Guild Wars 2

NEW PROFESSION TRAITS

Fire

• Blinding Ashes: Blind foes for 4 seconds when you burn them. (Cooldown: 5 seconds)

Air

• Lightning Rod: Interrupting an enemy causes them to be struck by a lightning bolt that damages them and leaves them weakened for 4 seconds.

Earth

• Stone Heart: You cannot be critically hit while attuned to earth.

Water

• Aquatic Benevolence: Healing done to allies (not self) is increased by 25%.

Arcane

• Elemental Contingency: Gain a boon when you are struck, based on your current attunement. (Cooldown: 10 seconds) The base durations of these boons are as follows:
  • Fire: 3.5 seconds of retaliation
  • Air: 5 seconds of fury
  • Earth: 2.5 seconds of protection
  • Water: 3 seconds of vigor

BALANCE AND BUG-FIXING

Dagger (Main Hand)

• Burning Speed: This skill now evades attacks.
• Frozen Burst: This skill is now a blast finisher.

Dagger (Off-Hand)

• Cleansing Wave: Updated the skill fact for number of targets to display the correct number of targets.

Scepter

• Water Trident: Added 3 seconds of regeneration to up to 5 allies in the radius.
• Dragon’s Tooth: Fixed a bug that allowed the spell effects to continue even if the skill was canceled early.

Focus

• Flamewall: Increased the number of targets from 4 to 5. Added a skill fact for number of targets: 5.

Staff

• Static Field: Fixed a bug that allowed players to block the lightning field.
• Ice Spike: Fixed a bug that allowed the spell effects to continue even if the skill was canceled early.
• Eruption: Fixed a bug that allowed the spell effects to continue even if the skill was canceled early.
• Lava Font: Added a skill fact for radius: 120.
• Meteor Shower: Updated the skill fact to display the increased endurance regeneration while the player has the Zephyr’s Focus trait. Added a red ring to indicate area of effect for enemy players. Added a white ring for allied players.
• Lightning Cage: Added an unblockable skill fact.

Trident (Underwater)

• Ice Globe: Fixed a bug in which this skill’s explosion could only hit a single target. Added a skill fact for number of targets: 5.

Utility Skills

• Signets
  • Signet of Fire: Added a precision increase skill fact.
  • Signet of Earth: Added a toughness increase skill fact.
  • Signet of Air: Added a movement speed increase skill fact.
  • Signet of Water: Added a conditions cured skill fact.
  • Signet of Restoration: Removed the split on this skill so that the signet passive heal amount will be increased in PvP to match the current PvE amount.

• Arcane
  • Arcane Shield: Reduced the maximum number of targets on the blast to 5. Fixed a bug that caused the skill to not deal damage when underwater.

• Cantrips
  • Armor of Earth: Reduced the recharge from 90 seconds to 75 seconds.

• Conjures
  • Fiery Greatsword:
    • Conjure Fiery Greatsword: Added a skill fact for number of targets: 3.
    • Fiery Rush: This skill now aborts if Shadowstep or Teleport is used.
    • Fiery Eruption: Added a skill fact for number of targets: 10.
    • Firestorm: Added a skill fact for number of targets: 10.
  • Earth Shield:
    • Magnetic Shield: Added a skill fact for number of targets: 3.
  • Lightning Hammer:
    • Lightning Storm: Added a skill fact for number of impacts. Updated the description of this skill to be more accurate.

• Glyphs
  • Glyph of Elemental Power: Added a skill fact to indicate the recharge when the skill triggers its effect.

• Others
  • Tornado: Fixed a bug that caused the area effect ring to persist if the player exited the skill early.

Traits

• Air
  • Tempest Defense: Fixed a bug that prevented this trait from activating when an elementalist was hit by basilisk venom.
• Water
  • Cleansing Water: This trait no longer has an internal cooldown while in PvP.

Click here to see the complete list of sigil and rune changes, along with all of the additional skills added and balance changes for the other classes!

The lower CD on armor of earth is nice.

The rest will have minimum effect for staff elementalist. Aquatic Benevolence might replace cleansing water for zerg play.

Going to make a second post to not clutter up the first with my own ideas. I split up the formatting so that it should hopefully be easier to find the updates related to the weapons or class of skills that you care about.

It’s pretty easy to say that all-around, the Elementalists have gotten a really big gift this patch. The new traits seem like they’d possibly find use here or there (poor Guardians with so many of their new traits pushing them to condition builds).

While the list seems a bit lengthy, there aren’t a huge number of substantial changes here. The big weapon ones to take note of are the Dagger Main Hand changes and the change for water trident with scepters, the former of which I’m way more excited for.

The other two massive changes that should be noted are the (re)buffing of Signet of Restoration and Cleansing Water back to it’s pre-nerfed state in PvP, the two of which contributed much to the dominance of DPS/tanky Elementalists back in Q1 of 2013.

With all of the new rune and sigil changes as well, this should mix things up a little bit.