meteor shower nerf still necessary?

[Stand The Wall.6987]

the damage reduction per hit part. seems like its over nerfed now.

editfor all modes i guess but mainly wvw

[Shroud.2307]

I think a few things could stand to get some damage back so boonballs are a little more vulnerable. Meteor Shower would be a good candidate, but I do want to point out that this skill still hits 10k+ pretty regularly. I don't know that "over nerfed" is the word. Even if one hit does 10k and the next is 6k it's still a ton of damage. Most times I get hit by this (which isn't often mind you) it cuts my health clean in half just from one tick. If I'm unlucky enough to take two hits in quick succession I'm probably downed.

Personally I'd have no complaints if it got a small buff. Anything that make sustain blobs less effective is good in my books. I just wanted to point out that this skill still does plenty of damage. The real problem is how much damage you take because of Retaliation.

[Jski.6180]

As long as weaver gives +20% dmg and 120 power staff always going to be hit hard. I hate the nerfs that hit staff so hard because of weaver raw dmg power creep. I also fear the coming nerfs to staff due to the next elite spec.

[Dawdler.8521]

I've been hit with 10k invisible meteors on 3200 armor.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

if meteors are still hitting for 10k its not the skills fault, the coefficient is only 1.1 now. probably fire + weaver buffs. ah air gives a bunch of ferocity too.

[Riba.3271]

Weavers very strong right now. It is god at busting pug blobs. Of course is quite bad against organised groups that run superspeed scrapper in every party but can fit there too as downed finisher.

If superspeed potency or duration is nerfed deservably, weaver will actually need nerfs.

[manu.7539]

Weavers definitely need some buffs but meteor shower? Nah, stances should give some stab as they use to and then it will be just fine. Maybe not as long as it was but u know, 1 seconde, guess its not asking too much :/

[supreme.3602]

Buff Meteor ShowerBuff Lava FontBuff everything else

[Junkpile.7439]

Maybe remove whole lame weaver and boost ele skills?

[Emberheart.8426]

The meteor shower nerf was never done for WvW. It has been a PvE change since day 1, because the "balance" team wanted to reduce the advantage of staff on very large bosses. Having the mirage advantage on things like largos or the cFB advantage on 100 cm is totally fine though for some reason. Double standards right there.

However, even with that being the case, meteor shower does not need a buff. It is everything else on staff that needs buffing and reworking. Meteor shower is still the best skill by far.

[Infusion.7149]

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:if meteors are still hitting for 10k its not the skills fault, the coefficient is only 1.1 now. probably fire + weaver buffs. ah air gives a bunch of ferocity too.

Exactly. With the change to Pyromancer's Puissance the might gain is going to be hard to attain as well unless you camp fire. If you camp fire then you can't get EoR (Elements of Rage) to activate and the might stack on the trait has a base duration of 6s in WvW.

Realistically the first few hits might do more damage than an autoattack which is 0.666 coefficient and taper off sharply after that and become a liability due to retaliation. That's assuming you even manage to get it off since it is one of the longest cast times in the game with a self-root on top of that. Each hit has 10% reduction.

If someone is getting hit for 10K damage it means they likely had vulnerability (up to +25%) , zero toughness and damage reducing food or karka potion, and took an additional 20% from Bolt to the Heart , maybe in an enemy keep where there is +200 power to the enemy team. Realistically you are looking at 6-7K assuming there is might stacks (added power from Power Overhelming), swiftness (10% damage bonus for weaver), and burning on target that hasn't been cleansed (10% damage bonus). The only major things that don't exist on typical WvW builds are Glyph of Elemental Power (+25%) and Arcane Power (+75 ferocity or +5% crit). This is easily tested in Armistice Bastion.

Meteor Shower was a high-risk high reward skill. It is kept in check by cast time and a blatant animation, self-root, retaliation on enemies, and the recharge time on top of that.

If you want to compare ranged damage, have a look at Coalescence of Ruin which is on lower cooldown and hits with 1.15 coefficient. It was probably overnerfed overall as well. Due to Incensed Response and herald facets , you're more likely to have higher effective power and it's on a more versatile and sturdy character.

In fact it is telling that Sword of Justice with 2.16 coefficient over 4 hits on guardians is deemed a usable skill nowadays as well as guardian staff which is primarily a support weapon.

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

A-net never reverse nerfs, they'll go around the whole problem and put band-aids here and there, but they'll never reverse the change itself.Even bigger joke is that this change was made solely for some PvE Raid Bosses, which are touched by what? 10% player population?

[Justine.6351]

Meteor shower should be the nastiest aoe dps skill in game but the risk/reward balance is so out of whack. And how could it not be when Anet removes damage from any skill that has an ounce of cc. And any skill that is supposed to do damage specifically is "competitive balanced".

"Oh no! I took a 10k meteor hit. Its ok my firebrand will push one button and heal me to full while giving me aegis to block the next meteor strike and the necros the barrier to preemptively absorb it. But yeah I better clip that as proof to the forums that meteor shower needs a damage nerf..."

Enjoy the boonball bunkerfest.~former hammer rev

[Zeesh.7286]

10k hits are only when the enemies have no boons or on downs where the Air grandmaster trait of 20% added damage ramps in the numbers. It's also on full berserkers. On it's own the skill does not burst in full zergs and the damage reduction comes in super quick. With protection now being permanent in this boon meta it is not really consistent damage unless the enemy blob stands. You need be to ungodly skilled with staff and positioning and predict blob movements 2 steps ahead of your own commander or delay casting it until the blobs are melee engaged to actually get good use out of it. It also needs to be spiked with a complicated rotation of double attunement, lava font for 10 stacks of persisting flames and you're rooted while casting it... to generate downs you need to be lucky that out of 50 people 1 person gets hit 2 times consistently with little gap otherwise the enemy scrappers spamming med kits can bring them back to full health or scourge barriers will absorb all of it.

I think a simple removal of the root while it is casted will compensate and reduce all my complaints to zero. It would truly balance it. right now every utility I have is to fix my positioning which gets shit on because of the rooted casting. That or revert the nerf and give me some prize for pulling it off with 100 people running around sniping me

[Justine.6351]

@Zeesh.7286 said:10k hits are only when the enemies have no boons or on downs where the Air grandmaster trait of 20% added damage ramps in the numbers. It's also on full berserkers. On it's own the skill does not burst in full zergs and the damage reduction comes in super quick. With protection now being permanent in this boon meta it is not really consistent damage unless the enemy blob stands. You need be to ungodly skilled with staff and positioning and predict blob movements 2 steps ahead of your own commander or delay casting it until the blobs are melee engaged to actually get good use out of it. It also needs to be spiked with a complicated rotation of double attunement, lava font for 10 stacks of persisting flames and you're rooted while casting it... to generate downs you need to be lucky that out of 50 people 1 person gets hit 2 times consistently with little gap otherwise the enemy scrappers spamming med kits can bring them back to full health or scourge barriers will absorb all of it.

I think a simple removal of the root while it is casted will compensate and reduce all my complaints to zero. It would truly balance it. right now every utility I have is to fix my positioning which gets kitten on because of the rooted casting. That or revert the nerf and give me some prize for pulling it off with 100 people running around sniping me

Yeah a lot of people don't get just how dangerous it is to cast meteor shower with like 12k hp and no additional toughness. Everyone hitting you is like getting hit by another full zerker build even if they are actually in full minstrels just booned up.

[Nephalem.8921]

@TrollingDemigod.3041 said:A-net never reverse nerfs, they'll go around the whole problem and put band-aids here and there, but they'll never reverse the change itself.Even bigger joke is that this change was made solely for some PvE Raid Bosses, which are touched by what? 10% player population?

Thats like 5 times the wvsw population. Doesnt meteor shower do more dmg in wvsw than before? First impact got a buff so a single person getting hit by 3 does more dmg than before. Multiple hits got nerfed but who gets hit 4 times anyways.Lava font on the other hand just tickles now.

[Infusion.7149]

No Meteor Shower is not doing more initial damage than before unless you mean pre-2020 and relative to a 2018 nerf. Anyone that actually has played elementalist in WvW and reads patch notes knows this. What has changed , however, is the modifiers in fire magic. Particularly Power Overwhelming which dropped requisite might stacks from 10 to 8 in light of might duration changes.

The Feb 2020 balance patch changed the initial WvW coefficient from 1.6 to 1.1 , which is roughly 31% reduction in line with most other skills.

The same 2018 patch that "increased the initial damage" made the damage over time far lower due to the drop off in damage.The internal cooldown of this skill has been removed when used against PvE targets, and its initial damage has been increased by 23%. Damage will now decline by 10% for each subsequent hit, capping at a minimum value equal to 10% of the initial impact's damage.https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2018-05-08#Elementalist

Lava font was shaved from 0.525 to 0.454 in the Feb 2020 balance patch, which is far less. The damage is almost on par with weak autoattacks now and a 6s cooldown with no activation time makes it less risk.

Also I'm inclined to think there's more legendary account-bound weapons and trinkets that require WvW gift of battle, so that means more than raiders. 10% of gw2efficiency players have Triumphant helm (WVW skin) unlocked and 13% have Triumphant Breastplate. Top 10 percentile of gw2efficiency players have 1047 skirmish tickets; top 20th percentile have 252 WVW rank or capped 339 towers, 121 keeps / Stonemist 12 times. The highest percentage for any Experimental Envoy skin is <8% , only 1% is listed as having a white mantle portal device.

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

@Nephalem.8921 said:

@"TrollingDemigod.3041" said:A-net never reverse nerfs, they'll go around the whole problem and put band-aids here and there, but they'll never reverse the change itself.Even bigger joke is that this change was made solely for some PvE Raid Bosses, which are touched by what?

10% player population

?

Thats like 5 times the wvsw population. Doesnt meteor shower do more dmg in wvsw than before? First impact got a buff so a single person getting hit by 3 does more dmg than before. Multiple hits got nerfed but who gets hit 4 times anyways.Lava font on the other hand just tickles now.

Meteor Shower is peak RNG skill, you may not get hit even once by it by standing in it's AoE or you'll get hit by 70% of hits if you're unlucky af.The first impact will hit targets with Aegis, Protection and even Barrier on top of that, so your burst becomes like 2~4k crits on these targets, if you're lucky you'll hit someone without boons for 6~8k, but then it'll get instant healed. The moment enemy will "run out" of boons, your hits after -10% on each on same target will tingle enemy... You could argue with "you should have waited for boonrips before casting" and it'll only happen if Enemy will become rooted in warriors bubble or in tight chocke points, in open fields enemy will just walk out boonrip skills and will apply boons again...So what's the point of higher initial burst if you get punished one way or another?Beside that, the skill make no sense at all, you cast it for so long which should result in either consistent damage for whole duration or it should start weak(starting casting) and become stronger with each hit as you channel fully the whole thing, but we have reverse of that for Raid Reasons, like wth.Most Staff skills are pepegas, even more on Weaver, I still wonder why Dual Skills on staff doesn't have "Unblockable" effect by default, these skills are self-punishable if enemy reflect bubble doesn't show on your screen.

[Emberheart.8426]

@"Infusion.7149" said:No Meteor Shower is not doing more initial damage than before unless you mean pre-2020 and relative to a 2018 nerf. Anyone that actually has played elementalist in WvW and reads patch notes knows this. What has changed , however, is the modifiers in fire magic. Particularly Power Overwhelming which dropped requisite might stacks from 10 to 8 in light of might duration changes.

The Feb 2020 balance patch changed the initial WvW coefficient from 1.6 to 1.1 , which is roughly 31% reduction in line with most other skills.

The same 2018 patch that "increased the initial damage" made the damage over time far lower due to the drop off in damage.The internal cooldown of this skill has been removed when used against PvE targets, and its initial damage has been increased by 23%. Damage will now decline by 10% for each subsequent hit, capping at a minimum value equal to 10% of the initial impact's damage.https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2018-05-08#Elementalist

Lava font was shaved from 0.525 to 0.454 in the Feb 2020 balance patch, which is far less. The damage is almost on par with weak autoattacks now and a 6s cooldown with no activation time makes it less risk.

Also I'm inclined to think there's more legendary account-bound weapons and trinkets that require WvW gift of battle, so that means more than raiders. 10% of gw2efficiency players have Triumphant helm (WVW skin) unlocked and 13% have Triumphant Breastplate. Top 10 percentile of gw2efficiency players have 1047 skirmish tickets; top 20th percentile have 252 WVW rank or capped 339 towers, 121 keeps / Stonemist 12 times. The highest percentage for any Experimental Envoy skin is <8% , only 1% is listed as having a white mantle portal device.

Raids are the least played game mode by far, next to sPvP. Not sure why Anet insist on ignoring everything else and balancing only for the top 10% of raiders. Basically making a class useless in most modes of play so they can satisfy a fraction of a fraction of the playerbase. And tbh, I doubt that they are satisfied either, because at this point ele is a hassle even for such players. In fractals, ele has been falling out of the meta even for top players. If anyone could make this class work, it is them and even they have started struggling to justify running it. For anyone below this tier of player the class is basically worthless, because the performance falls off harder than any other class.

At this point of PoF's life ele excels at nothing, and has huge weaknesses across the board. It used to be that at least it had its niche as a top dps under perfect conditions, but even that is not realistic anymore. So the weak performance in most other areas of the game is not justified in any way. Sadly, nothing will be fixed anytime soon. You have to wait for the pre-EoD balance and for the new elite specs. That is the only hope that ele has right now.

[Dadnir.5038]

@"Stand The Wall.6987" said:the damage reduction per hit part. seems like its over nerfed now.

editfor all modes i guess but mainly wvw

The damage reduction per hit is one of the few true PvE nerf of the game. Asking whether it should be reverted or not is like asking whether the elementalist need 1 to 3 more builds flirting with 40k DPS potential on large target in PvE or not.

The answer should thus be: "At this point, it doesn't really matter, there is already 4 elementalist builds dealing between 38 and 40k DPS potential on large target, who care if there is a few more?"

[Nephalem.8921]

@"Infusion.7149" said:No Meteor Shower is not doing more initial damage than before unless you mean pre-2020 and relative to a 2018 nerf. Anyone that actually has played elementalist in WvW and reads patch notes knows this. What has changed , however, is the modifiers in fire magic. Particularly Power Overwhelming which dropped requisite might stacks from 10 to 8 in light of might duration changes.

The Feb 2020 balance patch changed the initial WvW coefficient from 1.6 to 1.1 , which is roughly 31% reduction in line with most other skills.

The same 2018 patch that "increased the initial damage" made the damage over time far lower due to the drop off in damage.The internal cooldown of this skill has been removed when used against PvE targets, and its initial damage has been increased by 23%. Damage will now decline by 10% for each subsequent hit, capping at a minimum value equal to 10% of the initial impact's damage.https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2018-05-08#Elementalist

Lava font was shaved from 0.525 to 0.454 in the Feb 2020 balance patch, which is far less. The damage is almost on par with weak autoattacks now and a 6s cooldown with no activation time makes it less risk.

The feb balance patch was the global coefficient reduction and has nothing to do with the pve nerf.The so called pve justified nerf was a net buff for meteor shower in wvsw. dmg reduction per hit is per target. But keep blaming pve and raids when the major nerf was purely pvp related.Dmg reduction per hit should not even influence wvsw because the skill shouldnt be balanced around hitting a single person with 4+ meteors. thats when the pve nerf kicks in.Anyone getting hit by so many should be downed in my opinion. this would probably mean slightly higher base coefficient or unblockable. Nobody knows why pyromancers puissance got changed or why its so hard to have boons without losing dmg for weaver. thats also hurting pve weaver a lot.

[Zeesh.7286]

@"TrollingDemigod.3041" said:

Most Staff skills are pepegas, even more on Weaver, I still wonder why Dual Skills on staff doesn't have "Unblockable" effect by default, these skills are self-punishable if enemy reflect bubble doesn't show on your screen.

THIS!!! Absolutely BONKERS that staff duals are still utterly garbage even after so many complaints. The changes aren't even hard to implement!

[Infusion.7149]

@Nephalem.8921 said:

@"Infusion.7149" said:No Meteor Shower is

not

doing more initial damage than before unless you mean pre-2020 and relative to a 2018 nerf. Anyone that actually has played elementalist in WvW and reads patch notes knows this. What has changed , however, is the modifiers in fire magic. Particularly

Power Overwhelming

which dropped requisite might stacks from 10 to 8 in light of might duration changes.

The Feb 2020 balance patch changed the initial WvW coefficient from 1.6 to

1.1

, which is roughly 31% reduction in line with most other skills.

The same 2018 patch that "increased the initial damage" made the damage over time far lower due to the drop off in damage.

The internal cooldown of this skill has been removed when used against PvE targets, and its initial damage has been increased by 23%. Damage will now decline by 10% for each subsequent hit, capping at a minimum value equal to 10% of the initial impact's damage.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2018-05-08#Elementalist

Lava font was shaved from 0.525 to 0.454 in the Feb 2020 balance patch, which is far less. The damage is almost on par with weak autoattacks now and a 6s cooldown with no activation time makes it less risk.

The feb balance patch was the global coefficient reduction and has nothing to do with the pve nerf.The so called pve justified nerf was a net buff for meteor shower in wvsw. dmg reduction per hit is per target. But keep blaming pve and raids when the major nerf was purely pvp related.Dmg reduction per hit should not even influence wvsw because the skill shouldnt be balanced around hitting a single person with 4+ meteors. thats when the pve nerf kicks in.Anyone getting hit by so many should be downed in my opinion. this would probably mean slightly higher base coefficient or unblockable. Nobody knows why pyromancers puissance got changed or why its so hard to have boons without losing dmg for weaver. thats also hurting pve weaver a lot.

Your post above asked "doesn't meteor shower do more damage than before?". It doesn't. The only way to reduce RNG on meteor shower is by casting it on a choke or on a wall which makes it basically useless in current open-field against teams with scrappers. In the same patches tempest was used as support and up until last year CoR + Phase Smash (rev hammer) did much more damage on the initial hit than Meteor Shower's maximum damage. Even if you get subsequent hits in , they are likely to be outhealed or blocked by aegis.

There was a brief time that meteor was bugged out in 2018 , see https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/47642/meteor-warsEven in that time-frame with 1.6 coefficient, it was only supposed to do 1.6x an autoattack on fire (fireball as 1.0 coefficient at the time). After the bug was fixed the amount of staff weavers essentially dissipated quickly and this was before gyro reworks.

Gyro rework occurred in March 2019 (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2019-03-05#Engineer ) , which is when superspeed became much more accessible due to Shocking Speed.

Even in PvE benchmarks, meteor shower was only "overperforming" against stationary large hitboxes.

When has staff been used in PVP in an offensive role? It was fire sword weavers, water sword weavers , dagger mainhand support tempests (similar to wvw frontline or midline aurashare), staff support tempests before that. Even if you go back all the way to core days, it was cele dagger+dagger.

[Arheundel.6451]

@Ganathar.4956 said:

@"Infusion.7149" said:No Meteor Shower is

not

doing more initial damage than before unless you mean pre-2020 and relative to a 2018 nerf. Anyone that actually has played elementalist in WvW and reads patch notes knows this. What has changed , however, is the modifiers in fire magic. Particularly

Power Overwhelming

which dropped requisite might stacks from 10 to 8 in light of might duration changes.

The Feb 2020 balance patch changed the initial WvW coefficient from 1.6 to

1.1

, which is roughly 31% reduction in line with most other skills.

The same 2018 patch that "increased the initial damage" made the damage over time far lower due to the drop off in damage.

The internal cooldown of this skill has been removed when used against PvE targets, and its initial damage has been increased by 23%. Damage will now decline by 10% for each subsequent hit, capping at a minimum value equal to 10% of the initial impact's damage.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2018-05-08#Elementalist

Lava font was shaved from 0.525 to 0.454 in the Feb 2020 balance patch, which is far less. The damage is almost on par with weak autoattacks now and a 6s cooldown with no activation time makes it less risk.

Also I'm inclined to think there's more legendary account-bound weapons and trinkets that require WvW gift of battle, so that means more than raiders. 10% of gw2efficiency players have Triumphant helm (WVW skin) unlocked and 13% have Triumphant Breastplate. Top 10 percentile of gw2efficiency players have 1047 skirmish tickets; top 20th percentile have 252 WVW rank or capped 339 towers, 121 keeps / Stonemist 12 times. The highest percentage for any Experimental Envoy skin is <8% , only 1% is listed as having a white mantle portal device.

Raids are the least played game mode by far, next to sPvP. Not sure why Anet insist on ignoring everything else and balancing only for the top 10% of raiders. Basically making a class useless in most modes of play so they can satisfy a fraction of a fraction of the playerbase. And tbh, I doubt that they are satisfied either, because at this point ele is a hassle even for such players. In fractals, ele has been falling out of the meta even for top players. If anyone could make this class work, it is them and even they have started struggling to justify running it. For anyone below this tier of player the class is basically worthless, because the performance falls off harder than any other class.

At this point of PoF's life ele excels at nothing, and has huge weaknesses across the board. It used to be that at least it had its niche as a top dps under perfect conditions, but even that is not realistic anymore. So the weak performance in most other areas of the game is not justified in any way. Sadly, nothing will be fixed anytime soon. You have to wait for the pre-EoD balance and for the new elite specs. That is the only hope that ele has right now.

We all know that the EoD elite will be nerfed down to same level of the rest of the class after only few months from release, this "community" not used to fight eles on daily basis like say...necro and rev or ranger even so, the moment ele becomes popular again...they will hard nerf it soon after release...once you happily buy the expansion.

[Jski.6180]

Hehe to the shadow realm also know as the ele forms!

There still core ele and tempest that got hit hard when they nerf MS duel skills still hit harder then most normal ele skills to weaver should be fine. Over all they over nerfed every thing on core weapons for ele to make the tempest and weaver weapons worth using.