Guild Wars 2

Evasive Arcana is a staple of most ele builds and has been for a while. Why? Not only is it easily one of most powerful grandmaster traits ele has, eles feel almost required to go 30 in Arcana to reduce attunement recharge. Hence the vast majority of ele builds taking the form x/x/x/x/30.

Other classes have “almost required” traits, like Deceptive Evasion for mesmer, but almost none of them are Grandmasters.

Currently, there is at least one Grandmaster trait in the other ele trait lines that is decidedly lackluster, and few Grandmasters that are attractive outside of a specific build (Persisting Flames for mightstacking builds, Fresh Air for scepter, Written in Stone for signets, and Powerful Aura for aurashare). Pyromancer’s Puissance, Tempest Defense and Diamond Skin are okay, but none is really good enough to justify going 30 points in their respective lines to take, regardless of game mode.

So, what if we got rid of Evasive Arcana, and replaced four lackluster Grandmasters with traits that grant dodge effects based on the trait line?

Fire Magic: Meditation on Flame and Rage. Gain might when you dodge. Damage and burn foes at the end of your dodge roll.

• Might: 3x, 10s. Burning: 3s.
• The damage and burning effect is a Combo Finisher: Blast, but can only activate once every 10 seconds.

Air Magic: Meditation on Wind and Lightning. Endurance refills 50% faster. Replaces your dodge roll with a short-range teleport.

• Removes evasion from dodges.
• Dodges can be performed while immobilized, but do not cure immobilized.
• The bonus to endurance refill stacks with vigor, but is reduced to 25% if you have vigor and do not have weakness.

Earth Magic: Meditation on Rock and Soil. Grant nearby allies protection and inflict heavy bleeding at the end of your dodge roll.

• Protection: 3s. Bleeding: 5x, 10s.
• The bleeding effect can only activate once every 10 seconds. Combo Finisher: Blast.
• This trait results in the availability of bleeds outside of Earth, and would help condition ele become more viable.

Water Magic: Meditation on River and Rain. Increases the duration of your dodge roll to 1 second. Heal nearby allies at the end of your dodge roll.

• The healing effect scales greatly with healing power. It is a Combo Finisher: Leap, and can only occur once every 10 seconds.

To give this a semblance of balance, you could only have one Meditation trait active at a time.

Unfortunately, this would be a massive nerf to overall Elementalist gameplay for anyone that invested into Arcana.

The reason why Evasive Arcana is so good is the versatility it gives. By only allowing one of your Meditations to be active at a time, you get rid of the versatility of the different dodge roll effects.

Let’s say I took the water meditation. Every 10s I get a heal and a leap finisher. That’s good and all. But compare it to EA. If you need a heal, drop a water field, dodge into it while in earth to heal you and all allies, then dodge in water to heal you and allies and cleanse a condition. Or say I want to stack might, I’d take the fire Meditation. But I can already do that with any weapon combination as long as I drop a fire field and EA Earth dodge.

Most of the things you want these Meditations to do are just chunks of what EA can do.

The only way to “fix” the dependency on EA and 30 in Arcana would be to reduce the cooldown on attunement swapping and to make the dodge roll effects a class mechanic, something which I doubt will happen anytime soon.

We don’t take evasive arcan because it’s good, we take it because everything else sucks. I wouldn’t bother with it if it weren’t for the water heal, which wouldn’t be necessary if we had a better way of sustaining ourselves. Eles lack sustainability in prolonged fights. They nerfed everything that would have allowed us to sustain ourselves without any buffs to compensate. I’d much rather have a more offensive ability available, but i’d be reluctant to take anything else at this point because we NEED that water heal because our burst healing sucks compared to warrior, our armor and hp sucks when compared to any class, as does our mobility. And even if we spec for full damage, bunker specs of other classes can still outdamage us without having to sacrifice every bit of survivability like we do.