Guild Wars 2

I keep seeing a lot of posts stating eles got buffed. Maybe I’m not seeing what other people are seeing.

I see a lot of traits moved around. I see a lot of damage traits no longer working in conjunction with each other due to traits being moved around.

I see signets got shafted by the removal of fires embrace (I guess glyphs and signets aren’t meant to be used, at this rate I’m not even entirely clear why they’re left in the game as a majority of them just aren’t remotely good).

We did get a couple buffs to conjures. Conjures just generally suck though. Yeah someone will argue that one or two skills see some use, sure. I’ll grant that. Lets be honest though, they were mostly used for exploitive purposes and now that its fixed, nearly all conjures, glyphs, and signets could be removed from the game and most people wouldn’t miss them (probably wouldn’t even notice they were gone).

Seems to me, with the talked about buffs…we seem to have an awful lot of skills stacking up that really don’t have much of a use with the upcoming traits changes. Doesn’t really seem promising.

Elites…can throw pretty much all of them into the pile. I can’t even remember the last time I used one. It just sits at the end of my bar gathering dust. I’m actually not even sure which elite sits on my bar, I pay that little attention to them anymore.

Effectively though, what I gather from the trait changes for ele is that we are supposed to use cantrips, and only cantrips. We also should be using arcana and water (although having a trait that only works on other people…Ahem water line I’m looking at you is a horrible idea since traits are meant to enhance YOU, not everyone else. Why aquatic is still there, I have no idea).

Really, from the trait changes…I can’t say I’m impressed. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t currently use a meta build. It looks like I might be soon though. They seem determined to pigeon hole eles into arcana, water, and cantrips. We’re going to be in the exact same place (meta wise) as before the trait changes…we’re just going to be doing less damage overall.

With all of the changes taking place, remember, we’re still the lowest hp pool, and lowest armor pool, losing stats off trait lines, and damage off trait lines due to reorganizing.

To me, it appears, we are falling from the meta-grace. Unless I’ve completely overlooked something the next “content patch” is looking extremely bleak. Since when it all shakes down, a lot more of us will be build pretty much the same, using extremely similar armor sets, and nearly identical weapon sets.

TLDR: I’m whining I guess. Maybe a little tired. I should grab some coffee and maybe re-read some more posts. Is there an updated build editor yet? Huh, I’m a little peckish. Might go make some breakfast. Enjoy your day, and please be kind when you inevitably reply, thank you.

I feel like it is impossible for me to have a clear picture regarding whether we got buffed or not, since balance is done in relative terms, and I do not know much about other classes.

However I can observe that a lot of the changes they made are sensible, and I appreciate that.

Special mention to Arcane Precision, it’s still there, hiding at the adept level Cuuuute

Well, i haven’t read all of the changes to all characters, yet. But it seems to me that eles indeed got somewhat buffed.

The things i noticed :

Base attunement recharge reduced from 13s to 10s
Base global recharge reduced from 1.65s to 1.5s

Ice Bow Frost Volley: Damage increased by 25%. Vulnerability application of this ability has been increased from 10 seconds to 15.
Ice Bow Frost Fan: The damage of this ability has been increased by 25%.

Pyromancer’s Training: Deal 10% more damage while attuned to fire. Fire abilities have a 33% reduced recharge.

So doesn’t this basically mean eles will constantly use Ice bow while switching between attunements faster (when needed) ? And some things they changed like Tornado or whirlpool, were they ever really used ?

And don’t forget : vulnerability on ice bow lasts longer = increasing the damage conditions applied while vuln. is active…. :

Vulnerability This condition was changed so that it not only increases direct damage, but it will also increase condition damage as well. Each stack will increase direct damage by 1% and condition damage by 1%.

Well, that’s my impression at least.

If Ele got buffed, its probably the class that got buffed the less.

As i said in another topic, trait change are fine (not perfect to me), but we need a rework to a lot of skill (weapon, utilities and elite) for the ele to be in a nice spot

It seems we’re still pretty much pigeon holded into arcana water, but the 3other spec are kinda viable. But I think build with only one of those currently mandatory lines can become possible.
That less us with only Fire Air Earth remaining, and i heard some player want to use it.
I think we might see more different build than the current 00266, even if it ends in xxx66, that’s better than nothing

PS: we will have to start use “00111” instead of “00666” … i just got used to 6 over 30 :’(

Mattmatt.4962:

PS: we will have to start use “00111” instead of “00666” … i just got used to 6 over 30 :’(

Or use EWA
F: fire
R: air
E: earth
W: water
A: arcane

Baseline Blasting Staff.
Elemental Attunement is minor trait.

I’m happy.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Mattmatt.4962:

PS: we will have to start use “00111” instead of “00666” … i just got used to 6 over 30 :’(

Or use EWA
F: fire
R: air
E: earth
W: water
A: arcane

Might work for ele, but for other class ? Does the first letter never collide with another ? Plus it would mean we have to learn the name of other class’s name … meh :o

I don’t care about other classes

I’m eletist.

Fire
Minors definitely got some very nice upgrades, and we finally got some added functionality for Sunspot. The aura from that has potential synergy with other Specs and follows in line with moar burning and damage.

Air
Zephry’s speed finally makes sense as a minor. It’s still a little awkward due to the attunement restriction, but I guess that’s the balance in making it a minor. Though Aeromancer training took an odd nerf, the Ferious Winds revision makes it look to be compatible in other attunements as well. I’m still sad to see Bolt to the Heart moved to GM, but at least the threshold has been made in line with other class’ traits. Fresh Air…no cd…I think we just found the new meta (maybe).

Earth
Geomancer’s Defense took a hit, but it’s original form may have been a bit on the strong side as the condition was very easy to meet.

Water
Aquatic benevolence is going to continue to get mixed reactions so I will leave that on the self. Personally, I’m okay with it. Soothing Power is very odd, but I’m interested to see how it works out as it’s a bit more than Guard resolve but not quite Warrior signet (if it were made at the group level). Still a few odd damage traits in this Spec, but overall it has great sustain/recovery capabilities.

Arcana
Elemental Attunement is back and Lingering elements has been tossed altogether. The Spec is very rewarding in its boons and applied conditions, and I enjoy that it promotes different effects based on attunements encouraging attunement swapping. Bountiful Power has been appropriately moved to this line. Between that or Elemental Surge, Arcana may be getting more attention from the PvE community as you can get a fairly reliable damage boost while getting high survivability skills all packaged into one Spec.

Misc
I feel like they Oprah’d the Cantrips, but it’s not like the few uncategorised skills could fall anywhere else. So while I don’t think a Tornado should be a cantrip I can’t think of any other box to put it in if we’re sticking to Ele skill titles. Burning skills got up’d to accommodate for the conditions overhaul. Base attunement swap cd set to 10s is likely to shake up rotations.

Signet ele was set to be one of the best ele builds, taking Fire, Earth and then either Air (selfish) or Water (team oriented) to have 100% fire aura uptime, craze signet spam, boons and conditions galore… and then anet managed to completely and utterly kill the build by taking the “fire aura on signet use” out of the conjurer trait.
RIP signet ele, you were almost a thing.

We did not get buffed contrary to popular belief. Or maybe we did get buff, but only if you play d/d and may d/f.

Apparently staff and s/d, signets, gylphs and arcane skills do not exist (not even going to mention conjures).

They goal was to add build diversity but with this change, it is still going to be arcane, water for 90% of the builds out there. So what really changed? I am arguing nothing did, it could have been worse but that is a terrible position to be arguing from.

They made many sensible changes, but we didn’t receive many buffs.

For the first week after the balance changes, I’ll Engi, not Ele :P. Gotta enjoy that OPness before it gets nerfed (or… buffed more—you know ANet)

I think that ele got some nice changes, but mostly got nerfed.

Earth line seams to be the most weak and irrelevant trait line. Not enough good defensive traits to make a tanky Ele viable, so why to bother…

Water line has many weird and useless skills leaving you only few obvious options.
Example: Piercing Shards working only while on water and without the existence of Shard Ice… you need vulnerable foes and skills that deal damage for this to work!
Also, Soothing Mist got nerfed? why? This trait is already too weak…

Arcane even with Elemental attument on Minor got weaker, no linger elements, no 30% boon duration, no blasting staff! The new grand master trait Bountiful Power isn’t as good as the rest of the options.

Signets and Glyphs still weak.

Conjurer, this trait should give you a way to benefit from Attuments while you hold them, else you are too vulnerable using Conjured weapons.

Yep it was a major buff for the ele class.

No, We got tweaked.
Our current meta build got a little stronger(but everyone elses got even stronger than that due to the 3rd GM)
Every other build lost viability.
Fresh Air is worse
Signet builds are worse
So that’s our only two other half viable pvp builds
And we are still stuck in water/air to be competitive
So build diversity didn’t change there
Honestly you cant say we got buffed if you look at any other class in comparison
We still have a plethera of useless traits/utilities/elites If they worked on these and traits to go with them we might be able to leave arc/water cantrips
Other classes actually have choices to make with their traits ours are a no brainier when 2/3 of each trait selection are garbage.
When you have the lowest HP and Armor in the game it shouldn’t be surprising we have to heavily invest in just surviving. Without them adding surviability to other utilites/traits we will never leave the arcane/water lines

Every other class is better off than the one I play, right?

Yep, Zephyr’s speed definitely makes sense. When ele has Singet of Air and superspeed. Most of the time it will be overwritten again, come on.

I don’t see the buffs, definitely not enough to be able to face mesmers and thieves.

Jaetara.4075:

no blasting staff!

The only trait that is now baseline isn’t mentioned in the patch notes. Blasting Staff is baseline and it means it is always active.

Laraley.7695:

Yep, Zephyr’s speed definitely makes sense. When ele has Singet of Air and superspeed. Most of the time it will be overwritten again, come on.

I don’t see the buffs, definitely not enough to be able to face mesmers and thieves.

It makes sense in that 10% did not get noticed at all while 25% is the equivalent of the Air Signet. So for Air focused builds (D/F notably) we can go without slotting Air Signet unless we’re needing it for the stunbreak. If worried about maintaining high mobility during combat One with Air can be slotted, otherwise the 25% trait will suffice. Superspeed caps you to the same movement rate that swiftness does out of combat so One with Air is more on the Meh side for that. Ironically though, Zephyr’s Speed would have been a lot more glorious had we retained Lingering Elements.

Outside of air builds though the Zephyr trait will be useful when doing open-world or roaming of sort as you can have your working utilitys slotted rather than awkwardly having to burn cooldowns for swiftness stacking or temporarily have Air signet slotted.

Anyways, for being a minor adapt trait, it has decent value. All it takes it just being attuned to Air.

OneKlicKill.4285:

Our current meta build got a little stronger(but everyone elses got even stronger than that due to the 3rd GM)
Every other build lost viability.
.
.
.

This is how I feel about the changes.
Our abilities to apply condi damage for nerfed because Celestial gear (which is my reference set here) will not have enough Condi damage to outweigh the base damage reduction, even after some duration buffs (which look nice on paper and are misleading)

The profession itself was nerfed, because the Devs were not willing to allow us to break out of the Cantrip meta with the trait changes. Cantrips have way too many possible synergies (e.g. with might stacking) that Glyphs e.g. have not. Signets and Arcane are slightly better, but still sub par in the meta-game with Cantrips.
The profession had a great chance to go out of the corner it is sitting in for over 2 years no, but can’t move due to Devs decisions to keep everything as it is.

Elemental Attunement coming back to a minor trait in Arcana is only a very minor buff to us, because – again – the DPS/dodge abilities of the current meta builds is strong and stacking boons (except might) and doing Condi damage is not encouraged.

I did not go in depth with other professions yet on the trait changes, but I don’t get the impression any profession (perhaps the Necro condi stepchild excluded) have complained a lot about the changes.

PS: Thinking of new condis and boons, the Ele seems to be the only profession that gets absolutely no access to them at all, unlike other classes that can pop e.g. Resistance.

Laraley.7695:

Yep, Zephyr’s speed definitely makes sense. When ele has Singet of Air and superspeed. Most of the time it will be overwritten again, come on.

In WvW roaming, you can just stay in air for running around the map and do not need to slot Signet of Air for that purpose if you already use the Air line (Zephyr’s speed is a minor trait you automatically get). Unless you want the Signet for the stun break & blind, this opens up a skill slot for something else.

savacli.8172:

Laraley.7695:

Yep, Zephyr’s speed definitely makes sense. When ele has Singet of Air and superspeed. Most of the time it will be overwritten again, come on.

I don’t see the buffs, definitely not enough to be able to face mesmers and thieves.

It makes sense in that 10% did not get noticed at all while 25% is the equivalent of the Air Signet. So for Air focused builds (D/F notably) we can go without slotting Air Signet unless we’re needing it for the stunbreak. If worried about maintaining high mobility during combat One with Air can be slotted, otherwise the 25% trait will suffice. Superspeed caps you to the same movement rate that swiftness does out of combat so One with Air is more on the Meh side for that. Ironically though, Zephyr’s Speed would have been a lot more glorious had we retained Lingering Elements.

Outside of air builds though the Zephyr trait will be useful when doing open-world or roaming of sort as you can have your working utilitys slotted rather than awkwardly having to burn cooldowns for swiftness stacking or temporarily have Air signet slotted.

Anyways, for being a minor adapt trait, it has decent value. All it takes it just being attuned to Air.

It’s hardly an equivalent to Signet of air, when it only works in air. It’s useless for me as much as 10% movement speed. Signet of air has quite a lot utility to just give up for one bad minor trait.

Earth line is entirely made for Readymade. I was actually laughing out loud when I tried a few builds with earth line. Staff ele with EWA will be extremely annoyingly tanky.

We didn’t get buffed. We lost our boon duration, some vitality, celestial is getting nerfed, fire and bleeding is getting nerfed for zerg stacks, chill and cripple got a huge nerf with them not affecting leap, we lost damage traits, other classes got a huge buff.

For the small buffs we got in protection we lost twice more in offense.

I would say that in spite of what eles lost, we got several significant additions. Eles can now comfortably run all the way into three traitlines. Most ele specs will probably be X/Water/Arcana. Choosing fire enables you to run what was once dhuumfire and blindspam, Air allows you to gain fury and damage boosts, and Earth allows you to tank and completely screw over condi builds.
There are a lot of new things we can do with our eles, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the update gives rise to many new specs.

Cecilia.5179:

I would say that in spite of what eles lost, we got several significant additions. Eles can now comfortably run all the way into three traitlines. Most ele specs will probably be X/Water/Arcana. Choosing fire enables you to run what was once dhuumfire and blindspam, Air allows you to gain fury and damage boosts, and Earth allows you to tank and completely screw over condi builds.
There are a lot of new things we can do with our eles, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the update gives rise to many new specs.

Lol, first you say ‘’Most ele specs will probably be X/water/Arcana’’ and then you say ‘’ I wouldn’t be surprised if the update gives rise to many new specs.‘’ You’re contradicting yourself a lot, lol.

Also, saying ele got a lot because we got a third line. Well, ALL classes got those.

Laraley.7695:

Cecilia.5179:

I would say that in spite of what eles lost, we got several significant additions. Eles can now comfortably run all the way into three traitlines. Most ele specs will probably be X/Water/Arcana. Choosing fire enables you to run what was once dhuumfire and blindspam, Air allows you to gain fury and damage boosts, and Earth allows you to tank and completely screw over condi builds.
There are a lot of new things we can do with our eles, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the update gives rise to many new specs.

Lol, first you say ‘’Most ele specs will probably be X/water/Arcana’’ and then you say ‘’ I wouldn’t be surprised if the update gives rise to many new specs.‘’ You’re contradicting yourself a lot, lol.

Also, saying ele got a lot because we got a third line. Well, ALL classes got those.

Alright, I worded it wrong. Most ele specs will use X/Water/Arcana, initially. What gets slotted in each line will likely vary, what gear is used will vary, and what utilities are slotted will vary. There are more things than a couple of traits that make a spec. It would be wrong to say ele was nerfed. Ele has 5 traitlines that are all viable in their own way. Most importantly, ele definitely was not the worst off. Necromancer got hit in places where a third line doesn’t even begin to compensate for.

For PvE I see something like Fire/Air/Arcana being more worthwhile for Staff or D/F (Air traits will vary a bit between the two builds) as the damage boost in water is either too situational (Piercing Shards) or can be unreliable (Vital Striking). The Bountiful Power in Arcana will be easier to maintain as the Spec already promotes Boons generation. Elemental Surge can also be an alternate DPS choice as well. On top of that the traits in Arcana will help to keep us off the floor. Maybe Elemental Precision for Fire Staff-ers depending on how much burning is needed.

For the current LH builds Fire/Air/Water is more likely to be used as the Piercing Shards buff is much easier to obtain since we can camp in water.

I’ll take a guess at PvP and WvW and agree at the usage of x/Water/Arcana. Earth seems like the obvious third Spec for Elemental Shielding to buff our easier access to auras or for Earth’s Embrace, but the rest of the Earth traits are kinda awkward to use. Thus, we will probably branch out to Fire or Air for whatever functionality we want beyond the Water/Arcana sustain.

Cecilia.5179:

Laraley.7695:

Cecilia.5179:

I would say that in spite of what eles lost, we got several significant additions. Eles can now comfortably run all the way into three traitlines. Most ele specs will probably be X/Water/Arcana. Choosing fire enables you to run what was once dhuumfire and blindspam, Air allows you to gain fury and damage boosts, and Earth allows you to tank and completely screw over condi builds.
There are a lot of new things we can do with our eles, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the update gives rise to many new specs.

Lol, first you say ‘’Most ele specs will probably be X/water/Arcana’’ and then you say ‘’ I wouldn’t be surprised if the update gives rise to many new specs.‘’ You’re contradicting yourself a lot, lol.

Also, saying ele got a lot because we got a third line. Well, ALL classes got those.

Alright, I worded it wrong. Most ele specs will use X/Water/Arcana, initially. What gets slotted in each line will likely vary, what gear is used will vary, and what utilities are slotted will vary. There are more things than a couple of traits that make a spec. It would be wrong to say ele was nerfed. Ele has 5 traitlines that are all viable in their own way. Most importantly, ele definitely was not the worst off. Necromancer got hit in places where a third line doesn’t even begin to compensate for.

Lol, sure. That would have happened if elementalist wasn’t forced into traits and skills, so keep dreaming.

I’m not really sure what else you could ask for, haha. Arcane got buffed in some pretty cool ways which is nothing abnormal because everyone was already in it anyway. I would have preferred some reallocation, but they at least massively buffed the traits that affected arcane skills.
Blasting staff is now baseline and you don’t need arcane for it.
Fire, our previously weakest line (People only even touched it in PvE because the, what, 5% increase in damage was worth the 50% decrease in everything else when you don’t need anything other than more deeps) had about half the traits merged.

Air basically lost bolt to the heart, which was why people put small amounts of points in air, in exchange for fresh air’s cooldown, which I can’t wait to horribly abuse.

Water and earth are nearly untouched outside of some slight tuning and the condensing of the earth signet traits (which is probably a buff if you were going to be running signets anyway).

What I see is a whole lot of options for people that weren’t going to go into traditional cantrip specs anyway.

Compared to the old builds, ele was most likely buffed slightly mainly because you can now run 3 full lines, which every other class can do now so it really doesn’t matter. A few traits got minor improvements as well. However we also got a lot of nerfs: vigor nerf hits us the hardest of any class, -10% on celestial can be huge though not quite sure how that 10% is calculated with all amulets being changed, loss of vitality and boon duration from trait lines which were extremely important with boon duration being unreplaceable, and vitality restricting amulet options heavily). Then we have the fact that every class barring perhaps necro gained massive buffs which will inevitably make us MUCH weaker by comparison. I don’t think it will be quite as bad as pre april 14 patch, however I will be surprised if any top teams still take elementalists once the meta settles down a bit. Maybe I will be pleasantly surprised.

It’s so-so. It all depends on how the gear and amulet changes pan out. If you put that aside, the changes are not spectacular, you will still need to be tanky if you want to survive, since we don’t have enough access to blocks, blinds, evades, stealth or invulnerabilities. So yeah, you’ll still SOAK damage and mitigate it however you can, with the difference being losing quite a bit of stats, specially if you go celestial in spvp.