Guild Wars 2

Elementalist:
This patch’s goal for the elementalist was to increase the power of the Earth, Air and Fire lines, while taking away some of the need to go into the Arcane line. This was done by bringing up the base cooldown of attunements so that elementalists aren’t forced to go as deep into Arcane in order to get the old attunement cooldown %’s. In doing so, we decided put some of the most powerful Adept tier traits in Water magic and Arcane to the Master tier to avoid power creep that would have occurred by letting players gain powerful effects in Master and Grandmaster tier of Fire, Air, and Earth and still get the extremely powerful traits in Water and Arcane by only splashing in 10 points.

Fire II – Burning Fire – This trait has a new effect. Use Cleansing Fire automatically when you have a number of conditions on you. 3 conditions. 40 second cooldown. Moved to Master tier.
Fire VIII – Conjurer – Moved to Adept tier.
Fire III – Ember’s Might. The effect of this trait has been changed to Burns you apply last longer. 25%.
Burning Rage 25 – Increased damage dealt to burning foes from 5% to 10%.
Air V – Soothing Winds. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
Air XI – Tempest Defense. Decreased the cooldown from 60s to 25s.
Earth 5 – Stone Flesh – Increased toughness while attuned to Earth Magic to 1.5/level (120 at level 80).
Earth VII – Strength of Stone. This trait is now Gain condition damage based on your Toughness. 10%.
Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.
Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.
Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.
Water VIII – Arcane Abatement. Moved to Adept tier.
Water X – Soothing Wave. Moved to Adept tier.
Arcane III – Arcane Retribution. Moved to Master tier. Decreased cooldown from 90 seconds to 45 seconds.
Arcane IV – Final Shielding. Decreased cooldown from 90s to 75s.
Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.
Arcane VII – Vigorous Scepter. Moved to Adept tier.
Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff. Moved to Adept tier.
Arcane IX – Windborne Dagger. Moved to Adept tier.

The following changes were done to reduce the necessity of putting points into the Arcane trait line.

The base cooldown of the attunement that you just left is now reduced from 16 seconds to 13 seconds. Attunement cooldown rate now increases by 1% per point in Arcane down from 2%. The end result is that now Attunements go from 13s to 10s instead of the old range of 16s to 10s.
Base global attunement cooldown is now 1.625 seconds. Global attunement cooldown rate now decreases by 1% per point in Arcane down from 2%. The end result is that now global attunement cooldown goes from 1.625 to 1.25 instead of the old range of 2.0 to 1.25.

I feel conflicted:

Like:

1. Attunement cooldowns reduced to 13 seconds.
2. Ember’s might and burning rage are no longer redundant and synergizes with each other.
3. Blasting staff as an adept trait.
4. All the air and earth trait changes.
5. Arcane abatement moved to adept traits is great!

No like:

1. Renewing stamina moved to be a master trait. I understand it allows us to have a lot of dodging and seemingly near perma vigor for so little investment, but as a PvE staff ele, this is great for those stubborn enemies that you can’t lose aggro. I’ll still be going 20 arcane just to have this trait.
2. Aquamancer’s alacrity moved to master is understandable, since 20 points would allow us to have 20% reduced water spell cooldowns and 20% reduced cantrip cooldowns at once. Still, 20% reduced water spell cooldowns helps a lot but I also need cantrips to survive. It seems Anet is adamant at keeping us with low health and armor and thus, making it much harder to stay alive. To me, this feels like an incredibly bitter pill to swallow.

I rarely use the other traits so I can’t say much about it. As for these planned changes, I feel like there are a lot of positives, but some of them really hit me hard.

10 seconds… just like the current. seriously why couldn’t they make the base CD with 0 points in arcana 10. Then knock it down to 7 if you go full arcana giving us the base “weapon” cd. THAT is what would’ve made going into arcana not as much as a necessity anymore.

With the way they moved both the V and VI to the master traits they’re now screwing up the D/D build even more so by now not being able to get the V in the adept trait line. Thus making the old arcana V,VI, XI now not useable.

They also did the same thing with the water line by moving V to the master line thus knocking out cantrip recharge in the master line. Now its either cleansing wave, cantrip CD or cleansing wave, cleansing water/power aura… screwing up the water line now.

DS is nice now for the start of fights but useless in wvw/pvp after the fight starts bascially. Toughness increase is nice but… its almost like a slap in the face with the other trait line changes.

Tempest defense cd is really nice. I can see they’re trying to get d/d builds into other lines than the standard 0/10/0/30/30.

All in all… i think this confirms that none of the devs main an ele.

EDIT: i havent looked else where but do we have a source for these changes?
EDIT 2: found it in dev tracker https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/devtracker

They were posted here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview

Those are some of the greatest changes elementalists will get since the game is out, and are going to be extremely important at fixing some of our core issues.

Don’t know what some people are complaining about. After a quick look at the buffs, they look great and nerfs such as arcane V are fair since it’s such a powerful trait.

tempest defense with d/x will be great for annoying people without stability.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Those are some of the greatest changes elementalists will get since the game is out, and are going to be extremely important at fixing some of our core issues.

not in the slightest. Its an “attempt” at a “fix” that ruins the core d/d builds even more so.

None of the mobility issues were addressed.

The condi removal now gets screwed up even more so by moving adept traits in water and arcana to the master traits. Were still required to go 50-60 between arcana and water for “decent” condi removal.

If youre not running a glass burst build, your still required to use 2-3 cantrips.

Mist form still not mentioned about being able to be rooted while in it.

I like the TD air change, but like i said, were still required for d/d to invest heavily into arcana and water.

Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.

This sounds OP.

rhodoc.2381:

Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.

This sounds OP.

its 90% hp, just like VS its useless after a fight starts. Its only useful in PVE.

We can’t have Elemental Attunement and Renewing Stamina together anymore? THIS IS AWFUL.

This is a MASSIVE NERF. This is literally all we had left…

red.2387:

We can’t have Elemental Attunement and Renewing Stamina together anymore? THIS IS AWFUL.

This is a MASSIVE NERF. This is literally all we had left…

Case and point.

Hook line and sinker, were done.

Stick a fork in us.

I gather that moving elemental attunement up one tier was kind of a necessity given how strong it was. But I still don’t get why they would move renewing stamina together, other than trying to force a choice between the two traits, which, given the lack of improvements elsewhere, is kick in the balls.

Overall the changes to arcana are meh, I expected them to go apekitten bananas and completely overhaul how attunement recharges work, parting with the gimmicky fresh air.

Treborlavok.3504:

None of the mobility issues were addressed.

(…)

If youre not running a glass burst build, your still required to use 2-3 cantrips.

Mist form still not mentioned about being able to be rooted while in it.

I wouldn’t expect for a single patch to fix every single issue.

The condi removal now gets screwed up even more so by moving adept traits in water and arcana to the master traits. Were still required to go 50-60 between arcana and water for “decent” condi removal.

New Burning Fire says hi. For a burst elementalist, an automatic condition removal is all they need. Especially when you can spec for it to add 3 stacks of might, vigor and regeneration with other traits.

People have been complaining about the dependence on arcana for too long. That alone will open up a lot of new possibilities.

First I was happy, then I saw this:

Ozoug.4158:

Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

Why is it that when changing something in the Elementalist you always accompany it with huge nerfs to avoid “power creep” and when buffing other classes it’s just a flat out buff with no strings attached?

DiogoSilva.7089:

Treborlavok.3504:

None of the mobility issues were addressed.

(…)

If youre not running a glass burst build, your still required to use 2-3 cantrips.

Mist form still not mentioned about being able to be rooted while in it.

I wouldn’t expect for a single patch to fix every single issue.

The condi removal now gets screwed up even more so by moving adept traits in water and arcana to the master traits. Were still required to go 50-60 between arcana and water for “decent” condi removal.

New Burning Fire says hi. For a burst elementalist, an automatic condition removal is all they need. Especially when you can spec for it to add 3 stacks of might, vigor and regeneration with other traits.

People have been complaining about the dependence on arcana for too long. That alone will open up a lot of new possibilities.

Actually… THIS would free up people from depending on arcana AND water so much for condi removal.

They need to make the BASE attunement cd 10 seconds. Then putting 30 into arcana would give us a 7-8 second attunement cd.

Or they need to just simply make the attunement cd 10 seconds. Then take away the attunement cd passive from arcana and change it to something like a celestial +to all stats. Then they need to remove the Interal CD on Evasice Arcana. Letting you free up points from water so you dont have to go 30 just to get “some” condi removal.

Burning fire… seriously… every 40 seconds.. yea thats helpful.

red.2387:

We can’t have Elemental Attunement and Renewing Stamina together anymore? THIS IS AWFUL.

This is a MASSIVE NERF. This is literally all we had left…

Renewing Stamina is now a master trait, while mesmer and guardian get it as a 5 point perk.

Because.. ANet…

#fail

Its fine i guess..But how am i supposed to survive without protection.You cant get elem attunement unless you go again deep in arcana..which makes again evasive arcana a good option.
Thing is that all the old specs that we run now will be just a shade of themselves cause you cant get elem att and ren stamina together.No evasive arcan will mean less sustain and the other trees still have sucky traits except for air grandmasters where there is frsh air and good tempest tdefence and the potentially broken diamond skin.
Ah and the more points you put into arcana the less of a buff reduced recharge times is.
In short 30 in arcana builds got screwed..lets hpe the other classes nerf actually do something .Lets hope a sustain build comes out or something but im actually sad

Ray.2640:

Why is it that when changing something in the Elementalist you always accompany it with huge nerfs to avoid “power creep” and when buffing other classes it’s just a flat out buff with no strings attached?

Nerfs for the meta stun-lock warriors.
Nerfs for the meta burst necromancers.
Nerfs for the meta s/d evade-spam thieves.
Nerfs for the meta spirit evade-spam rangers.

Pretty much the entire OP pvp meta is going to be nerfed.

Elementalists might “lose” the protection from elemental attunement or the vigor from renewing stamina (or both), but all the builds they have to fight against will get their damage nerfed, and many of them will get less vigor as well.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Ray.2640:

Why is it that when changing something in the Elementalist you always accompany it with huge nerfs to avoid “power creep” and when buffing other classes it’s just a flat out buff with no strings attached?

Nerfs for the meta stun-lock warriors.
Nerfs for the meta burst necromancers.
Nerfs for the meta s/d evade-spam thieves.
Nerfs for the meta spirit evade-spam rangers.

Say again?

I was talking about buffs. Buffs with strings attached.

EDIT: I realize that most other classes are being nerfed next patch, which will indirectly help the ele.
Overall I like the changes, as I said. It’s just the fact that my trusty old D/D will now be shelved and probably be replaced by some generic burst build.

by letting players gain powerful effects in Master and Grandmaster tier of Fire, Air, and Earth

Okay, can anyone explain me those powerful traits of fire, air and earth?

There are very interesting changes in here…. like some of you, im concerned with the moving of elemental attunement and the adept water condi clear. I think this would be ok if they changed the cooldown on RTL back to 20 seconds with its reduced range. The earth condi immunity and tempest defense changes actually sound amazing (does tempest defense damage boost still not work with updraft? ). I also dont think the attunement cooldowns will keep people out of arcane, its all about the boons… those 3 extra seconds can feel like a lifetime when your waiting for protection, water heals, or shocking aura to come back up. Evasive Arcana and the Water 15 trait are way to strong, they are our only source of having staying power in a fight. All that being said I am very much looking forward to these changes!

For how I play in sPVP, these are great changes. It’ll probably increase the pressure to use Staff, but hey, if it’s viable, I’m a happy Ele.

If any dev cares, I don’t think this will solve ALL of our easy issues, though it’s a lovely step and I appreciate it.

The other easy issues are 1.) a lametastic health pool and 2.) personal regen scaling. I get that we’re good at healing others, but for us that want to play strong self-healers in PVP, we should be comparable (or better, since we lack their armor and health and damage in that setup) to heal-shadow thieves and passive regen warriors (who can use Soldier’s[!] and still regen better than I can w/ Cleric).

I’m gonna try 0 0 30 20 20 for WvW and will see.

haviz.1340:

by letting players gain powerful effects in Master and Grandmaster tier of Fire, Air, and Earth

Okay, can anyone explain me those powerful traits of fire, air and earth?

Persisting Flames is meta in PvE. Fresh Air is meta everywhere. New Diamond Skin is going to be pretty tough.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Persisting Flames is meta in PvE. Fresh Air is meta everywhere. New Diamond Skin is going to be pretty tough.

Now you won’t even have vigour. Good luck being carried by 1-2 guardians but I would prefer not being dependant on others.

Already posted in the thread itself, but I’ll copy my elementalist thoughts on the patch here:

As a long-time elementalist player, I am a bit upset at the poor quality of choices we’ll now have in our water and arcana adept trait lines. Though I understand and agree with the general direction that these elementalist traits are going.

Water – We need to see better adept water trait options. Soothing Wave is still terrible, and should be dropped in favor of a different effect. Everyone will likely choose Vital Striking(VI) or Soothing Disruption(III) for most scenarios now. We need more options. Better options.

Arcana – Quite interesting. The biggest problem I see here is that staff now have Blasting Staff, scepter now has Vigorous Scepter, but dagger is stuck with the virtually useless Windborne Dagger. Windborne Dagger is crappy, especially in comparison to the scepter and staff traits I just mentioned. Please give daggers a better trait. Or just don’t move Renewing Stamina. At least not until dagger has a better trait option. Also, Evasive Arcana is still powerful enough that it’s hard to NOT pick it up. In all honesty, the 50% healing nerf in sPvP could probably be lowered to 60-70% and then applied to WvW and PvE. This would keep the trait powerful, but it’d make me more willing to not go into 30 arcana.

Fire – Not good enough. I really want to be able to go in fire, and making water and arcana a bit less great helps, but earth and air give a lot more utility. The cleansing fire trait is decent, but once every 40s isn’t good enough, especially considering we have no control over when it activates. Burning Precision needs a buff. Increase the chance on critical hit to at least 75%. Increase the burning duration to at least 1.5s. Or increase the duration to 3s and CD to 4s. Overall, we need more utility from our ele traits.

Air – As a dagger/dagger user, I HAVE to get Zephyr’s Boon, as it allows me to have perma fury. I already have to build with enough armor, health, and sustain so that, as a melee user with the lowest health and armor pool, I don’t die very easily. Thus in pretty much all my builds, 10 air is a must. This could be changed by giving us higher crit rate or/and more access to fury via other trait lines, ideally as adept traits. Fire needs better traits, so how about there, hrm?

Earth – Pretty good. I think the new grandmaster trait is quite interesting, though I see very little room in any build to put 30 in earth.

In regards to weapon skills, a lot of abilities in focus need to be looked at, and lightning strike needs to be nerfed (the minor master trait moreso than the weapon skill). Staff still does very poorly in 1v1 situations, though I’m not quite sure how that could be helped all that much, but I feel that it should be addressed.

These changes look like they’re really a step in the right direction. I still enjoy 30 arcane for small things like making my stability on earth attune longer (small, but key, in PvP) but I’ll definitely be more tempted to move away from that now.

Need some more time to digest the proposed changes but I’m cautiously optimistic.

As Lingering Elements does not even function properly, how about just replacing it with Elemental Attunement? This allows d/d to keep both Renewing Stamina and Elemental Attunement and gets rid of this talent that’s been broken for over a year.

And yeah, windborne dagger is still bad. I’d rather just have the scepter trait work for daggers.

Rock Solid builds might become more viable now that they won’t rely so much on Arcana.

Some interesting changes, and even some good looking buffs. But wow… Losing renewing stamina is gonna be painful for my D/D.

Khalic.3561:

Some interesting changes, and even some good looking buffs. But wow… Losing renewing stamina is gonna be painful for my D/D.

This is really the thing that gives me pause after a quick readover. Condi removal getting moved around I can deal with but that … that really hurts any D/D build I would care to run. And since D/D is my preference … eeeh.

Also, +1 to fixing Lingering Elements or actually swapping it with Elemental Attunement. I’d love to have lots of good minor traits to build around, like guardian has.

Hekmatyar.8725:

I gather that moving elemental attunement up one tier was kind of a necessity given how strong it was. But I still don’t get why they would move renewing stamina together, other than trying to force a choice between the two traits, which, given the lack of improvements elsewhere, is kick in the balls.

Overall the changes to arcana are meh, I expected them to go apekitten bananas and completely overhaul how attunement recharges work, parting with the gimmicky fresh air.

WHAT LOL?> STRONG ITS THE ONLY THING THAT KASDKAFSL CBA ANYMORE

i have lost all hope this time game, i just sat with my hand on my face. srrly i don’t think any testing is been done behind the seen its just RNG changes.

red.2387:

We can’t have Elemental Attunement and Renewing Stamina together anymore? THIS IS AWFUL.

This is a MASSIVE NERF. This is literally all we had left…

yep….

15 char.

well i think they just posted these to get feedback from people. im certain you wont be see’ing these exact changes when patch hits

red.2387:

As Lingering Elements does not even function properly, how about just replacing it with Elemental Attunement?

This!

red.2387:

We can’t have Elemental Attunement and Renewing Stamina together anymore? THIS IS AWFUL.

This is a MASSIVE NERF. This is literally all we had left…

This!

Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

is is very bad and for dd builds a hard nerf

why they can not buff other traids, builds without nerfing our current viable? If they want that we use other builds they should make them more viable.

I saw the attunement recharge change, and arcane’s 60% down to 30% coming a looong time ago. It took awhile, but it was sure to happen.
I am now very happy about this coming update.
This is definitely a step in the right direction.

Except for one thing, Diamond skin.
It might not be powerful, but it is yet another thing that causes “immune” to pop up.
I don’t like anything that grants immune, or invulnerable. Doesn’t matter how powerful or useless it is, I detest anything immune.

I honestly think they are seeing people use dd and think it is a viable set still, but honestly I just use dd now because it is the most fun set and I think a lot of people are the same way. Also mainly use evasive arcana because it looks awesome even with all the nerfs (water and earth are strong still though).

I’m confused why they move both arcane 5 and 6 to master … seems like big nerf for elementalist. Would love to test 25/15/0/30/0 d/d with these notes.

The more I think about the renewing stamina change the more stupid I find it. I just can’t wrap my head around such a huge nerf out of nowhere.

as a long time dd ele, i can just admit what the previous eles said.
Its a big nerf, i think the nerf is actually bigger then the buffs.

i am playing my ele since beta.
I lost to other classes knowing i didnt made a mistake and the enemy made big mistakes.
I won fights by outplaying my enemies, while they didnt pay attention to my attacks.

i was ok with that, i didnt come to the forums an complained, even if we were under powered compared to other classes.

Ele is anets stepchild i got used to it and i sticked to my ele.

but i slowly lose hope. if i understand the patch notes right, we will be less sustainable.
the joke is we werent very sustainable before, so now even worse.. nice one..

hopefully i get my engineer up until the nerf patch arrives.

well anet.. good job.. i was playing to much anyway.

I posted in the thread and it would be a good idea if other did also as they said they have time to make adjustments. Chap responded to Dogsilvia’s post about the changes. So they are reading.

It looks like most elementalist don’t understand the change. The more that post the more visibility it gets to hopefully have it not changed.

I usually can find a silver lining in many changes and keep a open mind but this one I can’t get behind at all.

Both traits are attractive so if someone wants both they must spend 20 trait points currently to get them. There is already a choice them reducing the base on Attunement recharge means many eles won’t go 30 into arcana anyway. So if they go 20 they can get both but I don’t see any changes they have that would make something OP. The traits are good neither is OP.

It will end up with Renewing Stamina>Elemental Attunement and elemental attunement not taken anymore.

The problem is that the higher you go into arcana the less of a buff the base cd reduction is..In fact i have to say that 30 in arcana builds will get heavily nerfed unless ..that diamond skin change turns out to be super op in pvp and carries them too (tbh i doubt it ll be so strong cause of the low hp pool) ?!
Honeslty i cant find a way an elementalist without access to protection will be playable. The alternative that comes close is elem shielding and tking 2 armors of earth..but thats so limiting either on utility slots or whole weaponsets since only d/d has auras.
Just give an other way we can get easy (and most important reactionary) acces to protection to make up for it and pls fix that mesmers and guards minor traits..i cant for the life of me see how they deserve so easy access to vigor when ele and engi will lose it

I honestly give up…

Tomorrow I’m running naked in WvW and traiting 0/30/30/(insert swear word here) maybe I’ll kill one upleveled midget before dying to an auto attack.

Yes the above statement isn’t constructive I’ll admit, I don’t know what else to do but hang my head in shame.

Moving Water 5 to Master
Moving Arcane 5 AND 6 to Master

is just plain wrong and an unwarranted nerf that nobody was asking for. They dont want “power creep”. Yeah nerfing elementalists is definitely making sure that won’t happen.

The idea behind diamond skin is just plain wrong as well. Any kind of “immunity” is something that does not add to the gameplay in any sensible way and does not belong into a competitive game at all.

Why does gaining new build options always include ruining the old ones? I just dont get it. With the new patch a lot of players (like me) will be forced into arcane and water even more than before, because we need the former adept traits. Its also the death to any boon duration build, because the key focus of that build was elemental attunement. And as my previous posters already stated, this now rivals with renewing stamina.

If they want us play fullzerker with conjured weapons only (so you dont have to worry about those pesky attunement switches anymore…), they should simply remove the other weapon options.

Did they even play what they have been designing?!?

Columbo.5924:

Did they even play what they have been designing?!?

Sadly, i think they dont…

If this goes into effect… the D/D build is now gone and done.

A user already said it, they need to NOT nerf current builds just to try and make other builds viable.

They need to fix 2 of the biggest reasons why people use arcana.

→ Evasive Arcana, its a D/D builds ONLY reliable trait to give us survivability/dmg.

→ Attunement CD, they need to flat out remove attunement % CD from arcana. Keep the attunement CD at a set 10 seconds.
——> Remove LE and replace it with Elemental attunement like someone else stated
——→ Keep renewing stamina in VI adept trait, giving us the option to go that extra 5 for elemental attunement if we want the extra boons

Condi removal/healing and dodging/boons are, as a D/D, the only way to survive vs any class.

If they were to remove the need to rely on arcana/water for the above stated reasons, without destroying the current standard build, THAT would be how they could add build diversity.

did this entire thread just disappear for anyone else too?

EDIT, nvm, it wasnt letting me change to the first page, ignore and continue with creative and constructive ideas.