Guild Wars 2

While i am really liking some aspects of this Trait. I feel that Air and Earth are VERY poor. Fire Gets Burning which is great, even Chill from Water is solid but i think that Blind should be replaced with Weakness for 5 seconds and that Immobilize should be replaced with 6 stacks of Bleeding for 5 seconds, which would be about the same amount of damage done by Burning.

Another Option add another condition – Make it do Torment 5 stacks for 10 seconds Which would have the potential to do more damage than Burning but only if they dont stay still. This would also aid us with another useful damaging condition.

What do you guys think?
Those of you who also use this trait, what do you think about it? and those of you that don’t would this change make you even want to try using it?

Actually the best condition from this trait is probably Immobilise, since positioning has so much effect - changing to damaging conditions might make this trait useful in PvE, but other traitlines are probably rather better for those focusing on damage.

I use Elemental Surge for the Immobilize and Blind most of the time on my Nuker Staff Ele. Immobilize on Stoning (with arcane power) is great for ensnaring a running opponent. Blind on Chain Lightning (with arcane power) is a nice DPS that can nullify some nasty mesmer/thief/warrior bursts.

It has its uses. But fairly limited and does not have a lot of synergy when making builds due to dependence on Arcane Skills. It’s like trying to build around condi for the effect of the trait but you have to equip arcane skills which are burst/power type utility skills. Although the duration of the conditions dealt does need some improvement since this trait is WAAAY behind Evasive Arcana in terms of utility. OR they can improve or redesign Arcane Power since the skill ultimately synergizes with this trait and both of them are hardly ever used or seen in play. They can also even make this trait proc with some ICD on Conjured Weapon skills to make Conjures more attractive and Conjures don’t have a lot of trait it synergizes with anyway so tying it with elemental surge could be a fun change.

The problem i have with the immobilize, the duration. Sure i dont expect a 10second duration but 1 second simply isnt enough. I find myself using the Burning the most. Air i simply don’t use, if was Weakness then yeah without a doubt i use it more often. If Earth Torment then it would be much better for Kiting and such

I replied to another topic about this very same thing. I’ll copy/paste it again here to save me the trouble of retyping:

YES. Elemental Surge is amazing. It adds so many different potential combos/conditions to be considered anything short of amazing with the right build.

Here’s mine:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArdhMmMbnxygjDIhCEg4hF0AcY5RMMD1AA-ToAg0CnIqRVjrGTNyas1MsYKC

A brief writeup on Elemental Surge (using the S/F sPvP build). You get several interesting combos out of this one trait:

Immobilize Combo:
Lightning: Use Gale to knock over your opponent.
Switch Fire:
Dragon’s Tooth on knocked down player. (Blast finisher)
flame wall on top of knocked down player.
Pheonix on top of knocked down player. (Blast finisher)
Switch to Earth:
Arcane wave onto downed player/flame wall (Elemental Surge: Immobilize 1s) (Blast Finisher)
(This is important to make sure the DT lands)
Switch to Water: Comet for Daze/Freezing gust for chill.

Chill Combo:
Defensive combo. Do not use at the start of the fight. Try to pull their condi cleanse first—but at the very least, make sure some of their abilities are on Cooldown.
Water attunement:
Freezing gust – Chill ~4s
Arcane shield (Elemental Surge: Chill ~4s)
Stand near them so they can hit you and wait for Arcane shield to explode, then Comet for daze.
Arcane Wave (Elemental Surge: Chill ~4s)
<Wait for them to blow their condi cleanse>
Arcane Power (Elemental Surge: Chill ~4s)
Use auto-attack. It hits 3 times her hit, so you apply 5x stacks of chill in 2 attacks.
Healing Trident to heal.
Earth Attunement (Optional):
Magnetic wave to clear movement condis/reflect projectiles.
Kite. You only use 1 attunement for this combo, so you should have 2 or 3 other attunements to swap between to keep casting spells and get that free healing from Sigil of Restoration.
If they can’t cleanse the chill, you’ll get back to full health in 6-8 seconds with regen.

Fire Combo:
Goes without saying. Use the combo listed under ‘immobilize’ but drop your arcane (bypass Earth to water for chill/comet) to apply ~14s of burning. Great to use if a teammate has stunned/controlled an opponent for you.

Air Combo:
Downed opponent.
Start spiking opponent:
Switch to air.
Blinding flash on downed.
Arcane Shield = blocks 3 attacks, then explodes into AoE blind.
Arcane Wave = AoE Blind.
Arcane Power = Single target blind on attunement swap (blind interfering players)
Arcane power = blind on lightning strike (blind interfering players)