Guild Wars 2

So, what’s the solution?

• The easiest/ simplest one, would be to swap each profession’s health, fixing the lack of defenses of one and fixing the huge amount of defenses for the other. But being the easiest/ simplest solution might not necessarily mean it would be the best one, of course.
• The alternative solution, and probably the one that Anet wants us elementalists to discuss for, is to improve all the current underwhelming survival skills (lightning touch, gust and shockwave have unreliable functionality, dust devil, fire shield and freezing gust are underwhelming), improve our access to chill (suggestion: add chill in shatterstone’s effect, dare to buff freezing gust’s chill duration to 5 seconds aoe, consider making frost burst adding 1 second extra of chill, add good chill traits), rethink our access to mobility effects, add more defensive traits in our offensive traitlines, and consider improving our access to other defensive conditions. And then hope that the sum of all parts would fix this profession’s base survival. Will that be enough? Which chill traits could exist outside of water and arcane traitlines? Probably none. Is Anet willing to revert the mobility nerfs? Is Anet willing to make us closer to the mesmer’s or necromancer’s active defenses? Will Anet simply fill all our traitlines with defensive options? How should it be?

EDIT About mobility, with easier/ stronger access to chill effects in our weapon skills, elementalists would have an easier time escaping with a combination of chill + swiftness. It’s mechanically important for us, it’s flavorful, and allows us to escape without getting the old RTL back. Yes, speed + chill is already possible in current builds, but clearly not effective enough, is it? Besides, skills like dragon’s Tooth, Flamewall, Lava Font, etc, want and demand more anti-movement skills. I definitely think our access to chill should be stronger.

The issue is ele can t prevent his target to flee….
Rtl as gapcloser will be evaded from >300 range by anyone.
Anything else is on a huge cooldown.

Ele needs mobility on anything but staff or the ability to change weaponset.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

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.

I’ve already stated my opinion on this matter, but I’m a bit unconvinced by this synergy. Soothing Wave will have a 10s cooldown. That will make Cleansing Water effectively have a 10s cooldown as well.

Yeah well a 3 second cooldown condition cleanse (passive of sort) would be broken as ever

Edit: Found the source of information.

Zelyhn.8069:

Is anyone really using alacrity traits?

Aeromancer’s alacrity is very nice for d/d.

I use Aquamancer Alacrity and like it very much, thanks for asking.

Thanks for answering.

I still can not understand why someone would want to pick an alacrity trait, unless by default, since it buffs 25% of our skills at best (no conjures).

As a pure staff elementalist, I can honestly say that its survivability was few designed by you (ArenaNet). Staff skills are now larger and this is awesome but, it is yet way too slow to cast. I also want to mention the lack of condition varieties an elementalist can cast.
We cannot cast poison, which I see it’s well fittable in Earth style. We can’t inflict torment, again I see it’s fittable in Earth style. The other complaints I have are about the staff skills’s purposes.

Let me begin by Water which is our “based” and “last” way to survive:

1st: Geyser and Healing Rain – geyser last too shortly though it’s a water field. Healing Rain is large – that’s ok – grants regeneration – that’s ok – removes three conditions for a shot-mid time – that’s ok; but just because it’s meant supportive it doesn’t mean it can’t be aggressive, just like I’ve been told since I was a child: “The best defense is also the best attack.”
So my suggestion on those skills in order to improve them are: Geyser – push foes who enter it.
Healing rain – “wash away” foes’s boons in case they enter it, and of course, without taking the skill’s abilities like granting regen to allies, healing and water field [ The same for geyser and please, make that push unblockable].

2nd: Frozen field: It’s all the way awesome.
3rd: Ice Spike: this one delays too much to fall, giving enemies enough time to recover and dodge.

I also want to mention the ineffectiveness of some air skills like Gust. 68,7% of the time that skills is cast is lost. So what’s the mean of that?
Now let’s talk about fire: lava font could use more instant damage and last 1 second longer. [I’m saying what lots of people already said]…

Condition builds on PvE are nice for elementalist, but for sPvP and WvW they’re not so nice and I seriously don’t recommend. I would if Eruption was cast faster.

Zelyhn.8069:

I still can not understand why someone would want to pick an alacrity trait, unless by default, since it buffs 25% of our skills at best (no conjures).

20% because autoattacks don’t have cooldowns … and about 15% when you include utilities

Tyler Chapman.1832:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

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.

I’ve already stated my opinion on this matter, but I’m a bit unconvinced by this synergy. Soothing Wave will have a 10s cooldown. That will make Cleansing Water effectively have a 10s cooldown as well.

Yeah well a 3 second cooldown condition cleanse (passive of sort) would be broken as ever

… epic fail post. Thought you meant Soothing Mist. Soothing Wave definitely was a good choice of alteration.

Guizao.4167

So my suggestion on those skills in order to improve them are: Geyser – push foes who enter it.
…
of course, without taking the skill’s abilities like granting regen to allies, healing and water field [ The same for geyser and please, make that push unblockable].

So basically, you want Geyser to be Static Field, except that it also heals allies and works on the entire area instead of the edges.

Do you have any idea how insanely powerful that would be?

Does Static Field push? Considering it remains at about 3 seconds, well…

DiogoSilva.7089:

The problem with some of the ideas here, including the one about EA being inherent to the class, is that an elementalist would rely too much on boons.

Ok, ok, they already do for several of their builds. But not for all of them. I would like to see more incentives for elementalists to spec in fire’s condition duration for extra defense, although IMO, the condition stats from traits should be swapped out. It’s earth that wants more condition duration for blinds, weakness, etc so it can offer more protection. It’s fire that wants more condition damage, not only because burning is their main damage source from conditions, but also because condition duration has weak synergy with 1s burning ticks.

I would like to see the following:
Fire Magic
+ Power
+ Condition Damage
Earth Magic
+ Toughness
+ Condition Duration

It just feels more natural this way. And it would make earth builds with weakness and cripple strong enough defensively to justify speccing for it instead of speccing for water magic.

Back to minor traits, I like how they don’t rely on boons, especially because that makes them stronger alongside boons. Water 5th is stronger the way it is, because you can have it and regen at the same time. That’s cool. If elemental attunement was inherent to elementalist’s minor traits, we would get regen instead.

What lingering elements and the minor traits need, is for the later ones to be stronger. That’s it. Especially fire and air, as water’s already decent and earth’s should get decent as well.

Like I’ve said before, I feel that the only reason people feel that EA should be inherent, is the sustained protection. Likewise, the same can be said for renewing stamina. And for Water 15th, and for evasive arcana’s water effect. What this means is, players feel that everything that gives enough survival to the elementalist to make them viable should be inherent to the class. Why? Because the existence of better survival effects determines how viable the elementalist class is.

This reveals one of the biggest issues to this profession, aside the arcana/ attunement cooldown rate. Our profession can’t be viable without really strong defensive traits. And if Anet feels that those traits are too strong for adept tier, and that they need to be toned down to be in par with what they believe to be right, then the base survival of the elementalist needs to be improved.

And, like I’ve also said in another post in this thread, our profession was officially designed to depend more on active defenses instead of passive defenses, but most of our active defenses rely too much on passive stats to be strong enough to keep us alive (healing skills that demand healing power, you-must-get-hit auras that demand high toughness or vitality, boons that demand some boon duration, especially for protection). Our defensive conditions (cripple, weakness, blind) are not enough to be an alternative at times, and our stat-neutral active defenses are too few: we have a few stuns, KDs, blocks, reflections, but like I’ve already said too, the mesmer has better stat-neutral active defenses than we do.

EDIT
To the point that, it almost feels like mesmers are the ones that deserve the low base Health, and elementalists the mid base Health. Most mesmers only care about offensive stats, because their base survival is beyond fine. At the opposite situation, elementalists only care about defensive stats, because our base survival is bellow what it should. The elementalist’s exception to that is a very gimmick instant-kill burst build, that should be nerfed someday in pvp anyway. By swapping each other’s health, elementalists would still rely on defensive stats to improve most of their active stat-biased defenses, but they would be potentially viable with more offensive stats. Meanwhile, mesmers would still have enough active defenses to survive with offensive stats, but their really strong duelist builds would come fairly at a higher risk, and there would exist greater desire to invest on defensive stats for them.

I feel that elementalist’s and mesmer’s should have had their health swapped since launch. It makes more sense both ways.

Best post you’ve ever made Diogo!

+1

Zelyhn.8069:

I still can not understand why someone would want to pick an alacrity trait, unless by default, since it buffs 25% of our skills at best (no conjures).

Can’t blame you, it’s understandable since you’re pve’er.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I would like to see the following:
Fire Magic
+ Power
+ Condition Damage
Earth Magic
+ Toughness
+ Condition Duration

+1

in PvE the Elementalist is in a good position and can do most of the content naked and using only one hand.

What’s needed -again- is either the ability to deal outstanding and continus damage OR average damage with super high self sustainability to fill the gap of a broken mobility and a ridiculus passive defense system

Purifer.3946:

2) Every CD reduction trait is less effective (more or less half effective of those of a warrior).

I’m sorry to say but the CD reduction traits are not less effective, they only appear to be because “we have 20 skills”. Simply put, we are less likely to notice just how effective it is because it only affects 25% of the skills versus other profession’s 50%, but in both cases only 4 (8 for some traits if you count underwater combat) skills are affected. In fact, the Elementalist’s CD reduction traits are just as effective if not more so given how bad the cooldowns on our skills are. 20% off of a 40 second skill vs. 20% off of a 15 second skill. That’s 8 seconds removed vs. 3 seconds removed.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Adastra.9821:

Jon, please give this post a good read.

Another interesting thing about my argument, is that I could use Jon’s post to justify the health swap suggestion instead of using his post to counter it.

Well, that’s why I quoted Jon’s post and asked him to read it

Strongly disagree about swapping Ele and Mes Hp pools.

Try play both before advancing such weird suggestions.
Mesmer surely have few more tricks than Ele to avoid dmg, like Clones a couple of Stealth skills and 2 Invulnerabilities. But it’s not like Eles lacks of way to evade/mitigate dmg.
Most importantly Mesmer has also very little access to direct healing (except Restorative Mantra gimmick, and some regen here and there) and condi cleansing (Null field, Mantra and a couple of traits all toghether aren’t worth even half of Water magic line + Water attunement baseline self-support) compared to a Ele.
(assuming both bunker/tanky specced).
Aka: you’re suggesting this hp swap only out of frustration for Ele bad (and Mesmer so-so) perfomance in the game or you have actual good reasons for such change and you think it’d be beneficial for both of them?

/flameshieldup

On the other hand, Ele hp do is a issue. Either:
-give Ele that compensative “good thing” for having low hp and armor, like high dmg or high mobility or whatever
or
-up ele Hp.

Imo having low hp and armor is just fine. But Ele has been nerfed too much on core things that were justyfing those low stats. Undo some nerfs, namely things like RtL (low hp and armor: need high mobility evasion) or CW (again, i’m ok with low hp but i must have good cleansing/healing in return: i might have only 12k hp but i can replenish/save them mucu easier than other classes), and don’t move core things like Renewing stamina (nerf it if you need to, but remember to apply the same treatment across all classes). Just few examples.

If you really have to up Ele Hp, to me the best solution would be catching 2 birds with one stone, and do a global rebalance of Hp pools. Lower the gap between high (War/Nec, 18k) and low (Ele/Guard/Thief, 10,8k) Hp tiers, maybe having, instead of 18/15/10k (8k-ish gap), something like 17/15/13k (5k) or even lower gaps.

Anyway, any touch to hp pools would mean doing a massive rebalance to the prof, so it’s highly unlikely to happen imo.

The ranger and engineer has the same amount of health and armor. There is no reason an elementalist and mesmer can’t share the same amount of health.

At least then we wouldn’t be forced into water for health or pick an amulet with vitality. It does limit build diversity currently.

Still wondering why there isn’t any signet synnergy on the horizon. Soothing Wave and Shards of Ice wouldn’t be missed, should they want enable water traits to grant signets MUCH needed condition removal.

Then there is Glyph of Elemental Power and focus. What about those poor puppies?

@AndrewSX

I like your idea of rebalancing health pools across all classes. Cutting the mesmers health by 5k would require a complete reworking of the mesmer. Some of you make it sound like dropping 5k health overnight is no big deal because mesmer has a couple stealths. I sure am glad none of you are in charge of balance.

IMO the big issue is that necro/warrior is 18k base and Guard/Ele/thief are 10.3k base……that’s a huge difference. It blows my mind some to think that they thought a 8k difference would be easy to balance around.

As it stands now 10k base health can be one shot. Bring Guard/ele/thieves up to 13k base health and bring necro and warrior down to 17k base health. Bump Mes/engi/ranger down to 14.5k base.

I have 1800 hours played on mesmer and trust me dropping our health by 5k is not some small detail. Everything about the class would have to be completely overhauled.

AndrewSX.3794:

Anyway, any touch to hp pools would mean doing a massive rebalance to the prof, so it’s highly unlikely to happen imo.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Offense-vs-punishment-risk-vs-reward/first#post2912970

His ideas may not be entirely correct, but that’s why Anet doesn’t (always) do balance based on the forums. Well-written posts are often the starting points leading to great discussions as demonstrated in the collaborative development initiative and your own thoughts on health rebalancing.

DiogoSilva.7089:

So, what’s the solution?

• The easiest/ simplest one, would be to swap each profession’s health, fixing the lack of defenses of one and fixing the huge amount of defenses for the other. But being the easiest/ simplest solution might not necessarily mean it would be the best one, of course.
• The alternative solution, and probably the one that Anet wants us elementalists to discuss for, is to improve all the current underwhelming survival skills (lightning touch, gust and shockwave have unreliable functionality, dust devil, fire shield and freezing gust are underwhelming), improve our access to chill (suggestion: add chill in shatterstone’s effect, dare to buff freezing gust’s chill duration to 5 seconds aoe, consider making frost burst adding 1 second extra of chill, add good chill traits), rethink our access to mobility effects, add more defensive traits in our offensive traitlines, and consider improving our access to other defensive conditions. And then hope that the sum of all parts would fix this profession’s base survival. Will that be enough? Which chill traits could exist outside of water and arcane traitlines? Probably none. Is Anet willing to revert the mobility nerfs? Is Anet willing to make us closer to the mesmer’s or necromancer’s active defenses? Will Anet simply fill all our traitlines with defensive options? How should it be?

EDIT About mobility, with easier/ stronger access to chill effects in our weapon skills, elementalists would have an easier time escaping with a combination of chill + swiftness. It’s mechanically important for us, it’s flavorful, and allows us to escape without getting the old RTL back. Yes, speed + chill is already possible in current builds, but clearly not effective enough, is it? Besides, skills like dragon’s Tooth, Flamewall, Lava Font, etc, want and demand more anti-movement skills. I definitely think our access to chill should be stronger.

This a very good post Diogo excellent post. I think more access to chill could be a good option and fits thematically.

As far as the base health is concerned I think the one thing about that suggestion is that it won’t change how people build ele’s. If you gave my Ele 15k base health it would allow me to chose more gear. I would still run 20+ in water and 30+ arcana because it is fun. Now armed with that extra vitality would open up more gear choices but I don’t think it would make build diversity. A better solution is to just bump the Ele up to 15k and leave the Mesmer at 15k. I am not really in favor of dropping 5k hp from a profession for the sake of another profession. The storm that would arise as people complain about gear.

I think your suggestion of more access to chill is a good one. I can’t buy the RTL survivability argument because /F and Staff don’t get access to RTL. It is one weapon set not a class trait. I think RTL has to be thrown out the window because not everyone runs X/D.

The more I think about it even just bringing Ele/Guard/thieves up to 12k base health would really help and they wouldn’t really need to touch much else. Thieves may benefit a little too much from 2k more base health but I don’t think Guardians would change hardly at all with that buff. Meh it’s hard to say but Ele’s could for sure use the 2k health increase.

yanoch.7051:

Please tell me what 1 hit ability ou speak off? Since the nerf to stunt runes you have to be a really unlucky player to get the whole HB hit.

What about this Ele build?

<snip>

This one also

<snip>

I love when Ele’s run those builds! Just 1 dodge (or block) = all their damage gone, proceed to kill them in the next 2 seconds because they have absolutely no escapes, CC or defense whatsoever. Usually they die so fast that I don’t even know which of my abilities killed them ahahaha.

Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incoming critical hits. 10s recharge.

Honestly replacing unpopular traits with useless ones that only work in addition to a grand master trait isn t gona do much. I would add a blind or 2-3 sec weakness to that trait also on a 10-15 sec cooldown.

Suggestion Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incoming critical hits and blind (or weaken)your foe for 3 seconds. 12s recharge.

now we have a trait that realy is atractiv and exctly helps the ele where he needs it in avoiding spike
I feel the elementalists lacks defensiv skills during combat. My Guard has got 3 blinds, all of them do good dmg 2 are gap closers, leap finishers and 1 even removes a condition, then focus 5 is 3 blocks and good burst potental, sword 2 blocks projectiles, my heal blocks, my elite blocks. Together with AH or Healing meditations and heals on dodge he s got as much self heal as the ele has, when not more and all that in adition to around 3 k armor with 5 berserker pieces.
If I look @ the ele he just doesn t have enough spike mitigation and is pressed defensivly as soon as he gets hit. scepter has got 2 blinds, the earth one is dire, cast time, not doing any dmg @ all and having no second function, and earth 2 has a slight armor increase.
Staff has got good cc ability, and 1 movement skill, my warrior s got 98% cc cond reduction and 2-3 times stability, there s certainly no staff ele gona stop me from killing anything. The blind is weak and the pressure on a single target is nonexistant. The Staff eles I can t ignore hit me with fireballs of 1.6k dmg, when I hit em with my hammer they eat 4k+ per swing final trust can hit up to 7k+ dmg
the only weapon that offers good defensiv skills is the focus, but @ the loss of mobility and dmg.

Thyophelis.8035:

Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incoming critical hits. 10s recharge.

Honestly replacing unpopular traits with useless ones isn t gona do much. I would add a blind or 2-3 sec weakness to that trait also on a 10-15 sec cooldown.

Suggestion Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incoming critical hits and blind (or weaken)your foe for 3 seconds. 12s recharge.

I feel the elementalists lacks defensiv skills during combat. My Guard has got 3 blinds, all of them do good dmg 2 are gap closers, leap finishers and 1 even removes a condition, then focus 5 is 3 blocks and good burst potental, sword 2 blocks projectiles, my heal blocks, my elite blocks. Together with AH or Healing meditations and heals on dodge he s got as much self heal as the ele has, when not more.
If I look @ the ele he just doesn t have enough. scepter has got 2 blinds, the earth one is dire, cast time, not doing any dmg @ all and having no second function, and earth 2 has a slight armor increase.
Staff has got good cc ability, and 1 movement skill, my warrior s got 98% cc cond reduction and 2-3 times stability, there s certainly no staff ele gona stop me from killing anything. The blind is weak and the pressure on a single target is nonexistant. The Staff eles I can t ignore hit me with fireballs of 1.6k dmg, when I hit em with my hammer they eat 4k+ per swing final trust can hit up to 7k+ dmg
the only weapon that offers good defensiv skills is the focus, but @ the loss of mobility and dmg.

Run S/D there is plenty of blinds there. The soothing wave trait is pretty good for a adept tier trait. Regen with out having to go into water that is sustain that you have that doesn’t depend on you blowing a cantrip or a 6th skill. The real gem of it is with 30 water otherwise I wouldn’t take it over the other options. More healing without having to go into water is a very good trait. I think 5 sec (base) would be better though.

Are you sure it is Soothing Wave that is getting redesigned and not Soothing Mist? I have seen a few posts by Tyler where he says Soothing Mist, not Wave. If it’s Soothing Wave, then cool beans. Soothing Mist.. ow.

Malcastus.6240:

Are you sure it is Soothing Wave that is getting redesigned and not Soothing Mist? I have seen a few posts by Tyler where he says Soothing Mist, not Wave. If it’s Soothing Wave, then cool beans. Soothing Mist.. ow.

It is soothing wave

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview-Updated-Nov-6th/page/30#post3157728

@ Diogo

What if Elemental shielding – protection on aura’s became inherent bumped up to 4 seconds base maybe even 5 seconds.

If we compare the classes raw no traits. Mesmer can get protection randomly from chaos storm and from Signet of inspiration.

So with the lower health pool couldn’t the argument be made that 4-5 seconds of protection on aura inherent with no trait point invest be justified? That could still be stripped or corrupted as counter play.

While we don’t have retal we do get protection and more protection would most certainly help and be balanced as long as it isn’t looked at as every ele specs boon duration because many do not go boon duration anymore. Does this help Focus yes because of fire aura, it helps staff because of Magnetic aura, it helps d/d because of shocking and frost and it helps S/D because of frost aura. For additional protection with out going boon duration grab GoEH and elemental attunement if you want.

oZii.2864:

Thyophelis.8035:

Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incoming critical hits. 10s recharge.

Honestly replacing unpopular traits with useless ones isn t gona do much. I would add a blind or 2-3 sec weakness to that trait also on a 10-15 sec cooldown.

Suggestion Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incoming critical hits and blind (or weaken)your foe for 3 seconds. 12s recharge.

I feel the elementalists lacks defensiv skills during combat. My Guard has got 3 blinds, all of them do good dmg 2 are gap closers, leap finishers and 1 even removes a condition, then focus 5 is 3 blocks and good burst potental, sword 2 blocks projectiles, my heal blocks, my elite blocks. Together with AH or Healing meditations and heals on dodge he s got as much self heal as the ele has, when not more.
If I look @ the ele he just doesn t have enough. scepter has got 2 blinds, the earth one is dire, cast time, not doing any dmg @ all and having no second function, and earth 2 has a slight armor increase.
Staff has got good cc ability, and 1 movement skill, my warrior s got 98% cc cond reduction and 2-3 times stability, there s certainly no staff ele gona stop me from killing anything. The blind is weak and the pressure on a single target is nonexistant. The Staff eles I can t ignore hit me with fireballs of 1.6k dmg, when I hit em with my hammer they eat 4k+ per swing final trust can hit up to 7k+ dmg
the only weapon that offers good defensiv skills is the focus, but @ the loss of mobility and dmg.

Run S/D there is plenty of blinds there. The soothing wave trait is pretty good for a adept tier trait. Regen with out having to go into water that is sustain that you have that doesn’t depend on you blowing a cantrip or a 6th skill. The real gem of it is with 30 water otherwise I wouldn’t take it over the other options. More healing without having to go into water is a very good trait. I think 5 sec (base) would be better though.

with plenty you mean 2? one of it has a cast time and does basicly no dmg. the other does no dmg at all. compared to other classes blinds who always have a secondary effect and dmg on top of that the earth blind is pretty crap. Necros have an ae blind that transfers 3 conditions and does dmg. thiefs have ae blind, smoke fields. the ae blinds on my guard hit for up to 2k dmg and are gap closers.
I mean lets be honest what does the new trait do? Most eles have perma regen on them, so all this trait does is remove 1 condition every 10 sec when you get critical hit and you need a grandmaster trait for it to work. even worth is if this trait goes off at the wrong time 1-4 sec before or after you switched to water, gaining no benefit from it at all..
One reason to use it, could be if you don t have elemental atunement anymore. So in order for an elementalist to get what he had trough elemental atunement is basicly spend 30 points in weak adept tiers to get half the duration of the boons he had before with Elemental attunement.

You loose regen and vigor on cantrips, which is an on demand 1 cond removal.
For prolly 95% of the ele builds this is just another useless trait in the adept water trait.

I don t understand people advocating this changes. besides the 13 sec base elemental attunement recharge, it s just nerfs for a class that is already at the bottom of the food chain.
Eles need help to cope with spike dmg and condition bursts, the sustain is fine atm.. a blind on crit would go exactly in the right direction.

Thyophelis.8035:

with plenty you mean 2? one of it has a cast time and does basicly no dmg. the other does no dmg at all. compared to other classes blinds who always have a secondary effect and dmg on top of that the earth blind is pretty crap. Necros have an ae blind that transfers 3 conditions and does dmg. thiefs have ae blind, smoke fields. the ae blinds on my guard hit for up to 2k dmg and are gap closers.
I mean lets be honest what does the new trait do? Most eles have perma regen on them, so all this trait does is remove 1 condition every 10 sec when you get critical hit and you need a grandmaster trait for it to work. You loose regen and vigor on cantrips, which is an on demand 1 cond removal.
For prolly 95% of the ele builds this is just another useless trait in the adept water trait.

It is adept tier though. Cleansing Fire if traited is 32 seconds 3 conditions what makes that utility good is that it is on demand burst. That trait would basically be cleansing fire but passive while you can still take cleansing fire and soothing disruption with it.

So you could remove

4 conditions (cleansing fire+soothing disruption and cleansing water) every 40 seconds or what amounts to 4 conditions every 10 seconds.

Lightning flash + Armor of earth/mist Form is another 2 conditions

Elemental attunement combined with 30 water for 1 more condition

If you take EA that is another condition

Along side 1 condition every 10 seconds with soothing wave + cleansing water.

So that is 8 conditions + a passive 1 condition every 10 seconds (though it does depend on you getting crit but the crit doesnt have to come from the condition enemy)

If you get hit by a crit every 10 seconds soothing wave + cleansing water = same condition removal as cleansing flame passively.

Attrition condition builds have never been a problem for ele it is burst condition builds like necro and engi. You can still burst remove conditions while having a passive condition removal against attrition style conditions. This isn’t even factoring in dagger offhand water 5, ether renewal, GoeH with 30 water, magnetic wave with focus.

As far as blinds go the 2 are pretty good blinding flash in instant in air and 900 range. Dust devil hits foes in a line on a 15 sec cd. It isn’t like ele stays in Air or stays in Earth. So they should add a blind to fire attunement and water also? Your guardian can stay on those weapon sets depending on the fight. A ele doesn’t stay in Air or Earth for very long.

you cannot control when you get crit hit, this trait will probably go off in the window 1-4 sec before or after you changed to water and you gain 0, nada, nothing from your adept tier.

together with elemental attunement this trait is useless. And I still consider elemental atunement to be the best trait for an elementalist.

Thyophelis.8035:

you cannot control when you get crit hit, this trait will probably go off in the window 1-4 sec before or after you changed to water and you gain 0, nada, nothing from your adept tier.

together with elemental attunement this trait is useless. And I still consider elemental atunement to be the best trait for an elementalist.

In sPvP it will have the icd on cleansing water in WvW this is better since there is no icd. With 30 in water and 20 in arcana for elemental attunement this is way better than taking cleansing wave. I don’t run cleansing wave anyway and take cantrip mastery but I will probably drop cantrip mastery for soothing wave+soothing disruption+cleansing water.

Anyone that has fought D/D ele or S/D that isn’t fresh air plenty of times knows that you burst the ele after he comes out of water that is when it is the most weakest. This helps in those fights against someone that knows how ele usually works. Your in Air and passively removing a stack of bleeds while you keep pressure up lightning whip spamming. This also helps SOR users alot with passive condition removal.

You are fighting a non condition build who has a immobilize or cripple that is pretty long. You just wiped it and keep applying pressure or kiting. Hammer warriors come to mind with it’s 7 second base duration cripple.

In sPvP maybe they should drop the ICD on cleansing water now it would really help ele alot there.

o i didn t know that cleansing water doesn t have a icd in wvw. wierd I droped it after that patch, when cleansing flame was no stun braker anymore and I was forced to used ether renewal

so lets agree in Spvp with elemental attunement the trait is still useless?

Thyophelis.8035:

o i didn t know that cleansing water doesn t have a icd in wvw. wierd I droped it after that patch, when cleansing flame was no stun braker anymore and I was forced to used ether renewal

so lets agree in Spvp with elemental attunement the trait is still useless?

Yea I would agree there. Yea in WvW cleansing water doesn’t have a icd.

oZii.2864:

Thyophelis.8035:

o i didn t know that cleansing water doesn t have a icd in wvw. wierd I droped it after that patch, when cleansing flame was no stun braker anymore and I was forced to used ether renewal

so lets agree in Spvp with elemental attunement the trait is still useless?

Yea I would agree there. Yea in WvW cleansing water doesn’t have a icd.

So a 3 sec weakness / blind in addition would make sense and actually adress one of the core problems the ele has.

there’s two traits that have still bothered me (kinda) since release: Elemental Surge and Arcane Precision, mainly arcane precision. I just wish it was a better trait for a GM… A 10% chance on crit is unnoticeable but the trait itself is kinda decent as a minor trait. one thing that I’d like to see changed is just the titles swapped with each other. so the minor trait in GM would be Elemental Precision, then the major GM would be Arcane Surge. It would just make more sense description-wise…2nd, the critical hit chance of Arcane Precision(Elemental Precision) should be buffed to something like 25% at least.

Geomancers Freedom is pretty lackluster, considering warriors have Dogged March for an adept trait and it gives 3sec regen on a 10s CD every time they are chilled, crippled or immobd. Personally, i really think that Geomancers Freedom should be combined with Rock Solid to be worth a master trait.

I know i’m not the only one who wants a CD reduction on Armor of Earth, as well as Earth’s Embrace…
The last thing I want to suggest, though it might be a little OP, is if Soothing Winds removed immobilized, crippled and weakness whenever you applied swiftness to yourself. and I realize you can just use Windborne speed on staff, but this might help with mobility…though there’s only so many movement skills that elementalists have. I just didn’t know what else to suggest.

but so far, I like some of the changes being made that won’t force ele’s into 30 arcana anymore. It’ll be interesting to see how people like ele after the patch…

I was actually thinking elemental shielding permanent for all aura’s rock solid moved down to adept in earth and geomancer can stay at master on it’s own geo isn’t great but it is good when you combine it with food or melandru/hoelbrak runes. That would still mean there needs to be a new earth trait at master tier.

As an “older” player (age > 40), I’m not such a fast clicker than 25 years ago when starting playing console/pc games => not going to learn to play those “faster clicking combinations” like d+d (and guardian with hammer + auto attack is boring). So I don’t mind if my staff is slow, but it has some issues when not fast clicker to get full benefit from auras, boons, cantrips etc..

1) inflicting condition dmg, not enough power at the moment, so using earth traits give mainly more toughness => rather use water to heal

2) control effects, in wvwvw quite limited against bigger zerk
- change “Blast Staff”=> “Blast Weapon”, increase all weapon radius 10%, increase all weapon range 10%
- Unsteady Ground, Meteor Shower quite weak compared to off-hand dagger
- for example Meteor Shower, could cause “Daze” or “Confusion”

3) chill should affect to all classes, ie slowing down everything : all cooldowns, weapon swap weapons, swap pet, ……

4) why ele weapon skills or traits doesn’t remove boons from foes compared to necro’s grim specter/well of power or mesmer null field/phantamsal disenchanter?
maybe mist form, remove 1 boon from all foes, radius 240 => so that even when running away, can help my team in wvwvw

Dweia Tulenhenki.8127:

As an “older” player (age > 40), I’m not such a fast clicker than 25 years ago when starting playing console/pc games => not going to learn to play those “faster clicking combinations” like d+d (and guardian with hammer + auto attack is boring). So I don’t mind if my staff is slow, but it has some issues when not fast clicker to get full benefit from auras, boons, cantrips etc..

1) inflicting condition dmg, not enough power at the moment, so using earth traits give mainly more toughness => rather use water to heal

2) control effects, in wvwvw quite limited against bigger zerk
- change “Blast Staff”=> “Blast Weapon”, increase all weapon radius 10%, increase all weapon range 10%
- Unsteady Ground, Meteor Shower quite weak compared to off-hand dagger
- for example Meteor Shower, could cause “Daze” or “Confusion”

3) chill should affect to all classes, ie slowing down everything : all cooldowns, weapon swap weapons, swap pet, ……

4) why ele weapon skills or traits doesn’t remove boons from foes compared to necro’s grim specter/well of power or mesmer null field/phantamsal disenchanter?
maybe mist form, remove 1 boon from all foes, radius 240 => so that even when running away, can help my team in wvwvw

I can quite agree with numbers 1, 3 and 4.

As for number 2, when against a zerg, there’s nothing better than the staff for utility and team support. Water Fields plus Static Field and Unsteady Ground can wreak havoc. Staff is the master weaponset for large scale battles. The other weapon sets can do quite fine but excel much more in small team fights and roaming and even 1v1 or 1vx compared to staff. Each weaponset has its own pros and cons and it’s not such a bad thing.

Dweia Tulenhenki.8127:

- for example Meteor Shower, could cause “Daze” or “Confusion”

That might be a little over the top. You can however get chill on your targets if you combine Meteor Shower with Glyph of Elemental Power (cast in Water Attunement).

Adastra.9821:

AndrewSX.3794:

Anyway, any touch to hp pools would mean doing a massive rebalance to the prof, so it’s highly unlikely to happen imo.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Offense-vs-punishment-risk-vs-reward/first#post2912970

His ideas may not be entirely correct, but that’s why Anet doesn’t (always) do balance based on the forums. Well-written posts are often the starting points leading to great discussions as demonstrated in the collaborative development initiative and your own thoughts on health rebalancing.

Yes. Even though I’ve spent some sweet time writing that many posts defending an health swap between both professions, if I was a developer, I probably wouldn’t do it (but certainly consider it). My posts were to put things into a new perspective, and as you’ve said, to be a starting point. Anet wanted the elementalist profession to rely on active defenses, in order to compensate for their lack of passive defenses, but mesmer was given the most neutral defenses while most of the elementalist’s defenses rely on the very same passive stats that they were originally designed to compensate for. We have a conflicting design here. We have a profession that wants passive defenses to improve not only their passive survival, but their active survival as well.

@AndrewSX, I remember defending a shorter gap between health before, but for some reason, I totally forgot to mention that here! The problem is, some of the professions are totally fine with their current health values. Guardian, for example, is one of the best professions across all game modes, and they have the health of an elementalist.

@Malcastus, I’ve also thought of the ranger’s and engineer’s base values being the same. There’s no medium armor user with a high health base. I don’t see the problem with elementalists getting medium health and sharing the same base values as the mesmer. Both professions are still completely different.

@oZii, I’ve been suggesting that buff to elemental shielding too. Both in this thread and in the universal dec 10th balance discussion thread. Haven’t got an answer, but my main argument is that elemental shielding mostly affects mh dagger builds, and mh dagger builds are the ones that need defense the most. If they weren’t overpowered with elemental attunement offering 8s of protection, would they suddenly become so with (assuming no points in arcana for aurasharing builds) 3 seconds of protection per aura? That’s two auras under 25 and 40 seconds cooldown. The fire aura from the leap is not always simple to trigger, and the shocking aura from tempest defense trait is triggered by your opponent, so many times it might not affect your party. I don’t see how it would be overpowered. In fact, in the current situation, I’d dare to say that an aurasharing build is better without 30 in air for tempest defense, even after its buff, just for the sake of 20 in arcana for elemental attunement (plus all the goodies from +20% boon duration and renewing stamina).

Okay, time to suggest more specific changes. I’m only going to address our poor base survival, not every single underpowered skill we have (like most of our auto-attacks).

Based on my reflections:

1. We need more stat-neutral active defenses. Can’t be too close to what other professions (especially mesmer) already have to offer.

• How: mesmer is naturally poor at mobility, and elementalists have the flavor of air and thunder to go for them. Evasion also fits that flavor, but needs restrictions to not overshadow thieves, rangers, etc.

2. We need more stat-driven active defenses that don’t rely on boon/ healing/ defense

• How: Chill is part of our flavor, and it so happens that it synergies well when alongside mobility. Torment could be a possible addition to earth (or outside of it!) not only to make our condition builds more viable, but so that the condition damage stat can also be used with defensive purposes. Finally, retaliation relies on power, and even though we’re tapping into guardian’s/ mesmer’s ground here, it fits with fire aura.

3. We need defensive traits in our offensive traitlines

4. We need our underwhelming survival skills to be made stronger

Mobility, evasion and more defensive air traits

• Ride the Lightning shouldn’t have twice the cooldown if the hit is blocked or evaded. The cooldown nerf was meant to hit it as an escape skill, not as a leap skill, but this detail nerfs the skill in both ways, and makes escaping more unreliable after using it as a leap.
• Ride the Lightning shouldn’t auto-target if the auto-targetting option is on.
• One with Air: Buff super speed’s duration to 2 seconds or 2.5 seconds. Make super speed ignore the speed cap restrictions outside of combat.
• Aeromancer’s Alacrity or new trait: Add evasion to Ride the Lightning, Swirling Winds and Windborne Speed (aka, all #4 air skills). The former would last RTL’s duration, the later two would be a passive 1 second of evasion party wide. Alternatively, add evasion to RTL in Windborne Dagger.
• Zephyr’s Speed: Revamp to add 33% passive endurance regen while in air instead.

Higher access to chill, and possibilities for torment

• Make Fire Magic add condition damage instead of duration. Make Earth Magic add condition duration instead of damage.
• Freezing Gust: Add torment in addition to chill (inspired by GW1’s skill Winter’s embrance) or improve chill duration. Add a radius effect.
• New trait, Winter’s Embrance (inspired by the skill of the same name in GW1), or just a revamped Piercing shards (sorry, Lightning Hammer users): whenever you apply chill, inflict torment.
• Shatterstone: Increase cooldown to 6s, add chill on the effect. Also helps dragon’s Tooth hitting. I might as well as suggest 2 extra stacks of vulnerability, from 4s to 6s, but that’s another matter.
• Shard of Ice trait: signets and arcane skills also inflict 1 second of chill.
• Stop, Drop and Roll: chills foes at the end of dodge roll, or:
• Revamp Stop, Drop and Roll to new trait (Winter’s Embrace name could also be used here): Chill lasts 25% longer.
• Comet to apply torment instead of, or in addition to, dazing. Ground-targetted.
• Hurl from Rock Barrier with slower animation, but applying low-duration torment per hit.

Improving other underwhelming skills

• Lightning Touch (and fire Grab for that matter) with improved functionality to hit more often.
• Dust Devil revamped. Perhaps in order to compensate for its cast time, which makes it impossible to time blind effectively, have the sandstorm move much slower, but apply blind each half a second. So enemies within it wouldn’t be able to hit anything while within the animation.
• Water Blast: have it heal self.
• Gust/ Shockwave: leave the speed, it’s the line effect that needs to be wider.
• Unsteady Ground: This skill doesn’t seems to work the first half second, or maybe it’s the cast time that needs to be finished before the skill is even activated. Lower the cast time, have the effect work the moment the animation triggers.
• Stoning: 1 second extra of weakness, or higher damage. It’s pointless to keep an enemy weakened, if you’re wasting your entire time by doing so and end up dying anyways. Either of those buffs would make the time casting Stoning worthier.
• Lightning Surge: Needs some sort of base defense while channeling. Or create a new mechanic: the more damage you receive while channeling this skill, the stronger it hits for.
• Fire Aura: Add retaliation, or add a stat-neutral active defense, like a block. would make it too similar to arcane shield, though. Perhaps a flat defense boost like frost aura? Or maybe increase the burning duration to 2s in pvp, and 4s in pve, to punish however hits the ele much harder?

Additional forms of defense

• Add evasion to burning speed.
• Elemental shielding trait: increased protection duration.

Hmm I don’t care for the Arcane Nerf.
I love being a support Ele- giving boons to allies & such; this just seems to mess it up is all.

“Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.”
This is originally in the 1st tier & a core part of my build- now it’s being taken away for master tier. I’ll still rely on Arcane. So 30 points will still be in Arcane.

“Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.”
Looks like this will still be 30 in Water.

My Trait Build is- 0 10 0 30 30- looks like it still will be that because some people actually like being Boon/Support eles. Only a few things I like will be missing, Should I keep Powerful Aura? Or switch to Cleansing Wave? This does NOT solve anything!
All this does for my ele is in order to get the effects I want I still have to push 30 points into water/arcana trait line. But in this case, nothing is changing except my ele’s healing abilities.

Instead of moving important traits to master tiers- which in my opinion is a waste & a core element of many builds now(that actually people like & enjoy & are good at) – just buff air, earth & fire & lessen cooldowns.

I’d love to see builds after this update :/

Fire aura suggestion:
Same, but with an additional effect.
Effect: for the duration of the aura, 20% of all direct damage received is “stored” and at the end of the duration the aura explodes, dealing this damage in an AoE around the player.

Edit: also this https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Creative-spells-and-effects/first

Tyler Chapman.1832:

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.

But destroying builds is exactly what’s going to happen if you move traits up and from adept to master. It’s inevitable if you make them require more trait points.

Changing or improving traits is the only solution if you wish to avoid destroying builds.

On my build:
————————————————-
My build (WvW, GvG, and PvE) incorporates everything I want from my staff ele and now there is a strong chance it will not work anymore:

I run 10/15/0/15/30, sigil of battle, 3 cantrips as utilities.

10 Fire: Might stacks on all cantrips (9), + sigil (3) elemental attn-fire (1), dodge roll into fire field (3). Total of 16 might stacks (this is where I get my condition damage).
15 Air: 33% dmg to foes – 20% hp, Absolutely required bolt on Air attn.
15 Water: regen on cantrips
30 Arcana: Ele attn, Blasting Staff, Evasive arcana (because dodging in earth it is the best blast finisher we have)

I really do not want to lose any of this.
————————————————-

Personally I do not think anything noticeable will change unless:
1: we have more blast finishers traits like evasive arcana
2: the “other” utility skills are improved to be as good as the cantrips

Suggestion: How about a blast finisher on earth attunement “Earthen Blast”

I’d really rather not swap health pools with Mesmer. We have the tools to make up for hp with our greater abundance of heals, we just lack the mitigation to make those heals amount to something.

Yet they’re moving our active mitigation into the master tier. Our condition removal, the only “mitigation” vs conditions, is being put into the master tier. Regen and protection on attunement swap moved to master. Vigor, the amount of dodging we use to avoid the crushing burst that puts our healing way behind… master tier. Even the new condition removal they gave fire… they moved into the master tier.

It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

PvP-relevant survivability is what we need most of all, and they’re kicking us while we’re down.

They have acknowledged that a lot of our traits need an overhaul. Their concern is we’re too dependent on arcane and water. How is it they don’t see the connection? FIX our traits that need an overhaul in the OTHER trait lines to make them more attractive and stop bending us over until we break! Improve our utilities by lowering the cooldowns on our stun breakers – hugely important for pvp active mitigation our, our major downfall – and ease up the need for us to make up for our utilities’ weaknesses with traits.

Whats up with the comparison between Mesmer and Elementalist? They’re 2 total different professions.

These changes seem good for what I’m running at the moment.

2 Things:
Earthen Blast should be a blast finisher
Every ele I spoke too said it make complete sense. That would serve as a good alternative to Evasive arcana as a blast finisher and it’s the only coherent way I see to have people considering not spending 30 points in arcana. It would also be a buff to a more than often useless trait nobody use.

Change One with Fire (remove useless trait) to Smoke Fields
Skill info: Substitute Fire fields with Smoke fields, +25-33% stealth duration (they would still cause the skill damage – but when blasted would give stealth instead of might)

The ele already has a smoke field underwater, I don’t see why we wouldn’t have one outside of water.