Before I start on the feedback, I have to establish something. Elementalists traits are super kitten: they have the innate problem of having super non-synergistic traits by nature. I’m going to put all of it in the spoiler below because it is pretty long, but anything I mention will be referring to it.
Their 4 elemental specializations never have anything that ever works together except for 3 different ways:
Cantrips: Fire grants auto Cleansing Fire and might on Cantrip. Water grants reduced cdr on Cantrips. Earth grants auto Armor of Earth.
On crit traits: Burning on crit, blindness on burning, tons of access to fury, Fresh Air reset on crit, extra precision while in Air, Condition on crit from Arcane. Hardly synergistic, but it’s something.
Auras: Fire grants might on Fire Aura. Also Fire Aura on picking up conjure weapons and sometimes on swapping into Fire. Water Grants Frost Aura on crit and Aurashare. Air grants mspd and fury upon granting aura and Shocking Aura on cc’d. Earth grants protection upon applying an aura. Arcane grants an Aura on resurrection. The only real thing you can call synergistic.
Let’s look at Necromancers, Engineers, and Guardians (one from each armor class) and see how tightly their traits tie together.
Necromancers: (Ignoring the “Cast _ when entering Shroud” stuff) have a Signet build that crosses multiple trait lines: Signets of Suffering (Spite), Plague Sending (Curses), Blood Bond (Blood Magic). So if you want to build a Signet build you can. Fear build: Fear of Death, Reaper’s Protection, Terror. Want to play around the healing from Life from Death? Unholy Sanctuary and Speed of Shadows. Crits inflict weakness? Highest minor stat conversion + bonus crit chance from a minor + you can take 50% bonus crit chance while in Shroud. Add in reaper, suddenly all the chill and vuln becomes that much more useful and synergistic.
Engineer: Thermobaric Detonation = procs Soothing Detonation. Alchemical Tinctures + Iron Blooded + Juggernaut = high amounts of free might and Stabi plus incoming damage reduction. Bunker down and Incindiary Powder = amplified by Hematic Focus, No Scope, and High Caliber. Invigorating speed? Can be used by streamlined kits, which allows you to upkeep Excessive Energy. Takedown Round is amplified by Explosions. Kits as a baseline are all amplified to some extent in each trait line.
Guardian: Valorous Defense + Communal Defences + Protective Reviver + Might of the Protector + Pure of Heart + Unscathed Contender + Courageous Return (not including any actual spells) = pretty much you can make an entire build where: they heal you and give you might if they break your aegis, if they do break your aegis you give aegis to other allies which heals them, if they don’t break your aegis you deal more damage, and if they to focus you down you gets even more aegis that heals you in turn, and if they focus your allies down, you grants even more aegis. Or you could take Shattered Aegis and be even more annoying. Either way, even without mentioning the amount of raw burning traits Guardians have, they have entire trait lines that fit together tightly while still allowing customization.
Back to Elementalist. Ignore cantrips and auras for a second. Without considering Arcane, the other 4 trait lines have literally 0 synergy, Blinding Ashes and Pyrmancer’s Puissance is really a fire-only trait. Sure, the precision from Air might help burning precision to help proc blinding Ashes, but they don’t actually match with any other trait line. Earth or Air Trait line doesn’t actually provide any burning or take advantage of that blind. Other than fury, Air is the only trait line that amplifies your precision, making Fresh Air another standalone trait. No trait line other than Air (through Tempest Defence) actually can proc Lightning Rod, and the one Glyph trait stands alone (which is acceptable, like Wells, Meditations, and Gadgets only have one real amplifying trait). Diamond Skin, Stone Heart, and Written in Stone are some of the worst contenders for “overpowered because doesn’t synergize.” Stone Heart — can’t be crit while in Earth. Also Earth grants you protection, toughness, and less damage from foes in close range. Literally goes against every other trait line. This isn’t even mentioning all the Minor Masters.
This is a problem inherent to Elementalist. Their traits revolve around sitting in an attunement and swapping around attunements (Arcane). You can’t make use of Soothing Power or Cleansing Water using any other non-Arcane attunement. This forces elementalist traits to be strong precisely because they can almost never be amplified by any other attunement-specific trait. It is as if you would take thief and make 4 trait lines, each trait line only amplifying a certain weapon type,then the last trait line amplifying swapping weapons, and then adding on a stealth trait in every single trait line for “synergy.” That’s pretty much how I feel about Elementalist.
Now why does even any of the stuff I said up there matter?
It’s precisely because they lack so much synergy that they deserved to have something that created actual synergy in the Tempest trait line. Instead, all they did was amplify the only strong synergy that existed: auras. Now here’s the problem: you are literally forced into taking two trait lines (water and Tempest) to do any real aurashare healing. And if healing is your thing, you clearly want to take Arcane for AoE Regeneration, protection, a blast finisher, and a heal + condi removal. You’d get protection by running Earth or might by running Fire or fury and swiftness by running Air, but all of this is literally turned moot. Even after Heat Sync is nerfed, you can literally stack 25 stacks of might on your own taking Arcane: the might on Fire Aura is wasted. Is fury on aura really that important? Arcane grants you fury while swapping all the time and by Elemental Contingency. Protection on auras? You already get protection just from swapping into Earth Attunement thanks to Arcane and you swap into Earth more often. Arcane does everything and choosing to not take Arcane is to literally kitten your team by giving up on protection, healing, a blast finisher, and boon duration. That’s where the problem comes from. Aurashare is literally a must for aura healing support, but Arcane does so much healing you have to take it.
Here’s an idea: why not make Aurashare a Tempest trait? You can move Earthen Proxy to replace Latent Stamina as an Adept and make Aurashare a master trait. Then why not add a water GM trait that, I don’t know, synergizes?
But let’s get to the point because I’m not very good at it.
Singularity – No comment.
Gale Song – I have a very severe problem with this trait: why does it proc on being attempted to be CC’d rather than actually being CC’d? Engineer Reactive Lenses and Smoke Bomb Dispenser only proc reliably on actually being CC’d. I don’t have to worry of Reactive Lenses being wasted because I got dazed while I have stability on. I should not be wasting my autostunbreak if I recieve a CC when I have stability on.
Latent Stamina – This is not a Tempest trait. This should be replaced.
Unstable Conduit – This amplifies the weaknesses of Tempest even more. Tempest is all about opportunity cost – it’s about giving up casting other spells or swapping attunements to Overload on top of having to wait the 5 seconds to actually Overload. The main problem is that aura on Overload applies at the end, meaning by the time you need it, it’ll be too late. You’d have to memorize the exact attack patterns of the enemy, swap into earth attunement at least 9 seconds before you need Magnetic Aura, deal mediocre damage for 5 seconds and deal close to no damage for the 4 seconds of overloading just to get the reflect (which also negates the point of protection from Earth Overload I might add) and also play super smart and not get hit during said overload while being unable to dodge.
Speedy Conduit – Could be changed but I’m not too picky here.
Earthen Proxy – I’d prefer something completely different here. Aegis upon applying protection? Change it to a trait that for instance grants you blur for 1.5s upon receiving a hit while you have swiftness on at the cost of consuming said swiftness (or at least consuming 60% of the current duration and including an ICD). I don’t feel like “Protection is Stronger” is a healthy buff or meaningful either. It’s competing against other traits and 7% less damage sometimes isn’t going to work and hoping you don’t get boonstripped (which was already your weakness) is not going to work.
Harmonious Conduit 2.0 – Stabi on Overload is great and all, but it’s at the cost of overload cdr. Will have to mess around a bit more.
Tempestuous Aria – Dear lord is this worthless. Weakness on enemies it hits is fine but the shouts are too long in cooldown for it to work often and they can dodge the weakness. The might is completely redundant and I think this part should be removed in exchange for cdr (i.e. Shouts recharge 5% faster and an additonal 6% for each ally affected). At least change the might on shout to be a boon that elementalist don’t have infinite max access to. Or better yet, each ally effected by a shout increases duration of auras applied (.33 seconds increase of aura per ally affected, stacks up to 9 times, each stack lasts 15 seconds). Or just anything else interesting.
Hardy Conduit – Protection should be in moderation – I think this is fine.
Elemental Bastion – Only real thing that makes Auras worthwhile if you’re willing to lock yourself into Aurashare like I mentioned earlier. I don’t like it but I don’t think it’s in a terrible position. In fact, it’d be amazing if Aurashare became a Tempest trait.
Imbued Melodies 2.0. – I really don’t like the change here removing the cdr off warhorn skills. I’d honestly just swap boon duration back for the warhorn cooldown reduction (why not both?).
Lucid Singularity – Dear holy lord of cows starring in Korean Dramas where the mother always hits the son for making a stupid decision, is this stupid. One of the biggest problems is the risk of being bursted while overloading, not being cc’d to the ground. Not to mention, there’s already an earth trait that does this exact thing at all times without requiring you to overload. This GM either needs to amplify Overloads upon completing them or need sto not be a GM.
I think this small change can make Tempest viable and solve a lot of the problems introduced by new Harmonious Conduit and Tempest in general:
Make the 33% reduction traits affect the overload cooldown and wait time for Overload. Doesn’t it make thematic sense? You’re “overloading” an element, not just harnessing it: if you’ve spec’d to “master” said element (i.e. Took the Fire Spec line AND took the cdr trait) then overloading that specific element should be easier. This would allow builds based around Fire Overload, for example, to Fire Overload more often and bring the support that they know they need to bring.
Also I’d like to see Aurashare become a Tempest trait and Ele have more synergy than just Auras.
Also some of the shouts are a bit weak – I think “Flash-Freeze” should leave behind a ice combo field for 2 or 3 seconds, but really they need any kind of fine tuning right now. Just any buffs.