Guild Wars 2

Hi! As the title says, this post is going to be about ele specializations and traits, particularly minor traits. I’m mostly going to talk about my thoughts on the fire line, and I welcome any ideas the community may have to improve the traits. I know there have been threads on this subject before, but I couldn’t find any that don’t seem kinda dead. If anyone has a link to an existing thread where this stuff should be, just drop me a link!

My hope is that this post will be seen and taken into consideration by the dev team. Okay, here we go.

So. The fire magic specialization. I think all the posts I’ve seen so far have shared the view that the fire line is… really disappointing. And one reason for this disappointment, at least in my view, is the minor traits. They don’t really fit a strong theme. Other professions have minor traits that interact with each other in interesting and powerful ways, so that each spec has some kind of theme.

For instance, the mesmer domination line has minor traits which cause interrupts to inflict vulnerability, daze to inflict vulnerability, and a boost to damage against vulnerable foes. Clearly, a focus on vulnerability and interruption.

Rangers skirmishing gives you swiftness on weapon swap, fury on weapon swap, and increased damage while flanking, a big focus here is mobility and unpredictability.

Warrior’s strength line gives damage at the end of a dodge roll, burst skills restore endurance, and you get a damage boost while your endurance is not full. This line lends itself to a play style with lots of dodging and movement.

Unfortunately, I think the ele is really left out for the most part when it comes to good minor traits. I think our only really nice line is water, with its aoe healing pulse, big heal on attune, and 25% increase in outgoing healing (though i think there should be a 10-15% boost to personal healing, to make this useful while solo). Earth is pretty good, but fire, air, and arcana just feel very aimless to me. I’ll go over why in my next post.

First off, I’ll talk about my views on the fire line.

What we have now feels very lackluster. For a spec that is supposed to be about heavy sustained damage and burning, our minor traits seem very misguided

Current/upcoming traits:

Flame Barrier: in it’s current form, it’s a 20% chance to inflict one second of burn an enemy if it hits you in melee, while the upcoming trait (which i know is not yet finalized) is a 20% chance to gain a fire shield when you swap to fire. Both of these are very weak, defensive, and seem to contradict what a fire attuned elementalist should be trying to do. Elementalists are so very squishy that having traits that Might hurt the enemy a tiny bit IF they hit you in melee seems counterintuitive. Most elementalists can’t tank through many direct hits in melee, so having these kinds of traits in fire magic seems counterintuitive

trait 2, sunspot: small aoe damage around the ele when you attune to fire. Again, this seems counterintuitive to what ele is all about. We have so far access to daggers which are 300-600 range, scepter which is 900 and staff which is 1200. it seems odd that we have two traits that require us to be in melee range to be effective (since sunspot damages in aoe and flame barrier burns melee attackers). Sunspots melee range means that it usually misses, and it’s low damage makes it pretty inconsequential.

trait 3, burning rage: 10% damage boost to burning foes. This trait is the only fire minor that makes sense with the theme of sustained damage and burning, and I think it should be the trait that the fire minors should lead up to.

My suggestions for the fire lines minor traits are to make it more focused on strong aoe burning effects:

Adept minor trait: I think flame barrier should be scrapped or moved to the major adept level, while power overwhelming should be updated and changed to the adept minor. I think the functionality should be something like you gain condition damage based equal to 10% of your power while attuned to fire. I think it’s justifiable to raise the % from 7 to 10 (maybe even a little higher??? pretty please) if the trait is active only while attuned to fire. This trait, I think, fits much better in a fire line focused on damage and burning than the current trait.

Master minor trait: I think this trait should take some inspiration from the air line master, which calls down a bolt of lightning on your foe when you attune to air. Rather than doing damage at your location when you attune to fire, I think sunspot should cause a few (2-4) seconds of burning on the area around your target when you attune. I think it should have a smaller radius than staff skill 3 and deal no direct damage. This trait would allow you to be useful regardless of the range you’re at.

Grandmaster adept: Keep it as it is. The 10% boost to burning foes would synergize perfectly with the other two suggested traits.

I think these new traits would give the fire line a much better sense of purpose as a heavy aoe damage dealer. If anyone has ideas to improve or maybe tone down my suggestions please comment! I’ll probably also talk a little bit about the major traits at some point, but for now I want to hear other people’s thoughts! Sorry if these posts are hard to follow, I do feel like i’m kinda rambling.

There are a lot of issues with the traitlines changes in the elementalist.

First, the change of flame barrier makes it not able to work with lingering elements.
Lingering elements is a great idea of a trait, but as it only works with T1 minors its useless.
Now, before you could make it work with all 4 minors, but now it will only extend the duration of 1 or 2 (due to specs and elite specs substituting trait point distribution). So I hope they completely change the LE trait to work with any and all traits…
But thats not the point…

For me, burning precision is a good T1 minor to increase burning application and duration for the fire-spec ele, it could be changed to only work in fire attunement, so it would have synergies with lingering elements too and not be too OP for a minor.

I like the concept of getting fire shield when attuning to fire, the problem is fire shield needs to be changed. I strongly believe that fire aura needs to be reworked into removing conditions when hit (1s icd), instead of applying might. This would make the aura more useful (not only for ele, but overall) and would open up possibilities to deal with condi spam without negating it. Currently, all auras have a good defensive value, except fire aura.

I’ve done some suggestions and analysis too, although didn’t get much feedback on it…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/suggestion-Eles-specs-and-playstyles/first#post5023386

Nice! yeah I think i’ve seen your post before. i agree that burning precision would also make a good adept, but I felt like power overwhelming was a little more versatile, since burning precision is only really effective if you have high crit chance. and I like the idea of the 20%CD reduction, but I feel like there’s a theme of the second minor trait causing an effect when you swap, and I wanted to keep that intact. But I think a lot of your trait ideas are really solid.

lLobo.7960:

There are a lot of issues with the traitlines changes in the elementalist.

First, the change of flame barrier makes it not able to work with lingering elements.
Lingering elements is a great idea of a trait, but as it only works with T1 minors its useless.
Now, before you could make it work with all 4 minors, but now it will only extend the duration of 1 or 2 (due to specs and elite specs substituting trait point distribution). So I hope they completely change the LE trait to work with any and all traits…
But thats not the point…

For me, burning precision is a good T1 minor to increase burning application and duration for the fire-spec ele, it could be changed to only work in fire attunement, so it would have synergies with lingering elements too and not be too OP for a minor.

I like the concept of getting fire shield when attuning to fire, the problem is fire shield needs to be changed. I strongly believe that fire aura needs to be reworked into removing conditions when hit (1s icd), instead of applying might. This would make the aura more useful (not only for ele, but overall) and would open up possibilities to deal with condi spam without negating it. Currently, all auras have a good defensive value, except fire aura.

I’ve done some suggestions and analysis too, although didn’t get much feedback on it…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/suggestion-Eles-specs-and-playstyles/first#post5023386

your very wrong you can get all the attunement damage modifiers to overlap with lingering attunements ( fire + other attunement damage bonus on meteor shower anyone??? )

lLobo.7960:

There are a lot of issues with the traitlines changes in the elementalist.

First, the change of flame barrier makes it not able to work with lingering elements.
Lingering elements is a great idea of a trait, but as it only works with T1 minors its useless.
Now, before you could make it work with all 4 minors, but now it will only extend the duration of 1 or 2 (due to specs and elite specs substituting trait point distribution). So I hope they completely change the LE trait to work with any and all traits…
But thats not the point…

For me, burning precision is a good T1 minor to increase burning application and duration for the fire-spec ele, it could be changed to only work in fire attunement, so it would have synergies with lingering elements too and not be too OP for a minor.

I like the concept of getting fire shield when attuning to fire, the problem is fire shield needs to be changed. I strongly believe that fire aura needs to be reworked into removing conditions when hit (1s icd), instead of applying might. This would make the aura more useful (not only for ele, but overall) and would open up possibilities to deal with condi spam without negating it. Currently, all auras have a good defensive value, except fire aura.

I’ve done some suggestions and analysis too, although didn’t get much feedback on it…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/suggestion-Eles-specs-and-playstyles/first#post5023386

also the flame barrier traits is awful, no one in their right mind would take it as a master and that is what you appear to have made it lol. and the pyromancers training s very good as it is right now i think a very different change of the fire traits would be much more beneficial especially to glassier builds that require high burst to work in pvp.

food for thought: the new trait, which provides a fire aura, is significantly better than the current minor trait.

WHY?
1) a fire aura doesn’t care if the enemy hit you in melee or at 1500 range. every time you are hit, you gain might, and you burn the enemy.
2) a fire aura synergizes with earth and air traits that grant protection, fury, and swiftness when applying an aura to yourself or an ally

(an aside, responding to Lobo’s fire aura suggestion) i’d much rather gain the might than have another passive condi cleanse. your suggestion of condi cleanse would be reworked to have a 10 second cooldown, just like signet of water, and the guardian’s healing signet, and that’s not very helpful at all. also, it doesn’t synergize with the damage specialization at all. condition cleansing is the healing specialization, aka water. now, if a new water trait would grant condi-cleanse on use of a signet, i wouldn’t complain… just don’t force me to take condi traits in the fire (damage) spec.)

however, that only explains why the trait is better than it’s predecessor, without commending the choice for it as a minor. i think i’d prefer burning precision as the adept minor, due to it’s synergy with the GM minor (+10% damage against burning foes.)

i agree with the hatred of sunspot. it’s a point-blank-area-of-effect skill, limited to only melee range. i would much rather it was an AoE that went off on your target, up to 1200 range. since Air master minot is basically a sigil of air, but activated when attuning to air, the Fire master minor should basically be a sigil of fire when attuning to fire.

Sadrien.3470:

lLobo.7960:

There are a lot of issues with the traitlines changes in the elementalist.

First, the change of flame barrier makes it not able to work with lingering elements.
Lingering elements is a great idea of a trait, but as it only works with T1 minors its useless.
Now, before you could make it work with all 4 minors, but now it will only extend the duration of 1 or 2 (due to specs and elite specs substituting trait point distribution). So I hope they completely change the LE trait to work with any and all traits…
But thats not the point…

For me, burning precision is a good T1 minor to increase burning application and duration for the fire-spec ele, it could be changed to only work in fire attunement, so it would have synergies with lingering elements too and not be too OP for a minor.

I like the concept of getting fire shield when attuning to fire, the problem is fire shield needs to be changed. I strongly believe that fire aura needs to be reworked into removing conditions when hit (1s icd), instead of applying might. This would make the aura more useful (not only for ele, but overall) and would open up possibilities to deal with condi spam without negating it. Currently, all auras have a good defensive value, except fire aura.

I’ve done some suggestions and analysis too, although didn’t get much feedback on it…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/suggestion-Eles-specs-and-playstyles/first#post5023386

your very wrong you can get all the attunement damage modifiers to overlap with lingering attunements ( fire + other attunement damage bonus on meteor shower anyone??? )

Lingering elements only work with the t1 minor traits. It does not provide the effects of any other traits during the extended attunment bonus.
Thats why, as it is, its very bad…

yeah lingering elements is practically useless. Flame barrier and zephyr’s speed don’t provide anything meaningful, and the water t1 minor already lasts for several seconds out of water. the only thing i can imagine it being good for is keeping the toughness from earth.

also, the t3 minor in arcana is so weak. 10% on a crit to inflict tiny conditions. the arcana minors really need some work

Sadrien.3470:

also the flame barrier traits is awful, no one in their right mind would take it as a master and that is what you appear to have made it lol. and the pyromancers training s very good as it is right now i think a very different change of the fire traits would be much more beneficial especially to glassier builds that require high burst to work in pvp.

Its awful as it is now. The proposed change I’ve made is to make it 100% chance to give fire aura on fire attune. This, combined with the change to fire aura and the trait to give might while a fire aura is active, can make a great synergy.
– It can be a good way to stack might without the need of fields. Trying to keep a fire aura active as long as possible (instead of spamming it) to slowly increase might on a fight (1 stack/2secs). Also makes it good for aura builds that want to get their buffs when attuning to fire
The trait as it is now, is useless, and as it is proposed is bad due to the low trigger chance that make it unreliable.

Forgotten Legend.9281:

food for thought: the new trait, which provides a fire aura, is significantly better than the current minor trait.

WHY?
1) a fire aura doesn’t care if the enemy hit you in melee or at 1500 range. every time you are hit, you gain might, and you burn the enemy.
2) a fire aura synergizes with earth and air traits that grant protection, fury, and swiftness when applying an aura to yourself or an ally

(an aside, responding to Lobo’s fire aura suggestion) i’d much rather gain the might than have another passive condi cleanse. your suggestion of condi cleanse would be reworked to have a 10 second cooldown, just like signet of water, and the guardian’s healing signet, and that’s not very helpful at all. also, it doesn’t synergize with the damage specialization at all. condition cleansing is the healing specialization, aka water. now, if a new water trait would grant condi-cleanse on use of a signet, i wouldn’t complain… just don’t force me to take condi traits in the fire (damage) spec.)

Fire element and the spec has quite some condi clean on its theme too
– fire cantrip removes conditions and burn foes
– phoenix removes conditions
– trait in fire removes conditions (activates fire cantrip for free)
– fire aura already reduces inc condition duration by 20%

All auras are mostly defensive
ice aura is a defense against sustain (freezes foes and reduces inc dmg)
magnectic aura is defense against ranged (reflect projectiles)
shock aura is defense against melee burst (stun, interrupting flurry attacks or burst combos)
fire aura is a mess…
makes sense to make fire aura a decent defense against condition pressure

Also, the might stacking by getting hit is a very poor implementation for the ele. And the trait that gives might on fire aura activation helps this issue. (But I think it should be by time during fire aura, so fire auras give 1 stack of might every 2 secs, making it more skillful play as you need to keep the auras active, not spam them, since they dont stack duration)
This opens the options to use auras to build might even when not taking hits.

lLobo.7960:

Fire element and the spec has quite some condi clean on its theme too
– fire cantrip removes conditions and burn foes
– phoenix removes conditions
– trait in fire removes conditions (activates fire cantrip for free)
– fire aura already reduces inc condition duration by 20%

They’re not really enough though. The cantrip is fine and Phoenix is good too(although I personally hate Scepter), but the trait is rather mediocre since it’s uncontrollable and not constant(as in, you might cleanse 3 crappy conditions from some random Warrior and then get Condi Bombed by a Necro and not have it anymore).

Also, I thought the Condi Duration decrease on Fire Aura was bugged and didn’t work currently. I’ve been gone for a while, so I don’t really know.

Malchior.5732:

They’re not really enough though. The cantrip is fine and Phoenix is good too(although I personally hate Scepter), but the trait is rather mediocre since it’s uncontrollable and not constant(as in, you might cleanse 3 crappy conditions from some random Warrior and then get Condi Bombed by a Necro and not have it anymore).

Also, I thought the Condi Duration decrease on Fire Aura was bugged and didn’t work currently. I’ve been gone for a while, so I don’t really know.

And they are not really supposed to be enough, they are just there to help. In your example the trait would clean the crappy ones so your active cleanse can clean the other ones…
the fire aura change wouldn’t be the solution to condi pressure, but it would help you keep your sustain by reducing the amount of condi you take.
Its an idea for an option. You can then combo that with other options to tailor the best solution for you. Be it with ER to remove heavy pressure, with spec in water for more cleanse and so on…

And yes, the proposed trait by anet is bad for its low activation chance. Thats why I think it should be a T2 major with 100% chance.

lLobo.7960:

Malchior.5732:

They’re not really enough though. The cantrip is fine and Phoenix is good too(although I personally hate Scepter), but the trait is rather mediocre since it’s uncontrollable and not constant(as in, you might cleanse 3 crappy conditions from some random Warrior and then get Condi Bombed by a Necro and not have it anymore).

Also, I thought the Condi Duration decrease on Fire Aura was bugged and didn’t work currently. I’ve been gone for a while, so I don’t really know.

And they are not really supposed to be enough, they are just there to help. In your example the trait would clean the crappy ones so your active cleanse can clean the other ones…

That’s the problem though. The only actives we have are Cleansing Fire(Cleanses 3), Focus Earth #4(pretty much the only good one), Scepter Fire #3(Phoenix), Staff Water #5(1 per pulse), and Dagger Water #5(Just one condition cleansed IIRC). Staff Air #4 only cleanses specific conditions(Cripple, Immobilize…).

Per weapon, you got:
1 on Scepter
1 on Focus
1 on Off-Hand Dagger
2* on Staff

*One of them is very specific in what it cleanses.

That’s why we’re always forced into Water/Arcana. The only way to get any decent amount of cleanses is to go 4 into Water and even that isn’t enough so we go 6 into Water for Cleanse on Regen, and only then do we have enough to not be completely threatened by Conditions. It might be a little too much Cleansing, but it’s pretty much our only good option when we need to solve that problem(a big one since we’re lacking in the Health department, which is the only other thing that can slow down the effect of damaging conditions).

Our cleansing options are pretty much non-existent in our trait lines outside of Water!
They don’t need to be AS strong, but not so worthless.

lLobo.7960:

I like the concept of getting fire shield when attuning to fire, the problem is fire shield needs to be changed. I strongly believe that fire aura needs to be reworked into removing conditions when hit (1s icd), instead of applying might. This would make the aura more useful (not only for ele, but overall) and would open up possibilities to deal with condi spam without negating it. Currently, all auras have a good defensive value, except fire aura.

I agree that fire aura is garbage too, at least for eles as we aren’t made to take a hit (unless you spec everything into defense, in which case you aren’t going into fire). However, a regular buff to fire aura would also greatly increase the power of other classes with access to the aura, most obviously warrior (and they don’t need any more buffs already) and engineers (likewise). Instead, I would like to see the proposed trait that makes “fire aura gives 2 stacks of might when applied” instead give a buff to fire auras applied by an ele when traited (-condition duration like in the tooltip of flame barrier, the focus skill. Note this skill does’t actually give the -duration, however).

Overall, you raise some nice points. Unfortunately, they have no idea what they are doing with this class as they don’t understand how it works.

Also, some more viable cleansing options ARE sorely needed. Currently, you either go water/arcana and have plenty of cleanse, or you don’t go into water and end up with no cleanse. This is especially important b/c eles are SO susceptible to conditions, and exacerbated by the removal of vitality from the water line. This is going to become even more important with the incoming change to conditions that allow burning to be stacked. As far as the fire trait that cleanses condis by proccing cleansing fire, it is just a terrible trait. They need to give it an active trigger (perhaps, on-heal, which would also open other heals for usability). This would actually be a very attractive option for signet builds, which would actually have controllable cleanse. However, they will probably keep it passive b/c they are working to remove every aspect of active play from the class.

lLobo.7960:

Fire element and the spec has quite some condi clean on its theme too
– fire cantrip removes conditions and burn foes
– phoenix removes conditions
– trait in fire removes conditions (activates fire cantrip for free)
- fire aura *already reduces inc condition duration by 20%*

All auras are mostly defensive
ice aura is a defense against sustain (freezes foes and reduces inc dmg)
magnectic aura is defense against ranged (reflect projectiles)
shock aura is defense against melee burst (stun, interrupting flurry attacks or burst combos)
fire aura is a mess…
makes sense to make fire aura a decent defense against condition pressure

Also, the might stacking by getting hit is a very poor implementation for the ele. And the trait that gives might on fire aura activation helps this issue. (But I think it should be by time during fire aura, so fire auras give 1 stack of might every 2 secs, making it more skillful play as you need to keep the auras active, not spam them, since they dont stack duration)
This opens the options to use auras to build might even when not taking hits.

FIRST: i’ve seen one or two players mention this, that fire aura reduces condition duration. but i have NEVER seen anything in game or on the wiki or by a dev that says the same thing. with all due respect, i call shenanigans until i see some proof.

(fire shield THE FOCUS WEAPON SKILL may show a tooltip for condi duration reduction (and according to the wiki, doesn’t even work)… but the fire aura tootltip lists no such thing. the fire aura only lists might and burning.)

IF the aura already reduces condi duration, then adding a condi cleanse would make it overpowered. either way, i still prefer the might. (cooldown 1 second per attacker, and blocking also activates the might and burning, according to the wiki )

also, fire field combos give might and /or cause burning. condition removal combos are found by interacting with light fields. (projective finishers or whirling finishers),

light aura gives retaliation to you when struck, and vulnerability to the enemy
chaos armour gives random boon to you and random condition to enemy when struck.

both of those are passive aggressive in nature, as is fire aura. so that’s 3 offensive auras and 3 defensive auras. that’s a 50/50 split if you ask me.

SECOND: on to condition cleanses in the fire line. yes, pheonix does remove a condition. and yes, so does the fire cantrip. that’s a bonus of the skill phoenix, not the primary function of the skill. the primary function is damage. but since the phoenix is a mystical creature that rises from the ashes, anet caved to real world mythology and gave it a condi cleanse. now the cantrip? i can’t really argue there as cantrips are defensive in nature, but it also causing burning, which is an offensive side effect of the skill. basically, it’s a conversion. change your condition into a harmful effect to the enemy. it’s like necro’s condi transfers. the ONLY reason i can accept the fire cantrip trait is that is has an offense effect: AoE burning

i do not dispute that fire line does have some condi cleanse. I DISAGREE WITH THE DAMAGE LINE OFFERING SO MUCH DEFENSE. if you want to trait defensively, you should be required to trait into the defense line. having one defensive trait in the offense line doesn’t bother me. but people are suggesting to add more and more defensive traits into fire. and more defensive traits means fewer offense traits to choose from. i don’t want to end up being pigeon holed into NOT HAVING offense choices because so many people want defensive traits in the offense specialization trait line

THIRD: passive condi removal is generally limited to a 10 second cooldown. (except for traited “use x skill to automatically cleanse the condi as soon as you have the condi” types, which have closer to a 30 second cooldown, and also except for the “using x type of skill, like signets or nature skill, will also cleanse condis” types) Anet obviously wants us to use active condi cleanses, not passive ones. (i’ll leave theif stealth condi cleanse out of the discussion, even though the thief has to actively stealth in order to cleanse a condition via the trait)

FOURTH: i actually agree with you on raising the chance of applying fire aura. in addition to making it 100%, i’d suggest moving it to to the master tier, and then change sunspot into “do 10% more damage when endurance is full.” at the adept tier.

tl;dr: fire aura is fine as is… don’t add any more defense traits to fire line

sorry for the double post…. but i hit the character limit:

i believe the solution to solution to ele’s condi issues would be to

a) give ele’s access to resistance on some water skills (say, 1 water skill per each weapon set, like say on the number 5 skills)
b) replace ele’s GM trait (+1% damage per boon) with a trait that grants condition cleanse and resistance on a type of utility. (i hesitate to say cantrips, as i want more utilities to be viable in PvP and WvW, but honestly, extra condi cleanse AND resistance would be the only way i’d ever take cantrips on my ele.)

Forgoten, a lot of player ask for more defensive option in EVERY line cause either way ele would die without delivering the burst tht offensive lines are supposed to make you able to deliver.
Nothing prevent you to ake 1 defensive ad 2 offensive, or 2 defensive and one offensive, etc.

On my mind they should do like for the reaper line where the top trait are GS oriented, midle ones are chill oriented and bottom ones are reaper oriented.

For instance what coulld be done to fire:
top ones are for direct damage (like pyromancer’s training)
middle ones are for burning (like burning precision)
botom ones are defensive (like auto cleansing fire and blinding ashe)