Elementalist Staff Rework Opinions

[Eilah.7908]

it could be neat to bring back the old gw1 elite skill searing flames' functionality on staff three. inflicts burn, but deals a decent chunk of damage to anyone who is already burning.

[Affinity.7253]

I totally agree that staff desperately needs a buff/rework in all forms of the game (PvX) but I think some of the solutions proposed by OP aren't fantastic ideas and pigeonhole staff into a particular playstyle, or are too much of a departure from the core class functionality.

 

From Eilah, I really like the idea of turning fire 3 into basically searing flames - doing what it does now but also dealing massive damage to something if it is already burning. That gives it both condi and power scaling.

 

Second, here is my proposed rework for fire 2: Lava Font - turn your target into a font of lava, turning them into a small fire field and dealing periodic damage to them. (you now need to be facing your target to cast it)

 

Basically, how this would work is just like lava font does now, but instead of being placed, you turn your target into the lava font and the fire field stays centered on their character. To people ABOUT to write how OPOPOP this would be in pvp.... stop. Fire 2 does little damage anyway in pvp after the nerf, so guaranteeing it is fine. For those concerned about how it would make kiting too easy, it cannot be placed behind you anymore, so no. Also, staff has too much reliance on placed fields, which makes it incredibly clunky. SOME place fields is good and fine, but too many is what makes it such a pain to use in non-raid environments.

 

Finally, here is my idea for air 4: Windborn - teleport to targeted area (1200 distance), clear movement impairing debuffs (immobilize, chill, cripple, slow) and grant swiftness (10s) to yourself and all allies that were in the INITIAL area of effect. Base cooldown of 30 seconds.

 

I find it absolutely INSANE that the lowest health and armor class has by FAR the fewest teleports out of the scholars. We have ONE mid range. Even necromancers now have triple that! What on Tyria is going on here?!? Why is the flimsiest class the most starved for movement options?!? So yes, a 30 second (24 if air talented) teleport that removes movement impairing effects. This will let staff elementalists get away from some classes instead of just... having to waddle away from fights going south, praying that earth 4 saves you.

[Xerac.1542]

I would simply love to be able to hit anything with the staff attacks...they are so sluggish.

 

I don't mind rotating through attunements to get the utility I would have needed 0.5 seconds ago.

 

I would propose simply speeding up all the projectile speeds by... 25% or something. Ich can almost outrun the fire/air #3 with swiftness....

So speed these projectiles and the auto attacks up and maybe even shave off a tiny bit on the other casts.

 

For balancing, if a faster auto attack is too strong they could turn it into an arcane trait so people who want to run staff need to drop a damage traitline.

 

 

[Shiyo.3578]

> @"Yasai.3549" said:

> Staff skills are extremely horrible for smallscale player vs player combat because :

>

> 1. They tend to require full uptime of skills affecting their target to actually be considered "good" (meaning the target actually has to be afk and eat the full effects of each spell to feel significant damage from it)

> 2. Cooldowns are disgustingly long.

>

> It works extremely well for Zerg combat and honestly it is a pretty good "heavy artillery" skill set due to its amazing range coverage.

> I think Staff is fine and has its place.

> If yu wanna play a mage duelist in small scale, use Sceptre instead, it's much better and can be combo'd with Dagger or Focus.

 

Staff is useless in every game mode.

[Sifu.9745]

Fire: Auto attack, Lava Font and Meteor Shower should all do burning dmg. The direct dmg part needs to be heavily reduced to compensate with added condi dmg. This is a Fire attunement (FIRE!) and i have absolutely no idea why it is based on pure Power dmg with Staff equipped? I'd like to see foes burn in flames!

Watter is quite ok.

Air: I'd like to see auto attack being a channeling spell with 1.5 sec duration and a small buff to dmg.

Earth needs a small bleeding on auto attack.

[FrownyClown.8402]

I understand people wanna be able to do damage with staff, but its a support weapon primarily. It offers more team utility than any other weapon imo.

[Sifu.9745]

> @"FrownyClown.8402" said:

> I understand people wanna be able to do damage with staff, but its a support weapon primarily. It offers more team utility than any other weapon imo.

 

That's why we see so many support Staff eles around, especially in PvP. Hmm, or maybe we don't see them at all. Best support weapon is Dagger/Focus. Dagger is also best dps weapon. So as elementalist you are limited to daggers and swords (weaver only), while Staff and Scepter are barely touched. Melee mage lol! What a stupid and lazy design. This melee oriented game is becoming really boring, when even mages are forced to play with melee weapons for both: dps and support role. As Mesmer at least i can do some dmg with Staff while keeping insane survivability.

[mikdepadua.8376]

imo air just needs a bit of a buff.

[FrownyClown.8402]

> @"Sifu.9745" said:

> > @"FrownyClown.8402" said:

> > I understand people wanna be able to do damage with staff, but its a support weapon primarily. It offers more team utility than any other weapon imo.

>

> That's why we see so many support Staff eles around, especially in PvP. Hmm, or maybe we don't see them at all. Best support weapon is Dagger/Focus. Dagger is also best dps weapon. So as elementalist you are limited to daggers and swords (weaver only), while Staff and Scepter are barely touched. Melee mage lol! What a stupid and lazy design. This melee oriented game is becoming really boring, when even mages are forced to play with melee weapons for both: dps and support role. As Mesmer at least i can do some dmg with Staff while keeping insane survivability.

 

Staff is fine in pvp and wvw. Its just not prefered over d/f because of the huge uptime of projectile reflect and shocking aura spam.

[Zeesh.7286]

> Staff is fine in ~~pvp and~~ wvw. Its just not prefered over d/f because of the huge uptime of projectile reflect and shocking aura spam.

 

here I fixed it.

 

the only changes needed imho is a boost in meteor damage and lava font and faster projectile speeds on all autos to make it competitive with sword in pve and relevant in spvp. It does fine in WvW (Though you really really need to be excellent at positioning and predicting zerg movements). I would also remove the bullshit delays in water 2 and earth 2. Especially Earth 2. It takes a garbage amount of time to erupt. Why is there a delay of 3 secs???? If that is the case it should hit as hard as a friggin meteor shower! I don't even want to talk about how ridiculous the speeds are for staff dual attacks as a weaver.... Earth 3 should be an AOE aura. Air 4 should give group alacrity or stab and immunity to slow, cripple, chill and immobilize so it's actually of some use in WvW and spvp now with all the crazy immob spamming and there is some attraction to picking staff support over dagger/focus.

 

 

[Henrik.7560]

Staff is in a pretty terrible state in all game modes, its only semi decent in WvW if the enemy has a massive blob and sits in your meteor otherwise a good herald will do the same damage and bring party buffs, and a good scourge will bring corruptions. Even meteor shower isn't really that great and only hits 5 digits on up levels, and staff is completely out of the meta in pve.

 

Some suggestions:

Increase damage of fire 1/2/5 by 15-20% in all game modes

Fire 3 should hit way harder and do bonus damage to burning foes, give it a longer cast time to compensate

Air 4 should grant 3-5s superspeed making staff support potentially better

Air 5 should be large radius

Earth 2 should be faster cast and reduced delay

Earth 5 should be ground target and faster, but not a projectile, make it like ranger muddy terrain

Water 2 could do more dps,15-20%

Water 5 reduce cast time

Water 3 buff the healing a bit