Guild Wars 2

I really like playing mages, and Elementalist in guildwars 1, going max fire and energy storage had no “wasted” … but in GW2 trying to pick traits that worked for me … I’ve come to the realisation that the problem is they are all a “grab bag” without any focus.

So, my first thought (and I did debate posting this in the suggestion forum), is to give each line a “theme” :

Fire – “burn baby burn” – currently we do this worse than the guardian !
So, apart from a total retool of the traits the obvious change is to change the “features” of the fire to Condition Duration and Condition Damage … also, make sure that burn is easy to trigger, put more ways for us to set things on fire – each #1 skill of the weapons ?

Air – “boom!”
+crit, +critdamage
Make the weapon skills that are aoe, more single target, not totally removing all them, but at least make the #1 single target (staff is a major grumble, make chain lightning more beefy and move it off #1, and while we are at it, staff has too much utility, merge gust with windborne speed)

Earth – “staying alive”
Earth’s Features should be +tough and +hp so that we have a self protection option, drop all/some of the bleed (cripple and immob are fine) and have more projectiles.

Water
To facilitiate support the obvious options are +heal and +boon, makes it a tight support element, don’t have a problem with the powers … but the traits .. hmm

And lastly …
Arcane
+swap
+power

With that arrangement, I can see a number of options spring to mind, rather than the “uhhh” that I currently feel.

Havn’t listed traits in detail, and my problems with them, but most of them have me going “huh?” – in particular the ones that trigger when we get hit – I’m never going to want to get hit, so why am I taking anything that only works when that happens … “Retributive” features more guardian than Elementalist …

- Alo

If you find no “focused” traits for Elementalists, it’s only because you haven’t given them enough thought yet. What about those traits about Auras – getting free Aura from the Fire tree, getting Vigor/Regen for every Aura from the Air tree, all Auras apply to allies from the Water tree.

Or perhaps the vulnerability traits from Water/Arcana?

Or weapon charges + frost bow grants regen from Fire/Water?

It’s there, it’s just not that obvious to see.

I am actually completely opposed to what you are suggesting.

First off, no trait lines on any other profession combine two major stats in one trait. Power, Precision, Toughness and Vitality don’t get paired up with each other, only get paired up with the 5 minor stats, Con dmg, Con duration, Crit dmg, healing power and boon duration. So if we start doing exceptions like that for Ele’s, why not do that for all classes, which would just put the Ele back at square one.

Secondly, If you take away Earth’s bleeding, you take away a HUGE chunk of D/D Ele’s damage. So, just no.

Also considering you are not building to stay in one attunement forever, build your trait lines for the utilities and types of damage you want. If you like conjure fiery greatsword and high crits, go Fire and Air with some in arcane. If you like cantrips, Fire and Water are your friends, and Condition dmg + signets can go a Fire + Earth trait focus.

An Elementalist rarely wants to go 30-30-10-0-0 in any combination of traits because we rely so much on our swapping and diversity unlike the other classes. Lets not just make the Ele feel like a guardian. Let the Ele be unique.

By the way… what are those “Charges” for weapons? From what I know Ele weapons have the given time of being (Engineer weps had “charges”). So what are those “10 more charges” from Fire Trait line?

Seraskus.6810:

By the way… what are those “Charges” for weapons? From what I know Ele weapons have the given time of being (Engineer weps had “charges”). So what are those “10 more charges” from Fire Trait line?

Elementalist summoned weapons are limited both by time, and to 15 actions. This limit is the reason kits/bundles/environmental weapons had their autoattack turned off by default.