Guild Wars 2

I posted about this in the big patch thread, but feel this issue could use its own thread because it affects just about all of eles, whether they go full arcane or not. That is the matter of elemental attunement being moved to master tier. Here is my initial counter to this posted in the patch thread:

Jabberwock.9014:

JonPeters.5630:

Summation of high risk concerns for elementalist.

Arcana
…
That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits.

I have a problem with this line of thinking. Yes elemental attunement is extremely powerful, but that is why ALL elementalists should have easy access to it, since it is such a core element of our survivability. It’s not like you would say “having 4 attunements is too powerful, so we are moving the functionality of changing attunements to a grandmaster trait”. That is how you should think of the trait elemental attunement, because it should never have been a trait in the first place; it should have been a built in feature of attunement swapping. The fact that nearly 100% of eles take it and still can’t compete with warriors and the like should tell you that it is not a problem having a powerful trait in the adept tier, especially for a class with atrocious inherent survivability.

I will argue that yes, elemental attunement is so powerful that it is essentially mandatory to take in all builds. However, that does not make it overpowered. Why? Well when was the last time an ele with elemental attunement (hint: all of them) was considered a good class? Because nearly 100% of eles take the trait and are not overpowered, this state should be taken as a baseline. You should not mess with the baseline when attempting to buff a class, because you might inadvertently go in the wrong direction, or nowhere at all.

The problem is that eles, as the class with the lowest hp and armor, REQUIRE extremely powerful traits to survive. The reason we don’t have diversity is that we have a few extremely powerful game changing traits which make us at least competitive with other classes, while the rest are comparatively trash. The ones I consider nearly mandatory are elemental attunement, water 15 minor, and evasive arcana (and I will note that it is impossible to take another grandmaster trait while going for both arcana 30 and water 15, which means attempting to buff eles by buffing other grandmasters is an exercise in futility). The degree to which these three traits add to our survivability is insane. Without the latter 2, you are missing out on 4k hp worth of healing and a cleanse every 10 seconds, and without the former, you are missing out on massive protection, regen, and swiftness uptime. Until the time where we can split the power of those traits among other traits or make them partly inherent to the ele class, we will never have real diversity. And until that time, you should not mess with those traits.

I don’t feel that Evasive Arcana is mandatory, this comes as a player who got used to playing without it. But Elemental Attunement definitely should be intergated\ at least left as is.

I would at least be willing to try a 10/0/30/20/10 or 0/0/30/30/10 condition build if elemental attunement was left as is. However, wherever it ends up is essentially the new baseline for arcana. You can barely even make use of the water grandmaster to remove conditions without having elemental attunement.

I have to agree as well.

The whole point of the reduction to Attunement Swap CDs was so that Eles do not have to go as far into Arcana to have strong viable builds.

But putting Elemental Attunement so deep in the tree pretty much guarantees that every single build will need to go 30 Arcana to even stay on the same level as other classes.

And yes, I have carefully read over and taken into consideration the nerfs to other classes when formulating my opinion.

eles are too op plz nerf

I agree with OP, coming from Gold league WvW staff ele , despite equipping soldiers stats, our base Health and Armor still makes us squishy to zerg trains.

We have to go deep into traits like:

1. Water for Healing & Health (survival)

2. Arcana for Elemental Attunement (swiftness for zerg, regen for cleanse with water trait)

I try to quit Ele in wvw but my Guild Leader refused, we are still the meta for water fields.

@ Peow peow.2189 You again? Stop trolling, what did us Ele ever do to you?

The only reason why I take this trait is for the swiftness and its perfect sinc with fresh air for getaways. It’s time to adapt again and come up with better builds for my ele when this patch is released.

I don’t see any reason to take this trait, as it adds little to my build. I guess if you’re just zerging and pressing staff 1 it might be good, but honestly I think there are better traits. What’s a good example of how this trait is essential to a wvw ele? I still need convincing.

The range is so small now that it’s really only a personal buff. Not mandatory in my opinion. For staff I usually go with the “vigor on crit”, Blasting Staff, and Evasive Arcana if I have 30 in Arcana line.

Your choice of Protection/Swiftness/Regen/Might at any given time (within the context of attunement switching) is really strong even if it was just personal.

I agree with OP leave elemental attunement where it is.

The protection and regen boons alone on switching can be huge to negate some of the disadvantage our current base HP and Armor put us in.

I think if this gets moved there needs to be a serious discussion about raising our base HP. If not HP and Armor.