Guild Wars 2

Why do hardly any of the traits sync with each other. In fact looking over the traits you actually make yourself worse by switching unless you absolutely have to. The way Elementalist is designed right now it only makes sense to stay in one attunement. Theres no point using the others because the traits are all over the place and at most only are helpful if you are in one attunement for pretty much 100% of the time.

I could compare them to every other class to point out how all of them have trait synergy and the elementalist has none but that would take forever so I will just use another caster class. Necros have trait lines work well with each other to make the class less squishy. Lets use a minion build for example as minions will most definitely get buffed in the first major balancing patch and will probably be a very strong solo build:

First of all for a light armor class you need Healing and Vitality. So going 30 points into Blood Magic gives you the following:
5 seconds of regen when health drops below 90%
Siphoning health is 50% more effective
Siphon health whenever you hit a foe
Minions siphon health and give it to you
Siphon health whenever you crit
Now becuase of all that incoming health you also deal 5% more damage if above 90%

20 into Spite give you power
5% bonus to healing from power
30% increased minion damage. If the amount they siphon from your Blood line is based on their damage this is even more healing and also DPS

20 into Death Magic gives Toughness and Boon duration
10% damage enemies under 50% health more DPS
20 toughness for each minion you have summoned so if using full minions more tanky
50% more health for minions

That build is an example of different traits working together to make each other better. Basically you have a ton of pets which grants you more toughness and they are buffed to 50% more health and 30% more damage and also heal you when they attack. Also you have a ton of survivability due to all the self healing. That sounds like pretty good synergy.

But looking over Elementalist traits most go something like this: Deal 10% more damage when attuned to this element. OK useless when you are in the other 3. All____skills recharge 20% faster again worthless unless you stay in that element. Air has lots of mobility but only when you are attuned to it so useless when using something different. Elementalist lack all the self healing a necro has but that 5 point regen passive seems nice….but oh wait it only works when you are attuned to Water. Thats funny necros also get a regen but it works all the time.

TLDR: If they expect us to play this class using all of our spells from each attunment why the hell dont thekittentraits support each other? About the only possible build where they semi do is a 30 Fire/30 Earth bleed build but after reading a guide on it you pretty much stay in Earth the entire time.

Without getting to winded I can say pretty plainly. You are looking at it wrong.

You need to switch in and out of attunments depending on the situation. Elementalist have an extremely high level of mobility and survivability if you do it right. I usually start out in earth to gain bleed and to lay Eruption down. I then switch to fire and drop a lava font to gain 3 stacks of might. From there if I need to get away I can switch to air and drop my 4 spell which grants quickness and then lay a static field if I need the stun. I can also switch back to earth by now and lay my 4 spell which is rock wall, cant remember the name. I can use my 6 spell to heal or switch to water. I can use my heals from there and I can also lay my 4 spell which takes quickness away from my opponent. That is just one example. Again each situation requires you to be attuned to different elements. That is the beauty of being an elementalist. The draw back is that you have to do a lot more work to get the same amount of benefit as other classes.

I like to have a lot of traits in arcanebecause I can switch through my attunments faster. I stack the rest of my points in water, earth and air. I dont need fire. I do enough damage but I am really support. I have a lot of great combo fields that I can drop and then switch attunments and use the combo finishers. That is where my damage comes from.

Watch this to get an idea of what I am talking about.

To play the ele effectively, you have to swap attunements frequently. I agree that specializing into one trait line incentivizes players to stay in one attunement, but that will result in diminished effectiveness from the class.

Effective play on the ele requires being effective at utilizing slows, other crowd controls, kiting, dodges, combos, and damage. It’s comparison to the other classes, it’s probably the most difficult to be effective with. That doesn’t mean it’s not effective when played with a high degree of skill.

Comparing professions naturally without traits, the ele has access to more synergy than any other profession. Now, because it is expected that as an effective ele you’ll be swapping attunements, what people should be doing is grabbing traits for the mechanics that they want to stand out more. Additionally if players want the kind of synergy created by using skills as exampled in the necro build above, you’ll have to spec more heavily into Arcana for traits such as Elemental Attunement, Evasive Arcana, or Elemental Suge. However I’d only recommend Elemental Attunement.

It’s correct to assess that trait synergy specifically is lackluster compared to other professions, but synergy naturally exists heavily within the ele’s profession mechanic and skills which can’t be said about other professions, because those only 10 to work with as opposed to the ele’s 20.

I see what everyone is saying but I agree with the OP. I know that to be effective you should stance dance but why are all of my traits for a specific stance? It isn’t like I can stay in one and be effective or put points into all trait lines and still be effective. As it is now I have to stay in one attunement more often or I might as well not have traits at all.

BTW OP, you have convinced me to try the necro again lol.

No offense, but you clearly haven’t played a necromancer.

I’ve been scanning both forums and I definitely think Ele has it worse. I am no expert (obviously) but it looks like a lot of people are just complaining over some skills not being entirely damaging. I look at the necro as a tanky character that can take a ton of hits and keep on chugging away. That and the super condition removal/damage isn’t anything to scoff at either.

I can say more when I start getting my necro up higher.

Dabrixmgp.4758:

The way Elementalist is designed right now it only makes sense to stay in one attunement.

Not gonna lie… I stopped reading right there.

You guys are NOT getting what he’s trying to say and this is something that we’ve complained about since Beta Weekend 1. We have the WORST trait synergies out of all classes.

He’s not saying he stays in ONE attunement just that the vast majority of our traits favour single attunements. How about you all actually think about what he’s saying before jumping down his throat.

bow, again the Izkimar thing?

You may not realise it, but that video kinda proves just how crappy Elementalists are. There you got one heck of an Ele and well….. he’s useless.

Look at the 2vs2. “oh he’s going 2vs2 against heavy cond dmg, but ok he has healing rain, he’s removing lots of conditions!” Hmm that sounds like the condition build from TeamParadigm is screwed. So they’re gonna own… no wait, conditions apply 10x faster than Healing Rain removes em and after Rain is over there’s no more removal since HR cd is ages long and it’s basically 2vs1 and they both get downed. But they both got their elites, they’re gonna make a comeba… no wait they’re both dead already.

Survivability mykitten Seriously. He carries around 2 survival cantrips, he has the earth armor trait and arcane shield trait. He’s basically taking everything that even remotely increases your survivability. Even with all that you can see how fast he goes down. The 50% point where Armor of Earth triggers is reached within seconds, the 2vs1 he was down in seconds and all he can do is run away and hope his team saves him. In the meantime his meteor shower does amazing 800-900 damage. Whoa, that’s scary!

Sorry but quite simply put a good Elementalist runs around throwing a combo field here and there and uses well timed CCs, F-inishers while doing close to 0 damage and mainly survives because he runs for his lives every 10 seconds and leaves his teammates to clean up the mess. Sorry, but if Izkimar went with another team it’d basically be 4vs5 because the Ele can not pull his own weight.

The answer is, do not pick the traits that cause you to do 10 percent more damage in any one trait. Those are tease traits designed to incentivize you to spec poorly. There are plenty of traits in all the lines that provide utility to an overrall build. One can put on the berserker amulet and nothing in the fire line and still do very nice damage.

Now that I have learned to spec correctly, unfortunately the amount of choices on how to spec are limited. For instance any build that does not have the arcane skill that grants vigor 33 percent of the time on crits is insane. This talent alone allows you to almost chain dodge.

Another hint is that if you want to begin to enjoy your elementalist start learning how to use the focus off-hand. The utility and defense provided by this one weapon is amazing. I can beat anyone using the focus off-hand. Yes you lose ride the lightning and fire grab, but the immunities are unsurpassable. Two immunities to projectiles and a blanket invulnerable, rangers, ranged warriors, and ranged thieves just became trivial.

Good points Baconbelly however things start going wonky when you look outside of only s/tPVP. We have issues in every aspect of the game and practically every aspect of the class, can we please just admit that ArenaNet aggressively over-nerfed us already?

Ele4Life (although it’s becoming demoralizing)

I have to say I agree with you if you pick certain traits, such as more dmg in a certain attunement, you loose any desire to swap out. I fell into this trap with fire, and found the game incredibly difficult to solo. My opinion is to avoid these traits. Personally I would like some of these traits to be replaced with more helpful things, as these lead people down paths which make elementalists less effective.
What I have recently started doing is d/d with full arcana and auto-cast on the auras from air and water. I then put all traits in giving me boons for stance-dancing and applying auras, which gives me near permanent swiftness as well as long lasting protection, fury and might and health regen, which makes up for lack of natural dmg. This basically makes me need to swap all the time, but also has made my elementalist a lot more powerful, I have gone with struggling 1v1 to being able to take 3 or more at a time (though it took some time to get used to as it is a lot harder play style). Also I agree with above about the arcane trait which gives a chance to increase vigor, as you get so much rolling ability from it, and couple this with the arcane trait that does an attack after a roll and suddenly the best/most different part of this game just became better.

The vid that helped me a lot was http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PKPbboLqzM&list=UUYUY9_i44IDNOs_Ja815mlA&index=5&feature=plcp though I have altered the build slightly for my own personal choice (found I wanted to swap attunements even quicker then it was allowing, so took fire down 10 to put into arcane).

All that said I don’t know how this matches up in pvp. Good luck.

Brogin.2395:

No offense, but you clearly haven’t played a necromancer.

When did I say I did. Its not hard to go through the traits for every class and see they have good synergy. I have never played a warrior but lets see if I can pick out the traits that go well together:

OK using a 20/30/0/0/20 build with all signets and using a sword/axe combo

Strength: Power and Condition Duration
2-5% extra damage depending on my adrenaline
5% extra damage wielding an axe in offhand

Arms: Condition Damage and Precision
40 Precision for each unused signet = 200 if using 5
33% chance to cause vulnerability on crits
33% to cause bleeding on crits
10% damage to bleeding foes
Critical hits grant an extra adrenaline strike

Discipline: Critical Damage
9% crit for full adrenaline
Critical hits with axes grant extra adrenaline

So if using a Sword/Axe build you have good bleeds, loads of crit, and will always cap out adrenaline in a hurry.

I can do this with every class. Again Im not saying stay in one attunement for 100% of the time Im saying the majority of your traits and passives require you to. And the ones that dont keep you in one attunement dont work well with the others.

Am i the only one who sees the ability to dance between attunements to be an advantage? We have twice the number of skills other classes do, even with their weapon swapping. We have so much utility with our weapon skills. Where’s the problem?

It’s not an advantage; it’s busywork. Other professions can accomplish similar things with fewer moves. And OP is quite right that synergies are lacking within traits. The elementalist is forced to take weaker skills that carry over when switching to other attunements, substituting breadth for depth.

@Chuckles.7356 Thanks for posting that video, i had no idea the “swap weapon in combat” upgrades worked with out F/W/A/E switching so hadn’t used them at all. And some of the other things he talks about really great – i play D/D alreaady so i’ll be looking into some of the things he does.

You learn something new everyday

Of all the casters you could have compared to, you picked a necromancer?

Go to almost every class forum there is, and you might see 20-30% whining and moaning.

The necromancer forum? 70-90% whining and moaning, why? Because the class is absolutely broken. At least you guys can have civil discussions, we’re too busy wallowing in our sorrow and self pity to even bother talking about how to play the class, because no necromancer build really works extremely well all around.

Voltric.6920:

Am i the only one who sees the ability to dance between attunements to be an advantage? We have twice the number of skills other classes do, even with their weapon swapping. We have so much utility with our weapon skills. Where’s the problem?

All other professions are designed to be self-sufficient with their 10 weapon skills + everything else, and the game is balanced around that. This means that elementalists’ skills are simpler and more restrict than normal to compensate for the fact that they have two times more. All other professions are also designed to especialize at specific roles, while elementalists by default must be weaker at specialized tasks to compensate for their “diversity”. And in a MMORPG, especially in spvp, professions are judged based on how specialized at doing something well they are.

Attunements are hard to balance. Seems like the best route for the developers to go, is that of dual daggers or staff, where each of those two weapon sets are specialized at something (damage and support respectively) at the expense of everything else, regardless of attunement. So Staff’s earth, air and water attunement are all crappy at damage but excel at CC, while even water’s and earth’s daggers are offensive in nature, while giving healing and disruption as a side bonus. Even so, they’re not perfect at that. Fire’s staff could get some extra support/ cc while still dealing damage (maybe if MS caused KD, or something?), and dagger’s air could get some extra damage with its first skills, imo.

Zeron.4017:

Of all the casters you could have compared to, you picked a necromancer?

Go to almost every class forum there is, and you might see 20-30% whining and moaning.

The necromancer forum? 70-90% whining and moaning, why? Because the class is absolutely broken. At least you guys can have civil discussions, we’re too busy wallowing in our sorrow and self pity to even bother talking about how to play the class, because no necromancer build really works extremely well all around.

Just did a warrior as well but I guess you missed that. Its not hard i can go all day picking a class and coming up with builds where 2-3 trait lines support each other very well. Also even as broken as necros are I still made a build where traits had good synergy. Once they get fixed in the first balancing patch they will be far better than elementalist because they are easier to play and their traits actually work together.

Didn’t read whole thread but just don’t worry much about traits on ele. They’re almost all completly underwhelming anyhow. You have to swap to make the class work because the abilities you need to do anything are spread across all 4.

Ele depend less on traits than any other class. Just pretty much pretend like they don’t even exist and then they become small little bonuses instead of gamechangers.

It’s a bummer that trait builds are so irrelevant on ele but it’s just a fact. Most people go at least 20 into arcane because it’s the only line that has decent traits that augment the class as a whole, and the reduced reset time after switching hugely enhances your ability to attunement dance.

There are some traits across different attunes that mesh well with each other. Here is a D/D I saw online that I have tried and really enjoyed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PKPbboLqzM&feature=g-all-u