Guild Wars 2

Elementalist is a pain to balance.

The way attunements and traits work is that we either kitten ourselves by focusing or we become jack of all trades, being mediocre dps, support and heal.

If they buff individual lines, it will be strong. But might be OP for those that run 30 Arcane for attunement switching. I believe that they should permanently reduce CD of attunement switching and then balance from there.

Or the traits should be reworked based on DPS, Control, Heal and Tank instead of focusing on each individual attunement. So DPS traits actually benefit ALL attunements.
Ex Power-based Major Trait: 10% increase to all staff dmg instead of just fire damage.
Ex Toughness-based Minor trait: Gain toughness for every attunement switching.

So our entire traits works somewhat similarly to other class’ traits like Warrior’s focus on dps, defense, support or all. Either way any weapon they use will still be useful.

Imagine if Warrior’s traits are broken into Shield-based, 2-handed, dual-wield, ranged and Banners. Warrior will suck big time and be kittened if they focus on a particular style. Now they are powerful because no matter what weapons and style they still shine because the traits helped Warrior across the board.

D/D or S/D seems to benefit more from attunement switching. You can trigger more combos with yourself. The synergy for Dagger seems better. A lot of the minor traits seems to favor melee range. Trigger flame when hit. Evasive arcana affects mostly melee ranged.

If you go Air and Fire Traits for dps, Staff has limited dps options except in Fire. In fact, you get more dps from staying in Fire; switching if you require the utilities or other skills from the attunements. A full zerker with 30 Fire and Air has very good dps!

It is wasted that attunement based traits seems to pigeon hole us into specfic builds and kittening the rest. The potential of elementalist is lost. This will be a major overhaul but who knows …

first, anet needs to make each weapon viable in each situation, since eles can’t swap weapons in-combat.

THEN work on balance.

“first, anet needs to make each weapon viable in each situation, since eles can’t swap weapons in-combat.”

^^ this!! /signed

first, anet needs to make each weapon viable in each situation, since eles can’t swap weapons in-combat.

THEN work on balance.

I don’t see this as big of a problem as many other elementalists apparently.

Staff has no issue imo since there is no minimum range on any skill. You can hit stuff from 1200 range to 0 range. Sure, it’s not intelligent to use it when engaging in melee range, but it’s not broken. If you’re holding a staff, it’s priority #1 to keep them at range.

D/D is fairly limited in that it’s melee range, but it has so many speed/gap closers that getting INTO said melee range is never a problem. That and I love all 20 skills on D/D, I would never volunteer to give one up for a longer ranged skill. Also, if one decides to run D/D in WvW because they plan on doing a lot of open field raiding (on supply depots and whatnot), just stick frostbow on the bar. Then if you find yourself on the keep walls during a siege and can’t get out of combat to switch to staff, just conjure the bow and nuke.

Or the traits should be reworked based on DPS, Control, Heal and Tank instead of focusing on each individual attunement. So DPS traits actually benefit ALL attunements.
Ex Power-based Major Trait: 10% increase to all staff dmg instead of just fire damage.

The +damage traits have a huge detrimental effect on the elementalist as a whole. You can stack a huge amount of +damage traits as an elementalist which act multiplicatively with each other, leading to a fairly massive burst build. And the elementalist damage as a whole has been heavily restricted just because that opportunity exists.

The really sad part about this is that each and every one of those +damage trait are actually mathematically inferior to the basic defensive traits. But because the option exists, our damage without those traits is on the lower end of the scale, and our damage with those traits is useless as we would die in a second if targeted.

Then you have the two “one with…” traits that are so utterly horrible that you have to wonder who designed them. It can’t have been someone who plays an elementalist at least. You have to stay in an attunement for ten seconds just to provide their minimal effect? That goes against everything that an elementalist currently represents.

And the third tier fire traits that suffer from the same attunement specific problem. And the movement boosting traits that are useless when most elementalists are doing their best to keep up perma swiftness already.

Or the trait that gives a pathetic 3 crit damage for 10 seconds after using an arcane skill (3 crit damage is the equivalent of about +1.5% damage while critting assuming you have a decent amount of crit damage gear, or less than 1% damage overall for most crit based builds). What is the point of that trait?

And don’t get me started on the traits like the one that give a pathetic 170 toughness while channeling. Seriously, even if it gave an unconditional 170 toughness it would be underpowered. And the precision to healing power trait, what the heck is up with that one?

You have to wonder if no-one at Anet has discovered that it is fairly easy to put rough stat points estimations to traits, and that if you do, it becomes obvious that the major traits worth taking are worth at the very minimum 250 stat points each, often quite a bit more.