Spear is AMAZING (What STAFF should’ve been)

[Alchemxst.6097]

Spear is amazing. The visuals thematically really represent what an elemental caster should showcase in terms of spells. But honestly, I’d expect this display of visuals on the staff weapon. Staff is a 1200 range caster weapon. Spear is more for a spellblade.
 

while I love spear, due to the visuals, I wish staff had the same love spear got. Staff spells just boring now compared to spear.  

[Jski.6180]

The dps is lacking staffs dps is better over time where spear is better burst. Anet realy needs to boost spear dps as staff also has a lot of utility on it spear dose not. I love to see some ideal on spear carried over to staff imagen getting burning retreat on an ground target like spear water 3. Or add in week / strong hits both for dmg and more condis like eruption getting an root at its center or Ice spike getting an chill or stadice field getting an lighting dot in the center of it.

[Uete.3805]

Its dps is fine, but relies on always hitting (and critting) with your 5 skills. That's a bit unreliable on moving targets, but so is lava font and meteor shower.

[DaKillaOfHell.5907]

Well, the best combination for me after testing very often with different builds is spear + core ele having the highest dps.

However, the dps is still far inferior to top-scoring builds. Plus since they lack utilities such as tempest, it is just a glass cannon build with the lack of "cannon".

Yeah, playstyle is nice, but numbers are too low and interactions with elite specs are the biggest issues right now.

[Aravind.9610]

Moving targets are the bane of this weapon.

[Ragnarox.9601]

this weapon is for mobs in open world, its dead weapon in wvw and pvp. 

[igmolicious.5986]

4 hours ago, Ragnarox.9601 said:

this weapon is for mobs in open world, its dead weapon in wvw and pvp. 

Only thing you even have to do vs spear to negate its damage in competitive is move away when you see the etching, and even if you don't, just constant moving is usually enough to keep most of its abilities from even hitting.

[Arheundel.6451]

19 hours ago, Ragnarox.9601 said:

this weapon is for mobs in open world, its dead weapon in wvw and pvp. 

Do you think those praising spear got anywhere close to wvw/pvp? It's quite clear all those praising spear are just open world pvers where it's very easy to catch praises as a developer...as long as you add enough flashy animations and a bunch of rainbow colors. Literally anybody can be a dev over the weekend, create a concept weapon with enough cartoonish animations and you have a job

[Fwog.9387]

It does kinda seem like a good amount of the spears were made for people who are soloing or roaming in the case of wvw and not group play. Though there are some that also seem slightly over tuned but that is kinda expected. 

[Bladestrom.6425]

8 hours ago, Fwog.9387 said:

It does kinda seem like a good amount of the spears were made for people who are soloing or roaming in the case of wvw and not group play. Though there are some that also seem slightly over tuned but that is kinda expected. 

you would get slaughtered by any half decent player roaming WVW with Spear, its far too slow and its big hits and rotations are highly telegraphed and predictable. in addition Spear breaks weaver and only really works with melee specialisations..

Edited September 1 by Bladestrom.6425

[Shaman.2034]

The buffs weren't nearly bold enough to get the numbers to match the visuals. Looking cool is only the half of it.

This spear should currently be redefining the DPS meta with how little utility or defense it has. And yet you're much better off taking weapons that do more damage and have more utility and survivability. Better yet, swap to a class that does it all for less effort. It's so upside-down!

I can only go "wow this looks so cool" so many times before the reality sets in that my full Etching combo in a damaging attunement just failed to completely kill a regular trash mob.

Edited September 2 by Shaman.2034

[Dadnir.5038]

46 minutes ago, Shaman.2034 said:

I can only go "wow this looks so cool" so many times

Unfortunately, that's the only goal of the devs when they design stuff nowadays.

Still wondering why volcano have the silly diminishing return mechanic when it's not an "impact" skill.

[Noodle Ant.1605]

1 hour ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Still wondering why volcano have the silly diminishing return mechanic when it's not an "impact" skill.

volcano works in a similar manner as meteor shower. it shoots out 12 balls within the area, and a particularly small hitbox standing near the edge may only get hit 3 out of 12 times

2 hours ago, Shaman.2034 said:

I can only go "wow this looks so cool" so many times before the reality sets in that my full Etching combo in a damaging attunement just failed to completely kill a regular trash mob.

fire has the only damage focused etch. the other etches are really more utility based, dealing around half as much (total) damage and are not always worth accessing for their dps (consider it an amped up #2 skill). however, volcano is both delayed and rng, often failing to hit at all unless placed directly under a stationary target

[Dadnir.5038]

23 minutes ago, Noodle Ant.1605 said:

volcano works in a similar manner as meteor shower. it shoots out 12 balls within the area, and a particularly small hitbox standing near the edge may only get hit 3 out of 12 times

Then there is an issue on the tooltip. In any way, the mechanic itself is trash and cripple way to many of the elementalist's skills. The devs should remove this kind of mechanics not introduce more of them.

[Fwog.9387]

On 9/1/2024 at 7:47 AM, Bladestrom.6425 said:

you would get slaughtered by any half decent player roaming WVW with Spear, its far too slow and its big hits and rotations are highly telegraphed and predictable. in addition Spear breaks weaver and only really works with melee specialisations..

That is a pretty broad and encompassing statement considering i never said what class and instead said that a good chunk of them seem better suited to solo play (but i didn't say all)

There is also a bit of one true Scotsman fallacy going on. I cannot disprove your statement, someone could hypothetically slaughter 10 standard roamer builds with a spear and you could just say... well those aren't decent roamers therefore they don't count. 

So rather ill just say, a lot of the spear builds are broad in scope rather than narrowly focused on dps or support. Some exceptions may include guardian spear (which i have actually seen roamers using, in spite of the flaws that should exist on paper) or spear ele. Spear guardian having ally healing, a support ability that does not benefit you when soloing and Ele spear being an entirely attack focused weapon which doesn't have the self-sustain or utility to hold a candle to most roamers. 

Disclaimer though... most of my expertise is in Engineer, not the other 8 classes. 
Also of note... You can kinda roam on almost anything on Engineer, engineer isn't a particularly good roaming class as most roamers right now have more mobility than engie does and will simply either chase you down when they have the advantage or run away when they don't. But you could roam on it and still get results depending on what you intend to do with it. The spear unfortunately does not let you use the leap combo defensively or as a utility... it must be used offensively or otherwise the spear would probably be much better than it currently is. You would be able to leap combo on a short cooldown for things like self healing or stealth which you currently cannot do because you must target an enemy and be within a certain range or the combo doesn't happen. Might be a bug. 

[Bladestrom.6425]

19 hours ago, Fwog.9387 said:

That is a pretty broad and encompassing statement considering i never said what class and instead said that a good chunk of them seem better suited to solo play (but i didn't say all)

There is also a bit of one true Scotsman fallacy going on. I cannot disprove your statement, someone could hypothetically slaughter 10 standard roamer builds with a spear and you could just say... well those aren't decent roamers therefore they don't count. 

So rather ill just say, a lot of the spear builds are broad in scope rather than narrowly focused on dps or support. Some exceptions may include guardian spear (which i have actually seen roamers using, in spite of the flaws that should exist on paper) or spear ele. Spear guardian having ally healing, a support ability that does not benefit you when soloing and Ele spear being an entirely attack focused weapon which doesn't have the self-sustain or utility to hold a candle to most roamers. 

Disclaimer though... most of my expertise is in Engineer, not the other 8 classes. 
Also of note... You can kinda roam on almost anything on Engineer, engineer isn't a particularly good roaming class as most roamers right now have more mobility than engie does and will simply either chase you down when they have the advantage or run away when they don't. But you could roam on it and still get results depending on what you intend to do with it. The spear unfortunately does not let you use the leap combo defensively or as a utility... it must be used offensively or otherwise the spear would probably be much better than it currently is. You would be able to leap combo on a short cooldown for things like self healing or stealth which you currently cannot do because you must target an enemy and be within a certain range or the combo doesn't happen. Might be a bug. 

The context here is that this is on the elementalist thread, so elementalist spear. I agree other classes are different.

[Fwog.9387]

5 hours ago, Bladestrom.6425 said:

The context here is that this is on the elementalist thread, so elementalist spear. I agree other classes are different.

You right. I forgot where i was. Ya no ele spear in wvw roaming. 

[scerevisiae.1972]

On 8/31/2024 at 6:33 PM, Ragnarox.9601 said:

this weapon is for mobs in open world, its dead weapon in wvw and pvp. 

this. it blows my mind that Anet are unable to make an Ele weapon that's decent in WVW.

warhorn - fail, never been good
sword - ok for solo until nerfed into the ground and everything else powercrept to hell
hammer - fail, who even wanted another melee weap
spear - fail, terrible solo, but not as good as staff in zerg

 

4 expacs and WVW eles still stuck with the original 12yo weapons. Anet are hands-down the most incompetent devs in gaming. Seriously, achieving some semblance of balance between weapons to give players some choices IS NOT THAT FREAKING HARD WTF.

Edited September 4 by scerevisiae.1972

[RaveOnYou.2819]

48 minutes ago, scerevisiae.1972 said:

this. it blows my mind that Anet are unable to make an Ele weapon that's decent in WVW.

warhorn - fail, never been good
sword - ok for solo until nerfed into the ground and everything else powercrept to hell
hammer - fail, who even wanted another melee weap
spear - fail, terrible solo, but not as good as staff in zerg

 

4 expacs and WVW eles still stuck with the original 12yo weapons. Anet are hands-down the most incompetent devs in gaming. Seriously, achieving some semblance of balance between weapons to give players some choices IS NOT THAT FREAKING HARD WTF.

i think there is no dev left who play elementalist in anet so they dont know the situation. they listen open world low expectation pve ele enjoyers all the time.

[Atoclone.4810]

4 hours ago, scerevisiae.1972 said:

. Anet are hands-down the most incompetent devs in gaming. 

I see you've never heard of firefall 

[Tidus.6830]

Most staff skills need to improve, especially for weaver, I Honestly don’t know why plasma blast hasn't been reworked before, its’s so slow and clunky You can fully cast a meteor shower and that thing would be still moving

Edited September 4 by Tidus.6830

[Bladestrom.6425]

Their devs are good, GW2 overall is a polished product.  The only issue is the slow release cycle for balance changes and extremely poor design choices made at times with skills  by people not applying appropriate impact analysis

Edited September 4 by Bladestrom.6425

[Twilightmage.8309]

Still sad about the kitten dual skills for weaver.

[Juniper.8197]

On 8/30/2024 at 6:27 PM, Jski.6180 said:

The dps is lacking staffs dps is better over time where spear is better burst. Anet realy needs to boost spear dps as staff also has a lot of utility on it spear dose not. I love to see some ideal on spear carried over to staff imagen getting burning retreat on an ground target like spear water 3. Or add in week / strong hits both for dmg and more condis like eruption getting an root at its center or Ice spike getting an chill or stadice field getting an lighting dot in the center of it.

What's a viable PvE build for staff?

[Loboling.5293]

I love both weapons for different things. The staff is a great control and support weapon, and the spear is awesome for glass canon goodness. I wouldn't mind some visual updates on staff, but I'd prefer some quality of life improvements, and dialing back some previous nerfs. For instance, I wish the staff fire 5 meteor shower didn't deal reduced damage per hit and still hit 5 targets per meteor. Also, they could reduce the cast time of Earth and Water 2 skills. With just those two changes, I would then consider visual updates. The staff is still lots of fun, but I can't stop playing with the spear. It's my new favorite weapon for open world. Staff is still my favorite for competitive modes, I just wish it had more oomph at times.