Guild Wars 2

I don’t understand why they chose to change One with Air they way they recently did. It used to offer a passive 25% speed boost similar Ranger’s Signet of the Hunt or Necros’ Signet of the Locust. Now it just gives a 1.5 second 100% speed boost. I don’t see the utility of this. But I only play PvE, so is there some PvP or WvW benefit?
Now Ele’s don’t have a good “constant on” passive speed buff,(without having to seriously re-arrange traits and/or swap weapons, which Ele’s have to open the inventory screen to do) and I’d like to understand what the tradeoff is. What is the upside of swapping a constant 25% speed boost for a 1.5 second 100% speed boost?

signet of air.

/15char

That’s a partial answer and a partial solution. To be fair, I can use signet of air like I can use the Ranger and Necro signets. Place the signet of air into my skill bar to “up shift” when I want to run, and “down shift” when I’’m about to go into combat. But my Ele utility skills are really more crucial for my Ele, and I’d like to avoid that if possible.(also you get drawn into combat a lot and can’t change skills)
But you also failed to answer the primary part of the question:
“What benefit is there to a 1.5 second, 100% speed boost?”(Bonus points if you can give me that in less than 15 characters.) I’m seriously wondering why they would do something like that. I figure I must be missing something.

The previous version required you to stay 50s(?) in air attunement to get the 25 speed boost. It just wasn’t very good. Besides, if anet wants a substitute for that, they can always buff the minor #5 trait. Both felt redudant together, and both were/ are underwhelming.

Meanwhile, the new version brings something new, and can lead to interesting playing. It allows you to escape or to chase more effectively, especially against targets with swiftness; and also to overcome some movement debuffs.

The problem is that it doesn’t seems strong enough at the moment. But Anet will probably tweak with its new numbers until players start using it.

1.5 sec is not even noticable and not worth to use it.

i love this trait … its amazing with staff and s/d, it makes it quite easy to kite people around add traveler runes to the mix and its much easier to fight outnumbered with fresh air builds …. if only RTL was affected by this i would be a very happy boy

Still the trait speed buff method has advantages over the skill(signet) method. It doesn’t mess up your build, and you can swap in/out of “running mode” while “in combat”. This is less of a problem with Eles, since they don’t have elementals up as much as Rangers and Necros have pets/minions.(Also, with that many points in Air, you start out at base 10%. It may be a bug but it seemed to start at base 10 and add from there.)

But Fishbones had the kind of answer I was really looking for. Except I was hoping for more details. Where is the best place to learn about “Fresh Air” build(s)? And how do you make use of the short speed burst with that type of build?
re: RTL – Yeah, that would be a lot of fun. Almost worth giving up a relatively cost-free, no hassle, 25% speed buff.

here is a link to the build ive been using

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmkbzR4wjDIkCmg4xFYBcY5xMkD2AA-jUCBYLBkCBkKAI7pIaslhFRjVbDT5CW7CSFTIVKgyVGB-w

As for one with air, it makes you run like your out of combat with swiftness ( also ignores cripple and chill) and with fresh air you can get it every 5 seconds or so. that 1.5 seconds may not seem like much but its enough to build a comfortable gap against other classes … also when you attune to air you get a lightning strike and number 2 and 3 on scepter are instance cast bursts that you can use while running away and kiting so they work nice together your other big damage comes from the fire skills pheonix and firegrab they are both important to land and dragons tooth is great for area denial or dropping on downed players … it takes a while to adjust to if your used to d/d but i think its much more fun and rewarding to play … good thieves that you would normally destroy with d/d can give you some trouble but one with air and traveler runes help alot with that.

This is from my experience in WvW , i dont do much PVE or SPVP anymore

I think what this trait needs is a a video with it being used before people hop on it hardcore. I don’t think people will buy it till they see it for some odd reason o.O

Try this trait on spirit watch …nuff said
——→ ele is again the fastest orb runner

yea everyone always wants video proof, but I found this trait incredibly useful since i first started using it and dont see anything better to take over it ….Ill try to make a video, but Ive said that before and never get around to it.

Fishbones.6914:

yea everyone always wants video proof, but I found this trait incredibly useful since i first started using it and dont see anything better to take over it ….Ill try to make a video, but Ive said that before and never get around to it.

20% damage increase to enemies under 33% health is pretty useful…

yea i use that also

In my mind, if you’re one with air, you should be:
1- able to feel the tiniest fluctuations in the air in a wide range (and thus detecting stealth characters)
or
2- Air yourself: Immune to damage, except maybe poison/chill/burn.
or
3- able to control the weather and the air around you (make an air vacuum area or powerful winds, etc.)

But not 1.5s speed. Or make it like 300% faster Out of Combat and remove the pointless cap.

This trait is clearly there for spvp and WvW and its usefull only for combat.

Being a WvW player i can see its usefullness but i am not sure its worth sacrificing an air trait for it.It would be better if it was passive or if the bonus speed lasted longer.

Basicly it gives you the distance needed to avoid some melee hits when the pain train decides to go after you.

Its helpfull for staff..gives some combat mobility and can help you avoid the pain but you already know that when you use staff you as the player already does that.

About s/d i haven’t tested but it must be good there too since the Fresh air builds have little mobility.

Overall i would switch according to the situation.

Come on..dont tell me you used that before.It needed 50 freaking sec to get to 25.
It required freaking staying in air!!! No ele stays in air while in combat.
Out of combat just swap a utility for signet of air if you have trouble managing to achieve perma swiftness..lol no wonder Sharp thinks most eles use 2 attunements in pve cause they might acutally do

Thank you to everyone for your responses.(Though anyone who has anything else to add, please feel free to do so.)
Thanks especially to Fishbones and Graendall for your detailed responses and the info on Fresh Air builds.(And Fishbones, people don’t want a video as proof, they want to see a demonstration of the techniques discussed to make sure they properly understand them. If you have the time, we’d love to see a video. If not, don’t worry about it.)
From what we’ve discussed, it looks like this change was aimed primarily at PvP/WvW. Though I’d like to see a video of how people are using this before I write it off.(I haven’t really been able to make it work for me in PvE yet.)
At some point I may put in a suggestion that they split some traits into PvE & PvP/ WvW versions like they do with some skills.
Because the old version really was effective in PvE. People seem to miss the fact that you’re already at +10% speed boost with that many points in air. So it’s not +0 to +25 in 50 seconds, it’s +10 to +25 in 30 seconds. And you can swap into and out of that mode without changing weapons or skills, even if you’re “In Combat”. It seemed like a small “Ele-only” benefit stacked against Ele’s inability to change weapons in combat. If you’re running from a way point to an event, it’s a definite benefit.
And I’ve had more success breaking aggro with the old version, than with the new version. So maybe this is a good argument for splitting traits into PvE and non-PvE versions. I’ll have to learn more before I can decide.

It would actually be nice if they took the current One with Air and replaced Zephyr’s Speed with it (the current 5pt minor trait in Air).

For me, the new trait ability seems a little redundant with the Inscription and Elemental Attunement traits. We already have a trait that gives a short term speed boost to us upon attuning. Having both together just seems a little odd to me.

Also the original “One with Air” actually was used to exploit events that removed weapons/utilities. For example last year during the Mad King’s Clock Tower I always had the +25% runspeed on cause I stayed in Air Attunement making it much easier.

@ Kodiak – This is why we can’t have nice things. Actually that analysis seems very “on target”. Especially when you consider that the change came out in the Halloween update. The exploit potential probably provided the motivation for them to make a change to One with Air. I’d rather they just strip traits along with skills for events like that. And leave PvE alone.