Guild Wars 2

Aomine.5012:

My only concern with diamond skin is that when pair with Ether Renewal, it can be too powerful against classes that rely on condition as their main source of damage.

Ether Renewal is already a very powerful healing skill that remove a total of 8 conditions every 15 seconds. When pair with diamond skin, it not only cleanse all the remaining condition on the ele, it also constantly heal ele so it can maintain above 90% hp when channeling, so a total of 4 seconds immunity to condition every 15 seconds.

This would be very unfair in 1 on 1 situation to necro and engineer who rely almost entirely on condition damage as their main source of damage.

Not a real concern. Every ability that necro has that adds conditions ALSO does damage. Even if they were pure condi it wouldn’t take them long to breach the threshold.

haviz.1340:

I don’t know if you guys saw Jon posting this:

ELEMENTALIST

• Arcane Resurrection is going up to master tier instead of Renewing Stamina.
• Windborne Dagger is going to function outside of combat.
• Soothing Disruption is moving to master tier.
• Cantrip Mastery is moving to adept tier.
• Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incmoing critical hits. 10s recharge.

but why is arcane resurrection going up to master tier? How would I revive zerkers floor sniffers now that it’s going to be master tier? Can anyone explain that? God kitten zerkers.

WHERE? Soothing Disruption going to Master will TOTALLY break my 10/15/0/15/30 cantrip build. I will have to lose either my might stacking or healing on cantrips, my bolt on air attunement, or my elemental dodge blast in Arcana.

This is horrible news.

Taldren.7523:

Aomine.5012:

My only concern with diamond skin is that when pair with Ether Renewal, it can be too powerful against classes that rely on condition as their main source of damage.

Ether Renewal is already a very powerful healing skill that remove a total of 8 conditions every 15 seconds. When pair with diamond skin, it not only cleanse all the remaining condition on the ele, it also constantly heal ele so it can maintain above 90% hp when channeling, so a total of 4 seconds immunity to condition every 15 seconds.

This would be very unfair in 1 on 1 situation to necro and engineer who rely almost entirely on condition damage as their main source of damage.

Not a real concern. Every ability that necro has that adds conditions ALSO does damage. Even if they were pure condi it wouldn’t take them long to breach the threshold.

Problem is condition spec classes usually have far lower direct damage than other classes, and ether renewal heals 5000+ every 15 seconds. So when an ele is healing, as a condition classes, you cannot really harm him in any way because you cant surpass his healing with just your direct damage.

Aomine.5012:

My only concern with diamond skin is that when pair with Ether Renewal, it can be too powerful against classes that rely on condition as their main source of damage.

Ether Renewal is already a very powerful healing skill that remove a total of 8 conditions every 15 seconds. When pair with diamond skin, it not only cleanse all the remaining condition on the ele, it also constantly heal ele so it can maintain above 90% hp when channeling, so a total of 4 seconds immunity to condition every 15 seconds.

This would be very unfair in 1 on 1 situation to necro and engineer who rely almost entirely on condition damage as their main source of damage.

You mean how its now unfair with elementalists marked as free kills by condition builds if they don’t fully spec into cleanses?

With healing as our only sustain (said goodbye to mobility with RTL nerf) poison hard counters heals…..guess who has lots of access to poison or boon corruption? 1v1 any ele has very little chance against a necro (large hp difference+death shroud).

Name a single class an elementalist considers a free kill vs how many classes targets ele’s as free loot?

Taldren.7523:

Aomine.5012:

My only concern with diamond skin is that when pair with Ether Renewal, it can be too powerful against classes that rely on condition as their main source of damage.

Ether Renewal is already a very powerful healing skill that remove a total of 8 conditions every 15 seconds. When pair with diamond skin, it not only cleanse all the remaining condition on the ele, it also constantly heal ele so it can maintain above 90% hp when channeling, so a total of 4 seconds immunity to condition every 15 seconds.

This would be very unfair in 1 on 1 situation to necro and engineer who rely almost entirely on condition damage as their main source of damage.

Not a real concern. Every ability that necro has that adds conditions ALSO does damage. Even if they were pure condi it wouldn’t take them long to breach the threshold.

A pure condition necro has an auto-attack DPS of about 400 direct damage, after taking crits into consideration. Ether Renewal, at base, heals 1250 per second for the duration of the cast (and also clears off just about any conditions that are on the ele). It basically becomes a second mist form when against a condi necro, on a much shorter cooldown.

I’ve done the math earlier in this thread; assuming the threshold for breaking through diamond skin is 1500 hp, a pure condi necromancer takes 4-5 seconds to break through it without blowing high cooldown abilities (which is important, because if they use all their cooldowns to break through they have barely anything left to actually inflict serious conditions)

The elementalist just has to heal around 400 per second on average to stay immune in the long term, and if the necro breaks through momentarily the ele can just cast ether renewal to top back up and remove all of the conditions the necromancer managed to land during the window. 400 heal per second isn’t difficult; the ele might have access to regeneration, soothing mists, healing on weapon skills. The ele won’t be poisoned because Diamond Skin, so these all work at maximum efficiency. 210 heal per second from regen and soothing mists before considering any healing power already increases the necro’s time before inflicting any conditions to 8-10 seconds. Then there’s the possibility of protection, dodging, invulnerability.

It may be one case, but Diamond Skin easily presents a sheer wall that a tiny subset of builds can’t break through; mainly pure condition necromancer, possibly pure condition engineer (but I haven’t ran the numbers on engi direct damage in such a build). The mechanic for breaking it shouldn’t be damage dealt; at most the health threshold should be the point at which whatever mechanic is used to break it begins to recharge, if the health threshold even exists at all.

Jaytee.9513:

Aomine.5012:

My only concern with diamond skin is that when pair with Ether Renewal, it can be too powerful against classes that rely on condition as their main source of damage.

Ether Renewal is already a very powerful healing skill that remove a total of 8 conditions every 15 seconds. When pair with diamond skin, it not only cleanse all the remaining condition on the ele, it also constantly heal ele so it can maintain above 90% hp when channeling, so a total of 4 seconds immunity to condition every 15 seconds.

This would be very unfair in 1 on 1 situation to necro and engineer who rely almost entirely on condition damage as their main source of damage.

You mean how its now unfair with elementalists marked as free kills by condition builds if they don’t fully spec into cleanses?

With healing as our only sustain (said goodbye to mobility with RTL nerf) poison hard counters heals…..guess who has lots of access to poison or boon corruption? 1v1 any ele has very little chance against a necro (large hp difference+death shroud).

Name a single class an elementalist considers a free kill vs how many classes targets ele’s as free loot?

No. D/D ele still remain a very solid roaming class, that when played well, can counter almost all condition classes even before the patch due to all the numerous cleanse they have access to.

However, with the addition of diamond skin, they boost from condition counter to condition invulnerability, which I consider a little OP.

Wait did You just call elementalist a condition counter ? Really ? Back to the topic if You really think diamond skin is so op think how much elementalist need to sacrifice to even get 30 earth and that trait will be only good vs conditions ONE VERSUS ONE (if it even gonna be good that is ).

Jaytee.9513:

You mean how its now unfair with elementalists marked as free kills by condition builds if they don’t fully spec into cleanses?

With healing as our only sustain (said goodbye to mobility with RTL nerf) poison hard counters heals…..guess who has lots of access to poison or boon corruption? 1v1 any ele has very little chance against a necro (large hp difference+death shroud).

Name a single class an elementalist considers a free kill vs how many classes targets ele’s as free loot?

A ele is not a free kill for a necromancer if the ele has specced to deal with conditions. Yes corrupt boon hurts it is suppose to counter condition bunkers so that is the counter play. The main danger is a signet of spite after cleanse the corrupt boon but it is easy to see if the necro is carrying the signet.

Players will for lack of a better word make the most abusive build possible with the tools they have.

30/0/30/10/0 this is with cleansing wave still at adept. Combine with ether renewal, diamond skin, the new 20 point trait in fire to remove use cleansing fire when you have more than 3 conditions on you.

When I mentioned this earlier I totally forgot about Geomancer’s freedom. Combine with Runes of Hoelbrak. There is no way you should have a problem with condi with that setup.

You will increase your might duration, be -53% condition duration against chill, cripple, and immobilze- 93% in WvW to go along with your +300 armor just from traits. Combine with the ability to pick up 2s of stability or protection on aura’s to help you with direct damage. With a 13s attunement recharge rate with no points in Arcana.

Remove Cleansing Wave from that build, pick up cantrip mastery or soothing vaport or put your 10 points in Air or arcana if you want some vigor. There is probably a reason they didn’t even mention Stop, Drop, and Roll to be moved to adept though I don’t know a soul that takes it. This is still on paper what looks like a extremely strong build against any condition class.

Griszax.2467:

Wait did You just call elementalist a condition counter ? Really ? Back to the topic if You really think diamond skin is so op think how much elementalist need to sacrifice to even get 30 earth and that trait will be only good vs conditions ONE VERSUS ONE (if it even gonna be good that is ).

That is the point of it. Should the build be good 1v5? That is what makes a good build or a OP one?

sPvP condition meta – a Ele with the above build I described that is sitting on a point has to pretty much be taken down with help if you have a engi roaming as condis he can’t engage the Ele on his own well he can and they can sit there all day. With the ele probably winning that fight since the ele doesn’t necessarily have to be conditions but can stack 25 stacks of might with ease and have fury. You can replace that engineer with condi necromancer and it is the same effect.

It isn’t that much of a sacrifice to basically not be bothered by conditions at all while still being able to pump out very good damage with 20-30 in fire. I am willing to bet 30 earth eles will be pretty popular using something similar to what I described above.

In WvW you pick up Omnomberry Loaf there is 100 vitality and 70 more toughness. I just don’t want them to make it another Dhuumfire type addition to elementalist then people will start complaining(which they already have started to) then they have to go back and “rework” the trait again. Which is exactly what is happening with Necromancers and Dhuumfire.

There will be alot of variations with 20 fire and 30 earth builds leaving 20 points left over.

oZii.2864:

30/0/30/10/0 this is with cleansing wave still at adept. Combine with ether renewal, diamond skin, the new 20 point trait in fire to remove use cleansing fire when you have more than 3 conditions on you.

Oddly enough, I was thinking of something similar for pve. Diamond Skin sounded like a good thing to counter those mad king mummies or any other future monsters like that. Putting 10 in arcana would provide access to windborne which could be good if buffed. Alternatively, take 10 out of fire and put it elsewhere. Just depends if there’s a second master/grandmaster fire trait desired above other options.

The latest subset of changes seem to be headed in the right direction, though it still seems like most people are going to want 20-30 in arcana and 20-30 in water. We have a lot of very useful condi cleanse available to use in water 20-30, which makes it very nice to have. 20 arcana is still almost necessary for Elemental Attunement – that skill offers a ~50%+ protection uptime! That’s huge, especially to the already squishy elementalist. And Evasive Arcana offers a great heal + condi cleanse every ~10 seconds!

We still need more reason to go deeper into the other lines and less reason to go deeper in to the water/arcana lines.

Fenrina.2954:

oZii.2864:

30/0/30/10/0 this is with cleansing wave still at adept. Combine with ether renewal, diamond skin, the new 20 point trait in fire to remove use cleansing fire when you have more than 3 conditions on you.

Oddly enough, I was thinking of something similar for pve. Diamond Skin sounded like a good thing to counter those mad king mummies or any other future monsters like that. Putting 10 in arcana would provide access to windborne which could be good if buffed. Alternatively, take 10 out of fire and put it elsewhere. Just depends if there’s a second master/grandmaster fire trait desired above other options.

Yea the options are there windborne for mobility, renewing stamina for vigor, cantrip mastery, 10 in Air for Zephyr’s boon. 30 earth definitely has options and the difference in attunement recharge if you didn’t go 30 arcana is 3 seconds. You lose EA but when you look at the other things you can gain while still having good condition management do you really need it? You don’t need the earth dodge in fire anymore for might stacking you can take spellslinger if you want, or pyromancers puissance or persisting flame if you want fury since you will already have alot of extra power if you go 30 in Fire.

It is disingenuous for gripes from other professions to appear here on our Ele thread. Even so, I have yet to read comments from Ele haters that are of sound reason. Like, what is the sense in saying that some random build in another profession must be a killer of Eles, while demanding that no d/d Ele should be competitive. A whole freakin’ weapon set. Every build for that weapon set gone. I mean they go so far as to want to strip us of anything but a staff. What is so crazy about these extremely selfish and game ruining comments is that the devs have catered to them in the past.

Let’s stop treating the Ele haters like their opinion matters. They obviously do not care about fairness or reason or the quality of life of any Ele player.

Since we’re throwing suggestions out here now, any chance of us getting an elite version of glyph of storms? I really like that ability, but it just seems like it would be better to me as an elite. Why not? we have a utility and elite version of the glyph of elementals. Just make it slightly stronger , and throw on a few more effects like the elemental glyph and let us also have an elite version. Our current elites still feel kind of blah compared to the elites of other classes. If we had an elite glyph of storms, i’d use that all the time.

To address the topic of D/D defense, I absolutely do not want more defense against power builds (i.e. the flat damage reduction or extra toughness). That’s actually one of the biggest problems with the game currently and why the meta is what it is. There is too much defense against power damage. As a d/d ele, we already have high uptime protection, perma vigor, low cd weakness, and two defensive auras. That’s why ele was so incredibly strong in the power meta.

So no, please do not give more defense against power builds. What D/D actually needs is more varied condition clearing. Not necessarily more overall, but access to it in a wider set of builds. Right now, I can’t even think about running anything other than 30 arcane, 15 water, and ether renewal because, even with that much condi clear, I struggle like hell against the currently popular builds.

I realize that the new diamond skin is supposed to address this, but no one is going to run 30 earth except for the defensive builds that already have ample condi clear. It’s going to make bunkers happy, but as a damage oriented player, there is no way in hell I’m going to count on my health staying near full in a real fight. Also, the cleansing fire trait is not good enough to warrant the investment, especially because the trait doesn’t give anything offensive to go with it.

I’d like to see traits adjusted to add condi clear to the other heals. Like the glyph trait add remove 1-2 condis when a glyph is used. Same for the signet cd trait. Maybe change the cleansing fire trait to add remove 1 condi when hit with fire aura up (with a icd). There are reasonable ways it could be added to the weapon skills themselves, but that would be adding condi clear onto what we already have instead of opening more options and tradeoffs.

I know the devs are thinking about these lines with the new traits, but they’re just not good enough.

Dingle.2743:

Taldren.7523:

Aomine.5012:

My only concern with diamond skin is that when pair with Ether Renewal, it can be too powerful against classes that rely on condition as their main source of damage.

Ether Renewal is already a very powerful healing skill that remove a total of 8 conditions every 15 seconds. When pair with diamond skin, it not only cleanse all the remaining condition on the ele, it also constantly heal ele so it can maintain above 90% hp when channeling, so a total of 4 seconds immunity to condition every 15 seconds.

This would be very unfair in 1 on 1 situation to necro and engineer who rely almost entirely on condition damage as their main source of damage.

Not a real concern. Every ability that necro has that adds conditions ALSO does damage. Even if they were pure condi it wouldn’t take them long to breach the threshold.

A pure condition necro has an auto-attack DPS of about 400 direct damage, after taking crits into consideration. Ether Renewal, at base, heals 1250 per second for the duration of the cast (and also clears off just about any conditions that are on the ele). It basically becomes a second mist form when against a condi necro, on a much shorter cooldown.

I’ve done the math earlier in this thread; assuming the threshold for breaking through diamond skin is 1500 hp, a pure condi necromancer takes 4-5 seconds to break through it without blowing high cooldown abilities (which is important, because if they use all their cooldowns to break through they have barely anything left to actually inflict serious conditions)

The elementalist just has to heal around 400 per second on average to stay immune in the long term, and if the necro breaks through momentarily the ele can just cast ether renewal to top back up and remove all of the conditions the necromancer managed to land during the window. 400 heal per second isn’t difficult; the ele might have access to regeneration, soothing mists, healing on weapon skills. The ele won’t be poisoned because Diamond Skin, so these all work at maximum efficiency. 210 heal per second from regen and soothing mists before considering any healing power already increases the necro’s time before inflicting any conditions to 8-10 seconds. Then there’s the possibility of protection, dodging, invulnerability.

It may be one case, but Diamond Skin easily presents a sheer wall that a tiny subset of builds can’t break through; mainly pure condition necromancer, possibly pure condition engineer (but I haven’t ran the numbers on engi direct damage in such a build). The mechanic for breaking it shouldn’t be damage dealt; at most the health threshold should be the point at which whatever mechanic is used to break it begins to recharge, if the health threshold even exists at all.

Life blast hits for 1000+ even in full Rabid gear … Death Shroud → (x2) Life Blast → Tainted Shackles → Doom

Ether Renewal is the easiest heal in the game to counter … and the most obvious being cast.

[quote=3150824;BlackBeard.2873:]

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.
[/quote]

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.

awesome I can get 55% easely with a guard or warrior without being screwed if the enemy dodges Phoenix air spike

Guard +10% when burning, +10% when a condition, +10 when endurance is not full, +20% when aegis is up… o and scholar runes… +10 when above 90…
The difference is this is actualy possible to acomplish with all the blinds the guard gets.
In comparison to stay over 90% health while not dodging… honestly I think everyone can gank afk players….

warrior does the same thing but when the enemy is on the ground or stunned, while beeing super tanky and with 100% crit chance. If you got stability up, np I ll just wait till it runs out while my endure pain, shield blocks and healing signet keep me @ 100% health.

If you want to burst people down play a mesmer, Thief or Warrior. Atleast this classes don t loose all their potential after beeing hit for 1500 dmg.

Taldren.7523:

Life blast hits for 1000+ even in full Rabid gear … Death Shroud -> (x2) Life Blast -> Tainted Shackles -> Doom

Ether Renewal is the easiest heal in the game to counter … and the most obvious being cast.

Lie Blast hits less than once per second, for 1000 damage per hit… against a healing skill that heals for 1250 per second. So for the first 4 seconds the ele could simply outheal it. The next hit they can reverse the damage by simply attuning to water or dodging while in water, depending on whether they’re running Diamond Skin with 15 water or 30 arcana. And they can avoid 2 more hits by dodging. If they’re running staff or focus, they can even projectile reflect the shots.

Life Blast, one of the most telegraphed and easily avoided skills on the Necromancer, in a build that won’t be getting a second chance at using it for another minute or so. And if it does somehow work, if the ele manages to get above 90% health again, you’ve lost your chance.

ThiBash.5634:

The thing I just don’t get is why the Elementalist’s defense must be nerfed in the first place. I haven’t seen any complaints about it recently, quite the opposite.

oZii.2864

The all around cleaner regardless of how you spec is Ether Renewal that is what puts Ele over the top of Guardians. for personal condition management. Though it has a extremely long cast time but is extremely good if you can get it off.

When you get immobilized, you need an instant cleanse, not somethign that may or may not work over the next few seconds. Immobilize is pretty much a death sentence for eles an it’s getting spammed around for free. An engineer can spam immobilize every 8 seconds (without the turret even) while Cleansing Wave has a cooldown of 10 minimum. There’s no good reason to move it up a trait and Jon knows it, because he’s admitted as much. But it still goes through even though we all know people will bring more water, not less.

Well you got to have some way to kill an ele you cant have an never ending answer to deal with a counter to the ele class. I guess you could make it so ele could never be rooted and no one could keep up with them but then they will become the first class on the chopping block. Every class MUST have something they need to avoid as best as they can.

Dingle.2743:

Taldren.7523:

Life blast hits for 1000+ even in full Rabid gear … Death Shroud -> (x2) Life Blast -> Tainted Shackles -> Doom

Ether Renewal is the easiest heal in the game to counter … and the most obvious being cast.

Lie Blast hits less than once per second, for 1000 damage per hit… against a healing skill that heals for 1250 per second. So for the first 4 seconds the ele could simply outheal it. The next hit they can reverse the damage by simply attuning to water or dodging while in water, depending on whether they’re running Diamond Skin with 15 water or 30 arcana. And they can avoid 2 more hits by dodging. If they’re running staff or focus, they can even projectile reflect the shots.

Life Blast, one of the most telegraphed and easily avoided skills on the Necromancer, in a build that won’t be getting a second chance at using it for another minute or so. And if it does somehow work, if the ele manages to get above 90% health again, you’ve lost your chance.

Although you have some valid points, they seem to be overly exaggerated in the most ideal scenarios you want to make out of it. No offense. Diamond Skin won’t be so much of an annoyance at the start of a battle to condi classes especially necros rather than a hard counter.

Do note that while the ele is busy healing himself for four freakin seconds, he’s not doing anything else and screams “Interrupt me while I frantically run around curved into a ball-shaped pose with flashes spouting all over my gorgeous body.”

The Elementalist has the lowest HP and Armor in the game. I don’t see how playing a class with 12K HP and 1800 armor is even remotely viable. Elementalists augment their weaknesses for a reason, if they don’t, they get squashed like a bug.

Without a huge investment in Water, they don’t have the HP, healing and condition removal tools. Arcane gives them fast attunment swaps which also increases the rate of healing, condition removal and protection.

What’s the alternative? Dealing insane damage and dying in 2 hits? Is that even fun?

Hi Jon
I hope you are still reading this thread. The problem with ele right now is they have to make up for their low hp and low armor. They must increase their EHP through the use of several healing skills as well as protection and regeneration uptime.
While I respect that you are trying to remove the dependence on speccing heavily into arcane because of the class mechanics, moving elemental attunement to master tier in arcana has the complete opposite effect. Eles need these boons to survive.
While I also agree that elemental attunement is a very powerful trait, it is also class defining. Being able to share boons with allies is what makes an ele an ele.
So is 15 points in water for heal on attunement (and ideally cleansing as the adept trait as a bare minimum investment into water tree). And to a lesser degree evasive arcana.
All of these are very powerful traits but are also class and build defining. An ele needs these things to be comparable in terms of EHP to other classes. Most eles dont want to play cheesy glass cannon fresh air burst-then-die builds. This was the old warrior bulls rush hundred blades cheese and I’m sure you remember how popular they were in spvp.
Probably the best suggestion I have heard is to make the boons on attunement the 5 point minor traits. Eg. gain 5 seconds of protection when attuning to earth. This will do several things:
-It removes the dependence on arcana to get the boons we so desperately need.
-It also forces tough choices. You want to play a 0/10/30/30 d/d build, but without 5 in earth you wont have the protection uptime. You also wont get might on attunement either.
Lingering elements:
This is now a trait. The functionality has been changed along with the 5 point minor traits of all attunements. The functionality would provide additional access to the boons provided by the 5 point minor traits. Eg. % chance to gain protection for x seconds when struck while attuned to earth.
Renewing stamina:
This is now the 15 point minor trait in arcana.
Diamond skin:
While I do agree that a trait like this could open up more possibilities for ele for speccing outside of water, I think in it’s current form it would either be completely useless or completely over-powered.
The best idea I’ve heard so far is that below x% hp incoming conditions have a y% chance to be converted into boons (something like below 33% and a 50% chance). This to me would be much more worth investing 30 points into earth rather than the current form. Eles will lose 10% of their health easily in just one autoattack, and you immediately lose the whole reason you specced 30 points into earth. On the flipside, lowering this threshhold too much would make this completely broken overpowered if you can stack enough regen/healing. I think you would back yourself into a balancing nightmare with this one in its current state.
Anyway hope you enjoyed the read and I would love to hear more about what you have to say.
As someone who has over 2000 hours on ele (not including beta), rank 30+ in spvp, rank 300+ in wvw, dungeon master and lvl 40+ fractals, I have played ele everywhere in gw2 and then some. I would be more than happy to take the time to talk to you in-game

Se if i understood correctly.

We got a new GRANDMASTER earth trait that is so strong that needs half ele traits to be nerfed.

Thus whoever won t spend 30 points in earth will get a nerf.
Doesn t make sense to me…..expecially talking of promoting new builds.

At least renewing stamina is not moving…yet i don t like the redesign of the water trait…
I ll take catrip mastery in its place ….

Calae.1738:

What’s the alternative? Dealing insane damage and dying in 2 hits? Is that even fun?

It’s quite a lot of fun in hot joins ya know.

0/30/0/10/30
Bolt,Arcane Lightning,Tempest Defense
Vital Striking
Blasting Staff,Elemental Attunement,Elemental Surge

Air Signet/Arcane Power/Arcane Blast

Zerkers with Fire Sigil for Flame Blast.

Gameplay:
Find a nice sniping spot, Auto here and there in Air, drop Static, Swap Fire, drop Lava, charge Meteor, switch to Earth, cast Arcane Power and see those bodies drop. That is to say everyone on the point is busy fighting your allies. If you get spotted and targetted, run away and escape as fast as possible while laying all your CCs behind you like Frozen Ground, Unsteady Ground. If you get caught, you’re basically dead. But you’re main purpose is to nuke from afar. It’s really satisfying seeing all those 2k-3k Fireball and Meteor shower hits. And they do splash damage!

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Although you have some valid points, they seem to be overly exaggerated in the most ideal scenarios you want to make out of it. No offense. Diamond Skin won’t be so much of an annoyance at the start of a battle to condi classes especially necros rather than a hard counter.

Do note that while the ele is busy healing himself for four freakin seconds, he’s not doing anything else and screams “Interrupt me while I frantically run around curved into a ball-shaped pose with flashes spouting all over my gorgeous body.”

Necro has no interrupts in a condition setup except fear. Which Diamond Skin makes ele immune to. What else can necro do? Chill to reduce cooldowns? Oh, wait. Poison to reduce ele’s healing? Oh, wait. Cripple to keep the ele within the 600 range needed for life blast to deal full damage? Oh, wait. The only option to do anything at all about the healing is run flesh golem, which has hard cc… that never really connects at range and has a huge wind-up time. Or maybe Lich Form with the one cc effect you better hope is enough to get you running. Of course, necromancers having virtually no mobility means the ele can just stun break and disengage til ER is recharged. Heck, the knockback even gives the ele a headstart on that, now that you can stunbreak whie being launched.

Even if the ele doesn’t deal any damage for whatever reason, the matchup is still just a stalemate. But the moment the necro runs out of death shroud/lich form, the ele has free reign to fight back with very little to fear.

Bone Minion’s self destruct might have enough damage to punch through, assuming the ele doesn’t have protection up. That’s about it. And if the necro’s not fast enough to launch their condition spike, the ele will be back over threshold within 1 or 2 seconds.

That’s about it. Necro needs to give up a utility or elite slot to get through it against a half-decent ele player. Screw up with Lich Form as your answer and you can’t even try again seriously for over 2 minutes. Bone Minions might work better, but they’re still avoidable. Flesh Golem can be targeted by the ele and removed.

And if in this situation the ele can’t win either, it just becomes incredibly boring.

Not to mention Diamond Skin is nigh useless against just about anything else, because it only lasts approximately 2 seconds against any direct damage build ever.

I don’t mind the idea of a conditional immunity to… well, conditions, but health thresholds shouldn’t be the variable the trait functions off. Tune the health threshold too low, some builds can never break through. Tune it too high, the trait is useless. I’ve mentioned before that it should probably function based on hits taken or conditions blocked and recharge over time. Every 5 seconds, gain a charge of Diamond Skin (max 5), which blocks a single condition. There. There’s no issue of condition builds entering a stalemate with it under any circumstances, unless they somehow can’t land a hit more than once every 5 seconds; yet the trait remains relevant through the entire fight by occasionally blocking a condition.

A note: in this discussion I am exempting all staff and focus builds from consideration, staff because I believe it is in a good position as a WvW and PvE specific weapon that is solely intended for group play and focus because it is so clearly in need of a redesign that it is simply irrelevant outside of Fractals.

First off, thanks for this patch preview, it’s a nice gesture to players even though the forums often provide pretty good reasons to ignore us. Second, while I don’t believe you’re going to accomplish your stated goals with this change, I do believe this is a step in the correct direction. Spreading condition management to different trait lines is a good step, as it helps to mitigate some of the notable reasons people spec into water. That said, Arcana is frankly still too much better than the other trait lines for any non staff build, excepting only Fresh Air builds (incidentally, Fresh Air is the best change that’s been made for the Ele since launch, it’s very well designed). This is for two reasons: 1) Arcana makes every attunement better, while much of each attunement line only helps itself. 2) Arcana synergizes with itself much better than the other trait lines, and does so in a way that works with the class as a whole.

The primary Arcana culprits are Renewing Stamina and Evasive Arcana. EA gives you two notable things; a significantly good heal with condition removal and a blast finisher. The blind is situational; the fire blast is entirely incidental. But between those two effects we have probably the single best trait for an Elementalist, and in a line that is best able to use it. Those 30 points to get there give you both boon duration and attunement swap cooldown, meaning that you can heal more often (in most builds healing on attunement as well) and that your blast-finisher might, already good at 3 stacks for 20 seconds, lasts a full 6 seconds longer. The current final part of the trifecta is Elemental Attunement, which provides non-trivial protection, somewhat trivial might, enough swiftness to get us to full uptime, and good regen (that is also condition removal when paired with Water). You get more or less everything; the problem is that it’s not only a jack of all trades line, it is also the master relative to the other trait options. It does everything, and it does it better.

Water is the notable exception. This is due to the fact that other than Piercing Shards there’s almost nothing that benefits you for being in water attunement. You gain all the benefit simply by passing through, which is exactly what the Ele wants; powerful abilities that benefit you for switching through attunements whenever possible. The faster you switch into water the more total healing you get, and there’s no loss to switch out again almost immediately. There’s no forced dead time.

The other trait lines don’t gives you the same benefit. There’s nothing significant that sticks around after you attune out. There’s nothing like Bountiful Power that powers up your attacks no matter the attunement, instead you either get things that effect you only while in that attunement or that only trigger when you’ve applied a condition that’s mostly specific to that attunement. This is admittedly true of Piercing Shards, but compare switching through water, which likely nets you at least 2604 +2x(Healing Power) health, removed conditions, and some regeneration, with switching through any of the other attunements. You drop some fairly unexciting damage and mediocre conditions. The traits don’t add anything exciting, and they don’t emphasize any strengths. The only reason that any of the attunements can add up to anything is the power of the Water rotation; it is the lynchpin of most builds. Again, Fresh Air is the exception; it breaks the mold of the usual Ele by opening up raw damage as a viable possibility, albeit only with Scepter. Without Fresh Air the Elementalist has only one viable option; build to outlast, which forces Water and Arcane for superior healing. Fresh Air lets you build differently.

I frankly don’t know how to fix the problem. Simple numbers changes might succeed, but they are uninteresting and will likely only make the clkitten fun to play. Ideally we could find something like Fresh Air for Fire and Earth, perhaps relating to condition application or something of the sort. Maybe we could borrow something like the Engineer’s Juggernaut, providing increasing rewards for time spent in one attunement. Scaling toughness and condition damage for time spent in Earth would be fitting, evincing a boulder – slow to begin rolling but becoming unstoppable once it gets up to speed. Perhaps prolonged time in Earth could lower the cooldown to attune back to Earth? Designing it so that attunements would alternate between earth, other, earth, other, earth, etc. would be quite different than the all-inclusive hodgepodge of Arcana Eles, and would realistically reward investment in lower cooldowns on a single attunment.

Fire might benefit from something more chaotic; it would be neat, in my opinion, if fire skills had a chance to not go on cooldown when used (when traited, of course), which would make for some very unpredictable play and some potentially memorable moments. Nor would it even be as powerful as it might first sound, as the RNG already applies more than double damage on single attacks with crits. It would certainly break the usual method of play, as you won’t always know what tools you have at any given time. Clearly, neither of these could be implemented now, as the balance testing would require a pretty long timeframe. But both would provide incentive to emphasize attunements, and both would add interesting and clearly different ways for an Elementalist to play. They would devalue Arcana without devaluing attunement changing altogether, which can only be for the good. It’s what Fresh Air did: reward emphasis on one attunement without penalizing you for using others.

oZii.2864:

Someone puts 30 into earth, 10 into water for cleansing wave, Then where do they go for damage with 30 points left over? 20 in fire to grab even more condition removal long with +200 power, where to next? 10 in air for mobility with zephyr’s boon or I go a full 30 into power and blast finish to maintain fury while stacking crazy might. Load utility bar with cantrips to include cleansing flame, maybe throw on signet of water also. A ele doesn’t necessarily have to spec deep into precision.

I think that is the kind of builds they worry about.

Which is why I’m not liking these new changes. Already the whole trait system has to be thrown in upheaval because of 1 potentially overpowered anti-condition trait.

I’d rather have adept cleansing wave than overcomplicated Diamond Skin.

Jski.6180:

Well you got to have some way to kill an ele you cant have an never ending answer to deal with a counter to the ele class. I guess you could make it so ele could never be rooted and no one could keep up with them but then they will become the first class on the chopping block. Every class MUST have something they need to avoid as best as they can.

I get that, I’m not an idiot. It’s currently rediculously easy to take down an elementalist: snare ‘em or stun ’em, and they go down. Period. No other professions have that kind of vulnerability. Where’s the spammable hard counter to warriors? What do you do to take down a necro in 2 seconds?

I don’t mind the ele being vulnerable to snares and stuns. I’m just pointing out that because they are so vulnerable to snares and stuns, not bringing condition removal and survival (a.k.a. Water Magic) is mandatory to at least have a chance to survive in PvP. The only way that’s gonna change is when either all traitlines get some way to combat conditions that’s at least half as good was Water’s, or our base health is increased so we don’t die to the first net that gets thrown at us.

The current state of the ele is: we stand still, we go down. Therefore it’s only logical to bring things that help us keep moving. Move the trait and the people will thus move after it.

Melancholia.8123:

A note: in this discussion I am exempting all staff and focus builds from consideration, staff because I believe it is in a good position as a WvW and PvE specific weapon that is solely intended for group play and focus because it is so clearly in need of a redesign that it is simply irrelevant outside of Fractals.

First off, thanks for this patch preview, it’s a nice gesture to players even though the forums often provide pretty good reasons to ignore us. Second, while I don’t believe you’re going to accomplish your stated goals with this change, I do believe this is a step in the correct direction. Spreading condition management to different trait lines is a good step, as it helps to mitigate some of the notable reasons people spec into water. That said, Arcana is frankly still too much better than the other trait lines for any non staff build, excepting only Fresh Air builds (incidentally, Fresh Air is the best change that’s been made for the Ele since launch, it’s very well designed). This is for two reasons: 1) Arcana makes every attunement better, while much of each attunement line only helps itself. 2) Arcana synergizes with itself much better than the other trait lines, and does so in a way that works with the class as a whole.

The primary Arcana culprits are Renewing Stamina and Evasive Arcana. EA gives you two notable things; a significantly good heal with condition removal and a blast finisher. The blind is situational; the fire blast is entirely incidental. But between those two effects we have probably the single best trait for an Elementalist, and in a line that is best able to use it. Those 30 points to get there give you both boon duration and attunement swap cooldown, meaning that you can heal more often (in most builds healing on attunement as well) and that your blast-finisher might, already good at 3 stacks for 20 seconds, lasts a full 6 seconds longer. The current final part of the trifecta is Elemental Attunement, which provides non-trivial protection, somewhat trivial might, enough swiftness to get us to full uptime, and good regen (that is also condition removal when paired with Water). You get more or less everything; the problem is that it’s not only a jack of all trades line, it is also the master relative to the other trait options. It does everything, and it does it better.

Water is the notable exception. This is due to the fact that other than Piercing Shards there’s almost nothing that benefits you for being in water attunement. You gain all the benefit simply by passing through, which is exactly what the Ele wants; powerful abilities that benefit you for switching through attunements whenever possible. The faster you switch into water the more total healing you get, and there’s no loss to switch out again almost immediately. There’s no forced dead time.

The other trait lines don’t gives you the same benefit. There’s nothing significant that sticks around after you attune out. There’s nothing like Bountiful Power that powers up your attacks no matter the attunement, instead you either get things that effect you only while in that attunement or that only trigger when you’ve applied a condition that’s mostly specific to that attunement. This is admittedly true of Piercing Shards, but compare switching through water, which likely nets you at least 2604 +2x(Healing Power) health, removed conditions, and some regeneration, with switching through any of the other attunements. You drop some fairly unexciting damage and mediocre conditions. The traits don’t add anything exciting, and they don’t emphasize any strengths. The only reason that any of the attunements can add up to anything is the power of the Water rotation; it is the lynchpin of most builds. Again, Fresh Air is the exception; it breaks the mold of the usual Ele by opening up raw damage as a viable possibility, albeit only with Scepter. Without Fresh Air the Elementalist has only one viable option; build to outlast, which forces Water and Arcane for superior healing. Fresh Air lets you build differently.

Excellent post. Healing ripple, evasive arcana, and cleansing wave coupled with attunement cooldown reduction from arcana are the true culprits behind lack of build diversity. If you don’t go 30 in arcana, not only are you missing out on double the heals and condition cleanses with EA, but you also won’t get good enough attunement cooldown to take advantage of healing ripple and cleansing wave. If anet wants to break the stranglehold arcana has on our builds, we need heals and condition cleanses from other lines that don’t rely on attunement cooldown. Reducing global attunement cooldown and giving fire cleanses is a step in the right direction, but healing that doesn’t rely on arcana is desperately needed.

Dingle.2743:

Taldren.7523:

Life blast hits for 1000+ even in full Rabid gear … Death Shroud -> (x2) Life Blast -> Tainted Shackles -> Doom

Ether Renewal is the easiest heal in the game to counter … and the most obvious being cast.

Lie Blast hits less than once per second, for 1000 damage per hit… against a healing skill that heals for 1250 per second. So for the first 4 seconds the ele could simply outheal it. The next hit they can reverse the damage by simply attuning to water or dodging while in water, depending on whether they’re running Diamond Skin with 15 water or 30 arcana. And they can avoid 2 more hits by dodging. If they’re running staff or focus, they can even projectile reflect the shots.

Life Blast, one of the most telegraphed and easily avoided skills on the Necromancer, in a build that won’t be getting a second chance at using it for another minute or so. And if it does somehow work, if the ele manages to get above 90% health again, you’ve lost your chance.

I just logged in my full rabid gear necro (because I rarely use my ele in wvw anymore as it is the worst class currently) and found that I can breach 1500 in a single attack with a single lifeblast (still takes 2 nomally), with 2 staff hits, and 2 scepter chains.

You keep bring up a channeled head that we can’t do anything else while channeling. Yeah, it heals for 1250 without being interrupted by anything … but what does that gain the elementalist? As soon as they are done they would have done 0 damage to you and you will still breach their threshold in another 2 hits.

If they really want us to use different builds , maybe they should consider:
- making Evasive Arcana a master trait

Maybe then this will free up points, which can be distributed among other trait lines.

Sylar.6802:

If they really want us to use different builds , maybe they should consider:
- making Evasive Arcana a master trait

Maybe then this will free up points, which can be distributed among other trait lines.

i totally agree. as far as i can see, i will always have 30 in arcana just for this.

i play DD a lot, and making both arcane V and VI master tiers is making it even harder to play. please don’t kill it any more than it has already been killed. VI should be adept tier if you are making V master.

Evasive arcana on fire-air-earth adept and attunement
Cd range 11-8 on attun swap
elemental attunement on 5 of arcana
renewed stamina on adept

Make those change and u will unlock every kind of builds, sadly to say but imo every one wanna those traits at any cost… it s a must have for any ele build… otherwise this topic is only gossip… u wanna make more viable build just do this modify

Makes me wonder, if most of us are talking about d+d or staff, what’s wrong with other weapons and combinations?

For me it looks like all weapon skills should be checked as well, not only traits..

Melancholia.8123:

A note: in this discussion I am exempting all staff and focus builds from consideration, staff because I believe it is in a good position as a WvW and PvE specific weapon that is solely intended for group play and focus because it is so clearly in need of a redesign that it is simply irrelevant outside of Fractals.

Aw, but I love focus. Have you read Zelyhn’s D/F sticky?

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

It seems like the easy way to get around this while still keeping the trait interesting and able to maintain major trait attunement-based passives is simply to make it so you can only have your current previous attunements active, not all four at once.

Also, I do not necessarily agree that it would definitely be worthwhile it would be to pick up all of those bonus damage traits and burn through all your attunements at once. It seems to me like something that can definitely be experimented with. Even if you fix flame barrier so it’s not completely abysmal, I’m not sure I can get excited by this talent. Maybe if they were all on the level of soothing mist, I have a hard time believing that would happen though.

Please make it so the Diamond Skin also works against retallation. Otherwise only 1 aoe and you will drop down 90% in WvW.

you know, since you’re balancing thieves around their stamina regen, and decided to increase base stamina regen, why not just make elemental attunement a base part of elementalists? you’re already balancing elementalists around that one trait, and making everything else weaker because of it, except that you’re buffing thieves by giving them a base passive, while nerfing elementalists by forcing every one of us to spend more points in arcana.

instead of forcing everybody to choose between their class mechanic trait lines or something else… why not auto grant the class mechanic line? (ele-arcana, warriors- discipline, rangers- beastmaster, etc) THAT would open up more build diversity than any other change you could possibly make.

I would make base attunment swap cooldown 10 seconds. Arcane traits would just increase boon duration. There should be a hard cap on boon duration and condition duration increases but, that’s another discussion for another topic.

If condition removal tools, healing, vigor and protection were available in other trees then Arcane and Water wouldn’t be getting this much attention.

dreztina.4820:

To address the topic of D/D defense, I absolutely do not want more defense against power builds (i.e. the flat damage reduction or extra toughness). That’s actually one of the biggest problems with the game currently and why the meta is what it is.

For what it’s worth, I think if Fire 5 and Air 5 are changed into decent defensive traits for their attunement, then boosting d/d’s defense specifically might not be needed. Fire 5 is pretty much a joke, and I just read how buggy Air 5 is. That way, an ele always has something defensive to fall back on no matter what, but that defense doesn’t have to be “reduce damage” or “healing.”

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Lian Olsam.9541:

Evasive arcana on fire-air-earth adept and attunement
Cd range 11-8 on attun swap
elemental attunement on 5 of arcana
renewed stamina on adept

Make those change and u will unlock every kind of builds, sadly to say but imo every one wanna those traits at any cost… it s a must have for any ele build… otherwise this topic is only gossip… u wanna make more viable build just do this modify

I’ve always personally felt as well that Elemental Attunement is a class defining trait. I’ve been arguing to make it baseline or to bring it back down to tier one but the decision we’ve made instead is to bring Renewing Stamina back down to adept instead. This will prevent the dps ele nerf and even though we might all perceive that EA is a “staple” trait we do luckily have options to trait up instead to make up for the loss if you wish to spend points elsewhere. [Elemental Shielding, Zephyr’s Boon, Soothing Mist, etc. etc.] and yes… I know its more than one trait to make up for one but at least they are there and accessible low in other trait lines.

Our hope is not to destroy builds but to make more. Right now the way it looks for Elementalists in PvP is that most builds will still be the same, maybe with a little less AOE condition removal, but there will be more accessible options when going higher in the Fire, Air, and Earth trees.

I personally can’t wait for the Soothing Mist + Cleansing Water synergy. I think I will be enough for me to opt out of taking Cleansing Wave.

Sorry but it is not really like you had a choice: moving renewing stamina to master would simply destroy the ele both in PvP and PvE.

And it is not like we are shining at the moment.

Sounds cool.
But aren’t you guys testing new builds for all classes? Are you fighting against new random made up builds or existing strong ones?

Yes I am being emotional and I apologize for this. This is all because I play mostly PvE and I can see quite clearly the state of the ele at the moment: it is not really bright. We have some builds that are incredibly boring, bypassing our class mechanics, and other builds that are interesting but they hardly deliver.

I have trust in your ability to balance classes. I can understand how difficult this is.
My mood only comes from the fact that I love this class. I am fascinated by its potential. Therefore I can easily commit crimes of passion

You really need to look at our most lacking traits:
- all alacrity traits – please give me the metrics: is anyone really using those?
- arcane precision
- Vigorous Scepter/Blasting Staff/Windborne Dagger should be combined as one, and include something for focus. Then you can introduce two new traits
- sunspot makes no sense since all fire attunement spells are at range on all weapons. It needs a bit more range or something like: your next attack inflicts additional fire damage
- conjurer is boring and it does not promote the use of our class mechanics (conjures need more attention, much more, despite your last awesome patch – no sarcasm)
- one with fire, flame barrier …
-zephyr’s speed
-zephyr’s focus, obsidian focus – we have like two channeling spells per weapon …
- arcane energy – metrics again please: has anyone ever slotted this trait for more than 2 minutes since release?

As for lingering elements I can understand your concerns about making this trait as awesome as we describe in this thread. But you should really consider this kind of changes: they make sense, they are fun, and they bring diversity.

Finally, I sincerely thank the Anet team for being so open and responsive. What you are dong as a company is ground-breaking. I highly respect you for this.

Now we are talking.
Are you guys thinking about some focus balance? :P
I mean, that could be a really good weapon for defensive builds.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Saying it would destroy Ele is strictly theory crafted hyperbole but I can respect your emotional reaction to that change. A lot of things are changing and from the internal testing I’ve personally done with ele (2000+ tournament games played on live on top teams) ele is looking really strong. I’m beating most everything 1v1 right now with the spec I’ve been running.

Thanks for all the work, testing, and changes. I agree with a lot of your perspectives. A couple of points:

-Please make sure 0/0/30/20/20 (soothing wave at water 20, probably with a valk’s ammy) isn’t OP vs. Rabid condi-specs in pvp. So much regen and healing I worry they will never be able to whittle down that 10% (unless reliance on power-support is desired). Don’t want to deal with/hear complaints if it has to be re-nerfed.

-I agree Ele attunement should be more baseline as the whole concept is that boons make up for the lack of stats. I am not sure how to make that happen without leaving the trait as an adept, but it is really strong to be there.

- When buffing/fixing the bad lines traits/lines we have, please keep putting some survivability options in there. Even moving things like renewing stamina (or a flavored version of it) to air/fire would make these lines infinitely more attractive. Having defensive options in other lines can help eles build a little more dps w/o going full-kamikaze.