Guild Wars 2

I just read the latest update notes and I noticed the following change to some Guardian Traits:
“•Defender’s Shield and Honorable Shield: Merged together into the same trait. •New trait Glacial Heart.”
That change gave the guardian two useful traits (the merged one and the new one), instead of two mediocre ones before the update.

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I think the Elementalist has a lot of traits that could be changed in a similiar way!
So my idea in short: Merging two weak Traits into an interesting + a new one.

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Some examples for traits that could be combined:
1) Icy Mist & Soothing Wave: Both are weak in the state that they are now, because they are limited to a few skills and there are better Water Traits. But they would work great combined and there would be also space for a new trait.

2) Vigorous Scepter & Windborne Dagger: Combining them wouldn’t make them overpowered, but makes the trait more interesting and frees up a slot for a new trait.

3) Salt Stone & Serrated Stones: They have some good synergy, but are really weak in my opinion, so they’re not worth taking alone, but one would consider using them, if they were just one trait.

4) Obsidian Focus & Zephy’s Focus: Both are triggered whil channeling a skill, but both are a little weak on their own. -> combining might make them more interesting.

5) Ember’s Might & Burning Precision: They would work good together in one trait. + possibility for a new trait.

6) Lingering Elements & Elemental Attunement: The first one is (nearly) useless, so it could either be removed completely, or merged with the second one.

7) All those “… spells recharge 20% faster” and “… deals 10% more damage” traits could each be combined with some other trait or added another effect. Other professions have better “20% recharge”-traits, for example the mesmer ones Warden’s Feedback: “Focus skills reflect projectiles. Reduces recharge of focus skills by 20%.” or Malicious Sorcery: " +50 malice when wielding a scepter. Reduces recharge of scepter skills by 20%."
I think those “20% recharge” and “10% damage” traits are the main reason why it looks like the elementalist didn’t get much love when the traits were chosen, because they are very uncreative, just numbers.

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A few ideas for new traits:
1) A trait that makes conjured weapons more interesting. Maybe “Deal 20% more damage while wielding a conjured weapon.”
or “Grants a boon associated with your Conjured Weapon when you cast a Conjured Weapon.”
or “Chance to cause a condition based on Conjured Weapon when you attack.” or something totally different.
There’s currently only one Trait that affects conjured Weapons and I think that’s not enough.

2) A trait that encourages using a Focus as an Offhand-Item. At the moment everyone uses Dagger on Offhand, but a good (creative) trait might change that. Maybe something like the mentioned Mesmer Trait equivalent, i.e. not just a trait that makes focus skills recharge faster, but with something else added.

3) Maybe a trait that makes summoned creatures (Elementals, Asuran Golems, …) stronger and/or last longer? (Or: “You get +90 power/precision/toughness/healing power while you have a summoned elemental, depends on elemental type”)

4) An arcane trait, that adds the Combo Field or Combo Finisher attribute to some Elementalist Skills, for example: Meteor Shower -> Blast Finisher, Unsteady Ground -> Combo Field, Shatterstone -> Blast, Updraft -> Blast, Swirling Winds -> Whirl, … But it needs to affect quite a lot skills, or it would be useless.

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Now I would like to hear your opinion on the topic. Do you think it is a good idea to merge weak traits in order to have a more interesting one and free space for a new one?
My suggestions for new traits aren’t the best. Do you have some more creative ideas? Or some more examples of traits that could be merged?

I definately think something needs to be done with Elementalist traits. They are by far the most boring and typically useless traits in the game, especially the ones in the Fire line, and not counting that you are forced into 30 Arcane regardless. It would be nice to actually have some build options.

Yeah elementalist’s traits are horrible, the main reason for that being that almost all of the traits affect one single attunement. In a class where you need to be constantly swapping attunements to stay alive this is not very useful. Take fire, nearly all of the fire traits give you bonuses only while you are attuned to fire and as soon as you swap to a different attunement they are all gone.

Seriously Drunken Monkey.2653:

2) A trait that encourages using a Focus as an Offhand-Item. At the moment everyone uses Dagger on Offhand, but a good (creative) trait might change that.

I actually use a focus 90% of the time for all those defensive skills on earth and air, I understand, however why so few people use it and I wish someone from Arena Net read this:
The focus should have a healing skill on water attunement but most importantly the fire focus skills are utterly useless:

Flame Wall: Damage almost non existent and it causes burning for one second, yes for one second to a target which is probably burning already from Flame Strike or Dragon’s Tooth.

Fire Shield: Perhaps the most useless skill in the entire game as I said on another thread. Puts up a shield which lasts for 3 seconds during this time if someone attacks you they will get burning for 1 second. Yes you read properly, as if burning from Flame Strike, Dragon’s Tooth and Flame Wall was not enough Fire Shield gives you the chance to burn your enemy for whole full second holy cow!

So yeah the focus has some nice defensive abilities but its fire skills are worthless, I really wish they implement a decent offensive skill for the focus on fire attunement. Isn’t attack what the fire attunement is supposed to be about? I’m sure more people would begin to use it if they made this change.
For now I’ll just watch my poor foes suffer for that full second…..

Your idea on the conjured weapon trait sounds interesting,, an idea could be each attunement has a trait that adds a bonus to that elements conjured weapon.

So at 20 points (or whatever) in fire you could select “improved flame axes” which would add an addition 25% damage and an addional 25% buring -Water “improved frost bow” this could add an addiotnal xyz heal per attack and a 33% chance to chill the target – Air “improved lightning hammer” (my fav i might add) could apply an addional 10% speed and a 5% increase in attack speed – and Earth “improved earth sheild” could add an extra 50% toughness.

Again all the above are examples, but you get the point.

Also, they really should remove the conjure bonus from fire (the one that adds 10 extra charges), it should be added to the arcana tree in the 10 point slot.

I agree the conjure trait should be for arcana, and I would change it to this:
- Conjure Weapons have 10 more charges and their weapon skills recharge 20% faster.
This would still have to be a tier 2 trait, I think. An alternative version would be:
- One additional Conjure Weapon is created on the battlefield that only you can pick. (This would effectively mean +15 recharges, though).
I would then add for tier 1 arcana something like:
- The casting time of Conjure Weapons is instant and break stun.
Break stun, so the elementalists can have alternatives to their cantrips. Instant cast, for easier self-combos.

I would fuse most of the one-attunement-only traits into one, something like this:
- Spells recharge 20% faster in X attunement. The longer you stay in this attunement, Y happens.
And then would add for each elemental traitline:
- When you swap to this attunement, X happens for Y seconds.
- When you swap to this attunement, create a combo field and/ or it counts as a combo finisher. (Improving tier 2’s minor traits, and an interesting way for self-made combos.)

For tier 2 arcana weapon traits:
- Your field attacks with Staff are larger and whenever you cast a field spell, you gain retaliation for 2 seconds. (Why? Because this would make Staff fare better in 1vs1, without making it stronger for larger battles.)
- While wielding a Dagger in combat, you move 15% faster and your endurance regenerates 15% faster. (Same suggestion as the OP’s, those two simply compliment each other, and Dagger needs that dodging more than Scepter).
Not sure about the Scepter’s trait.

I also think some meaningful skill-changing traits would be really interesting:
- Meteor Shower and Fire Storm cause cripple for 2 seconds when they hit. (Fire Storm comes from one glyph and one conjure).
- Skill X now creates a combo field or counts as a combo finisher.
- Fire’s Focus skills apply retaliation and/ or regeneration.

Also more cross-elemental synergy:

Air: Arcane’s 1st and 3rd minor traits here:
- Grant yourself fury for 2 seconds on attunement. (Tier 2)
- Skills have chance to apply a condition on critical hits. (Tier 3)

Earth:
- X% chance to gain Y boon on critical hits. (Tier 1)
- Grant yourself retaliation for 2 seconds on attunement. (Tier 2)
or
- Apply blind on target/ nearby foes for 2 seconds on attunement. (Tier 2)
or
- Apply blind on target/ nearby foes for 6 seconds on attunement. This effect can only be activated once each X seconds. (Tier 2)
- You have a chance to apply a condition whenever you are hit. (Tier 3) <— Synergies well with the inherent condition damage boost in this traitline.

Water:
- You are healed for X/ gain X boon whenever you critical. (Tier 1)
- Grant yourself vigor for 2 seconds on attunement. (Tier 2)

Fire (because it’s the most lacking traitline, I’ll try to be more creative here):
- If you lose more than half of your health in 2-3 seconds, a Phoenix is cast on your attacker. (Tier 2?)
- If you are being attacked by more than one enemy in 2-3 seconds, cast a weak Flame Burst on the area around you. (Tier 1?)
- Fire Fields add 1 stack of might to any ally that crosses them. (Tier 1)
- Whenever you create a Fire Field, a Flame Burst is activated on that area (X seconds recharge). (Tier 2-3)
- Whenever you gain might, you apply 1 second of burning to foes around you. (Tier 1?)
- Whenever you take more than half of your opponent’s HP in 2-3 seconds, you gain vigor (X seconds recharge). (Any tier)

Some of those fire suggestions could also be modified for other elements, and I could go on… :P

MajorMelchett.6042:

So at 20 points (or whatever) in fire you could select “improved flame axes” which would add an addition 25% damage and an addional 25% buring -Water “improved frost bow” this could add an addiotnal xyz heal per attack and a 33% chance to chill the target – Air “improved lightning hammer” (my fav i might add) could apply an addional 10% speed and a 5% increase in attack speed – and Earth “improved earth sheild” could add an extra 50% toughness.

I like your idea MajorMelchett, but I wouldn’t make a different trait for each Conjured Weapon. Otherwise we would end up with 5 different traits that are all only useful for one skill each. Maybe a weaker version of yours in the Arcane Tree that combines all or some of the effects in one? (I like more general traits more, rather than traits that are specific to one skill)

OneBloke.7264:

Fire Shield: Perhaps the most useless skill in the entire game as I said on another thread. Puts up a shield which lasts for 3 seconds during this time if someone attacks you they will get burning for 1 second. Yes you read properly, as if burning from Flame Strike, Dragon’s Tooth and Flame Wall was not enough Fire Shield gives you the chance to burn your enemy for whole full second holy cow!

Yeah, you got a point there. Fire Shield is very weak, and you need to be hit (which you should really avoid as an Elementalist) to trigger it’s effect! I’m sure the Elementalist has some more skills that aren’t very good (like Glyph of Renewal which never triggers properly when I try to use it..), but my intention was to mainly focus on Traits with that topic.
Also, I’m sure there are some people that use Focus Offhand, but not many compared to Staff (Two hand) or Dagger users. For example I haven’t seen someone playing PvP with Focus as Offhand yet, they use always Daggers. Anyways, there is no Trait that affects Focus Skills, therefore my idea. Again, I wanted to focus on the Traits of the Elementalist, but you’re right when you’re saying that there are other problems with the Focus!

Seriously Drunken Monkey.2653:

MajorMelchett.6042:

So at 20 points (or whatever) in fire you could select “improved flame axes” which would add an addition 25% damage and an addional 25% buring -Water “improved frost bow” this could add an addiotnal xyz heal per attack and a 33% chance to chill the target – Air “improved lightning hammer” (my fav i might add) could apply an addional 10% speed and a 5% increase in attack speed – and Earth “improved earth sheild” could add an extra 50% toughness.

I like your idea MajorMelchett, but I wouldn’t make a different trait for each Conjured Weapon. Otherwise we would end up with 5 different traits that are all only useful for one skill each. Maybe a weaker version of yours in the Arcane Tree that combines all or some of the effects in one? (I like more general traits more, rather than traits that are specific to one skill)

Plus, all we have right now are specific skills that only affect one element anyways.

Seriously Drunken Monkey.2653:

I like your idea MajorMelchett, but I wouldn’t make a different trait for each Conjured Weapon. Otherwise we would end up with 5 different traits that are all only useful for one skill each. Maybe a weaker version of yours in the Arcane Tree that combines all or some of the effects in one? (I like more general traits more, rather than traits that are specific to one skill)

I was thinking of it more incase you want to specialise deep into 1 element type, but either way is good as they both do (or close to) the same thing,

DiogoSilva.7089:

- The casting time of Conjure Weapons is instant and break stun.
Break stun, so the elementalists can have alternatives to their cantrips. Instant cast, for easier self-combos.

And then would add for each elemental traitline:
- When you swap to this attunement, X happens for Y seconds.
- When you swap to this attunement, create a combo field and/ or it counts as a combo finisher. (Improving tier 2’s minor traits, and an interesting way for self-made combos.)

I think there had been some Trait in one of the BWE that allowed Conjured Weapons to break Stun on activation. Combined with you idea of instant cast, it would be a really interesting way to use Conjured Weapons!

I’m not so sure about the second point I quoted. The first idea sounds just like the Arcana Trait “Elemental Attunement” and I think we don’t need another similiar trait.
But the second idea (Combo Field/Finisher) is really good and could also be added to the already existing Tier 2 Minor Traits. For example “Earthen Blast” (T2 Earth, Minor) already looks like it’s a Blast Finisher

And you’re right that some Minor Traits need some improvement. I do like the idea of the Tier 2 Traits, because they encourage swapping Elements, but on the contray the Tier 1 Traits are only useful if you’re attuned to that specific Element and most of them aren’t great, even if you stayed on one element. Other professions have some really good Tier 1 Minor Traits, for example the Ranger one Natural Vigor: Increases endurance regeneration by 50%. or Natural Vibor: Gain regeneration when your health reaches 75%.
And the Elementalist has Flame Barrier: You have a 20% chance to cause burning whenever a foe attacks you in melee. Only triggers when attuned to fire.
20% in melee when attuned to fire! That’s a lot of “if” for a small effect like burning, which can be applied in so many other ways.

I really like all of your other ideas! They are a lot more creative than most of the current Traits. And if some Traits were merged, for example the 20% recharge Traits that you mentioned, there would be enough space for some of your ideas.

I honestly think that if the conjure spell only conjured one weapon in your hand it would be better. I hate that I have to ground target my conjures and then wait for a cast time. Though the burn from greatsword and axe are neat.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

Plus, all we have right now are specific skills that only affect one element anyways.

Yeah, exactly. That’s why I came up with the idea that some Elementalist traits could easily be combined into one. And most of those Traits aren’t even good, even though they only affect one or a few skills!
For example: Soothing Wave grants you 6 seconds of regeneration when you use Mist Form, Frost Bow or Signet of Water.
Compared to Soothing Disruption, which grants you 9 seconds of regeneration and vigor when you use a Cantrip.
So if you chose Mist Form (a Cantrip), there is no reason to take Soothing Wave instead of Soothing Disruption.

Another of those Traits is Burning Fire which adds 3 seconds of Burning to some Skills. For example Signet of Fire already burns for 9 seconds. You could keep a target burning forever, when you use all of those skills, but then the target uses a condition removal and all your burning is gone. It would be better if Burning Fire improved the damage of your burning, instead of adding more seconds, because there are already soo many Fire Skills that add burning.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

I honestly think that if the conjure spell only conjured one weapon in your hand it would be better. I hate that I have to ground target my conjures and then wait for a cast time. Though the burn from greatsword and axe are neat.

Adding some effect to the other Conjured Weapons might be an idea too. Maybe Frost Bow heals when conjured, Earth Shield weakens enemies and Lightning Hammer stuns at summoned location. Could also be implemented as a trait. (maybe even combined with the ‘breaks stun’ idea, because I really like that one)

Yeah, other professions’ traits not only feel stronger, but they’re also less conditional. It’s so interesting when you pick a (minor) trait, and get to see its consequences/ results regardless of the weapon you are using. Elementalists’ traits are highly unsatisfying because we only see their effects 1/4th of the time, and they’re usually lacking.

I suggested stuff like “fire fields do X” in my post above, but I would go as far as say that fire traits should offensively affect spells across all attunements, much like how earth traits should defensively affect spells across all attunements, etc. After all, that already happens with their stat boosts. When you’re speccing in the fire traitline, you’re not really speccing into better fire magic, but instead you’re improving the overall power of all four elements – with fire making better use of it generally, of course. Under this logic, I wouldn’t mind seeing something like “all your fields apply might” or “your channeling spells apply burning” in fire, or “your channeling spells apply bleeding” and “all your self-casting weapon spells grant you 3s protection”.

I like traits that are immediatly satisfying, even more so when they are visually shown (through animations) or add something to your playstyle. Thus why my suggestions included stuff like “phoenix when you’re being spiked” or “flame burst whenever you create fields”. Both of them create animations, and thus feel like “extra skills”. And they respectively a) improve your kamikaze spike and/ or allow you to survive a spike, and b) add an interesting playstyle where burning/ condition builds involve field spells.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Yeah, other professions’ traits not only feel stronger, but they’re also less conditional. It’s so interesting when you pick a (minor) trait, and get to see its consequences/ results regardless of the weapon you are using. Elementalists’ traits are highly unsatisfying because we only see their effects 1/4th of the time, and they’re usually lacking.

I suggested stuff like “fire fields do X” in my post above, but I would go as far as say that fire traits should offensively affect spells across all attunements, much like how earth traits should defensively affect spells across all attunements, etc. After all, that already happens with their stat boosts. When you’re speccing in the fire traitline, you’re not really speccing into better fire magic, but instead you’re improving the overall power of all four elements – with fire making better use of it generally, of course. Under this logic, I wouldn’t mind seeing something like “all your fields apply might” or “your channeling spells apply burning” in fire, or “your channeling spells apply bleeding” and “all your self-casting weapon spells grant you 3s protection”.

I like traits that are immediatly satisfying, even more so when they are visually shown (through animations) or add something to your playstyle. Thus why my suggestions included stuff like “phoenix when you’re being spiked” or “flame burst whenever you create fields”. Both of them create animations, and thus feel like “extra skills”. And they respectively a) improve your kamikaze spike and/ or allow you to survive a spike, and b) add an interesting playstyle where burning/ condition builds involve field spells.

This is what I believe is putting the elementalists behind at the moment, having entire trait trees only effecting you 25% of the time is pretty poor design. Having these traits provide boosts outside of their attunement would be a welcome change to me..

“I definately think something needs to be done with Elementalist traits. They are by far the most boring and typically useless traits in the game”

My only comment on this is that you must not have seen the necromancer traits, sorry to say it but necro’s have the worst traits in the game right now, some of them are more interesting i’ll give them that, but 90% of them are entirely useless with the skill kit necro’s have available to them and with the current bugs floating around with necros.

That being said, not all of the traits affect only said attunement all the time, most of them in the attunement trees do yes, but there are a chunk of them which float between each other. and if you’re putting a solid amounts of traits into a specific tree you should be focusing on the trees you’re dumping these points into vs trying to use every single element constantly. EX: spec’ing Fire and Water mostly, stay in first for 5-6 seconds while you throw down several abilities then swap to a lesser trait like air and use an ability or two then swap into your next major trait of water and lay down some frost damage/chilling and throw out some heals for everybody then swap into earth and throw out an ability or two, by then your fire should be almost back up.. now you’d getting the benefits of your traits for 85% of the battle vs constantly. Now mix in the fields and blasts of certain elements, if you used say healing rain with staff while in water form or geyser right before swapping to earth, throw out an eruption as soon as you get in to play off of your combo field and grant additional healing from your water field (further increased by the stat points from your water trait increase effectively putting those trait points to use still even if the traits themselves weren’t necessarily in effect.) Elementalist is an extremely in depth class that you’re going to have to get creative with, with 20 possible skills per weapon set (vs your other classes 10 not to mention the longer cooldown timer between swapping weapons and switching between 3 elements.) there isn’t going to be that major of a disadvantage, not as much as you people are trying to make out at least. I’m not saying balance changes aren’t needed, but we don’t need to buff every class to warrior status we simply need to even out the playing field a bit more, the classes which are vastly superior need to be a little toned down and the ones which are below the average playing field need to be bumped up.. i’d say right now Elementalists are sitting solidly somewhere in the middle and as such they need minor tweaks not blatant boosts.

Zanzu.7503:

Elementalist is an extremely in depth class that you’re going to have to get creative with

I totally agree with you there. I just think it would be a lot more interesting, if we had more good traits to get creative with, e.g. more viable choices.

Zanzu.7503:

I’m not saying balance changes aren’t needed, but we don’t need to buff every class to warrior status we simply need to even out the playing field a bit more, the classes which are vastly superior need to be a little toned down and the ones which are below the average playing field need to be bumped up.. i’d say right now Elementalists are sitting solidly somewhere in the middle and as such they need minor tweaks not blatant boosts.

I don’t think most of the ideas mentioned are “blatant boosts”. And it really isn’t my intention to boost all the Elementalist traits/skills, to make him stronger in general. I just think there is a bunch of weak or uncreative traits that need a change, for example by merging two weak traits and creating a new interesting one, which is actually the topic of this thread.
The Elementalist has some great traits (Evasive Arcana, Cleansing Water, Elemental Attunement, … ) and the other traits really shouldn’t be made stronger than those, but they should be about on the same level in my opinion. Therefore the Elementalist wouldn’t be stronger in general, but there would be more viable choices, that might significantly affect how you play your Elementalist, because at the moment most traits don’t feel like they really have any impact on the way your playing. (except very few combinations of traits)

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It really wasn’t my intention to start another discussion whether the elementalist is too strong or too weak though. I was just inspired by the merge of the mentioned Guardian traits and I still think it’s a great way to create some diversity in the trait system without removing the old traits completely.

OneBloke.7264:

Yeah elementalist’s traits are horrible, the main reason for that being that almost all of the traits affect one single attunement. In a class where you need to be constantly swapping attunements to stay alive this is not very useful. Take fire, nearly all of the fire traits give you bonuses only while you are attuned to fire and as soon as you swap to a different attunement they are all gone.

Seriously Drunken Monkey.2653:

2) A trait that encourages using a Focus as an Offhand-Item. At the moment everyone uses Dagger on Offhand, but a good (creative) trait might change that.

I actually use a focus 90% of the time for all those defensive skills on earth and air, I understand, however why so few people use it and I wish someone from Arena Net read this:
The focus should have a healing skill on water attunement but most importantly the fire focus skills are utterly useless:

Flame Wall: Damage almost non existent and it causes burning for one second, yes for one second to a target which is probably burning already from Flame Strike or Dragon’s Tooth.

Fire Shield: Perhaps the most useless skill in the entire game as I said on another thread. Puts up a shield which lasts for 3 seconds during this time if someone attacks you they will get burning for 1 second. Yes you read properly, as if burning from Flame Strike, Dragon’s Tooth and Flame Wall was not enough Fire Shield gives you the chance to burn your enemy for whole full second holy cow!

So yeah the focus has some nice defensive abilities but its fire skills are worthless, I really wish they implement a decent offensive skill for the focus on fire attunement. Isn’t attack what the fire attunement is supposed to be about? I’m sure more people would begin to use it if they made this change.
For now I’ll just watch my poor foes suffer for that full second…..

You are aware that certain traits play off auras, right?

DrakeWurrum.6049:

You are aware that certain traits play off auras, right?

Fire Shield is poor without traits, and there’s a better alternative in OH dagger when you want to build for auras.

DrakeWurrum.6049:

You are aware that certain traits play off auras, right?

I am. But like someone said above there are better auras if you want to build for auras. The fact that some traits play off auras doesn’t change the fact that the skill is worthless.
They should completely redesign the skill. Something I’d like to see there instead:

Flame Shield:
X Damage (an amount at least close to fire grab from the dagger OH)

Burning: 6 seconds (Or just make the instant damage equal to fire grab’s and remove burning altogether, we have enough ways to cause burning using S/F already anyway )

Knockdown: 2 seconds

This is what elementalists’ skills should do, encourage players to avoid getting hit, not the opposite.

To the OP, sorry im going off-topic. I just couldn’t help mentioning this skill because, as I said, I use focus all the time and this skill really bothers me

I’m not sure how people can defend elementalist traits with a straight face when you compare ours to other classes’ traits.

Non-elementalist traits:

• Hammer damage is increased by 25% when a foe is disabled. Reduces cooldown of hammer skills by 20%.

• Gain might on critical hit with a greatsword or spear. Greatsword and spear skill recharge 20% faster.

• Torch skills remove conditions. Reduces cooldowns of torch skills by 20%.

• Increases pistol attack range for you and your illusions. Reduces recharge of pistol skills by 20%.

Elementalist traits for comparison:

• Deal 5% extra damage to burning foes.

• Flame Barrier’s chance to burn foes goes up the longer you are attuned to fire.

• Deal 5% more damage when you are within melee range of your target.

• All your fire weapon skills recharge 20% faster.

Compared to other classes elementalist traits just aren’t as thought out and they tend to punish for trying to stance dance [with the exception of the arcane traitline, the only good line we have].