Guild Wars 2

Looking at these mainly from an SPvP perspective. These were my first thoughts.

• Blinding Ashes [Fire]: Blind foes for 5 secs when you burn them. Cooldown: 5 secs.

Potentially good. Going this deep into fire means a lack of defensive traits and it’s on a 5 secs ICD which means you need to ready your stopwatch when using burn skills. I doubt it will be enough to make a difference. Perhaps 2 secs ICD, depending on how it fares. The concept is good.

• Lightning Rod [Air]: Interrupting an enemy causes them to be struck by a damaging lightning bolt that leaves them weakened (5 secs).

Who do they think we are? Mesmers? Elementalists aren’t proficient at interrupting, you could say we SUCK at it, and the skills that actually has a chance of interrupting are on a long CDs, so this trait is horribly misplaced and pointless.

Here is a list of surface interrupt skills. Let’s see what we have on our main weapons.

Daze – Focus x1
Fear – None
Knockdown – Dagger offhand x1
Launch – Dagger offhand x1
Push/push – Tornado
Stun – Dagger mainhand x1, staff x1

The interrupt that is most guaranteed for us is Shocking Aura, as opponents will actively attacking and almost guaranteed to be interrupted. Being integrated with Tempest Defense I likely wouldn’t use it. Is that worth a grandmaster trait that grants you 5 secs of weakness, when you have Lightning Touch ready every 10 secs lasting for just as long and much more easily applied? However it does have a lightning bolt attached, but how often will it trigger? Not often with our interrupts. Terrible trait.

• Stone heart [Earth]: You cannot be critically hit while attuned to earth.

Sounds useful, when you stick to earth attunement. How often do you really do that when swapping constantly? It has potential, especially with Elemental Attunement’s protection for decreased damage. However you need to go 30 in earth for it, leaving you weakened in other aspects. Diamond Skin worked in all attunements, this will likely not even be usable with Lingering Elements. Not sure about this one yet.

• Aquatic Benevolence [Water]: Your healing to other allies (not self) is increased by 25%.

With Cleansing Water unnerfed, how much will it be used? No clue. But I can see it bringing good healing to party members using staff and blast finishers. I will stick with Cleansing Water most likely.

• Elemental Contingency [Arcane]: Gain a boon when you are struck, based on your current attunement. Cooldown: 10 seconds. Fire: 3.5 secs of retaliation; Air: 5 secs of fury; Earth: 2.5 secs of protection; Water: 3 secs of vigor.

The arcane traitline will remain mandatory after the patch. Will this trait replace EA? My crystal ball says no, but who knows.

My favorite is Blinding Ashes admittedly. What do you think about these traits and how will they affect builds and PvP? Discuss.

I actually have been theory crafting and I’ve thought of a 30fire-30earth build to try out.

What I’m actually going to love about stone heart is it’s ability to resist condi specs by not letting them proc condis on criticals. This is huge. (as well as the damage reduction)

With 30 trait points and attunement to earth, you have gained a cat-load of defense. Moderate resistance to condis and extreme resistance to damage. I think with this trait eles can make a come-back into the meta.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vEAQJAodhMM6Z25wxBdEBARBMmEeIgBAIK8QpQOA-zUCBYfAofgJqFRjtMMsVXBp8KaakYaXBSFTpmUA6KMC-w

Little theorycrafting

The Game Slayer.7632:

I actually have been theory crafting and I’ve thought of a 30fire-30earth build to try out.

What I’m actually going to love about stone heart is it’s ability to resist condi specs by not letting them proc condis on criticals. This is huge. (as well as the damage reduction)

With 30 trait points and attunement to earth, you have gained a cat-load of defense. Moderate resistance to condis and extreme resistance to damage. I think with this trait eles can make a come-back into the meta.

It’d be lacking in the healing/arcane/condi cleanse department though. Are you thinking condi build?

The Game Slayer.7632:

I actually have been theory crafting and I’ve thought of a 30fire-30earth build to try out.

What I’m actually going to love about stone heart is it’s ability to resist condi specs by not letting them proc condis on criticals. This is huge. (as well as the damage reduction)

With 30 trait points and attunement to earth, you have gained a cat-load of defense. Moderate resistance to condis and extreme resistance to damage. I think with this trait eles can make a come-back into the meta.

I’m also thinking of trying to go for a build that goes 30 in fire and earth. I hope gw2skills can update with new skills soon so we can theory craft better.

30 fire and 30 arcane I am thinking. EA dodge in fire for AoE blindness, dodge in air for AoE blindness. Then with S/F you could potentially be doing well.

The Game Slayer.7632:

I actually have been theory crafting and I’ve thought of a 30fire-30earth build to try out.

What I’m actually going to love about stone heart is it’s ability to resist condi specs by not letting them proc condis on criticals. This is huge. (as well as the damage reduction)

With 30 trait points and attunement to earth, you have gained a cat-load of defense. Moderate resistance to condis and extreme resistance to damage. I think with this trait eles can make a come-back into the meta.

I’m also thinking of trying to go for a build that goes 30 in fire and earth. I hope gw2skills can update with new skills soon so we can theory craft better. I wish they had released all the details on all the changes for each and every rune and sigil as well so we could get a better idea on what to go for since my current runes are trash now. (Monk+Traveler+Water)
Edit: oops, meant to edit my op, oh well

Here’s some prototype builds for 6 (30) earth:

D/D – 6 fire, 6 earth, 2 somewhere else (arcana for windborne dagger and fury?).

• Blinding Ashes coupled with Burning Precision and, possibly, Burning Fire.
• Stone Heart coupled with Rock Solid and Stone Splinters.
• Ether Renewal, Lightning Flash, Armor of Earth, Glyph of Elemental Power.
• Berserker Amulet with Celestial Jewel, Rune of Strength, Sigil of Battle and Energy.

Sturdy defense with 30 earth, reliable condition cleansing, frequent stability, high damage input and decent condition damage input with nice stacks of might, and high condition control with blinds and +30% condition duration for the cripple/ weakness/ chill/ burning/ bleeding input. High speed.

D/D Cantrip Stone Heart – 4 fire, 6 earth, 4 water

• Spell Slinger and Burning Fire.
• Earth’s Embrace, Stone Splinters/ Rock Solid and Stone Heart.
• Cantrip Mastery and Soothing Disruption.
• Signet of Restoration/ Ether Renewal, Cleansing Fire, Lightning Flash, Armor of Earth.
• Soldier amulet + Celestial Jewel, Rune of Strength, Sigil of Battle and Energy.

Really high defense with soldier’s, regeneration, cantrips and 30 earth. High, non-critical damage and condition damage input with 25 stacks of might.

Wow this is not even close to being better or even on the same level with the current gm traits in any build.sad.just sad.
fire-fire has 2 pretty good traits already this one is of limited use in pvp at best
air-what?wrong class brah.
earth-solid if you sit in earth for a long time,pretty good if it works with la (but nothing works with la to start with)
water-other 2 traits are waaay better for ally support now give us the trinity back,k plz tnx.
arcane-a when hit trait on the squishiest class in the game in a tree that give 0 defense of any kind? 10/10 would never take EVER.
All in all where is the dude who thought up fresh air-get him back on.

I have been theory crafting lately, but it had nothing to do with any of the new GM traits.

Are we sure that the blinding from 30 fire will be aoe? I mean, it has 5 secs icd just like glyph of elemental power and the later only affects one target, even when you use aoe skills to trigger.

Dolores.5471:

Are we sure that the blinding from 30 fire will be aoe?

Honestly? No. I’m wondering that myself as what Karl McLain said that it’d help “skirmish with one or possibly more enemies at a time.” He doesn’t really elaborate on that. They mention burning speed/retreat will provide “some cover,” and that’s it.

Fenrina.2954:

Dolores.5471:

Are we sure that the blinding from 30 fire will be aoe?

Honestly? No. I’m wondering that myself as what Karl McLain said that it’d help “skirmish with one or possibly more enemies at a time.” He doesn’t really elaborate on that. They mention burning speed/retreat will provide “some cover,” and that’s it.

I think he means you’ll be able to randomly blind and avoid damage from at least 1 attack. Since it won’t be a 1 on 1, your enemies won’t be able to easily predict or count 5 seconds from when you last blinded someone thus it gives you a chance to randomly blind and avoid their high damaging skills.

As for petting zoos, I don’t know. If it’s gonna be 5s ICD per target, it’s gonna be a lot better than people think.

I think it depends on the skills used. A Flame Burst would hit up to five people with it, I would think. If you go Drake’s Breath on people, it will likely trigger at the first person you hit then go on ICD.

But yeah, I wonder if it’s 5 ICD per target, or per usage.

Drake’s Breath is actually an area (cone) skill that has 4 “ticks”, each one of them may hit up to 5 people at same time causing around 3 secs of burning. So if this GM trait works with aoe (which is unlikely given similar traits/runes/sigils) you’ll be able to blind 5 foes with the first “tick” of DB.

Only if you hit them at the same time I would imagine. I wonder if you apply a 12 secs burn to someone if it re-applies blindness after 5 secs, or you need to apply it again.

Yes, but its fairly easy to hit multiple people with a tick of DB, you may test it on the pvp golems. Anyway, I’m inclined to think that weakness would be a better condi for this trait, but perhaps a s/x ele with fresh air may be able to spam blinding as effectively as a thief with it.

We actually have four more interrupts on our conjured weapons, not that it makes much of a difference for that awful new air trait.

Malcastus.6240:

Only if you hit them at the same time I would imagine. I wonder if you apply a 12 secs burn to someone if it re-applies blindness after 5 secs, or you need to apply it again.

If blind could be re-applied by a long duration burn itself, then this trait sounds more interesting.

objectively speaking the new traits are not so bad, they increment the number of possible viable builds.

Subjectively speaking, I am disappointed from most of the new traits because I am longing for a solid 1vs1 Elementalist meta.

on a side note: from my understanding of the livestream, skills have been tweaked accordingly to the new sigils/runes era, so although I like theorycrafting I also think we have no basis to formulate valid hypothesis.

SlayerUK.5029:

Malcastus.6240:

Only if you hit them at the same time I would imagine. I wonder if you apply a 12 secs burn to someone if it re-applies blindness after 5 secs, or you need to apply it again.

If blind could be re-applied by a long duration burn itself, then this trait sounds more interesting.

Given that every ele weapon has at least 1 burn to apply, and you’ll automatically have Flame Barrier, and you have fire combo fields to use, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about it proccing again on long burn durations.

Having said that, I doubt it works that way. If it did, it’d be more like ‘when you deal damage with burning’.

Dolores.5471:

Are we sure that the blinding from 30 fire will be aoe? I mean, it has 5 secs icd just like glyph of elemental power and the later only affects one target, even when you use aoe skills to trigger.

Glyph of Elemental Power actually has no limit on the number of targets it can affect. The limiting factor is the AoE limit of the skills used to proc the effect. This would be one of the many viable ways to make use of Blinding Ashes, especially if this new trait’s CD is per target like the glyph.