Guild Wars 2

With the current patch being released today, Fresh Air trait is really caught my attention. Is it just a coincidence or there is something else behind this change? My prediction is in the future, we will see similar Grandmaster trait on Fire,Water, and Earth Tree, maybe something like this:

Grandmaster Earth Trait (name) : When you get disabled (immobilise, Stun,Dazed,etc..)
reset your Earth Attunment recharge rate.

Grandmaster Water Trait (name): When you have 4 or more Conditions on you, reset your Water Attunment recharge Rate.

I still have not think what is good for Fire Trait yet. Help from everyone else is very appreciated. With this change, Anet give the player the choice to be specialize in one specific Attunment,and help with Diversity. Soon,we will see Fire Eles, Air Eles, Water Eles, Earth Eles who are specified in one tree. What do you guys think about this future?

Discuss.

Dunno for Fire or Earth, but i don’t want it for Water.

The 2 grandmasters (Aura sharing and cond removal on regen) are fine that way and it’s better to leave them there…

Doesn’t beat out Evasive Arcana imo. Eles still don’t have an amazing reason to go without EA.

You can still have 30 on EA, but if this goes true, you can have an extra specific Attunment your choice.

Leuca.5732:

Doesn’t beat out Evasive Arcana imo. Eles still don’t have an amazing reason to go without EA.

Fresh Air is about as good as EA, just restricted to scepter builds. You can burst more often while having plenty of swiftness and fury on you, and more healing from the signet. It’s worth taking away EA for it, or you can always get both at the cost of the water’s traits.

Never really like EA. Do not dodge enough for it to be useful to me. I use alot of blinds in my build. Fresh Air is a great grandmaster trait unlike the last ones for Air. It really increased my dps for my glass cannon build.

I wouldn’t say Fresh Air it is restricted to scepter builds, but works best with scepter, alright with dagger, and is sort of redundant with staff.

EA and staff is still the way to go, imho.

Fresh Air is the best change happened since release, finally Ele isn’t predictable anymore during a fight.
Unfortunately, after its nerf, EA is overrated.

Also, I don’t feel like Fresh Air restricts Ele to scepter builds, as I noticed great improvements with d/d, s/f, s/d, staff (have yet to try d/f, I can’t find yet a good way to make use of such weapons set against Mist invaders)

I don’t think any similar traits should trigger on what an enemy does – it makes the build too predictable, and too strong against certain professions.

For example, refreshing water attunement upon gaining 4 conditions would make us virtually invincible to any condition build.

Personally I think the fire tree is okay, being the PvE option we all wanted (don’t quote me on this, because as a lazy person I just use the same WvW build everywhere), and the water tree already has very strong GM traits.

Earth could use it though, since to deal good damage you will need to keep the bleed stacks up. Just don’t make it dependent on what an enemy does, for the reason I stated above.

The patch is still very nice, and I don’t have any complaints (for Eles).

This was so incredibly nice for my lastest lupi solo

I think this is just dancing around the real issue of of base attunement timers suck and should be lowered.

Kinda bad/wasteful design really. They know what the issue is but instead of just directly addressing it they’re coming up with gimmicky Traits in order to change it. How many other classes would accept it if all their weapon swap cool downs were 15 seconds and they had to spec 30 points into a line to speed it up…but only if it’s <insert one weapon type here>?

Once Fresh air is fixed (ctually have a 5 cd) I would prefer the other grandmaster trait or even the air skill reduced cd more.

I just got myself a new valkyrie armor set and I am loving it. I have 103 crit damage without food and I hit very hard. Due to the cooldown starting whenever you enter air and not when you exit air, you can basically enter air almost every 2 seconds. I do miss EA in my 0/30/0/20/20 build. I can get EA but then I miss out on water 15 which is also great and kind of is the same. I might drop the 20 in water though, and get EA and somewhere 10 points. I am kind of squisy atm but it’s worth it so far. Only 1vx seems to be really hard.

No other Fresh traits would really work.

Fire: There is simply nothing on fire that is short enough cooldown to be worth being back in fire on any weapon. Staff has access to lava-font like aoe on most attunements, dragons tooth doesnt actually hit people, dragons breath is not really that amazing.

Earth: Again, for what? Earth’s low end skills are weak on most weapons except scepter for the auto. The idea behind scepter-condi is to stay in earth (access burning through fire traits / glyph).

Water: Only cone of cold and evasive arcana would really warrant this, and I dont see Anet wanting to make DD healing any better, ever.

There needs to be a way to lower recharge outside of massive arcane investment, but fresh traits only work for air, and only work for scepter. nor is it fair to make us take them over grandmaster traits just to avoid arcane.

I love fresh air. My only problem with it is that a build that uses it as well as heavy arcane investment is working against itself because having shorter attunement recharge rate cheapens the value of instant attunement recharge.

For now though i’m just going to enjoy nuking things, maybe pick up some valk gear instead of zerkers and see if a 3x arcane build can work.

Malcastus.6240:

I wouldn’t say Fresh Air it is restricted to scepter builds, but works best with scepter, alright with dagger, and is sort of redundant with staff.

If I had 80 trait points to play with instead of just 70 I’d grab Fresh Air for my staff elementalist. Air Attunement for staff is, in my opinion, in a distant fourth as far as usefulness in combat. But if it were refreshed every time I scored a critical hit (often) I could skip through it when cycling to/from Fire, Water, and Earth Attunements just for the Electric Discharge proc. And the extra Precision would be of use, too.

Where are all the burst eles in wvw!, been waiting with anticipation for so long to face my first one. Never have encountered a single one since beta! if you are in sor or jq go to sor battleground and lets duel right now!

LightningBlaze.4913:

Where are all the burst eles in wvw!, been waiting with anticipation for so long to face my first one. Never have encountered a single one since beta! if you are in sor or jq go to sor battleground and lets duel right now!

you are looking for burst eles on the zerg tier? thats an odd place to start…

Fresh air is amazing.
Step 1, auto attack in air and use 2 and 3 quickly
Step 2, Change to something else while the auto attack is still happening
Step 3, Change back to air (since air auto critted under a different attunement)
Step 4, Continue air barrage.

Raven.9603:

LightningBlaze.4913:

Where are all the burst eles in wvw!, been waiting with anticipation for so long to face my first one. Never have encountered a single one since beta! if you are in sor or jq go to sor battleground and lets duel right now!

you are looking for burst eles on the zerg tier? thats an odd place to start…

Well 2 showed up for 3 duels each today and yesterday I found one so there are a few out there just not many on tier 1 servers. I hear Magguma is really good at this, I might switch there.

TGSlasher.1458:

Fresh air is amazing.
Step 1, auto attack in air and use 2 and 3 quickly
Step 2, Change to something else while the auto attack is still happening
Step 3, Change back to air (since air auto critted under a different attunement)
Step 4, Continue air barrage.

Don’t just use air 3 skill randomly…. it doesn’t do damage just causes blind so save it when you really need it..

I use it at start of fight, due to S/F. Like to keep my foes opening form hitting me, from the on its tactical. Although I do have earth 3 and sig of air for extra blinds.

I totalled my friends thief build just by blinding him to death lol (lies, but the blinds did prevent me from taking damage for quite along time).

I do know about using skills when required and not spamming, air 3 on opening is my exception.

Yea T1 is kinda hard to find good fights that don’t turn into a 1vX really quick. It’s why I tend to run with a group (5 or so people) so that it can be even. But not too many people solo roam.

@LightningBlaze Maguuma is a zerg server too. I doubt you’d have much fun there either. I’m currently fighting against them. They always have like 80 people on 24/7 running in a giant, red, mindless blob around the map.

Nikkinella.8254:

@LightningBlaze Maguuma is a zerg server too. I doubt you’d have much fun there either. I’m currently fighting against them. They always have like 80 people on 24/7 running in a giant, red, mindless blob around the map.

Dang, I dueled a mesmer today and he told me I will really enjoy going against magguma because they have a lot of solo roamers and duelers there but his guild switched to jq and that’s why he left that server. What server is well known for dueling or solo/small group roaming in wvw?

Sorry to disappoint you man. But yeah. They like spawn camping too and aren’t very sportsmanlike either. I was having this fun duel with some guy from Crystal Desert that I spotted while roaming alone and 20 Mags rolled on us, killed us both then started dancing on our bodies. You’d probably have fun on my server, Yaks Bend. We rarely have large groups on as most people on our server are over 20-30 years old and actually have jobs and don’t wvw as if its their life. But when we do have people on we roam in small groups and generally have good fights. Even though they always outnumbered us, I do miss fighting Dragonbrand. There were some really good fighters on that server. So that’s an option too. I don’t know what tier they’re on now though.

Nikkinella.8254:

Sorry to disappoint you man. But yeah. They like spawn camping too and aren’t very sportsmanlike either. I was having this fun duel with some guy from Crystal Desert that I spotted while roaming alone and 20 Mags rolled on us, killed us both then started dancing on our bodies. You’d probably have fun on my server, Yaks Bend. We rarely have large groups on as most people on our server are over 20-30 years old and actually have jobs and don’t wvw as if its their life. But when we do have people on we roam in small groups and generally have good fights. Even though they always outnumbered us, I do miss fighting Dragonbrand. There were some really good fighters on that server. So that’s an option too. I don’t know what tier they’re on now though.

I completely dislike when players do those emotes against defeated players when they kill in a group or in a zerg. Ironically when you find those same players alone, they die easily on 1v1. Interesting to know Yaks Bend and Dragonbrand tend to have those type of roamers to go against. Thanks for the feedbacks Nikkinella!

No problem. Hope you find a server that you like better. Too bad it wont let you guest and just try out wvw on another server. I mean I understand why, but they could make it so you wont get wxp or something like that while guesting just so you could get a feel of how the server acts before you decide to switch.

Don’t mind Nikki, he mad.

Maguuma has a large force on one map at a time and relies on solo and small group roamers to hold the other 3 down until the main force is needed to defeat a large enemy group. As long as you avoid the map currently being fought over by the main force, there is always lots of action to be found. I run across way more solo mags while I’m roaming and looking for fights than I do enemies; even deep in enemy territory.

It’s Yak’s you have to look out for. Their idea of a roaming group is 10 dudes and an open field arrow cart. If one ever stops to 1v1, it’s because he sees a swarm of green dots coming his way on the mini map.

I never roam with more than 2 other people. And we only use siege out on the field when we see the wave of red headed towards us that is usually Mag. Atleast we take a few of them down with us before we get rolled over.

LightningBlaze.4913:

What server is well known for dueling or solo/small group roaming in wvw?

Why not just make a private arena? It just went public.

To me, WvW is not the place for 1v1 and you shouldn’t expect to find it there.

Stealth.9324:

With the current patch being released today, Fresh Air trait is really caught my attention. Is it just a coincidence or there is something else behind this change? My prediction is in the future, we will see similar Grandmaster trait on Fire,Water, and Earth Tree, maybe something like this:

Grandmaster Earth Trait (name) : When you get disabled (immobilise, Stun,Dazed,etc..)
reset your Earth Attunment recharge rate.

Grandmaster Water Trait (name): When you have 4 or more Conditions on you, reset your Water Attunment recharge Rate.

Like I said hunders of time:
- Remove/Rework Intelligence
- Put a “go back to the attunement feat for all Elements”. I would have supported a passive CD reduction scaling on the trait point invested but Fresh Air is also a path.

innocent ouarior.1954:

Stealth.9324:

With the current patch being released today, Fresh Air trait is really caught my attention. Is it just a coincidence or there is something else behind this change? My prediction is in the future, we will see similar Grandmaster trait on Fire,Water, and Earth Tree, maybe something like this:

Grandmaster Earth Trait (name) : When you get disabled (immobilise, Stun,Dazed,etc..)
reset your Earth Attunment recharge rate.

Grandmaster Water Trait (name): When you have 4 or more Conditions on you, reset your Water Attunment recharge Rate.

Like I said hunders of time:
- Remove/Rework Intelligence
- Put a “go back to the attunement feat for all Elements”. I would have supported a passive CD reduction scaling on the trait point invested but Fresh Air is also a path.

So eles should be the only profession that need to spend grandmaster traits to be able to use their class mechanic? That’s ridiculous and the whole root of ele’s problems.

Aether McLoud.1975:

So eles should be the only profession that need to spend grandmaster traits to be able to use their class mechanic? That’s ridiculous and the whole root of ele’s problems.

You’re perfectly capable of using your mechanic without spending any traits at all. The traits just let you use them more often. And this isn’t something that’s exclusive to elementalists; warriors, thieves, necromancers, and I’m sure everyone else has traits that allow them to utilize their class mechanics more often.

darkace.8925:

You’re perfectly capable of using your mechanic without spending any traits at all. The traits just let you use them more often. And this isn’t something that’s exclusive to elementalists; warriors, thieves, necromancers, and I’m sure everyone else has traits that allow them to utilize their class mechanics more often.

You are arguing semantics instead of addressing his problem.

Not speccing into arcane at all is non-viable because a base 15-second attunement cd isnt playable. Arcane also has blasting staff, which is required for staff elementalists to be playable, and evasive arcana, which is required for D/D elementalists to be playable (because of lack of defensive mechanisms in fire or air).

“Fresh” talents arent a solution to improve the bad situation with arcane. Ontop of this, Scepter-Air is literally the only situation that benefits a single attunement always being up. We shouldn’t have to give up GM traits just to avoid speccing heavily into arcane.

TGSlasher.1458:

Fresh air is amazing.
Step 1, auto attack in air and use 2 and 3 quickly
Step 2, Change to something else while the auto attack is still happening
Step 3, Change back to air (since air auto critted under a different attunement)
Step 4, Continue air barrage.

What all of you conveniently seem to be forgetting is that fresh air is bugged at the moment and does not have the intended five second internal cooldown. Once it’s fixed it will be next to worthless in my opinion or at least not worthy of a grandmaster trait. More like first or second tier.

Dunkelbunt.1064:

TGSlasher.1458:

Fresh air is amazing.
Step 1, auto attack in air and use 2 and 3 quickly
Step 2, Change to something else while the auto attack is still happening
Step 3, Change back to air (since air auto critted under a different attunement)
Step 4, Continue air barrage.

What all of you conveniently seem to be forgetting is that fresh air is bugged at the moment and does not have the intended five second internal cooldown. Once it’s fixed it will be next to worthless in my opinion or at least not worthy of a grandmaster trait. More like first or second tier.

I’m not forgetting. I currently play as if it were more or less 5 seconds as is. If you start in air, you still can do what I listed above.

Usually its:
Step 1, auto attack in air and use 2 and 3 quickly
Step 2, Change to something else while the auto attack is still happening
Step 3, Change back to air (since air auto critted under a different attunement)
Step 4, Focus KD
Step 5, Change to Fire
Step 6, Dragons tooth, Sig of Earth, Flamewall (when not bugged anymore), Pheonix + Fire Aura
Step 7, Then back to air and watch that thief go invisible and come back with full hp

When getting back to air number 2 is off cd, so I’ve taken at least 4 seconds since changing.

Dunkelbunt.1064:

TGSlasher.1458:

Fresh air is amazing.
Step 1, auto attack in air and use 2 and 3 quickly
Step 2, Change to something else while the auto attack is still happening
Step 3, Change back to air (since air auto critted under a different attunement)
Step 4, Continue air barrage.

What all of you conveniently seem to be forgetting is that fresh air is bugged at the moment and does not have the intended five second internal cooldown. Once it’s fixed it will be next to worthless in my opinion or at least not worthy of a grandmaster trait. More like first or second tier.

Ok..ive heard that from a million people..Cant you kittening read the tooltip or what?
The internal cooldown is supposed to start when you refresh air by scoring a critical hit..NOT WHEN YOU LEAVE AIR

kostbabis.8791:

Dunkelbunt.1064:

TGSlasher.1458:

Fresh air is amazing.
Step 1, auto attack in air and use 2 and 3 quickly
Step 2, Change to something else while the auto attack is still happening
Step 3, Change back to air (since air auto critted under a different attunement)
Step 4, Continue air barrage.

What all of you conveniently seem to be forgetting is that fresh air is bugged at the moment and does not have the intended five second internal cooldown. Once it’s fixed it will be next to worthless in my opinion or at least not worthy of a grandmaster trait. More like first or second tier.

Ok..ive heard that from a million people..Cant you kittening read the tooltip or what?
The internal cooldown is supposed to start when you refresh air by scoring a critical hit..NOT WHEN YOU LEAVE AIR

This, if you start in air you can go back to air within milliseconds. Even if the cd was there. Then it would be on cd for 5 sec.

The ICD is broken. I tested it in the aoe golem pit with a high precision build to insure crits, and it always resets when you crit without any ICD.

The only real CD on it right now is the global attunement cooldown that makes you wait to switch back out of air (fresh air resets the global cooldown for air).

Yeah you are right..It was like 3-4 sec between each crit that refreshed it.Nice job!
But still i dont think people should believe that fixing the trait will change anything really.The global cooldown already prevents you from swapping so fast to even notice the 5 sec between refreshes by crits if you cast a spell and you can still go back immediately in air if you start there with the cd in cooldown ..
Tbh even something as strong as this doesnt feel enough for me to give up 1 heal..but maybe we need to l2p again cause the gameplay feels a lot different and the trait should also shine the less points you have in arcana.

Ok i ve seen it myself.. you can put all attunements in cd assuming you crit..almost instantly..
It doesnt show up with valkyries cause of the low crit chance but with zerkers.
Its not optimal but its broken in the sense that you can do very good damage if you know the fight its near the end ..You can also end up in fire for bigger burst
Please anet!!Dont fix it ..its so fun pressing 10 buttons in less than a second :P

Yep, it’s bugged, but even so it gives me an idea of how useful it will still be for my build(s).

It’s possible, in the current state and with a high crit build, to blow every attunement “immediately”. The thing about that is all of the others go on full cooldown. Taking any time at all during the rotation to cast another skill from another attunement causes the cooldown to naturally approach 5 seconds anyway, and just blowing through attunements for no reason other than to get back to air may be funny but isn’t a really good battle strategy.

Thieves can still pump out more damage (with built-in gap closer) by spamming 2,2,2,2,2,2. Hopefully they leave it bugged. Could be fun having more than one (effective) burst class in the game.

Ok..its strong.I was wrong about it i kitten it..now im excited.
With zerkers amulet you proc it almost immediately with air..With 20 in water you can get an instant heal and frost aura without practically leaving air at all plus soothing mist and cond removal now with zero lose of dps or only a bit if you cast a heal spell/
Also with zerkers amulet 25 minor in arcana in air proccs weakness!!!! in a fairly decent rate and MORE than perma if you take GoEP. That together with our high protection uptime is like nullifying the low toughness :O
It requires a lot of l2p though..Im sure people that dismissed it barely even touched the possibilities.
Lastly since you can switch instantly (only once if they fix it) the attunement you go after air practically gets as much cooldown with 20 arcana (or a bit lower) as much as you would get with with 30 in arcana!! Pretty neat if you ask me

Do fresh air really reset the Air attunement’s global cooldown?
Meaning can I get a perma static aura, with swiftness and vigor (Zephyr’s boon)? That sounds really fun!

The global attunement cooldown is the short cooldown that all attunements go on when you attunement swap. Fresh air will remove that ~1.3 second global cooldown from air so you can switch back immediately. It doesn’t reset the weapon skill cooldowns.

Snowball.3497:

Do fresh air really reset the Air attunement’s global cooldown?
Meaning can I get a perma static aura, with swiftness and vigor (Zephyr’s boon)? That sounds really fun!

These words do not mean what you think they mean.

Global cooldown refers to the (brief in this case) period after activating ANY attunement in which you are unable to switch to any other attunement. Not the cooldowns of the weapon skills themselves.

/edit: dang, ninja’d

Raven.9603:

You are arguing semantics instead of addressing his problem.

Not speccing into arcane at all is non-viable because a base 15-second attunement cd isnt playable. Arcane also has blasting staff, which is required for staff elementalists to be playable, and evasive arcana, which is required for D/D elementalists to be playable (because of lack of defensive mechanisms in fire or air).

It is playable. You might not find it optimal, but that doesn’t mean it’s not viable. Blasting Staff is certainly a boon for the staff elementalist, but giving up the traits to get it isn’t any different than any other profession or any other build having to put X points into Y trait line to get Z trait to make their particular build of choice better.

hint:
lingering elements and 10% more damage while in air atunement.
Kind of like a permanent 10% damage boost.

darkace.8925:

Raven.9603:

You are arguing semantics instead of addressing his problem.

Not speccing into arcane at all is non-viable because a base 15-second attunement cd isnt playable. Arcane also has blasting staff, which is required for staff elementalists to be playable, and evasive arcana, which is required for D/D elementalists to be playable (because of lack of defensive mechanisms in fire or air).

It is playable. You might not find it optimal, but that doesn’t mean it’s not viable. Blasting Staff is certainly a boon for the staff elementalist, but giving up the traits to get it isn’t any different than any other profession or any other build having to put X points into Y trait line to get Z trait to make their particular build of choice better.

15 seconds attunement cooldown is not playable. That’s a fact.
No other profession has to spend trait points to be able to USE THEIR WEAPON SKILLS because if eles don’t they are stuck using autoattacks for 5-10 seconds.

Aether McLoud.1975:

15 seconds attunement cooldown is not playable. That’s a fact.

Actually, it’s an opinion. And that’s a fact.

Aether McLoud.1975:

No other profession has to spend trait points to be able to USE THEIR WEAPON SKILLS…

And no other profession has 20 weapon skills. Technically, engineers can if they want. But the elementalist is the only profession with a default 20 weapon skills.

Aether McLoud.1975:

…because if eles don’t they are stuck using autoattacks for 5-10 seconds.

How is that any different than any other profession that spams their weapon skills (or Initiative, in the case of thieves) while their weapon swap is on cooldown?