Guild Wars 2

I’ve played Elementalist to about lvl 30 now and I’m curious what way to go with my traits/skills. I’m not a fan of signets. I just feel like I have a terrible time figuring out when to sacrifice them or not and am far to tempted to just leave the passive on for easy buffs. While I could get past this, I find it better for myself just to build around a different set, but I’ve come to a conundrum when it comes to elementalists.
As we all know, at later levels, being able to drop conditions is crucial to dungeon survival. I have a level 80 mesmer and I sometimes take several condition removal skills just to make sure I don’t die of burning, which seems to be a plentiful condition on any boss mob. But with elementalists, you get a lot of options. Cantrips give you a 3 condition removal + burn which I’ve used to great effect when tagging mobs in DE’s. I also took ether renewal to try out. To my joy it’s got an incredibly short cooldown, does a lot of healing, a LOT of condition removal, and even though the channel’s long, you can move during it, easily avoiding most damage. Because I don’t need the cantrip on top of it, I was tempted to take glyph skills, but there’s a healing glyph skill too. And it feels like if I’m going to trait into glyphs I should use that heal instead, but lose all condition removal. At the same time, I could instead trait into cantrips and then use a different heal, but I’m not sure I even like the other heals. The glyph doesn’t heal nearly as much and I already mentioned I don’t like signets. On top of feeling bad for taking either of those but not traiting into them to make signets/glyphs more effective. Any suggestions?

Of the two I’d suggest Cantrips, because the bonuses from those seem more useful to me. Also, I don’t know if this is ANet irony, cantrips make it so you can’t trip (be knocked down, stunned, hard cc’ed in general) as they are stun breakers, which I find useful.

theonewhoknocks.8641:

Cantrips are great as they are all instant cast. I hate casting Glyphs or Signets, gotta lift up my hand and draw a sign in the air? That’s like asking to be interrupted and they are not even so powerful that they should be interrupted.

This is a good point. I think the glyph of storms has a decent leg up on say the fire cantrip, damage and sustainability wise, but the instant cast is too much too pass up.

Anyone have a suggestion for what heal to go with it then? Or stick with ether feast and just have ALL the condition removal?

What weapons are you using? What role?

Signets are ok with some of the traits, however they become offensive. So you lack any defence from them. So probably good in groups.

Glyphs are good for groups also. (for me staff)

Cantrips I find are more for soloing. They buff you in many ways and can keep you alive. (for me solo, any weapon)

I mostly use dagger/dagger. Staff when I really need range or dagger/focus when I pick up a really good focus. And as I do with mesmer, I expect to be able to fill whatever role my group needs. It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to switch a few traits and go from control to support to heavy damage.

Ether renewal is not really any good because the long channel; glyph of elemental harmony is one of the best heal spells. Combined with easy access to condi removal through traits and water skills, there is no reason to take ether renewal imo.

The cooldown for ether renewal is not really that good because it starts counting after you channel it, so it is basically equivalent to the traited glyph of elemental harmony.

In my build if i want to heal during battle, I will use glyph of elemental harmony and I will switch to water attunement. This means I will heal:
4992 (base heal)
1609 (11 second regen from secondary effect)
1609 (11 second regen from inscription trait)
for a total of 8210 with 20 second cd.

If you use cleansing water trait it will heal over 9000 aswell as remove 2 conditions.

Also i will heal:
732 (5 second regen from elemental attunement)
1078 (11 second soothing mist)
and remove a condition with cleansing wave trait
and whatever healing spell I throw out while in water

What hotdogs said.

As far as I’m concerned, Glyph of Elemental Harmony is one of, if not the best heals in the game when traited for (and it is worth spending 1-2 of your traits on it, at least for inscription if not quick glyphs). A 20 second rchg heal, with access to 20+ seconds of swiftness or regen, 7+ seconds of protection, or 2 stacks of might is incredibly good. The potential overall healing it can put out when factoring its ability to give perma regeneration is really good and I can honestly say I wouldn’t have hit 100% world completion on my Ele as fast as I did without the perma swiftness, it just makes things so much easier.

edit: of course if you’re one of those eles that dies in <5 secs, the regen won’t help you that much, but neither will much else in terms of healing.

Cantrips are largely your “oh shi-” buttons and can be traited with some nice extras. Some of them feel pretty much required when it comes to pvp at times as they have very pvp centric utility. I’m not sure I would go glyphs over cantrips at this point.

Though I still use Glyph Of Elemental Harmony. It’s easily our best heal.