I’m not going to get into specifics, just frame the core of a simple idea.
Each attunement represents a certain aspect of Ele gameplay. Fire for AoE damage, Air for single target, Water for healing and support, Earth for defense and CC.
Why not make the traits reflect this more? A trait like Blasting Staff should then sit in the Fire traitline to reflect the Staff’s role as a long range blasting weapon (whoever thought the Staff should be “supporty” is crazy) for example. Daggers tend to be a brawler’s weapon, so Dagger related traits would go to Earth, Focus into Water and Scepter into Air.
This would then be a reason for ANet to adjust minor traits to give cross-attunement bonuses. So if a Ele was running Scepter/Focus, and had 30 points into both Air and Water, then each Minor trait should give either a secondary effect or boost the strength of each effect to represent the “specialization.” Dual Daggers and Staff would of course hybridize with Arcana more readily.
As an example, using the above, you’d have both “Weak Spot” and “Bountiful Power.” With the “attunement specialization” bonus described above, Weak Spot would cause Bountiful Power to be a 2% damage increase per boon, and Bountiful Power would cause Weak Spot to inflict two stacks of Vulnerability instead of one. Or take “Healing Ripple” and “Electric Discharge.” Healing Ripple would cause Electric Discharge to inflict Chilled in addition to damage, and Electric Discharge would cause Healing Ripple to apply Swiftness to up to five allies in the AoE.
Certain Arcana traits would split to increase the effectiveness of all attunements, rather than being located in a crutch traitline for survival. For example, the effects of Elemental Attunement would be spread to the 5 point minor trait in each elemental line, so if you wanted access to each boon you’d have to sink a minimum of 5 points into each traitline (which means 20 trait points, what you’d spend in Arcana post Dec 10th). A trait like Renewing Stamina, being based on crit, should be moved to Air, likely the 5 point minor trait to compete with the Mesmer (yes with 5 points into Air you’d have access to attunement to Air Swiftness and on-crit Vigor, which is powerful, but spreading out the other effects to other attunements keeps it from being OP and makes sense being in the Air line). In keeping with the idea of “elemental” traits being distributed to the individual attunement traitlines, the individual effects of Evasive Arcana would be moved to the 15 point minor traits in each attunement traitline, so to get all four effects from this current GM trait, you’d have to spend 15 points into each attunement. If you went with a Scepter/Focus Air/Water build as described above, then you’d have access to the Blinding Flash and Cleansing Wave, but not the Flame Burst or Churning Earth effects.
Then make Arcana traits deal specifically with Arcane, Glyph, Cantrip and Conjure skills, making this traitline a boost to utility skills but not required to effectively play with the primary weapon skills. In this way, Arcana helps round out the customization options, rather than being required to make effective use of the profession at all.
Individual Attunement recharge rates should be lowered to a baseline of ten seconds, with the governing attribute further reducing recharge to a minimum of seven seconds. So an Ele with 30 Fire and 0 Air would have a 7 second recharge on Fire Attunement, but a 10 second recharge on Air Attunement. Arcana could still increase Boon Duration, and to replace the attunement recharge reduction, Arcana would instead reduce recharge on any skill (weapon or utility including individual skills on conjures) that gives a movement boost, whether it be a “charge” like RtL, a teleport like Lightning Flash or a boon granting skill like Windborne Speed. This would reflect the idea of Arcane as a general improvement line and the “meta magic” aspect.
I realize this may well be an extremely drastic change, but if ANet truly wants to increase build variance without having to nerf everything into the ground to force players into unfavorable builds, then making each traitline distinct and useful is a much better way to go about things. It would also be a great setup if ANet ever decides to allow players to “save” an alternate build that can be switched to when OOC. Such as having a D/D build (Earth30/Water10/Arcane30) for general PvE , then being able to switch to a Staff build (Fire30/Air10/Arcane30) for organized WvW, or if WvW isn’t your cup of tea, a Scepter/Focus build (Air30/Water30/Arcane10) for Fractals. Given that in my idea, Conjures would be governed by Arcana, the D/D and Staff builds would have good access to Conjure related traits, giving even more variety.