Guild Wars 2

It’d be rather easy in my opinion to buff DPS ele sustain without improving any bunker spec whatsoever:

We add sustain to Air Trait line

-Weak Spot Gm minor changed to Storm Blessing
-You heal for 1k base (low coefficient) on crits every 5s

We add condi clear to Air Trait line

-Inscription Master revamped
Now in addition to glyph reduction and boons, you remove 2 condis on use

We add active defense to scepter and focus

-Shatterstone revamped

You cast shatterstone and a second skill appear Shatter Ice, you daze for for 1/2s in 300 radius when you decide to shatter the ice, casted on a targeted area
The shatter is instant
Shatterstone CD increased from 3s to 12s

-Dust Devil revamped

Blind removed
PBaoe knockback added
CD increased from 12s to 20s

-Frozen Gust
PBaoe chill and roll back 600 radius with 240 blast radius

Dagger Offhand buffs

-Frost aura 5s CD reduction

-Cleansing Wave 5s CD reduction

-Ride the lightning 10s CD reduction ( animation speed increased so its easier to hit enemies and get bonus Cd reduction)

-Earthquake 5s CD reduction

-Churning earth now has 2 stack of stab pulsating for 1.5s ( time to change the skill from ‘lol free target practice to ’oh kitten let’s get the hell out of here)

These are realistic changes that would benefit ele a lot, the main points I’ve touched

1) lack of sustain for dps builds
2) condi removal only available in water
3) No ways to move away from a tight spot, extremely low in combat mobility threat level

If you think my changes would buff bunker ele in any way…pls let me know how

Fresh everything. There. Now we’re perfect!

^That aside, I have been pwning unranked with the lamest of builds.
Maurader / air
edit: s/f
Air / blood
Fresh air, cantrip water, and arcane.
Can 1v1 anything so far. Including annoying DD.

I haven’t played ranked this season, and I’m not about to start and end with a low number beside my name.

And what if instead of asking for more sustain, you asked for controle and debuff abilities?

To answer your question, I think your weapon suggestions would indeed buff bunker elementalists. Any survivability change on weapons impact all specs, so more survivability tools on a weapon is bound to improve bunker specs. As for the suggestions on the Air magic traitline, it may not impact the current bunker spec but it will most likely create a new bunker spec which include this traitline.

I’m all for more survivability to elementalist’s burst spec but I don’t think more sustain is the way to do it. More controle via blind or root would probably be better than 1k heal every 5 seconds. Although, you introduce a lot of hard controle which is something even more toxic than the cancer specs. (we’ve already seen bunker spec on engineer that relied heavily on hard CC, it’s bound to be a disaster)

Honestly, if someone can stop a glass canon, this glass canon should logically die (the fact that it doesn’t necessary happen on other profession is another subject). The glass canon elementalist should rely on soft CC and debuffing condition to prevent themself from dying. In fact Air have ties with blindness, weakness and vulnerability. Improving blindness and weakness should be the way to go.

NB.: While water magic produce several mean of additionnal condi removal, there is already quite a lot condi removal inbuilt in skills that doesn’t need water magic. Although there is some condi cleanse traits in fire and earth magic.

I don’t think that it is currently possible to add any meaningful survivability to DPS elementalists, without buffing bunker tempest survivability or filling the game with even more lame passives. We simply need to hope that the next elite spec will take care of the issue.

If you try to add survivability to utilities or weapons, they can simply be utilized by tempest bunker specs to make them more survivable. If you add survivability to the air and fire lines, it will probably lead to more passive play, because traits are usually involved in passive play. Also, sustain is not that great if you instantly die to burst, so active mitigation is way better for damage builds.

Dragonhunter sustain doesn’t work just because it’s superior to that of damage ele, it works because the guardian already has a bunch of active mitigation to avoid some of the burst. Tempests do have 40% damage reduction from protection, which can sort of substitute for active mitigation. However, a damage ele cannot get much protection coverage, because most of it is in the earth line. Also, like all other tempest defenses, protection gets better with more defensive stats. When you have more effective health due to your healing or your vitality, protection affects a greater amount of health. Blocks, invulns and dodges have no relation to your health pool though.