Guild Wars 2

Made a thread in the elementalist subforum but also wanted to post it here, feel free to remove it devs.

A few suggestions, I know these suggestions might not sit well with a lot but I feel it’s rather important for Elementalists. I’ll try to explain the suggestions a little.

-The ability to dodge while overloading.
Currently there is a lot of AoE, there is also a lot of dazes/stuns and generally hard CC with HoT builds especially in PvP. All Overloads are Melee range. The ability to dodge raises skill floor due to letting players enabling themselves instead of adding more passive stability stacks to Harmonious Conduit.

-Return Diamond Skin to it’s former glory.
The original complaint was that Diamond Skin and Celestial Amulet shut down all counterplay to condition builds. The removal of Celestial Amulet was a big enough hit to that combo that should have rendered Diamond Skin viable again. Diamond Skin kept a lot of condition builds in check for PvP, currently now there is that many condition builds running rampant through PvP to a point to where it’s almost sickening. Since this removal some Amulets have been added that should see no problems with the old Diamond Skin functionality, Vipers for example. Another point to bring into this is DH traps, due to those the Ele is pretty much forced into Stone Heart, returning Diamond Skin to it’s former glory means people could actually choose to counter the 2 DH or the 2 condi berserkers/Mesmers with a venom share thief.

-Remove CD on attunement swapping
I don’t mean Fire > Earth > Fire with no cooldowns, what I mean is currently on D/D build if you Ring Of Fire to Water for Blast then to Earth for more blasts there is a CD on attunement swapping between those attunements which means I cannot rotate my skills to my full potential, I’m held back by the game itself. This is the 2 second CD on attunement swaps, not the 9 second CD after leaving the attunement.

-Raise base health pool by at least 2k or implement a trait to raise base health.
Pretty much self explanatory, would allow much more builds to be viable too.

-Buff Fire/Air/Arcane trait lines for respective builds.
Buff Fire to be aimed at power/condition focused builds, Give Air some condition removal because it’s already a fantastic line for power builds and Give Arcane that much needed buff towards the potential it already has to be the Hybrid crit/condition that could synergise well with Fire if given the right love.

All in all I think this is a fantastic class, but a few tweaks could really help see this class being played to it’s full potential. Currently there is a bit of build diversity, but with Tempest/Water/Earth synergizing too well for certain reasons I don’t think many newer players will stray far from the Menders aura heal spam builds.

I posted it before and was surprised to receive mails and questions about it, but the class has a lot of potential. One of the tricks I posted about Elementalist utilities available to the class is the ability to drop an Air Overload that Pulsates Immobilize.
To do that you must have Arcane equipped, Elemental Surge trait. Equip Arcane Power.
Air Overload > Earth > Arcane Power. Rather easy combo, if you’re playing a Sage Amulet then Fire Overload would be suited better for fast burn stacks or immobilize people in the fire field, what ever combo works best for what ever situation you can think of. The class already has more potential than most to be played at a higher skill level, just a few things are holding it back.

If anyone has some simple suggestions to help improve Ele gameplay please make them

-I’m not the best player, just an Avid Ele player.

Overloads are channelled abilities, so dodge on overload wouldn’t make sense

mrauls.6519:

Overloads are channelled abilities, so dodge on overload wouldn’t make sense

Maybe that should be looked at then, or even if they moved the passive stack of stability into the overload itself and raised the % damage from Harmonious Conduit. I don’t like adding more passives, would much rather be able to dodge BUT currently there is an issue with Melee Overloading competing with the amount of AoE dazes/stuns and CC.

Overload are really strong skills and at last they can have a little lower channeling duration, nothing more. They’re strong enough to spam might, inflict huge damage, grant you stability inflicting immobilize (and stay holded in this burst meta is a real danger) or heal by a lot and grant a big Water Field. They don’t need changes, if you’re good enough to chose when active them.

Diamond skin is still a seriously strong trait that can grant you the chance to remove a condition Ever Second! That’s insanely strong and for a lot of reasons better than before because it last till you drop down the 75%hp instead of 90%.
Anyway there’s a lot of classes that use CC conditions like cripple or immobilize (rangers can literally spam immobilize) or condi like vulnerability, that don’t inflict damage. Then, the amount of classes in the game that use conditions are always lesser every time I get into a match. A lot of warriors now chose the direct damage to have burst and ignore blocks using signet of might, making them able to kill DH, mesmer and Revenant easier. Mesmers also can chose to play direct damage instead of condition and be good anyway. The only class chained to condition damage I see in the game is the necromancer and isn’t a big problem for how easy is to burst down.

Remove the Cooldown from the attunement swap will make eles totally OP. not giving them a QoL improvement, simply make them insanely OP.
They still can change between they’re attunements pretty well and change they’re skills faster than any other class (is like they have 4 weapon set instead of 2) and that grant a lot of survavibility, damage and tecnical game to play with. Yes, you need to be a skilled player to play an ele at it’s best, expecially in sPvP, but you can do things no other class can do. That’s the reason that Celestial amulet made them top tier and OP for so long time (years and years): they can do everything and a amulet that grant them every stat grant them the chance to do literally everything.

Yes, a little rework on fire, air and arcana can make them better dps class, but they already have a really strong bunker/support build that can make them barely unkillable (a lot of Immunity skills, stability and high movement skills), but you need to play it really good.
Also Fire, Air and Arcana are really strong.
Fire by itself grant you 150 Power and 10% damage to burning targets as minor traits, then you can obtain another 10% of damage when attuned with fire and spam might every time you use a fire skill (also the AA). isn’t that already an insanely strong traitline? What do you want more?
Air make you obtain 25% spedd when attuned and spam weakness when crit, obtain precision, auras grant you fury and swiftness (with the Tempest that’s pure gold!), obtain shock aura for 4 sec every 25 sec when disabled (obtaining also a 20% damage against CCed enemies) and obtain 20% of damage against enemies under 50% hp.
Just by that two traitlines you can have up to +60% direct damage in a Passive Way, plus a insane amount of Might.
Arcane grants you attunement swap recharge and everything you do something of any kind you obtain boons. isn’t that enough?

If they’re weak traitlines i don’t know what do you mean for a strong one..

Would remove dragon claws on dagger and give aa that looks like slashing with dagger and with 0,2s cast time. I would give syngergy with fire grandmastertrait where for using skills in fire attunement you gain might.

Would change air staff aa to be bouncing lightning like in gw1 from a energy lightning projectile like now.

Make new lighting flash trick. If you hit enemy with lighting flash its teleport that enemy inside your existing static field or other lightning field that you made.

If pheonix didn’t hit any target when its back to you it will repear and start circling around you damaging foes that pass by.

Change to earth scepter 3. Idk what, but significant change.

you do realise switching between attunements with no CD will give u the most overpowered kittened up immortal build ever?
i mean im no good Ele nor im playing sPvP with ele but my ele barely dies in WvW mainly cus of the attunements swapping if u remove CD i wont die at all unless i get sucked up into a zone blob.

Guys, you didn’t understand what he said. He doesn’t mean cd on single attunements. Actually if you swap like fire and immediatly to another attunement there is a very little cd, the same Mesmer has on his shatters skills. Just go in game and try it, swap to an element and then very fast to another.
I have this problem a lot of times, while.for example I’m in air, I swap to earth for instacast focus4 and I want to.go immediatly in fire, it is no possibile because there is like “0,idk how much” sec of cooldown.

Ele/war player here. Our class is sleeper OP, if not the strongest in the game. Only weakness is condi clear and poor stacking, but every team that cares about winning should run 1. Their healing/support is around 3/4x as strong as druid.

Ele problems are being boring to play and only having 1 viable build. Ele easilly has the worst dps builds of any class in spvp.

I’m not talking about completely removing the 9 second cooldown on Attunement swapping, I was referring to the 2 second cooldown between the switches. So on a D/D build you Ring Of Fire > Water 3 blast > Earth 4 + 5 Blast then to Air = minimum 6s before reaching Air due to 2s cooldowns on attunement swaps. Could do rotation in less than 2 seconds so game is holding players back from getting faster at rotations.

I’ll edit original post to remove confusion. Thankyou to Mem for posting suggestions too, especially about Staff Air AA.

@Silv: Also a very good suggestion for Overloads, my perspective was giving players a choice to waste evades getting onto point or to use evades getting off point after overloading but shorter durations would also prove to be quite the improvement for overload gameplay. In terms to buffing Air, it was mostly just give it some condition cleansing. If Air had condi cleanse, I could probably drop water for fire and have fire/air/tempest build that was a bit more viable in PvP.

It is also worth noting that your overload can be interrupted with any hard CC like when blocking with Arcane Shield/Aegis or invulnerability while Mist Form. This should not happen.

stone stunbreaker and magnetic auras are great for denying blocks.

Trait idea; Gift of True Sight
Reasoning: ele third eye, mursaat have 3 and anomaly have 3.
Description:
1. Mark enemy passive defenses [that are currently ready] from traits on their healthbar.
2. See weapon skills that went on cd and are not from current attunement. (Appear above attunements).