Guild Wars 2

Zelyhn.8069:

Thank you for your attention and pardon my mood. Here is a list of some passive bonuses that should benefit from lingering elements:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Internal_Fire
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Air_Training
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Strength_of_Stone
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Piercing_Shards
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Arcane_Precision (to double proc if two attunements are active)

The potential of this trait has been discussed many many times in several thread over the past year. Many elementalists agree that it could the highlight of this class, and that it could bring fun as well as diversity.

I have heard it worked like this at some point in alpha/beta and was WAY OP. You could get +26-30% damage very consistently, maybe even +40%, which is absurd.

I do wish they fixed the air 5-point minor: perhaps apply blinds every X-hit, or increase crit damage, or pretty much ANYTHING useful that isn’t over-written by half of our skills/boons. It could even give a STACKING speed boost (like runes of speed apparently) of like 5% and be somewhat useful.

However, the bug-fix (essentially) will be nice, making us a psudeo-medium armor class just by taking 5 in earth and getting a nice regen from the 5-water.

Edit: Cool idea for fire 5-point minor: 5% chance to get a fire-aura on-hit. Not too strong, but would be a some-what useful access to more auras to make aura builds more viable.

JonPeters.5630:

I think this trait needs better wording. I hope you all understand why that trait would be wildly overpowered if it carried over everything particularly all 10% damage bonuses. You could simply slam through all attunements and then get 50% bonus damage. Similarly making other things work with this would requires those traits get lowered in the base case as well. I think this is a fine 15 point minor trait on its own and we can reword it and then discuss the merits of the other traits on their own.

To me, that is a better starting point for discussion than attempting to balance all of these effects with how they might work with a minor trait in Arcana. That would predicate the entire profession around that trait which is not what we want out of our minor traits.

Jon

With 10/20/0/10/15 (+15 points) you would be able to have 40% damage boost on vulnerable targets (not 50%) for less than 5 seconds (swapping cooldown) at the expense of two attunement cooldowns.

This does not seem soo unreasonable to me.

Also for those who think 40% (for 3 seconds) is a big boost, you should know that most PvE builds run perma 35% boosts (10/20/10/10/0 +20) and LH builds can get 60% (25/0/25/20/0) on vulnerable foes, and yet the class isn’t considered to be top tier because this comes at high costs and requires very specific conditions.

So no, Jon, I do not think this is overpowered.

For Lingering Elements to ever be relevant, the minor adept traits need to be strong enough to warrant a 5/5/5/5/15 investment.

Currently, our minor adept traits have two issues:
1. They only work 1/4 of the time (without lingering).
2. They are weak.

In the Dec. 10 patch, Stone Flesh is going to get buffed to 120 toughness. But, I wonder, is that enough? Is 120 extra toughness for 1/4 of the time any good? How much defense does 120 toughness translates to, anyway? 5% damage mitigation? When an elementalist changes to earth for defense, what they need is usually some burst form of defense, like protection from Elemental Attunement or stability from Rock Solid.

I would personally push for more aggressive changes:

Stone Flesh: Adds 180 toughness while in earth.
Stone Flesh: Adds 300 toughness while in earth.
Stone Flesh: Adds 400 toughness while in earth.

It’s worth noting that Obsidian Focus adds 290 toughness to channeling skills, and no one seems to pick that trait. And it’s an adept tier trait.

Other minor traits then be buffed to similar levels:

Zephyr’s Speed: Improves your speed by 15% while in air.
Zephyr’s Speed: Improves your party’s speed by 15% while in air.
Zephyr’s Speed: Improves your speed by 25% while in air.

Soothing Mist: 1.2x the healing.
Soothing Mist: 1.5x the healing.
Soothing Mist: 2x the healing, no longer affects other party members.

Flame Barrier: 40% chance.
Flame Barrier: 100% chance on a small cooldown.
Flame Barrier: Apply fire aura for might, and for synergy.

JonPeters.5630:

I think this trait needs better wording. I hope you all understand why that trait would be wildly overpowered if it carried over everything particularly all 10% damage bonuses. You could simply slam through all attunements and then get 50% bonus damage. Similarly making other things work with this would requires those traits get lowered in the base case as well. I think this is a fine 15 point minor trait on its own and we can reword it and then discuss the merits of the other traits on their own.

To me, that is a better starting point for discussion than attempting to balance all of these effects with how they might work with a minor trait in Arcana. That would predicate the entire profession around that trait which is not what we want out of our minor traits.

Jon

Ironically if you did that to get the 50% bonus damage, you’d be locked out of your three other attunements. Which would be a bummer if you accidentally ended up in Water Attunement! Although 50% extra damage might just be enough to bring us up to par with Rangers auto attacks.

My concern with Lingering Elements is that, while its a neat concept, most of the 5 point Minor traits in the elemental lines are completely lackluster. Flame barrier is bad because being hit on a profession with no inherent defenses, low armor and health is a terrible idea. And its a 1 second burn, which is a horrible trade-off for being hit. Zephyr’s Speed is terrible because it doesn’t stack with anything, and given that most builds acquire perma swiftness via traits or runes (or the 25% signet) is pretty much useless. Stone Flesh is a nice concept, but atm 80 Toughness is not even good for a Minor trait. Soothing Mist isn’t horrible, but usually the minor heal is just too minor to be of any real use or notice.

I’m cool with the concept of Lingering Elements not carrying over all the traits, and I agree that would be going too far.

One possible suggestion would be to make LE carry over not just the 5 point minor traits, but also double up on the per point trait bonuses. So for those 5 seconds, say you switch from Fire to Air, and you’ve got 20 points invested in Fire, then for those first 5 seconds in Air you’d have an additional 200 power and 20% condition duration.

This would increase the benefit of thoughtful attunement switching, rather than just quickly blowing through all the cooldowns, because you would switch for what you really need. You’d switch from Earth to Fire as you’re zerg diving with D/D and Burning Speed to get a bit of Toughness boost and some extra Condition Damage for all your upcoming burns, or switch from Air to Earth to get the Precision and Critical Damage boost for LF+CE.

LE would then operate in tandem and complement Elemental Attunement quite nicely.

BlackBeard.2873:

\
I have heard it worked like this at some point in alpha/beta and was WAY OP. You could get +26-30% damage very consistently, maybe even +40%, which is absurd.

The build I run (10/30/10/10/10) has +35% “permanent” damage and I still deal less damage than most warriors, I have less health, less armor, I can dodge less and I give less support (compared to banners + FGJ).

Raven.9603:

This is why Elementalists are so frustrated. Its been a year since launch and the only “powerful tools” we have to compensate for low survivability are 15 water, Elemental Attunement, Evasive Arcana, and to a much lesser extent Final Shielding (which no one takes over better arcane traits) and Earth’s Embrace. 3 powerful traits and 2 somewhat useful ones. No offense, but Temepest Defense, even at 25 sec cd, is not going to be viewed as much of a survivability improvement by most.

If you really want players to feel safe speccing outside of water/arcane, there needs to be powerful survivability mechanics in fire and air. None of your proposed changes really add that. Fire Aura is something you could improve that would make 20+ fire really appealing, if having Fire Aura up was actually a reason for players to regret hitting the ele. Improvements to Flame Barrier/Zephyr’s Speed at high trait levels is another thought too.

This is true on many levels. The issues I’ve encountered whenever speccing into full fire or air is that I absolutely feel forced to spec into water too because it offers a large health bonus and traits that I need to stay alive. It seems to me that fire and air don’t have much to offer aside from crit damage and power boosts, but as helpful as the stat boosts are, they’re nothing if you’re downed/defeated because you didn’t have much health and armor to begin with.

A downed/defeated player means no DPS, utility, and/or support. Jon, this is what I have to deal with when playing on my main, an elementalist. I can’t speak for everyone about it though.

Suppose you do improve Fire and Air enough that people are comfortable leaving water 15 to spec for them. All ele’s still NEED Elemental Attunement (or feel they do) and all staff ele’s still definitely need blasting staff. 20 arcane will still be holding everyone back. Staff ele’s arent going to go the aura-for-protection-and-swiftness route ever, because they only have good access to one aura.

As a main staff ele, yes, I won’t be going for aura traits since I have access to one single aura skill. Still, I need to have renewing stamina to be able to dodge (mostly) thieves and stubborn aggro locked enemies. Since I also play staff, I absolutely need blasting staff because that 60 increase in radius is beyond helpful. For me, I have to invest 20 points since I need it.

This has me puzzled since playing BWE 3 when I noticed that the elementalists skills were weakened a lot. Why do elementalists have a very high skill cap to play effectively (as DPS, utility, or support focused builds), yet even with such a high skill cap, I don’t see any proportional results that reflect the amount of skill required when compared to other classes? Also, yes, I have played d/d, s/f, and s/d in PvE and WvW.

JonPeters.5630:

I think this trait needs better wording. I hope you all understand why that trait would be wildly overpowered if it carried over everything particularly all 10% damage bonuses. You could simply slam through all attunements and then get 50% bonus damage. Similarly making other things work with this would requires those traits get lowered in the base case as well. I think this is a fine 15 point minor trait on its own and we can reword it and then discuss the merits of the other traits on their own.

To me, that is a better starting point for discussion than attempting to balance all of these effects with how they might work with a minor trait in Arcana. That would predicate the entire profession around that trait which is not what we want out of our minor traits.

Jon

Actualy it s not overpowered at all. It s exactly how warriors and guards get their dmg up, by stacking +10% dmg boosts together. +10% when endurance is not full, +25% when enemy is knocked down, +10% when an enemy has a condition / bleeding +3% per boon thats exactly how players get their dmg up.

But the elementalist he can t, first because he has to specc defensiv and second because our traits are weak. earth has +10% when endurance is full, which is basicly never then we get water who doesn t have any dmg at all and even requieres us to put a cond on someone.

if we wanted to stack this traits, we couldn t take defensiv traits making us sacrifice defense for offense exctly how it should be. Yes I know burst eles can hand out a good punch but after their burst they are incredibly weak for 10 sec and die a miserable death, specially in grp fights if they are getting focused.

Don t bother fixing lingering effects, 2 of the effects are useless anyway and the 2 others don t make the difference. remove the trait and put evasiv arcana as a minor trait instead and we are happy.

Honestly I don’t even think more defensive traits in fire, air,or earth will make much difference. Attunement dancing are class skill offers little to no defense outside of Arcane and water.

Taldren.7523:

Leuca.5732:

You are suggesting that this kind of build would be broken.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQBoAgKIUgghiQ+QowCHqHmB

I respectfully disagree on the basis that damage increases are not additive.

I think he is more afraid of a build like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmIbwx5QlEIkCpwoQHIeYBOAHWUMD5AA-jECBofBkgAkEBI7pIaslhFRjVXDT5iIq2cuIa1SBwqwI-w

Water to Air would be a 20% increase in damage … which I already do by Earth to Water for Churning Earth. If it isn’t OP there, I don’t know why it would be for Water -> Air.

A 20% increase in damage to vulnerable foes, which can be soundly countered by condition cleansing. The first time you get hit by something like this, it may take you by surprise, but it’s numerically very easy to deal with, especially coming from an ele, which doesn’t have a large number of conditions it can stack.

Treborlavok.3504:

JonPeters.5630:

Zelyhn.8069:

JonPeters.5630:

Lingering Elements
All passive bonuses for that attunement should linger. This means Flame Barrier, Stone Flesh, Soothing Mist, and Zephyr’s Speed.

These are not all passive bonuses.

But thank you for taking the time to reply.

Edit: and thank you for making a trait that could be the highlight of the class be so pathetic.

Give me a list of what else you think might be considered a passive benefit of these attunements, and I am happy to discuss the merits of this stuff working with this trait. However, posts that say things like “this isn’t everything” are just not constructive.

Wouldn’t the better route for making LE a really nice 15 trait be to make it so that all the traits when swapping to an attunement carry over for “x” seconds…?

For the sake of the example.. You had this build…
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQBYAgowkUEPswBJKKyZGA

If you’re in water, and then switch to air with LE specced you’d carry over for 5 seconds…
-> compassion
-> cleansing wave
-> healing ripple
-> piercing shards
Doing something like this would give people the option to not have to rely on evasive arcana and would give the class some much needed synergy between attunements. It would also make switching attunements to the correct follow attunement more interesting.

I posted this further up but i feel it’s LE strong point in giving us the option to get out of arcana for evasive arcana. You could switch ea for RS in arcana in the build for vigor I just put up some traits for the sake of the example.

Thyophelis.8035:

Actualy it s not overpowered at all. It s exactly how warriors and guards get their dmg up, by stacking +10% dmg boosts together. +10% when endurance is not full, +25% when enemy is knocked down, +10% when an enemy has a condition / bleeding +3% per boon thats exactly how players get their dmg up.

But the elementalist he can t, first because he has to specc defensiv and second because our traits are weak. earth has +10% when endurance is full, which is basicly never then we get water who doesn t have any dmg at all and even requieres us to put a cond on someone.

If you want to go HAM, you can play 0/30/25/10/5 with scholar runes if you want and get:
+10% in air
+10% w/in 600 range
+10% with full endurace (possible on ranged)
+10% above 90% health (water trait)
+10% above 90% health (runes)
+5% from force sigil
+ fury on swap

That is +55% max-glass burst spec (not viable mind you), but is possible.

And you will still get lots of air procs, and even take arcanes to try and 1-shot or be 1-shotted.

Don t bother fixing lingering effects, 2 of the effects are useless anyway and the 2 others don t make the difference. remove the trait and put evasiv arcana as a minor trait instead and we are happy.

Not going to happen, and still too strong. Fixing it is fine, they just have to improve the 5-point minors in fire/air.

Also, reducing arcana recharge is a good first step, but there needs to be survivability in other lines to actually get people away – not just nerfing the good lines. A good balance would be moving renewing stamina to air.

The could even make a fire trait:

Phoenix’s Touch:
Gain 5s of vigor on applying a burn. 5s ICD.

Not perma-vigor, unless you sit in fire (which is a strong trade-off), and even encourages use of glyph of elemental power. It would even work well with the “burn on crit” trait. (Actually, this would make the fire-line instant usable)

JonPeters.5630:

I think this trait needs better wording. I hope you all understand why that trait would be wildly overpowered if it carried over everything particularly all 10% damage bonuses. You could simply slam through all attunements and then get 50% bonus damage. Similarly making other things work with this would requires those traits get lowered in the base case as well. I think this is a fine 15 point minor trait on its own and we can reword it and then discuss the merits of the other traits on their own.

To me, that is a better starting point for discussion than attempting to balance all of these effects with how they might work with a minor trait in Arcana.* That would predicate the entire profession around that trait which is not what we want out of our minor traits. *

Jon

If you’re worried about making the profession focused around it, make it a core feature instead, and maybe promote Elemental Attunement to that trait slot.

New profession stat line: Lingering Elements Duration. We have a base Lingering Elements of 1, +0.2 seconds per point in Arcana (Max 7 seconds, 4 seconds at 15 which is 1 less than currently). Have it work with all attunement-specific trait effects because you either have a short duration on them, or can’t spec into a large enough amount to make them overpowered.

Attunement Recharge Rate is removed from the stat line; either the effect of it is spread out to the Alacrity traits (each now reduces the matching attunement’s recharge to 10 seconds), or the base recharge is set to a flat 10 seconds.

6 out of 8 professions currently have “F1-F4 cooldown reduction” as their stat lines, and that’s… well, incredibly boring. This could be a chance to make the elementalist more unique.

Dingle.2743:

If you’re worried about making the profession focused around it, make it a core feature instead, and maybe promote Elemental Attunement to that trait slot.

New profession stat line: Lingering Elements Duration. We have a base Lingering Elements of 1, +0.2 seconds per point in Arcana (Max 7 seconds, 4 seconds at 15 which is 1 less than currently). Have it work with all attunement-specific trait effects because you either have a short duration on them, or can’t spec into a large enough amount to make them overpowered.

Attunement Recharge Rate is removed from the stat line; either the effect of it is spread out to the Alacrity traits (each now reduces the matching attunement’s recharge to 10 seconds), or the base recharge is set to a flat 10 seconds.

6 out of 8 professions currently have “F1-F4 cooldown reduction” as their stat lines, and that’s… well, incredibly boring. This could be a chance to make the elementalist more unique.

Many players (myself included) have suggested something along the lines of this. I’m honestly confused as to why attunements don’t have a set cooldown with a different Arcana investment bonus; it would solve the main conundrum eles face, and attunement recharge is already affected by chill, unlike regular weapon swapping.

JonPeters.5630:

I do agree that the 5 point minors need looking at. I think the Earth and Water ones are in an ok place right now but Fire and Air need work.

Jon

Thanks for the communication Jon! I know you are very busy!

I like some of the direction you are taking with some of the lines, and know it will take time. If it would help, we could aggregate some trait suggestions that might help you with the brainstorming process to bring a little bit of viable defense to lines other than water/arcane so that there is more build diversity.

Keep up the great work.

Raven.9603:

Fire Aura is something you could improve that would make 20+ fire really appealing, if having Fire Aura up was actually a reason for players to regret hitting the ele. Improvements to Flame Barrier/Zephyr’s Speed at high trait levels is another thought too.

I disagree about using Fire Aura for defense. I’d rather have Sunspot (Fire 15) replaced as it’s borderline useless. Alternatively, have defensive traits at grandmaster. Since I use d/d, I cannot access Fire Aura directly. I do not want to be forced to focus on Fire’s Embrace (which can already trigger Elemental Shielding anyway).

JonPeters.5630:

I do agree that the 5 point minors need looking at. I think the Earth and Water ones are in an ok place right now but Fire and Air need work.

Jon

Can I just say, thank you so much for the consistent communication! It’s a huge relief to see frequent red posts in the Ele forum.

Thank you!

Fenrina.2954:

I disagree about using Fire Aura for defense. I’d rather have Sunspot (Fire 15) replaced as it’s borderline useless. Alternatively, have defensive traits at grandmaster. Since I use d/d, I cannot access Fire Aura directly. I do not want to be forced to focus on Fire’s Embrace (which can already trigger Elemental Shielding anyway).

You have two fire fields and a leap finisher.

Thyophelis.8035:

Actualy it s not overpowered at all. It s exactly how warriors and guards get their dmg up, by stacking +10% dmg boosts together. +10% when endurance is not full, +25% when enemy is knocked down, +10% when an enemy has a condition / bleeding +3% per boon thats exactly how players get their dmg up.

That’s how I did my ranger. +10% from full endurance, +10% from flanking, +25% from signet of the wild, and +25% from signet of the hunt.

It’s also what I do on my ele with conjures. +10% from stone splinters and +20% from piercing shards while sitting in water.

The point was also made that in order to maximize +% damage boosts with lingering elements like that, you would have to cycle through all the attunements ( up to 6s of setup because of the delay ) and then be left with everything locked out after that one bit of burst.

It’s completely impractical, so I suppose it’s irrelevant whether it would be OP is this case. Revamping the 5pts does seem like a better option.

As a side note, thanks again for taking the time to talk Jon.

Zelyhn.8069:

Also for those who think 40% (for 3 seconds) is a big boost, you should know that most PvE builds run perma 35% boosts (10/20/10/10/0 +20) and LH builds can get 60% (25/0/25/20/0) on vulnerable foes, and yet the class isn’t considered to be top tier because this comes at high costs and requires very specific conditions.

So no, Jon, I do not think this is overpowered.

Stacking too many damage modifiers wouldn’t matter in pve; nobody cares about killing an npc too quickly. It would be too good in a gimmick capacity for pvp. Ele can already use instant cast damage to spike people down. The short duration of your full damage buffs isn’t an issue when you use all your skills in the same second. It’s literally a matter of luck whether your enemy dodges that kind of attack or not. If it wasn’t for those gimmicky burst builds, I wouldn’t agree with Jon at all because most ele skills are very telegraphed. If someone doesn’t dodge a +40% damage churning earth, dragon’s tooth or burning speed, that’s his own fault.

Honestly, lingering elements should just go away; it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Make elemental attunement the 15 point minor. Alternatively, arcane precision can be changed into a trait that has synergy with lingering elements. If an arcana trait is only going to function based off other traits, you should at least not be expected to go into 4 other trait lines and/or pick specific major traits. It wouldn’t even have to be anything all that clever.

Gain increased attributes based on your current attunement.
Fire= power & condition damage
Air= precision & crit damage
Earth= toughness & condition duration
Water= healing power & boon duration

1) Useful in every ele build
2) Makes up for a weakness in going 30 arcana, low traditional stat totals
3) Further encourages intelligent swapping (e.g. making sure to go from air to fire for more damage)
4) Won’t apply conditions that are redundant with conditions that attunement already applies like arcane precision does
5) Neither over nor underpowered on a conceptual level; balancing it would simply be a matter of playing with numbers

Agree with Tei — remove the trait and give the “boon on attunement activations” as the new Master Minor.

Or better yet… add the boon from attunement switching to the actual elemental line Adept Minor (yeah the 5pt traits we’re all talking about being lack luster).

JonPeters.5630:

I do agree that the 5 point minors need looking at. I think the Earth and Water ones are in an ok place right now but Fire and Air need work.

Jon

So you are completely discarding the idea of lingering all passive bonuses?
And there goes a huge potential fun factor …

Arcane precision also needs some attention.

Glenstorm.4059:

JonPeters.5630:

I do agree that the 5 point minors need looking at. I think the Earth and Water ones are in an ok place right now but Fire and Air need work.

Jon

Can I just say, thank you so much for the consistent communication! It’s a huge relief to see frequent red posts in the Ele forum.

Thank you!

Seconded. Flame Barrier sucks.

Leuca.5732:

You have two fire fields and a leap finisher.

Let me rephrase that then. Without relying Fire’s Embrace or frequent attunement switching.

JonPeters.5630:

I think this trait needs better wording. I hope you all understand why that trait would be wildly overpowered if it carried over everything particularly all 10% damage bonuses. You could simply slam through all attunements and then get 50% bonus damage. Similarly making other things work with this would requires those traits get lowered in the base case as well. I think this is a fine 15 point minor trait on its own and we can reword it and then discuss the merits of the other traits on their own.

To me, that is a better starting point for discussion than attempting to balance all of these effects with how they might work with a minor trait in Arcana. That would predicate the entire profession around that trait which is not what we want out of our minor traits.

Jon

You could simply cap it at 1 or 2 swaps. That way 10% bonus damage from fire + pyro puissance works for the next swap while it lingers, or 20% from piercing shards, but you could never achieve 50%.

I’m sure you can understand the lack of excitement about this change considering how awful (“underwhelming?”) 5 fire and 5 air are. The only nice bonus of this in your suggested form will be that it now works a little bit with earth, if someone happens to spec earth.

Or, you know, if higher level fire/air minors improved upon flame barrier/zephyrs speed to make them interesting defensive mechanics (like flame barrier reflects x% dmg, or zyphers speed causes a chance to evade attacks).

juno.1840:

Agree with Tei — remove the trait and give the “boon on attunement activations” as the new Master Minor.

Agreed, if that’s all the “fixed” LE is going to do… Make the arcana 15 the current elemental attunement and get rid of LE. Keep renewing stamina as VI. Then remove the ICD on evasive arcana and then arcana will be fine.

Then leave water as is, and work on fire line because it’s garbage.

Fix signets and cantrips and boom, class is playable again across the board.

JonPeters.5630:

I do agree that the 5 point minors need looking at. I think the Earth and Water ones are in an ok place right now but Fire and Air need work.

Jon

Zephyr’s Speed is problematic in my opinion.

It can go up to 25% speed to feel relevant, but this is probably too much for a minor trait, no? It would allow you to ignore Signet of Air completely with just 5 points. It would work better as an adept major trait, but then it would be redudant with Windborne Dagger, making the dagger trait feel less unique. And then One With Air is already good (in theory, not in practice) for some in-battle tricks.

A 15% speed boost, instead of 10%, would still be underwhelming, but it could always work party-wide like the water minor for some interesting party roaming, especially to roam between points with an ally when no party swiftness is accessible.

Or maybe it could get a revamp. What about making it work like the Ranger’s nerfed version of Natural Vigor? A passive 25% endurance regeneration would be an awesome solution for all squishy glass cannon eles who need to rely way too much on renewing stamina/ arcana/ water to be any good. Besides, it’s a passive effect, so it would work well with Lingering Elements (unlike many other suggestions for this trait), and it would allow d/d air eles to spec in arcana for Windborne Dagger (assuming it gets changed to work outside of battle).

EDIT: In fact, the more than I think of it, the more I’m impressed by my suggestion. It would be really great to tone down the many survival problems with squishy air eles and with squishy d/d eles, without being anything broken (it is just 25%, afterall). Name change from Zephyr’s Speed to Zephyr’s Vigor.

Zelyhn.8069:

BlackBeard.2873:

\
I have heard it worked like this at some point in alpha/beta and was WAY OP. You could get +26-30% damage very consistently, maybe even +40%, which is absurd.

The build I run (10/30/10/10/10) has +35% “permanent” damage and I still deal less damage than most warriors, I have less health, less armor, I can dodge less and I give less support (compared to banners + FGJ).

Exactly.

Other classes are doing the damage Elementalists do with the elementalist going full glass cannon and jumping through all the hoops to get all the stacking damage multipliers FULL TIME and with FAR BETTER SURVIVABILITY.

I honestly don’t believe that ANet has any idea how fragile the class is or how badly lopsided the Risk/Reward (and effort to achieve it) is compared to every other class in the game.

Treborlavok.3504:

juno.1840:

Agree with Tei — remove the trait and give the “boon on attunement activations” as the new Master Minor.

Agreed, if that’s all the “fixed” LE is going to do… Make the arcana 15 the current elemental attunement and get rid of LE. Keep renewing stamina as VI. Then remove the ICD on evasive arcana and then arcana will be fine.

Then leave water as is, and work on fire line because it’s garbage.

Fix signets and cantrips and boom, class is playable again across the board.

This would be a big negative. Water attunement current tics at 100-200 per sec (0 vs 1k healing power) for 10 seconds after swap because its the only non-bugged effect. thats 1-2k HP after every swap away from water just from the current LE.

JonPeters.5630:

I do agree that the 5 point minors need looking at. I think the Earth and Water ones are in an ok place right now but Fire and Air need work.

Jon

Fire – Flame Barrier should bump up to 40% chance. I would consider it 20% is really low. It is a 1s burn and you have to be struck to burn someone with it and you have to stay in fire attunement. Ele’s aren’t very fond of getting struck.

I know you probably want the 5 point minors to feel like 5 point but fire requires you to stay in fire and take damage for a 1’s burn.

oZii.2864:

JonPeters.5630:

I do agree that the 5 point minors need looking at. I think the Earth and Water ones are in an ok place right now but Fire and Air need work.

Jon

Fire – Flame Barrier should bump up to 40% chance. I would consider it 20% is really low. It is a 1s burn and you have to be struck to burn someone with it and you have to stay in fire attunement. Ele’s aren’t very fond of getting struck.

I know you probably want the 5 point minors to feel like 5 point but fire requires you to stay in fire and take damage for a 1’s burn.

I have to ask … what good is a 1 second burn on a class that can only take a few hits before dieing? Even if it was 100% of the time … the fact that it requires the class with the least survivability to be hit in order to proc makes it a loser. Especially given that it is in our so-called ‘Damage’ line (even though we get more damage out of Air).

If you are that concerned that Renewing Stamina and Elemental Attunement are going to be too available why not get rid of Lingering Elements and put either in that spot? Or better yet move Elemental Attunement to 25 points removing arcane precision and ensuring high investment is required? Because frankly I find RNG condition proc pretty useless and IMO it’s not even close to worthy of 25 points.

Treborlavok.3504:

juno.1840:

Agree with Tei — remove the trait and give the “boon on attunement activations” as the new Master Minor.

Agreed, if that’s all the “fixed” LE is going to do… Make the arcana 15 the current elemental attunement and get rid of LE. Keep renewing stamina as VI. Then remove the ICD on evasive arcana and then arcana will be fine.

Then leave water as is, and work on fire line because it’s garbage.

Fix signets and cantrips and boom, class is playable again across the board.

What replaces the 5 point water trait? Soothing mist is basically regen that can’t be stripped or corrupted. The base could be brought up a little imo.

Air #5
Zephyr’s Vigor
Increases endurance regeneration by 25%.

oZii.2864:

Treborlavok.3504:

juno.1840:

Agree with Tei — remove the trait and give the “boon on attunement activations” as the new Master Minor.

Agreed, if that’s all the “fixed” LE is going to do… Make the arcana 15 the current elemental attunement and get rid of LE. Keep renewing stamina as VI. Then remove the ICD on evasive arcana and then arcana will be fine.

Then leave water as is, and work on fire line because it’s garbage.

Fix signets and cantrips and boom, class is playable again across the board.

What replaces the 5 point water trait? Soothing mist is basically regen that can’t be stripped or corrupted. The base could be brought up a little imo.

Nothing replaces it — it’s fine. We said dump “Lingering Elements”… not the individual element buffs themselves.

Mithfir.1038:

If you are that concerned that Renewing Stamina and Elemental Attunement are going to be too available why not get rid of Lingering Elements and put either in that spot? Or better yet move Elemental Attunement to 25 points removing arcane precision and ensuring high investment is required? Because frankly I find RNG condition proc pretty useless and IMO it’s not even close to worthy of 25 points.

Yea something needs to happed for Arcane precision! Lets bump that chance to proc up on that too. I notice it when someone has weakness when I am lightning whip them other wise I never notice it.

juno.1840:

oZii.2864:

Treborlavok.3504:

juno.1840:

Agree with Tei — remove the trait and give the “boon on attunement activations” as the new Master Minor.

Agreed, if that’s all the “fixed” LE is going to do… Make the arcana 15 the current elemental attunement and get rid of LE. Keep renewing stamina as VI. Then remove the ICD on evasive arcana and then arcana will be fine.

Then leave water as is, and work on fire line because it’s garbage.

Fix signets and cantrips and boom, class is playable again across the board.

What replaces the 5 point water trait? Soothing mist is basically regen that can’t be stripped or corrupted. The base could be brought up a little imo.

Nothing replaces it — it’s fine. We said dump “Lingering Elements”… not the individual element buffs themselves.

You then need a new trait to replace Elemental Attunement then if it would move to 15 points in Arcana.

oZii.2864:

juno.1840:

oZii.2864:

Treborlavok.3504:

juno.1840:

Agree with Tei — remove the trait and give the “boon on attunement activations” as the new Master Minor.

Agreed, if that’s all the “fixed” LE is going to do… Make the arcana 15 the current elemental attunement and get rid of LE. Keep renewing stamina as VI. Then remove the ICD on evasive arcana and then arcana will be fine.

Then leave water as is, and work on fire line because it’s garbage.

Fix signets and cantrips and boom, class is playable again across the board.

What replaces the 5 point water trait? Soothing mist is basically regen that can’t be stripped or corrupted. The base could be brought up a little imo.

Nothing replaces it — it’s fine. We said dump “Lingering Elements”… not the individual element buffs themselves.

You then need a new trait to replace Elemental Attunement then if it would move to 15 points in Arcana.

I would pick up something like windborn dagger if that happened and quite honestly it would probably be a little bit of a buff.

oZii.2864:

juno.1840:

oZii.2864:

Treborlavok.3504:

juno.1840:

Agree with Tei — remove the trait and give the “boon on attunement activations” as the new Master Minor.

Agreed, if that’s all the “fixed” LE is going to do… Make the arcana 15 the current elemental attunement and get rid of LE. Keep renewing stamina as VI. Then remove the ICD on evasive arcana and then arcana will be fine.

Then leave water as is, and work on fire line because it’s garbage.

Fix signets and cantrips and boom, class is playable again across the board.

What replaces the 5 point water trait? Soothing mist is basically regen that can’t be stripped or corrupted. The base could be brought up a little imo.

Nothing replaces it — it’s fine. We said dump “Lingering Elements”… not the individual element buffs themselves.

You then need a new trait to replace Elemental Attunement then if it would move to 15 points in Arcana.

That’s a different discussion (which you can start if you want) but it’s not related to the point we made above which is eliminate Lingering Elements (again this does not eliminate the 5pt element line minors).

My suggestions:
-make conjure weapons instant cast and some of their abilities like invulnerability from shield usable while moving (why? conjured weapons are useless in pvp and it wouldnt effect pve i guess and it could increase our pool of utilities)
-make imobilize from elemental surge (arcana XII) athleast like 2 sec se we might be able to somehow chainit with dragon tooth
-and some more rewarding dmg on dragon tooth would feel nice

Just my toughtsxD

Have you given any thought to reworking Flame Aura?

Getting hit is just about the last thing an Ele wants to do in combat, which is also why the Flame Barrier Minor and One with Fire trait are so poor.

Pulsing aoe burn while automatically stacking some Might seems like an obvious tweak, but anything would be preferable to the current implementation that requires you to get hit to have any effect whatsoever.

I think Flame Barrier and One with Fire need to be scrapped entirely.

While still within the topic of weak traits, I feel that fire’s 15th is “okay-ish”, but underwhelming compared to air’s 15th. It has one strong point in comparison: it’s aoe. But it has two drawbacks: it’s melee range and it’s weaker. I feel that Fire’s 15th should either be a ranged skill (like sigil of fire), or should deal as much damage as air 15th, considering that being melee-ranged is already a compensation for being aoe. That, or have it apply burning in addition to damage. Even if it’s just 1 tick.

I feel fire’s 15th lacks purpose outside of dagger builds. Earth 15th is melee too, but that one serves to punish foes around you, so it makes sense defensively.

DiogoSilva.7089:

While still within the topic of weak traits, I feel that fire’s 15th is “okay-ish”, but underwhelming compared to air’s 15th. It has one strong point in comparison: it’s aoe. But it has two drawbacks: it’s melee range and it’s weaker. I feel that Fire’s 15th should either be a ranged skill (like sigil of fire), or should deal as much damage as air 15th, considering that being melee-ranged is already a compensation for being aoe. That, or have it apply burning in addition to damage. Even if it’s just 1 tick.

I feel fire’s 15th lacks purpose outside of dagger builds. Earth 15th is melee too, but that one serves to punish foes around you, so it makes sense defensively.

Earth 15 is a pretty good trait. If you are 15 points in Earth you are probably defensively specced as a ele. It can be used offensively to stack cripple with Ring of Earth. The damage is decent also.

Fire 15 should burn it just makes sense.

Evilgamer.3964:

Getting hit is just about the last thing an Ele wants to do in combat, which is also why the Flame Barrier Minor and One with Fire trait are so poor.

In addition to this, if I’m in fire attunement, there are very good odds that the enemy is already on fire. Randomly adding more burn isn’t going to help.

If Flame Barrier was a defensive buff(s) on getting hit, it could easily be useful. But that would require a high success rate (at least 50%, likely higher) for people to like it.

Phoenix Touch
Gain 5s of vigor on applying a burn to an opponent. ICD: 5s

With this, Fire trait-line has a lot more usable skills, you reduce the necessity of arcana, you don’t have perma-vigor without jumping through a lot more hoops, and even fire aura/the 5-point minor are useful.

1: Its active
2: It easy to implement
3: It fits thematically
4: It fills a critical need to break arcana-dependence by providing a bit of defense outside of water/arcana.
5: Its actually good

The primary difference that I see between the Elementalist’s damage modifying traits and other classes’ traits is that the Elementalist traits are impossible to maintain reliably.

Warrior example: Berserker’s Might…15% damage increase across the board for being limited on using the warrior’s burst skills. Also, the 15% buffs the burst skill itself when the warrior chooses to use it.

Elementalist example: As currently stands, Piercing Shards is one of two traits we have that even comes close by increasing damage by 20% vs vulnerable foes. In order to maintain vulnerability, we have to hit reliably with Ice Spike, stay in water attunement for Vapor Blade, or rely on Shatterstone. So, in short, we have to stay in water attunement to keep vulnerability applied. Other than that, we can just hope that our teammates are applying vulnerability, I guess. Solo, it’s highly unlikely.

The other trait is Bolt to the Heart, which increases damage by 20% when our enemy is at less than 33% health. This trait isn’t bad, but again, the Ele has to get the enemy down to 33% health for it to even impact the fight.

It would be really nice if some of our damage modifying traits were stackable and not dependent on one attunement and conditions we can’t reliably apply.

Vick.6805:

The primary difference that I see between the Elementalist’s damage modifying traits and other classes’ traits is that the Elementalist traits are impossible to maintain reliably.

Warrior example: Berserker’s Might…15% damage increase across the board for being limited on using the warrior’s burst skills. Also, the 15% buffs the burst skill itself when the warrior chooses to use it.

Elementalist example: As currently stands, Piercing Shards is one of two traits we have that even comes close by increasing damage by 20% vs vulnerable foes. In order to maintain vulnerability, we have to hit reliably with Ice Spike, stay in water attunement for Vapor Blade, or rely on Shatterstone. So, in short, we have to stay in water attunement to keep vulnerability applied. Other than that, we can just hope that our teammates are applying vulnerability, I guess. Solo, it’s highly unlikely.

The other trait is Bolt to the Heart, which increases damage by 20% when our enemy is at less than 33% health. This trait isn’t bad, but again, the Ele has to get the enemy down to 33% health for it to even impact the fight.

It would be really nice if some of our damage modifying traits were stackable and not dependent on one attunement and conditions we can’t reliably apply.

Nevermind that Piercing Shards is only active while attuned to water to begin with, so it’s only really useful for conjure builds. It’d be another story if it worked with Lingering Elements, but currently even with the fix that’s a no.

imho i think that atm lingering attunement is useless and it should be revamped as the others 5 minor traits,anyway i thought something about lingering attunements :

I think that lingering attunement should give the chance to COME BACK to the previous attunement,here some expamples :

I’m an ele s/f and i’m in earth and i want to switch in fire, now i’m in fire but i see a thief is coming to me and makes a backstab, 2 seconds passed and i came back to earth to gain the 5# invulnerability so i’m able to reposition myself for a burst and have a chance against this thief… and boom,burst done and then gg,ele op,needs nerf. (i had the possibility to came back and choose a skill that saves me my life instead of waiting 16/13/10 secs cooldown)

I’m an ele s/d and i’m in air and i switch into fire,i see a warrior gs/sword-shield coming to us and (we will scream against him for sure),but,wait we can switch again in air and escape with RTL that is nerfed and the warrior come to us with 3#+5# gs and 2# sword,he will reach us and kill us,but hey,WE GOT +5 SECS SURVABILITY,gg ele,needs nerf.

Obviously the 15 traits won’t trigger. so i won’t be able to switch to air-fire-air or water-earth-water,etc etc.
This new trait will be triggered only 1 time, i’m in air i switch to fire and then after 2sec i switch to air again, if now i switch again to fire i won’t be able to switch again in air that is in cooldown.

2-3 seconds to come back to the previously attunement.

OR Change/Modify 5 points that are nearly useless:

Zephyr’s speed is so USELESS,better if you put 25% chance to blind someone 5 secs cd.
Flame Barrier : burning area for 2 secs chance to trigger 50% and 1 sec cooldown.
Soothing mist is fine.
earth is fine.

or
20%chance to gain an Aura when triggered an attunement
i switch to fire and i have a 20% chance to gain fire shield.
i switch to water and i have a 20% chance to gain frost aura and so on.

or nothing(i think this will be the final answer).

other questions :

With Weak Spot(25 air) should be 80% to inflict vulnerability and 20% to inflict blind on target 1 sec cooldown,i think that blind will help ele’s survability.
(Acidic Coating that is an engi trait helps them very well,and i think a similar trait should be on ele)
Why won’t revert nerf on RTL? or why don’t nerf warrior greatsword #3 and #5 and sword #2 (double the cd if they don’t hit someone)?

Guys, what do you think about this proposal? It will increase build diversity a lot by allowing people to have 0 points in Arcana. I think it’s an idea that’s worth considering.

Sunshine.5014:

JonPeters.5630:

Elementalist:

• Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

Please swap Air II – Zephyr’s Focus and Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina instead.

Renewing Stamina depends on Crit, and is out of place in the Arcana line, while Zephyr’s Focus belongs to the Arcana line (although it’s nearly useless since only Meteor Shower counts as a channelling spell). Swap it, put Renewing Stamina in Adept tier for Air, and put Zephyr’s Focus in Master tier for Arcana, and maybe buff it a little bit.

Arcana has too many good traits, swap it to other line like Air will help builds diversity.