Guild Wars 2

I’m curious and i know it may sound over powered but Do you think that having an exact time set for attunement recharge rate would allow a variety within builds?

No. It is one major thing holding back spec diversity, but its not the only thing.

Elemental Attunement is the second best trait we have and it only costs 10 points. It is “mandatory” for all specs because it is very strong for an adept trait, and 10 points are required into arcane just to lower the recharge.

Blasting staff is mandatory for running a staff (20 arcane).

Evasive Arcana is mandatory for running Dagger mainhand (lack of defensive traits in Fire/Air force speccing into arcane for survivability).

Because there are diminishing returns on spending points in Arcane as far as cooldown reduction goes, only the first 10 points are really “mandatory” for cd reduction. After that you are spending the points because your weapon demands a specific trait, or there are a lack of competitive options elsewhere.

A better option to increase spec diversity would be to make Evasive Arcana an adept trait (which will become the new mandatory) and make Elemental Attunement a GM trait (which is very, very good, but not really mandatory). Blasting staff should be removed from the game, and staves should function with a usable radius by default.

Raven.9603:

No. It is one major thing holding back spec diversity, but its not the only thing.

Elemental Attunement is the second best trait we have and it only costs 10 points. It is “mandatory” for all specs because it is very strong for an adept trait, and 10 points are required into arcane just to lower the recharge.

Blasting staff is mandatory for running a staff (20 arcane).

Evasive Arcana is mandatory for running Dagger mainhand (lack of defensive traits in Fire/Air force speccing into arcane for survivability).

Because there are diminishing returns on spending points in Arcane as far as cooldown reduction goes, only the first 10 points are really “mandatory” for cd reduction. After that you are spending the points because your weapon demands a specific trait, or there are a lack of competitive options elsewhere.

A better option to increase spec diversity would be to make Evasive Arcana an adept trait (which will become the new mandatory) and make Elemental Attunement a GM trait (which is very, very good, but not really mandatory). Blasting staff should be removed from the game, and staves should function with a usable radius by default.

Good Answer!

and I would agree to removing ‘blasting staff’ if!!! Anet does set the radius of blasting staff as DEFAULT but I’m not sure if they will.

However if you’re talking about ‘better option to increase spec diversity’ i wouldn’t state moving evasive arcana into an adept trait as this trait itself will be considered as OP as you can use it for heals and combo finisher: blast to give you might and blah, blah, blah.

Evasive Arcana and Elemental Attunement are active defense mechanics. They are 2 of the 3 we have (the other being healing ripple), and they are in arcane. Of those, Evasive is probably better for sustain. Every Elementalist needs some of these defensive traits because we have no natural defensive mechanic (like stealth, deathshroud, clones, HP or armor).

There are 2 ways to get people to stop feeling forced into speccing 30 in Arcane.

Make Evasive Arcana accessable, or create a new defense mechanic and put it somewhere else. Thats it. It’s the only way (short of nerfing the kitten out of it).

If Tempest Defense(Air) periodically evaded attacks or caused shocking aura to proc (say, when struck with a crit with a 30sec ICD) instead of the stupid stuff it does now, staff and DD would have a reason to spec air.

if there was a trait in earth that gave 5s protection when struck hard (like natures protection for rangers, which has a 30sec ICD), staff and DD would have a reason to spec earth.

if fire aura was changed to reflect melee damage the same way earth aura reflects missiles, everyone would have a reason to spec fire AND use signets.

tl:dr, Arcane is mandatory until defense is available elsewhere, or for less investment.

I do know that evasive arcana is a defense mechanic but by putting it the adept trait I have a feeling that the rest of the classes will be complaining about it. When you stated that other classes have things such as stealth, death shroud, clones, HP and armor what we elementalist have is high mobility in comparison to other classes unless you’re playing staff and focus. Although this is arguable due to thieves bow =-= and Mesmer portal.

When you state crit i’m thinking of glass cannon directly and i’m not really a big fan of it although it does contradict that i’ve made build instantly after the patch was made that does focus on crit itself.

I think the new patch sort of pushed us to a heavy constant burst cause i’m starting to see a lot of glass cannon S/D elementalist and that’s sort of boring.

Urukami.4796:

I do know that evasive arcana is a defense mechanic but by putting it the adept trait I have a feeling that the rest of the classes will be complaining about it. When you stated that other classes have things such as stealth, death shroud, clones, HP and armor what we elementalist have is high mobility in comparison to other classes unless you’re playing staff and focus. Although this is arguable due to thieves bow =-= and Mesmer portal.

…and ranger greatsword and ranger sword/dagger and warrior greatsword, both of which have RTL level gap closers on 12 and 20sec cd’s… we’re not that mobile, especially if we miss. All that mobility is also tied to a specific offhand, so it doesn’t increase the survivability across the board.

Urukami.4796:

When you state crit i’m thinking of glass cannon directly and i’m not really a big fan of it although it does contradict that i’ve made build instantly after the patch was made that does focus on crit itself.

I think the new patch sort of pushed us to a heavy constant burst cause i’m starting to see a lot of glass cannon S/D elementalist and that’s sort of boring.

When I said crit, I mean when someone crits on us. See: Ranger trait “primal reflexes: gain 5sec vigor when struck by critical, 15sec CD”. 4 second shocking aura when struck by critical probably warrants a 30sec CD, but its a powerful enough defensive mechanic when taken with something else (like healing ripple) to justify not spending 30 points for Evasive Arcana, and thats the goal, right?

I guess I understand you. Thanks

P.S have you seen the ranger forums (it’ funny) they’re complaining about the Nerf.

Urukami.4796:

I guess I understand you. Thanks

P.S have you seen the ranger forums (it’ funny) they’re complaining about the Nerf.

Yeah, I mained a ranger until this patch hit (trap/condi, not BM, for the record). the complaints are justified. The last patch was pretty upsetting and has basically put my ranger into hibernation while I enjoy “Fresh Air” S/D for awhile.

BM was OP because bunker specs should not do high damage through pets while gearing to be invulnerable. Pet damage for BM had to be lowered, and the community accepted that and was totally okay with having it nerfed… But by nerfing ALL pets for all specs, they hurt the entire class with a dramatic damage nerf instead of tuning the broken spec. It’s not an really appropriate approach to balancing. The correct approach would be to scale pet stats off of player stats, so defensively geared players dont have high dps pets.

Ontop of the huge damage nerf to all specs:

• The shortbow nerf wasnt warranted and hurt very badly, it already only received half bonus from quickness, and if it was an attempt to make longbow appealing, a better start would’ve been improving longbow itself.
• Spirits were not improved enough to be viable, much like Fire for elementalists.
• Nothing was done to improve pet survivability for WvW or dungeons. The community is basically thinking "well, we can spam ‘Guard’ shout every 15sec. That’s dumb, i’m not doing it.

So, back to the elementalist for me.

you are correct as BM was OP, i played ranger for a while then deleted him as soon as i got bored.

Elementalist is still one of my mains and lately s/d and d/d has been too boring and really lacked that challenge that I want so I’ve been switching to staff (support build) more frequently and in the current process of making a staff build that will someday beat both d/d and s/d although occasionally i will play s/d and d/d.

Last sentence welcome back to the elementalist community

To the OP,

If we had a “exact time set for attunement recharge rate” that was short (10 seconds) I believe we would be fine.

I play d/d, and I spec only 20 into arcana for the vigor on crit and the elemental attuning—neither of which feel necessary/mandatory for my success. So, while I agree that we do need more worthwhile defensive traits and actives for fire and air, I don’t agree that making any trait placement changes to the arcana trait line will alleviate the problem.

Of course, we won’t know what works until we’ve actually been given a chance to try builds that don’t require arcana to lower our attunement rate.

Raven.9603:

Evasive Arcana is mandatory for running Dagger mainhand (lack of defensive traits in Fire/Air force speccing into arcane for survivability).

.

i agree with you on most parts but i do not feel that evasive arcana is needed for surviveability on mainhand dagger.

building around a 0/30/30/0/10 build with dagger and focus there is actually a lot of defensiv potential. the main thing will be that earth is the go too attunemnet for defense and condi removal and getting the most out of ether renewal.
i learned to love elemental shielding which also triggers for you on combofield auras. earth focus with 20% cd reduction is also extremely good imo.

i am testing this build right now and it is quite diffrent but also fun. if only i could use the new master trait and tempest defense at the same time…

lightning whip is the coolest thing we have and its not bad damage wise.

OT:
the new mastertrait is cool but in general i feel its only really good for scepter which is sad. I think it would be better to have a attunement reduction based on the points you spend i each attunement indivdually.

so 30 points in lightning gives 30% reduction, 20 in fire 20% and so on.
as a trade off arcana will only have boon duration as a bonus for speccing in it.

Asmodal.6489:

Raven.9603:

Evasive Arcana is mandatory for running Dagger mainhand (lack of defensive traits in Fire/Air force speccing into arcane for survivability).

.

i agree with you on most parts but i do not feel that evasive arcana is needed for surviveability on mainhand dagger.

building around a 0/30/30/0/10 build with dagger and focus there is actually a lot of defensiv potential. the main thing will be that earth is the go too attunemnet for defense and condi removal and getting the most out of ether renewal.
i learned to love elemental shielding which also triggers for you on combofield auras. earth focus with 20% cd reduction is also extremely good imo.

i am testing this build right now and it is quite diffrent but also fun. if only i could use the new master trait and tempest defense at the same time…

lightning whip is the coolest thing we have and its not bad damage wise.

OT:
the new mastertrait is cool but in general i feel its only really good for scepter which is sad. I think it would be better to have a attunement reduction based on the points you spend i each attunement indivdually.

so 30 points in lightning gives 30% reduction, 20 in fire 20% and so on.
as a trade off arcana will only have boon duration as a bonus for speccing in it.

Not a bad idea i guess and yes the new master trait to me only feels like it’s suited for scepter, well in my opinion as well.

They should make attunements a base 9 (or 10) second cd and make arcane’s intelligence stat something like a modifier for the lingering elements trait.

Intelligence – Increases the duration your attunements linger by 2% per point spent in arcana.

Lingering elements will have to be made baseline for elementalists and the air 5 points and fire 5points traits will need to be improved to be on power with the earth/water.
This will open up some really interesting mix/match builds of attunement bonuses.

For example, you can pick up the vital striking trait in water to deal 20% damage to vulnerable targets in water attunement and combine it with the air 25 point trait and lingering elements to deal 20% more damage in air (vulnerability gained from crits) for a few seconds after you leave water.

They can really follow up more combos like this with protection for earth and condition damage/duration for fire and critical chance/damage for air. Imho this will make the class really fun to play and build diversity will shoot through the roof.