Guild Wars 2

So I thought it’d be a good idea to use this thread to collect our feedback about what remains to be done in terms of elementalist balance post-6/23 balance changes. I hope this makes it easier for Anet to see and act on our feedback.

My thoughts:

General

-Chill needs to stop affecting Attunement swap. No other class suffers from this limitation. Yes, we get a trait that specifically removes chill (Stop Drop and Roll), but it is overshadowed in its tier by Soothing Ice.

-Why did we not get access to any of the new effects like Resistance, Slow, Taunt etc.?

Traits

I quite like the majority of the trait changes, but there is still room for improvement.

-Aquatic Benevolence and Soothing Power should be switched, with the former being buffed back to 25% and the latter being nerfed, maybe to 100-150%. As it stands, AB does nothing for the elementalist, which is really crappy for a trait that you are forced to take. At least this way, the GM minor trait will do SOMETHING for you regardless of your build.

-Soothing Mist: radius should be 600 at the very least. Buffing its healing only to reduce its effect to a minuscule 300 seems counterproductive; you practically have to be next to your ally for them to receive the effect.

-Fire’s Embrace: I’m guessing this was axed because of the buff to Powerful Aura, Sunspot, Soothing Ice and baseline Attunement swap recharge reduction. But I still feel that it should be reinstated in the Conjurer trait; it was the core of many signet condi builds and quite a few people enjoyed running them in WvW. Removing this trait just destroys a non-meta build and forces people to rarely if ever run signets. Maybe fix the aura/boon durations to account for the new aura traits if there are concerns about it being OP.

Skills

We seriously need hefty reworks to many skills. The recent changes have buffed cantrips but have barely touched the other utilities, which means cantrips are more necessary than ever.

-Glyphs are still gimmicky and clunky, do not help clean conditions, and the one stun breaker glyph is actually meant to be used off-coold own, which is counterproductive to its stun break functionality. The storms and elemental glyphs could use cool down reductions.

-Conjures are still borderline useless, with the exception of Frost Bow and FGS for mobility. Earth Shield has so much potential; if only it were a stun break on cast, and perhaps had Taunt/Resistance.

-Scepter: Auto-attacks could use lower casting times. Shatterstone is so bad; it either needs a dramatically reduced casting time or needs to pulse Chill while charging up, because it is just too easy to walk out of.

-Focus: Fire Shield does NOT reduce condition duration on you despite the tooltip, and definitely does not deserve its 40 second cool down. Freezing Gust is a 3 second chill on a 25 second cool down; it could use additional functionality like boon strip for example.

-Staff: Gust and Shockwave need either increased projectile speed or wider projectiles. Ice Spike has the same problems kittenterstone.

-Dagger: Ride the Lightning needs to have the stupid cool down penalty removed. No other movement skill in the game suffers this penalty. Its cool down could be brought up to a flat 25-30 seconds to compensate. Alternatively, it should ONLY accrue the penalty when NOT used as a gap closer (i.e. not if the target evades/blocks/stealths.)

-Elites are SEVERELY lacking. NONE of them feel like the momentum-changing skills they’re supposed to be. Glyph of Elementals needs at the very least a cool down reduction. Tornado is still a joke. Compared to Rampage, Lich Form, Moa or even Plague, it is hilariously bad. It is a “kill me” sign and could use either projectile reflection/destruction and/or Resistance; definitely needs a cool down reduction too. Fiery Greatsword definitely needs a cool down reduction. In fact, I don’t feel like any of our elites should have anything more than 120 second cool down before traits.

Those are my thoughts for now. Let’s hear everyone else’s!

I agree with everything but this paragraph:

-Aquatic Benevolence and Soothing Power should be switched, with the former being buffed back to 25% and the latter being nerfed, maybe to 100-150%. As it stands, AB does nothing for the elementalist, which is really crappy for a trait that you are forced to take. At least this way, the GM minor trait will do SOMETHING for you regardless of your build.

Soothing power cannot be made a minor. It would be somewhat redundant with soothing mist: why split a single effect in two traits? I think this trait should be a major choice, but at the moment I am not convinced it is very valuable.

Aquatic benevolence does not need to do anything for the ele itself. I think the three minor traits should be seen as a package: as long as some minors do something for ourselves then it seems fine to me.

I would add again that staff desperately needs a buff to its air attunement, especially a change to air 2.

please, how can you forget churning earth?

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

I agree with everything but this paragraph:

-Aquatic Benevolence and Soothing Power should be switched, with the former being buffed back to 25% and the latter being nerfed, maybe to 100-150%. As it stands, AB does nothing for the elementalist, which is really crappy for a trait that you are forced to take. At least this way, the GM minor trait will do SOMETHING for you regardless of your build.

Soothing power cannot be made a minor. It would be somewhat redundant with soothing mist: why split a single effect in two traits? I think this trait should be a major choice, but at the moment I am not convinced it is very valuable.

Aquatic benevolence does not need to do anything for the ele itself. I think the three minor traits should be seen as a package: as long as some minors do something for ourselves then it seems fine to me.

I would add again that staff desperately needs a buff to its air attunement, especially a change to air 2.

Well, I agree with the first paragraph. However, I don’t think that Aquatic benevolence should be a minor, because.
1. If you’re a zerker, you automatically lose on a GM minor trait.
2. There are damage modifiers in water, yet supportive only trait as a minor.
3. It should be a choice, not something you’re stuck with. The idea of support ele shouldn’t be forced on people.
4. I would much appreciate if minor traits actually did something for the ele itself and then it can trait for aoe support if he wishes.

I don’t think that we should be just fine with this since we have some decent minors somewhere else. It doesn’t really help the cause, look at many traits, they’re beyond useless and no one will ever pick them. There’s barely any choice and that means no wider build diversity.

I get your points. I guess that I am fine with Aquatic Benevolence being a minor because everytime I specialise in water the purpose of my build is to be supportive. But it does not have to be like that.

I am not yet convinced though. Let’s discuss this:
1. A counter example: If you have no precision then Weak Spot is close to useless. All heals have a fixed base amount, and apart from our sel-heal they all have the capability to heal others, therefore AB is still somehow useful – or at least as useful as Weak Spot without additional precision from gear.
2. Fire minors are mainly offensive (ok not the aura), yet the line includes some defensive major traits. Therefore I am not sure about the strength of your argument.
3. I agree that diversity is always desirable. For the sake of choice variety, all minors should accommodate our available play-styles. However, is the ele not a supportive class by nature?
4. I agree with this view. My nuance would be that if we consider the minors as a package then we can consider whether together they do enough for the ele. I am not sure it is the case though. Maybe adding an other self-centred factor to AB like “Healing done to you by allies is increased by 15%” would make sense?