Guild Wars 2

I come to the conclusion that not matter what trait changes this profession will see at the end of this month, the end result will remain the same, people will still spec in water and arcana, no matter how Anet want to turn it… the ele possess no base survivability, out of the box, with no trait investment in any line, this profession is the weakest ever, a free kill in the true sense of the word.

As it stands now there will never be a viable build with no investment in water trait line, the devs want the ele to be a profession that can reach decent results in every situation, meaning you’ll never be the best DPS, Healer or Tank at any given time, but only a decent version of them.

There is no point in investing heavily in Fire or Air, you will still be less bursty than mesmer or thief…and definitely warrior, while being less survivable, but got no complaints about it, I’m clear on the concept of versatile profession VS specialized profession

Basically you’ll never be able to specialize in anything while using an ele, the devs want you to pick another profession if you want DMG or Tanking options, in the end what I think is that trait changes won’t bring build diversity, people will still run 0/10/0/30/30.

I’d like to know what you guys think about this.

Depend on what trait they are gonna change,also they could change trait into Water or Arcane too, so too early to say anything atm

Depends on the synergy between Fire and Air after the changes. ATM the synergy between water and can trips is ridiculous.

Adding to the problem is that our stun breaks are on our cantrips, so you almost always have to take 1 with you (unless your crazy like me lol).

The main reason why the Water trait line is fundamental it’s the sheer amount of condition removal traits , because of this heavy condition spam meta, the more conditions removal you can bring with you..the better it is on the long run.

For this reason I don’t see myself moving away from water trait line anytime soon, unless they add condition removal traits to Fire and Air and I don’t see that happening anytime soon

The survivability of the ele atm is based on the amount of healing you can have within the shortest amount of time, that healing is the main thing that keeps you alive as ele, like thieves got stealth and mesmers got clones.

This bring another problem where healing itself is linked to the Water trait line, due to this I can safely say that no viable ele build will ever have less than 15 pts in the water trait line.

Another major design flaw of this profession is the attunement mechanic recharge, what should be baseline it’s instead reached after heavy investment in another trait line – arcana.

Even before a player can start thinking about making a new build, he finds himself forced in investing at least 25 pts in the water and arcana together.

Now we all know the benefits of investing the remaining 45 pts in water and arcana, what Anet could ever hope to offer in Fire and Air that can make us change our minds?

It’s not just the condi removal from water — it’s sustainability. That heal on water attunement is substantial and critical to our survival, as is the heal from evasive arcana.

Arcana also provides the vital fury on attunement switch (we have no other source of fury outside zephyr’s boon, which only D/D sets can benefit from as the other weaponsets only have one aura on a long cd).

Most importantly, boon duration. With boon duration runes, switching to earth means about 7 seconds of protection. That’s just survivability you can’t live without, and the same applies for vigor on crits.

The ele also has no active defenses outside frost aura/shocking aura (made useless by stability) that are not cantrips.

Thief/mesmer active defenses are on their own weaponsets in addition to utilities, and thief/mesmer burst is done much more frequently and simply.

Or if they make speccing into deep fire and air able to blow people up before they can kill us, it might change things :p

emikochan.8504:

Or if they make speccing into deep fire and air able to blow people up before they can kill us, it might change things :p

Which I doubt, because the balancing issue has always been those arcane utilities. They nerfed arcane so badly, a 2k aoe (basically a melee cleave from a greatsword) on a 30 sec cd mainly used for the blast finisher.

I don’t get the point of making the ele go into utility slots to have any kind of spike. They tried that with the mesmer mantra of pain as well, and the end result is that both iterations are crappy (arcane missile is not bad, though) because if they were actually spike skills, paired with a burning speed+firegrab+air attunement switch lightning strike, it’d have people crying.

Another issue with fire/air burst specs is that unlike mesmers/thieves, we don’t have the crit modifiers that make our spike reliably crit. So s/d specs need to spec glassy, because if their rotation of air doesn’t crit, it doesn’t hurt. Backstab will always crit, phantasms get perma fury from trait, mindwrack gets an extra 15% chance to crit, etc.

Water being taken often isn’t a bad thing if you look at many popular build for many classes even burst builds venture into some condi removal or sustain.

Thieves – often times go 30 in shadow arts or at the minimum 10 in SA for the passive condi removal.

Mesmers – phantasm spec goes 25 in inspiration usually which has regen from phantasms and mender’s purity remove a condition on heal. Many take mantra’s heal on cast which gives 2 condition removals on cast of MoR. Going 25 points into inspiration is why many phantasm specs heal for alot even if they run ether feast. Shatter specs can just go 10 inspiration just for remove condition on heal.

Warriors – Go into defense often for the new dogged march trait. Not awesome passive condi removal but it is still a really good traits that many warriors run now. Also defense tree is also the healing tree.

I am just speaking on classes I am very familiar with water is a awesome trait line. I will drop 10 from water but not more but I don’t see that as a problem. The three classes I mentioned all have traits that many from each community consider necessary.

With that said inb4 30 Air become extremely popular

Zenith we do have fury for the duration of our burst combos

Ele is great for group healing and one of only 2 profs that can bring water fields, not to mention some of the best AoE in the game. You sound like you want to be able to be tanky as balls and still do great damage, which certainly isn’t going to happen on any profession. Arguably the tankiest class in the game right now, and just because you can’t go without 30 in arcane AND water doesn’t mean others can’t.

Parktou.4263:

Ele is great for group healing and one of only 2 profs that can bring water fields, not to mention some of the best AoE in the game. You sound like you want to be able to be tanky as balls and still do great damage, which certainly isn’t going to happen on any profession. Arguably the tankiest class in the game right now, and just because you can’t go without 30 in arcane AND water doesn’t mean others can’t.

Eles, rangers, engies all have access to water fields. its not that rare (ill give any human with melandru a pass, but im sure a few run it for the lols given how bad some classes elites are).

he doesnt sound like he wants everything. what he is saying is that water/arcane is the only viable spec right now, because low starting stats demand defensive traiting to survive (at least outside of PvEasy). if you really think other people are doing well without it, show us a competitive spec that doesnt have at least 15 in water and 20 in arcane. if the dps trait lines offered some survivability along with their dps (similar to say, earths embrace), they would be more viable choices.

zero survivability for a dps spec is a choice no other class really has to live with, because every other class has higher starting stats AND usually a defensive class mechanic to boot.

So true..atm when you leave water/arcana the added damage is greatly out of proportion to how vulnerable you become.Theres no defence for ele outside of water/arcana.
Even the vigor on crits trait is on arcana when it could be in air.
They could makes us leave water by giving very interesting grandmaster traits.
Like the idea of fire fields leaving a short duration smokefield as a 30 fire trait or something like that.But to free as from arcana i think there needs to be a small redesign unfortunately.
Its a shame but this class is balanced on healing adn att dancing..Thats why many people new to ele have a very bad time till they figure this out

I got 2 shotted by a thief using a 0 30 0 10 30 build with zerker armor – one cloak and dagger one backstab and im down…… Nuff said.

They really need to up our base survivability and move some traits around so we arent required to invest in water and arcana just to be able to survive. We can survive, but we do crap damage. I’d love to be able to invest fully in fire and air and melt people’s faces, but you don’t do enough damage to justify losing what little survivability we have. If meteors could hit for as much as warrior’s 100b, then it would be worth it. But no, that would be too OP because people are too stupid to move out of the giant obvious red circle on the ground. Can’t tell you how many times i’ve killed people who just stand there attacking. probably dying with full endurance, never dodging once. And to me it doesnt even make sense in the first place that 100b can do more damage than meteor storm. Logically, a meteor falling out of space and slamming down into the earth and landing on someone SHOULD do more damage than a simple steel sword slashing at a guy.

I’m just hoping this whole trait rework isn’t going to be a nerf.

In all honesty, I just want them to stop their attempts at fixing us, at the very least until they fixed their balancing team. Even with all those bullcrap nerfs they threw at us (RtL slaughtered, Evasive Arcana only a shadow of what it used to be, …) I still manage to draw some amount of fun from playing my Elementalist. It’s getting less and less with every patch they release tho.
I live in constant fear the next balance patch is gonna be my last one. My Elementalist is my main character, I invested pretty much 90% of my playing time, 95% of the gold I spent and 100% of the laurels & badges I spent into that character. The day I stop playing my Elementalist is the day is stop playing this game.
Now obviously it would be nice to have lots of options in terms of traits and traitlines, BUT: I actually like my 0/15/0/25/30 spec, and I’d rather stick with that spec for eternity instead of those idiots screwing it over to force me into alternatives.
As people here have already said, since the Elementalist is the ONLY profession in the game cursed with the lowest base HP, the lowest base armor and no inherent defense mechanic at all, it’s an absolute must to spec decently into defense just to be able to compete with other profession and not go belly-up the moment they look at you. That’s why people will stick to Water + Arcana & maybe Earth, regardless of what ANet does to the other traitlines.
What’s then gonna happen is pretty obvious: ‘Hey guys, didn’t you get the meme? We don’t want you to play Water/Arcana, that’s why we reworked those other traitlines. But I see you’re still using Water/Arcana… soooo, enjoy those nerfs to Water/Arcana, and better switch to Fire & Air now! Hope you learned your lesson!’

No, thanks. Just leave our traits as they are right now, and stop messing around with us please.

Yeah, unless they add several heavy condition cleanses, evades, defenses etc. to fire and air traits, there won’t be any real changes I think.

Another problem is that air has glyphs.. The traits that grant bonuses to them are almost redundant, because you would never use many glyphs, because their uses are limited. No stunbreak, protective/evasive means, or condition removal, and the CD is rather high.

If glyphs of elemental power and glyph of storms got a complete overhaul, and added traits in fire and air to create synnergy between them, things might look better. But hey, getting two utility skills redone like that isn’t going to happen the next couple of years, if ever.

Lets just wait a see what they come up with. A good way to not be overly disappointed is to lower your expectations to bare minimum. The only way elementalists have been shocked by updates so far, is in a negative way.

I jut hope one day i’ll be shocked in a good way when they change us. Up till now, every time a new patch comes out, i’m afraid to even look at it because i know it’s going to be more nerfs that will suck even more fun out of the class and make even more builds less viable. The thing they said they didnt want to do. All they did with the recent patches were force even more people into bunker spec because nerfing our healing, condition cleansing, mobility, etc. has made the glassier builds less effective cuz they lost what little survival abilities they did have. And we got nothing in return for those nerfs like buffs to other traits that would have actually made other specs more attractive.

Yeah, hopefully they will make up for all the builds they ruined in the process of nerfing bunker builds. Reducing condition cleansing, healing, mobility etc. was a bad move, in terms of granting us more options, for sure.

Any profession thread about balance is a pool of hyperbole.

RTL slaughtered? Yet, it’s still one of the most useful “leap” skills in the game, and is still completely vital to any ele.

Arcanes underpowered for bursts? They are widely used in valkyrie-burst eles in pvp, and believe it or not, those builds are top pvp meta alongside bunker ele builds. The finishers are just a bonus.

Evasive Arcana just a shadow of what it used to be? It was a broken trait because it could spam blast finishers every dodge before. It’s still an excellent trait, if only for the heal and the earth cripple + blast finisher effects. The fire’s burning is a convenient extra for Fire Grab.

It’s true that elementalists’ traits and skills are very uneven, but I would like to know what are all those “builds that were ruined in the process of nerfing bunker builds”. Last I know – and maybe I’m a very ignorant person, but valkyrie-bursters and bunkers are still top meta in pvp, valkyrie-bursters + staff eles are still top meta in wvw, and aurasharing builds are still an alternative that’s in the almost-there-but-still-not-good-enough situation. What has changed? Certainly, a lot of pve’s builds can no longer explore the map as fast or heal under mist form, with no real buff to compensate, but I would hardly call those builds “ruined”.

raise ele’s base HP to match mesmer, and then reduce base attunement swap to 10 seconds from 15. add the upcoming changes (let’s face it, they’ll be nerfs, but still) and maybe people will be willing to spec into something that’s not x/x/x/30/30.

I just hope they keep all the nerfs seperate this time. Nerf us in spvp all you want, only a small fraction of the population bothers with that anyway. But stop sucking all the fun out of PvE builds with stupid nerfs based on what’s going on in PvP. Keep it fracking seperate! Un-nerf ride the lightning for one. it was so fun to use before traveling across the map.

stale.9785:

raise ele’s base HP to match mesmer, and then reduce base attunement swap to 10 seconds from 15. add the upcoming changes (let’s face it, they’ll be nerfs, but still) and maybe people will be willing to spec into something that’s not x/x/x/30/30.

I always thought vitality was just bonus to going into water. The reason people go 30 water is the traits. Why raise it to 15k base health? So you need more healing power to recover health?

oZii.2864:

stale.9785:

raise ele’s base HP to match mesmer, and then reduce base attunement swap to 10 seconds from 15. add the upcoming changes (let’s face it, they’ll be nerfs, but still) and maybe people will be willing to spec into something that’s not x/x/x/30/30.

I always thought vitality was just bonus to going into water. The reason people go 30 water is the traits. Why raise it to 15k base health? So you need more healing power to recover health?

Its not just the traits, its also the health and the healing power. also, the you-need-more-healing arguement is baseless. it might take longer to fill a 15k healthbar with 500 healing power than it does to fill a 10k healthbar with 500 healing power, but the 15k bar is still the better bet.

the problem is that with the lowest base stats in the game and no inherent defensive mechanic, elementalists have to either gear or trait or both to achieve survival parity with other classes. if you are doing that, then you are sacrificing damage parity. there are no ele’s running around wvw and bursting people down. strange for a class with low hp and low armor to not be doing competitive damage, right? its because they had to give it up for survival parity.

Tought so 2 I have no problems with walking around with 14.2k hp. Sure can use some more HP but i do fine. The traits however are the reason i go into water.

Ptolomy.6984:

Tought so 2 I have no problems with walking around with 14.2k hp. Sure can use some more HP but i do fine. The traits however are the reason i go into water.

right, but if Health was in another line, say fire for arguements sake. wouldnt you still take water for the traits and then adjust your gear to hit approximately 14-15k health again? thats the point. playing with 10k base health and no defensive class mechanic is not viable.

he’s not saying bunker ele’s need more HP, he’s saying offensive ele’s need more survivability.

Hmm you have a point there:P

We spec survivability because of burst damage in the game. You can either deal with baseline Elementalist survivability or reduce overall burst of all classes.

Guess which one is more likely to happen? None. Because arena net just nerfs.

^ i dont think its true..I can have all cond removal traits in the game and an engie still can eat me for breakfast if do a mistake.Thats not classified as burst and yet i know that if i didnt spec in water i would be dead before i even reached range for my d/d skills to hit him..
Also theres a lot of balanced non cond builds in game that could kill a non water/arcana ele with no problems
Its deeper imo..The damage increase you get leaving water is not enough especially when you consider you lose bountiful power and perhaps vital striking.At same time your burst is as unreliable as ever and on huge cd
I think we can only suck it up..elementalist is balanced around healing…

I abandoned any kind of bunker build after the massive RTL nerf, and am having pretty much fun with a full dps build, which is very very hard to play but very satisfying.
This doesn’t change the fact that our class is in dire needs of major tweaks to grant many more playstyles than the current viable two.
Fire and Air traits should truly give the feeling of “cannon”, rather than leaving us with merely “glass”.

And no class should have an ability without a common counter (cough thief cough)

Raven.9603:

oZii.2864:

stale.9785:

raise ele’s base HP to match mesmer, and then reduce base attunement swap to 10 seconds from 15. add the upcoming changes (let’s face it, they’ll be nerfs, but still) and maybe people will be willing to spec into something that’s not x/x/x/30/30.

I always thought vitality was just bonus to going into water. The reason people go 30 water is the traits. Why raise it to 15k base health? So you need more healing power to recover health?

Its not just the traits, its also the health and the healing power. also, the you-need-more-healing arguement is baseless. it might take longer to fill a 15k healthbar with 500 healing power than it does to fill a 10k healthbar with 500 healing power, but the 15k bar is still the better bet.

the problem is that with the lowest base stats in the game and no inherent defensive mechanic, elementalists have to either gear or trait or both to achieve survival parity with other classes. if you are doing that, then you are sacrificing damage parity. there are no ele’s running around wvw and bursting people down. strange for a class with low hp and low armor to not be doing competitive damage, right? its because they had to give it up for survival parity.

Well its not baseless its fact that you will need more healing power to be heal up as fast with less health.

You an get vitality through gear. Thieves, mesmers, warrior vitality tree’s dont focus on damage there is usually is a 25 point trait to help with damage and a few traits here and there for damage but its mostly focused on support/sustain.

Zenith.7301:

Arcana also provides the vital fury on attunement switch (we have no other source of fury outside zephyr’s boon, which only D/D sets can benefit from as the other weaponsets only have one aura on a long cd).

It’s only scepter which lacks an aura.

Staff can actually get as much or more fury from auras than d/d with the right traits and utilities. 3x blast finishers (eruption, arcane wave, Earth EA roll) in frozen ground gives quite a bit of fury (and it’s applied to allies without needing the water GM trait to aurashare).

But yeah, fire and air traitlines need survivability built in or something. Also, traits need a pass for underwater usefulness and bugs. The arcane line needs a total makeover, attunement recharge is far too important and evasive arcana is disproportionately good compared to other GM traits. Spreading some of the effects of the most popular water and arcane traits and effects between other traitlines would make more builds possible.

Even my “burst” builds use at least 35 points in water and arcane.

wait, that is a dangerous word and Devs might take it seriously xD You don’t want the good effects to “spread”, you probably want to have as many good effects as in water/arcana traits in the other ones xD

The single worst balancing act in this game is that classes have different base healths and armors, but roughly the same damage output if specced for it.

It’s simply boggling that warriors are tied for highest base armor, tied for highest base health, and manage to have the highest burst dps in the game. Eles have the lowest armor, lowest base health, and don’t really have all that much damage to show for it.

It forces Eles to go into water just to be able to survive being hit once or twice, and because attunement swapping is the core of our class, we need to go at least 20 into arcane just for that.

Devildoc.6721:

The single worst balancing act in this game is that classes have different base healths and armors, but roughly the same damage output if specced for it.

It’s simply boggling that warriors are tied for highest base armor, tied for highest base health, and manage to have the highest burst dps in the game. Eles have the lowest armor, lowest base health, and don’t really have all that much damage to show for it.

It forces Eles to go into water just to be able to survive being hit once or twice, and because attunement swapping is the core of our class, we need to go at least 20 into arcane just for that.

^^This. 1000 times, this.

oZii.2864:

Well its not baseless its fact that you will need more healing power to be heal up as fast with less health.

You an get vitality through gear.

This is sort of a sidebar debate, but lets give a scenario. ele (A) with 10k max health, another ele (B) with 20k max health. Partway through a battle, they are both down to 50% life. They both pop their heals, which heals them for 5k. The ele (A) now has full health again (10k), while the ele (B) is at 75% (15k). Ele (B) is still in a much better position in terms of survivability than (A).

Yes, we can get vitality through gear, but see the above quoted comment. In trying to bring our base armor and health up to average levels, we sacrifice hugely in damage.

No other class in the game is forced to do this. All other classes with low starting armor have much, much higher base health and strong defensive mechanics (clones and deathshroud). All other classes with low starting health have much higher armor and strong defensive mechanics (stealth, or lol-ima-guardian).

Vitality is needed at some point due to initial burst damage and due to certain % hp mechanics. Having additional hp will combat this even though your heals will heal you for a smaller % of your total hp. It is a fine balance similar with toughness and vitality.

As for the trait line changes I don’t think it will do much since going 30 into fire or air sacrifices too much. 30 Arcana is really good due to EA and it reduces the cooldown on attunements. At the same time, this line synergies really well with water 15 minor trait. The faster you can swap to water attunement again the more you can heal through water 15 and EA. So from a survivability perspective you would use 45 points on these lines giving you 25 unused short of the 30 needed for any grandmaster trait in any other line (specifically fire and air).

On top of that, the fire and air trait lines give offensive stats and at the same time they are loaded with offensive traits. What Ele needs more are traits with defensive properties in fire and air or traits like Arcana VI. Arcana VI benefits from critical chance (damage stat) but at the same times gives you something to use defensively (Vigor). So I don’t think these trait changes will be enough for most people to go deep (30) into fire or air since Elementalist have the lowest base stat of any profession in the game. These changes are similar to some of the trait changes previously like Water X (Cleansing Water). Like really does anyone use that?