Guild Wars 2

So we ve all been reading a whole lot of posts about how the 0/10/0/30/30 build is ‘GodLike Errmagherd’. Myself being a d/d ele i find it incredibly fun but i like to change builds every now n again just to modify the 100% healing kinda gameplay.
The one variable i have noticed on d/d ele is EA or the 30 arcana points, imo the attunement swapping time IS a must AND must be reduced at least that way we wont see that many ppl using EA and could use those points on some other line (yes yes i know some pros dont use EA but im talking about 99.99% of the d/d ele population).
On the other hand fire/earth honestly blow chunks (unless you are a staff ele who likes to stay ranged, thats fine no judging its a great way to play for some ppl), i love trying going full BURST with 30fire30air10arcana just to have some fun in pve, but using more than 10 points on those trait lines for Wvw (spvp, maeby…mmm nop still not) is a big no, wouldnt it be nice if the Earth trait line gave some sort of support options like the water trait line does?

Weapons wise Ive recently retried the good ol’ scepter, and my god… that weapon is so boring due to the lack of burst it literally makes you wanna cut off your man vegetables n make a pair of nice exotic earrings (again i know some of you are absolutely impossible to beat with a scepter cuz all gamez got proz).

What do you guys think? less healing moar powa? moar hp base less healing?

Less healing, more power. Definitely. The lack of damage is sort of annoying, admittedly.

When people say god mode, I think it means “yay, I hardly die anymore”. 0/10/0/30/30 has lousy damage, mind you. Surviving is not god mode, but surviving and killing people quickly would be. Elementalists can’t kill anyone semi-skilled quickly, from what I have seen/experienced (unless you go for pure damage and use Arcane Blast and Wave and catch someone unaware, with little toughness, or/and no condition removal handy. You only have one utility skill left, no real healing or toughness, and will die in blink of an eye if countered or CC’ed).

Personally I can’t live with playing a build that has low damage output. Who cares about surviving, if you can’t dish out damage. That is why I use http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQJAoYhImmbwR5gjDAkHn4CLiHPUhFlCzA;ToAA0CnoqxUjoGbNuak1M+YSA

For SPvP, but also tried something similar in TPvP as well, unless the team needs a bunker build (yawn).

I think you (OP) are right about the trait line boons. If they switched and altered a few things there, things might look a lot differently. That and increasing damage would be interesting.

horaxx.9728:

Weapons wise Ive recently retried the good ol’ scepter, and my god… that weapon is so boring due to the lack of burst it literally makes you wanna cut off your man vegetables n make a pair of nice exotic earrings (again i know some of you are absolutely impossible to beat with a scepter cuz all gamez got proz).

In terms of pure burst damage, the differences between the scepter and dagger mainhand lie in fire 1,2,3. Dragon’s tooth hits harder and has a lower cooldown than burning speed. Phoenix can hit 3 times and is more bursty than drake’s breath, which relies on burn damage. You also get 2 blast finishers for might.

This game is about survival. When bosses/mobs can down you in one or two hits when you go glass cannon, you need a more robust build. Can’t do damage if you’re dead, and you hurt your whole party when you’re downed.

- Fix ALL the bugs
- Nerf some bunker traits but give glasscannon more innate survivability
- More damage overall, better scaling
- Make fire a viable traitline
- Completely rework staff to make it a viable 1v1 weapon
- Completely rework the conjures to make them viable (something like engi kits with a max duration)
- Give focus a mobility skill
- Make utilities besides cantrips viable

Aether McLoud.1975:

- Fix ALL the bugs
- Nerf some bunker traits but give glasscannon more innate survivability
- More damage overall, better scaling
- Make fire a viable traitline
- Completely rework staff to make it a viable 1v1 weapon
- Completely rework the conjures to make them viable (something like engi kits with a max duration)
- Give focus a mobility skill

+

- Improve Scepter and staff auto attacks (dmg and projectile speed)
- Phoenix needs to move faster so it’s useful outside of melee range.

Aether McLoud.1975:

- Make utilities besides cantrips viable

Signets need to be instacast (the ability to midcast with a cast time would be fine too) like Air Signet or Assassin’s signet. Signet of Earth’s duration is too short to use before Dragon’s Tooth without a bunch of +condi duration, and casting it after spreads out the burst damage too much(it often lets the enemy move away from DT before they’re immobilized anyway). Being able to cast it at the same time would be a huge improvement and no longer require two long cooldown CC skills to land a 6 second CD DT.

Glyph of Storms needs 1200 range and a shorter cooldown. I would take it in some of my builds if the cooldown was 40 seconds before quick glyphs.

nerf tank eles they are immortal that should help the game now

Every one say use d/d when playing a elementalist i always felt that a mage or elementalist should be using a staff and all this attunement swapping is also not for me. So what i would like to see is a total overall of the staff. Casting times is just to slow ive been testing it extensively during the maw event with loads of people around its just impossible to get gold rewards using a staff before your spell goes off the mobs are already dead and the damage is not up to par aswell. Ive tried loads of different build combinations and no matter how you construct your build it takes ages to kill mobs compared to other classes

Osculim.2983:

Every one say use d/d when playing a elementalist i always felt that a mage or elementalist should be using a staff and all this attunement swapping is also not for me. So what i would like to see is a total overall of the staff. Casting times is just to slow ive been testing it extensively during the maw event with loads of people around its just impossible to get gold rewards using a staff before your spell goes off the mobs are already dead and the damage is not up to par aswell. Ive tried loads of different build combinations and no matter how you construct your build it takes ages to kill mobs compared to other classes

You realize that jade colossi reflect every autoattack from staff back at you? Staff isn’t the best dps weapon. Too many supportive spells.

Adastra.9821:

horaxx.9728:

Weapons wise Ive recently retried the good ol’ scepter, and my god… that weapon is so boring due to the lack of burst it literally makes you wanna cut off your man vegetables n make a pair of nice exotic earrings (again i know some of you are absolutely impossible to beat with a scepter cuz all gamez got proz).

In terms of pure burst damage, the differences between the scepter and dagger mainhand lie in fire 1,2,3. Dragon’s tooth hits harder and has a lower cooldown than burning speed. Phoenix can hit 3 times and is more bursty than drake’s breath, which relies on burn damage. You also get 2 blast finishers for might.

But you do no damage if the enemy moves.

Scepter has potential, but most of the scepter auto-attacks are saddening. Fire has a HUGE cast time, air is decent but only good for single target fights, and water tickles. Earth-condition damage is the best scepter build in my opinion, 3k tougheness and 15+ bleeds on your enemy is crazy.

Shatterstone (water#2) was buffed recently, but still is not as useful as it needs to be. I run water-dps, allowing Shatterstone to not interfere with your attacks (no dead time) would make me very happy with the game.

Get rid of stun block, I mean Magnetic Grasp.
No matter how many times this has been “fixed” it`s only a matter of hours/days until it starts stunning players again.
Swap it for wtk Thief has that pulls players instead. I`ve yet to hear of a Thief cronie saying “ kitten it! I got stunned by my own cast!”

i prefer to use staff its fun for pve and the way i play i prefer to use glyphs a lot. both elemental summon glyphs and storms. i would love to see our leet skills given some love as u are basically reduced to 1 the greater elemental summon.
i would like to see them put in a greater glyph of storms and the way it would break down is : 120 sec c/d and the effects:
Fire/ fissure opens up shooting fire balls up into the air. and also crippling
Water/ comet storm freezing the ground
Elect / Electrical storm, lighting but more of it also blinds and stuns
Earth/ tectonic shift, crippling. bleeding, snaring, knocking down

to me this would give a lot more enjoyment to the class and allow for some build changes

I wonder if some players really play this game.

Remove healing to D/D ele and you get a class that has to stay in melee and has ANY surviving mechanics while having low HP and light classes.

Yeah remove Healing and give stealth like thief…..

May be that if you don t stay in battle with ele to make him finish his spells the issue is not the ele?

For ex:
Thief arrives, try to burst, fail (because rely on stealth instead of CC) and escapes to recover….

Ele recovers also <=== OMG BROKEN…….

Not to mention that tank or not, 2 VS 1 ele dies to any class.

haviz.1340:

Osculim.2983:

Every one say use d/d when playing a elementalist i always felt that a mage or elementalist should be using a staff and all this attunement swapping is also not for me. So what i would like to see is a total overall of the staff. Casting times is just to slow ive been testing it extensively during the maw event with loads of people around its just impossible to get gold rewards using a staff before your spell goes off the mobs are already dead and the damage is not up to par aswell. Ive tried loads of different build combinations and no matter how you construct your build it takes ages to kill mobs compared to other classes

You realize that jade colossi reflect every autoattack from staff back at you? Staff isn’t the best dps weapon. Too many supportive spells.

Jade colossi never seen one of those during the maw event.

haviz was talking about the boss fight in fractals of the mists. I guess you were talking about something different here (frozen maw event or something?)

However, in events I always choose the staff for the high (aoe) dmg output to get loot. It also helps a lot to use your combo fields and inflict conditions to the mobs (e.g. eruption and then cast lava font on it).

So in PvE staff is more than acceptable. I only have problems using it in 1on1 situations in PvP.

Osculim.2983:

Jade colossi never seen one of those during the maw event.

Seems like I created some confusion. Which maw event were you talking about?

Speed up the staff projectiles a bit, and reduce their casting time a bit. That make the staff a bit more useful in 1v1 without totally negating the advantage that D/D has.

Either that, or turn skills like Ice Spike and Eruption into dot fields so they’d at least hit a bit, instead of once hit-or-miss.

Fishbait.6723:

Get rid of stun block, I mean Magnetic Grasp.
No matter how many times this has been “fixed” it`s only a matter of hours/days until it starts stunning players again.
Swap it for wtk Thief has that pulls players instead. I`ve yet to hear of a Thief cronie saying kitten it! I got stunned by my own cast!"

The magnetic gasp isnt as bad as fire grab because you need to be facing perfectly the enemy direction in the other hand magnetic gasp helps you get an enemy that is trying to escape 65% of the time. If you forumQ.Qers would stop q.q and go play and learn some techniques ask other people for help how they use them pm I can give you some names to whisper in game and ask for help!

my ancestors used to say “repetita iuvant”, so here we go again:

- fix all mobility bugs first (RTL, MG)
- SLIGHTLY boost damage output (around 3 or 5% max)
- make conjured weapons effective on any build
- give us Elite skills worth such name
- improve traits to make awesome ’em all

Elementalist imho, at least in this phase of the game, doesn’t need anything else.

Dagger Water #2: Remove the heal. Make it heal for a % of the damage done. This will resolve a great deal of the D/D complaints people have if we actually had to hit with it to heal.

Scepter Fire #1: More upfront damage. Lower condition damage if need be.
Scepter Fire #2: Shorten the arming time so it fires off quicker
Scepter Fire #3: Make it explode and spawn where target is and steal a boon. Fly back and give us the boon(s) and vigor regen hitting all targets on the return path.
Scepter Water #1: I saw it suggested elsewhere, but have each hit provide 1 stack of vuln.
Scepter Water #2: Drastically increase damage and reduce arming time.
Scepter Lightning #1: Add a chance on crit to stun for 1 second.
Scepter Lightning #3: Merge #2 with #3 by increasing damage.
Scepter Lightning #2: PBAoE. For every target hit gain 2 seconds of quickness for a max of 10 seconds.
Scepter Earth #3: Blind and knock back.

Staff projectile speed increased to match bows. All auto attacks could use a slight damage increase too since a lot of the activated abilities are strickly utility oriented. Staff really is quite boring to play.

Staff Fire #2: Initial damage when cast and not have to wait a second.
Staff Fire #3: Lower condition damage, increase condition duration, increase direct damage.
Staff Water #2: Faster activation time.
Staff Earth #2: Snare targets in AE and erupt after 2seconds.
Staff Earth #4: No longer need a snare due to #2 so introduce a sink hole ability that creates muddy ground for us to jump in or a sink hole to immobalize a group.

That’s just weapon skills. Traits are a mess. Skills are a mess. Etc.

CachoDm.4639:

Fishbait.6723:

Get rid of stun block, I mean Magnetic Grasp.
No matter how many times this has been “fixed” it`s only a matter of hours/days until it starts stunning players again.
Swap it for wtk Thief has that pulls players instead. I`ve yet to hear of a Thief cronie saying kitten it! I got stunned by my own cast!"

The magnetic gasp isnt as bad as fire grab because you need to be facing perfectly the enemy direction in the other hand magnetic gasp helps you get an enemy that is trying to escape 65% of the time. If you forumQ.Qers would stop q.q and go play and learn some techniques ask other people for help how they use them pm I can give you some names to whisper in game and ask for help!

search a big karka (vet or champion) use your magnetic grasp….
you’ll see the issue……(happens in many occasions, just with karka is 100%).
Seems your L2P suggestion wasn t that smart…….

LordByron.8369:

search a big karka (vet or champion) use your magnetic grasp….
you’ll see the issue……(happens in many occasions, just with karka is 100%).
Seems your L2P suggestion wasn t that smart…….

or Lupi. It doesn’t work at all with bigger targets.

LordByron.8369:

CachoDm.4639:

Fishbait.6723:

Get rid of stun block, I mean Magnetic Grasp.
No matter how many times this has been “fixed” it`s only a matter of hours/days until it starts stunning players again.
Swap it for wtk Thief has that pulls players instead. I`ve yet to hear of a Thief cronie saying kitten it! I got stunned by my own cast!"

The magnetic gasp isnt as bad as fire grab because you need to be facing perfectly the enemy direction in the other hand magnetic gasp helps you get an enemy that is trying to escape 65% of the time. If you forumQ.Qers would stop q.q and go play and learn some techniques ask other people for help how they use them pm I can give you some names to whisper in game and ask for help!

search a big karka (vet or champion) use your magnetic grasp….
you’ll see the issue……(happens in many occasions, just with karka is 100%).
Seems your L2P suggestion wasn t that smart…….

^^ What he/she said.

Also, 65%? You think that is acceptable? lol
It shouldn`t stun the Ele` casting it at all, regardless of if it grabs the enemy or not, as they (player or mob) can just turn & splatter you & you can`t do shizz.
Length of times it stuns players is the same length of time anyone/thing else can kill them easily enough/or a Thief kill you four times over ;p

Yep, I know Fire Grab is also bad, but I never mentioned that & assumed someone would eventually.

I want a viable glass cannon build similar to mesmer and thieves T.T
I would

Nerf:
– Evasive Arcana Water effect: replace it with a Frozen Burst chill effect
or
– Reduce healing power contribution to most water healing skills, not by much, 10-15%
—→nerf healing builds effectively

Buff:
– Overall damage by 10%, closer to what elems used to do in bw1

- Reduce some off hand cooldowns by 20%, like Fire Grab, Frost Aura, Updraft, Earthquake, Gale, Freezing Gust, Fire Shield…

Anything with a cd over 30sec is ridiculous: it gimps both damage/burst capability AND survavibility. Elem really is the profession with the longest cd’s.

- Same with utilities: Most survavibility utilities have a inexplicably long cd for the effect they provide. Ex: Cantrips, Arcane Shield. Other professions have similar utilities with much less cooldown.

- Last but not least, fix Intelligence: bonus % attunement recharge rate with each point in Arcane Power line is not accurate at all. 60% of 15sec is 9sec, not 5ish sec.
Not having to put 30 points in Arcane Power line for a build to be effective would provide soooo much more diversity in builds.
Plus the Grandmaster trait Arcane Precision is so weak…

Tired of having to spec so much in defensive points/traits/utilities to be a little useful, to the extreme of becoming an unkillable, but non threatening, moving punching bag.

Increase RTL to a 30 second cooldown. Force Elementalists to be a little wiser in their fight selection.

Fix Mist Form, so that the Cantrips 20% reduction works on it. Not needed, but it is still an irritating bug.

Fix pathing on RTL and MG. That’s so annoying.

Almost forgot, a less ridiculous cast time on Churning Earth.
Also if you cancel the cast, a reduction on the time until it resets.
As it stands, we need to use another skill to either lightning flash or armour of earth just to try & make use of it.

Some great Ideas in this thread. From what I’ve experienced the main tweaks that Elementalists could use are:
- Allowing players to move away from feeling forced into placing points into Arcana
- Having a higher chance of landing scepter attacks (while not being 100% chance)
- Increasing staff single target damage output
- Increasing the speed of staff abilities
- Making focus more desirable
- Making some utilities slightly more desirable
- Tweaking Ele base stats / bonus trait stats to allow for more viable damage builds
- Making some traits more desirable (especially in Fire)
- Increase damage of trident

Some ideas expanding upon that

Scepter:
- Increase direct damage on all auto attacks
- Increase damage on Shatterstone (water 2) and increase the animation speed by ~20%
- Increase the animation speed of Dragon’s Tooth (fire 2) by ~20-30%
- Increase the speed of the Phoenix “projectile” by 50%
- Increase damage on Hurl (earth 2), increase the animation speed by ~20%

Staff:
- Increase all auto attack speed / projectile speed
- Increase damage on all auto attacks
- Increase the animation speed of eruption (earth 2) / ice spike (water 2) by ~20%
- Add a direct damage component to Flame Burst (fire 3) (only affects your target, burning component is still aoe)
- Damage on Lava Font (fire 2) now occurs the moment it’s cast. The fire combo field will place a 1s burn (refreshes) on enemies standing in it
- Add a small medium damage point blank aoe to Burning Retreat (fire 4)

Dagger mainhand:
- Make Burning speed (fire 3) mechanics similar to heartseeker (can still move in a direction without a target, won’t overshoot enemies)

Dagger offhand:
- Make churning (earth 5) earth a “hold to channel” ability. The longer it is channeled, the more initial damage it does. OR reduce the cast time significantly

Focus:
- Reduce cooldown on Gale (air 5) by ~30s and add a damage component OR add a small AOE knockdown radius from the target
- Reduce cooldown on fire aura (fire 5) by ~20s, increase duration to 5s
- Replace fire wall (fire 4) with an ability similar to Thief’s Infiltrator’s Strike/shadow return, except causes a small fire wall at your location
- Allow an out of combat weapon swap

Trident:
- Increase auto attack damage on all attunments and speed of projectiles
- Add a medium direct damage on Boil (fire 2)
- Significantly increase damage on Steam (fire 3)

Utility and elites:
- All four utility signets are now instant cast similar to signet of air (signet of restoration unaffected)
- Combine all utility conjured weapons into one, allow swapping similar to attunements. Increase charges to 25. Increased stats will vary according to the weapon you’re holding
- Tornado adds protection and swiftness for the duration
- Whirlpool adds stability, protection, and swiftness for the duration. (maybe too strong?)
- Unsure what 3 utilities to add in place of 3 conjured weapons being removed

Other changes:
- Arcana traitline now increases combo field and aura duration by 0.5% per point (or 1% if it isn’t too powerful)
- Attunement swapping has a static cooldown (same as -60% reduction from current Arcana trait)
- Allow out of combat weapon swap

Delak.1064:

Some great Ideas in this thread. From what I’ve experienced the main tweaks that Elementalists could use are:
- Allowing players to move away from feeling forced into placing points into Arcana
- Having a higher chance of landing scepter attacks (while not being 100% chance)
- Increasing staff single target damage output
- Increasing the speed of staff abilities
- Making focus more desirable
- Making some utilities slightly more desirable
- Tweaking Ele base stats / bonus trait stats to allow for more viable damage builds
- Making some traits more desirable (especially in Fire)
- Increase damage of trident

Some ideas expanding upon that

Scepter:
- Increase direct damage on all auto attacks
- Increase damage on Shatterstone (water 2) and increase the animation speed by ~20%
- Increase the animation speed of Dragon’s Tooth (fire 2) by ~20-30%
- Increase the speed of the Phoenix “projectile” by 50%
- Increase damage on Hurl (earth 2), increase the animation speed by ~20%

Staff:
- Increase all auto attack speed / projectile speed
- Increase damage on all auto attacks
- Increase the animation speed of eruption (earth 2) / ice spike (water 2) by ~20%
- Add a direct damage component to Flame Burst (fire 3) (only affects your target, burning component is still aoe)
- Damage on Lava Font (fire 2) now occurs the moment it’s cast. The fire combo field will place a 1s burn (refreshes) on enemies standing in it
- Add a small medium damage point blank aoe to Burning Retreat (fire 4)

Dagger mainhand:
- Make Burning speed (fire 3) mechanics similar to heartseeker (can still move in a direction without a target, won’t overshoot enemies)

Dagger offhand:
- Make churning (earth 5) earth a “hold to channel” ability. The longer it is channeled, the more initial damage it does. OR reduce the cast time significantly

Focus:
- Reduce cooldown on Gale (air 5) by ~30s and add a damage component OR add a small AOE knockdown radius from the target
- Reduce cooldown on fire aura (fire 5) by ~20s, increase duration to 5s
- Replace fire wall (fire 4) with an ability similar to Thief’s Infiltrator’s Strike/shadow return, except causes a small fire wall at your location
- Allow an out of combat weapon swap

Trident:
- Increase auto attack damage on all attunments and speed of projectiles
- Add a medium direct damage on Boil (fire 2)
- Significantly increase damage on Steam (fire 3)

Utility and elites:
- All four utility signets are now instant cast similar to signet of air (signet of restoration unaffected)
- Combine all utility conjured weapons into one, allow swapping similar to attunements. Increase charges to 25. Increased stats will vary according to the weapon you’re holding
- Tornado adds protection and swiftness for the duration
- Whirlpool adds stability, protection, and swiftness for the duration. (maybe too strong?)
- Unsure what 3 utilities to add in place of 3 conjured weapons being removed

Other changes:
- Arcana traitline now increases combo field and aura duration by 0.5% per point (or 1% if it isn’t too powerful)
- Attunement swapping has a static cooldown (same as -60% reduction from current Arcana trait)
- Allow out of combat weapon swap

Interesting points really.

Now, being a d/d ele myselft since bwe1 dont you guys (other dd eles) get tired of the amount of heals mechanic? wouldnt it be better to (and this is just an opinion you dont have to go ape about it):
Evasive arcana: when used in water for instance, the water skill would be in cd. For earth give CE more damage but also have CD.
OR
Give us moar HP and reduce the healing %.

Last 5 days in wvw ive seen more D/D eles running 30 water 30 arcana than ever, i dont think its a matter of “eles have finally l2p” but actually being the only viable build for massive survival i think its pretty weak. Remember back in the day when you couldnt get outside a keep w/o seeing 2400 thiefs waiting to hit for 13k heartseaker? This is pretty much the same.

Some changes in S/D would also make it interesting, making scepter a viable weap could at least reduce the “im so good w d/d i won GW2 w AC gear” population.
Stuff like Dragon tooth falling on target and not making you wanna take a nap when you cast it d be nice. Maybe increase auto attacks and or reduce some of the animations.

Again, not saying you are BAD for playing D/D 30 water, just saying better get ready and start practicing fighting w less heals couse a LOT of ppl are complaining about it and i kinda see their point. I remember when heavys had such a massive amount of dmg they got a bit of a nerf there, same for thiefs, you guys think its “fair” we can pretty much stay 90% > HP during an entire fight? And be honest, this is w/o breaking a sweat unless going against a bigass zerg.

Make both the elemental attunement trait (10 in arcane, required) and the 9 second attunement swap cooldown from 30 in arcane both baseline elementalist features. Bigger cooldowns on attunements feel ridiculous and just lead to you spamming our terrible #1 attacks.

Without those two changes, the class with always be either pidgeonholed into the same builds, or be made useless (if either are nerfed).

THEN changes can be made adjusting the class accordingly.

Other ideas:

Switching to water attunement always heals you for 50% of what it does now. If you take healing ripple, it “improves” it to be 100% which is just the same heal we have today. Allows people that want to be damage focused an opportunity to not take healing ripple, which is required at the moment imo.

Cleansing wave made baseline. Replace trait with something else. Or Switching to water removes a condition for the ele, and cleansing wave makes it affect allies too.

It won’t keep damage builds from getting killed but it’ll give them some tools to survive a bit with careful play. A good thing.

Here’s a good one that alot of people would enjoy for scepter: Earth 2 (rock barrier) is now considered an aura. Suddenly people are picking up scepters!

Since elemental attunement at 10 in arcane is baseline now and gone, it needs a replacement. Guess what goes there now? EVASIVE ARCANA! Sure the water roll won’t heal for much on damage builds, but it’s something. Maybe they’ll even use the rolls in other attunements.

You might say “But now bunker builds will be like they are today but will get extra trait points from not going so far into arcane, so they’ll be stronger”. Well THAT’S when we then look for a few places to do some minor nerfs on some healing numbers, then we end up with “bunker” builds that are still tanky but maybe a little less so…but they’ll do a little more damage since they’re on trait lines other than arcane now. Probably better gameplay for everyone on both ends.

Watch build variety soar.

Atherakhia.4086:

Dagger Water #2: Remove the heal. Make it heal for a % of the damage done. This will resolve a great deal of the D/D complaints people have if we actually had to hit with it to heal.

Scepter Fire #1: More upfront damage. Lower condition damage if need be.
Scepter Fire #2: Shorten the arming time so it fires off quicker
Scepter Fire #3: Make it explode and spawn where target is and steal a boon. Fly back and give us the boon(s) and vigor regen hitting all targets on the return path.
Scepter Water #1: I saw it suggested elsewhere, but have each hit provide 1 stack of vuln.
Scepter Water #2: Drastically increase damage and reduce arming time.
Scepter Lightning #1: Add a chance on crit to stun for 1 second.
Scepter Lightning #3: Merge #2 with #3 by increasing damage.
Scepter Lightning #2: PBAoE. For every target hit gain 2 seconds of quickness for a max of 10 seconds.
Scepter Earth #3: Blind and knock back.

Staff projectile speed increased to match bows. All auto attacks could use a slight damage increase too since a lot of the activated abilities are strickly utility oriented. Staff really is quite boring to play.

Staff Fire #2: Initial damage when cast and not have to wait a second.
Staff Fire #3: Lower condition damage, increase condition duration, increase direct damage.
Staff Water #2: Faster activation time.
Staff Earth #2: Snare targets in AE and erupt after 2seconds.
Staff Earth #4: No longer need a snare due to #2 so introduce a sink hole ability that creates muddy ground for us to jump in or a sink hole to immobalize a group.

That’s just weapon skills. Traits are a mess. Skills are a mess. Etc.

Yes to everything, other than the stun on scepter air#1.

This is what we need from a 30 point arcane trait.
1st skill: something that will support whichever trait line your in, such as EA.
2nd skill: The same as 5 point arcane except that all traits from your previous line are carried over for 5 seconds. That means, when I switch to lightning from fire I can also get ever skill cast for 5 sec is fire and lighting (so the 1 might per fire skill 30pointer) 10%extra damage in fire (and the one in air) and anything else I have in fire.

If I change to water the I now have air+water traits for 5 sec.

Rage face, just had a good idea in edit and clicked post reply instead of edit noob moment. Not writing all that out again.

TGSlasher.1458:

This is what we need from a 30 point arcane trait.
1st skill: something that will support whichever trait line your in, such as EA.
2nd skill: The same as 5 point arcane except that all traits from your previous line are carried over for 5 seconds. That means, when I switch to lightning from fire I can also get ever skill cast for 5 sec is fire and lighting (so the 1 might per fire skill 30pointer) 10%extra damage in fire (and the one in air) and anything else I have in fire.

If I change to water the I now have air+water traits for 5 sec.

That’s pretty interesting… almost like element twisting

Specific ideas:

Remove regeneration from water 3 and replace with something else less potent.

to compensate:

more evasion and protection on weapon skills (for example, RTL and burning speed should count as dodges, staff should get some reflects, scepter some distortion (like mesmer sword) )

— this shifts more survivability into active skills and away from passive regeneration of health.

a 15% damage boost to weapon skills across the board. (ele damage is garbage compared to guardian, thief, and warrior)

another 15% increase to damage for full investment each in air and fire trait lines (through revision to those traits).

Any balancing from there should be about tweaking the PASSIVE PERSONAL SURVIVAL knob for 30 in water DOWN while bringing up the damage and mobility knobs on fire and air respectively and, where necessary, adding more active tools to evade damage.

a 30/30/0/0/0 D/D ele should play like a backstab/death blossom thief and have similar results.

TGSlasher.1458:

This is what we need from a 30 point arcane trait.
1st skill: something that will support whichever trait line your in, such as EA.
2nd skill: The same as 5 point arcane except that all traits from your previous line are carried over for 5 seconds. That means, when I switch to lightning from fire I can also get ever skill cast for 5 sec is fire and lighting (so the 1 might per fire skill 30pointer) 10%extra damage in fire (and the one in air) and anything else I have in fire.

If I change to water the I now have air+water traits for 5 sec.

That…is already the case —>Lingering Elements, Arcane Power Master Trait oO

plasmacutter.2709:

Specific ideas:

Remove regeneration from water 3 and replace with something else less potent.

to compensate:

more evasion and protection on weapon skills (for example, RTL and burning speed should count as dodges, staff should get some reflects, scepter some distortion (like mesmer sword) )

— this shifts more survivability into active skills and away from passive regeneration of health.

a 15% damage boost to weapon skills across the board. (ele damage is garbage compared to guardian, thief, and warrior)

another 15% increase to damage for full investment each in air and fire trait lines (through revision to those traits).

Any balancing from there should be about tweaking the PASSIVE PERSONAL SURVIVAL knob for 30 in water DOWN while bringing up the damage and mobility knobs on fire and air respectively and, where necessary, adding more active tools to evade damage.

a 30/30/0/0/0 D/D ele should play like a backstab/death blossom thief and have similar results.

100% THIS TY!

More freaking survivability on skills themselves and less regeneration ! Yes pls…but I doubt Anet will ever do something so clever, they’ll just nerf our survivability and expect us to win fights simply using our super-human reflex…only way to dodge the leap/immobilize/autoface/invulnerability spike from mesmers and steal/backstab/CnD burst from thieves…they’re so balanced compared to eles…yeah right

Most likely gonna get infracted again but I’d fire their alpha testing team and hire people who actually know what they’re doing.

Like PC said and Arhy supported, more defensive skills promoting a pro-active defence instead of a passive defense, in other words better rewards for skillful play.

I’d merge the 15 point traits of every element into one trait in the Arcana tree (maybe the 25 point minor?) because Arcana is all about attunement switching, so why shouldn’t it grant on-switch effects?

The 15 point minors in the elemental trait lines are replaced with a trait that reduces the attunement cooldown for that element to fixed 5-7 seconds, not stacking with the attunement cooldown reduction from Arcane.

That way, the players who want to focus on one element can use the other elements as utility and switch back to their main element with the standard weapon switch cool down.

Attunement switchers could either spread 15/15/15/15/X or X/X/X/X/30 depending if they want to deal damage or take the 30% boon duration from Arcana for support.

That change would also make the “while in X attunement” traits more powerful, because it allows to stay longer in the main attunement.

I’d give Ride the Lightning the current functionality of Lightning Flash, and change Lightning Flash to be a Light Field version of Thieves’ Pistol 5 (Black Powder).

We would have less mobility this way, which is a large part of what people dislike about us, as far as I know.

~

We also need to ditch this idea that elementalists must attunement dance, while allowing people to continue to use that play style if they so choose. As it is, Arcana will always be the best trait line because it rewards you for playing Elementalist literally the only way you can. This in mind…

I’d also make a new Grandmaster trait for our elemental lines, combining traits like “Internal Fire” and “Pyromancer’s Alacrity”, and add a halved attunement recharge rate effect specifically for that attunement. I’d put these in the current spots of Persisting Flames, Tempest Defense, Rock Solid, and Cleansing Water, and drop those traits down to Master level (possibly with slight nerfs).

No one really uses those traits as they stand, and these changes would encourage investment in specific trait lines to actually maximize the effectiveness of your preferred element(s).

In addition, I’d make our baseline attunement recharge equivalent to current rate at 15 Arcana, and make each point of Arcana half as effective.

I’d also remove Evasive Arcana and replace it with a somewhat improved version of Elemental Attunement, reducing healing while also requiring more investment to achieve our current levels of boon stacking, another large component of our Water-Arcana survivability.

~

However, in order to encourage us to move away from bunker builds, we’d also need to be more survivable. Water is our go-to choice for survivability at the moment, and this is primarily because it’s our only choice.

So, I’d improve Geomancer’s Freedom to a 50% reduction, and make it reduce the duration of our bleeds, burns, and poisons in addition to “soft” CC. Additionally, I’d move Stone Flesh up to our 25 point minor trait and have it grant us 2 points of Toughness per level in all attunements.

I’d change Tempest Defense to a Master trait, and make it stun our attacker and proc my new version of Lightning Flash when we’re hit with hard CC, on a 30 second cooldown. I’d also change Soothing Winds to our Air 25 point minor trait, and increase it to ~15-20% of our precision to healing.

I’d add a Fire Master trait which removes one condition whenever we burn our opponent with a skill (not via Flame Barrier), but can only proc once per skill. Additionally, I’d replace our Fire 25 point minor trait with a trait which boosts our Vitality by ~20% of our Power—call it “Vital Flame” or something. :p

As for Water, I’d simply improve our heals, but only on our allies. We would have the same self-healing we have now, but we’d still be able to support our groups very well.

Oh, and I’d change Arcane Fury to our Arcana 25 point Minor trait and increase its duration to 3-4 seconds, and make Arcane Precision our Arcana 5 point minor trait.

…and I’d implement my changes on a public testing server to tweak them according to players’ input and hard statistics before release!

I’d merge the 15 point traits of every element into one trait in the Arcana tree (maybe the 25 point minor?) because Arcana is all about attunement switching, so why shouldn’t it grant on-switch effects?
The 15 point minors in the elemental trait lines are replaced with a trait that reduces the attunement cooldown for that element to fixed 5-7 seconds, not stacking with the attunement cooldown reduction from Arcane.

<~ Great idea! Matches what other classes get better than forcing us into Arcane for EVERY SINGLE BUILD

Air traits need to mesh better with a DPS build. (or they need to change the tooltip for Air attunement)

20 Moves as staff with ONE blast finisher, no leap, no whirlwind. I honestly think they forgot something …. and yes, a lot of people dump 30! into arcane for a Blast finisher every 10s

Might want to also look at the fact that a wolf can take half my HP with its intro move of ‘leap/bite’ while mining in Frostgorge lol …. sure I’m ~80% glass gear, but its all exotic :/

I would seriously look at coefficients and scaling for staff as well, if you don;t do anything about resilience/HP pool.