Guild Wars 2

my other biggest gripe about elementalist. (sorry for the double post, but this is actually a separate topic) is that our 25 point traits are the same as traits that other classes get at 10 points.

for example:

earth 25… +10% damage when endurance is full… ranger can choose this at 10 points in skirmishing (precision)

water 25… +2% damage per active boon… warrior gets this at 10 points in strength. (i think it’s strength)

fire 25… +10% damage against burning targets… compared to 10 point investment in earth to receive +20% duration for bleeding, and +5% damage to bleeding targets.

oZii.2864:

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.

This, more than anything, is what I want to see them verbally address. People (such as myself) have been saying this for a very long time and it’s quite the common response when asked what people feel is the one thing wrong with the Elementalist.

One of the most serious problems we have is the lack flexibility we need to be able to survive , we’re supposed to be a flexible class able to jump from one element to another when we really need it but because of our long CD linked our change of attunement its not possible. I propose is to change the CD to 2 seconds and put a 20 sec internal CD to all talents related to switch attunement, reducible via arcana. This way i think we could be what is supposed to be a jack of all trades. I also want to add a little twist to our class by adding the overcast ability,basically what I propose with the overcast is that whenever you are in an element you can activate the overcast related to that element in which case if you change attunement you cannot return to that element just only when the cd is over, for example let’s say i’m in water i activate my overcast creating a pretty decent heal but I change to earth, now I can go to any element except water until the water overcast CD ends,each element should have its own overcast CD , the CD can be reduced via arcana, with the possibility to add talents to improve the overcast , the CD that I think would be more correct is 20 or 15 seconds , the effects i suggest :

Fire : the next attack adds a fire nova efect 20 sec cd
Air : bolt of lightning 20 sec cd
Water: a heal in area of ??about 1000 20 sec cd
Earth : Magnetic shield 3 secs with a 20 sec cd (do not eliminate curses )

I think the proposed changes would make our class more flexible and effective it would give more sense to certain talents that only shorten the CD on certain elements , plus it effectively allow both specialization in one attunement or being a master of arcane and use all the attunements.

I doubt my solution is perfect but I think it would greatly improve our class

Greetings Philips

While you are moving blasting staff could you please also fix the AOE range indicators with this trait? Skills like lava font and static field don’t show the bigger circle, particularly Static Field would be much more usable if you knew where exactly the stun will be applied.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Targeting-circles-with-blasting-staff-trait/first#post2707398

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.

Which attacks would you use to deliver that damage reliably using a condi-specced S/D Necro? Most of my Necro’s direct attacks deal almost no damage, and rely on applying conditions for peak effectiveness. I would hate to have to burn a Feast of Corruption cooldown when they have no conditions up. I just don’t understand what a Condi specced character is meant to do when faced with a fully healed Ele other than turn and hope someone else can get them.

I’ve played with about everything but I think I found my calling with 0/30/10/30/0 dagger/dagger. The traits I take are Tempest Defense, Zephyrs Boon, Air Training, Elemental Shielding, Soothing Wave, Soothing Disruption, Cleansing Water) with 6 divinity. It’s a bit high risk of a spec but if you can get down your aura timings as well as cantrip use for cleansing, it’s devastating. It’s a very high damage spec in sPvP.

Which D/D spec would you use that includes Evasive Arcana?

Ohoni.6057:

Which attacks would you use to deliver that damage reliably using a condi-specced S/D Necro? Most of my Necro’s direct attacks deal almost no damage, and rely on applying conditions for peak effectiveness.

We’re a bit over exaggerating here don’t you think?

Ohoni.6057:

I would hate to have to burn a Feast of Corruption cooldown when they have no conditions up.

We’re a bit over exaggerating here don’t you think? That skill is on a 10 second CD. Like seriously?

Ohoni.6057:

I just don’t understand what a Condi specced character is meant to do when faced with a fully healed Ele other than turn and hope someone else can get them.

Since ANet decided to integrate some sort of rock-paper-scissors kind of build wars in the game, you have to accept the fact that you can’t win against everyone. That’s exactly why D/D eles were nerfed to oblivion because it can sustain against almost anybody. But now, the devs are trying to get them back on by giving them the opportunity to counter one of the most currently dominating builds in the game (aside from Warriors. Those are totally broken as hell).

I’m not saying that I agree with you that necros will have zero chances of winning against a Diamond Skin ele. You just gotta learn to adapt. Saying doom and gloom about everything because all the condi-spam playstyle you’re so used to using with your necro MIGHT not work effectively against an ele will definitely lose you the fight. Mesmers and eles were phased out of the current meta because of the dominating condi-spam necros engies and rangers have introduced in the scene and now the devs are trying to provide the ele some sort of counter IF THEY SPEC FOR IT to balance it out in a way. Eles will basically ADAPT with this new trait. It doesn’t mean necros don’t have the opportunity to do so as well. Try to adjust your build if you really think your current build has zero chances of winning against that Grandmaster Trait. I’m not bashing you or anything, I’m just trying to point out that your argument is petty and really really selfish especially the Feast of Corruption thingy you’ve said. I mean sheeesh, hating to waste a 10-second cooldown. XD

Oniyui.8279:

More again on my disputes with the elementalist changes, and the importance of strong adept abilities.

Every elementalist that doesn’t take 30 in arcane for pvp is going to be a free kill. We’re already on the ropes as the squishiest profession with the lowest baseline hp – and we have the least reliable stun breaks being that they’re on cooldowns over a minute long, very little stability, and we require might just to get decent damage. Losing access to might, protection, swiftness, and regen is absolutely devastating to survivability and our ability to get decent damage needs to be compensated for, making 30 arcane builds more powerful, or reverted. Elementalists rely heavily on getting those buffs, and the only one in our weapon skills is swiftness. To even consider moving Elemental Attunement to a master tier you’d also better be putting all our buffs in our weapon skills and lowering cooldowns and cast times of any ability that gives these effects, and giving us some Stability and stun breaks so we can get to those effects. Of course, doing so would only make 30 arcane that much more powerful while still hurting the other elementalists’ group utility. It really needs to remain at Adept.

Now, again, look at Cleansing Wave. Elementalists don’t put 10 into water because this ability’s powerful. They put 10 into water because it’s absolutely vital to their survival and their group utility. If an elementalist isn’t cleansing their team every once in a while and dies every time they get poisoned then what are they good for? If you move it to master it’s going to be absolutely mandatory for non-water elementalists to take Cleansing Fire and the new fire trait to make up for it, and they’ll be worse off for it not being able to cleanse allies, suffering a longer cooldown, and losing a utility skill to another mandatory ability.

This is my petition to keeping these traits at 10. Bring other viable traits to splash down to 10 rather than moving them up. Rock Solid is a prime candidate as we are sorely lacking in stability.

I’d also like to petition you to lower the cooldowns on our stun break abilities. Make Lightning Flash a stun break, even. Cantrip builds aren’t strong right now because cantrips are strong – cantrip builds are strong right now because many elementalists are working their fingers to the bone and stacking more stun breaks than should be necessary just to stay alive- and it’s still falling short.

From the gw2 discussion thread.

I also in another post I made on these abilities a suggestion that Evasive Arcana be made adept, as much of its strength is in the talents building up to it and a 10 second attunement cd. At 10, it would result in more Eles choosing between talents to splash rather than going all the way to 30 for all the most powerful abilities in the line, resulting in more elementalist diversity and survivability.

What would make that viable? Getting rid of useless traits that get completely and utterly overshadowed in nearly any build. I.E. windbag daggers and the scepter vigor nonsense (also a source of EA’s power).

If they want less people to splash arcane they should also look into improving the minor adept traits for fire, air, earth, and water to be, well, useful. Alacrity abilities could fall in here, as they’re valuable but usually not picked because of how much we change over 4 attunements rather than the simple weapon swap of other classes (often with a 20% cooldown reduction trait with an additional effect, not just the flat 20%) that gives them more time getting the buff’s advantage.

Anet, IMO, has fallen for a fallacy in thinking strong abilities need to be higher on the talent train. Strong abilities need to be at every level for a class to be successful. It’s specialized abilities that should rise to the higher levels of a skill train. A perfect example of this is Elemental Surge – it rewards arcane specialization at the high end of the arcane train. Pyromancer’s Puissance – same. Fresh Air, Powerful Aura, Written in Stone, Cleansing Water, Persisting Flames – all extremely specialized abilities rewarding 30 points, not extremely splash-worthy abilities – as they should be. More splash-worthy abilities need to go in the Adept tier, not less.

@devs.
The part about redesigning access to vigor means you will completely rework PvE true?

Should i suggest you to look at % of pve and PvP players?

Thank you a lot.

Also when you introduce new traits make so they don t need nerfs for each other.

Expecially if they are grandmaster traits.

Why didn t you design something that could just make the ele better raher then forcing players to use 30 points in earth or suffer a direct nerf?

I still think it would be a good idea to make our base cooldown for attunement swapping 10 or less, and make arcane traitline give boon duration and aura duration instead. Remove elemental attunement as a trait, since every ele takes it anyway, and just let us have that naturally. Replace elemental attunement with a trait that gives us auras on attunement. Remove all auras from all weapon sets. Replace the removed auras from the weapons with teleports, since the ele is a mage and IMO mages SHOULD have lots of movement skills in combat. It never made sense for me for the thief to be the one with all the teleports, the mage should be the one teleporting all over the place.

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.

Did u try full berserker ele in dungeons and fotm? With no points on water u have 11k hp at lvl 80 i play 0-10-0-30-30 and i have to be very smart and fast or i m death, i have to use 3 defensive utility or i m death… and this is my dps build… doesent look so much dps but a death one make 0 damage.. i ve played with other eles with more dps build and i ve spent my timeto ress him… i have also a war and a guard at lvl 80 war is zerk too its really another world… open the lfg tool and u will see lf zerk war/mesmer for any content ppl lf ele only for bow on ac… i play ele since bwe its my main class… spvp is different i know but dpsing on pve atm its freaking hard also with my defensive dps build. So this patch wont work on dps pve contents or u do some modify on build like i wrote before o u have to design the mob attakking differently or i will go to play war if i wanna dps and guard if i wanna give support on team… i dont wanna play ele support i want dps with him

Btw thanks for talking with us

Forgotten Legend.9281:

water 25… +2% damage per active boon…

1%, it was nerfed

Gorni.1764:

Forgotten Legend.9281:

water 25… +2% damage per active boon…

1%, it was nerfed

Should also provide 1% healing per boon as well imo…

Healing deserves a buff, perhaps with exception to the regeneration boon as that seems good where it is.

Gorni.1764:

Forgotten Legend.9281:

water 25… +2% damage per active boon…

1%, it was nerfed

I don’t know why that trait was ever in water to begin with. Boon duration stuff would belong in the arcane trait line I would think. Would be nice if it were buffed back to 2% and moved to the 25 pt in arcane, since the 25 in arcane is crap anyway, no one would miss it.

Nikkinella.8254:

Gorni.1764:

Forgotten Legend.9281:

water 25… +2% damage per active boon…

1%, it was nerfed

I don’t know why that trait was ever in water to begin with. Boon duration stuff would belong in the arcane trait line I would think. Would be nice if it were buffed back to 2% and moved to the 25 pt in arcane, since the 25 in arcane is crap anyway, no one would miss it.

the idea behind the 25 arcane is great, but 10% on crit is way to low, even for adept and ridiculous for a GM minor. It should be 60% on crit like the air one.

I don’t mind about everything else. but please remove lingering elements and switch it with renewing stamina (Arcane VI) TYVM

Tempest Defense change is huge. thanks for buffing my D/D Dps spec.
i barely touch water and more than 10 arcana (dont like playing bunkerstyle, its funny some players calling 0/10/0/30/30 a dps spec), so i’m perfectly fine with the proposed changes.

Oniyui.8279:

Gorni.1764:

Forgotten Legend.9281:

water 25… +2% damage per active boon…

1%, it was nerfed

Should also provide 1% healing per boon as well imo…

Healing deserves a buff, perhaps with exception to the regeneration boon as that seems good where it is.

Healing was nerfed.

oZii.2864:

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.

Yep, that’s one of the core problems.
Eles’ low base survivablity requires good traits, while other classes can get away with “ok” traits as their baseline survivability isn’t nil (e.g. looking at mesmer with clones, necros with double healthbar, warriors with heal signet/low cd aoe cc, thieves with perma evade/stealth, ranger with high hp pets, engi with easily accessible defensive traits combined with backwards orientated gamestyle (read: condi dmg while kiting)).

Anet can’t argue against strong traits in adept or master position with a straight face in regards to Ele seeing the list above. Either increase baseline survivablity OR give us more and better traits at low point investment.

We’re a bit over exaggerating here don’t you think?

Have you tried playing a condi-spec S/D Necro? Against an inanimate (yellow bar) object I might as well just be whistling at it. Feast of Corruption does about a third of what the Warrior’s auto attack does, and that’s using base stats, not even accounting for the fact that a Condi spec would add little to that number, while a Power spec would add a ton to the Warrior’s. Even burning every attack in that spec’s kitten nal might not achieve more than 1500 damage, taking about ten seconds to cast, and wasting numerous stacks of bleed, poison and Vulnerability.

We’re a bit over exaggerating here don’t you think? That skill is on a 10 second CD. Like seriously?

Yeah, and it’s also an ability that I don’t want to use until I’ve put a few conditions up. Even that wouldn’t be enough to drain a thousand or more HP. I might have to go through a whole rotation of abilities to build up enough damage to lay a single condition, and then hope the Ele doesn’t have anything to heal with. . .

Since ANet decided to integrate some sort of rock-paper-scissors kind of build wars in the game, you have to accept the fact that you can’t win against everyone. That’s exactly why D/D eles were nerfed to oblivion because it can sustain against almost anybody. But now, the devs are trying to get them back on by giving them the opportunity to counter one of the most currently dominating builds in the game (aside from Warriors. Those are totally broken as hell).

I don’t think auto-win is ever fun. If there are a too strong build, the goal shouldn’t be to make a different build that slaughters it. That’s no fun at all. Either A: you’ll find yourself against that build, in which case you’re toast, or B: you’ll find yourself against something else, in which case they’re toast. Neither would be an engaging encounter. If a given build is too strong then you tone it down, so that it’s not overly strong NOR overly weak against anyone else.

Eles will basically ADAPT with this new trait. It doesn’t mean necros don’t have the opportunity to do so as well. Try to adjust your build if you really think your current build has zero chances of winning against that Grandmaster Trait.

I just think it’s a ridiculously overpowered trait. Sure, there would be ways to design around it, but I don’t think that players should have to. Imagine if they added a trait to, say, Necros, called “Oil Skin” that makes them 100% immune to all direct damage until condition damage peels off even 5% of their HP first? Would that just be a “learn to play better” moment for all the power-based specs in the game? If you can only use Ele as a reference, what if you had to burn through every Fire and Earth attack you have available before you could start dealing any damage?

And keep in mind here, I’m not coming at this from a “Necros should beat everything” stance, I play all classes, my D/D Ele was my second to 80 (after my Thief) and my Necro isn’t the most important to me, I just know how little direct damage she’s capable of, and how terribly this trait would hurt.

Just tested ur elite golem hit twice for 500-600 and third one is for 900 on heavy golem in spvp as a full condition necro. Your whole idea of "ridiculously overpowered trait " is invalid. Go away from this forum please.

The proposed buffs are pretty but the nerf (ie: reallocation of traits in water and arcana) can be iffy and prolly shatters my dagger build into pieces. *sigh

Again… why are Elementalists cursed with buff some-nerf more disease every major class skill/trait update!?

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.

This change is devastating to the team support in my 20/10/0/30/10 Scepter/Dagger Signet Aura-share build.
By moving Elemental Attunements to Master tier you’re forcing me to choose between pulling 10 points out of Zephyrs Boon and investing it in Arcana for Elemental Attunements or pulling 10 points out of Arcana and investing in Elemental Shielding.
Without Zephyrs Boon Auras are not worth forming an entire build around,and the 3 seconds of protection provided by Elemental Shielding is nowhere near as supportive as Elemental Attunements boons.

Either way I look at it, the changes in Arcana will have me investing further into the line and possibly abandoning my aura share build entirely for an Evasive Arcana build.

blutstein.2468:

Nikkinella.8254:

Gorni.1764:

Forgotten Legend.9281:

water 25… +2% damage per active boon…

1%, it was nerfed

I don’t know why that trait was ever in water to begin with. Boon duration stuff would belong in the arcane trait line I would think. Would be nice if it were buffed back to 2% and moved to the 25 pt in arcane, since the 25 in arcane is crap anyway, no one would miss it.

the idea behind the 25 arcane is great, but 10% on crit is way to low, even for adept and ridiculous for a GM minor. It should be 60% on crit like the air one.

Eh, I think it’s too much like the glyph, which could use a buff in its own. I do like the concept though. Maybe it’d be better off with something to do with endurance, though. Like dodging executes leap finishers or something.

Nikkinella.8254:

I still think it would be a good idea to make our base cooldown for attunement swapping 10 or less, and make arcane traitline give boon duration and aura duration instead. Remove elemental attunement as a trait, since every ele takes it anyway, and just let us have that naturally. Replace elemental attunement with a trait that gives us auras on attunement. Remove all auras from all weapon sets. Replace the removed auras from the weapons with teleports, since the ele is a mage and IMO mages SHOULD have lots of movement skills in combat. It never made sense for me for the thief to be the one with all the teleports, the mage should be the one teleporting all over the place.

That would actually be perfect! I love that idea… But I guarantee they would do it because it would require too much “work” on there part.

I think it’s a real mistake to make Elemental Attunement master level – it’s a class-defining trait and IMO entirely nullifies the point of the changes which is ostensibly to make Ele’s less dependent on arcane.

Personally I think Ele attunement buffs should be baseline, but not AOE, then reintroduce the AOE Ele attunement functionality via a master-level trait.

Personally, I think this would be a better change than those they proposed.

Fire: Condition Duration and Condition Damage (Burning might actually be decent)
Air: Critical Damage and Precision
Earth: Boon Duration and Toughness (Longer defense buffs without the need of Arcana)
Water: Healing Power and Vitality
Arcana: Attunement Cooldown and Power (Gives more spec choices access to power without gimping themselves)

Being a staff ele, I’m having a hard time trying to figure out how to make Diamond Skin work for my build. My main issue isn’t the traits, but rather the condition damage being (nearly) useless. Eruption’s trigger delay pretty much ruins all hope of hitting with it.

Now, while I know this is a trait rebalance, I still propose to add the following change to Eruption:

New Eruption:
Duration: 3 seconds
Damage: 154 per second (0.417 modifier)
2 stack bleeding per second: 12 s (3060 damage total)
Radius: 240
Combo Finisher: Blast after 3 seconds
Range: 1,200

Basically spread the effect over 3 seconds, with just 1 blast finisher of course. The first and second tick would start respectively 2 and 1 seconds before the final tick, with the final tick being the blast finisher at the same instant that the whole skill triggers now.

Let me list where Anet devs are wrong.

Imo (and many player share this opinion), Ele is already in a troubled state.

So this troubled profession, will get more build diversity by:

Making their baseline defence that everyone mandatory chooses to survive, harder to reach. (elemental attunement, cleansing wave)

These are the last standing pieces between ‘troubled but still playable ele’, and ‘completely devastated ele’.

If you guys don’t get it now… The most squishy class in game (with no offensive compensation wathsoever – not compared to other profs), surviving by a few good defensive traits, and you are nerfing them (making them harder to reach).

No no no no no.

This is the problem with Anet devs.

‘lowest hp/armor vision of ele in game’. ‘sorry vision is vision, we cannot change this fact’. ele player: ‘ok guess we’ll keep taking 0/0/0/30/30 traits to compensate for this massive downside. ’anet dev, oh wait but those traits are to strong, we must nerf them.

Essence of logic is this Anet devs (and theres no but or countering this, it’s the complete truth).

Stand alone, the mentioned traits are wrong, and deserve master trait. But that’s completely misisng the point.

Lowest hp + lowest armor in game + those traits in adept tire = by no means overpowered. By no means to strong. And yet you are pushing it out. Basically nerfing them again.

If you take away the defence every ele takes now because he has to, to survive, then you must compensate by a defensive ‘tool, passive’, wathever, to compensate for the void. If not, you officially nerf ele into useless ‘one trick spvp pony builder’. The answers lie there, boost hp or boost armor, but wait ‘omg we can’t.

Conclusion Anet is to stubborn that traits like elemental attunement these days are what’s keeping the ele in place even with super low armor/hp combo. taking that last piece of consolidation away (or harder to get) = officially making ele’s broken (to underpowered to survive correctly in all 3 game environments)

I haven’t mained ele in a long while, and yet I’m fully admitting this. It’s time to give ele community a cookie rather then steal cookies (you did that enough now devs).

Current proposed changes with no compensation (survival) = brutal nerf to ele.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Let me list where Anet devs are wrong.

Imo (and many player share this opinion), Ele is already in a troubled state.

So this troubled profession, will get more build diversity by:

Making their baseline defence that everyone mandatory chooses to survive, harder to reach. (elemental attunement, cleansing wave)

These are the last standing pieces between ‘troubled but still playable ele’, and ‘completely devastated ele’.

If you guys don’t get it now… The most squishy class in game (with no offensive compensation wathsoever – not compared to other profs), surviving by a few good defensive traits, and you are nerfing them (making them harder to reach).

No no no no no.

This is the problem with Anet devs.

‘lowest hp/armor vision of ele in game’. ‘sorry vision is vision, we cannot change this fact’. ele player: ‘ok guess we’ll keep taking 0/0/0/30/30 traits to compensate for this massive downside. ’anet dev, oh wait but those traits are to strong, we must nerf them.

Essence of logic is this Anet devs (and theres no but or countering this, it’s the complete truth).

Stand alone, the mentioned traits are wrong, and deserve master trait. But that’s completely misisng the point.

Lowest hp + lowest armor in game + those traits in adept tire = by no means overpowered. By no means to strong. And yet you are pushing it out. Basically nerfing them again.

If you take away the defence every ele takes now because he has to, to survive, then you must compensate by a defensive ‘tool, passive’, wathever, to compensate for the void. If not, you officially nerf ele into useless ‘one trick spvp pony builder’. The answers lie there, boost hp or boost armor, but wait ‘omg we can’t.

Conclusion Anet is to stubborn that traits like elemental attunement these days are what’s keeping the ele in place even with super low armor/hp combo. taking that last piece of consolidation away (or harder to get) = officially making ele’s broken (to underpowered to survive correctly in all 3 game environments)

I haven’t mained ele in a long while, and yet I’m fully admitting this. It’s time to give ele community a cookie rather then steal cookies (you did that enough now devs).

Current proposed changes with no compensation (survival) = brutal nerf to ele.

Completely agree with you. I was playing some WvW yesterday and whenever I see an elementalist they just became food. Same for my elementalist.

Since we are going to be required to spend more points in water and arcana with the December 10th changes, would it be possible to review the Fire Adept traits and give us at least one generalist trait that was attractive?

The new Fire II seems useful, but it will be hidden behind:

• Conjurer (useless given the water changes have made us more reliant on slotting cantrips, not less by moving up the generalist Cleansing Wave and Cantrip Mastery down)
• Lava Tomb (a trait to improve downed state, awesome)
• Spell Slinger (heaven forbid we slot anything but cantrips)
• Misc traits that improve burning (everyone agrees condition builds aren’t currently viable, adding burning duration is particularly terrible and yet is one of the new traits)

Thank you for the consideration.

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

We’re on the shortest clock vs dps conditions having the lowest hp and absolutely no complete condition wipes. We absolutely need short cd cleanses as just a minimal maintenance vs conditions, & it’s one of the last useful specialties for us to bring (right there with cycling buffs from Elemental Attunement…) and still… many players don’t even value it as our contribution. A ten second cleanse for us is our only reliable maintenance vs any sort of condition. Our hp is too low to try and stall for our 50 second dagger cleanse or 40 second cleansing fire cooldown.

We need the tier 1 AOE cleanse to be valuable/viable. Our minor trait is useless, and the practicality of using it every 10 seconds is akin to saying water attunement weapon skills are never worth using over a single condi cleanse. Not to mention… we don’t have any way outside of runes of lyssa to wipe conditions off ourselves! 1 cleanse every ten seconds amounts to… falling behind. The profession with the lowest hp and armor is already on a really short clock vs condition dps, and we have to eat effects like chill and cripple just to keep it available in case someone puts a poison on us and auto-wins.

Keep universally valuable, splashable abilities in tier 1, and specialized abilities in higher tiers. Filling tier 1 with overly-specialized abilities and making them go to 20 to splash a trait destroys the class. Yes, that’s exactly what it’ll be. Going to 20 to splash a trait, making it so any build outside of water has 50 points to work with instead of 60. Oh, but then there’s people who don’t really want to go into arcane, either, but they’ve got to go 20 in to splash a trait… leaving 30 points to make a unique build. Then again, evasive arcana’s around the corner….

Elementalists will get 30 points to make a unique build unless they want to make a 1 trick pony gimmick build.

Talents you can splash for 10 are a good thing, not a bad thing. Make more talents available at 10 that are universally beneficial to every build in all the trait lines, put slightly more specialized abilities in Master, and highly specialized in Grand Master.

Oniyui.8279 said it perfectly.

Hi, so about this patch :

1)

Fire II – Burning Fire – This trait has a new effect. Use Cleansing Fire automatically when you have a number of conditions on you. 3 conditions. 40 second cooldown. Moved to Master tier.

Very good change,nothing to add, now it’s a good trait
I suppose it can be affected by the trait that reduces cantrips CD ?

2)

Fire III – Ember’s Might. The effect of this trait has been changed to Burns you apply last longer. 25%.

Much better this way

3]

Burning Rage 25 – Increased damage dealt to burning foes from 5% to 10%.

Very good to apply the damage to this minor instead of taking the adept major, better designed

4]

Air XI – Tempest Defense. Decreased the cooldown from 60s to 25s.

Now that’s huge and a very good change, providing a strong defense for eles, whether being GC or bunker. This trait will probably become one of the must have, as well as …

5)

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

Wow, that’s just great, so awesome ! Given the low healthpool of an elementalist, it should not be OP, just very good.
However, I definitely agree with somebody who posted there should be a visual clue/buff so that we can see this immunity. So much better than how it is currently.

6) Changes to water line :
Well OK, nothing much to say it’s pretty hard to see the impact except the trait reducing cantrip CDs moving to adept, it’s pretty good

7) Changes to Arcana :
Very good changes once again, especially giving up the idea of vigor in crit staying in adept. Still the other one, Arcane Retribution I think, moving to master is going to be pretty lackluster there.

However ….

8) Focus still pretty weak with fire, scepter auto attacks still bad (except in air) and Staff in air still so bad …

To sum up, very good changes, definitely going into the right direction. It’s a shame for #8 but maybe for later.

Ladies and Gentlement, :P

Elemental Attunement as a whole is not a staple to elementalists. The protection on Elemental Attunement is.

EA is a good party support skill. EA is versatile. EA has good synergy with the water traitline, which happens to be one of our best traitlines. But although all of those characteristics help making EA a strong trait, none of them make it a staple.

5 (8) seconds of protection under a 10-ish second cooldown is what makes all elementalists require it to survive.

EA is as much as a “staple” to the class as Renewing Stamina. Who cares about the 1 stack of might? Who cares about 6s of swiftness? They’re all okay-ish, but that’s not why all eles absolutely want to have it.

So, again, one of the core flaws of our profession is the survival. And this is something that must surely be addressed someday.

When people suggest an HP increase, they are just suggesting the easiest solution. I understand when Anet says that all classes should be balanced around its own unique base stat values. But, I wonder, wouldn’t it make it more sense for the Mesmer to have the low HP value and for the Elementalist to have the mid HP value? The Mesmers have clones, stealth, and stronger active defenses than ourselves.

Because the root of all this is the original design behind the elementalist. Anet has said, before the launch of the game, the following: to compensate for the low passive defense, we would have stronger active defenses.

That’s all fine in theory. But those “stronger active defenses” weren’t given to us. They were given to the mesmer.

It’s the mesmer that has easier access to blocks and invulnerability and teleporting and stealth and clones and confusion and torment and interrupts.

And us elementalists have gotten auras, which require us to get hit before doing anything, and so they’re most useful when we have stronger passive defense. And us elementalists have been given plenty of healing skills, which are the most useful when we have, again, stronger passive defense (toughness & healing). And we elementalists have been given slow-to-cast blinds or slow-to-cast defensive skills (most staff’s defenses). Which are more useful when we have – guess what? Stronger passive defense. Only our stuns/ KDs seem to be neutral enough, to be equally powerful regardless of our builds.

THIS is the problem with the elementalist’s survival. We were mechanically designed to depend more on active defenses, but those active defenses were given to the Mesmer. We need active defenses that don’t depend on stats. We need more blocks, more evades, more blinds, more of that stuff, and less auras and less healing. But those blocks, those evades, those blinds, and stealth, and confusion, and torment, and clones – all of them made more sense for the duelist/ trickster flavor of the mesmer profession, and so anet gave them the best and the most neutral active defenses.

So the solution can be simply enough:
- Swap the base health of the elementalist with the base health of the mesmer.

Or it can be a hard and time-consuming solution:
- Improve most of our active defenses across all our weapon skills to be more neutral. but then, won’t that make us way too similar to mesmers? Would that be a good solution?

Anet wanted a spellcasting profession with low passive defense and high active defense. That’s all lovely. They choose the elementalist for that role. Sure. But mechanically, that profession was the mesmer all along. Not the elementalist, unlike what Anet originally intended. And this is unfair to us.

Taldren.7523:

Personally, I think this would be a better change than those they proposed.

Fire: Condition Duration and Condition Damage (Burning might actually be decent)
Air: Critical Damage and Precision
Earth: Boon Duration and Toughness (Longer defense buffs without the need of Arcana)
Water: Healing Power and Vitality
Arcana: Attunement Cooldown and Power (Gives more spec choices access to power without gimping themselves)

I like this remix of the trait line attribute bonuses. The 1 second Attunement Cooldown per 10 points isn’t much of a bonus anymore especially when paired with 10% Boon Duration per 10 points when compared with other lines.

The Fire Line is pretty weak right now and other than getting Power from the traitline itself, most of the trait options don’t do direct damage, but help with condition damage. A lot of Eles that invest in Fire are doing so because they want to add Power to their builds. We tend to “settle” on the lackluster choices provided by the Fire line instead of our other lines that offer stronger traits where we invest in those lines because we “want” those traits.

I like the idea of having access to Cleansing Fire in master tier for Fire and it’ll really help out with being able to invest 20 points in Fire while still being survivable. It’s a nice defensive option in an offensive tree. I’m curious to what’s going to happen with Grandmaster Fire traits because as of now the options just aren’t that appealing to go full 30 into Fire…

Persisting Flames is a cool Grandmaster trait as long as you can get your combo finishers off . I didn’t like the whole gimmick of everything tied down to blast finishing off my 1 combo fire field, but when it works it’s pretty nice having a lot of Fury.

What I didn’t like about Pyromancer’s Puissance is that it basically forces you to stay in Fire if you want to get the max benefit out of it. The time between attunement cooldown is what made this trait unappealing to me too.

I wanna know what you guys think about Grandmaster Fire options???

Peace!

- Mel

Belorn.2659:

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.

That’s your problem. You’re trying to use a support weapon as a dueling weapon. You might down the bads at best.

Maybe even catch a decent one off guard if you’re good at placing your CC and you’re something of a glass spec VS another squishy.

But in general, staff isn’t designed for 1vs1. It’s designed for team play.

It does godly damage and among the best CC in the game… in a team setting with smart, defensive play.

A good staff elementalist in the backline of a small team can change the entire outcome of a fight. 6vs15 WvW? Doable.

Staff has strong defensive abilities, damage, cleanse, and healing.

It can get the user out of fire for a time. In a group fight, this works because you’re not the only person they have to worry about.

In a 1vs1 setting, that’s not so. It’s not a 1vs1 weapon. Ideally, it might give you enough breathing room to hold them back until you get some help.

If you want a mobile dueling playstyle, you want to look at scepter or dagger. Staff will never be an ideal dueling weapon against better players.

ThiBash.5634:

Being a staff ele, I’m having a hard time trying to figure out how to make Diamond Skin work for my build. My main issue isn’t the traits, but rather the condition damage being (nearly) useless. Eruption’s trigger delay pretty much ruins all hope of hitting with it.

Now, while I know this is a trait rebalance, I still propose to add the following change to Eruption:

New Eruption:
Duration: 3 seconds
Damage: 154 per second (0.417 modifier)
2 stack bleeding per second: 12 s (3060 damage total)
Radius: 240
Combo Finisher: Blast after 3 seconds
Range: 1,200

Basically spread the effect over 3 seconds, with just 1 blast finisher of course. The first and second tick would start respectively 2 and 1 seconds before the final tick, with the final tick being the blast finisher at the same instant that the whole skill triggers now.

This is a brilliant idea for Eruption. Love it. I hope they might consider this.

Guardian Staff definitely beats out Elementalist Staff for worst 1v1 weapon

Just saying…

EDIT: However like Ele, the Guard staff is epic in a group situation.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Ladies and Gentlement, :P

Elemental Attunement as a whole is not a staple to elementalists. The protection on Elemental Attunement is.

EA is a good party support skill. EA is versatile. EA has good synergy with the water traitline, which happens to be one of our best traitlines. But although all of those characteristics help making EA a strong trait, none of them make it a staple.

5 (8) seconds of protection under a 10-ish second cooldown is what makes all elementalists require it to survive.

EA is as much as a “staple” to the class as Renewing Stamina. Who cares about the 1 stack of might? Who cares about 6s of swiftness? They’re all okay-ish, but that’s not why all eles absolutely want to have it.

So, again, one of the core flaws of our profession is the survival. And this is something that must surely be addressed someday.

When people suggest an HP increase, they are just suggesting the easiest solution. I understand when Anet says that all classes should be balanced around its own unique base stat values. But, I wonder, wouldn’t it make it more sense for the Mesmer to have the low HP value and for the Elementalist to have the mid HP value? The Mesmers have clones, stealth, and stronger active defenses than ourselves.

Because the root of all this is the original design behind the elementalist. Anet has said, before the launch of the game, the following: to compensate for the low passive defense, we would have stronger active defenses.

That’s all fine in theory. But those “stronger active defenses” weren’t given to us. They were given to the mesmer.

It’s the mesmer that has easier access to blocks and invulnerability and teleporting and stealth and clones and confusion and torment and interrupts.

And us elementalists have gotten auras, which require us to get hit before doing anything, and so they’re most useful when we have stronger passive defense. And us elementalists have been given plenty of healing skills, which are the most useful when we have, again, stronger passive defense (toughness & healing). And we elementalists have been given slow-to-cast blinds or slow-to-cast defensive skills (most staff’s defenses). Which are more useful when we have – guess what? Stronger passive defense. Only our stuns/ KDs seem to be neutral enough, to be equally powerful regardless of our builds.

THIS is the problem with the elementalist’s survival. We were mechanically designed to depend more on active defenses, but those active defenses were given to the Mesmer. We need active defenses that don’t depend on stats. We need more blocks, more evades, more blinds, more of that stuff, and less auras and less healing. But those blocks, those evades, those blinds, and stealth, and confusion, and torment, and clones – all of them made more sense for the duelist/ trickster flavor of the mesmer profession, and so anet gave them the best and the most neutral active defenses.

So the solution can be simply enough:
- Swap the base healing of the elementalist with the base healing of the mesmer.

Or it can be a hard and time-consuming solution:
- Improve most of our active defenses across all our weapon skills to be more neutral. but then, won’t that make us way too similar to mesmers? Would that be a good solution?

Anet wanted a spellcasting profession with low passive defense and high active defense. That’s all lovely. They choose the elementalist for that role. Sure. But mechanically, that profession was the mesmer all along. Not the elementalist, unlike what Anet originally intended. And this is unfair to us.

Don’t forget stun breaks with all this talk about active defenses!

Though I agree with most of your statements, I actually do find the aoe swiftness, might, and regen to be valuable assets, not just protection. I do acknowledge, though, that protection on demand is a must.

Lian Olsam.9541:

Did u try full berserker ele in dungeons and fotm? With no points on water u have 11k hp at lvl 80 i play 0-10-0-30-30 and i have to be very smart and fast or i m death, i have to use 3 defensive utility or i m death… and this is my dps build… doesent look so much dps but a death one make 0 damage.. i ve played with other eles with more dps build and i ve spent my timeto ress him… i have also a war and a guard at lvl 80 war is zerk too its really another world… open the lfg tool and u will see lf zerk war/mesmer for any content ppl lf ele only for bow on ac… i play ele since bwe its my main class… spvp is different i know but dpsing on pve atm its freaking hard also with my defensive dps build. So this patch wont work on dps pve contents or u do some modify on build like i wrote before o u have to design the mob attakking differently or i will go to play war if i wanna dps and guard if i wanna give support on team… i dont wanna play ele support i want dps with him

Btw thanks for talking with us

You have problems surviving with 0/10/0/30/30?

DiogoSilva.7089:

Ladies and Gentlement, :P

Elemental Attunement as a whole is not a staple to elementalists. The protection on Elemental Attunement is.

EA is a good party support skill. EA is versatile. EA has good synergy with the water traitline, which happens to be one of our best traitlines. But although all of those characteristics help making EA a strong trait, none of them make it a staple.

5 (8) seconds of protection under a 10-ish second cooldown is what makes all elementalists require it to survive.

So true man… The swiftness and regen is nice also but it’s mainly that Protection. That combined with Frost Aura givin -10% damage reduction is sooo crucial when you’re getting focused. I always thought EA was really powerful for only a 10 point investment and I can understand why they want to move it to Master tier. At the same time, they need to give us some more options on getting protection. Earth line would be a nice candidate. I always thought the Earth 25 trait was sketchy being 10% damage on full endurance within a condition damage & toughness line… maybe replace that with protection on dodge roll or something.

I’ve been training myself to get used to running w/o Elemental Attunement and it’s definitely a noticeable impact. It’s not the Might, Swiftness, or Regen I’m missing that I’m noticing… it’s the Protection. I’ve been playing with 2000-2500 toughness and nothing beats just having flat out -33% incoming damage.

Don’t get me wrong I get it… AoE Protection for 5s is really powerful for an Adept trait…. Go ahead and take Elemental Attunement away, just give me an option to apply Protection on myself. (Something aside from having to trait for glyphs & auras)

- Mel

Quiet an obvious one why powerr is playing with V in earth after they nerfed EA to master position. Protection. Without boon duration (high arcana or runes) it’s pretty low though. 3s per aura, with 2 auras on 25s cd, 1 on 40s + armor of earth, that’s 15s prot, 10s nothing, another 6s, 9s nothing, 3s etc… protection is definitly not spamable (EA) anymore and wise use is required.
I’m totally cool with that, but for the sake of balance make it so that ALL classes either spam their defense abilities (read: up duration on all traits/skill on ele) or ALL have to think about it (read: keep ele as is; kittening nerf most other classes).

Oniyui.8279:

Don’t forget stun breaks with all this talk about active defenses!

Oh yeah. Mesmers literally have stun breaks outside of their utility slots.

I don’t want to envy the Mesmer class, but there’s a reason why most mesmer’s builds are fine at surviving and over-lasting with zerker gear.

Classes should be unique, but I think swapping ele’s and mesmer’s health would retain their uniqueness, while giving more neutral active defenses to the ele would make it closer to the mesmer.

Anet has to rethink what they want for elementalist’s survival. Do they still have plans to make this profession revolve around “weak passive defenses but strong active defenses”? Well, then they need more active defenses that don’t depend heavily on vitality/ toughness/ healing power/ boon duration. Or are they willing to give that idea up and make the mesmer the official “low passive/ high active defense” class? Then they should swap each other’s health.

Ok, a lot of you guys are being completely ridiculous here about the Ele having bad survivability. In fights over 30 seconds we are as tanky as any class. In fights over a minute we are the tankiest, period. Our healing relative to other classes is amazingly good, and that absolutely has to be factored into any discussion on how survivable the class is. That said, that goes away immediately if you don’t have 15 in Water and 30 in Arcana. The problem isn’t that we don’t have survivability, it’s that you have to lock up 45 trait points in order to get it.

Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.

^This is a major error. I need to find a new class to play. No wonder no one wants to run staff eles any longer. Why the kitten would you do that? Why not just undo the few crumbs you threw us last balance update. Stupid stupid stupid.

Robert.1086:

Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.

^This is a major error. I need to find a new class to play. No wonder no one wants to run staff eles any longer. Why the kitten would you do that? Why not just undo the few crumbs you threw us last balance update. Stupid stupid stupid.

Staff Eles are still stupidly good in WvW. They are probably the single most essential role in a Zerg. If you’re trying to use staff as a solo weapon then sure, you’ll have a bad time, but it’s never been viable while solo, this doesn’t change that.

DD ele may well be prevented from playing in WvW by this change to arcane traits, leaving staff only boring role to play. Most DD’s also switch to staff for WvW giving big variety to play. Positive suggestions:
Arcana 5,6,11 really needed to work together, with a choice of 5 OR 6 it does not work.
1. Please only move one of 5 or 6 to adept.
2. Alternatively then perhaps making arcana 7 apply to dagger as well (still transfer to adept & abolish windborne dagger) would be a compromise to use instead of 6, leaving a trait Number free for something else – e.g focus.
3. Otherwise there will be no adept choice for DD as windborne dagger only works in combat. You could change it to apply speed generally so signet of air not needed.

4. Options 2&3 probably not enough without something else to compensate – maybe a boost on arcane precision % which would also encourage hybrid builds.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Oniyui.8279:

Don’t forget stun breaks with all this talk about active defenses!

Oh yeah. Mesmers literally have stun breaks outside of their utility slots.

I don’t want to envy the Mesmer class, but there’s a reason why most mesmer’s builds are fine at surviving and over-lasting with zerker gear.

Classes should be unique, but I think swapping ele’s and mesmer’s health would retain their uniqueness, while giving more neutral active defenses to the ele would make it closer to the mesmer.

Anet has to rethink what they want for elementalist’s survival. Do they still have plans to make this profession revolve around “weak passive defenses but strong active defenses”? Well, then they need more active defenses that don’t depend heavily on vitality/ toughness/ healing power/ boon duration. Or are they willing to give that idea up and make the mesmer the official “low passive/ high active defense” class? Then they should swap each other’s health.

My main is a mesmer and I don’t have stun breaks outside my utilities. If you are thinking Staff 2, that’s not a stun break.

I don’t find ele lacking for stun breaks at all — although there are some skills with stun break that don’t make much sense (cough glyphs cough). A stun break should be on a skill that’s reactive, not proactive (that’s what stability is for). EDIT: I think this is temporary as the stun breaks were moved around a few patches ago so cantrips didn’t have a monopoly. I think it’s something ANet will correct with time.

I’ve been playing my ele a lot and I don’t think it’s as bad as players make it out to be. The mesmer is quite gimicky with stealth and clones. The thief is gimicky with stealth. Those two things along make it so you cannot really compare those classes with ele.

haviz.1340:

Lian Olsam.9541:

Did u try full berserker ele in dungeons and fotm? With no points on water u have 11k hp at lvl 80 i play 0-10-0-30-30 and i have to be very smart and fast or i m death, i have to use 3 defensive utility or i m death… and this is my dps build… doesent look so much dps but a death one make 0 damage.. i ve played with other eles with more dps build and i ve spent my timeto ress him… i have also a war and a guard at lvl 80 war is zerk too its really another world… open the lfg tool and u will see lf zerk war/mesmer for any content ppl lf ele only for bow on ac… i play ele since bwe its my main class… spvp is different i know but dpsing on pve atm its freaking hard also with my defensive dps build. So this patch wont work on dps pve contents or u do some modify on build like i wrote before o u have to design the mob attakking differently or i will go to play war if i wanna dps and guard if i wanna give support on team… i dont wanna play ele support i want dps with him

Btw thanks for talking with us

You have problems surviving with 0/10/0/30/30?

He’s a liar, we shouldn’t pay much attention to him. If he has 30 in Water then he has more than the base health. Also, his argument seems to be that if full Zerker is viable on any class then it should be viable on every class, which is silly.

Moonglum.4659:

DD ele may well be prevented from playing in WvW by this change to arcane traits, leaving staff only boring role to play. Most DD’s also switch to staff for WvW giving big variety to play. Positive suggestions:
Arcana 5,6,11 really needed to work together, with a choice of 5 OR 6 it does not work.
1. Please only move one of 5 or 6 to adept.

They are only moving 5 to Master. 6 is staying at Adept, so we’re fine.

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

It takes a 30 point investment in Arcane traitline for it to be “on demand” every 10 seconds or did you forget eles base attunement recharge is currently 16 seconds(13 with new patch) That’s a 40 traitpoint investment (including the 10 in water to get cleansing wave) for 1 condi aoe cleanse( or 2 condi cleanse if you count evasive arcana ) every 10 seconds.