Guild Wars 2

Lingering Elements: Excellent. Makes the already ridiculous Elemental Attunement skill even better!

Lingering Elements does nothing to Elemental Attunement. It is actually really bad

Avatara.1042:

Lingering Elements: Excellent. Makes the already ridiculous Elemental Attunement skill even better!

Lingering Elements does nothing to Elemental Attunement. It is actually really bad

Yeah, when I originally read the skill I assumed it meant for elemental attunement as well. It didn’t seem like it was affecting it though, so I actually dropped from 15 to 10 points in Arcana on my build a while ago.

At least I know I wasn’t being crazy, now that other people are confirming there is something fishy with this trait.

cznrhubarb.5946:

Avatara.1042:

Lingering Elements: Excellent. Makes the already ridiculous Elemental Attunement skill even better!

Lingering Elements does nothing to Elemental Attunement. It is actually really bad

Yeah, when I originally read the skill I assumed it meant for elemental attunement as well. It didn’t seem like it was affecting it though, so I actually dropped from 15 to 10 points in Arcana on my build a while ago.

At least I know I wasn’t being crazy, now that other people are confirming there is something fishy with this trait.

Wow really? That is crazy, thanks for letting me know. It’s hard to tell with your boon duration unless you specifically test this. I will update the OP.

Creslin.1758:

On grounded, can we confirm that the damage bonus isn’t added after updraft???

Here Creslin was just trying to help everyone by starting a discussion and we go ruining his day by telling him Grounded doesn’t work with Updraft and that Lingering Elements doesn’t work with Elemental Attunement.

It’s really lame when the minor traits are bugged or useless, because you can’t even just decide not to use them…

cznrhubarb.5946:

Creslin.1758:

On grounded, can we confirm that the damage bonus isn’t added after updraft???

Here Creslin was just trying to help everyone by starting a discussion and we go ruining his day by telling him Grounded doesn’t work with Updraft and that Lingering Elements doesn’t work with Elemental Attunement.

It’s really lame when the minor traits are bugged or useless, because you can’t even just decide not to use them…

All good, learning experience. I never really used Grounded that much so I was just basing my analysis off the skill description.

So after reading this excellent analysis of the Elementalist’s traits, I’m thinking about completely overhauling my build.

New question:
Do auras applied from things like Superior Rune of Fire’s 6 ability (Gain a Fire Aura for 5s when you fall below 80% health.) or leap finishers (When Magnetic Grasp’s leap finisher works) proc traits like Zephyr’s Boon, Elemental Shielding, or Powerful Auras?

cznrhubarb.5946:

So after reading this excellent analysis of the Elementalist’s traits, I’m thinking about completely overhauling my build.

New question:
Do auras applied from things like Superior Rune of Fire’s 6 ability (Gain a Fire Aura for 5s when you fall below 80% health.) or leap finishers (When Magnetic Grasp’s leap finisher works) proc traits like Zephyr’s Boon, Elemental Shielding, or Powerful Auras?

The magnetic grasp one USED TO proc your aura perks like Zephyr’s Boon, but now it apparently does not, not sure if this is a bug or not, and not sure about auras granted from runes. As for Powerful Auras, I believe that it triggers ONLY for auras that you actually use via skill, please correct me if I’m wrong here anyone.

cznrhubarb.5946:

So after reading this excellent analysis of the Elementalist’s traits, I’m thinking about completely overhauling my build.

New question:
Do auras applied from things like Superior Rune of Fire’s 6 ability (Gain a Fire Aura for 5s when you fall below 80% health.) or leap finishers (When Magnetic Grasp’s leap finisher works) proc traits like Zephyr’s Boon, Elemental Shielding, or Powerful Auras?

YOU will get those aura’s and the boons associated with it (e.g., fury, swiftness, and protection if properly traited) but these aura’s WILL NOT be shared amongst the group (via powerful aura). At least that is my current understanding (and magnetic leap not applying the fire aura properly is a bug).

The difference is in semantics. As a D/D Ele, using air skill #3 and water skill #4 applies an aura (and is thus shared). Runes, and blast finishers (such as magnetic leap into ring of fire) grant aura’s. Granted aura’s are not shared, only applied ones.

Bsquared.3421:

cznrhubarb.5946:

So after reading this excellent analysis of the Elementalist’s traits, I’m thinking about completely overhauling my build.

New question:
Do auras applied from things like Superior Rune of Fire’s 6 ability (Gain a Fire Aura for 5s when you fall below 80% health.) or leap finishers (When Magnetic Grasp’s leap finisher works) proc traits like Zephyr’s Boon, Elemental Shielding, or Powerful Auras?

YOU will get those aura’s and the boons associated with it (e.g., fury, swiftness, and protection if properly traited) but these aura’s WILL NOT be shared amongst the group (via powerful aura). At least that is my current understanding.

The difference is in semantics. As a D/D Ele, using air skill #3 and water skill #4 [/i]applies[/i] and aura (and is thus shared). Runes, and blast finishers (such as magnetic leap into ring of fire) grant aura’s. Granted aura’s are not shared, only applied ones.

Do you know if they changed Magnetic Grasp so that it gives you your aura perks again when you get fire aura from it BSquared?

Creslin.1758:

Do you know if they changed Magnetic Grasp so that it gives you your aura perks again when you get fire aura from it BSquared?

Not sure, last I heard it was still “bugged” and didn’t grant fury/prot/swiftness, but I haven’t tested it myself to know if it’s been fixed. My understanding was that it was supposed to work with zerphyr’s boon, etc., and that it’s a bug that it is not. Hopefully this is the case.

I’m hoping they fix it, cause the Leap into ring is super helpful for maintaining perma-fury if you’re only running 10 pts in arcane like I am

Piercing Shards-Decent. This trait allows you to attune to Water while channeling other skills for a 20% damage boost to vulnerable enemies. This includes skill like Churning Earth and Fire Grab. The one thing that holds this skill back is the fact that we don’t have a reliable method of applying vulnerable outside of Water. It’s also facing competition from some of our best traits.

TwoBit.5903:

Piercing Shards-Decent. This trait allows you to attune to Water while channeling other skills for a 20% damage boost to vulnerable enemies. This includes skill like Churning Earth and Fire Grab. The one thing that holds this skill back is the fact that we don’t have a reliable method of applying vulnerable outside of Water. It’s also facing competition from some of our best traits.

Good point! I updated the OP, and changed it to “Good” with your reasoning.

Weeeell…
One with air: You are looking at it from a D/D point of view. A staff ele, like me, isn’t exactly swimming in auras so perma-swiftness is far-fetched. I’m quote fond of this trait because it makes jumping puzzles a breeze(i don’t need to activate anything, just hop around like a bunny on speed xD) and for general running around and gathering purposes.
Serrated stones: There was a discussion somewhere about it…an ele was saying s/he could solo maintain 25 stacks of bleed. They were discussing what gives higher dps earth-bleed or fire-power build and last I looked, it seemed like a draw. It’s a very specific trait though and one would have to spec towards cond dmg, cond duration(bleed in particular) to pull it off, but it is an interesting possibility.

TWMagimay.9057:

Weeeell…
One with air: You are looking at it from a D/D point of view. A staff ele, like me, isn’t exactly swimming in auras so perma-swiftness is far-fetched. I’m quote fond of this trait because it makes jumping puzzles a breeze(i don’t need to activate anything, just hop around like a bunny on speed xD) and for general running around and gathering purposes.
Serrated stones: There was a discussion somewhere about it…an ele was saying s/he could solo maintain 25 stacks of bleed. They were discussing what gives higher dps earth-bleed or fire-power build and last I looked, it seemed like a draw. It’s a very specific trait though and one would have to spec towards cond dmg, cond duration(bleed in particular) to pull it off, but it is an interesting possibility.

With staff, you can get perma-swiftness by equipping arcane wave, putting down an eruption → attune to air (swift from elemental attunement) → put static field over eruption, trigger arcane wave in eruptions (swift x 2 from two blast finishers), then use air 4 (swift). The swiftness you get from this exceeds the cooldowns so you can actually stack swiftness very high like this.

Lingering elements – this allows you to be in multiple attunes at a time. With this you can take advantage of specific element attune buffs like +10% damage while attuned to <insert element>. You can go d/d with a build like this (not a serious build here) and have 10/20/30% more damage at some points in combat.

Piercing shards – I believe this is more of a conjurer build. Weak spot gives you vulnerability for piercing shards, while your damage comes from your conjure.

Creslin.1758:

TWMagimay.9057:

Weeeell…
One with air: You are looking at it from a D/D point of view. A staff ele, like me, isn’t exactly swimming in auras so perma-swiftness is far-fetched. I’m quote fond of this trait because it makes jumping puzzles a breeze(i don’t need to activate anything, just hop around like a bunny on speed xD) and for general running around and gathering purposes.
Serrated stones: There was a discussion somewhere about it…an ele was saying s/he could solo maintain 25 stacks of bleed. They were discussing what gives higher dps earth-bleed or fire-power build and last I looked, it seemed like a draw. It’s a very specific trait though and one would have to spec towards cond dmg, cond duration(bleed in particular) to pull it off, but it is an interesting possibility.

With staff, you can get perma-swiftness by equipping arcane wave, putting down an eruption -> attune to air (swift from elemental attunement) -> put static field over eruption, trigger arcane wave in eruptions (swift x 2 from two blast finishers), then use air 4 (swift). The swiftness you get from this exceeds the cooldowns so you can actually stack swiftness very high like this.

But not having to do that at random intervals while running between resource nodes is nice. I agree that the trait needs fixing, but some kind of low always-on swiftness trait that stacks with swiftness bonuses would be nice.

Creslin.1758:

TWMagimay.9057:

Weeeell…
One with air: You are looking at it from a D/D point of view. A staff ele, like me, isn’t exactly swimming in auras so perma-swiftness is far-fetched. I’m quote fond of this trait because it makes jumping puzzles a breeze(i don’t need to activate anything, just hop around like a bunny on speed xD) and for general running around and gathering purposes.
Serrated stones: There was a discussion somewhere about it…an ele was saying s/he could solo maintain 25 stacks of bleed. They were discussing what gives higher dps earth-bleed or fire-power build and last I looked, it seemed like a draw. It’s a very specific trait though and one would have to spec towards cond dmg, cond duration(bleed in particular) to pull it off, but it is an interesting possibility.

With staff, you can get perma-swiftness by equipping arcane wave, putting down an eruption -> attune to air (swift from elemental attunement) -> put static field over eruption, trigger arcane wave in eruptions (swift x 2 from two blast finishers), then use air 4 (swift). The swiftness you get from this exceeds the cooldowns so you can actually stack swiftness very high like this.

Still there is something to be said for the ease of use for One With Air. It doesn’t cost anything or require you to be anywhere specific to change your major trait at any time. If you’re already traited 10 points in Air and you want swiftness for a jumping puzzle without having to do the attunement dance, you can always switch back and forth.
I don’t know if it makes a huge difference, but I can see it being convenient as a backup trait.

Seetoo.9316:

Lingering elements – this allows you to be in multiple attunes at a time. With this you can take advantage of specific element attune buffs like +10% damage while attuned to <insert element>. You can go d/d with a build like this (not a serious build here) and have 10/20/30% more damage at some points in combat.

Piercing shards – I believe this is more of a conjurer build. Weak spot gives you vulnerability for piercing shards, while your damage comes from your conjure.

unfortunately lingering element doesn’t work with any +x% dmg while in element.. it only work with 5 point minor trait (and test reported that it doesn’t even work with earth one… hard to test for fire…)

so… actually lingering element is POOR… it only work with 3 minor trait (assuming it work with fire) 2 of wich are poor (fire and air)… if it worked with every attunement only trait (like +10% dmg while in XXXXX attunement) it whold have beengood or even excellent… but as it is now it is really POOR

on pircing shard I agree… heavy air + 10 point of water makes an excellent conjure build…

Creslin.1758:

With staff, you can get perma-swiftness by equipping arcane wave, putting down an eruption -> attune to air (swift from elemental attunement) -> put static field over eruption, trigger arcane wave in eruptions (swift x 2 from two blast finishers), then use air 4 (swift). The swiftness you get from this exceeds the cooldowns so you can actually stack swiftness very high like this.

Or you can also just use one with air and not hit every mob on your way. Can you really imagine running around Orr maps(that are packed with mobs) and pulling off those combos without unnecessary aggro? Cause I’m having a hard time seeing that work somehow… As I said, it’s actually pretty good for jumping puzzles and running around to gather. Not for other activities, obviously, but you did ask for uses of the traits and that is definitely one. Also, it’s a very lazy way to get speed xD

Oh, and it’s a pretty close-ish call when you are actually running through mobs with a fairly good chance at not making it.

PS: I said D/D vs staff, because auras are relatively passive skills as opposed to laying down aoes(especially with the added arcana range, which I absolutely love btw).

cznrhubarb.5946:

Creslin.1758:

TWMagimay.9057:

Weeeell…
One with air: You are looking at it from a D/D point of view. A staff ele, like me, isn’t exactly swimming in auras so perma-swiftness is far-fetched. I’m quote fond of this trait because it makes jumping puzzles a breeze(i don’t need to activate anything, just hop around like a bunny on speed xD) and for general running around and gathering purposes.
Serrated stones: There was a discussion somewhere about it…an ele was saying s/he could solo maintain 25 stacks of bleed. They were discussing what gives higher dps earth-bleed or fire-power build and last I looked, it seemed like a draw. It’s a very specific trait though and one would have to spec towards cond dmg, cond duration(bleed in particular) to pull it off, but it is an interesting possibility.

With staff, you can get perma-swiftness by equipping arcane wave, putting down an eruption -> attune to air (swift from elemental attunement) -> put static field over eruption, trigger arcane wave in eruptions (swift x 2 from two blast finishers), then use air 4 (swift). The swiftness you get from this exceeds the cooldowns so you can actually stack swiftness very high like this.

Still there is something to be said for the ease of use for One With Air. It doesn’t cost anything or require you to be anywhere specific to change your major trait at any time. If you’re already traited 10 points in Air and you want swiftness for a jumping puzzle without having to do the attunement dance, you can always switch back and forth.
I don’t know if it makes a huge difference, but I can see it being convenient as a backup trait.

Haha okay, point taken. I will update the OP and say that if you don’t want to bother with getting perma-swiftness you can use this.

Seetoo.9316:

Lingering elements – this allows you to be in multiple attunes at a time. With this you can take advantage of specific element attune buffs like +10% damage while attuned to <insert element>. You can go d/d with a build like this (not a serious build here) and have 10/20/30% more damage at some points in combat.

Piercing shards – I believe this is more of a conjurer build. Weak spot gives you vulnerability for piercing shards, while your damage comes from your conjure.

You’d think it would work that way but it doesn’t. Lingering elements currently only works with the 5 point adept traits (except earth which is bugged). I’ve tested this with steady weapons.

EDIT: Missed previous post explaining this.

Creslin.1758:

ARANCA

Stat Bonuses: AMAZING + 1. +30% boon duration is awesome by itself, but that ain’t the reason why this is so good. The attunement recharge rate bonus will bring your attunements from 15s CD at 0 Arcana to a 10s CD at 30. This is SOOOO good it borders on being broken, and many Ele’s complain that they feel forced into the Arcana tree because of it. For now though, I would HIGHLY recommend investing some points here.

I would argue that we feel forced into Arcana not because the reduced attunement rate is so good but because the base attunement rate is so bad. With high levels of Arcana, you feel like you can make quick decisions about which skills to use because you’ll be able to slide back into the attunement you want with little downtime. At 15 seconds, you’re making too big a sacrifice to switch around much.

Otherwise, I largely agree with your assessments.

Creslin.1758:

Arheundel.6451:

My analysis:

1) Tempest defense = poor, the conditions required to trigger it are too easily replicated, making this trait activate when really not necessary, should be changed to something like activate at 70 % HP and 90s CD

2) Grounded= poor, the moment gale got changed from 3s to 2s KD, this trait become useless, why should I waste 30 pts in air to rely on a single 45s(earthquake) or 50s CD (gale)skill?

I agree on all the rest

I’ll put in your disputes, but I’m against you on Tempest Defense. For PvP, many burst classes will try to stun or otherwise disable you prior to bursting. I feel like it can really save oyu.

On grounded, can we confirm that the damage bonus isn’t added after updraft???

Tempest defense – poor 30 pt trait for another cantrip which you can not trigger when you want it to.

Grounded – poor it is to situation elementalist have few ways stun an enemy with Air. All of the knockdown/stun skills have a 45-50sec cooldowns. Unless you use MH dagger grounded is not useful. Grounded can be useful with shock aura.

JonPeters.5630:

Can I start? Icy Mist. This trait is really bad and should be merged with Soothing Wave to make room for a fall damage reduction trait.

Fall damage trait? I could kiss you.

Alright, this is gonna be long, so I’ll try to make it short :

Fire

Minor:
Flame Barrier – Very weak, I don’t want to be hit in melee so I don’t want to trait for the occasion either.
Sunspot – Nice in theory, but I don’t want to be in melee range with anything but Dagger, and even then the standard Updraft – Burning Speed combo means this skill will hit air most of the time.
Burning Rage – Typical Minor trait, boring but OK. Fits the Fire theme.

Major:
Lava Tomb – Um… nice flavor skill I guess, but I don’t want to trait for sth. that only helps me when I’m downed.
Burning Fire – Adds more duration to stuff that already burns. DPS increase is actually not too bad, but the trait is too situational.
Ember’s Might – Weak and boring. It’s OK to have this as a Minor trait, but not as Major.
Spell Slinger – Decent, but situational. I would prefer if it affected another skill type on top to make it more versatile.
Burning Precision – Another DPS increasing trait. I sometimes choose this when only going 10p in Fire, but it’s a “Meh…” decision.
Internal Fire – Standard trait when going heavy Fire. I have a problem with traits that only buff dmg of one spell school though, even if it’s a good amount like here.
Pyromancer’s Alacrity – Same as with Internal Fire. I think traits like these two should affect spells across all attunements, e.g. “All instant spells deal 10% more damage and recharge 20% faster”.
Conjurer – This trait is too far into Fire and thus limits build variety when going for a Conjure build. It’s also too weak and needs another effect on top, because more charges is not always what you care for when playing with Conjures.
Fire’s Embrace – Fun trait. The duration should be 5sec though. 3 sec shields emphasizes reactionary play too much due to the desire to get the most out of the shield, but you often want to use Signets proactively + many signets have effects that prevent opponents from hitting you for short amounts of time (blind, root, chill). 5sec shields would make sure that at least one of your opponent’s hits will actually hit the shield and burn them.
One with Fire – Terrible.
Persisting Flames – Effect too weak for Major trait. This would be weak even as Minor.
Pyromancer’s Puissance – A worthy last tier Major trait. Was better when it affected Conjures. Why did you change that?

Air

Minor:
Zephyr’s Speed – Should affect all attunements. I feel hamstringed having to be in Air all the time when I’m moving around. This trait also conflicts with One with Air and makes Electric Discharge a lot less useful.
Electric Discharge – I like this trait.
Weak Spot – I like this trait, too. Pairs well with all multihit attacks.

Major:
Zephyr’s Boon – Very good.
Zephyr’s Focus – Arcana already has tons of endurance buffs. Might want to cut a few.
Quick Glyphs – It’s OK, but I would prefer rolling this into Inscription. The aura buffing traits are more powerful than these two alone.
One with Air – I love running faster, but again: makes me feel forced to have Air as my start attunement, which I dislike.
Soothing Winds – Needs to be 10%. I like these converter traits, because they make highly specialized builds more versatile.
Bolt to the Heart – Obviously great vs tough PvE mobs, but rather bad in PvP and while farming. It’s a trait I want to avoid, because it does nothing most of time.
Arcane Lightning – Quite weak, or I’m missing something here.
Inscription – Should be combined with Quick Glyphs. Choosing two Glyph traits in Air is sth. one can rarely afford.
Aeromancer’s Alacrity – Same as with the Fire equivalent.
Air Training – Same as with Fire equivalent.
Tempest Defense – Didn’t work when I tried it. Seems pretty weak and has gigantic cooldown.
Grounded – Is the basis of my current Scepter/Focus farming build. The trait itself is OK, but it’s too hard to make a build around it that’s versatile. Pure dmg buffing traits are a lot less painful to use and will likely bring the same DPS if not more in many cases. I suggest giving this trait a slight +knockdown/stun duration on top to make it more interesting.

(continued in part 2)…

written in stone is too high in the trait tree or fires embrace is.
in my humble opinion the signet/aura build should be able to get 25 water for the damage boost that auras can give.
written in stone, fires embrace, and air 1 fury and speed with auras.
and that is totally ignoring arcane.

that combination being so far out of reach is a real shame.

Also firesembrace working with signets that have a rather long cast time for all but one of them makes that spec a little hard to use.

a second is a pretty long time when i can take all or most of my HP in the time it takes to cast one signet. Firesembrace would be a lot more sexy if reduced or removed the cast time on signets. Or maybe worked with arcane to give a cast reduction based on attunment speed.

signet of air is the most useless signet save that it has no cast time.

Earth

Minor:
Stone Flesh – Needs to affect all attunements. Again, I really dislike one attunement only effects, because they feel so limiting and do nothing a lot of the time.
Earthen Blast – I like the effect, but it somehow never matters at all in cases where I switch to Earth.
Enduring Damage – Even if this trait did affect condition damage, which it does not, I wouldn’t like it much. Endurance management has nothing to do with Earth, so this trait feels pretty random.

Major:

Obsidian Focus – Too situational. If stuff keeps hitting me while I channel sth. then I will likely stop doing so soon and do sth. about it rather than keep on channeling.
Signet Mastery – This is the first trait I ditched in my Signet build. Somehow pure cooldown reduction traits don’t feel worth it. The reason might be fights being over once the CD resets most of the time anyway.
Earth’s Embrace – CD should be 60s. Works nice in a Cantrip build, but it’s still a bit weak for a Major.
Salt Stone – Not working with condition damage and 5% is weak. Boring trait anyhow.
Elemental Shielding – Good trait. 3sec is quite short, but it’s a powerful effect that can be prolonged with +duration. Still, I dislike that I cannot be sure the effect will actually have an impact each time I use an aura.
Stone Splinters – 5% more dmg is weak for a Major. This trait should read “Deal 5% more damage when you are within melee range of your target and then die horribly”. Even a D/D Ele does not want to have this trait trigger too often except while farming.
Strength of Stone – Even worse than the other “10% while in this attunement” traits, because it will not affect conditions, which Earth damage is about.
Serrated Stones – Finally something that helps condition dmg. Good trait, even better now since Frost Bow Conjure #4 does Bleeding.
Geomancer’s Freedom – I’d like to see statistics on how many people actually use this trait. This would be a cool Minor, but it’s a bad Major.
Geomancer’s Alacrity – See similar traits in Fire and Air I already mentioned. Don’t like it.
Rock Solid – Extremely situational. Maybe useful in tPvP, but I don’t see me standing there going into Earth just to have 2s stability to avoid a control skill that likely will do damage as well. Really bad trait for Grandmaster IMO.
Written in Stone – Worthy Grandmaster trait.

Water

Minor:
Soothing Mist – Very nice.
Healing Ripple – Very nice.
Bountiful Power – Very nice. That’s the kind of +dmg trait I like. Flexible and interesting.

Major:
Aquamancer’s Alacrity – Same as with all Alacrity traits, I don’t like ‘em.
Shard of Ice – Nice dmg boost and a welcome addition to an Arcane heavy build. I feel the trait should give 5 Vulnerability stacks on all Arcane skills though (OR a longer duration), not just when using Arcane Power. The “problem” with Vulnerability is, that everyone benefits from it, so it tends to be weak for myself alone and strong while playing in groups.
Soothing Disruption – Nice addition to a Cantrip build. Fits much better than Fire’s Spell Slinger IMO since Cantrips are mostly used defensively.
Piercing Shards – Love it. It’s so interesting to have this skill in Water. Works well with Conjures, too, but only if you go 25p into Air for Weak Spot OR Arcane heavy. I tried making a Conjure build like this but it was too unreliable. Would love to see this improved.
Cleansing Wave – Simple but good. I will often end up NOT taking this trait however, because I’d rather use a utility or a normal skill than “wasting” a Major trait for an effect that isn’t always needed. In groups and dungeons this trait can be very convenient though.
Vital Striking – I like it, because it works with all attunements and because it rewards good play.
Stop Drop and Roll – Too situational. I don’t like this trait at all. Like with Earth’s Geomancer’s Freedom this would make a better Minor trait.
Icy Mist – Should be rolled into Soothing Wave, too weak on its own.
Cantrip Mastery – Actually a meaningful cooldown reducing trait, since Cantrips have such long cooldowns.
Soothing Wave – See Icy Mist.
Cleansing Water – Looks like this could be good in a condition heavy environment and when using other regeneration stuff, but it feels way too situational.
Powerful Aura – Another worthy Grandmaster trait. It should give allies Protection, Fury, Swiftness from auras that were produced from combos too though, which it currently does not (I heard), and I would feel better while soloing if the trait’s use wasn’t 100% altruistic.

(continued in part 3)…

and lastly:

Arcana

Minor:
Arcane Fury – Hands down the best Minor trait Eles have. Opens up super interesting tactical choices on when to switch attunements and which skill to use etc.. I love it.
Lingering Elements – It should be made much clearer as to what exactly this trait affects. It’s a good trait, even if I cannot comprehend its full functionality ATM.
Arcane Precision – According to the Wiki this has a 7,5% proc chance, which is quite low. How about 10%?

Major:
Arcane Mastery – Another decent cooldown reducing trait, because Arcane skills can be used from any attunement and have mostly longer cooldowns.
Arcane Resurrection – Good example of an altruistic trait that also benefits myself. It’s still too situational though and should thus be changed.
Arcane Retribution – A bit “Meh…” for a Major. I don’t like +damage traits I cannot control.
Final Shielding – How about combining this with Arcane Retribution? If this trait wasn’t bugged (procs at around 10% life, not 25%) it would be OK, but again it’s not always doing something, which I dislike, hence the suggestion of combining it with AR.
Elemental Attunement – Sweet. Such a good example of a trait that’s versatile yet far from overpowered. I like buffing people and the trait helps me even if I play alone.
Renewing Stamina – Good but situational. I will rarely choose this trait because of good alternatives.
Vigorous Scepter – I tested this once and it felt pretty weak. I’m also not sure why Scepter is the chosen weapon.
Blasting Staff – Good.
Windborne Dagger – Would be good if it wasn’t bugged.
Arcane Energy – Yet another endurance helper. There are far too many!
Evasive Arcana – A nice idea. I don’t like the 10sec cooldown, because it feels confusing to have endurance as limiting factor AND this internal 10sec cooldown AND attunement cooldowns. It’s also not easy to estimate the area of effect of the dodge effects.
Elemental Surge – This would be the backbone of my Staff build if Arcane Power wasn’t so bugged. A lot of cool stuff can be done with this, so please fix the bugs!

/phew.

@Xolo:

I liked your analysis, but I have to ask, do you do primarily PvE? I was just curious because a lot of your statements seem to come from a more PvE-oriented perspective. For example, cleansing water in PvE is…decent, just because conditions normally aren’t flying all over the place constantly. But in PvP, it’s excellent because players will ALWAYS be putting conditions on you, and you really need a way to get rid of them if you want to stay alive.

I’ve gotten some responses contesting my AMAZING water for the water GM trait Cleansing Water. So I updated my OP to show that my rating is disputed, but I also added more reasoning of my I think the trait is so good…here is what I added to the OP:

—Some posters have pointed out that this skill requires you to have certain other traits and skills in your build to be effective so they don’t feel it’s that powerful. But I actually disagree. Fact is, that with Elemental Attunement, soothing disruption, glyph of harmony as your heal, and 2 cantrips on your bar, you will have FOUR more condition removals, and one of them is AoE. I mean, everyone thinks that Cleansing wave is great…this trait does THE EXACT SAME THING as cleansing wave if you have Elemental Attunement (no brainer) IN ADDITION TO making any cantrip a condition removal with soothing disruption.
So, IMO, I don’t really think this trait should be downgraded just because you need to build for it.

And just to add to this…if you take this trait, you can actually give up cleansing water if you want because you will already have condition removal on water attune via this trait. If you keep cleansing water, you get two condition removals, which is nice, but it opens up the possibility to pick another awesome water trait instead…yet another reason why I think it’s a great trait.

For example, if you give up cleansing wave for cantrip mastery, and pair it with soothing disruption…then that not only lets you casts your cantrips more, but increases your condition removal via the regen they grant!

Creslin.1758:

@Xolo:

I liked your analysis, but I have to ask, do you do primarily PvE?

I do both and would even prefer PvP if it was already in a better state. I usually don’t go until Grandmaster in Water though, which is why I have no strong opinion on this particular trait.

The water and arcane trait lines blow every other trait line out of the… Well.. Out of the water. It’s almost like those 2 trait lines were developed by different drive than the rest were.

I agree that it seems a little odd that 2 trait lines are just pure amazing. The rest seem to suffer and don’t synergize well with our skills or our other traits. The elementalist is by far the coolest class, but I don’t feel more powerfull for traiting into fire or lighing. Some traits just don’t reflect some of the conceptual ideas the ele have, and then some traits don’t even work well with the ele itself. This makes it difficult to make a wide variety of good and working builds.

For one thing. In fire attunement, we have 2 skills that are exactly the same bar the cost. Embers might and Burning Rage are exactly the same, but one requires five more points to get. One is a choice to slot.
To me that is truely bizzare. When I look at traits, I expect traits to be diffrent, and widly change the way my build works. These traits alone only add 5% more damage on a burning target…And then wierdly enough combined is 10% more damage. Thats decent when someone is burning. But i am not sure if they stack, or anything like that. They are just way to similar. Burning rage could simply proc higher damage when we are on fire(hard to pull off but heavy damage). Just as a thought.

Also a drastic suggestion. But grandmaster minor traits could offer benifits based on the main-hand weapon when the elementalist is in said attunment. One of the reasons I dislike our trait-lines is because to get any benifits based on our weapons you have to spec into Arcana. This puts you back into the “use all attunemnts and swap every second you get”. I would not mind our 25 traits being based on our weapons and really being usefull and Unique.

Theses traits are off the top of my head. From my head they would be 25 point investments.(With it that high you can only get two traits like this). These traits effect how your weapons preform in the attunement you specilize in. This makes being a Fire-Staff Ele a bit more intresting then just a fire ele who happens to weild a staff.
I would not mind if traiting into something really “specilized you”. We should embrace our attunments, not just the abbility to swap.

I’d like to add few small personal notes oncouple of things. Altho I don’t have big “complaints” :P.. There is some leeway on personal preference on some traits.

Correct, Grounded does not apply to updraft for example.
Correct, Earth’s Embrace does give you all the cantrip bonuses if specced.
Tempest Defense, wayy too situational for “exellent”. 90 sec cooldown with no control on if it procs on important moment.
Lingering Elements is assumably supposed to work on 5p minors, it does on 3 of em. Not on Stone Flesh. And does not linger specs like in Fire “One With Fire”. Not that any would would use it :P, but I think it went upto like 50% proc which is pretty good.

I would say Rock Solid is Okay, in your standards. Thats first choise in my 30 earth spec. You are not supposed to have constant 10 sec stability, you need millisecond of stability just before the CC hits. It’s a great trait for sPvP for downing. Feels goooood to down succesfully everytime without blowing important cantrips.

Written in Stone, concidering how piss poor signets are in general, I wouldn’t really advertise this as AMAZING. Any ele running signets should right away change to proper cantrip/arcane builds.

0/10/0/30/30 all the way and u’ll hit all the “AMAZING” traits

about the 20% added bleed duration. wish it was intesity, but cant have everyting. but i like it since, in WvW most are to busy doing whatever they are doing to care, so they are killed quickly, and in PvP it kills quickly to. like i said, wish it was intensity, since most just get rid of the bleed before the full 18 seconds are up

Well, seeing as OP is likely judging traits from a PvP perspective, many of the concerns really isn’t that clear cut.

Water attunement on land should more closely reflect water attunement underwater numbers.

Mainly play D/D, but trying out the scepter I can’t help but wonder what a skill that increases our range would be like. Maybe from 900 to 1200 like the staff? It lacks the AOE of the staff and would only apply to 3 skills each attunement, but could really add flavor to the instrument.

It would also mean ele’s with 20/30 in Arcane would have to give up something like Final Shielding or Renewing Stamina to use it, both of which could work well with scepter builds.

Also, please consider making Lingering Elements affect Arcane Fury and Elemental Attunement if it doesn’t allready. Those sort of ‘internal trait combos’ like we have with Water signets make build more fun and interesting. Really, how many people will build into more than 2 lines while having 20(+) points in Arcane?

Nice article. Very informative, because it also explains the various uses of the different traits.

There’s a few things I’d like to comment though.

Zephyr’s Speed: It’s pretty terrible for Air specialists, true. However, it has some minor use for non-specialists. Also, it’s a great skill for Jumping Puzzles. Often, there are jumps that are catered to normal speed and actually become tougher at +33% speed. A 10% speed boost will help you make the jumps without the risks of overshooting.

Stone Flesh: 80 toughness may be meh, but it’ll still decrease the damage you take by roughly 1.5%. There are worse traits.

Lingering Elements: Yeah, it’s not as great as it could be. However, part of that is because it’s bugged. Basically what it should do is increase the duration of all your minor traits to about 50% uptime (instead of 25%) which in theory would be ok. However, it doesn’t work with Stone Flesh to name but an example. The only use it has at the moment is to increase the duration of Soothing Mist application by another 5 seconds. That means that, at the 5th second, you get another 9 seconds of Soothing Mist, resulting in pretty much a 100% uptime. Still not great maybe, but at least it does something.

Elemental Surge: The main reason this skill is worthy of a GM slot is the fact that when you combine it with Arcane Power, it’ll cause the next five skills to cause a condition. This could mean up to 15 seconds of chill, 5 seconds of immobilize or (with chain lightning) 15 applications of blindness. However, as you may have read in one of the other threads, it’s currently as bugged as an anthill and doesn’t work as expected in almost any situation.

Creslin.1758:

Avatara.1042:

Ya, it is very shameful that the Elementalist cannot even soften the earth, slow the fall with fire, manipulate the air, or liquify the ground.

Anyway, the biggest issue BY FAR that the Elementalist faces is:

ATTUNEMENT RECHARGE RATE INCREASE FROM ARCANE.

Sorry for that caps, but I cannot emphasise this enough. Attunement recharge needs to be 9 seconds baseline, and this trait bonus changed to something else. It is ridiculous how powerful and essential Arcane is because of this bonus.

Personally, I think it should be 12s base, and reduceable to 10s via Arcane 30. But yes, I agree with you! And I even went into an aside about this when I talk about Arcane stat bonuses.

I believe that the attunement CD (15secs/9.375secs) should start at the moment when an elementalist enter the attunement, not when he leave it, that would fit much better to the class description as a “caster which can quickly adapt to any situation”, because a situation when you need specific attunement, but have is locked by CD is so common. This way the ele will be able to return back to the previous attunement quickly once, then the CD will apply.

ThiBash.5634:

Elemental Surge: The main reason this skill is worthy of a GM slot is the fact that when you combine it with Arcane Power, it’ll cause the next five skills to cause a condition. This could mean up to 15 seconds of chill, 5 seconds of immobilize or (with chain lightning) 15 applications of blindness. However, as you may have read in one of the other threads, it’s currently as bugged as an anthill and doesn’t work as expected in almost any situation.

I think Arcane Power is bugged not Elemental Surge, when Arcane Power works it procs Elemental Surge correctly… when it works

maddoctor.2738:

I think Arcane Power is bugged not Elemental Surge, when Arcane Power works it procs Elemental Surge correctly… when it works

Well, there’s more to the story. Like for example, if you use Arcane Power (with Elemental Surge) together with Arcane Wave, it causes double the amount of chill and half the amount of immobilize. You’d expect 2*3 seconds of chill yet you get 12 seconds. You’d expect 2 seconds of immobilize but you only get 1 second.

On a whole though, you’re right. Few things in the combination of trait and skill work as you’d expect and most of it isAP’s fault. A good change may be to have it trigger on the next 5 times you actually deal damage. That would at least make AoEs only trigger multiple times when you actually hit stuff multiple times, and Frozen Ground wouldn’t eat up charges without doing anything.

The idea of a falling trait that matches those of other professions is interesting, but what can we think up for landing effects?

With the Elementalist flavour, we’d probably be looking at the landing effect varying with attunement. Let’s see what the likely possibilities are:

Fire: Turning the ground to lava might be a good way to soften the ground, but even if you’re a fire-attuned elementalist you probably don’t actually want to go diving into lava. I’d probably be inclined to with with a simple burst of flame or a non-lava fire field (possibly borrow the graphics from the ranger’s fire fields?), representing that the elementalist is using a burst of flame like a Harrier’s vectored nozzles.

Water: Geyser seems a good option – you can imagine the geyser bursting just before the elementalists lands to soften the landing, and then when they DO land they’re landing in water. (If the trait goes in Water as an Icy Mist replacement and thus you want to keep the effect water-related rather than attunement-related, this would be the one to go for. But that’s boring – albeit probably a good stopgap while coding an attunement-influenced version.)

Air: Updraft seems hard to look past here, partially due to the lack of air AoE. in general, and neither Blinding Surge nor Static Field really seem to fit with falling. If that’s not appropriate, simply creating a burst of electricity when landing could evoke the idea of the elementalist striking from above like a thunderbolt – this could be made truly epic if when this trait is chosen and you’re in Air, you transform into a Ride the Lightning as soon as you’ve fallen far enough that you’re going to take falling damage.

Earth: Earthquake would probably be a good representation of the elmentalist landing heavily against ground that… proves more elastic than stone normally does. Alternatively, Magnetic Surge could represent an elementalist using a blast-style effect to slow their fall before landing.

Wanted to let everyone know that I updated a few of the OPs with some new information I have gotten and changed two ratings fairly drastically…here is what I changed:

Elemental Surge: Excellent (maybe AMAZING). I used to have this as poor, but revised it to Excellent. Many posters have pointed out that when you use this with arcane power, it causes your next FIVE attacks to impart a condition. And this could really be absolutely amazing. For example, I would be interested to see if an Ele could fire multiple AoE immobilizes if they trigger arcane power and then fire a bunch of AoE or bounce (chain lightning) abilities. THAT would be brutal in PvP…same with multiple AoE blinds…let me know if anyone has experience with this.

Grounded: Poor. I have seen multiple reports that updraft does actually NOT benefit from this trait. This has made be downgrade it from excellent to poor. Without being able to benefit from this with updraft, we only have shocking aura and earthquake to synergize with this (in D/D), and those skills don’t really lend themselves to a burst opener. As such, unless you are in a group situation where someone is just laying down tons of CC for you…this is pretty bad, and doubly bad to be a GM trait.

TwoBit.5903:

Piercing Shards-Decent. This trait allows you to attune to Water while channeling other skills for a 20% damage boost to vulnerable enemies. This includes skill like Churning Earth and Fire Grab. The one thing that holds this skill back is the fact that we don’t have a reliable method of applying vulnerable outside of Water. It’s also facing competition from some of our best traits.

Shard of Ice (II) in traits can be used to make all signets and arcane spells apply vulnerability and is the only reliable way to do so outside of water I know of.

Creslin.1758:

For example, I would be interested to see if an Ele could fire multiple AoE immobilizes if they trigger arcane power and then fire a bunch of AoE or bounce (chain lightning) abilities. THAT would be brutal in PvP…same with multiple AoE blinds…let me know if anyone has experience with this.

Unfortunately, unlike Glyph of Elemental Power, Elemental Surge considers your current attunement…so no mass immobilize (mass cripple through glyph + meteor shower does work though).

The issue with Elemental Surge is that it’s very buggy at the moment. Fire Ball removes multiple charges for being an AoE skill for example. Frozen Ground consumes charges but doesn’t apply an effect. Arcane Power + Arcane Wave in water causes 12 seconds chill, but in Earth only 1 second immobilize. And I haven’t even tried it with the other weapons, so who knows what they do.

Overall, the skill can be either awesome or worthless, depending on what combination you use it with. Three ‘safe’ combinations are AP in water with Water Blast, with Stoning in earth and with Chain Lightning in air.

ThiBash.5634:

Creslin.1758:

For example, I would be interested to see if an Ele could fire multiple AoE immobilizes if they trigger arcane power and then fire a bunch of AoE or bounce (chain lightning) abilities. THAT would be brutal in PvP…same with multiple AoE blinds…let me know if anyone has experience with this.

Unfortunately, unlike Glyph of Elemental Power, Elemental Surge considers your current attunement…so no mass immobilize (mass cripple through glyph + meteor shower does work though).

The issue with Elemental Surge is that it’s very buggy at the moment. Fire Ball removes multiple charges for being an AoE skill for example. Frozen Ground consumes charges but doesn’t apply an effect. Arcane Power + Arcane Wave in water causes 12 seconds chill, but in Earth only 1 second immobilize. And I haven’t even tried it with the other weapons, so who knows what they do.

Overall, the skill can be either awesome or worthless, depending on what combination you use it with. Three ‘safe’ combinations are AP in water with Water Blast, with Stoning in earth and with Chain Lightning in air.

Very strange.

So with arcane power, does it count a “hit” as an attack??? Like if my fireball hits 3 people, that counts as 3 attacks? Does it do this across the board, or does it behave differently with different skills??

ThiBash.5634:

Unfortunately, unlike Glyph of Elemental Power, Elemental Surge considers your current attunement…so no mass immobilize (mass cripple through glyph + meteor shower does work though).

Would you be able to achieve this through the use of conjures? Have a conjure with an AoE, be in Earth Attunement, use AP. I’m gonna have to play around with this when I get home. The interaction of Elemental Surge with Arcane Power could be one of the most interesting mechanics we get.

Creslin.1758:

So with arcane power, does it count a “hit” as an attack??? Like if my fireball hits 3 people, that counts as 3 attacks? Does it do this across the board, or does it behave differently with different skills??

To be honest, I’m not really sure. From what I’ve heard, Fireball counts as 2 hits regardless of the amount of people you hit with it. In general, aoe skills tend to respond pretty weirdly to it but I’ve not done extensive testing.

JonPeters.5630:

Can I start? Icy Mist. This trait is really bad and should be merged with Soothing Wave to make room for a fall damage reduction trait.

There is an entire thread that appreciates you over here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/No-50-reduced-fall-damage-trait/first