Guild Wars 2

I was wondering if the new GM trait Stone Heart also works when using the Tornado elite while you’re in Earth attunement. Or does Tornado remove any attunement for the duration when used?

Thanks!

I can confirm, No it doesnt. The moment you go into it Stone Heart is removed and 10 seconds later so is the Attunement buff. Another reason why it isn’t that great a trait.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I can confirm, No it doesnt. The moment you go into it Stone Heart is removed and 10 seconds later so is the Attunement buff. Another reason why it isn’t that great a trait.

stoneheart is a great balance trait, it is just that tornado is a terrible elite.

Yeah, Tornado puts you in a state without attunements.

Pretty sure this will also happen with other transforms... like Moa Morph. Mesmer wants to burst you? Oh look you’re a bird and immobilised and vulnerable to crits again.

Ah, alright. Such a shame that it doesn’t work when using Tornado.

Thanks anyway guys, I appreciate it.

Stone Heart is terrible, just like Diamond Skin. Thieves still own you with stone heart on. Stone Heart doesn’t adhere to the increased buff duration from lingering elements and elemental attunement. There are no good weapons to sit in earth attunement with, except maybe s/f because at least the focus has buffs that linger on attunement change. Diamond Skin is way better, but still bad because it is a counter to openers only. You have to fight back up to top up hp all the time to make use of it. Specing 30 in Earth is crap unless you plan on playing burn duration or something like that, that probably doesn’t kill anyone at all. I hate this game.

agree, the trait is pretty disappointing, because the amount of time spent in earth is fleeting at the best of times, and specs that would spend a lot of time in earth (S/? conditions) are pretty bad.

its because its a transform which is a shame, it would be good if you could keep utilities and attunements

silvermember.8941:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I can confirm, No it doesnt. The moment you go into it Stone Heart is removed and 10 seconds later so is the Attunement buff. Another reason why it isn’t that great a trait.

stoneheart is a great balance trait, it is just that tornado is a terrible elite.

No, it sucks.

katniss.6735:

Stone Heart is terrible, just like Diamond Skin. Thieves still own you with stone heart on. Stone Heart doesn’t adhere to the increased buff duration from lingering elements and elemental attunement. There are no good weapons to sit in earth attunement with, except maybe s/f because at least the focus has buffs that linger on attunement change. Diamond Skin is way better, but still bad because it is a counter to openers only. You have to fight back up to top up hp all the time to make use of it. Specing 30 in Earth is crap unless you plan on playing burn duration or something like that, that probably doesn’t kill anyone at all. I hate this game.

I’ve actually had pretty good success using a 30/10/30/0/0 build that largely sits in earth while using flame axe. It takes a while to get used to, but I’ve killed virtually every thief that’s tried to gank me and with the barbarian amulet giving me 20k health, I’m highly resilient.

dietzero.3514:

silvermember.8941:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I can confirm, No it doesnt. The moment you go into it Stone Heart is removed and 10 seconds later so is the Attunement buff. Another reason why it isn’t that great a trait.

stoneheart is a great balance trait, it is just that tornado is a terrible elite.

No, it sucks.

instead of pretending that I care about your opinion, how about we agree to disagree?

katniss.6735:

Stone Heart is terrible, just like Diamond Skin. Thieves still own you with stone heart on. Stone Heart doesn’t adhere to the increased buff duration from lingering elements and elemental attunement. There are no good weapons to sit in earth attunement with, except maybe s/f because at least the focus has buffs that linger on attunement change. Diamond Skin is way better, but still bad because it is a counter to openers only. You have to fight back up to top up hp all the time to make use of it. Specing 30 in Earth is crap unless you plan on playing burn duration or something like that, that probably doesn’t kill anyone at all. I hate this game.

After reading your first sentence, I couldn’t take you seriously. Diamond skin is a monster trait and when used rightly, can kick some butt. I’ve heard many claim the same for stone heart so I wouldn’t be so closed minded.

Does stone heart work with conjures?

Shockwave.1230:

Does stone heart work with conjures?

As long as you’re attuned to earth while using the conjure, you’re good to go.

stone HEARTH not heart.

Big Tower.5423:

stone HEARTH not heart.

It is most assuredly Stone Heart.

Coldtart.4785:

Big Tower.5423:

stone HEARTH not heart.

It is most assuredly Stone Heart.

Seconded.
For all the people disliking this trait, it is probably the single strongest defense any class has against direct damage currently. I wouldn’t be so quick to get it removed. It just needs a little bit of getting used to, because you have to manage it in addition to your attunements and measure the comparative value you get for being in or out of earth.

The problem isn’t the trait, the trait is okay it is the Earth skills. You tend to spend as little as you can in Earth because it is rather terrible. If they fixed the the Dagger auto attack then maybe we could have something but currently it offers very little.

D/D has a terrible auto attack. Ring of Earth is decent. The Bleeding stacks need to be higher or add something like Torment. Magnetic Grasp is terrible and bugs out SO much. Earthquake has an insane cool down. Churning Earth has an insane cast time, an insane cool down and is insanely hard to actually hit.

Scepter has a good Auto attack. Rock Barrier is decent but again the 2nd part needs to have Torment and Cripple added to it to actually make it WORTH using. Say 3 stacks of Torment and 3 seconds of Cripple for each of the rocks that hit the target (5 in total) Maybe make it so that the Auto attack and Hurl pierces targets would be nice. Dust Devil is meh. Decent in group fights but rather meh in duels.

Focus is just a terrible weapon in pretty much every attunement except Earth which is hilarious as its normally the other way around, though Scepter is the same, great in Earth not so in other attunements (going by my build – condi) Magnetic Wave is very good. Though i do wish it had (again) conditions added to it having 5 stacks of Torment added would be reasonable seeing as other classes have just as many stacks on much shorter cool downs. Wish it was 5 second reflect as well. Obsidian Flesh is decent but has an insane cool down.

You don’t need to sit in earth to make use of Stone Heart.

You only need to switch to earth while under pressure, use Ether Renewal while running in circles/ running away, switch to another attunement, and come back. If you’re still under pressure, every other MH dagger attunement has a defense now – use burning speed, shocking aura, updraft or your heals immediatly. Perhaps a lightning flash is good too. And all else you have to do, is to put heavy pressure on your target – make them go defensive. This should give you some room to breath, to finish them or delay their offensive skills until you get back to earth for another ether renewal.

It works specially well with celestial and with sigil of doom (plus battle + strength combo), because the pressure you put on your target is higher, you make better use of condition damage due to earth investment, and you’re ticking your opponent’s health decently with 2-3 conditions while “wasting your time” casting ether renewal.

I’m using 6 points in earth and 4 in water for cantrip traits and healing. So far, I’ve been equally successful with 4 in fire or 4 in arcana. With arcana, the protection you get, in addition to stone heart, offers you massive defense, and unlike stone heart, it overlaps into other attunements. It also frees you to use stone splinters in 2 earth. But if you invest in fire, you’d go with earth’s embrace in 2 earth, and pick spell slinger and burning fire, which should give you most of the vigor and regen you need, situational protection, and generally higher might/ damage/ condition control/ pressure.

And if you slot armor of earth on your utility, or have elemental attunement, churning + stone heart + rock solid is surprisingly effective as long as you aren’t being pressured by conditions.

The problem with that is, We either have terrible defense (outside earth) or good defense (in Earth) but the problem comes in with the fact that pretty much every class has burst options on shorter cool downs than what the Attunement swap is.

Then once you are getting burst you have to go back to Earth and be very little to no threat what so ever. I really do think that they could do with an increase to conditions in Earth – for a Condition trait line and Attunement it has a rather terrible access to conditions.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

The problem with that is, We either have terrible defense (outside earth) or good defense (in Earth) but the problem comes in with the fact that pretty much every class has burst options on shorter cool downs than what the Attunement swap is.

Then once you are getting burst you have to go back to Earth and be very little to no threat what so ever. I really do think that they could do with an increase to conditions in Earth – for a Condition trait line and Attunement it has a rather terrible access to conditions.

From a PvP standpoint balance wise, stone heart is good because you have to give up something to reduce damage. It seems to me that your issue with stone heart is more that it is not OP and less about it being a terrible trait. It doesn’t solve the issues with our high attunement, it is simply one trait but it doesn’t take away from it’s effectiveness.

Like someone said above, the time you use stone heart is when you want to mitigate damage, it wasn’t designed for you to be in it indefinitely. If you have to in it indefinitely in sPvP you are probably better off disengaging.

silvermember.8941:

It seems to me that your issue with stone heart is more that it is not OP and less about it being a terrible trait

Rather than try to look for a meaning that isn’t there you could just look at what i said. The issue i have with it is that Earth attunement is no threat. Why is it only one class has to make HUGE sacrifices to gain something else.

Look at all the other classes, what do they give up when going zerker? Nothing. Ele going Zerker means death in seconds if their burst fails to kill the target. Look at Bunker what does other give up going bunker? Nothing meanwhile Ele going bunker does like no damage what so ever. Why is it that only ele have to make sacrifices…

All it would take is to make Earth a VIABLE attunement to spend more than 3-4 seconds in and then maybe it would have a better chance. For a “Condition” (and defense) attunement – it seems to be rather lacking on the condition front.

Staff – Bleeding, Weakness, Immobilize. All of which are rather easy to dodge
D/D – Bleeding, Cripple, Immobilize. Either terrible stacks, Buggy or impossible to hit.
Scepter – Bleeding, Blind. The Bleeding is decent the blind is okay.
Focus – Cripple. Nothing more.

Here is the problem. For a condition attunement either the skills are too easy to dodge/miss as with pretty much all Staff skills as well as Chruning Earth or they have poor stacks such as Dagger Auto attack, Dagger 2, dagger 3 or they bug out.

We need other conditions added. I would like to see some Torment. A total resign of the Earth auto attack. Churning Earth needs to have a lower Cast time. More than 3 seconds is insanely stupid for such a game as this. They also need to have a reason why you would rather stay in it and try and dodge at the right time rather then just easily walk out, like increase the Cripple duration by 50% and add like 3-4stacks of Torment at every proc. These are the sort of changes i would like to see that would actually make Earth a threat. Have it so it deals very low direct damage but is a serious threat if you are into conditions.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

silvermember.8941:

It seems to me that your issue with stone heart is more that it is not OP and less about it being a terrible trait

Rather than try to look for a meaning that isn’t there you could just look at what i said. The issue i have with it is that Earth attunement is no threat. Why is it only one class has to make HUGE sacrifices to gain something else.

Look at all the other classes, what do they give up when going zerker? Nothing. Ele going Zerker means death in seconds if their burst fails to kill the target. Look at Bunker what does other give up going bunker? Nothing meanwhile Ele going bunker does like no damage what so ever. Why is it that only ele have to make sacrifices…

All it would take is to make Earth a VIABLE attunement to spend more than 3-4 seconds in and then maybe it would have a better chance. For a “Condition” (and defense) attunement – it seems to be rather lacking on the condition front.

Staff – Bleeding, Weakness, Immobilize. All of which are rather easy to dodge
D/D – Bleeding, Cripple, Immobilize. Either terrible stacks, Buggy or impossible to hit.
Scepter – Bleeding, Blind. The Bleeding is decent the blind is okay.
Focus – Cripple. Nothing more.

Here is the problem. For a condition attunement either the skills are too easy to dodge/miss as with pretty much all Staff skills as well as Chruning Earth or they have poor stacks such as Dagger Auto attack, Dagger 2, dagger 3 or they bug out.

We need other conditions added. I would like to see some Torment. A total resign of the Earth auto attack. Churning Earth needs to have a lower Cast time. More than 3 seconds is insanely stupid for such a game as this. They also need to have a reason why you would rather stay in it and try and dodge at the right time rather then just easily walk out, like increase the Cripple duration by 50% and add like 3-4stacks of Torment at every proc. These are the sort of changes i would like to see that would actually make Earth a threat. Have it so it deals very low direct damage but is a serious threat if you are into conditions.

Based on the bold part, it seems to me you wanted a more OP leaning trait and less of balanced trait.

It also seems to me based on your post you don’t understand the purpose of stone heart and you definitely do not understand the purpose of the earth attunement. The earth attunement has and will always be a defensive based attunement that is the purpose of it you can see it in how most of the traits operate.

The reason why very few of the skills are a threat is because they were never meant to be, they were design to protect not damage hence why we have 2 other damage based attunements.

Back to stone heart, stone heart is a good trait for the overrall game because it is strong and at the same time doesn’t make the player OP. THe whole purpose of the trait is not to completely be invunerable while killing other players, the whole purpose of it is to protect yourself when you think something big is about to happen and to switch back to the one of the other 2 damage based attunements you have.

It seems to me you are not happy that this one particular trait is not the messiah.

silvermember.8941:

Based on the bold part, it seems to me you wanted a more OP leaning trait and less of balanced trait.

Again you are making wrong assumptions. Did you like only read certain parts? As i have said my issue is NOT and i will repeat again NOT the trait. It is the attunement and the skills itself.

Again, the trait is actually okay. What i don’t like is that they have no idea what they want ele to do with attunements. Some traits promote staying in a attunement, others promote jumping in and out of attunements.

The skills in Earth should be more of a condition threat, as in. You go into Earth for the defense and the very dangerous access to conditions, this is currently not the case. People should see you go into Earth and think about your defenses being higher, your direct damage being lower but your Conditions being a big threat with the likes of Cripple, Torment and such.

I am not a huge fan of traits that promote jumping into attunements and then jumping out and you have to remember many classes can spam burst the moment you leave Earth and you have 10+ seconds of being threatened with burst. Which in itself wouldn’t be so bad – if this same design was used for ALL the classes.

I think you will find as i have stated MANY times Earth attunement ISN’T only about defense. Well its not meant to be about defense it is also MEANT to be about CONDITIONS

Taking frost bow (the only conjure that I like to ever use in PvP) with stone heart solves all the problems of both, I find. It’s hard to stay in earth because of bad skills, and frost bow solves that. It’s hard to use frost bow skills because the root makes you take a ton of damage, stone heart solves that.

With 30 points in earth, celestial amulet, and 10-20 stacks of might, which is what current ele builds are geared towards, staying in earth for 2-3 extra seconds auto-attacking is much better than what you may think.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Taking frost bow (the only conjure that I like to ever use in PvP) with stone heart solves all the problems of both, I find. It’s hard to stay in earth because of bad skills, and frost bow solves that. It’s hard to use frost bow skills because the root makes you take a ton of damage, stone heart solves that.

Not really. You ain’t going to use the bow for its whole duration so you would be pretty much using it as a 60second cool down AoE….Not really worth it now is it. Plus then you would have to sacrifice something.

I currently run Arcane Shield (amazing against Thief and melee) Armor of Earth (Counter Hammer noobs) and Signet of Earth (Added Toughness) So i would be giving up defense for a 60 second cool down AoE that would have like a 3second cast time – 1/4second to summon Bow and 2 3/4 Ice Storm Cast time.

Could you really make use of that in say a 1 Vs 1? Maybe in zerg fights and keep/tower defense/attack but that is about it. Useless in 1 Vs 1, slight use i guess in small groups but that is about it and that would require you being able to summon it and cast it while they are still in the same area without getting attacked knocked back or anything…

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Taking frost bow (the only conjure that I like to ever use in PvP) with stone heart solves all the problems of both, I find. It’s hard to stay in earth because of bad skills, and frost bow solves that. It’s hard to use frost bow skills because the root makes you take a ton of damage, stone heart solves that.

Not really. You ain’t going to use the bow for its whole duration so you would be pretty much using it as a 60second cool down AoE….Not really worth it now is it. Plus then you would have to sacrifice something.

I currently run Arcane Shield (amazing against Thief and melee) Armor of Earth (Counter Hammer noobs) and Signet of Earth (Added Toughness) So i would be giving up defense for a 60 second cool down AoE that would have like a 3second cast time – 1/4second to summon Bow and 2 3/4 Ice Storm Cast time.

Could you really make use of that in say a 1 Vs 1? Maybe in zerg fights and keep/tower defense/attack but that is about it. Useless in 1 Vs 1, slight use i guess in small groups but that is about it and that would require you being able to summon it and cast it while they are still in the same area without getting attacked knocked back or anything…

That #5 stun is the most absurd thing ever if they fail to dodge it in a 1v1, and stone heart lets you counterburst with it (3542).

P Fun Daddy.1208:

That #5 stun is the most absurd thing ever if they fail to dodge it in a 1v1, and stone heart lets you counterburst with it (3542).

Who is going to get hit by the stun in a 1 Vs 1 though? It is rather easy to dodge. I don’t think i have ever been hit with it but i think that is the case for pretty much everything else has when it comes to projectiles (staff for example)

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

That #5 stun is the most absurd thing ever if they fail to dodge it in a 1v1, and stone heart lets you counterburst with it (3542).

Who is going to get hit by the stun in a 1 Vs 1 though? It is rather easy to dodge. I don’t think i have ever been hit with it but i think that is the case for pretty much everything else has when it comes to projectiles (staff for example)

Soooooooo many warriors lol.

You underestimate how much people feel like they can “tank” damage and stuns.

If you are going to use a conjure weapon while in earth why not fgs rather than axe ?

Forzani.2584:

If you are going to use a conjure weapon while in earth why not fgs rather than axe ?

Because fgs is on a huge cooldown and thus cannot be used as reliably.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Forzani.2584:

If you are going to use a conjure weapon while in earth why not fgs rather than axe ?

Because fgs is on a huge cooldown and thus cannot be used as reliably.

Good point.

I have never used axe. How does it compare to fgs for damage? Would it work better with a condition or power build?

Forzani.2584:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Forzani.2584:

If you are going to use a conjure weapon while in earth why not fgs rather than axe ?

Because fgs is on a huge cooldown and thus cannot be used as reliably.

Good point.

I have never used axe. How does it compare to fgs for damage? Would it work better with a condition or power build?

Like all ele weapons, it is built for hybrid DPS (however viable that may be), but being a utility it does much less damage than fgs, though it does have the added utility of 50% increased range, might on auto, two fire fields, and a blast which may or may not be relevant.
Seeing as it only has burning as a condition, I would most likely build power if I wanted to use it.