Guild Wars 2

Hi developers,
With all the recent nerfs to our class I think it is about time we got ourselves some buffs. Yes, double dagger is overpowered (probably) but if you want to break the bunker we need alternatives. Let us start with our fire traits

1) Flame Barrier – To be fair, this is a 5 point minor trait but its probably our worst. 20% chance to burn anyone that hits you in melee isn’t really appealing given that if we’re attuned to fire the enemy is probably already on fire. Also, taking 5 hits usually means we’re dead or spilling guts from our stomach wound (excluding bunkers).

Improvement: increasing the chance (without another trait) would be nice. Also instead of burning why not a direct damage or perhaps (borrowing from WoW) a reduced chance to get hit critically.

2) Burning Fire – Aside from being named by Captain Obvious, this trait appears to be a legacy from the time cleansing fire, etc., did not cause burning. The added extra seconds are not worth the trait slot.

Improvement: Just replace it with a new trait. Maybe one that increases burn damage.

3) Burning rage – Its an OK trait but it felt like the one a developer came up with on a Friday night and the bar is just around the corner. The trait feels like a lazy attempt; it is a carbon copy of Ember’s Might, just deeper into the tree.

Improvement: Making a new trait for this sounds appropriate

4) One With Fire – Now you’re assuming Flame Barrier is useful?

Improvement: Replacement required. Increase damage the longer you are attuned to fire?

5) Persisting Flames – Ha ha now my fire fields last longer… hey where are you going? OK it actually isn’t that bad a trait but 30 points into fire just so your thin flame wall can last 2 seconds longer is probably not worth 30 trait points.

Improvement – reduce its trait level or better yet increase the duration of fire fields to more than 30% somewhere around 50% sounds about right

Feel free to add more guys. I’ll probably be touching on air later on but for now I am being lazy, also the laundry does not wash itself (has anyone invented that yet?).

Scorael.8952:

5) Persisting Flames

Fire fields leave behind a smoke field for a short time after disappearing.

Perististing flames is absolutely necessary on certain builds, as it makes your fields last just long enough to get in the full might stack combo you would otherwise fall just short of. Though it could go lower in the tree I suppose.

Pyromancer’s alacrity and Ember’s Might need to be combined in my opinion, probably take up the space of PA and add something new over EM.

Since this class has gone a completely different direction than what the devs intended, One with Fire should be changed so that flame barriers chance increases the longer you are in fire as well as persisting for a certain amount of time after swapping attunements.

Just fire? Because honestly I think the air tree needs just as much attention… and the earth tree has quite a few traits that could afford to be combined.

Conncept.7638:

One with Fire should be changed so that flame barriers chance increases the longer you are in fire as well as persisting for a certain amount of time after swapping attunements.

Flame Barrier would be pretty useless even if it functioned like a Fire Aura, because:

1: We already have access to plenty of Burning.

2: Getting hit is a terrible idea when playing as the class with the lowest defense in the game. (Even bunkers rely on avoiding and healing through damage, so sitting in Fire and facetanking ain’t an option.)

3: Even if you’re running a condition build, you’ll want to remain in Earth as much as possible to stack Bleeding.

4: It’s limited to freakin’ melee range.

Flame barrier sounds like it would involve blocking or reflecting.
Make it impassable and destroy projectiles trying to exit or enter.
It wouldn’t require being able to take hits but allow glass cannons more ways to negate damage.

Burning fire should make burning reduce the target’s healing effectiveness (not as effective as poison) so that going heavy into fire means you can be effective vs bunkers

One with the fire; applying burning to enemy removes a boon (or has % chance to) standing in fire fields cure 1 condi per sec for you or ally. It would add a different way to deal dmg and add support abilities to a dmg tree. The reason people go into arcana or water because they provide utility beyond the stat bonuses.

Fire’s Embrace sounds like it would protect you. It could summon a ring of fire or a dragon’s tooth on your position when disabled with a cooldown of 30 seconds. Requiring signets for a weak effect just seems way to situational to be that deep in the tree.

Persisting flames should make applying new conditions reapply burning for a short duration.

Flame barrier WAS basically Fire Aura (or fire shield, as it is called for some reason to REALLY confuse people). Then they made Fire Aura not suck, but also they made Flame Barrier not count as an aura anymore. Now all that is left is the pre buff Fire aura but its not even an aura to take advantage of all the aura buffing traits. So its completely kittening useless.

You COULD make it give might just like Fire Aura but then you kind of make fire aura pointless (although you could then factor in not needing to use focus which most people do not use anyway) and then have some point – make it so when an ele is in fire you better be careful when you hit them because if you fail to kill them you are going to be taking a lot of damage.

The whole fire trait line needs a massive overhaul. Air at least has a few choices to be made when going full 30 points and is pretty strong, earth has less choices but is strong. But fire you can’t go 30 points and truely feel you did it for ANY of the traits. The only case I ever wanted points in fire was for the 10 extra uses on summoned weapons because Lightning Hammer is so boss

I don’t know what trait it’d replace, but how about some sort of reduce damage taken from burning foes type trait? Of course it’d be master level or so so bunkers can’t use it.

As for flame barrier, I’d say either increase it to 50% while in fire, or 25% but works in all attunements.

One with fire- doubles proc rate of flame barrier (if you want to keep the current idea). If not, then maybe something like transfers a condition when you burn a foes (5 to 10 sec cooldown)
A trait that increases burning damage might be nice too, seeing how we already have more than enough to maintain it.

Burning fire- perhaps this would be a good candidate for boon removal? Either the currently affected traits also remove two boons, or applying burning removes a boon (5 to 10sec cd)

Persisting Flames, at least, is mainly aimed at Staff. It increases the duration of Lava Font long enough that it should grant an extra damage tick, and with the 20% CD trait, the player should be able to reach roughly 100% uptime on that fire field – which, if your party is aware you’re doing this, can lead to a lot of might-stacking through blast finishers. It also makes it easier to land your own blast finishers with Eruption/Evasive Arcana.

The others, yes, they’re pretty bad. I’d personally replace Flame Barrier with a pseudo-Retaliation, and make One With Fire apply it as a party-wide effect (like water’s Soothing Mists)

Burning Fire… probably has a niche role. I’d say it’s aimed mostly at condition builds that don’t want to leave Earth attunement and need to get more sources of burning in utility slots. (As Navsar said, it might be a good candidate for boon hate, or possible condition removal, but I think it’s functional as-is, just niche)

Burning Rage is somewhat useful for stacking up on damage multpliers. A little boring, but functional. Maybe the increase could be larger.

Dingle.2743:

Burning Rage is somewhat useful for stacking up on damage multpliers. A little boring, but functional. Maybe the increase could be larger.

It certainly is functional but its not enough to get someone to invest 25 points into fire over any of the other trees.
They could either double the increase or also grant the 5% bonus to nearby allies.
I would go for granting bonus to allies since traits w/ more supportive abilities and I think traits should provide more utility than personal dmg increases.
The fire tree needs to be more designed around how it helps your team rather than how it helps just you.

Chaosky.5276:

Conncept.7638:

One with Fire should be changed so that flame barriers chance increases the longer you are in fire as well as persisting for a certain amount of time after swapping attunements.

Flame Barrier would be pretty useless even if it functioned like a Fire Aura, because:

1: We already have access to plenty of Burning.

2: Getting hit is a terrible idea when playing as the class with the lowest defense in the game. (Even bunkers rely on avoiding and healing through damage, so sitting in Fire and facetanking ain’t an option.)

3: Even if you’re running a condition build, you’ll want to remain in Earth as much as possible to stack Bleeding.

4: It’s limited to freakin’ melee range.

If you run a signet build with fires embrace you’ll constantly have a fire shield up which means more might for you and more burning on them so its not useless so much as it is situational, which is the point of build variety. No such thing as one size fits all folks, those pants will only stretch so far

Parktou.4263:

Chaosky.5276:

Flame Barrier would be pretty useless even if it functioned like a Fire Aura, because:

1: We already have access to plenty of Burning.

2: Getting hit is a terrible idea when playing as the class with the lowest defense in the game. (Even bunkers rely on avoiding and healing through damage, so sitting in Fire and facetanking ain’t an option.)

3: Even if you’re running a condition build, you’ll want to remain in Earth as much as possible to stack Bleeding.

4: It’s limited to freakin’ melee range.

If you run a signet build with fires embrace you’ll constantly have a fire shield up which means more might for you and more burning on them so its not useless so much as it is situational, which is the point of build variety. No such thing as one size fits all folks, those pants will only stretch so far

I’m saying that even if Flame Barrier offered the effect of a Fire Aura 100% of the time while attuned to Fire, but didn’t synergize with traits like Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Shielding, it’d still be pretty freakin’ terrible. Because Fire Auras are terrible (for eles).

Something like a Frost Aura is effective because it’s defensive in nature, chilling enemies that hit you and reducing damage taken by 10%. Fire Auras, on the other hand, are intended to punish enemies that attack you, as they burn foes and grant you Might when hit. Thing is, aside from Fire Auras not being as powerful offensively as Frost Auras are defensively, elementalists lack the defense required to take advantage them.

Flame Barrier isn’t even as good as a Fire Aura, though, lacking the Might-on-hit component, being limited to melee range, and possessing a mere 20% chance to trigger.

Dingle.2743:

Persisting Flames, at least, is mainly aimed at Staff. It increases the duration of Lava Font long enough that it should grant an extra damage tick, and with the 20% CD trait, the player should be able to reach roughly 100% uptime on that fire field – which, if your party is aware you’re doing this, can lead to a lot of might-stacking through blast finishers. It also makes it easier to land your own blast finishers with Eruption/Evasive Arcana.

The issue is that it’s way too far up the fire tree to be practical. You have piqued my interest on the 20% CD trait though; Perma lava font sounds interesting. I’ll give that a try.

Dingle.2743:

Burning Fire… probably has a niche role. I’d say it’s aimed mostly at condition builds that don’t want to leave Earth attunement and need to get more sources of burning in utility slots. (As Navsar said, it might be a good candidate for boon hate, or possible condition removal, but I think it’s functional as-is, just niche)

Burning Rage is somewhat useful for stacking up on damage multipliers. A little boring, but functional. Maybe the increase could be larger.

On Burning Fire, it only affects utility skills that already cause burning (unless there’s a tooltip error) and since burns do not stack intensity it feels pointless to invest the trait slot into it. No point changing attunements since they are all utility skills.

And Burning Rage is, as you said, boring. It feels like the developers never put it a lot of effort in designing elementalist traits.

Scorael.8952:

On Burning Fire, it only affects utility skills that already cause burning (unless there’s a tooltip error) and since burns do not stack intensity it feels pointless to invest the trait slot into it. No point changing attunements since they are all utility skills.

Burning Fire increases the base burn duration of Signet of Fire from 9 seconds to 12 seconds; this reduces the amount of condition duration required to maintain permanent burning through that skill alone from 127% to 70%. My condition build has 76-80% condition duration, depending on food, so Burning Fire is actually resulting in 100% uptime on burning, and I never have to leave earth attunement to get it (and the cast time of Signet of Fire is so short I barely lose any bleed stacks casting it)

In return that allows me a lot more freedom with the other utility slots, because I only need to dedicate one to inflicting burning. This is the only set-up I’ve found for maintaining burning at a 100% uptime without leaving earth attunement; there’s a glyph set-up which can work for up to 30 seconds before needing to leave it, but nothing else. Elementalists lose around 9-12 bleed stacks (minimum, and nearly every stack without points in Arcana) if they leave earth attunement to get access to burning, which means it’s not worth doing so (Burning’s only worth about 6 bleed stacks in a dedicated condition build)

Dingle.2743:

Scorael.8952:

On Burning Fire, it only affects utility skills that already cause burning (unless there’s a tooltip error) and since burns do not stack intensity it feels pointless to invest the trait slot into it. No point changing attunements since they are all utility skills.

Burning Fire increases the base burn duration of Signet of Fire from 9 seconds to 12 seconds; this reduces the amount of condition duration required to maintain permanent burning through that skill alone from 127% to 70%. My condition build has 76-80% condition duration, depending on food, so Burning Fire is actually resulting in 100% uptime on burning, and I never have to leave earth attunement to get it (and the cast time of Signet of Fire is so short I barely lose any bleed stacks casting it)

In return that allows me a lot more freedom with the other utility slots, because I only need to dedicate one to inflicting burning. This is the only set-up I’ve found for maintaining burning at a 100% uptime without leaving earth attunement; there’s a glyph set-up which can work for up to 30 seconds before needing to leave it, but nothing else. Elementalists lose around 9-12 bleed stacks (minimum, and nearly every stack without points in Arcana) if they leave earth attunement to get access to burning, which means it’s not worth doing so (Burning’s only worth about 6 bleed stacks in a dedicated condition build)

I never thought of it that way. That does provide a use for it but, like you previously mentioned, it is very niche.

In this sense, I wish the developers would put in a trait to increase burn duration and/or damage.