Object in Motion] does. Water skills still have no vuln, which feels purpose-made to give me psychic damage by now, but for a "1200-range" "glass cannon with few defensive options more comfortable at range than in the thick of combat", water has a TON of self-sustain healing, significantly more than even melee-range hammer, and trades for all of it at the cost of actual damage: Water spear is the weakest of the four elemental attunements again, because gods forbid we have real competitive water DPS with ice spears and the like.

I doubt anything is going to change dramatically in the next two months, because spear is fine, but it's JUST fine. Fidgeting with the range, the cast times, the aftercast, the damage and healing, and adding boons or conditions, really doesn't go a long way in changing how spear engages with Elementalist traits compared to other weapons, because Elementalist has been pretty limited in actual versatile methods to inflict damage for a while now. Almost every single pDPS and cDPS build has used the exact same traits for a decade (with the more passive and unengaging, the better), and without creating weapons and traits that offer OTHER ways to do huge amounts of damage, we were always going to run into this "specialization" issue, whether it was on spear, or on pistols, or on hammer.

Now, we don't have time to unpack all that, so my recommendations are limited to the following:

• Have Etchings pulse a small packet of damage and a short condition each second (For example: Weakness, on Earth). Enables Persisting Flames, and Catalyst cleave for energy, and weakness-empowered bursts on Weaver.
• Have Etchings persist for an extra 5s if they were completed, pulsing said effect, and giving time to return to the right element to cast.
• Is Weaver meant to use Etchings? If so, dual skills leave that value behind. If the only reason to quick-attune to your main element is to jump through Weave Self faster, then it sucks. Consider moving Etchings to the second skill slot if we're supposed to use them, otherwise, reevaluate what dual skills are supposed to accomplish. There's very little on spear 4-5 that I actually NEED right away.
• Dramatically increase the defiance-bar damage that spear CC does to defiant targets. I am tired of being useless with a half dozen CC skills that somehow do less than a single Guardian skill.
• Dramatically increase the damage of waterspear, nuke the healing, and make the healing power scaling be higher. If we want sustain, we should have to pay for it.
• Replace either Jokulhlaup or Water Jade Sphere with an ice field, for auras.
• Make Ripple be a ground-targeted leap, so we aren't forced to move if we don't want to. YOU KEEP PUTTING FORCED MOVEMENT ON ELE WEAPONS, STOP IT-
• If we're feeling crazy:
• 1) Give Tempests a ranged overload option
• 2) Rework Earth to have more pDPS bruiser traits
• 3) Rework Catalyst Augments to grant auras and/or work with regular combo fields instead of just jade sphere, for variable choice gameplay not reliant on [Written in Stone]
• 4) Create a trait that grants benefits against movement-impaired foes and/or a trait that triggers on application of chill
• 5) Add an Air trait that grants benefits while under superspeed that all three elite specs could actually benefit from using different weapons and utilities
• 6) Upgrade Blinding Ashes with an effect that triggers on blind, not just grants blind on burn
• 7) Grant Pyromancer's Puissance bonus outgoing damage for 10s equal to the amount of might sacrificed in the blast, so we aren't leaving Fire with less than we started with

I dunno. I could go on and on, and I want to reiterate, I LIKE the ideas behind spear. But one of the most important takeaways in the grumblings from "we're not going to make more elite specs" was the subsequent admission that "people like when we add more new ways for them to play their character". From what I've seen of the previews and playtests, almost no spear added in Janthir Wilds will seriously transform the traits we choose to change the way we play the game. The animations are new and pretty, and that's GREAT, I appreciate that, but my biggest observation of Elementalist Spear was "this can't use any of the tech we've relied on for DPS for ten years, and there are literally no alternatives, so the damage is going to feel extremely low." If we want to have new and exciting weapons that ACTUALLY feel different to play on Core, Tempest, Weaver, and Catalyst, we NEED to introduce tech that capitalizes on the ten billion different toys that Elementalist has available to it, but never finds meaningful use for.

(I'm serious guys what does Glyph of Ice Storm need to inflict chill 18 times in a single cast for)

[Josif.2015]

1. Fire
Flame Spear: no changes needed.
Blazing Barrage: no changes needed.
Seethe: no changes needed.
Meteor: reduce the damage increase from 25% to 20%, it may deal too much damage when combined with Seethe's 20% damage increase.
Etching Volcano: make it last longer.

2. Water
Restorative Spear: it's the same as the staff's auto attack, only it heals the elementalist instead of allies. Either make it so it heals allies like staff's auto attack or increase the healing to the elementalist.
Ice Beam: no changes needed.
Ripple: reduce the range from 600 to 500 or 400 so it synergizes with Etching Jokulhlaup.
Undertow: no changes needed.
Etching Jokulhlaup: make it last longer.

3. Air
Lightning Javelin: it's the same as the staff's auto attack, only it hits one target. Either make it so it hits multiple enemies like staff's auto attack or slightly increase the damage.
Fulgor: no changes needed.
Energize: no changes needed.
Twister: reduce the float duration from 3 to 2 seconds.
Etching Derecho: make it last longer.

4. Earth
Stone Strike: no changes needed.
Earthen Spear: no changes needed.
Harden: the tooltip says it's an instant cast skill, but it isn't. Either make it an instant cast skill or add the cast time in the tooltip.
Fissure: no changes needed.
Etching Haboob: make it last longer.

[Markus.6415]

14 hours ago, Vooksa.2941 said:

As many others have said; 1) Fire etching doesn't proc [Persisting Flames]

And as many others don't know... Vulcano procs Persisting Flames.

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

a more detailed explanation of my comments in previous posts:

using supplied exotic marauder gear (but with strength runes, because i had extra in the bank), and mentioning skills on which i can actually remember numbers.

A: in general, with using PvE numbers:

staff fire auto was doing about 1500 damage (strike plus burning) up to 3 targets at 1200 range; scepter fire auto was doing about 1600 damage on 3 targets, while spear fire auto was doing less than 1200 damage against 1 target, with no burning to proc minor GM fire trait. conclusion: fire auto needs to do about 2000 base damage plus 1 second burning.

all the other autoattacks in the other elements are actually lower numbers, (for the so-called glass canon weapon): at 1 target, every auto attack should hit for 2k (before crit)...

all the damaging fire skills should apply 1 second burning for fire trait synergy

water 1, 2 and 4 should only heal when blocked / CC is applied... edit: and do way more damage

water 5 feels like a missed opportunity: the flip skill could have been a multitarget tidal wave, low tier offering pushback + damage, and fully charged offering pushback + pull + damage, and would offer great synergy with Lightning Rod trait. ( potentially proccing twice per target on fully charged tidal wave) the animation would be a wave crashing on shore, and then the water returning to the sea/ elementalist caster) AS IS: it feels like a weak necro lifesteal skill... maybe a pushback when fully charged could make up for the lack of damage... edit: or seriously buff damage to be worthy of a #5 skill

the 3rd skill's buff in each attunement should NEVER apply to autoattacks

the etching flip-over skills need to have their own cooldowns once charged, to allow for actual use...

a) the etching themselves should count as fields,

b) and the other spear attack skills should act as combo finishers (this could remove some healing in the water attunement in favor of more damage, as the combos can heal allies/ self. my only concern is that since no spear skills are listed as projectiles, does projectile hate work against ele spear? if not, i'm a little apprehensive about ele spear skills being counted as projectiles, which is why i suggested using GW1's Glass Arrows style skills: if blocked it does damage through a secondary effect. but it's prolly too late to add that effect to the weapon.

I'm personally fine without any aura generation on spear as a glass canon weapon, but etching combo fields could allow more synergy with core and elite traits for those who also wish to play spear glass canon offensive boon support through combos, which many other folks would like

B: in WvW:

Autoattacks need to hit for minimum 1000 pre-crit as a single target power weapon, (needs to hit harder than ranger longbow autoattack...) needs to be dangerous for enemies to get hit by spear.

fulgor only hits for 502 a hit, over time, doesn't even crit nor does it even out-DPS any barrier. needs to hit way harder, like 2k per hit, like the beta's PvE version. (which means it should hit even harder in PvE_)

meteor needs to hit like a truck, since it's an "inner circle" skill... it needs to be more dangerous than anybody's number 2 skill... rapid fire is much more dangerous, necro spear 2 is much more dangerous. Meteor is a 4 skill, and it does less than half the damage of other classes' burst skills (warrior bursts hit me for 16k, thief rifle could 1-shot me too, other classes hit me for 9k+) Meteor only crit for 6k for me with 25 might. needs the PvE numbers in WvW, to crit for 9K-12k... or it just tickles. Again: glass canon, not wet noodle...

other players need to be afraid of ele spear, so ALL the skills need to do more damage. as a glass canon, spear ele needs to be feared more than rifle deadeye and longbow sic' em soulbeast and should make meteor shower builds seem weak...

C: one more note about etchings, assuming they're made into combo fields: too bad there's not a GM group trait-choice somewhere that can buff etchings different ways: such as 

1) etchings pulse debuffs to enemies, such as blind, weakness, slow, chill (think wards from GW1) based on attunement

2) combos in etchings apply twice (could apply more damage to projectile based spear attacks against enemies, or more support through blasting, depending on attunement)

3) etchings instantly charge their corresponding flip skills (this would really help weavers)

with the above either/or trait choice, etchings could actually help specialize the glass canon even further, into more canon or less glass

D: some traits need to be redone into ranged damage, such as sunspot (and other minor master traits) and Pyromancer's Puissance's "explosion"

E: i must admit that i didn't comment on how awesome a lot of the animations are. I'm really impressed about them, and it's part of why i'm so passionate about improving the damage of the skills, so that the threat of damage feels as good as the animations

Edited Wednesday at 09:12 PM by Forgotten Legend.9281

[Mejiora.9584]

Here are my condensed thoughts after testing the weapon over the weekend. I can only comment on the weapon from a perspective of pvp, wvw and open world, as I didn’t get to test it in instanced pve.

Overall, as an elementalist main with over 5k hours played on my toon, I LOVE the way the weapon is designed, and I love the animations. This is the playstyle I have been waiting for since forever. So firstly, thank you so much for all of your great work so far. The rest of my post may not focus so much on the positives, as I still see issues with the weapon (so-called “rough etches”) that I hope get addressed. Anyway, I have a lot of stuff written down, so here goes:

Bug: Weaver attunement swap
When fully attuned to an element with an active etching, if you swap attunement the #5 will go on cooldown (even though this shouldn’t affect your #5 skill, as this is the same skill/element as before the swap). This bug doesn’t happen 100% of the time, at least I have noticed a few times where I was able to maintain fire #5 when swapping out of full fire, maybe because this skill seems to work slightly differently with skill queuing compared to other etchings.

Inconsistency: Weaver attunement swap
Having an active etching while dual attuned and swapping to an element that does NOT cause you to fully attune will simply replace the etching with an inactive etching of the new element. This could be considered intentional, but is counter intuitive to how the dual > full attunement lets you use the etching of the previous element. This could be fixed just for weaver, but also leads me to a general spear suggestion.

Suggestion: An active etching should persist through attunement swaps
This would be like it currently works for weaver dual > full attunement. This change would help with the general consensus that #5 window feels too narrow and spammy, as attunement swaps count towards the etching, thus freeing up the need to use an extra spear skill or utility, making it easier to consistently charge the etching without having to change the duration drastically to improve the usability. This alone, however, does not fix the problem people seem to experience with #5 window and usage being too rushed and “fire and forget”. Therefore:

Suggestion: Fully charging an etching should extend the duration of the flipped #5 ~2 seconds.
This may be trickier to implement, and a simple 1-2s extended duration on the etchings along with above suggestion of retaining an etching through attunement swaps should alleviate most of the frantic feel and allow for slightly more strategic usage of #5 skills. Being strategic about your gameplay is fun. Spamming skills, including the powered up #5 in a “fire-and-forget”-like manner, is not. This change as well as the above suggestion should allow for more flexibility and strategic positioning when using the #5 skills, without completely breaking the intended design of building up power around the etchings.

Suggestion: Add some indication of the remaining duration of an etching
It could be as simple as a buff to track the duration. This will help alleviate the rushed state spear users sometimes find themselves in, helping them track how much time they have to fire the flipped #5 skill.

Bug: Fire etching skill queuing
Queuing spells right after pressing fire #5 interrupts fire #5 and puts it on a 3s cd. This applies to the initial flip and the cast of the skill itself. This makes it easy to fumble the combo or completely miss casting the powered spell. The rest of the etchings don’t seem to have this issue.

Suggestion: Give Fire Volcano an initial knockdown
The time from you cast fire #5 till it’s doing anything is too long. Taking time to set up, cast, and then waiting an additional second for the lava blobs to hit the ground makes it borderline unusable in a pvp setting. Even if you manage to place the volcano on top of an enemy, they can simply walk out of it and avoid most, if not all, of the damage. The volcano itself is a big “you better move away sign”, so the enemy doesn’t even need to mind the setup or casting animation. My suggestion would be to reinforce the spear as a cc weapon and add an initial ~1s knockdown to Volcano. In pve, spear has 750 break bar damage combined on its abilities, but multiple other elementalist weapon combinations beat this, with dagger/focus weaver for example reaching 1150 on weapon skills alone. If spear really is the cc weapon it is supposed to be, a little extra break bar damage should be justified, but more importantly it would help connect the skill more reliably in game modes where it currently struggles tremendously, such as pvp. It would even help in open world, where mobs tend to just run past the skill when it has been placed as you kite them. If a knockdown is in no way possible, I suggest at the very least to increase the damage significantly and increase the speed of the lava orbs so that they reach the ground faster and thus do damage faster. Lesser Volcano barely tickles the enemy, even if everything hits…

Suggestion: Add chill to Jökulhlaup
It feels uneventful to cast Jökulhlaup whilst at high hp, especially in pvp/wvw where the damage on the skill is low, and with water #4 doing no damage, it makes for very tame attunement unless you need to heal or use the mobility of #3. Consider either buffing the damage, or even better, adding a chill to the fully charged version. It’s a damned glacier, and I feel that the ice part of the skill doesn’t shine through. Adding a knockback is also a possibility that thematically plays well here, but seeing as water already gets a hard cc on #4, I feel a soft cc fits better here, and will help with peeling which fits the spear kit well.

Suggestion: Make starting water #3 inside etching count towards Jökulhlaup
This could make for some really cool final repositioning before firing off #5, and would solve most issues people have with the skill, being moved outside of the etching while not charging it. 
In general I love the design of water #3 and how it interacts with superspeed.

Suggestion: Make the final #5 flip faster
The flip-over between lesser and fully charged #5 takes too long. This may be a minor point, but I will mention it anyway since the short etching window has made this quite noticeable to me. Often you think you pressed the fully charged #5, but you hit the button mid-flip, resulting in no cast. In general, it feels slightly sluggish to spam buttons only to have to then wait for the flip-over of the #5. Make the final #5 flip faster, or have it queue the fully charged etching even when pressed mid-flip. Having a longer etching window will in general mitigate this issue.

Suggestion: Add a tiny initial cd to the lesser #5 skills
It would work similar to how hammer 3 orbs work. the initial flip on #5 is a tad too fast, making it easy to double tap by mistake.

Suggestion: Make the #5 (air, water, earth) skills trace better along uneven ground.
The #5 skills are unreliable with (sometimes even slightly) uneven terrain. This means that oftentimes, when you “have the high ground”, you have to give it up and jump down closer to the action, just so your #5 skills hit reliably, or you will do very little damage. Even on even terrain the #5 skills sometimes don’t hit even though the spell effect appears to be overlapping with the enemy. This makes me a sad wizard, as the fantasy of being a long range caster with smart positioning is exactly what I hope to gain from using a 1200 range spear. Since we are encouraged to stay at range, as it is next to our only defense, map layout almost always has some degree of difference in elevation, forcing us to have to get closer to do reliable dmg and then lose that edge. In addition, consider increasing the hitbox of #5 skills slightly (primarily along the vertical axis, as I like that the #5 skills require careful aim). 

Suggestion: Increase air #4 vulnerability by ~3-5 stacks in pvp/wvw
Water and air #4 do great damage in pve, but due to the “cc tax”, it feels like air and water #4 skills are balanced around hitting the center (since the general damage component is gone), which means that you get punished for hitting outside of the center, rather than rewarded for hitting the center on a skill that is incredibly hard to land reliably. This is especially true for air #4. Hitting air #4, but outside of the center, deals 5 vuln. That’s it. I suggest bringing the vulnerability back up a few stacks so the skill feels somewhat impactful even when you don’t hit the sweet spot. The alternative would be to give it a gentle nudge in dmg, which would also be welcome.

Suggestion: Increase damage on some #4 skills and #5 skills in WvW
For a damaging weapon, spear has surprisingly few damaging skills, especially in pvp/wvw where most cc abilities are not allowed to do damage. This results in the major bulk of damage being given to few, powerful, although often unreliable, abilities. I love this design, but think that the payoff is not always quite there. In wvw, I am especially surprised about the uneventfulness of Derecho, which can be a lot of fun in other modes, but is dealing much less damage than Haboob, and just a bit more damage than lesser Derecho, making it almost not worth charging. Even when you do charge it, with zergs stacking stability it often feels like simply sending a fart through the blob with little effect. Additionally, the reduced dmg to fire, earth and air #4 also seems somewhat unnecessary, as the proper dmg and air float requires hitting the sweet spot, which affects very few people in the opposing zerg. I understand the initial concern with the weapon potentially being strong in this mode, but from my (albeit limited) testing, the reduced dmg takes away a lot of the fun in playing the weapon.

Suggestion: Make Fulgor able to crit and have it interact with traits, buffs and debuffs
Let me start by saying that I LOVE the design of this skill acting as a dot. This was one of the skills I was looking most forward to trying, but I must admit, in its current state I am a bit disappointed. Thematically and aesthetically it matches air perfectly, but mechanically it has 0 synergies. It can’t crit thus is unaffected by precision and ferocity, and it is likewise unaffected by vulnerability, which the spell itself even provides a tiny bit of. Fury, ferocity and vulnerability are cornerstones of air, but none of it works with Fulgor! In fact, Fulgor just seems to just scale linearly with power and that is it. Zero trait or gear interactions, making for a very bland skill. It is not considered direct damage nor a condition, and bar being uncleansable, it inherits the worst of both worlds (e.g. it has no interaction with catalyst energy, which already struggles generating energy with spear, it doesn't work on downed players and doesn’t proc traits of any kind). In general for spear, it feels bad when only 1 skill in air scales meaningfully with precision+ferocity in pvp/wvw (#5). On top of these issues, the skill feels undertuned, at least in pvp where it hardly feels worth casting. Best case scenario in full power gear in pvp/wvw, it seems to tick for around 500/second, and if you manage to hit an enemy with it, you can most of the time expect it to last for one second before they move out of it, netting a total ~1k damage over 2s for 3/4s invested cast time. In the best case scenario where the enemy decides to stand in the tiny aoe for the full 4 seconds, it totals less than 5k total damage over 10 seconds. If everything about the spell remains unchanged, at least let it apply 3s of fulgor instead of 2s per tick, so that we get to see it actually do a few ticks in this game mode, but I would much rather that the spell was able to crit and benefit from traits and gear besides the power stat.

Suggestion: Add a bit of ferocity to air #3
Air #3 100% crit feels unimpactful in pve. Since power ele builds are encouraged to crit cap, the offensive part of this skill feels superficial. Consider adding a bit of ferocity on the next skill as well, similar to arcane power. 

Suggestion: #3 (air, fire) shouldn't trigger on autos
Their effects feel wasted in these scenarios.

Bug: Earth #3 is not instant, but tooltip doesn’t mention a cast time.
I assume the intention is a slight cast time, so this is simply a tooltip bug.

That is all for now. Overall, I am very eager to get my hands on the weapon again. The weapon has already been a ton of fun, even though it felt somewhat undertuned in the game modes that I tried. I have high hopes that with some of the above changes accounted for, the weapon will both feel great and be viable to play.

[The Ghost.3087]

On 6/27/2024 at 11:30 PM, Demented Yak.6105 said:

Get rid of the etching animations. I know the art team must have worked very hard but it's impossible to see anything beneath it. I can barely see things on top of it. Just get rid of it.

Having every skill do roughly the same thing in each attunement makes the weapon seem very flavourless and boring to me. I'm sure I'm in the minority on this point but it sucks for me going from one attunement to the next doing exactly the same thing but with different colours. For people who only play PvE and love following rotations this weapon will probably be great.

Beautiful animations. Awful gameplay. Low damage. No defence. 3/10.

 

The thing that blocks the view is actually the black goo that is concentrated around the center and spreads out. If the black hole goes away or the AOEs from bosses and other players overlap that of the etching. It would fix the issue. The circle with the runes is fine. I am honestly surprised how come ANet hasn't done that already for the overlapping. There is no technical limitation which prevents you from writing a proper code to force an overlap of one animation over another. In other words if it is an enemy attack just make it prioritize the overlapping and always being on top.

Edited yesterday at 08:24 AM by The Ghost.3087

[Iveic.8293]

Like many others here I also had some issues with the timing of the etching mechanic. I didn’t have too much difficulty in fitting 3 abilities into the 5 second charge-up time frame but pressing the 5-key for the charged attack effect and then targeting an enemy with it is where I struggled. Often, I would lose the charged ability before I could place it and the whole etching effect would go on cooldown. A lot of people have suggested a longer duration, or the charged effect having its own timer could make the ability less frustrating. Both would be a simple and effective solution, but I have two ideas which I think might offer a smoother experience.

 An alternate idea could be that once you have your etching fully charged it auto-casts at whatever enemy you have selected. In addition, if you couldn’t fully charge the etching the lesser version would also auto-cast so the effort isn’t wasted. This would make things a lot easier and more forgiving in case the Elementalist casting the etching gets stunned or CC’d.

 Another idea which might make etchings easier to work with is to make the etching a ground targeted effect with a 1200 range, and the Elementalist can charge it from anywhere within a 1200 range. Once it’s fully charged the etching could then explode with the charged effect, or partially charged if the timer runs out. In this example the etching itself would turn into Volcano or lesser volcano if it was a fire etching AOE. Maybe to help keep people from escaping it too easily add some control conditions like chill, slow, cripple, immobilized.

On the topic of control conditions, I felt as though the spear could really benefit from having more of those placed on either the 2 or 3 skills of the different attunements. The short duration daze on Earth 3 and the short chill on Water 2 were a bit disappointing. If I'm not mistaken I think the Earth attunement already has two cripple effects, so seeing a slow or immobilize effect added to Air could be in theme with the element. Adding a fear effect to Fire 3 could create some helpful ways of keeping your opponents at a distance. It could work something like this: if the next attack causes burning, the target has a short duration fear condition applied to them. This would give the Elementalist an edge in keeping a safe distance between them and their target, and these mobility effecting conditions would also help with lining up the precision-shots on our 4-key.

Beyond that, I would love to see some multi-target potential on all of our auto-attacks. 

The spear's visuals look amazing, I'm really eager to see it in play.