Guild Wars 2

Hello team,

Besides the celestial balance issues, I think the main problem with Elementalist is that we have no trait points to move around. I have drawn up some concepts that should spice up all the trait lines and hopefully make more viable and promote more diverse builds.

I’d like to preface saying I have no idea how balanced these ideas are, so please ignore numbers or percentages because it’s too hard to judge before actually seeing anything in action. Think conceptually here.

Fire:
1. Remove Flame Barrier, replace with: “remove chilled when attuning to fire.”
2. Move Renewing Stamina to adept in Fire. Remove Conjurer.
3. Remove One With Fire, replace with: “refresh fire attunement when you get burned. 10 second cooldown.” (Perhaps make this grandmaster and move Persisting Flames to master.)

Air:
1. Rewrite Zephyr’s Focus as: “endurance regenerates 25% faster while attuned to air.”
2. Remove Soothing Winds, replace with: “air attacks heal self for 10% (5%?) of the damage dealt.”
3. Arcane Lightning moved to Arcane.
4. New master trait: “blind target on crit while attuned to air. 10 second cooldown.”

Earth:
1. Merge Signet Mastery and Written in Stone. Keep as grandmaster.
2. Move Diamond Skin to adept. Rewrite as: “conditions wear off 20% (33%?) faster when attuned to Earth.”
3. New grandmaster trait: “nearby enemies have cast times increased by 20% while attuned to earth.” (Is this possible? It sounds cool.)

Water:
1. Merge Cantrip Mastery and Soothing Disruption. Rewrite as: “Cantrips recharge 20% faster and remove a condition on cast” (no more vigor or regeneration). Keep as master.
2. Merge Soothing Wave and Cleansing Water. Rewrite as: “remove a condition and grant regeneration for 5 seconds when critically hit. 10 second cooldown”. Keep as adept.
3. Move Cleansing Wave to adept.
4. New grandmaster trait: “chilled lasts 50% longer, refresh water attunement when striking a chilled target. 10 second cooldown.” (alternatively, deal 10-20% bonus damage to chilled targets)
5. New master trait: “cast Cleansing Wave (dagger 5) when cc’d. 20 second cooldown.”

Arcane:
1. Remove Lingering Attunements, replace with: “refresh all attunement cooldowns at 50% HP. 45 second cooldown.”
2. Renewing Stamina moved to Fire.
3. Move Evasive Arcana to adept, rewrite as: “create an Arcane Wave (not blast, about half the damage) at the end of your dodge roll.” (note, I don’t think a cooldown is necessary)
4. New grandmaster trait: “based on attunement, arcane skills buff allies based on attunement (240 AoE). Fire: remove condition, Air: +10% damage for 3 seconds, Water: 1k or so heal, Earth: protection for 3 seconds. 10 second cooldown per attunement.”
5. Merge Arcane Retribution and Final Shielding. Keep at adept. Cooldowns are independent.
6. Rewrite Arcane Energy as: “using a signet refreshes that attunement cooldown.”
7. Rewrite the earth part of Elemental Attunement to: “give Aegis for 3 seconds.” This is probably overpowered, but I want to remove the protection part from here. Perhaps something different is better.
8. New master trait: “blast finishers cause confusion for 3 seconds (3 stacks).”
9. Merge all of the weapon specialist adept traits: Blasting Staff, Vigorous Scepter, Wolfborne Dagger.
10. Move Arcane Resurrection to adept.
11. Move Arcane Lightning to adept in Arcane.
12. New master trait: “all the master minor traits are 50% (25%?) more effective.”

Basically most of these are just to spice things up. I think the biggest problem is the Arcane line because it’s basically required in any build you want to run. I think a lot of these are nerfs in the Arcane and Water line, perhaps the biggest change is that team condition clear would be significantly lower. Also the amount of protection is significantly lower. I also think the synergy between the Evasive Arcana and arcane skills in general could be very interesting, and you have a choice between offensive or defensive arcane traits!

Perhaps this opens up doors for a cool condition burning build. Or a cool chilling build! These don’t really exist (outside the burn Guardian build which doesn’t really work.)

Thanks for surviving wall of text, but this is the kind of thing I personally would like to see (whether it’s changes similar to this, but at least something that spices the game up).

The trait shuffling, which has been done many times in the past, Devs have mentioned it’s kind of unrealistic now, since the way traits are acquired in PvE.

I’d like to see >Evasive Arcana, Healing Ripple, Elemental Attunment< these traits becoming baseline, in a reduced form, numbers TBD, and all affected traits could improve the new baseline abilities to current levels.

Chaith.8256:

The trait shuffling, which has been done many times in the past, Devs have mentioned it’s kind of unrealistic now, since the way traits are acquired in PvE.

I’d like to see >Evasive Arcana, Healing Ripple, Elemental Attunment< these traits becoming baseline, in a reduced form, numbers TBD, and all affected traits could improve the new baseline abilities to current levels.

You do realize that that amount of baselining will basically demand a rebalancing of the nerf kind. It is basically just like the warriors are asking for fast hands baseline (next they will want cleansing ire for no investment). If a trait is so good that you are giving up something to have it then that is making a build choice, but to just hand out those effect for no investment is powercreep in its purest form.

Minor adepts are the individual elemental attunements. Minor masters are the individual evasive arcana. That kind of baseline? Cause simply giving it to them for free would take an enormous amount of effort. GW3 kind of effort.

Actually I think it’d be really interesting if the strongest traits were the minors, and the weaker traits were the majors. I don’t know how good that well be game-design but it would be something new.

Bran.7425:

Chaith.8256:

The trait shuffling, which has been done many times in the past, Devs have mentioned it’s kind of unrealistic now, since the way traits are acquired in PvE.

I’d like to see >Evasive Arcana, Healing Ripple, Elemental Attunment< these traits becoming baseline, in a reduced form, numbers TBD, and all affected traits could improve the new baseline abilities to current levels.

You do realize that that amount of baselining will basically demand a rebalancing of the nerf kind. It is basically just like the warriors are asking for fast hands baseline (next they will want cleansing ire for no investment). If a trait is so good that you are giving up something to have it then that is making a build choice, but to just hand out those effect for no investment is powercreep in its purest form.

Yep, it’d be a power creep if Eles could make a superior build with the Fire and Earth traitlines. That’s kinda the point, it’d be nice to be able to have options to being an offensively built Elementalist, where currently there are: Fresh Air Eles and Fresh Air Eles.

But I understand that it would shift things around in non-PvP use quite a bit, and I’m not qualified to comment on the Ele PvE or WvW Meta.

As long as it wouldn’t be game breaking, I’d be down for power creeping the sustain and boons of non-meta Eles. How big a buff connected with my suggestion is to be determined. Giving a little splash of healing on Water Dodge & Attunement, with a splash of prot seems merciful to how easily offensively traited Eles get wasted.

Just an idea. I think Ele traits are horribly unbalanced, lol. Anything without heavy investing in Arcana & Water is just an incomplete yolo build in PvP

Edit: And when I say ‘make’ anything ‘baseline’ I just envision it tacked onto the attunement tooltips. Not messing with minor traits.

ie: "Attune yourself to Water, healing allies. While attuned, heal allies at the end of your dodge roll (10s).

WvW meta, to my knowledge, is very similar to PvP meta except they use staff. Some might argue using more offensive traits but I assure you they’re incorrect. PvE I am unsure, I know Frostbow is popular. The thing is, I think most Elementalist changes will not affect the other game modes at all.

I just want to see a traitline that isn’t bad and doesn’t require 12 points into water and arcane. Fresh air is a fresh (hah, pun) start but two builds for Elementalist is just silly.

Also I really hope that the moving traits around because PvE unlocking traits thing isn’t an argument they actually use, else we have a grim future ahead of us.

I agree with Chaith in that at least evasive arcana and elemental attunement should be baseline (in a reduced form) for all eles because they are so core to how the class plays.

For instance, all eles should get the boons from elemental attunement at 66% of their current rate, and only for themselves as a baseline. The “elemental attunement” trait should increase the duration of these boons by 50% (bringing them up to the current duration traited) and make it AOE. Thus, the “meta spec” is not changed at all (and there is still a strong impetus to take this trait for more defense and team support) while other builds aren’t required to pay the “arcana tax” just for viability.

Evasive arcana could have similar treatment.

I also think that Deceptive evasion should receiver a similar treatment even though I only have limited experience with mesmer. Mesmer has some amazing traits and potential builds that are just ruined by the necessity of paying the “DE tax.” If you still make clones available on-dodge (with a FIVE s CD), but require the trait to improve its functionality to current (no CD) you might see more mesmer build diversity without much power-creep to the top specs.