Fulgor is the most blatant proof that they have no idea what they're doing with Spear

[Jeyzer.1605]

What's Air element all about? Movement and Crit damage. 

What's Air Spear main DPS source? Spear #2 Fulgor. What does it NOT do? Crit

I don't even understand how you can mess up this much when designing a weapon, although making a weapon set THIS bad outta be harder than making a decent one, so congrats I guess?

Lightning Javelin (#1 AA) deals 0 damage and is SINGLE target. I'm not sure if it counts as a projectile for reflect purposes, but that's beyond bad.

Fulgor (#2) is your low CD main source of damage, but it deals damage over time (so no burst) that CANNOT crit, so all your Air traits and Zerker gear is useless on your main damage skill?

Energize (#3) superspeed is a wish version of Staff #4, which is AoE and removes cripples etc. It making your next spear spell crit is totally irrelevant because if you play this weapon, you should be crit capped through gear / traits since it's a 100% power ranged weapon. If anything, all this does is add insult to injury since, as mentioned above, FULGOR CANNOT CRIT. 

Twister (#4) deals no damage in WvW, so does not benefit from #3 anyway (since it deals 10 dmg, it WILL waste #3 if you use it after it though, so it's even worse than not benefitting at all). 

Derecho (#5 big etched) needs a whole setup before you can use it, and deals OK damage. Necro deals that much damage on any of their basic skills lmao.

On top of it all, the weapon has the same range as Staff. The one class that SHOULD have 1500 range weapon given how squishy they needlessly are, still doesn't have one. It's essentially a bait & switch weapon to incentivize Power Ele players to buy the expac after they overnerfed Staff all those years ago. Why fix the 1200 power weapon when you can release a new one behind a paywall?

Also, why does the long range weapon have 0 long range field? No fire field for Persisting Flame (you know, the trait that Power ranged Ele wants to take given that the two others are irrel), and 2 blast finishers (so less than Staff) with no ranged field to combo them in. Are they expecting us to run in melee to Etch, on a glass canon class with a 1200 range spear?

Oh and last point: Since Ele is the ONLY class that cannot have a ranged + melee weapon sets equipped simultaneously (Engi has Holo sword + no CD kits), they could've decided to address that with the Spear, by making it a weapon that could be used AoE in melee or single target at 900 or maybe 1200 range. Instead they gave that feature to RANGER, REVENANT and WARRIOR (the class with a 5cd weapon swap, probably the one that needed that gimmick the least). Ele is still stuck with being melee locked or pure ranged. 

I guess after designing 3 terrible elite specs for the class, they decided to keep the trend of fumbling the bag going strong with the last few weapons Ele has been getting: Hammer lmfao, Pistol and now this noodle stick.

gg 

Edited July 10 by Jeyzer.1605

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

 

1 hour ago, Jeyzer.1605 said:

Fulgor (#2) is your low CD main source of damage, but it deals damage over time (so no burst) that CANNOT crit, so all your Air traits and Zerker gear is useless on your main damage skill?

Range weapon ? Need to bodyblock mob to hit.

[Twilightmage.8309]

dont forget that fulgor doesnt stack with intensity it just stacks duration as well as the fact it cant crit.

I was so excited for spear and now it just looks like kitten. Melee range combo fields with blast finishers only on a 1200 range weapon, bad damage, bad utility, weaver gets screwed, tempest is anti-synergestic because overloads are melee, so i guess its cata but even that is melee focused mostly.

[igmolicious.5986]

May not crit but did damage to walls in WvW... sooo... huh.

Edited July 10 by igmolicious.5986

[Jeyzer.1605]

45 minutes ago, Twilightmage.8309 said:

weaver gets screwed, tempest is anti-synergestic because overloads are melee, so i guess its cata but even that is melee focused mostly.

Personally, a solution I've found is to accept that Ele doesn't have any good elite spec for ranged dps and to just revert to core Ele. It's still bad, but it's less BS than the "elite" specs. They made 3 specs targeted for melee, why even bother with them?

Air + Water + Fire

At least until they nerf it because it now benchmarks higher than a Necro spamming GS #2 👍

Edited July 10 by Jeyzer.1605

[Twilightmage.8309]

just give us ranged overloads pls

[Jski.6180]

And see air always seemed to be a fast hitting power base dmg atument where its burst dmg was build into doing crits with in that fast hitting set of skills. Fulgor is an dps skill much like burning is dps fore fire atument. There is space for the fulgor effect on air but it needs to be more then just on spear to work right.

[draxynnic.3719]

Looks like air is being kittened yet again. News at 11.

Mesmer will continue to be the best lightning build, even if the lightning is pink and technically not lightning.

[zeyeti.8347]

Did you all tryed the new FA tempest ? the beast bench press 46k with a not hard rotation and is very tanky (u have +300 vit from water traitline) you give your allies 100% fury uptime , some prot. , and a good chunk of might , and the rotation is very fluid and fun , u even heal your allies cause you go water 0,5 secs to proc FA tus giving healing ripple and the passiv healing from water. But it's gonna be nerfed soon i guess , an easy ele build with survivability , sharing boons and meta damage with a non piano rotation ... not gonna last long.

Didn't know the fulgor couldn't crit ... that freaking stupid , no crit damage on a weapon skill aimed to be power is useless , are you sure of that ? the tooltip on wiki says nothing about non critical ?

[Jski.6180]

42 minutes ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

Did you all tryed the new FA tempest ? the beast bench press 46k with a not hard rotation and is very tanky (u have +300 vit from water traitline) you give your allies 100% fury uptime , some prot. , and a good chunk of might , and the rotation is very fluid and fun , u even heal your allies cause you go water 0,5 secs to proc FA tus giving healing ripple and the passiv healing from water. But it's gonna be nerfed soon i guess , an easy ele build with survivability , sharing boons and meta damage with a non piano rotation ... not gonna last long.

Didn't know the fulgor couldn't crit ... that freaking stupid , no crit damage on a weapon skill aimed to be power is useless , are you sure of that ? the tooltip on wiki says nothing about non critical ?

It dose not seem to be effected by dmg reduction so not criting would fit for such an effect. Though that is why it was doing so much dmg vs doors and doing dmg vs walls in wvw hehe.

I think that an missing effect for air being able to get around dmg -%.

[vardeleanu.8972]

Guys, we might be getting ahead of ourselves. I'm sure that the lack of crit is 100% a bug and will be fixed before the expansion releases. They always fixed issues like this between the beta and the expansion release, especially for classes like elementalist and thief. 

(snorts more copium)

Edited July 12 by vardeleanu.8972

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

Fulgor needs you to bodyblock mobs, which is already stupid for a range weapon.

Of course the "idea" is to use #4 in same time to lock the target, yet it's 20sec CD (3 times fulgor) and has no damage in pvp/wvw (and poor in pve)
Which also means #3 is useless to cast before #4, and Fulgor can't crit, and so you want it to cast #3 before final Etching, which has also poor damage particulary in pvp/wvw and poor tracking. But if you play Air don't you already try to cap high crit chance ?

I Just don't get it; what's the point of #3 ? Why give the next spear attack crit in Air Element ? May be to play without crit chance and use it before swapping ? But it's the same in all element, poor damage anyway, you need to do the full rotation of etching > #4 #3 #2 > final. It has no sense.

So the whole Air element with Spear is just pur garbage ; 
You can't effectively use Fulgor alone, skills have no logic with Air, you need the full rotation of fillers skills in the hope of some mediocre damage and  instantly swap attunement.
It's not different of all elements. Spear has no sense, no skill on demand, no skill effective by them selves, no damage, filled with the same filler effect in all elements.

Honestly I can understand players enjoying Hammer or pistol in some niche gameplay, cat golem, OW etc.
But Spear, once you've passed the "WAHOU" point of the etching visual, there is nothing good. How can you enjoyed elementalist before, then see the same AA and #2 on all elements, no field, no transmute*, and fillers skills with impossible gimmick to launch, and say "It's okai"/"iIt's fun" ?

Edited July 12 by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[igmolicious.5986]

4 hours ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

Fulgor needs you to bodyblock mobs, which is already stupid for a range weapon.

Of course the "idea" is to use #4 in same time to lock the target, yet it's 20sec CD (3 times fulgor) and has no damage in pvp/wvw (and poor in pve)
Which also means #3 is useless to cast before #4, and Fulgor can't crit, and so you want it to cast #3 before final Etching, which has also poor damage particulary in pvp/wvw and poor tracking. But if you play Air don't you already try to cap high crit chance ?

I Just don't get it; what's the point of #3 ? Why give the next spear attack crit in Air Element ? May be to play without crit chance and use it before swapping ? But it's the same in all element, poor damage anyway, you need to do the full rotation of etching > #4 #3 #2 > final. It has no sense.

So the whole Air element with Spear is just pur garbage ; 
You can't effectively use Fulgor alone, skills have no logic with Air, you need the full rotation of fillers skills in the hope of some mediocre damage and  instantly swap attunement.
It's not different of all elements. Spear has no sense, no skill on demand, no skill effective by them selves, no damage, filled with the same filler effect in all elements.

Honestly I can understand players enjoying Hammer or pistol in some niche gameplay, cat golem, OW etc.
But Spear, once you've passed the "WAHOU" point of the etching visual, there is nothing good. How can you enjoyed elementalist before, then see the same AA and #2 on all elements, no field, no aura, and fillers skills with impossible gimmick to launch, and say "It's okai"/"iIt's fun" ?

I think they idea with fulgor being the way it is is that they expect you to use the lift from Twister to CC mobs in place (the lift in competitive is only like a fraction of a second tho, so not really an option there). For the 100% crit from Energize, I think the idea was you'd pop that when you were ready to release your Derecho from the etching, building its charges with auto attacks and utilities.

I am honestly not a fan of ele spear at all, even outside of air attune. It looks great, and the ideas sound good on paper, but in practice it neither felt mechanically smooth nor powerfully damaging. I'm sure on NPCs or practice golems you could probably get decent damage numbers off of it, but in anything that isn't 100% standing still it's a huge gamble without a big payoff even if you get it right -- and that's not even considering baffling choices that we got for the Weaver dual skills (personal feeling: dual skills should get a buff that auto-charges the next etching cast by 1 for each used, so they can be used to pre-charge etchings for faster casting in addition to their base effects).

Edited July 12 by igmolicious.5986

[Jeyzer.1605]

On 7/10/2024 at 10:54 PM, Twilightmage.8309 said:

just give us ranged overloads pls

This REALLY needs to happen, atm we have no ranged elite spec. Tempest has melee overloads, Weaver is an abomination and Catalyst is mostly melee as well. Tbf all three specs are poorly designed in my opinion, but the issues with Tempests can easily be solved by making overloads ranged, unlike the other specs which would be too hard to fix conceptually at this point. 

6 hours ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

Did you all tryed the new FA tempest ? the beast bench press 46k with a not hard rotation and is very tanky (u have +300 vit from water traitline) you give your allies 100% fury uptime , some prot. , and a good chunk of might , and the rotation is very fluid and fun , u even heal your allies cause you go water 0,5 secs to proc FA tus giving healing ripple and the passiv healing from water.

Tempest is a melee spec so atm it's still garbage-tier in my book, at least for a squishy ranged WvW build. Also, I wouldn't call +300 vit "very tanky" when you're still made of paper and have less HP than any other class that has an easier rotation. The 46k benchmark was the ideal scenario with 99% air overload uptime on the golem, seems very unpractical in a real scenario. They'll still nerf it since they nerfed condi mirage in PvE when it was top dps for 1 patch against golem, even though it had the hardest rotation of any class by a WIDE margin.

But honestly, tempest could even have 80k dps and I still wouldn't care less the spec as long as it's melee only, if I wanted to play a melee class, there's a plethora of other choices I could've gone for. If I'm playing a paper made mage, that's because I want to be ranged. Nerf the dmg if you will, but let it do ranged overloads (maybe with a small radius, or lower damage at range idk), then we're in business.

6 hours ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

Didn't know the fulgor couldn't crit ... that freaking stupid , no crit damage on a weapon skill aimed to be power is useless , are you sure of that ? the tooltip on wiki says nothing about non critical ?

Yeah I tested it myself and my jaw dropped when I realized it did not crit and all. 

5 hours ago, vardeleanu.8972 said:

Guys, we might be getting ahead of ourselves. I'm sure that the lack of crit is 100% a bug and will be fixed before the expansion releases.

It's not technically a bug. Fulgor applies an effect over time, like a condition, and effects like that do not crit. That's either a design decision (a really bad one, but wouldn't surprise me given their track record on ele), or an oversight (did they not test it like, at all?). Honestly, I'd be more inclined to believe it's the first option. 

They'll probably go back on that decision on launch, because it's quite frankly an absurd one if they made it voluntarily, but it really shows their disconnect with the class as a whole. 

5 hours ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

But if you play Air don't you already try to cap high crit chance ?

I Just don't get it; what's the point of #3 ? Why give the next spear attack crit in Air Element ? May be to play without crit chance and use it before swapping ? But it's the same in all element, poor damage anyway, you need to do the full rotation of etching > #4 #3 #2 > final. It has no sense.

Exactly. If you play Air on a ranged power weapon, you're crit capped already if you have any idea of what you're doing.

Only reason NOT to crit cap on a burst power build is if you're playing some sort of Valkyrie / Crusader build with sigil of vision + relic of daredevil for a bruiser build with burst windows. Could be useful on a melee build for WvW zergs. Definitely not on Spear though. 

Something like that, I guess? Tempest version | Cata version

Poor DPS but solid burst if you're mindful of your sigil of vision CD and quite tanky so you don't immediately explode on contact. Would still be largely outperformed by Zerkers / Reapers and Revs, but if you want to play Ele as a melee burst option, this could work. 

If you want to do the same thing on Spear, for say, a ranged dueling build? You could do this: Valk Spear Core Ele

Problem is vision won't last long enough to make your whole volcano crit, at most you'd get 1s of crit from volcano if you're quickened. Seethe into dodge (for daredevil relic) + Meteor would be a strong burst I guess. Dodge + Blazing Barrage, Earthen Spear or Fissure for damage between burst phases.

If you're running a build like that though, you can already ensure crits through daredevil rune, so what does Energize even provide? Maybe garanteed crit on Ice Beam, since it's a multi hit, but it doesn't do enough base damage to be worth it as a burst option anyway. Or getting Derecho to crit when vision is on CD?

Cast times are too long for this to be a decent dueling build, and your CC is limited to Air 4 and Water 4, good luck landing those in a duel against anything that has a million dashes/blinks, aka most classes nowadays.

5 hours ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

then see the same AA and #2 on all elements, no field, no aura

No Aura is a really good point as well, especially since your fields are all melee and your finishers are ranged, you have no good way to get them by combo'ing. Only way would be to fire field from Etching into Water 3 for the leap, which means you lose your volcano for a fire field...

 

Edited July 12 by Jeyzer.1605

[draxynnic.3719]

You know that joke about an ArenaNet employee being beaten triggering harsh nerfs? I'm beginning to think someone got so brutalised by an air elementalist or channeling ritualist that they're determined not to allow it to exist in GW2. Elementalist or engineer, lighting themes seem like they're only allowed to be good in melee.

[Jski.6180]

It is a bit odd that also fire main use is to crit too the game way too aimed for power dmg to be crits. Something that is just raw power dmg like fulgor is very much needed.

Fulgor dose fit the air atument just in an different way then crit dmg. There a lot of space for air skills to have fulgor added to them as most of air atument skills do low to no dmg witch in it self is odd as air is an dmg line not an pure cc line.

[Ragnarox.9601]

Fulgor ahould drop some lightning spears from the sky like that warrior spear skill.  I remember that skil doing 0 damage, lame and underpowered. For a dps weapon they put some lame dot lol. This should crit like hell. If they dont change it they need to increase its size like tempest f5 or catalyst f5 with increased size trait. This skill sure miss a lot. 

[Nihila.6102]

On 7/10/2024 at 8:54 PM, Jeyzer.1605 said:

On top of it all, the weapon has the same range as Staff. The one class that SHOULD have 1500 range weapon given how squishy they needlessly are, still doesn't have one. It's essentially a bait & switch weapon to incentivize Power Ele players to buy the expac after they overnerfed Staff all those years ago. Why fix the 1200 power weapon when you can release a new one behind a paywall?

I think you're on to something. Balancing and class mechanics always were GW2's treadmill. This time I am not coming back. I had many great years in this game but one cannot live off memories only. Always loved the elementalist class, but the devs did not. And that is the elementalist's demise. 
But many people will enjoy the game, even the elementalist with its new rangeweapon, and I am happy for them.

Once you've opened your eyes to a certain realisation it is impossible to go back to sleep and find peace.