Guild Wars 2

The first thing that hits anyone trying an Ele is our attunements. They are fun while leveling, but turn into a waste in PvE and an actual liability in PvP. This should be an exciting, core mechanic. Instead, it’s something you either ignore or hate.

The changes to each attunement would be:

Fire – Whenever a movement impairing condition is applied to you, you instead gain Vigor and apply Burning to nearby enemies. (5-10 second cooldown)

Air – Dodging now teleports you, instead of merely rolling you. Teleport covers twice the distance, removing all movement impairing conditions. (no cooldown, but stamina regenerates 100% slower)

Water – The duration of movement impairing conditions is initially reduced by 25%. This percentage is increased by 25% for every 5 seconds you remain in Water, resetting to 0% from 100%. (no cooldown)

Earth – Apply Cripple whenever you apply Bleed to your target. Every 5th application of Bleed also applies Immobilize for 2 seconds. (1-5 second cooldown)

These changes would reward attunement-swapping. Instead of being simple gates to needed abilities, attunements themselves would provide important and valued benefits.

I am sorry but those suggestions do not seem balanced at all.

Fire – Well, that one sounds alright as a trait and not something innate, but cooldown would need to be like 20 seconds

Air – The importance of evade is the invulnerability frames, not necessarily covering ground quickly. Removing all movement condis is OP. Changing the endurance regen rules is not user-friendly

Water – Seems ok as a trait… bit odd. I see where you’re coming from – “who would stick around in water for 20 seconds to get the full immunity?” But then the whole idea just seems pointless, no one sticks in water for more than 5, let alone 10.

Earth – So presuming you’ve got D or S MH, you can keep up permanent cripple by just auto attacking. Not only that, every 5th bleed is also 2s immobilise? That’s 1.6666 auto attacks with scepter. That is ridic OP.

These are huge, sweeping changes not suitable for PvP. Anet has already addressed that they will be reverting some of the earlier nerfs to Ele that made it less suitable as a roamer.

Denar.3950:

I am sorry but those suggestions do not seem balanced at all.

Fire – Well, that one sounds alright as a trait and not something innate, but cooldown would need to be like 20 seconds

Air – The importance of evade is the invulnerability frames, not necessarily covering ground quickly. Removing all movement condis is OP. Changing the endurance regen rules is not user-friendly

Water – Seems ok as a trait… bit odd. I see where you’re coming from – “who would stick around in water for 20 seconds to get the full immunity?” But then the whole idea just seems pointless, no one sticks in water for more than 5, let alone 10.

Earth – So presuming you’ve got D or S MH, you can keep up permanent cripple by just auto attacking. Not only that, every 5th bleed is also 2s immobilise? That’s 1.6666 auto attacks with scepter. That is ridic OP.

These are huge, sweeping changes not suitable for PvP. Anet has already addressed that they will be reverting some of the earlier nerfs to Ele that made it less suitable as a roamer.

My response for each of the attunements:

Fire – If it removed all conditions, not just movement impairing, I would agree it’s too good to be innate. I think you’re judging the buff in the context of Ele’s other abilities, outside of Fire. Except those abilities cannot be used, so they aren’t a factor. Fire currently provides nothing in the way of survivability or mobility, once conditions are factored in. Basically, it would give fire one single mobility buff every 10-20 seconds. In team fights, it would barely matter, with all the conditions flying around. And it can’t stack on top of other Ele condition cleanses, because Fire has none. (Burning Retreat and Burning Speed improve mobility, but are countered by Immobilize.)

Air – Endurance regen is already altered by Vigor, Quickness, and a number of traits. It isn’t a concept foreign to the player. As for whether it is OP or not, consider that when an Ele is focused they have no escape outside of the teleport Cantrip. The idea is for Ele’s to have an out if they become the main target. With the 100% regen penalty, no one will be spamming this. And because you can no longer use dodge for the invulnerability, no one is going to camp in Air just for the teleport.

Water – This is meant to interact with the Air attunement, to provide Ele’s the ability to roam freely. You can use Air to get out of fights, then hop into Water to stay out of fights. The longer you retreat, the harder you will be to catch. That said, the buff stacks so slowly it would not have much of a role during fights. It would work well with the Chill abilities already available in Water.

Earth – First of all, I think you are vastly underestimating the omnipresence of Chill/Cripple/Weakness in teamfights. Targets already face these conditions with 100% uptime. All that said, you ignored the cooldown. I think 2 seconds would be enough, but my range was 1-5. If you went with the full 5, then the immobilize would only be available once every 25 seconds. That’s certainly not a very outlandish ability. (Warriors have full-fledged stuns available more often than that.)

Just to further explain these changes, you have to remember how astonishingly fragile Ele’s are. It amplifies nerfs and undercuts buffs. Minor tweaks have crippled the class, while (theoretically) massive improvements have proven useless.

A perfect example is Diamond Skin. On paper, it looked disgusting. Other professions thought it would ruin the meta, with condition-immune Ele’s running rampant. Necromancers thought they were going to get pushed out of sPvP entirely. Then it was released, and proved to be such a negligible buff that most Ele’s don’t even take it.

To buff Elementalists, you have to aim higher than you think you should.

You need to rethink these buffs. Some of them are actually hindering which you stated you dont want.