Guild Wars 2

First time posting here, but I have been playing since BWE1 on an Elementalist. I do not claim to be an expert but feel that I do have some good ideas for the profession that I love. As many here have pointed out, a lot of Elementalist traits are either subpar or counter intuitive with the classes’ mechanic of attunement switching by only giving incentive while in specific attunements but having skills being balanced around accessibility to all the attunements. Also, the supposed damage lines of fire and air are lacking. As many have said, “I’d like some cannon with my glass.” Since we have the lowest armor and health of all professions, we are not compensated well when trying to go glass cannon. I do not think that an increase in weapon skill damage would be good since it would also increase the damage of tanky specs, instead modifying traits in lines that are not normally considered part of survivability would offer the cost/benefit needed to balance an increase in damage. This balance would be achieved since a person would need to give up spending points in other lines and not get traits from them to get the benefits from the Fire line. I will only be focusing on the Fire line at this time but will do the other lines at a later time.

Fire Magic

Minor traits

Adept – Flame Barrier – Move it to Grandmaster change it to “You have a 25% chance to cause burning whenever a foe attacks you, add an additional 25% chance to cause burning while attuned to fire”
Master- Sunspot – Move to Adept tier
Grandmaster – Burning Rage – Move to Master tier change to “Increase area of Sunspot to 360 and inflict burning”

Major traits

Adept – Lava Tomb – add Take 50% less damage from falling
Adept – Burning Fire – Keep the same
Adept – Ember’s Might – Move to Master tier change to “Deal 5% extra damage to burning foes, deal an additional 15% extra damage while attuned to fire”
Adept – Spell Slinger – Keep the same
Adept – Burning Precision – Keep the same
Adept – Internal Fire – Change to “Deal 5% more damage, deal an additional 5% more damage while attuned to fire”
Master – Pyromancer’s Alacrity – Change to “All your weapon skills recharge 10% faster, your weapon skills recharge an additional 10% faster if you are attuned to fire”
Master – Conjurer – Change to “Conjured weapons recharge 20% faster and have 20% increase to stats”
Master – Fire’s Embrace – Keep the same
Master – One with Fire – Move to Adept tier, change to “You recover from burning 50% faster “
Grandmaster – Persisting Flames – Change to “Fire Fields last 25% longer and you do 5% more damage to burning foes, add an additional 20% damage to burning foes if attuned to fire”
Grandmaster – Pyromancer’s Puissance – change to “Add quickness and 2 might for 2 seconds when you cast a weapon spell while attuned to fire”

An example of the new traits would be if someone went 30 into fire and chose Internal Fire, Ember’s Might, and Persisting Flames. Current traits would give you 20% extra damage to a burning foe while attuned to fire and 10% when not attuned. With the changes to the traits this would change to 55% extra damage while attuned to fire and 15% when not attuned. Only an increase of 5% when not attuned to fire and an increase of 35% when attuned. This is increase is almost half the amount of the damage decrease that elementalist saw during the BWE, but that was a decrease in skill damage which at that time you could still trait yourself to be survivable and still do more damage. By making the damage increase come from the traits and the larger increase coming the more you spec into the line, this balances out with not having as many points to put into the other lines for more survivability/versatility.

Any thoughts, feelings, or suggestions are appreciated.

I don’t think the problem with fire/air is that they lack for damage increases. The traits just don’t really add much compared to other lines.

Right now, 30 water is essential mandatory for a solid build. It’s where we get our condition removal and the bulk of our survivability. I swapped 30 fire for 30 water in my build and my survivability was easily tripled or more with only a moderate loss in damage, less if I keep my boons up.

I would move the Burning rage and Sunspot traits down a tier and dump the adept minor trait. The new Grand Master trait would be Cauterize – 15% chance to remove a condition when you gain might.

Pyromancer’s Alacrity is basically mandatory for a power/crit ele because fire skills and lightning whip are our only real DPS output for scepter and dagger. Earth is all condition and water is survival, though ironically water scepter is the only decent power/crit autoattack option with nearly double the DPS of air. It would be nice if they just reduced the cooldown on fire skills to a more reasonable level and replaced PA with something else.

Air:
Grounded should include immobilized (aka rooted… to the ground) and knocked back in its condition for +damage, or people who are knocked back should be considered knocked down. Either way is fine.

Replace the air adept minor trait with +1 precision per level while attuned to air. We already have 30 ways to grant speed increases. This is just redundant.

Arcane Lightning – this should count as a boon, stack intensity and last as long as might.

Arcana -

Final Shielding – this trait should proc on any attack that would kill the ele and block the attack instead of procing after our health drops below 25%. When I first started, this was always traited and I just didn’t notice it going off frequently enough to justify keeping it over blasting staff or renewing stamina.

Caffynated.5713:

Final Shielding – this trait should proc on any attack that would kill the ele and block the attack instead of procing after our health drops below 25%. When I first started, this was always traited and I just didn’t notice it going off frequently enough to justify keeping it over blasting staff or renewing stamina.

yes
it should be
when an attack would bring health below 25%, you first gain an arcane shield
would make it infinitely more amazing. elementalists would be OP. nerf pls

How about a trait that, if you take it, fixes the bugs in your fire skills?

Naah … that would be completely overpowered …

Grandmaster – Pyromancer’s Puissance – change to “Add quickness and 2 might for 2 seconds when you cast a weapon spell while attuned to fire”

Taking an already great trait and making it OP imo…

I feel Sunspot is where it should be, if only because the general “theme” for all our elemental lines seems to be a burst when changing attunements for the master minor trait. Changing Burning Rage to your idea (“Increase area of Sunspot to 360 and inflict burning”) however would make it vastly more useful. I always felt 5% more damage under certain conditions was rather underpowered for a grandmaster minor trait. What’s worse is that the WATER trait gives you a larger and more sustainable damage boost. I find I have three or more boons on me most every fight.

For major traits though, I don’t think FIRE is thematically the place for a fall damage reduction trait. But creating a lava font on fall would work.

I also find it odd that our cooldown reduction of a weapon set skills are just a bse weapon set cooldown reducer. Other classes have a trait like this paired with a secondary effect (Merciless Hammer, Forceful Greatsword etc.) And all in the Master tier as well. I’d combine Internal Fire and Pyromancer’s Alacrity. So you’d get 10% more damage in fire and 20% cooldown reduction for fire spells in one trait. Our elements are our weapon swap, and I don’t see why it should be treated differently than weapon sets of other classes. Beyond the fact a warrior can wreck things with his hammer and never really have to switch, while we can’t reasonably sit in one element forever and perform well at all. Any trait that requires us to stay in one attunement for it to work should therefore be a bigger benefit to us than the weapon enhancing traits of other classes, not weaker.

A few better adept traits would be nice too. It’s not that they’re all BAD, more so they are all just very much inferior to Spell Slinger. Maybe if the Burning on Burning Precision lasted a bit longer it’d be more worth it.

Our master and grand master traits are also alright in general. They just don’t have that pop that water or arcane has. I’d suggest a trait like..

Smoke Screen: Creates a burst of smoke on point at the start of a dodge roll, causing 3 seconds of Blindness to nearby foes.

Star Struck: Meteors from Meteor Shower dazes and cripples on impact for 2 seconds.

Solar Flare: Causes a flash of light that blinds nearby foes for 6 seconds when you take more than 20% of your health in one hit. (90 second cooldown).

Molten Armor: Armor of Earth now causes 3 seconds of Burning to foes within 190 range for it’s duration.

Burning Target: Increases Critical Chance against burning foes by 10%.

Just some ideas.