Guild Wars 2

For a similar reason Diamond skin was; it does not address the real issue with ele’s lack of tools for survival.

Here is a breakdown of perceived vs actual results;

-It will make them immune to crit-based builds. Not true, in order for this trait to take effect, the ele must be in earth attunement. Every experienced ele player will tell you how little time you spend in that attunement due to lack of damage and rotations CD. I would like to challenge anyone to beat a WvW backstab thief or a Eviserate warrior with only earth attunement

-You can now go full glass cannon and not have to worry about crits. So false. Once again, earth attunement doesnt have any major damage spells, in fact, have very few, and all of them very unreliable on long CD. But this point isnt about the skills, but rather the traits. Earth offer toughness and condition damage. A glass cannon ele has absolutely no use for conditions, specially since we only have burning and bleed, most classes can cleanse at least 2 conditions, making us completely useless as condi speccs. Lastly, taking that trait line shut us from taking more direct damage focused traits and trait lines.

The real ele’s lack of survival has not been addressed at all: high CD on skills key for survival, such as cantrips, RtL, lack of defensive traits on offensive tres such as air and fire. (im sorry, but a blind on burn with an ICD, taking the spot of a 30 points grandmaster is not fair, at most it should be adept or master)

Possible solutions:

-Move the new blind on burn to master.

-Replace the new grandmaster air trait with something worth it of being up there, not a lighting that gives weakness on interrupting….. as if we had that many interrupts.

-Fire aura: make it more accessible; on hit it burns a condition on self, 1 sec ICD, burns a buff on the opponent 3 secs ICD. Make it more desirable. Make the leap + fire give 2-3 mights instead of fire aura.

-A trait on air that every time you use a glyph, you get an aura based on attunement, 4 duration.

You have so much potential, auras and glyphs are unique to elementalists yet they do so little in our aid. You have the potential for the class to feel unique, yet our core mechanics are being ignored

1. Earth is a Defensive Attunement. If being in a Defensive Attunement allows you to become an offensive threat at the same time, it’s what you call imbalanced. You are an Elementalist, not a Warrior. You can’t have the best of both worlds.

2. You switch to Earth Attunement when you predict an incoming burst. Think of Stone Heart as an Active Defense mechanism. This trait will reward skilled players who uses their skills and trait advantages selectively based on the situation instead of spamming all available skills.

3. Elementalists have been crying for more survivability for a year. Here they are; Blinding Ashes and Stone Heart. Blinding Ashes gives you a defensive mechanism while going into a full Offensive trait line. Stone Heart rewards skilled elementalists who actually predict their enemy’s moves and manage their attunements properly instead of spamming available skills.

From what I see it seems like people want an “easier” access to survivability that doesn’t require player skill at all.

Kyon.9735:

1. Earth is a Defensive Attunement. If being in a Defensive Attunement allows you to become an offensive threat at the same time, it’s what you call imbalanced. You are an Elementalist, not a Warrior. You can’t have the best of both worlds.

2. You switch to Earth Attunement when you predict an incoming burst. Think of Stone Heart as an Active Defense mechanism. This trait will reward skilled players who uses their skills and trait advantages selectively based on the situation instead of spamming all available skills.

3. Elementalists have been crying for more survivability for a year. Here they are; Blinding Ashes and Stone Heart. Blinding Ashes gives you a defensive mechanism while going into a full Offensive trait line. Stone Heart rewards skilled elementalists who actually predict their enemy’s moves and manage their attunements properly instead of spamming available skills.

From what I see it seems like people want an “easier” access to survivability that doesn’t require player skill at all.

I agree to an extent. Two things I think need to be addressed.

1. Other classes need to be brought in line like the elementalist. Right now I think Ele are pretty much completely balanced if the traits turn out like I hop they are going to be. That is, only builds that take one of these grandmaster traits in fire and earth. All the other builds still completely lack defense so one of these traits is a must. Other classes like warrior can get the best of both worlds and that is why Eles are weak, because they are balanced and other classes are not.

2. The Eles base HP needs to be brought up to around mesmers at least because even if these other classes were brought in line with speccing for only offense or defense (or of course hybrids which would not get the best of both worlds) then Eles would still be below par because the HP difference is massive and we don’t have stealth and evades like a thief does.

tl;dr I agree but other classes need to become balanced in the way Ele is and also Ele’s base health needs to be brought up to around the mesmer’s because even if the other classes were balanced then they would still have an advantage because the Ele’s health is so low compared to others and we don’t have stealth and constant evades

Kyon.9735:

From what I see it seems like people want an “easier” access to survivability that doesn’t require player skill at all.

What people want is for elementalist to be viable in competitive play (ie SPvP). How the developers reach this point is that extremely important as long as they do reach it.

Make buffs that require skill but which can reliable be pulled off so the class get used? OK.
Make buffs that are passive which helps get the class used again? OK.
Buff our health to be competitive? OK.

What is not ok is the current status quo of no elementalist in competitive play.

Cush.4063:

1. Other classes need to be brought in line like the elementalist. Right now I think Ele are pretty much completely balanced if the traits turn out like I hop they are going to be. That is, only builds that take one of these grandmaster traits in fire and earth. All the other builds still completely lack defense so one of these traits is a must. Other classes like warrior can get the best of both worlds and that is why Eles are weak, because they are balanced and other classes are not.

In general I agree in that Elementalists seem to balance quite well.
Though I dislike the design of traiting per-attunement, because this makes you always favour some. Arcane works well as a line here, as do the glyph-traits (since glyphs favour switching depending on context).

But other than that there’s some work needed.

Still, the overall balance works much better than with say, Warriors. Or Mesmers. Or Rangers.

I think Stone Heart is different from Diamant Skin.
The reasons are simply:
1: The Crit immunity works only in earth attunment and no ele can stay only in one attunement for a long time (well he can but eles are to depended on attunment swapping to be functional). So at one point will be possible to crit against an ele unlike with Diamant Skin, since some condi builds will never get an ele below 90% health if the ele plays reasonable enough.

2: It doesnt negate the damage completly unlike Diamont Skin.

Though i am still thinking if i like the “idea” behind Stine Heart or not.

What if Lingering Elements was changed to include effects like Stone Heart and Diamond Skin?

Elementalists have been crying for more survivability for a year. Here they are; Blinding Ashes and Stone Heart. Blinding Ashes gives you a defensive mechanism while going into a full Offensive trait line. Stone Heart rewards skilled elementalists who actually predict their enemy’s moves and manage their attunements properly instead of spamming available skills.

no reason to invest into fire traits. because our “defensive” earth trait line provides more offense than our “offensive” fire trait line.

nothing changes hambow/spirit rangers dont need to make crits, their AA gives them enough damage to kill ele without crits.

are new traits gives us builds diversity? yes, they are
will we have more survivability? no, another way to play, same way to die.

OneManArmy.9732:

no reason to invest into fire traits. because our “defensive” earth trait line provides more offense than our “offensive” fire trait line.

nothing changes hambow/spirit rangers dont need to make crits, their AA gives them enough damage to kill ele without crits.

are new traits gives us builds diversity? yes, they are
will we have more survivability? no, another way to play, same way to die.

This. Not taking Crits means nothing when non-critting hits still do insane damage to us. Even with 2k Toughness i am still taking high damage from even just auto attacks….

Muchacho.2390:

I think Stone Heart is different from Diamant Skin.
The reasons are simply:
1: The Crit immunity works only in earth attunment and no ele can stay only in one attunement for a long time (well he can but eles are to depended on attunment swapping to be functional). So at one point will be possible to crit against an ele unlike with Diamant Skin, since some condi builds will never get an ele below 90% health if the ele plays reasonable enough.

2: It doesnt negate the damage completly unlike Diamont Skin.

Though i am still thinking if i like the “idea” behind Stine Heart or not.

Diamond skin doesnt negate damage completely either. Pre-existing conditions, before the proc, persist. And direct-damage doesnt give a toss about diamond skin.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

This. Not taking Crits means nothing when non-critting hits still do insane damage to us. Even with 2k Toughness i am still taking high damage from even just auto attacks….

You take the same damage per attack as someone else with 2k Toughness. :P

Carighan.6758:

You take the same damage per attack as someone else with 2k Toughness. :P

Yeah, now if only i had the health they had or the defensive skills they had….

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Yeah, now if only i had the health they had or the defensive skills they had….

True, but that Warriors need a serious mobility/defence nerf is an entirely different thing.