Guild Wars 2

The fact that we are being forced to chose between Evasive Arcana over Elemental Attunement is absolutely rediculous when elementalists core being is revolving around team game play. Elementalists are going to lose condition removal and self sustain due to them not receiving regeneration and protection through elemental attunement. If you decide to take Elemental Attunement instead of Evasive Arcana you arent going to be able to dodge heal and remove conditions, blast combo fields on earth dodge, and you arent going to be able to blind on dodge. Either way you chose you are being ripped off. Its not only unfair, this change will unbalance elementalists that are already not 100% equal with other professions as they currently stand. I suggest replacing elemental attunement with Elemental Contingency, and getting rid of Elemental Contingency, so elemental attunement is in the Master line instead of Elemental Contingency.

Just step back and look. I’d say 50-60% of devs/GMs are Rangers….and rangers got buffed to the point there they press#2 and win. NO devs play Ele and clearly don’t kittening understand how DEVASTATING THIS IS and how many eles are going to STOP playing ele.

P.S. This will probably get removed bc ANet forum admins are kittens and they delete every post that points out where Anet is wrong and why(bc its the kittening truth and Anet doesn’t like to be proven wrong) GG Anet GG.

And thats why i moved from playing Ele other than staffPvE, and playing only ranger, ranger doesn’t need any brain or any thinking, just sit back and press #2 and you deal 15k dmg almost always, sit and laugh from afar.

So I think that these changes are not going to work out very well for ele. Let’s look at this from a perspective of weapon-sets:

S/X – Scepter builds will still have to take fresh air because they have atrocious sustained damage. So going into air, you lose a lot of damage, gain near permanent uptime on super-speed, and gain either an auto-shocking aura or CD reduction in air. So you have MORE utility, but less damage, which needs to be made up. Fire would normally be the line of choice for more damage, but you don’t actually get any traits in this line that increase your damage appreciably for a burst build. Seeing as scepter is only viable as a burst weapon, and can’t make up that damage, this is a net nerf.
PREDICTION: Scepter builds will die because they just don’t have enough damage to keep up.

Dagger/X: Dagger builds have always had to go arcana/water to keep up (with condi clear and damage reduction), and with a nerf to arcana, will probably be forced to go into earth for that amazing -20% melee damage reduction minor. With lower attunement cooldowns, dagger builds should do fine due to high access to boons and cleanses. There is even the possiblity that there could be an offensive aura build pop up that uses tempest defense, lightning rod, earth for prot on aura, and water for cleanses. Fire seems out of place as the lower-tier traits just can’t compare (only the blind-spam is good in higher tiers).
Prediction: Dagger/X builds will be fine, perhaps with a water/earth/arcana d/d build and air/earth/water d/f variant.

Staff: This weapon will be irrelevant as engineers are automatically way better (more water fields, fire fields, other fields, and way more blast finishers, on a sturdier body and without general cooldowns). The nerf to elemental attunement hurts staff the most, as it removes access to the cleanse and blast necessary to fight in close-quarters. Perhaps a lightning rod build can do something, but staff just has too much trouble landing damage in small-scale fights. With all the power-creep, it just feels too clunky and slow. I think staff is the biggest loser from these changes, even with a built-in blasting staff.
Prediction: Staff ele won’t be able to keep up.

Utilities:
Conjures: these are useless, don’t bother.
Glyphs: Still bad outside of glyph of ele power, don’t go here.
Signets: Perhaps the selfish aura build has a place, but I don’t think it has the power to keep up with the massive power-creed happening.
Cantrips: Welcome home eles. Might as well just leave these on your bar 100% of the time now.

I think its clear that Anet has no idea what makes else tick. While some of the trait changes seem to open up some possibilities, they don’t really address the core weaknesses that eles have always had (tank up or go home). If you don’t like tanky d/d I suggest you check out engineer. It seems to be ele 2.0 (more fields, more blasts, no CD’s on swaps).

Its too early to make our assumptions about the class being ruined, although I am also feeling a little down in the dumps hearing elemental attunement, once again, got moved up a notch and now is in the GM trait line. I feel like Elemental attunement really should just be a base part of the class with the amount of protection toned down to maybe 3 1/2 seconds. I’m not sure if the Devs are aware but its the protection from elemental attunement + elemental shielding which basically makes this class right now. IMO the trait didn’t need to be moves from adept to master and then master to GM, it just needed to have its protection duration lowered.

@blackbeard you are almost correct, but D/D would take just as much of a nerf as staff, because they rely on blasting their own fields still.

Id like to add that if this change happened, the offensive side of dodge spell casting would dissapear completely. I know I use my dodges offensively all the time, but if this change happened I wouldnt be able to sustain while being offensive. Fights will become very stale when I cant push in to make the first move, because I wont live getting back to a safe spot.

ANET, please do not take away the core of the elementalist as it currently exists. You have thousands of people who love the class based on the fact that it takes a high level of skill and creativity, but IF mastered can be whatever it wants (support, healer, nimble, dps) to me that’s the core of the elementalist. Why would you want to take the essence of what so many people love about a class and rework it while the core of all other classes are being left intact if not buffed….please leave the elemental attunement and evasive arcana traits alone. They are essential to the experience that many of your customers have put a lot of time and possibly money into with the elementalist.

Here’s my two cents about the ele changes:

Fire traits:

Flame Barrier: Without supporting traits like One with Fire, Zephyr’s Boon or Elemental Shielding this trait is useless. Fire Aura by itself is pretty weak and having a trigger chance of only 20% does not help either. So instead of keeping this as a minor trait, I’d suggest swapping it with Burning Precision and reducing the increase in burning damage duration on this trait back to 25% and only having it active while attuned to fire. Now you can strip the trigger chance on Flame Barrier completely and have it activate every time. This way there is also a decent support option in the Adept tier which still matches the fire theme.

Sunspot: It’s a trait you don’t notice at the moment. The damage could be increased, as well as the range and it could apply some burning as well (say 1 stack for 2s). Especially when burning can stack now this would be helpful.

Burning Rage: That’s a very good trait, so there’s no need to change anything. It would also synergize well with the new minor trait Burning Precision and with the burning from Sunspot. Depending on how many stacks of burning can be applied, it me might be an idea to add tiers to this trait. If burning stacks are capped at 5, the damage could be increased by 2% per stack for example.

Burning Precision: I talked about this one in the section about Flame Barrier.

Conjurer: This appears to be messed up now. It’s obvious that the +10 charges should stay, but the part about getting a fire aura when an ally picks up a conjured weapon or when you use a signet just does not feel right. Stuff about signets is much better suited in the earth line, where you could pick Written in Stone at the end. So scratch that part. Since Flame Barrier would be a new Adept trait, we already have a reliable source of Fire Auras in this triple, so granting Fire Aura is not the way to go. I’m currently playing with some possible replacements:

• Move the attribute bonuses from the conjured weapons to this trait. So Ice Bow would only grant extra condition duration and healing power if this trait is slotted. However, that approach would make this trait absolutely mandatory to pick, so it should better be kept baseline.
• Add an effect to whoever is picking it up — that’s how it’s handled at the moment. However, it should apply to the ele as well. One possibility could be different auras depending on the conjured weapon. Lightning Hammer would be Shocking Aura, Ice Bow is Frost Aura, Earth Shield is Magnetic Aura and Fire Axe is Fire Aura. I don’t know yet what FGS would be. But this would again be just about Auras. Still making it more diverse than always granting Fire Aura seems like a good idea and there are lots of other options, too.
• Have an effect at the location were the weapon is summoned. Lightning Hammer could strike foes in the area with a blinding flash and deal some damage, Ice Bow could heal allies in the area, Earth Shield could grant protection or inflict bleeding, Fire Axe could inflict burning and deal some damage. FGS is again a bit more difficult, but I’m sure you can come up with something. This way you would always have to make a choice where to place the conjure. Do you want it to be picked up easily or do you want the conjuring effect to be as efficient as possible?

One problem with some of those solutions is that they don’t fit the fire theme well, so maybe you can come up with something better here.

Power Overwhelming: I like this trait and it’s a decent offensive choice between Conjurer for utility and Flame Barrier for support. I know numbers are absolutely subject to change but anything between 7 and 10% seems to be alright for an adept trait.

Pyromancer’s Training: Great offensive trait. Nuff said.

One with Fire: This would be the (offensive) support choice, but it’s quite weak in it’s current state. With the above changes, you could gain a Fire Aura every 11.25s from Flame Barrier or by using Fire Shield (40s CD) on focus or by leaping through a fire field. I’m not great at doing exact uptime calculations, but on average you won’t have more than 3 stacks of might from this trait. So staying at the aura theme, I’d suggest that the trait instead grants 1 stack of might for 10s when you apply any aura to yourself or an ally. Along with Zephy’r Boon, Elemental Shielding and Powerful Aura this would make this trait quite powerful and Auramancers worthwhile. Just as with Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Shielding, giving an aura to an ally with Powerful Aura, should apply the effects on that ally and not on the ele. So if you give Fire Aura to yourself and 4 allies, everybody would get 1 stack of might instead of you getting 5.

Cleansing Fire: It’s a good utility choice and I think you merged the right two traits here. No complaints from my side.

The flame barrier change is a sad joke.

First, it does not work with lingering elements, which is just a continuation of an older sadder joke.

Then, I know that the devs said the numbers are not final, but let’s take a look at them. 20% trigger change on attuning to fire. Fire attunement has 10s recharge plus 1.25s attunement swap cooldown (most likely) so 11.25s real cooldown. Therefore, as you can expect to get a trigger once every five times you attune to fire, then you can expect to get a fire aura once every 56.25s. The aura lasts 3s, so the expected uptime of the aura is 3/56.25=5.3% if you attune to fire exactly on cooldown (optimistic).

I find this uptime really low. But this is not the entire picture. It is a random proc which prevents any strategic use. This trait will be as unreliable as Arcane Precision, and therefore it will also be inconsequential.

BlackBeard.2873:

So I think that these changes are not going to work out very well for ele. Let’s look at this from a perspective of weapon-sets:

S/X – Scepter builds will still have to take fresh air because they have atrocious sustained damage. So going into air, you lose a lot of damage, gain near permanent uptime on super-speed, and gain either an auto-shocking aura or CD reduction in air. So you have MORE utility, but less damage, which needs to be made up. Fire would normally be the line of choice for more damage, but you don’t actually get any traits in this line that increase your damage appreciably for a burst build. Seeing as scepter is only viable as a burst weapon, and can’t make up that damage, this is a net nerf.
PREDICTION: Scepter builds will die because they just don’t have enough damage to keep up.

Dagger/X: Dagger builds have always had to go arcana/water to keep up (with condi clear and damage reduction), and with a nerf to arcana, will probably be forced to go into earth for that amazing -20% melee damage reduction minor. With lower attunement cooldowns, dagger builds should do fine due to high access to boons and cleanses. There is even the possiblity that there could be an offensive aura build pop up that uses tempest defense, lightning rod, earth for prot on aura, and water for cleanses. Fire seems out of place as the lower-tier traits just can’t compare (only the blind-spam is good in higher tiers).
Prediction: Dagger/X builds will be fine, perhaps with a water/earth/arcana d/d build and air/earth/water d/f variant.

Staff: This weapon will be irrelevant as engineers are automatically way better (more water fields, fire fields, other fields, and way more blast finishers, on a sturdier body and without general cooldowns). The nerf to elemental attunement hurts staff the most, as it removes access to the cleanse and blast necessary to fight in close-quarters. Perhaps a lightning rod build can do something, but staff just has too much trouble landing damage in small-scale fights. With all the power-creep, it just feels too clunky and slow. I think staff is the biggest loser from these changes, even with a built-in blasting staff.
Prediction: Staff ele won’t be able to keep up.

Utilities:
Conjures: these are useless, don’t bother.
Glyphs: Still bad outside of glyph of ele power, don’t go here.
Signets: Perhaps the selfish aura build has a place, but I don’t think it has the power to keep up with the massive power-creed happening.
Cantrips: Welcome home eles. Might as well just leave these on your bar 100% of the time now.

I think its clear that Anet has no idea what makes else tick. While some of the trait changes seem to open up some possibilities, they don’t really address the core weaknesses that eles have always had (tank up or go home). If you don’t like tanky d/d I suggest you check out engineer. It seems to be ele 2.0 (more fields, more blasts, no CD’s on swaps).

Far too early to declare what will work, I believe you’re in too negative state of mind to clearly think things through in the correct way

Continuation of the fire line discussion from above

Persisting Flames: This trait was already a worthwhile GM trait and now some more utility (downed state) was merged into it. Overall I think it is the right spot to put it because of the self-synergy.

Pyromancer’s Puissance: This trait was only chosen over Persisting Flames against target that you cannot crit, like world bosses. So buffing it by increasing the might duration seems like a good move.

Blinding Ashes: I always like the idea behind this trait, but the CD felt too long. This got changed now, so the trait should at least be worth considering. I doubt it will be enough to bring eles into the fire line in PvP, but that is something I will talk about later.

Summary: So the fire line seems to be quite good at the moment. Overall I’d suggest to swap Flame Barrier and Burning Precision, while also dropping the 20% trigger chance on Flame Barrier and have it activate every time. Conjurer needs to be looked and the effect should not trigger on signets. Finally the might from One with Fire should be applied for every aura.

Air traits

Zephyr’s Speed: The trait is useless at the moment. First of the 10% movement speed increase is barely noticeable. Second if you have swiftness applied, the buff is completely nullified and swiftness is not that hard to come by. So instead my idea would be that this trait reduces the cooldown on skills you cast in air attunement by 10%. This would by a decent buff to fresh air builds in particular, because they have ready access to air whenever they want to cast an expensive skill.
Glyphs are a bit of a problem here. Currently there are some where the attunement you start in determines the effect (Glyph of Storms) and then there are some where the attunement you end in matters (Glyph of Elementals). The first type would be affected by this, since the cooldown only starts when the skill is fully cast. The second type, however, would only benefit when specializing in Arcana to get Lingering Elements. I’m no big fan of having that separation anyway, so I’d suggest that for any glyph the attunement you start in determines the effect, but that is probably going to be pretty controversial.

Electric Discharge: It’s a good trait. The only thing I’d suggest is that it inflicts something between 3-5 stacks of vulnerability to match the theme of the third minor trait. This would be another buff to fresh air builds in particular.

Weak Spot: Great trait, no changes needed.

Zephyr’s Boon: This trait also seems to be in a good spot and it’s a good choice for utility in the Adept slot.

One with Air: The trait would be OK if superspeed actually did more than swiftness does. At least it is my impression that both increase the movement speed by the same amount. If this gets fixed it seems to be a decent utility choice.

Ferocious Winds: As others have pointed out this trait is crap. The old version gave you healing power based on your precision. If you specced in air you at least had some precision so you would actually get a buff. But now you most likely don’t have much healing power, so the buff to ferocity is abysmal. The whole trait should either be removed or changed to something sensible like “Gain ferocity based on your precision”. Overall I think removing it makes the most sense to free room for Bolt to the Heart, but I will come to that in a bit.

Inscription: Merging those two traits made sense and the trait seems to be well rounded overall. I think 1 stack of might for 20s is a bit low, however, and should be 2 stacks instead.

Aeromancer’s Training: I fully expected Air Training to get merged into this trait, but apparently they went for +10% crit damage instead. It makes sense as well, since this used to be the precision/ferocity line, but of course it’s a nerf to damage. Considering how much a class like warrior is buffed in terms of group support and personal DPS, I think it’s not to much to ask that ele can keep this damage modifier. Therefore I propose that precision is being increased by this trait as well. +150 precision would amount to about +7% crit chance, which is a bit strong most likely, but you get the idea.

Tempest Defense: It’s a nice trait for fresh air burst builds because of the +20% damage modifier while also offering some utility and — if traited — support from the auras. For a master trait the ICD seems to be in order.

Bolt to the Heart: This is obviously one of the changes that hurt the most. Overall it’s just a 6.7% damage increase at the moment, so totally not worth being a GM trait. If Ferocious Winds was removed, a slot would free up for this trait and it could be brought back down. This reason why moving it to GM is bad is because you have to choose between Fresh Air and this one. In PvE dagger builds only work with Fresh Air, so you miss those 6.7% damage. A staff build — which is already stronger than D/F in this scenario — can pick Bolt to the Heart, so the margin increases. In PvP scepter builds also rely heavily on Fresh Air, so those are also missing out that damage modifier. Given the one-trick-pony nature of scepter builds in PvP this breaks the build. Either they can burst down a target or they have to back off and wait till the burst combo is back up since scepter offers no sustained damage.

Fresh Air: It’s one of the traits that best match the “build-defining” nature GM traits are supposed to have.

Lightning Rod: I don’t see many uses for this trait other than very gimmicky builds involving tornado. Ele does not have enough disables for this to matter. Depending on how defiance bars on players work, this trait could maybe be triggered by blinds as well. This way burst builds could be created without using Fresh Air. With the ready access to blinds from Blinding Ashes it could get a little too strong, however, but tweaking some numbers or adding an ICD should work around that.

About Ether Renewal: It doesn’t fit into any of our skill classes, but I can think of a workaround. ANet should make it the heal that eles start with in the tutorial so that it doesn’t need to be unlocked with a reward track, and thus doesn’t need a category. Simple enough.

I’m worried about glyphs. Combining the glyph traits does buff them somewhat, but there still isn’t anywhere near enough there to make a full-fledged “glyph build” that can benefit from the Glyph of Restoration and the underused utilities. I’m sad that I’ve never been able to run a “glyph ele” since glyphs are my favorite mechanically of all of the utility categories….

Continuation of the air traits discussion above.

Zephyr’s Focus: If Ferocious Winds is removed, we are currently down one trait. One of the traits that were removed from the air line was Zephyr’s Focus, which causes your endurance to regenerate 100% faster when channeling a skill. It used to be an adept trait, but I think it has the potential to become a GM trait if another missing trait Arcane Retribution gets merged into this. Arcane Retribution caused your next 5 attacks to crit when your health dropped below 75% on a kitten ICD. Every second you are channeling a skill you could now get one stack of Arcane Power on top of the additional endurance regeneration.

Summary: Still lots of work in this traitline. The first minor is useless, superspeed seems to be bugged, Ferocious Winds is complete garbage, Air Training was removed instead of being integrated into Aeromancer’s Training and Bolt to the Heart was made unreachable for many builds thus making them inviable. Lightning Rod also seems to be lackluster for a GM trait.

First of all, thank you OP for creating this topic. I was on my way to make one final topic on how outraged I am about this change to Ele traits, and then say goodbye to GW2, when I found this one.

My main is an Ele and I’ve invested a lot of playtime into fine-tuning my build because I’m not meta, I’m not a zerker, I don’t spam Meteor Shower, I’m not D/D. So I had to make my build work and, with time, I have. And Elemental Attunement and Evasive Arcana are absolutely crucial to my build, as to many other builds (including meta D/D, I know though), because those boons aren’t some fancy master trait choice: we need them to SURVIVE. And why do we have to sacrifice the dodge heal? You’re killing elementalists!

Not to mention that Mesmers get baseline benefits but Elementalists have to CHOOSE? This is insane. This is ridiculous.

And to be perfectly honest here, it makes zero sense that boon on attunement isn’t even baseline to begin with (so GM is just laughable), but let’s not even get into that (even though that’s a middle-of-the-road solution that could make everyone happy).

Basically, this change to Ele traits is just a travesty. It’s unfair, and I hope that they’ll listen to what people are saying; otherwise I have a feeling I won’t be the only player leaving the game and that’s just sad, really.
I’ve been playing this game since launch (actively), I love it, I happily give them my cash to buy silly little things from the gemstore and I was extremely excited for HoT and more than willing to camp outside the store to get it on the first day. But I can’t go on playing when my main profession is getting irrational changes made to it, to nerf it even more, specially when it’s already hard to try and keep up with everyone else playing other professions (and continuously watch as some of them just keep getting improvements....)

do you guys realize how much damage lightning rod actually does? its a great trait and is considered meta for wvw staff eles at least on mag. Tempest defense is only going to buff its damage.

also, id rather have people quit the game then complain about elemental attunement on the forums. Its a good trait for sure, but game breaking? thats not true. get good.

I don’t want to be that person, but here we go.

I’ve been playing since beta and I’m not a huge fan of evasive arcana and elemental attunement.

I run these things in my guild due to WvW req. etc, but my preferred builds rarely ever go into arcana past blasting staff (even for PvP reasons).

I don’t think evasive arcana/elemental attunement are necessary for survival outside of a few situations.

As far as the changes go, I see several people making comments that have already been mentioned in the Ready Up discussion. i.e. Karl already mentioned that ferocious winds is being looked at to being changed to precision > ferocity conversion. I suggest that people go and watch the ready up discussion in order to get a better feel for the changes (one only needs to see the ele changes).

EDIT: Clown brings up a good point. Lightning rod crits DESTROY teams (but this pertains to WvW staff ele). For a much more healthy discussion, it may be useful to preface one’s words with which aspect of the game you’re talking about.

Edit: Nevermind, they changed it back.

“Jon Peters just said on WTS stream that Elemental Attunement is becoming a minor trait. I assume it’s in Arcana. I think it’s better than what we have now, but still think it would deserve to be a baseline, this will force eles in Arcana again.”

I think its going to make ele a bit on the op side i am thinking fire water ar will be the meta build for d/d and maybe staff. Getting fury off of your fire blasting will out preform aura fury and now that you can have both EA you should have 100% up-time of fury. Keep in mind air no longer makes you crit more and fire no longer makes you have more power so stacking might and fury will become much more importan on the d/d eles.

As for the “support” staff builds for wvw i am thinking earth air water or air water ar going for more cc / condition removal support. There they super tank earth water ar ideal too where as staff ele will be nearly unkillable though there dmg may not end up so well. Maybe going full zerk with this set up would be a real thing.

Added note i think magis combo will make a come back becuse ele is mostly losing healing power and vit (for most builds out there) there no healing power power vit set that i know of.