Guild Wars 2

Imo air and arcane are the best. Water have still better dmg traits than fire.

i’m still keeping my arcana and water… with low hp base water is a must for dont be downed all the time, and arcana just for evasive arcana… if they wanna give us more option they have to give use more hp and move evasive arcana on 15 of arcana three, so we can choose alot of build…

your loss

meanwhile I’ll be doing tons of damage and still removing all of the conditions ever with my 30 in fire
maybe you think ele sucks because you don’t even stop to try out the offensive trait lines

reikken.4961:

your loss

meanwhile I’ll be doing tons of damage and still removing all of the conditions ever with my 30 in fire
maybe you think ele sucks because you don’t even stop to try out the offensive trait lines

Auto cleansing fire every 40 secs is not all the conditions ever…. is far from all the conditions ever. Necromancer scepter AA only is 3 conditions(supposing they trait condi on crit which almost all of them do).

And even so auto defenses are not all that good you could get perma bleed and you cleansing fire will never trigger while you die from bleed.

And it would even matter if our hp pool where big like idk a necromancer that soak up a lots of conditions. But our pool is among the smallest. That is another thing I need an answer for. Why do we have such low hp pool?. I mean necro has a 15k hp worth of block pool and they have tons of hp.

Put it this way. Ele’s are a broken class and I cannot play them until the fix them. Sucks to say because I love playing as a D/D ele.

elprimo.4398:

Auto cleansing fire every 40 secs is not all the conditions ever…. is far from all the conditions ever.

yeah I know, but that’s not the only condition removal I have. I also take ether renewal. between that and the auto cleanse, I don’t have to worry about conditions at all.

but literally every weapon set has some condition removal, so that case of having only bleeds wouldn’t be too bad even if you only had the auto cleanse

reikken.4961:

elprimo.4398:

Auto cleansing fire every 40 secs is not all the conditions ever…. is far from all the conditions ever.

yeah I know, but that’s not the only condition removal I have. I also take ether renewal. between that and the auto cleanse, I don’t have to worry about conditions at all.

but literally every weapon set has some condition removal, so that case of having only bleeds wouldn’t be too bad even if you only had the auto cleanse

you right imma try full gc or go home.

Me too .

Patch achieved the direct opposite of its stated goal, I now need 20+ water/20+ arcane instead of 15 water/20 arcane.

kittening kitten ed off.

Hanako.1827:

The only way you’re going to make people leave arcane and water is if you…….

Increase base health to medium level.

I now more dependent on water and arcane traits then ever on my all builds.
I have to put an extra 10 points in water or arcane now in order to keep my prepatch trait benefits.

morrolan.9608:

Hanako.1827:

The only way you’re going to make people leave arcane and water is if you…….

Increase base health to medium level.

No the only thing that will free Eles from being shackled to water/arcane is to make compelling traits in the other lines. The new fire and earth traits are pedestrian at best, the Earth 30 trait has 1 use only, and that’s 1v1ing condi classes in a duel arena.

Not to mention, glyphs are crappy, signets are crappy, conjures are crappy, the 30 arcane trait is crappy… everything that is halfway decent is in water/arcane/cantrips. The design and/or implementation of everything else is total kitten.

The only thing that will lead ele out of water/arcane is if they remove the healing traits and make the water weapon skills actually do real healing.

Ele is not thief or mesmer, they cannot survive without a means of healing, much like guardian, who is also forced to trait heavily for healing and/or condi removal

I was kind of confused at the “grand announcement” for making ele’s less dependant on the Arcana tree, mainly due to there having been no indication that Evasive Arcana was being moved to a less expensive option; i.e. Adept or Master. Then, with this change of making Cleansing Wave a Master trait, 10 points are now taken away from other trees — other than Arcana — in order to keep this skill as well; all of which defeats the very premise of the “revamp.”

So, as it stands, these do not seem like helpful changes. Things were fine as they were — if EA was always to remain a Grandmaster trait. However, with EA still costing 30 in Arcana, along with the promotion of CW to Master trait in Water, I can’t commend this patch in doing much to “open up” trait points for the many ele’s that use these very useful skills. It seems to have done the exact opposite, gimping a lot of builds in the process. :-/

So what now? Is this it or can reconsideration be given to either modify (or reverse) some of these skills/costs?

Reflecting back on Gw1, I am noticing that traits seem to be shackeling ANet. They can’t easily make meaningful change via traits, bcs of the impact to current builds.

In Guild Wars 1, there weren’t traits to worry about. Just skills and the primary attribute effects. We very rarely saw much change to the primary attributes, which is what I would equate to traits. The real change was with new skills.

Basically what I’m saying is don’t expect trait changes to be the thing that results in build diversity. That’s not ANet’s history. The new skills that get released are what’s really going to open things up.

Shockwave.1230:

Reflecting back on Gw1, I am noticing that traits seem to be shackeling ANet. They can’t easily make meaningful change via traits, bcs of the impact to current builds.

Yeah the GW1 system was so much better. Copying the WOW talent tree system was a mistake. Even Blizzard are trying to move away from it.

The only change I’ve made to my Ele’s traits are:

moved 10 points out of Arcane and put them into Fire

So I basically gave up Evasive Arcana for extra Conjure charges. I feel a bit squishy now, so might just go back to my old traits.

My conclusion: these changes suck, and that whole spiel of theirs about getting people out of Arcane, was rubbish.

I want to use this thread to thank Anet for giving me build variety by making me remove from fire and invest 10 useless points in water to get the traits I can’t live without…I play staff/s+d and now I really don’t know what to do with the 10 points in fire cause they’re useless.

I think they did create more meaningful traits — so much so that players are upset they don’t have 90 points to spend in the talent tree.

When you have a more than two good GM traits it forces build choices — and therefore build diversity.

If Evasive Arcana was available for “cheap”, everyone would take it and it would be mandatory. With the addition of the the new traits this patch we have more choices — and for some those choices are difficult.

Evasive arcana pretty much IS mandatory.

There is no choice because an ele that can’t sustain is a dead ele. You will never kill somebody on your first rotation anymore, what are you gonna do while it’s on cooldown, pop armor of earth and run in circles hoping not to die? Already have to lose 5sec of DPS if you want to use ether renewal, and are lucky to break even on hp if you are getting hit during this time (I mean if you have 20 in arcane for protection it’s more likely, but we aren’t supposed to need arcane)

The only build that can pressure and therefore survive without some healing is fresh air because it can escape the rotation hell other ele are stuck in

I disagree that it’s mandatory.

I do have a similar problem with Guardian where I can’t get away from AH (without it I feel extremely vulnerable). It comes down to my playstyle and comfort level. I believe with some effort I could run with a different build — it would be a training effort on my part to overcome my dependency on AH.

I think the same situation exists here with Evasive Arcana. You can live without it — it just requires training yourself on another build. Stepping out of your comfort zone so to speak.

They achieved the exact opposite of what they wanted to.
Want me to take points from Arcane and spend them on Fire/Air ? Then why in the world do you take the only skill from Arcane that I don’t find it enjoyable to play without and move it to the Master trait-line ? Elemental Attunement was such a great skill and now I have to spend extra 10 points in order to use it ? Why ?
Plus taking the condition removal from the Water line and put it on the Master one was also unnecessary. These 2 changes kind of destroyed my build and now I’ll have to spend additional 10 points in Arcane and Water in order to get them.
If there’s still room for changes when it comes down to the Ele traits please undo the applied changes and do something else. Because what you did yesterday was utterly pointless in my opinion.

ens.9854:

The only build that can pressure and therefore survive without some healing is fresh air because it can escape the rotation hell other ele are stuck in

This is pretty much my main reason for sticking with Fresh Air. It’s about our most dynamic build.

Thought a lot about arcane builds, but I realized I couldn’t make it work and still bring the basic protection uptime I don’t want to give up. So I ended up shifting some stuff around and now I have pretty much the same build I had before the patch. With more water, not less.

It’s clear that ANET developers don’t actually play their game in a real scenario.
In guild wars 2, there is no pure healer, so every player has to care of (atleast 75% of) his survivability.
Some profession has mechanics to survive, some other are helped by high base stats,
some other are helped by the itemization status too (condition builds).
Elementalist has no survive mechanic and lower base stats.
Elementalist survivability comes from healing spells, boons and utilities. Strongest healing spells come from traits (water and arcana), part of boons come from traits and something from utilities.
Add to this that healing spells are affected by stats.
So the conclution is that we are forced into some traits,
usually forced into defensive stats,
forced into some utilities, because we have utilities (example lightning flash) that give us a kind of “special mechanic” to make use, having nothing else “so special”, or maybe an armor of earth to get boons.

What they don’t understand is that giving us a “good” 30 points fire, earth, or moving something around in arcana or water will NEVER take us out of forced traits.

And…. COMEON…. What’s the meaning of the new 30 earth trait?? I’ts useless in a teamfight and op in a 1v1 vs a condition. it’s just stupid

Oh god I hate these forums, they always eat my posts by asking me to re log-in or giving me weird errors. I really wish there was an auto-save draft feature so I don’t have to copy every response I make just in case before submitting, but that is neither here nor there. Recreation of my post that got eaten:

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but man. I had a build full of trait-line diversity. If the point was to get me out of arcana, they’ve done terribly because if anything I’m now spending twice the points in both that and water. Elemental Attunement and Cleansing Wave feel pretty necessary for me. I tried out an auto-barrier build last night, with an earth shield up at 50% health and an arcane shield up at 25% and cleansing fire going on at 3 conditions. The problem is there’s no warning and I can’t squint hard enough to distinguish the difference between 60% and 50% health in battle so I end up popping a shield before the auto shield , or the fight is running down and the trait pops when I don’t need it — only to still have it be on cooldown for the next wave and me dodging like an idiot, waiting cause think it’s gonna auto-pop when it won’t. Cleansing conditions is even worse, because even I don’t know when I’ll be hit with a third condi, so I had a few times where I cleansed about a second after auto-cleanse. Not a fan. It leaves too much up to chance, and I have way more fun actually reacting to things.

I tried to make a point about the fun of AoE buffing/cleansing (even if that cleanse only removes 1 condi vs the 3 of the fire trait) in the post that was eaten, but I can’t be bothered anymore, all the good words have gone from my brain already.

IMO, the only way to get people away from those awesome traits that got bumped to master is to give them traits that are similarly awesome in other lines and levels as a lure. Why do I give any kittens about elemental attunement cool down when most of the weapon skills are still on cd themselves and the benefits for changing attunement have been put out of reach (assuming you don’t give in like I have to a ?/?/?/20/20 build)? I feel like this trait update was just an attempt to move popular traits out of reach while not understanding why those traits are so popular in the first place. Still not really impressed with any of the grandmaster traits, tbh; I feel like it’s almost more worth it to just master a few lines instead, but I will have a good staring contest with the grands after work again today.

…And has Lingering Attunement been fixed yet? It’s been a year. I can’t believe this trait doesn’t even work but they thought it was a good idea to go ahead and overhaul the entire trait tree. Priorities.

Raiga.4508:

kimeekat.2548:

I had a build full of trait-line diversity. If the point was to get me out of arcana, they’ve done terribly because if anything I’m now spending twice the points in both that and water. Elemental Attunement and Cleansing Wave feel pretty necessary for me.

^ This. I mean, what is their point ? The whole goal about leaving Arcane, reducing the attunement-swap-cooldowns (which is a great idea) is now thrown out of the window, because those are such 2 basic, natural skills for me and I bet a lot of other Eles to have, that they’re forcing us to spend 20 more points in Water and Arcane.
Please, whoever’s in charge of those changes, is there a way of reconsidering?

We told them over a month before they made these changes. They don’t care. It’s another nerf, they just didn’t want to say it because our class is already so under-powered and the amount of negative post about the poor ele balancing.

Well consider that other Arcana traits are now only 10 points. Arguably Evasive Arcana and Elemental Attunement are much more “Arcana” than Blasting Staff or Windborne Dagger.

It’s nice to have all the weapon traits from Arcana available for only 10 points. We don’t have weapon swapping so a single weapon trait will have 100% usage for an elementalists (when on land I guess).

This provides some flexibility to builds which desire a weapon trait but nothing else in arcana.

I love the attunement switching boons and dodge spells like everyone else, but I’m also open to try out some new possibilities with a 30/30 build that has only 10 in Arcana.

There’s a lot of flexibility from the last changes. Some players just can’t see them yet, because they’re stuck to the old builds, and are unwilling to try something new.

Elemental Attunement is a class-defining trait. A caster-only version of it should be baseline, with a 10pt arcana trait to restore the AOE effect.

I’ve been said many times we need a denfensive mechanic an universal defensive mechanic.

Warriors. I troll stances, troll heal signet, troll huge hp pool.
Necromancer. haha ds huge troll hp pool x2.
Thief. Evasion invisibility bye, bye.
Mesmers. Plop smoke and mirrors I will now proc to get you in the what, while you try to find the real me.

Not that they can’t make mistakes and waste their stances or get a necro witouth a full ds pool. Or find the real mesmer quick. Or get a thief with stealth on cd or cc him out of shadow refuge.

But man they are so much forgivable.

scerevisiae.1972:

Elemental Attunement is a class-defining trait. A caster-only version of it should be baseline, with a 10pt arcana trait to restore the AOE effect.

I still think this is the bestestest idea on the internets.
Want group support? trait for it! But at least allow elementalists to keep their boons.

Other then that I’m not so bummed about the patch. Got some interesting ideas which I will be testing and hopefully I’ll like it. If not, well my old build remains unchanged so I can always switch back to that.

DiogoSilva.7089:

There’s a lot of flexibility from the last changes. Some players just can’t see them yet, because they’re stuck to the old builds, and are unwilling to try something new.

There is a lot of flexibility, true, but there’s also a matter of playing preference. Some skills just don’t click, and some traits do. Arcana is what makes the elementalist stand out among the other professions. Evasive Arcana and combos with staff is a whole playstyle in itself. If you enjoy that, then it can be hard to give that up for a fireball spamming build.

The attunement recharge was never the reason I put points into Arcana. My build is the same pre-post patch. 20 air, 30 water, 20 arcana.

Until I can be survivable enough in other traits to give up either my condition cleanse synergy or my boons, I’m settling here. I don’t feel like I have much of a choice. I hate feeling like the liability to a party, and this build, while not helping the DPS at least saves me the embarrassment of getting picked up all the time.

Clark Skinner.4902:

The attunement recharge was never the reason I put points into Arcana. My build is the same pre-post patch. 20 air, 30 water, 20 arcana.

Until I can be survivable enough in other traits to give up either my condition cleanse synergy or my boons, I’m settling here. I don’t feel like I have much of a choice. I hate feeling like the liability to a party, and this build, while not helping the DPS at least saves me the embarrassment of getting picked up all the time.

100% agree
I would rather be bunker then the burden to my party of “hey its time to rez the ele again” and five seconds later “hey its time to rez the ele again”.

The moving of Cleansing Wave to the master tier simply isn’t fun as far as I’m concerned. I’ve been running 30 earth, 10 water, 30 arcana S/D in Dungeons, WvW and PvE for quite some time now. It’s been great at support, very survivable, fun to play, and capable of grinding champions into a fine paste via a death of thousand cuts.

Cleansing Wave, Written in Stone and Evasive Arcana were the bread and butter of this build, with Written in Stone giving me permanent 25% movement speed and area blind via Signet of Air, Cleansing Wave keeping me alive, and Evasive Arcana keeping me amused. I wonder what I should sacrifice here… Speed, Survivability, or Fun. Since the patch I’ve been trying a few alternative builds (with Air, with Fire) and they just don’t work as well for me. Oh, they function as a build, but they are less fun to play for me. I enjoy being able to sort of eletank in dungeons, duct taping other players back together. Which has become that much more difficult without cleansing wave or the toughness from earth. So should I remove 10 points from arcane and remove the part of the build that makes it cool to play?

The only solution I see to keep the playing style I like, is to move 10 points from Earth into Water. Exactly the opposite of what anet was trying to accomplish. I’m not sure what to think of this change, since it is not completely crippling my build, but it’s just a nuisance. I won’t start screaming the elemantalist is bwoken fowever, since it’s not, but it just became that much more annoying to play for me. And I love the class. Please stop “helping” it in the way you’ve been helping it anet. If you want us to experiment with builds, and go outside water and arcana, you should make survivalist traits available outside water and arcana, not move those traits up a tier or two.

In the hopes this actually has any effect on anet…

Peace. Have fun playing your elementalists, and remember to kill your daily amount of warriors in WvW today. We elementalists can do it

- Edited some dubious spelling

I’ve always tried to avoid Arcane and Water. But I always ended up with 10 points in Water and 30 Arcane.

In PvP you cannot avoid 30 traitpoints in Arcane. Its not possible at all if you want enough condition cleanse.
You have enough stamina to dodge and you still have a dagger in your offhand. Staff is still too slow, especially for condition cleaning.

Diamond Skin is useless, especially as a Grandmaster trait in Earth. 10% healthpoll is way too easy to break, especially as an Elementalist.

The idea of Auto-condi-cleanse as a Fire-Master trait is a good idea. But there is no other really useful fire-trait.
The idea of +10% damage against burning foes ist also good but the Elementalist is not able to build up enough condition pressure like the Necromancer, Mesmer or even sword/sword Warrior.
You HAVE to compare it to other classes. Condition-pressure is always the same tactic. For every profession. You could have … 2 conditions – Burning and bleeding. And its still not enough because even the Mesmer was able to clean two conditions pretty easy before the patch. Now its even easier.
Thus +25% burning duration is also not really useful. You could have perma-burning with more condition-pressure. But one condition is too easy to clean. You cannot build around burning in PvP-aspects actually.

Actually, I hoped that I would be able to play my Elementalist again. But its still far too worse. Maybe it was a cool change for PvE-players, I don’t know.
But PvP-wise I don’t know why I should play an Elementalist when I even have more fun with a sword/sword Warrior.

4 “Weaponsets” / Earth, Air, Fire, Water do not justify the current state of Elementalist. Absolutely not. All professions have more mobility, all professions could specify themselves on something (Necromancer: Condition-pressure, Warrior: Stunlock, and so on), all professions do have enough sustain and enough damage.
All of them just use 2 weaponsets and do work excelent. Why is it not possible to do the same for the Elementalist?
I don’t know why he should not be able to do a lot of damage with Fire-skills, especially if the Elementalist invests 30 trait-points in FIRE, which actually is a classic damage-spec. If Fire is not a damage-spec then I don’t know why it is in the game at all … Because it does not really enhance the damage of the Elementalist.
Water does work really good. It heals and cures conditions – as it should be.
Arcane also works really good if you specialize your Elementalist on Arcane. You are able to combine all Elements; thats the cause of Arcane as far as I understood.

- – -

I don’t know how to develop games. Actually, you guys at ArenaNet should know it.
My suggestion would be: Rework or enhance the skills of the Elementalist. I also don’t know if something like this is too expensive for you or if you just have way too little time for it.

But I know one thing: The Elementalist class should work like other professions. Thief, Engineer, Warrior, Mesmer, Guardian and so on. I played all of them. I had one good reason to delete my Ranger. Please, don’t push me to delete my Elementalist because I feel that he is useless compared to my Warrior or Mesmer. My other classes have much more possibilities, especially after that patch.

RighteousOne.4613:

Put it this way. Ele’s are a broken class and I cannot play them until the fix them. Sucks to say because I love playing as a D/D ele.

You D/D Eles keep crying rivers. The problem is you want to relive the “good old days” and can’t adapt to change and try something new. And I don’t mean changing your D/D weapon set, just try a different load out with a different strategy or play style.

Already tried and it didn’t work? Maybe you just need to practice more. Remember how long it took you to get good with the old D/D playstyle? Ele is that kind of class. It’s something you don’t get good at until you play it over and over and over.

The real problem with Ele is that our Class Mechanic (Elemental Attunement) screws us rather than works for us. That’s because of a little something called Attunement Cooldown.

Mesmers have a great class mechanic — one of the best class mechanic (clones and shatters) that really ups their survivability and confuses enemies
Warriors have burst — which is great for dealing more damage
Thieves have stealth — which is great for a whole crapload of things
Guardians have virtues — which are great for buffs and supports
Rangers have a pet, which can tank for them and deal damage and even revive them
Necros have pets and they can do tons of things for them like be an army, heal,etc.

And finally we have Engineers with tool belt skills and Kits — which are strictly speaking is a better version of the Ele’s attunements — because they offer the same diversity of multiple skill sets — without the pesky attunement cooldown problem.

I don’t really agree that Elemental Attunement is a class-defining skill, but the Ele’s core class mechanic needs some work. Either get rid of that cooldown (or make it 1 second like Engineer kits) or the idea of building in Elemental Attunement into the core class mechanic is another idea.

That said, I think the real problem is what DiogoSilva said: people are just stuck in the Arcana Water rut and don’t want to get out and try new things. Get out of your bunker builds and learn to play differently. I played for the longest time with no points in Water and I do PVE just fine without being a liability to my team, at least no more than anyone else is. I don’t play PVP yet but WVW I’ve also been doing just fine, finding my niche.

You CAN survive as an Elementalist without Water or Arcane. In PVE or WVW, Fractals or Dungeons, taking Stonemist or what not. I guarantee it. Just get out of your comfort zone.

I have played a lot of thief and must say I am always delighted to find elementalists on the opposing team. In WvW I have run into one or two that I have not been able to kill, but that’s only because they always escape to the safety of their keep first.

People aren’t playing bunkerish eles in pvp, usually valk or berserkers because they need to get something done before they run out of cooldowns. Problem is ele doesn’t have defenses like war or thief or even mesmer if they get focused without giving up dagger offhand (which comprises half their aoe and mobility). Armor of earth is like throwing a wet rag on a bonfire and mist form locks you out of all your skills, and let’s be honest, doesn’t make us curse like we do when a warrior uses endure pain.

I don’t know how many times I’ve been immobilized as ele and frantically cycled all of my cleanses only to die still stuck to the ground. Lightning flash is only half a shadowstep, doesn’t stunbreak or remove condi, yet has almost the same cooldown, and is still one of our best escapes used by a huge number of builds. That shows you how desperate the situation is.

L.Flash really needs a buff, but I’ll take what I can get. I tend to use MistForm for the stunbreak, yeah it locks me out, but we work with what we have.

I am gonna experiment with builds over the weekend using Diamond Skin, should be interesting to see what happens.

Lighting Flash used to be stun break…nerfed for no reason long time ago

No offense, but I have no reason why you guys insist on going into Water and Arcana. Its just not worth it, I find a Staff build with 30/10/10/10/10 or S/D or S/F with 30/10/10/20/0 to just be much better overall.

It almost seems like ANet hired George Lucas as an Elementalist balance consultant.

I’ll have to buy a name change and call my Ele “Har Har Stinks.”

viable build diversity is a pipe dream for elementalist
there’s just no sizable cushion {skills, base stats, traits} to fall back on in the interest of developing non-cookie-cutter builds {most of which are horrible}
not to mention our 5 magics have poor synergy with our 4 attunements

Mochann.5298:

Lots of words… You CAN survive as an Elementalist without Water or Arcane. In PVE.

There I fixed it for you.

Mochann.5298:

RighteousOne.4613:

Put it this way. Ele’s are a broken class and I cannot play them until the fix them. Sucks to say because I love playing as a D/D ele.

You D/D Eles keep crying rivers. The problem is you want to relive the “good old days” and can’t adapt to change and try something new. And I don’t mean changing your D/D weapon set, just try a different load out with a different strategy or play style.

Already tried and it didn’t work? Maybe you just need to practice more. Remember how long it took you to get good with the old D/D playstyle? Ele is that kind of class. It’s something you don’t get good at until you play it over and over and over.

I’m sorry to be picking on you but did you ever play D/D in sPVP or WvW? What you refer to as the “good old days” is sweet kitten all compared to the current state of the Warrior and to a marginally lesser degree a dps Guardian. Yet they’re never nerfed.

Do you honestly think we don’t get how things work? Many of us have played our Ele’s since beta, please stop spouting third hand wisdom, you’re worse than other classes coming in here and telling us to “Adapt or Die”.

Wake up and smell the roses man, #ELEtism be kitten ed.

Honestly I have to agree, I’m still for water and arcane. Mainly because the patch did nothing to my build. switched around some stuff but its exactly the same, just the order I put traits in XD

I was worried the shuffling was gonna make make take some of traits away but I’m still in the clear. for now.