Guild Wars 2

Arcane Precision, particularly the fire attunement effect (7.5% chance for a 1 second Burn on critical hit) seems fairly underwhelming for a grandmaster trait (especially one competing with Evasive Arcana). This trait badly needs an overhaul, in my humble opinion.

darkace.8925:

Arcane Precision, particularly the fire attunement effect (7.5% chance for a 1 second Burn on critical hit) seems fairly underwhelming for a grandmaster trait (especially one competing with Evasive Arcana). This trait badly needs an overhaul, in my humble opinion.

It’s a minor trait. The trait that is competing with Evasive Aracana is Elemental Surge, which gives your arcane skills the guaranteed ability to cause conditions. Using arcane wave in water attunement always causes chill, or always immobilize in earth attunement. It’s a potentially powerful trait if used with arcane power as your arcane skill, as your next 5 spells will cause those conditions. Imagine using arcane power in earth attunement, and then using lava font, the pulses will be guaranteed to crit, and also immobilize the target in the aoe, this synergizes with the Arcane 25 point minor trait you’re talking about.

Arcane precision is completely useless …
If only lingering elements worked, then it would make some sense, but this other minor trait does not work either, so both are complete nonsense.

Devildoc.6721:

It’s a minor trait. The trait that is competing with Evasive Aracana is Elemental Surge, which gives your arcane skills the guaranteed ability to cause conditions.

Oops, completely missed that. As a minor trait it’s not as nearly as bad as I thought it was. It’s still not great, but it’s not terrible either.

Devildoc.6721:

It’s a potentially powerful trait if used with arcane power as your arcane skill, as your next 5 spells will cause those conditions. Imagine using arcane power in earth attunement, and then using lava font, the pulses will be guaranteed to crit, and also immobilize the target in the aoe, this synergizes with the Arcane 25 point minor trait you’re talking about.

Unfortunately the crits from Arcane Power match whatever attunement you are currently in. So if you activate in earth and swap to fire for lava font your lava font will apply burning. I’d have to test the other way. Use AP, cast lava font, swap to earth. Does it now do immobilize because you’re in earth, or is it based on the spell type. I think it’s the latter and will be based on the spell type.

^It’s the based on what attunement you’re in when the damage is given.
So that means you can chill people with drakes breath if you feel like it :p

Anyway, OP is right, arcane precision is pretty weak. However, it’s in a powerful/necessary line, so buffing it would just encourage dumping points into arcana even more.

We don’t need it to be buffed, we need lingering elements to work.
(if lingering elements worked then at this stage of arcana you probably swap attunements every 2-3 secs so you can “stack” attunements and this way arcane precision has a 15% to do something on crit, wich is not that great but acceptable)

Elemental Surge would be great in a world without evasive arcana. I guess it’s just because ALL builds can take advantage of dodges, but only builds using an arcane ability can take advantage of surge. Maybe it just needs to be changed to 100% chance on crit > 10s cooldown (separate in attunements, like EA).

Yeah..
The thing is they will likely only fix lingering elements and buff arcane precision when there will be less people running that much arcane.

So, never.

/15chars

Well they have started introducing alternatives to arcana, like fresh air. I am quite confident that we may see something rather similar for the other elements in the future. Or maybe I am just too faithful!!

Zelyhn.8069:

Well they have started introducing alternatives to arcana, like fresh air. I am quite confident that we may see something rather similar for the other elements in the future. Or maybe I am just too faithful!!

While fresh air certainly is an awesome trait (though only for scepter which is sad) it’s no substitute for 20 arcane. Sure builds with 20 points in arcane are viable though most take 30 for EA. But anything below 20 points simply gives you too long of an attunement cooldown even with fresh air.

I run a FA build with 10 arcane in both PvE and WvW, it works just fine.
It could also work with only 5 in arcane!
In PvP however I take 30 in arcana, but I am not as invested in this mod as I used to be.

Even fresh air builds are usually best with 30 arcane. Traits like Elemental Attunement and Renewing Stamina, and the intelligence stat, are way too powerful to not use arcana.

A lot of people think like this, but it is worth trying, trust me.
Also my point was that FA benefits daggers a lot too.

I had fun with a Fresh Air staff build for a while. The build relies on 2 quirks about the weaponset.

1) Nobody really expects to take a lot of damage from a Staff Ele.

2) When you’re putting out lots of AoE you don’t need all that high a crit chance to reliably proc Fresh Air.

Those 2 things together make for an amusing set of sPvP matches.

Fresh Air staff… hmmmm… That’s an interesting idea but is fresh air good enough for that? I mean, you get your burst with air trait #15 and two arcane skills, and you only get to repeat the trait’s damage 5 seconds after.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Fresh Air staff… hmmmm… That’s an interesting idea but is fresh air good enough for that? I mean, you get your burst with air trait #15 and two arcane skills, and you only get to repeat the trait’s damage 5 seconds after.

Oh, I didn’t use it for burst. I used it for consistent extra damage output. The staff weapon skills just weren’t enough to phase anyone, so I tried a Valk FA build. The 30 Air and constant Fury from swapping attunements was enough to get the trait to proc almost all the time with no Precision on my gear.

It isn’t what I’d call a serious build, but it was fun to mess around with in a few hotjoins.

Zelyhn.8069:

We don’t need it to be buffed, we need lingering elements to work.
(if lingering elements worked then at this stage of arcana you probably swap attunements every 2-3 secs so you can “stack” attunements and this way arcane precision has a 15% to do something on crit, wich is not that great but acceptable)

Lingering elements (most likely) is only meant to affect the 5 point minor traits. So even if it is fixed, it won’t be having an impact on skills like arcane precision.
This is because if you’d be able to take all the % extra damage skills and get a temporary 50% extra damage for bursting.

If I am not mistaken this is what used to happen in beta.

Zelyhn.8069:

If I am not mistaken this is what used to happen in beta.

Hmm I don’t remember if that was the case, but I don’t think I payed this trait much attention back then and I didn’t play BWE1, only BWE2 onward.

If it really was that way, then that means they rebalanced it, so it’s even less likely to happen.

Not exactly: it was the concept to be able to mix attunements with this trait, but it was OP so they needed redesign. Redesigning takes time and resources, so in the meantime they just toned those traits down. And since everyone is happily using arcane regardless of this, it is not in their top priority.

They could change lingering elements so it only affects minor traits. Which is basically the same as now except it would affect arcane precision as well.

It is absolute rubbish and Anet should be ashamed.