Guild Wars 2

Tyler Chapman.1832:

It’s the only tier 1 AOE cleanse in the game is the main reason

We’re also the only profession in the game with weak armor and low health…

In regards to Cleansing Wave, I would also be fine if were only a solo cleanse, if it were to remain adept.

It’s been said time and time again, but I’ll continue being redundant here: Going deep into Arcana and Water is now more necessary than before. The trait changes in the other lines are nice, but I feel like, combined with these Arcana and Water changes, a lot of people are still going to opt to keep 20-30 points into Arcana and Water.

oZii.2864:

TimeBomb.3427:

Again, it would still be a very poor decision NOT to choose elemental attunement. It gives you 50-60%+ protection uptime. With one trait. This is +50% armor. (Not to mention the other three boons, which are nice as well.) Elementalists, having the lowest health and armor pools, need all that they can get, and this protection uptime is (literally) a HUGE boon. Thus there’s still a 20 point reliance on Arcana for all builds that want to be able to be not squishy. Something should really be done here to lower the reliance on this trait.

If protection is the argument there is still Elemental Shielding, Glyph of elemental harmony, Earths Embrace, Inscription, Armor of Earth. Still Rune options to get protection or spec boon duration and just go 10 points in for renewing stamina. You only get 1 extra second of protection anyway just going 20 points into Arcana. Protection is important but if it really was that important like you are saying people would always take elemental shielding also but if people have 10 in earth they usually take earths embrace or stone splinters. Or they just go 20 in Air.

Elemental attunement just makes sense if you have 10-30 points in arcana because it augments something you are going to be doing anyway with swapping attunements. If I was forced to choose between renewing stamina and elemental attunement Renewing stamina would always win. I am not forced to choose so I can take both.

Armor of Earth (which doesn’t deserve a 90s CD) is 6.6% protection uptime. For D/D, Elemental Shielding offers potentially ~19.5% protection uptime. Glyph of Elemental Harmony is a 12% protection uptime if it’s used whenever it’s off CD and only when you are in earth, which is almost never the case; not to mention the other two heals are better against anything that isn’t burst damage. The fact of the matter is that Elemental Attunement is vastly superior for protection uptime (@50-60%+). The alternatives to Elemental Attunement are not as good; not to mention EA offers more than just protection. It’s insanely good, and it’s just plain silly to not take it in most builds.

I think bringing diamond skin down to 85% will be a wise decision. 90% seems kind of useless vs a properly geared and traited necro, engi or mesmer. A phantasm will drop me below 50% hp in 1 hit if i don’t dodge it, healing up would just narrowly give me a few seconds of alittle bit above 85% hp meaning id then have time to retaliate without worrying about confusion spam but my window of opportunity would be small at best, and when i say this about me, im talking about the majority of eles out there.

TimeBomb.3427:

oZii.2864:

TimeBomb.3427:

Again, it would still be a very poor decision NOT to choose elemental attunement. It gives you 50-60%+ protection uptime. With one trait. This is +50% armor. (Not to mention the other three boons, which are nice as well.) Elementalists, having the lowest health and armor pools, need all that they can get, and this protection uptime is (literally) a HUGE boon. Thus there’s still a 20 point reliance on Arcana for all builds that want to be able to be not squishy. Something should really be done here to lower the reliance on this trait.

If protection is the argument there is still Elemental Shielding, Glyph of elemental harmony, Earths Embrace, Inscription, Armor of Earth. Still Rune options to get protection or spec boon duration and just go 10 points in for renewing stamina. You only get 1 extra second of protection anyway just going 20 points into Arcana. Protection is important but if it really was that important like you are saying people would always take elemental shielding also but if people have 10 in earth they usually take earths embrace or stone splinters. Or they just go 20 in Air.

Elemental attunement just makes sense if you have 10-30 points in arcana because it augments something you are going to be doing anyway with swapping attunements. If I was forced to choose between renewing stamina and elemental attunement Renewing stamina would always win. I am not forced to choose so I can take both.

Armor of Earth (which doesn’t deserve a 90s CD) is 6.6% protection uptime. For D/D, Elemental Shielding offers potentially ~19.5% protection uptime. Glyph of Elemental Harmony is a 12% protection uptime if it’s used whenever it’s off CD and only when you are in earth, which is almost never the case; not to mention the other two heals are better against anything that isn’t burst damage. The fact of the matter is that Elemental Attunement is vastly superior for protection uptime (@50-60%+). The alternatives to Elemental Attunement are not as good; not to mention EA offers more than just protection. It’s insanely good, and it’s just plain silly to not take it in most builds.

I don’t really think elemental shielding is a good trait for most builds. Most of the time you will get protection on shocking aura, and shocking aura already wards off a great portion of hard hitting (melee) attacks making your protection go to waste. Also earth’s embrace gives you stability and stun break, which are more important since they allow you to ether renew back up. It also usually triggers when you are getting pummeled, which is when you need protection the most.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Leuca.5732:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Not going to dive too far into answering this but the designers moved these traits to the master line because they consider them traits too strong to be adept. Surely you can imagine a bunch of ideas were on the table.

Why are they too strong to be adept? A condition cleanse every 10 seconds (requires maxed Arcana) and some boons on attunement. Stating the obvious here, but wouldn’t a better solution have included identifying factors that make them so strong and then toning those down? For instance, how numerically strong would Cleansing Wave still be if it only affected the Elementalist? I can only guess ideas like this were brought up, but who actually thinks Cleansing Wave would be too strong for the Adept tier if it had no aoe, and what ele wouldn’t still find it useful for the most part?

My issue with many of these changes is that they are unnecessarily counteracting changes that are meant to increase versatility.

It’s the only tier 1 AOE cleanse in the game is the main reason, other factors are that its also an on demand cleanse, and it can be used every 10 seconds.

^^ directly from JP’s mouth just now

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Purity

what? So just like the guardians 5 trait for vigor on crit… its ok for them to have a 10 second single condition cure at adept…? Gotcha

heres the whole list http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_removal#Skills_that_remove_conditions

So a class that has the lowest hp and armor in the game has the hardest time getting vigor and boons and clearing conditions… that makes total sense for balance…

GLASS CANNONS FOR EVERYONE!!!

I also find Elemental Shielding to be a bit underwhelming. However, with some really strong traits being moved up a tier (except renewing stamina), and with the buff to tempest defense, it’s possible that ES might be worth enough the 10 point investment in an aura build.

Now, if there was just an utility skill called Glyph of Elemental Auras.

Treborlavok.3504:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Purity

what? So just like the guardians 5 trait for vigor on crit… its ok for them to have a 10 second single condition cure at adept…? Gotcha

Cleansing Wave is AoE and can be activated on-demand. That makes it stronger than Purity, so yes, based on your post, it justifies being on master tier. :P

Treborlavok.3504:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Leuca.5732:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Not going to dive too far into answering this but the designers moved these traits to the master line because they consider them traits too strong to be adept. Surely you can imagine a bunch of ideas were on the table.

Why are they too strong to be adept? A condition cleanse every 10 seconds (requires maxed Arcana) and some boons on attunement. Stating the obvious here, but wouldn’t a better solution have included identifying factors that make them so strong and then toning those down? For instance, how numerically strong would Cleansing Wave still be if it only affected the Elementalist? I can only guess ideas like this were brought up, but who actually thinks Cleansing Wave would be too strong for the Adept tier if it had no aoe, and what ele wouldn’t still find it useful for the most part?

My issue with many of these changes is that they are unnecessarily counteracting changes that are meant to increase versatility.

It’s the only tier 1 AOE cleanse in the game is the main reason, other factors are that its also an on demand cleanse, and it can be used every 10 seconds.

^^ directly from JP’s mouth just now

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Purity

what? So just like the guardians 5 trait for vigor on crit… its ok for them to have a 10 second single condition cure at adept…? Gotcha

heres the whole list http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_removal#Skills_that_remove_conditions

To be fair that’s not on demand. Which is one of the reasons why cleansing wave is so awesome. It does trigger more often though since you spend more than 0 seconds in water.

I don’t think it’s aoe either actually. Not that I personally care about aoe much.

The most unbelievable part about this is I’m pretty sure the developers are actually trying to help; they just haven’t identified the actual problem and as a result are making things worse.

The actual problem is base health that is too low. That problem is mitigated by investing in water for hit points and investing in Arcana for vigor, dodge heals and EA for protection. The way to fix the issue if you’re not going to give us more base hit points is to make Elemental Attunement and Evasive Arcana apply to us as minors somewhere or spread throughout the minors in the various elements low in the trees and give their party effects as the traits.

I love helping my team; I don’t love requiring to spend the majority of my trait points to have the survivability every other class has just because all my personal survivability traits also affect my team.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

… This trait will help you negate those immobilizes…

That’s actually a pretty major point. Being able to engage, and disengage if you can healing up before doing so, without having to worry about immobilize would be really nice in a lot of situations out in WvW.

lowest health + lowest armor = needs something else

- highest condition removal/immunity
or
- highest mobility
or
- highest damage
or
- highest evade
or
- you get the idea

There has to be a reward for the risk, that’s the key issue with ele

The argument of jack of all trades is a bit strange: we’re the specialists at having the lowest health and the lowest armor – a true jack of all trades has medium health and medium armor

The jack of all trades is, in fact, the engineer

Defensive boonspam, no ICD on cleansing water and RTL mobility was a potent combination to stay out of trouble despite the inherent fragility

Now that those have been reduced, something else needs to be added

Start there, solve the actual issue, bandaids don’t really help long-term

Also, have some beer and pizza

Tyler Chapman.1832:

The point I’m trying to get across is that it is once again going to be very exciting to play Ele come this patch. It’s much more effective and there’s a lot more options for players. We will also continue to work hard for you guys in continuing this trend across all game mode. If it were easy or even possible to perfectly balance a game for everyone across 3 different game modes with the systems we have we would be doing so I can assure you.

Here are some quick ungrammatically correct thoughts:

To address the other player regarding his comments stressing the importance of making unappealing trait lines better; Burning fire and Diamond Skin are steps in the right direction. It’s a big patch and we are doing a lot of things for each class. We only have a certain amount of time to make changes and it shouldn’t give you the impression that these are the only things we want to do.

Burning fire will allow you to invest offensively in fire and get some defense capability that you lose if you opt points out of water/arcane. This will likely be more useful to PvPer’s rather than PvE’rs, however, PvErs already find it innately easier to take points in fire since kiting mobs is more easily done as compared to kiting players in PvP.

I think you’ll find Diamond skin will give you more freedom than you think as well. We’ve considered bringing Diamond Skin to 85% but we worry it would be too much. It definitely gives you some freedom of mobility as well as much needed negation of condi dumps on inc. This trait will help lower the risk of swapping attunements too early as well. Surely this trait scales in effectiveness with your HP and ele does have the lowest health pool however, I wouldn’t say all ele’s have 12k health pools. Your typical support elementalist with 30 points in water in PvE have around 16-19k HP and some elementalists can get their hp up to 22k. This will let you take around a 1600-2200 hit before conditions are applied. Sure thats a common hit to take in PvE but it’ll most likely have its strenth in safeguarding you in the encounters that have immobilize spam. This trait will help you negate those immobilizes and give you the opportunity to use your cleanses and heals on teammates much easier. In PvP I’m fairly certain only cleric amulet elementalists are looking at 12k hp builds. The majority of builds that are played are actually 14k+ builds. Regardless, it’s a trait that is now way better than it used to be.

Until you add baseline survivability it’s always going to be difficult to break people away from either going extremely defensive or extremely glass cannon. You have been steadily increasing the number of options for Elementalists for a long time and no one can really argue against that. The point a number of us have been trying to make is the options you are creating ultimately aren’t viable due to factors like the innate lack of survivability after all the survivability nerfs in some areas (such as healing and mobility) but no buffs to survivability in other areas.

It’s a total picture. Oh sure, Diamond Skin is neat. However since I’m forced to gear for Vitality (on top of 20 already in Water) just to get equal HP to other classes’ base line Hitpoints (15k+) that means I’m going to end up giving up points elsewhere (usually in Crit and Crit Damage). This means I’m more than likely going to end up in Air (not only because it’s one of the better lines) to raise my Crit/Crit Dmg up. While Arcane won’t be as mandatory after the patch, I still likely will end up keeping 20 in there now to pick up Elemental Attunement.

This is my beef with the Elementalist. You can add in all the coolest stuff in the world into Fire/Air/Earth but I just don’t see myself (or a vast majority of others) leaving x/x/x/20/20 without some more baseline survivability.

xiv.7136:

lowest health + lowest armor = needs something else

- highest condition removal/immunity
or
- highest mobility
or
- highest damage
or
- highest evade
or
- you get the idea

There has to be a reward for the risk, that’s the key issue with ele

Defensive boonspam, no ICD on cleansing water and RTL mobility was a potent combination to stay out of trouble despite the inherent fragility

Now that those have been reduced, something else needs to be added

Start there, solve the actual issue, bandaids don’t really help long-term

Also, have some beer and pizza

I wish I could +1000 this cause it really covers everything that needs to be said. If you want a jack of all trades, middle ground class you can’t give it some of the lowest survivability and expect it to be okay being mediocre at everything else.

Jabberwock.9014:

Treborlavok.3504:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Leuca.5732:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Not going to dive too far into answering this but the designers moved these traits to the master line because they consider them traits too strong to be adept. Surely you can imagine a bunch of ideas were on the table.

Why are they too strong to be adept? A condition cleanse every 10 seconds (requires maxed Arcana) and some boons on attunement. Stating the obvious here, but wouldn’t a better solution have included identifying factors that make them so strong and then toning those down? For instance, how numerically strong would Cleansing Wave still be if it only affected the Elementalist? I can only guess ideas like this were brought up, but who actually thinks Cleansing Wave would be too strong for the Adept tier if it had no aoe, and what ele wouldn’t still find it useful for the most part?

My issue with many of these changes is that they are unnecessarily counteracting changes that are meant to increase versatility.

It’s the only tier 1 AOE cleanse in the game is the main reason, other factors are that its also an on demand cleanse, and it can be used every 10 seconds.

^^ directly from JP’s mouth just now

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Purity

what? So just like the guardians 5 trait for vigor on crit… its ok for them to have a 10 second single condition cure at adept…? Gotcha

heres the whole list http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_removal#Skills_that_remove_conditions

To be fair that’s not on demand. Which is one of the reasons why cleansing wave is so awesome. It does trigger more often though since you spend more than 0 seconds in water.

I don’t think it’s aoe either actually. Not that I personally care about aoe much.

Adept traits that remove conditions that are on demand similar to Cleansing Wave
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shrouded_Removal
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow%27s_Embrace

A fair trade would be to just have it be self removal. Assuming it is unbalanced to begin with.

Xernth.8561:

The actual problem is base health that is too low. That problem is mitigated by investing in water for hit points and investing in Arcana for vigor, dodge heals and EA for protection. The way to fix the issue if you’re not going to give us more base hit points is to make Elemental Attunement and Evasive Arcana apply to us as minors somewhere or spread throughout the minors in the various elements low in the trees and give their party effects as the traits.

This is a huge part of the problem. Like it or not, in our current state our survivability is almost entirely based on heals from traits. The reason why eles are still decently survivable is because our water-oriented traits are wildly overpowered compared to what any other elemental traits give us. I am not talking purely of the water line, but also water related traits in the arcana line. Evasive arcana dodge in water is about 10x better than in any other element, and elemental attunement regen is just barely worse than protection from earth. Healing ripple and soothing mist are also insanely better than their other element counterparts. The problem is that due to our hp and armor, we are still not overpowered even with these healing traits… but without them we are more squishy than any other class.

The obvious solution to Evasive Arcana is to reduce its healing and place that healing somewhere lower in other trees. The problem is that healing doesn’t make much sense roleplay-wise anywhere but in the water line, but since the water line is already comparatively overpowered and loaded with heals in the lower traits, it would not be a good idea to put more healing there. Honestly I feel it was a design flaw naming traitlines after elements, and is a core reason why some traitlines are loaded with far better traits than others (because you are forced to load all traits of a certain type into one line). If you could squeeze some healing into arcana minors that would be the best solution I think though.

Well, it’s true that a jack-of-all-trades spec should have… jack-of-all-trades defense. That’s what engineers are about, right?

Before launch, Anet said elementalists would have to rely more on active defenses to survive. That’s cool, but in reality, we also rely on defensive traits for that.

I think the base problem with our survival, is that our active defensive skills, that were meant to be the core of our survival, never ended up being strong enough for that. When people suggest a base hp increase, they are just suggesting the easiest solution.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Treborlavok.3504:

just like the guardians 5 trait for vigor on crit… its ok for them to have a 10 second single condition cure at adept…?

The Guardian and Mesmer vigor traits are something that were on the table and will be on the table for change in the future. We don’t like those traits being that easily accessible. While they haven’t yet been changed as long as our thoughts don’t change internally they are part of the vigor rework we want to do.

As someone (I think you) said earlier, make Ele more appealing by bringing other classes down a step. Those vigor changes to other classes (alongside overdue nerfs to certain builds) should have higher priority than trying to mess with Ele who is twisted at core.

Ele is surviving “ok” with traits that are being considered op by the dev team, think about what that means before you change anything. What is the result if you change those traits with the intention to add build diversity? Correct, you are creating more weaker (read: noone will play them) builds instead of more and powerful (read: playable) builds.

I originally posted this in a separate thread, but have since realized it goes here if I’m hoping for Dev consideration .

On the concept of making people branch out in their Elementalist builds, with less absolute reliance on Arcane, I have a counter proposal for the Devs~

General: It would be nice to see more synergy between the elemental trait lines. Give me obvious, tangible reasons to build 30 Fire & 30 Earth or 30 Air and 30 Earth. Make elemental “pairing” sing. There’s only 6 possible pairs among the 4 elements, go through and deliberately make sure each pair offers something (probably by way of their 25 point minor trait) that has specific utility and application if you have 25+ points in another of the 4 elements. Give us an incentive to break away from the tyranny of Arcane rather than increasing the opportunity cost of Arcane in the hopes that we’ll maybe give up on the cornerstone choices in that line.

Specific: Dump all-aspect recharge% from Arcane entirely. Rather than neutering it down from 60% to 30% for a whole line’s worth of investment, keep the current recharge times and ADD “+50% recharge% for that element only” to each of the 15 point minor traits for each elemental line in addition to their current effects. Do you want fast recharge for Fire attunement? THEN SPEND POINTS INTO FIRE! Splashing 10 is not a commitment. Splashing 15? Cool, you get fast recharge for that Attunement. 15 points is also a low enough number that you could see a “fast-swapping master” built on 15/15/15/15/0 with 10 points left over to mix it up.

But what to replace the class specific boost of arcane with? Make it a stat buff that varies with your attunement! Make it “double down” on the attributes already associated with that element as seen in their trait lines. A fully fire-traited elementalist in Fire Attunement with 30 points in Arcane should get a huge bump to Power and Condition Duration (the Fire line bonus). When he shifts attunement to Earth, that Power and Condition Duration bonus morphs into a Toughness and Condition Damage bonus (The Earth trait-line attributes). Make points into Arcane something that reinforces the flavor and playstyle of your other choices, rather than diluting them.

Less “I want to be a hydromancer, and arcane lets me get away with occasionally swapping through other attunements…”

More “I want to by a hydromancer and arcane lets me stack even more vitality and healing power while in water Attunment, making me a BETTER hydromancer!” With it built-in that being a 15+ point hydromancer means you can get back to that attunement quickly after rotating out to answer some specific need.

Why on earth would you nerf/ruin Ele Vigor accessibility of which they need it so much to survive, due to extremely low hp & armour, yet leave Mesmer which can stealth, lower blink etc & guardian which gets free auto blocks & possibly in the future lower theirs?

Tyler, thanks for showing up here and talking with us

any chances to see in the future 1vs1 s/f builds as effective as the d/d one you used in sPvP testing but for WvW?

DiogoSilva.7089:

I also find Elemental Shielding to be a bit underwhelming. However, with some really strong traits being moved up a tier (except renewing stamina), and with the buff to tempest defense, it’s possible that ES might be worth enough the 10 point investment in an aura build.

Now, if there was just an utility skill called Glyph of Elemental Auras.

Treborlavok.3504:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Purity

what? So just like the guardians 5 trait for vigor on crit… its ok for them to have a 10 second single condition cure at adept…? Gotcha

Cleansing Wave is AoE and can be activated on-demand. That makes it stronger than Purity, so yes, based on your post, it justifies being on master tier. :P

Or I’ll just run my Mesmer with mantra if resolve and have 3x the aoe condition cleanse in the same time frame… And have perma vigor, stealth, clones, etc etc…

Eles give up more than any class to be able to get that tingle condition cleanse every 10 seconds.

Goes back to the old argument about eles having to do 20x the work that any other class can do better and faster and easier…. Why? Lowest hp lowest armor =…. Free bags, gotcha.

Treborlavok.3504:

Or I’ll just run my Mesmer with mantra if resolve and have 3x the aoe condition cleanse in the same time frame… And have perma vigor, stealth, clones, etc etc…

Eles give up more than any class to be able to get that tingle condition cleanse every 10 seconds.

Goes back to the old argument about eles having to do 20x the work that any other class can do better and faster and easier…. Why? Lowest hp lowest armor =…. Free bags, gotcha.

Bringing up a Mesmer is like bringing a gun (mesmer) to a knife (elementalist) fight.

It has all myriad defenses of a Thief, the base HP of a Ranger and still maintains high burst potential. It’s basically everything we aspire to be.

JonPeters.5630:

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.

How about making these lingering auras instead? This could give great synergy with the aura spreading trait (unstackable if another attunement swap happens, changes the aura) this might require a bump to a 15 or 25 point passive, but it would be so cool and create a great defensive option for eles. Get some eles off of cantrips. Really fits the asthetic too, protecting ourselves and punishing our enemies with the elements. This could give you the chance to take some of the auras off weapon skills in the future and leave them to combo fields. Large overhaul I know, but we want intersting play here right?

Side note, but are there some changes coming to conjure skills, a lot of the skills on those weapons are not very useful IMO (or dmg is just too low). I think WoodenPotatoes sums up the problem in his conjure weapons video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLcJv3un7m8

I like all the changes proposed so far… great job on the new ideas and balancing decisions. I was wondering if Ele is going to see any new Grand Master traits for Fire/Water/Arcana for this upcoming patch. Or is it only going to be the tweaks to Air & Earth Grand Master traits for now?

Hollarback!

- Mel

Nike.2631:

snip

This is definitely the direction in which I would like the devs to make the ele evolve.

Fresh air was a very good move. It allowed eles to be able to use their class mechanics in PvE instead of a heretic LH build.
I think there is something to be done with alacrity traits: these traits could reduce the attunement recharge by 25% (13->10) or more, and arcana points could reduce our spells’cooldowns globally. This is just an idea

No one has posted that video yet. I guess that dream of a duelling staff elementalist is just that, a dream. No other combination of a weapon and a profession is so underwhelming in a 1v1 fight.

Nike.2631:

I originally posted this in a separate thread, but have since realized it goes here if I’m hoping for Dev consideration .

On the concept of making people branch out in their Elementalist builds, with less absolute reliance on Arcane, I have a counter proposal for the Devs~

General: It would be nice to see more synergy between the elemental trait lines. Give me obvious, tangible reasons to build 30 Fire & 30 Earth or 30 Air and 30 Earth. Make elemental “pairing” sing. There’s only 6 possible pairs among the 4 elements, go through and deliberately make sure each pair offers something (probably by way of their 25 point minor trait) that has specific utility and application if you have 25+ points in another of the 4 elements. Give us an incentive to break away from the tyranny of Arcane rather than increasing the opportunity cost of Arcane in the hopes that we’ll maybe give up on the cornerstone choices in that line.

Specific: Dump all-aspect recharge% from Arcane entirely. Rather than neutering it down from 60% to 30% for a whole line’s worth of investment, keep the current recharge times and ADD “+50% recharge% for that element only” to each of the 15 point minor traits for each elemental line in addition to their current effects. Do you want fast recharge for Fire attunement? THEN SPEND POINTS INTO FIRE! Splashing 10 is not a commitment. Splashing 15? Cool, you get fast recharge for that Attunement. 15 points is also a low enough number that you could see a “fast-swapping master” built on 15/15/15/15/0 with 10 points left over to mix it up.

But what to replace the class specific boost of arcane with? Make it a stat buff that varies with your attunement! Make it “double down” on the attributes already associated with that element as seen in their trait lines. A fully fire-traited elementalist in Fire Attunement with 30 points in Arcane should get a huge bump to Power and Condition Duration (the Fire line bonus). When he shifts attunement to Earth, that Power and Condition Duration bonus morphs into a Toughness and Condition Damage bonus (The Earth trait-line attributes). Make points into Arcane something that reinforces the flavor and playstyle of your other choices, rather than diluting them.

Less “I want to be a hydromancer, and arcane lets me get away with occasionally swapping through other attunements…”

More “I want to by a hydromancer and arcane lets me stack even more vitality and healing power while in water Attunment, making me a BETTER hydromancer!” With it built-in that being a 15+ point hydromancer means you can get back to that attunement quickly after rotating out to answer some specific need.

+1 for you. Hopefully T will see this.

I wonder if we could get a dev response on what strengths we have to warrant the lowest health/armor?

Calae.1738:

They’re trying to promote build diversity on a class with the lowest possible base defenses in the game by making the 2 best defensive trait lines a “worse” investment than the other 3.

They’re also making changes to “traits” without taking into account that spending points in a trait line not only provides them with traits but also STATS. These STATS are just as important if not more than the traits themselves because it effects gear choice.

In my opinion, they’re showing quite a poor understanding of their own system.

100% correct, its why I spec 20 into water minimum.

Xernth.8561:

The most unbelievable part about this is I’m pretty sure the developers are actually trying to help; they just haven’t identified the actual problem and as a result are making things worse.

The actual problem is base health that is too low.

I agree that this is the main problem but I’m also sure that anet also realise this, Peters I think has said as much, but they are clearly unwilling to change it, for what reason I’m not sure.

xiv.7136:

lowest health + lowest armor = needs something else

- highest condition removal/immunity
or
- highest mobility
or
- highest damage
or
- highest evade
or
- you get the idea

There has to be a reward for the risk, that’s the key issue with ele

Spot on and in the first BWE we did have amongst the highest high damage, early in the game we did have high mobility and defense. But thats all been taken away and replaced with nothing.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Leuca.5732:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Not going to dive too far into answering this but the designers moved these traits to the master line because they consider them traits too strong to be adept. Surely you can imagine a bunch of ideas were on the table.

… wouldn’t a better solution have included identifying factors that make them so strong and then toning those down? For instance, how numerically strong would Cleansing Wave still be if it only affected the Elementalist? …

It’s the only tier 1 AOE cleanse in the game is the main reason, other factors are that its also an on demand cleanse, and it can be used every 10 seconds.

^^ directly from JP’s mouth just now

I am 40 years old. I have played mmorpg since UA. One common mistake I have seen is a misapplication of concept. If a dev reads this, then do not take that as a slam. I totally respect what devs do, and I do not want to make you think you are not appreciated. Heck, I am learning to do the same thing right now. What is important to recognize about balancing AoE buff spells is that the power is a team strength, not an individual strength. The buff spec shaman in DAoC is a great example of what happens when a class gets nerfed for giving strength to a group. AoE buff skills should only count toward meta changes and team synergies balancing.

I always gravitate toward the hated classes. I like the challenge and I want to understand the problem. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel the pain, though. I have always thought of it as a hard lesson, though, for when I get to be a game programmer. I hope not to make the same mistakes. I hope you guys can figure this out, and figure out a way to not punish an Ele player for making warriors stronger.

No need to respond. Just saying.

Currently, most WvW support elementalists run a variant of the 0/x/x/20/20 build which can easily be swappable between d/d and staff.

As much as I tried to look ahead and theorycraft all kinds of builds, I cannot find or see any build that improves on survivability and support for WvW.

30 Arcane
Most will take Elemental Attunement(V), Renewing Stamina(VI), Blasting Staff(VIII) or Evasive Arcana(XI) for their traits. Other than some traits being swapped around between master and adept, the 30 Arcane is not any different from current builds, apart from a lack of returns from the attunement recharge for 30 invested points. Easily swappable between d/d, s/d or staff(mostly by replacing VIII).

20 Arcane
Most will take V and VI, unless you are staff where you might drop one for VIII. Again, lesser returns from the 20 points as you gain less in attunement recharge compared to someone who doesn’t invest points in there.

30 Water
While Cantrip Mastery being swapped to adept is welcome, 3 very common adept traits are now being moved to the master tier, Aquamancer’s Alacrity(I), Soothing Disruption(III), Cleansing Wave(V). Cleansing Wave is the must have trait. Without it, most wvw guilds will drop you for a guardian. While on paper, it doesn’t look very bad if you invest 30 in water, it still represents less choice for any wvw support elementalist.

20 Water
This is where you now have very hard choices. If you never took Cantrip Mastery, now it becomes an automatic choice because most wvw elementalists take at least 2 cantrips for pure survivability. Your master option is now a very difficult choice of 3 formerly adept traits.

This is a straight out nerf for WvW support elementalists.
And I do believe many don’t appreciate that a heavy investment in Arcane is sacrificing a lot of stat points from other lines. Yet many cannot drop Arcane because so much survivability depends on investing in Arcane.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Treborlavok.3504:

just like the guardians 5 trait for vigor on crit… its ok for them to have a 10 second single condition cure at adept…?

The Guardian and Mesmer vigor traits are something that were on the table and will be on the table for change in the future. We don’t like those traits being that easily accessible. While they haven’t yet been changed as long as our thoughts don’t change internally they are part of the vigor rework we want to do.

You should be mindful of what lines each trait is in as well as the benefits of dodge rolling outside of the evade to each class.

The guard is a low-mobility mostly melee fighter which is balanced around getting powerful benefits by standing in a designated area (symbol). His vigor trait is down the vitality/healing line which requires that he crit in order to receive the boon. He gains a small heal (129 HP) at the end of a dodge roll 15 points into the line.

The Mesmer, unlike any other ‘on-crit vigor’ traits, has his in the precision line. He also has a major trait that creates a clone on dodge roll. A clone is only one of three illusions allowed up at a time. So it’s one third of his class mechanic refreshed on every dodge. They can also be used as a body block, any of the four shatter skills, and apply full conditions based on traits and weapon selection.

Dodging 100% more often powerful, but synergizing vigor on crit with the crit line and giving a class 1/3 of its class ability on every dodge is extremely powerful.

Fishbait.6723:

Why on earth would you nerf/ruin Ele Vigor accessibility of which they need it so much to survive, due to extremely low hp & armour, yet leave Mesmer which can stealth, lower blink etc & guardian which gets free auto blocks & possibly in the future lower theirs?

Free auto blocks? Go play a guard and let me know how often you “block” and how often it strategically benefits you. I have the answer for you, but I feel the need to ask you to educate yourself before you just assume.

Nike.2631:

I originally posted this in a separate thread, but have since realized it goes here if I’m hoping for Dev consideration .

On the concept of making people branch out in their Elementalist builds, with less absolute reliance on Arcane, I have a counter proposal for the Devs~

General: It would be nice to see more synergy between the elemental trait lines. Give me obvious, tangible reasons to build 30 Fire & 30 Earth or 30 Air and 30 Earth. Make elemental “pairing” sing. There’s only 6 possible pairs among the 4 elements, go through and deliberately make sure each pair offers something (probably by way of their 25 point minor trait) that has specific utility and application if you have 25+ points in another of the 4 elements. Give us an incentive to break away from the tyranny of Arcane rather than increasing the opportunity cost of Arcane in the hopes that we’ll maybe give up on the cornerstone choices in that line.

Specific: Dump all-aspect recharge% from Arcane entirely. Rather than neutering it down from 60% to 30% for a whole line’s worth of investment, keep the current recharge times and ADD “+50% recharge% for that element only” to each of the 15 point minor traits for each elemental line in addition to their current effects. Do you want fast recharge for Fire attunement? THEN SPEND POINTS INTO FIRE! Splashing 10 is not a commitment. Splashing 15? Cool, you get fast recharge for that Attunement. 15 points is also a low enough number that you could see a “fast-swapping master” built on 15/15/15/15/0 with 10 points left over to mix it up.

But what to replace the class specific boost of arcane with? Make it a stat buff that varies with your attunement! Make it “double down” on the attributes already associated with that element as seen in their trait lines. A fully fire-traited elementalist in Fire Attunement with 30 points in Arcane should get a huge bump to Power and Condition Duration (the Fire line bonus). When he shifts attunement to Earth, that Power and Condition Duration bonus morphs into a Toughness and Condition Damage bonus (The Earth trait-line attributes). Make points into Arcane something that reinforces the flavor and playstyle of your other choices, rather than diluting them.

Less “I want to be a hydromancer, and arcane lets me get away with occasionally swapping through other attunements…”

More “I want to by a hydromancer and arcane lets me stack even more vitality and healing power while in water Attunment, making me a BETTER hydromancer!” With it built-in that being a 15+ point hydromancer means you can get back to that attunement quickly after rotating out to answer some specific need.

This concept is wonderful, and I love it.

Kodiak.3281:

Treborlavok.3504:

Or I’ll just run my Mesmer with mantra if resolve and have 3x the aoe condition cleanse in the same time frame… And have perma vigor, stealth, clones, etc etc…

Eles give up more than any class to be able to get that tingle condition cleanse every 10 seconds.

Goes back to the old argument about eles having to do 20x the work that any other class can do better and faster and easier…. Why? Lowest hp lowest armor =…. Free bags, gotcha.

Bringing up a Mesmer is like bringing a gun (mesmer) to a knife (elementalist) fight.

It has all myriad defenses of a Thief, the base HP of a Ranger and still maintains high burst potential. It’s basically everything we aspire to be.

Exactly and that’s why I’m bringing them up. They’re another light armor profession yet they can do 3x the burst dmg, strip boons, have great condition mitigation and casting, stealth, evasion, clones, more hp, more armor, shall I keep going?

Why should another light armor profession like the necro or meanders, be able to flat out out do anything an ele hopes to do? It’s a wonder we even play eles… If it wasn’t for my s/d build to fall back on, which is going to lose its swiftness and boons with having spent 10 in arcana… In now going to have to choose to be more bunker or more glass at the cost of being weaker either way. Let alone if I was using my d/d build…

xiv.7136:

lowest health + lowest armor = needs something else

- highest condition removal/immunity
or
- highest mobility
or
- highest damage
or
- highest evade
or
- you get the idea

There has to be a reward for the risk, that’s the key issue with ele

Been saying that since forever. Most of the risk was already applied to the elementalist to pay for rewards that didn’t even make it out of closed beta. The war on soft healers, AE, and then our mobility left us with no ‘reward’ … and no gimmicks like Stealth/Clones/Death Shroud.

Taldren.7523:

xiv.7136:

lowest health + lowest armor = needs something else

- highest condition removal/immunity
or
- highest mobility
or
- highest damage
or
- highest evade
or
- you get the idea

There has to be a reward for the risk, that’s the key issue with ele

Been saying that since forever. Most of the risk was already applied to the elementalist to pay for rewards that didn’t even make it out of closed beta. The war on soft healers, AE, and then our mobility left us with no ‘reward’ … and no gimmicks like Stealth/Clones/Death Shroud.

Exactly, my point and others entirely .

I’m glad that some ele players are happy. But I feel that means they’ve never entered and been serious about wvw or pvp In the slightest. Which is where this entire thing starts to cause a giant annoying gaping hole in the devs entire idea about balancing… How can you balance around pvp, wvw, AND pve… The mechanics and game play of all 3 are completely different in every way.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

It’s the only tier 1 AOE cleanse in the game is the main reason, other factors are that its also an on demand cleanse, and it can be used every 10 seconds.

^^ directly from JP’s mouth just now

Moving cleansing wave doesn’t affect me now that cantrip mastery is going to be adept, so I don’t really care that cleansing wave will be master. However, I feel like reasoning behind moving it is bad.

It is the only adept aoe cleanse, but it’s balanced by having a small radius and a variable cooldown. 240 is a tiny range; you literally have to chase down a tackle your allies to get in range, which usually means giving up on damaging or harassing the enemy for a moment. This makes it not entirely dependable as an aoe cleanse. There are many times when an ally is just out of range. For the most part, people aren’t stacked up within 240 range, so you’re almost never removing a condition from 5 allies. If you are within 240 range of an ally, you’re both being hit with enemy aoe as well. Risk and reward.

Instant cast heals and cleanses are justified on the profession with low hp and armor. You have the least amount of time to react, so your defense tends to be faster. Plus, on demand isn’t necessarily better than passive; warriors are currently proving as much with their regen and auto-balanced stance.

It can be used every 12 seconds (accounts for global cooldown on all attunements when you swap) assuming you have 30 in arcana and leave water immediately. You’re giving up the attunement you just came from and using more than one skill in water attunement.

You make it sound like you guys consider cleansing wave too strong for adept with no weaknesses, drawbacks or additional requirements whatsoever.

However, there is one good thing that could come from having cleansing wave as master, remove the spvp ICD from cleansing water. The original reason behind that nerf was soothing disruption. Soothing disruption and cleansing wave will compete for the same master slot. Anybody using that trait combo will be out one controllable condition cleansing trait anyway. No ICD would also give soothing wave more synergy with a grandmaster trait, which it will likely need to see serious use.

Problem
Elementalist has the lowest base health and armor. In other words the lowest base survivability in the game.

This seems to be the staple argument that people bring up as to why certain traits are a must have.

Elementalist inherent defenses If you where to take no trait points and just look at the class raw.

Healing (base and scaling)
Attunements allowing you to deal with a variety of situations or flexibility.

The problem that still plays out in game

People still feel they must go at least 15 into water, take protection to help with survivability via Elemental attunement trait, go 30 into arcana for EA heal and to a lesser extent earth dodge roll blast finisher.

Suggestions

• Increase healing base and scaling if that is suppose to be elementalist main defense. It is already the best scaling so maybe the bases need to be increased so people won’t feel they need Extra heals to survive from 15 water and 30 arcana. Soothing Wave change does kind of help with passive regen proccing and you don’t have to attune to water. It is still a water trait but it should be attractive and I plan to pick it up over soothing disruption for sure.

• Another option could be to increase base armor to medium class. I don’t think we need HP but more base Armor would be good and allow elementalist to have a few more armor choices without being super squishy. On the same token increasing the base Armor to possibly medium will also increase the value of healing which is the Elementalists main defense.

As far as condition management goes: I feel that elementalist are fine there you spec into it and of all the classes I play just from traits you can spec into condition management that is pretty good. The benefit that elementalist has is that the really good ones are all in one trait line. That is without considering Ether Renewal even though it has that extemely long cast time which can be accounted for by Earth’s Embrace, Armor of Earth and Rock solid.

Treborlavok.3504:

Exactly and that’s why I’m bringing them up. They’re another light armor profession yet they can do 3x the burst dmg, strip boons, have great condition mitigation and casting, stealth, evasion, clones, more hp, more armor, shall I keep going?

Why should another light armor profession like the necro or meanders, be able to flat out out do anything an ele hopes to do? It’s a wonder we even play eles… If it wasn’t for my s/d build to fall back on, which is going to lose its swiftness and boons with having spent 10 in arcana… In now going to have to choose to be more bunker or more glass at the cost of being weaker either way. Let alone if I was using my d/d build…

Neither has more armor but they both do have more HP.

Mesmers have the potential to have great condition mitigation but they don’t take it because they lose damage. The best mesmer condition mitigation traits are in Inspiration. If you are running a phantasm spec sure you can get those and still have your 25 points in inspiration for phantasm damage. Shattered conditions is a awesome trait that I would put up there with cleansing water but to get it you lose damage. Alot of mesmer builds rely on Hoelbrak, Melandru, or Lyssa runes in alot of their builds. Or they invis so much that there phantasms do alot of the work while they stay out of harms way as much as possible. Mesmers and Elementalist are not currently getting much play in the sPvP meta at all. To keep up with a 30 water elementalist for condition management a Mesmer has to go 30 inspiration and they still can’t keep up unless they throw on cleansing conflagration for 20 in Domination.

Necromancers have condition management in the form of transfers or wipe from heal but the best condition management TRAITS are in Death Magic and Blood Magic not many Necromancers go deep into either. There is another in spite but requires something dies to remove conditions and nobody I know takes it. Necromancers inherently deal with condis fine because of deathly swarm on dagger and putrid mark on staff, they also have plague signet though it is on a 60 sec cd untraited. That is the Necromancers thing though there theme fits them being able to manipulate conditions and boons. The trade off with necro is that is can’t escape fights very well a mesmer can escape fights well if they have enough invis on their utility bar which means less condition management tools.

@oZii
Yea I know that but the point is they can both do multiple things very well and without any or much of a draw back. List one thing an ele can do better than any other class, besides dying, and besides just standing there putting down water fields.

We have no reward for our extremely high risk factors.

Treborlavok.3504:

@oZii
Yea I know that but the point is they can both do multiple things very well and without any or much of a draw back. List one thing an ele can do better than any other class, besides dying, and besides just standing there putting down water fields.

We have no reward for our extremely high risk factors.

Mobility: With FGS, we have the highest potential mobility in the game. Yes, its an elite with a cd, so its a trade off.

Healing: pound for pound, ele’s out heal guardians handily (as far as party healing goes). Not sure if anyone really out-heals the completely overpowered warrior healing signet, which is currently ticking at almost 400 hps with zero points in healing power.

Cleansing: If (and only if) the ele takes ether renewal, ele is one of the top condition counters. this is sort of a huge joke though, as at the moment no one in the game has enough condition cleanses to counter the garbage that is the current state of condi-spam.

Treborlavok.3504:

@oZii
Yea I know that but the point is they can both do multiple things very well and without any or much of a draw back. List one thing an ele can do better than any other class, besides dying, and besides just standing there putting down water fields.

We have no reward for our extremely high risk factors.

I can think of a few things but it would be best to compare builds so it doesn’t get confused with 30/30/30/30/30 vs 30/30/30/30/30.

Mesmer 20/20/30/0/0 usually called Black Water (name the creator who made it popular called it). In a condition build you Run Scepter/Torch or Sword/Torch + Staff.

The mesmer condition version of 20/20/30 requires your enemy to kill themself by blowing up your clones. You don’t have mobility but deception to get away, you don’t have good condition management which are 2 skills on Torch. You might slot null field but you give up a invis which means less escape tools.

Group support is nonexistant in that build unless you want to count chaos storm.

The same 20/20/30 build can be ran in Power with Sword/torch + GS. Same issues as condition version but here you would be forced to choose between Torch condition management or GS cooldown reduction. You have no group support at all because you don’t have staff unless you want to count mirror blade and your buddy standing next to the enemy when you throw it giving him stacks of might.

Necromancer – 30/20/0/0/20 Standard Terror build that is popular group support is nonexistent unless you run plague signet or get some good putrid marks off. Necro’s deal with conditions themselves very well so that part is moot. It does do conditions better than Elementalist but so do most classes. Never seen it ran in power. You have no mobility but that is all necromancers. No stability access so you can get stun chained easily. Low Life force regeneration because your conditions UNLESS you take soul marks in SR.

Necromancer – 30/10/0/0/30 or 30/0/10/0/30 pretty standard Power build – condition management is inherent because of offhand dagger. Some people run staff in this build. Same issues as above with mobility. Does get stability access with Foot in the Grave trait but it is all personal stability.

Just looking at the light armor classes.

They all give up something if you go Conditions as a necro you give up running other weapons sets and pretty much have to run staff and Scepter/X if you take focus you give up condition management with deathly swarm personally I like focus though because chill is so good. You also feel forced to go 20 into soul reaping and to take soul marks because as conditions it is very hard to regenerate your class mechanic of Death Shroud with life force. Power necros do it much better because of Axe you can run Axe as conditions but why? It is terrible in a condition build since it doesn’t have any real conditions.

If you go power as a necro you do have good life force regeneration but you are still slow like a condi necro. You can by pass the squishy feeling with taking deathly perception and throwing on some Soldier gear so you can sacrifice some precision for vitality and toughness but you would lose stability in DS.

The popular mesmer builds all sacrifice condition removal and deal with it via Food(wvw), lyssa runes, melandru, hoelbrak. They may go 10 into inspiration and take mender’s purity which currently is only 1 condition on heal (20 seconds). Not many mesmers run mantra so I didn’t even mention those.

With the current condition meta in sPvP that is why Mesmer’s aren’t present because nobody goes 30 points in inspiration which would pretty much be required if Mesmer’s wanted to survive.

Raven, c’mon really… You think you can out run a thief or warrior with gs/sword/horn…. Our Fgs runs out, your ability to run is gone. They can keep running almost indefinitely, not counting the fact that they can either stealth or strait up ignore conditions and take the dmg.

ER is a horrible argument in condition control. And having to rely on stability to use said skill ends the argument.

I’m all for eles being great healers, we need something for being so squishy. If our SoR was on par with wars, evasive arcana had no ICD and our healing scaled even more, then I can see some good d/d builds with a base of 30 in arcana and then only needing a 10 in water for cleansing wave.

I can still run my fun 0 25 0 15 30 build.. with difficulty but I’m sure I can continue to defeat all ele’s in spvp and wvw 1v1. Staff, Scepter or DD. But after the nerf I might have to try a little harder Yes you heard me. I support the arcane tree hehe. Yes I use to roll 2-3 people prior october 2012 in wvw with 0 10 0 30 30. But that wil never happen again haha. At most a 0 15 10 15 30 is quite great conservative if you have 5 vitality stacks. (Yeah Iike Jetstorm’s build, but still hate FA’s numbers over skill) Not sure why you guys nerf arcane since your putting in 30 points to get the results of 20 lol. I know with the builds anet is generally try to rework everyone styles to theirs. I was from guild wars 2005 beta and on ward. So I do support divisity but you just closed a door an opened a window. 1v1 any time just pm me or jump me in wvw or 8v8 anytime. Yes and ele’s had lots of freedom back in the day please ask Izzy I’m sure he’ll give a nodd. Yeah I know he loves mesmers, necros and engis. Btw not sure if I can take your Genius Engi in Yaks after this nerf. He’s prety tough and careful. Lost in ele mobility means I’m duck to him.

PS make Ritualist more sexy in expansion please.

Treborlavok.3504:

Raven, c’mon really… You think you can out run a thief or warrior with gs/sword/horn…. Our Fgs runs out, your ability to run is gone. They can keep running almost indefinitely, not counting the fact that they can either stealth or strait up ignore conditions and take the dmg.

ER is a horrible argument in condition control. And having to rely on stability to use said skill ends the argument.

I’m all for eles being great healers, we need something for being so squishy. If our SoR was on par with wars, evasive arcana had no ICD and our healing scaled even more, then I can see some good d/d builds with a base of 30 in arcana and then only needing a 10 in water for cleansing wave.

I agree that SOR should be bumped up since it gets double penalized for poison and confusion. A GS Sword/Horn warrior doesn’t kill anyone that isn’t AFK. There is no control there to CC anyone in order to land damage from GS. Sure if you are comparing a race across tyria that would make the Warrior win. No matter how much damage a warrior puts into a GS Sword/horn build it is by no means scary damage unless you are AFK. This is a 30/30/30/30/30 example. GS Sword/Horn warriors are built to run away and are no threat to kill anyone who is paying attention. Final Thrust does alot of damage but is so slow that it needs setup from hammer or mace to land.

devs don’t care about our lowest armor and life so stop spamming it in every post,they won’t buff us for being the squishest class they ever made.
/disappointed with the new patch for various things.

why ele is not working properly and it won’t work properly? because we have a lot of traits/skills that are USELESS,intentionally maybe?

lingering attunement,zephyr’s speed and one with air are still USELESS.
I really don’t understand why put an USELESS 1,5s superspeed why the hell don’t you buff a bit this trait,it’ could be VIABLE if buffed to 3/4s.
zephyr’s speed with 10% speed please,please,please revamp it,it’s USELESS.
arcane precision is a grandmaster trait,why?
signets are still USELESS AND NOT VIABLES,add to them/stability,ecc.
why earthen blast can’t be a BLAST FINISHER?THERE IS BLAST AT THE END of the name.
why don’t you split evasive arcana into every 5/15/25 points water/earth/fire/air?
why you want us to use conjurer weapons?not all are masochists.

why don’t we have aegis to mitigate the damage? why can’t we spam blind to mitigate the damage?
why retaliation don’t deserve a nerf?400+ for hitting a guardian,come on guys it’s so RIDICULOUS.
diamond skin WILL BE AN EPIC FAILURE if they don’t put an 80-85% and all we know why.

could i deserve an answer from a dev?

On Cleansing Wave:

Sure, it’s an AoE cleanse every 10 seconds. If you have full investment in Arcana.

Never mind all the drawbacks people have been mentioning, ANet appear to be treating it as if 30 arcana is a default for all builds.

Additionally, that “other classes don’t get AoE cleanse at adept tier” isn’t necessarily a problem. Some professions should get certain effects at a cheaper cost than others. Maybe this is one effect that the Elementalist can get cheaper than the others.

Maybe they’re still trying this esport thing. That might explain a few things.

my biggest problem with elementalist right now, is that i feel like i’m being forced to play melee…. yet there are no melee spells, no melee weapons. (even dagger / dagger is usable at 600 range. melee is less than 200)

to explain:
evasive arcana gives a spell at the END of a dodge roll. most of those spells damage foes or apply conditions. i thought the point of dodging was to get away from your foe, to avoid attacks. now this trait wants me to use my escape and evade mechanic basically as an offensive leap INTO melee combat.

fire 5:
is only useful in melee, when i’m struck. elementalist has the lowest hit points of any class, the best defense is to not get hit. given a choice to dodge roll, knockback, blind, burning retreat, or any other plethora of evades / control skills at ele disposable, why in Tyria would i let something hit me? just to apply a 1 second burn to them? that’s no trade off. fire 5 needs to be A ) buffed, and B ) made into a 10 point trait so i’m not forced to take it when it’s useless as a ranged playstyle. and c ) something else should take fire 5 place that is actually useful 100% of the time i’m attuned to fire.

fire 15:
is another trait that wants me to play melee style. it only hits enemies close to me. at least air 15 hits target at range. at least water 15 heals nearby allies, which is useful in both melee and ranged playstyles. so again, when my playstyle is defined by staying at range, how does this trait benefit me at all?

i use staff because i want to play at range, and both my fire 5 and 15 traits do not benefit my playstyle in any way shape or form. neither does evasive arcana. now, i just stop at 20 arcana so that’s not really an issue, but speccing 30 in fire gives me 2 wasted traits, when i should have 6 useful ones.