Guild Wars 2

I am not sure if I am posting this in the right place or if this has already been mentioned.
How about removing some of the attunement speed recharge from the arcana trait line, and improving traits in the different elemental traitlines by giving them some elemental attunement recharge for this element.

e.g : elemental attunement recharge rate is now of 1% for 1 point in arcana. Every adept/master/grandmaster trait gives me 10% cd reduction on the attunement of this particular element.
If I go 20 in arcana an 20 in earth I basically have 20% increased elemental attunement recharge rate for every element, and 40% for earth.

This idea is just thrown at random. However it would mean that switching from one element to another is more difficult if I am not specialized in it. Hence water specced D/D people will be good at supporting/healing but will go less often in air for burst/escape. This also mean that traits like Air training, Strength of Stone and so on are not hindered by a change of elements.
If I trait for high damage when using fire, I want to go back quickly to fire to deal my high damage, not wait 15 secs for my attunement to come back.
It does not solve everything (some traits have to be reworked, and cantrips offer too much sustain when traited in just one traitline). It does mean less balancing in the arcana traitline which already has some nice traits and will still seem appealing to many.

It is probably a very complex idea and would require lots of time for balancing. I just wish a dev reads this and gives it a think!

@HikariNoTen

Your idea has been suggested several times in the elementalist forum, and I agree.

Arcana: nerf attunement cooldown rate to 30% (from 60%).
All grandmaster minor traits: reduces their respective attunement’s cooldown by half.

This would be extremely interesting for players that want to “specialize” in one or two specific attunements, and also create new synergies with -20% cooldown traits and other “while in X attunement” traits.

It would also have the extra advantage of allowing builds to be less dependent on arcana.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

I honestly wouldn’t want to see the healing scale to be toned down, or at least not much, or else this would make the healing power stat a bit useless.

Also, I always felt that Cleansing Wave should be a focus skill. My immediate reaction to that skill, when I started playing this game, was “wait, this is a OH dagger skill? Why is this not on focus?” :P Especially when the scepter also had the other direct heal skill while MH dagger was left with a slower, more sustained heal skill. It kinda made sense to me that the more traditionally “magical” items would share more similarities with each other. But I suppose that with so much damage mitigation/ prevention in focus, healing like that could be a bit too strong.

Meanwhile, comet is like the ranged, weaker earthquake, and I can’t quite understand why both comet and magnetic surge are blast finishers, you won’t want to exactly combo them with the flamewall all the time, because those skills are more conditional and should be saved for specific times. And now that fire shield gives might, what is the point of all this in the focus, offer a different way to stack might like scepter/ oh dagger do? But it just doesn’t work, because it requires fast switching between three attunements instead of only two (meaning you would have to “waste” one of those attunements), depend on your opponents, and “waste” two utility skills. Might-stacking, in the focus, feels accidental – sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t, without any particular strategy nor any direct result from the player’s intention.

I do like the idea of fire aura basically being the elementalist’s “weaker” version of retaliation, that also happens to make them get stronger whenever they get hit, but that kinda goes against the profession’s playstyle, that relies on dodging and rupting, and can’t soak up damage like a warrior or a necromancer. Besides, when a player sees a character covered in a (burning or not) magical shell, what is the first thing a player thinks of? “It’s a defensive/ block animation!” For all those reasons, fire shield (it’s even called “shield”!) deserved as much the 10% damage reduction frost aura got, if not more.

The focus feels kinda unfocused (lol) at the moment. There’s this vague idea that it’s a defensive set with some ranged disruption, but then it has several details that aren’t consistent with the set as a whole. Some weirdly-placed blast finishers, a weird might-stacking subtheme, a random ranged chill, 2 very conditional anti-projectile skills, and a fire skillset that is purely about condition damage while its earth set has no single bleed. Are the chill and knockdown skills even meant to make dragon’s tooth hit more often? But dragon’s tooth is mostly a burst skill, and the focus offers no burst at all… :P The focus is so contradictory at parts.

(And currently isn’t as fun as playing with OH dagger, due to the lack of epic skills, interesting cross-attunement combos, and plain simply some underwhelming or highly conditional effects).

I’m not sure what you’re doing with focus; it’s an extremely powerful defensive/utility tool and the might stacking is easily comparable to /dagger. It’s more than fluid in this regard as well; when you combo right the focus actually has higher might stack potential because of recharges/dual fire shield potential with dagger mainhand. The range on swirling winds is absolutely amazing considering its very fast casting time and relatively short recharge (try grabbing aeromancer’s alacrity for a lot of anti-range fun and extra utility) and magnetic wave is like having a free cleansing flame that applies aoe cripple+blast finisher. I think d/f is stronger than s/f because of the current levels of synergy regarding blast finishers and auras, but an ele who can use focus well is not to be trifled with. Focus will shine even more when cantrips are brought down a tad more and other utilities are brought up. I think it could use a little tweaking on a few recharges/cast times, but it’s really solid overall.

I just hope this new change will only affect PvP and not PvE… I already stopped playing my Ele anymore in PvP, maybe I should stop in PvE too?

This thread should be deleted just because symbolic choosen divinity ruins.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Very well written Symbolic.

Great write-up. Just so you guys know, we’re trying to bring down the cantrip Ele, while also being careful to let other Ele builds work. We don’t want to just take all Ele’s out of play, but we do need to bring a few things down (traits/skills) in efficacy.

Please remember that any changes you make have to leave the Ele still viable in both WvW and Fractals, where having the lowest hps and armor is already a heavy viability. I find myself having to play these bunker builds just to be able to survive in WvW and high end PvE content just to have any amount of survival at all. And when I saw WvW I mean actual WvW battles, not solo roaming and fighting 3 upleveled stragglers.

In fact, the idea of balancing around spvp which has proven to be the least popular aspect of the game seems like a complete waste of development resources. This game has, unfortunately, failed to develop any kind of esport following and maybe abandoning spvp as a balancing metric in favor of making all classes have better self-sustainability and support in WvW and PvE would help improve those aspects of the game.

That is the issue…
Despite the greatest part of the community is WWW AND PVE we have to suffer nerfs for game modes where D/D is not an issue for sure…

Expecially touching traits means WWW and PVE nerfs.

COnsidering how in pve Wariors and guardians are utterly broken and OP and are monopolizing groups mostly it rightfully makes people upset.

D/D ele maybe is OP in PvP but if you nerf it again in pve/www it will become unviable….
So for the sake of few pvp players don t ruin the game of thousand players thank you!
KEEP any nerf to pvp

Dsquaredcri.9421:

This thread should be deleted just because symbolic choosen divinity ruins.

you don’t really need runes.

LordByron.8369:

That is the issue…
Despite the greatest part of the community is WWW AND PVE we have to suffer nerfs for game modes where D/D is not an issue for sure…

Expecially touching traits means WWW and PVE nerfs.

COnsidering how in pve Wariors and guardians are utterly broken and OP and are monopolizing groups mostly it rightfully makes people upset.

D/D ele maybe is OP in PvP but if you nerf it again in pve/www it will become unviable….
So for the sake of few pvp players don t ruin the game of thousand players thank you!
KEEP any nerf to pvp

It’s not just D/D that could become nonviable. All elementalist specs need massive survivability to come from skills and traits to compensate for the fact that we have both the lowest armor and lowest health of any class.

Anet for the love of the gods please don’t nerf another build just cause people cant l2p, a skilled player can take down a skilled cantrip ele and someone who has even a slight bit idea on how to play can take down the average one. I know you guys get a lot of complaints on these forums but you have to understand that that is all people use the forums for. You don’t hear from the good players on here cause they have no reason to be on here complaining about stuff and I am sure if you looked into the other posts these same people have been making all you will find is them complaining about one build or another. Even if you nerf this build these same people will be on here next month complaining about a new build that they are just to lazy to figure out how to beat. All you will really get out of nerfing this is a bunch of upset pve players who cant use their builds any more just like you have the last few updates. I understand you guys have this great utopian idea of making all professions and builds equal but it just isn’t going to happen and real players understand that. There will always be a “best” profession/way to do something and players will figure it out, like they always do, and the majority will follow suit and adapt and the rest will still be right here where we all know where to find them…

I don’t think soothing disruption can be nerfed any further. At its current state, it is still viable to be used for many builds with a few cantrips, even for more offensive eles with lesser boon duration (and using only 2 cantrips). Any further nerfs for that trait, and it would be pidgenholed only into heavy boon/ cantrip builds and useless elsewhere.

It’s the cantrips that are too strong (again: ALL of them being stunbreakers, and all of them being all the stunbreakers an ele can have), and maybe a few other stuff.

I’d say that if there’s another good trait candidate for a nerf, is without a doubt Elemental Attunement. The skills and traits in this game seem to follow a general rule, which is that for most of the cases, protection is only applied for a short duration (usually 3). Elemental Attunement applies 5 seconds of protection every time you switch to earth. That’s already over the curve, and with 30 arcana, an extra 20% boon duration, and maybe 15% protection duration, and you can get 7-8+ seconds worth of protection every 10 seconds, which is just plain crazy, especially combined with all their healing spells.

(However, if the devs ever touch EA, I would wish for a buff to its fire’s might gain, from 1 stack to 3. Nerf the duration from 15s to 10s or even to 5s, if it has to be. This would be a buff to offensive builds and, if the duration ended up being nerfed that much to compensate, it would also slightly nerf water’s 25th trait. But regardless of all that, Elemental Attunement is begging to be a master tier’s trait).

If the elemental attunement trait is ever fiddled with, the profession completely falls apart.

It’s so necessary and so required, the trait should just be made baseline to the profession and removed as a trait.

Attunement cooldown should be reduced from 15 base to 12 base. 30 in arcane would still take it to 9. Allows people to not feel like they have to go deep arcane just to have playable attunement swap time, while still making it desirable to go deep if they want to.

Want to nerf eles in spvp so they’re still good but a few of them on the same point isn’t nearly unkillable? Here’s something for you that doesn’t kitten the class.

patch note: “Healing ripple, in spvp only, no longer heals allies”.

Can still remove a condition and give regen. Just the direct heal becomes self only. spvp only.

Would make a MASSIVE difference in spvp for good players. Unfortunately people would still complain because they’re busy focusing on complaining about having problems killing a bunker 1 on 1.

I think cantrips are so popular due to the low HP pool of Elementalists. All our healing doesn’t amount to much if we’re stunned/immobilized and burst down. IMO, an additional 3-5k base HP would go a long ways to adding diversity to the class.

Elemental Attunement’s earth is overpowered. Something must be done to it regardless. :P

Also, talking about improving trait synergy, fire’s condition duration and earth’s condition damage should be switched. Earth can apply multiple conditions outside of bleeding (cripple, immobilize, weakness), while fire is usually stuck to burning, and burning doesn’t even always works well with condition duration compared to bleeding, due to the several 1s/ 2s burning attacks.

Switching them out would allow fire traited eles to deal more damage, and earth traited eles to have stronger crowd control (and equally “strong” bleeding). But if that were to be too strong, then the opposite could be done, and nerf the stat synergy in other traitlines.

Fire
Power + Boon
Air
Precision + Condition Duration
Arcana
Attune + Critical Damage

What’s the logic behind those stat placements?

First, those stat combos would still have synergy with each other:
1. critical damage is good in arcana because of its critical traits and arcane utility’s enhancements;
2. boon also makes sense in fire for might-stacking;
3. condition duration is left to air; not too bad with vulnerability/ blind/ etc;

Second, those combinations wouldn’t be overpowered. Especially: boons. Elementalists’ bunkers rely so much on boons, that having boon duration on arcana only makes that traitline even more mandatory. Putting boon duration on fire would shake the ele bunker meta. :P And elementalists would have to choose two options out of more boons, more defense, or more flexibility, instead of having access to all three of them as they do in current bunker ele meta.

Summed up i think Eles are just adapting to the facts given. There are many factors that push us into that kind of playstyle:

• Fire, Air and Earth-Traits are weak compared to Water and Arcana and compared to other classes -> Water/Arcana-Build
• Conjures, Glyphs and Signets are weak compared to Cantrips and compared to other classes -> Cantrips are the only solid option (maybe except Arcane-Spells)
• Staff is weak compared to S/D and D/D, same goes for Focus
• lowest base-HP and base-toughness -> forces players to compensate through defensive spec
• high CD on attunenment-switch -> to use the full potential of all our attunenments 30P in Arcana are necessary (other classes can keep their 10 weapon-skills on CD without having to spend talent-points)
• low synergy on other builds and traits (except cantrips) -> builds all revolve around cantrips
• too many traits that only buff one attunenment -> makes them unappealing since our playstyle involves heavy rotation through attunenments (would like to see more traits that improve specific weapon-sets, like it’s the case with most other classes)
• (Elites are crap, I would totally trade my elite-slot for a fourth “normal” utility-slot)
• 1-spells too weak -> makes Arcana-tree more interesting since low CD on attunenment-switch is important to keep the other spells on CD
• no possibility to adapt to situations where defense is needed because of the lack of weapon-switch (that offers defensive skills or the possiblity to kite at range) -> defensive spec (30P Water, cantrips) is necessary to compensate for this
• unreliable spells (dragons tooth, fire-grab, shatter-stone, …) [ → the lack of reliable burst (and also single-target-DMG)] makes GC-Builds less attractive -> makes Bunker-Builds more attractive

To get rid of all those bunker-eles you must not nerf water/arcana and cantrips … you have to change the other factors that make us specc into them. Fix these points and there will be other specs.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Great write-up. Just so you guys know, we’re trying to bring down the cantrip Ele, while also being careful to let other Ele builds work. We don’t want to just take all Ele’s out of play, but we do need to bring a few things down (traits/skills) in efficacy.

Please be careful how you do this, you don’t want to pull a Divine Boon on this where you make the build completely unviable for competitive gameplay. I think it’s more important to make alternative elementalist builds more competitive than to nerf this to the ground. For example, I don’t think i’ve seen anyone using Staff or conjured weapons in tournaments, well, ever to be honest!

I think Symbolic’s analysis can be boiled down to this: very frequent condition cleansing and high boon uptime. My personal opinion is that the main cause of these is Evasive Arcana, and the fact that it can be procced so frequently. A small reduction in Vigor uptime would easily solve this.

Oblivion.8307:

Dsquaredcri.9421:

This thread should be deleted just because symbolic choosen divinity ruins.

you don’t really need runes.

Yeah let’s everybody play without runes

The thing is that the ele is in a precarious state right now. More nerfs to this build without SIGNIFICANT buffing of other traits, weapons, and base stats is going to leave this class useless much like engies pre patch because frankly, eles really have very few decent choices otherwise. I say this as someone who mains thief and necro for spvp, warrior and ele for pve. PVE/WVW wise this class is fine in terms of D/D. If things are going to change to hurt this build beyond use in PVP, please keep it in PVP and leave eles where they are in PVE for this build – I’m sure that most would agree with this decision. And yes, perhaps instead of hurting eles, buff up other classes that need help like warriors and perhaps thieves in tpvp prowess. The ele, guard, mesmer, ranger, and necro have pretty good niche roles in spvp right now and it’ll be nice for them to stay where they are – if anything, engineers may be a tad OP right now but you know what, instead of hurting classes that come out at the top perhaps bring everyone up to par?

JonathanSharp.7094:

Very well written Symbolic.

Great write-up. Just so you guys know, we’re trying to bring down the cantrip Ele, while also being careful to let other Ele builds work. We don’t want to just take all Ele’s out of play, but we do need to bring a few things down (traits/skills) in efficacy.

I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes, the Elementalist profession is quite complicated to play correctly (relatively to others), I can’t imagine how hard it could be to balance it.

I realy hope you will take small steps and compensate by making other trait lines viable, you guys at ANet know other builds are not viable: you mess with this one, you butcher the whole profession.

xehn.3420:

I think they could start by increasing the cooldown of renewing stamina to10s.

And you realize this nerfed DD and SD burst right? They also nerfed fury. this is a tricky situation but we all know cleanses need to be toned down as well as base healing. Until they do that they will nerf all of the above killing anything that isn’t full bunker and it really is a shame because the nerf needs to happen but what they nerf always seems to be the little tools that let no bunker builds survive.

Nerf /D btw and watch the rise of D/F unkillable builds. they are already out there but no one uses them.

TheGuy.3568:

xehn.3420:

I think they could start by increasing the cooldown of renewing stamina to10s.

And you realize this nerfed DD and SD burst right? They also nerfed fury. this is a tricky situation but we all know cleanses need to be toned down as well as base healing. Until they do that they will nerf all of the above killing anything that isn’t full bunker and it really is a shame because the nerf needs to happen but what they nerf always seems to be the little tools that let no bunker builds survive.

Nerf /D btw and watch the rise of D/F unkillable builds. they are already out there but no one uses them.

I’ve been using D/F for quite some time now and it’s a very efficient set when you learn how to damage with it.

I would like to remind one thing before any nerfs come.

The only usefull ele build and the only traits that has snergy are cantrips and related traits.

LordByron.8369:

That is the issue…
Despite the greatest part of the community is WWW AND PVE we have to suffer nerfs for game modes where D/D is not an issue for sure…

Expecially touching traits means WWW and PVE nerfs.

COnsidering how in pve Wariors and guardians are utterly broken and OP and are monopolizing groups mostly it rightfully makes people upset.

D/D ele maybe is OP in PvP but if you nerf it again in pve/www it will become unviable….
So for the sake of few pvp players don t ruin the game of thousand players thank you!
KEEP any nerf to pvp

I agree, i am going to be so mad if i get nerfed in wvw cause of spvp. Hard enough being a d/d ele since i cant hit anything on a wall and in big fights you have to be right up on the front lines face tanking all the damage and conditions. That is if i can even make it through all the aoe i have to charge though to get to the front lines.

Need to keep the nerfs like they did the EA nerf where it only affects spvp. Hidden Cantrip nerf was more then damaging enough to the wvw d/d ele as it is.

rhodoc.2381:

I would like to remind one thing before any nerfs come.

The only usefull ele build and the only traits that has snergy are cantrips and related traits.

in short term, ele needs a buff to almost everything what wont receive a nerf or wasnt nerfed already… aka almost everything except cantrips, water traits, arcane traits and daggers oh and maybe AOE dmg, he needs a bit single target so ppl dont cry he have too much AOE, no idea what happened with before release concept idea of main specs as Fire=AOE, Air=Single target, Water=Support, Earth=Defense with minor tweaks ofc, like fire staff got 1 def skill etc, some combinations for synergy

IMO, best way to balance cantrip ele isn’t by nerfing traits, but by moving them into other trait lines. Keep the power of the build, just make them sacrifice to get it, make it so they have tougher decisions to get there. This also helps out other builds that may put points into those lines.

I’m no balance guru, but off the top of my head:
-move Soothing Disruption and Cantrip Master to Earth
-make Elemental Attunement a Master trait
-move Renewing Stamina to Air
-make Earth’s Embrace a Master trait (as suggested in OP)

Thoughts?

lettucemode.3789:

IMO, best way to balance cantrip ele isn’t by nerfing traits, but by moving them into other trait lines. Keep the power of the build, just make them sacrifice to get it, make it so they have tougher decisions to get there. This also helps out other builds that may put points into those lines.

I’m no balance guru, but off the top of my head:
-move Soothing Disruption and Cantrip Master to Earth
-make Elemental Attunement a Major trait
-move Renewing Stamina to Air
-make Earth’s Embrace a Major trait (as suggested in OP)

Thoughts?

Elemental attunement and earth’s embrace are already major traits, unless you mean master. If you move renewing staming to air it should be changed to minor trait like vigorous precision and critical infusion.

haviz.1340:

Elemental attunement and earth’s embrace are already major traits, unless you mean master. If you move renewing staming to air it should be changed to minor trait like vigorous precision and critical infusion.

Yes, I did mean Master, thanks for asking. Gonna edit.

Another similar idea: swap the effects of the 15-point minor traits and Elemental Attunement. So with 10 points in Arcane you’d get various effects on switching (damage on fire and air, bleed on earth, heal on water), but you’d only get boons for switching if you put 15 points into those lines.

Elemental attunement is so critical to the profession it should just be baseline.

Moving ele attunement to a 20 point arcane trait completely ensures that all eles go 20+ in arcane.

Firstly, I’d like to say I play an elementalist and I’ve tried almost every build I though viable. As such, I can confirm, that a cantrip build is best when playing point-defense build. The thing is it’s best because you don’t really have any other viable choice when playing an elementalist specializing in survival, the condition builds simply does not work. Even as it it, there are other profession builds that can blow through a bunker elementalist (like condition ranger, for instance). I’d like more viable options for elementalist, make it a bit more flexible, buff staff/focus, solve the cantri kitten ues, but make sure the class can still compete with mesmers in longer combats, maybe think about how to make more offensive builds more attractive. It’s like elementalist is the jack of all trades and master of none in GW2.

P.S. ATM I’m playing a glass-cannon build and I’m having a blast how everyone ignores me because they think I’m a bunker XD