Guild Wars 2

This class’s main issue lies in it’s main strength, attunement dancing. Mastery of it is necessary to success and it can do some amazing things. It provides the Elementalist with unparalleled options in a fight. But at the same time you must trait for it. Where other classes get to 30/20/20 purely offense and defense, offense defense and support, or another combination of the 3, Elementalists have to give up an entire trait line to attunement dancing just to play their class as intended and balanced.

• A Guardian doesn’t need to trait virtues to be effective.
• Warrior doesn’t need burst damage, in fact it’s laughable for some weapons and some popular builds even suffer when adrenaline is used.
• Thieves can do a lot without faster steals
• Rangers don’t need their pet attribute bonuses
• Engies would be just fine without faster toolbelt recharges.
• Necros are plenty viable without a higher life force pool
• And Mesmers are lucky enough to have their profession attribute paired with one of their primary means of damage. Even if it wasn’t, they wouldn’t be lost without faster shatters.

All of these are things you can build to take advantage of but are in no way necessary to success. Try asking several Elementalists to run without at least 20 Arcane and chances are you’ll get some pretty mean looks. This profession trait was a terrible idea in my opinion and is what makes the class’s balance so difficult to pin down. It’s the true root of Elementalist discontent and the lack of understanding this discongruity is why some people don’t feel the class needs “buffing.”

So scrap Arcana. Make attunements 40% faster by default. Add 20% recharge as a 10 or 20 point major in a new profession attribute which does something useful but not required (like every single other class.)

My idea for a new profession attribute:

• Combos on Elemental fields are more effective, whether someone finishes your field, you finish your own, or you finish someone else’s. Effectiveness increases duration on effects that stack duration, intensity on effects that stack intensity, and healing power on heal effects (regeneration benifiting from both duration and healing power, or just one of them.)

Awareness and mastery of their combo fields suits the Elementalist perfectly. Some pretty useful things could be done if built for it and it would make a great support option, yet it’s in no way necessary to spend your trait points in it to be successful.

Boon duration as the secondary trait in this line may be seen as redundant but keep in mind that this only effects elemental fields. The only boons affected are swiftness which an Ele can already area perma, regeneration which has a base combo duration of 2s, and might which stacks intensity.

+1 I find it very stupid to always put points into Arcana trait line for using the attunements usefully, or just have to give up the Attunement Dancing and stick to Fire.

Agreed. There’s no point in a trait line existing if it’s essential to play the profession. This is all the result of ANet over-nerfing the cooldowns during beta though. They kept changing things without doing anything to compensate which is why things are so messy…

Actually major Arcana traits are awesome once you have ditched the mindset of ‘i am a nuker! ele means nuker!’, which is very wrong in GW2.
We’re ranged controllers and supporters with enough sustainable and AoE damage to keep it at a viable level, but we’re not the primary damage dealers. Once you have dealt with it, you will appreciate the power of Arcana and Water traits.

drkn.3429:

Actually major Arcana traits are awesome once you have ditched the mindset of ‘i am a nuker! ele means nuker!’, which is very wrong in GW2.
We’re ranged controllers and supporters with enough sustainable and AoE damage to keep it at a viable level, but we’re not the primary damage dealers. Once you have dealt with it, you will appreciate the power of Arcana and Water traits.

The OP isn’t talking about the traits, they’re talking about the attunement cooldown reduction. It’s pointless to have that as the line bonus because every ele basically has to take it.

When a build system sees every build use the same thing it means the option is considered essential to the profession and therefore should already be a core part of the profession itself and not a false ‘option’.

When you build yourself for support and not ‘omg i need to deal damage with me ele’, you will also notice how cool extended boon duration from Arcana is.

Arcana is in my opinion the best elementalist trait line by far. Even ignoring the attunement recharge reduction and boon duration (which you seriously undervalue), it has some of the most useful major traits. You can get by well with only 10-20 points in arcana if you really want to, especially using staff or dagger/.

Since for some reason some people don’t like speccing into arcana, perhaps a better solution other than removing arcana all together is to reduce the base recharge of attunements by 30%, and make arcana reduce the recharge by an additional 30% at 30 points.

+ 1 on OP greatly undervaluing boon duration. Berserker’s amulet or cleric’s amulet I’m running 100% uptime on protection(sometimes only 70%), fury, vigor, swiftness, and maintaining 16+ stacks of might.

Also using evasive arcana builds I can crit for over 10k with fire grab and churning earth. I’m not really even trying to prove a point with that I was just messing around and felt like posting these screenshots.

Arcana is meh.. Its OK for D/D builds. Been running with zero in Arcana for the last week or so and had none of the issues any of you describe. If anything, my K/D ratio has increased significantly since I switched to an auramancer setup with 20/20/30/0/0. Its all in the player behind the toon.

Last night just to play around a bit I switched to 20/25/0/20/5 for the fury on attunement swap and the vulnerability on crits running a hybrid Glyph/Cantrip setup. Wow! Thats all I can say about that. Nice! Big difference in raw killing power now.

To clarify, no I’m not talking about major or even minor traits. Just the actual profession attribute of attunement cooldown. I should have been clearer on that.

I also don’t believe I undervalue boon duration in the least. This in fact recognizes how valuable boons are to advanced Elementalist play and expands the concept to include all effects gained by combos for themselves and their allies. From auras and healing to negative effects on enemies. My actual statement on boon durations was just to show that boon duration wouldn’t necessarily have an OP effect when combined with combo effectiveness because of the only 3 boons that it affects, i.e. to head off people that would start screaming “no 100% retaliation uptime no no no!”

There is no loss to this option. All current builds running high arcane would still play exactly the same except that combo support while running them would be more effective. What it does is broaden the builds available to the majority of Elementalists to levels seen with other classes by freeing up what’s otherwise (for most people) a necessary profession trait line.

drkn.3429:

Actually major Arcana traits are awesome once you have ditched the mindset of ‘i am a nuker! ele means nuker!’, which is very wrong in GW2.
We’re ranged controllers and supporters with enough sustainable and AoE damage to keep it at a viable level, but we’re not the primary damage dealers. Once you have dealt with it, you will appreciate the power of Arcana and Water traits.

Huh?

Elementalists are multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding. What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.

Another part of weakness in Elementalist trait is that.
Putting point in one will not have effect on others..
Thus it making most ele choosing 1 main spec+arcane(affect all attunement) and others for stats only. .

The trait on one should also affect the others when they are not under that attunement.. So people will switch attunement more .

Totally agreed. I was going to make a similar thread about how the Attunement recharge bonus is the main problem of the class, and needs to be baked-in and replaced, but alas, I was suspended.

Has someone tried a build with, and without using the arcane trait line?

I’ve had an elementalist since launch, got to 80, and I’ve never put a point in the arcane trait line. 30/30/0/10/0, and I do fine in PvE, and even better in wv3 (though I wouldn’t do that in sPvP). I find the cooldown for switching attunements with no arcana is enough time to cycle through your attunements without trouble. This probably wouldn’t work with d/d build though, but I find it works well for staff and s/d, and you get to see big numbers.

I don’t know how it is with the arcana trait line though. It may be better – not sure, maybe I’ll try it sometime. I’ve been successful without it, so perhaps it’s a preference of playstyle.

It is not really the trait is not good..
But rather it is not good enough..
It lacks of the most important thing than all the other class, that is
“Synergies”
Currently there is no synergies between element.. You spec into 1 and it dont do anything for the others..
So for other element, it only get the stats, thats all it is..

Linkent

Currently there is no synergies between element.. You spec into 1 and it dont do anything for the others..

That’s a gross overstatement. Sure, there are some specific traits, but about 75% of everything we have extends to other attributes as well.

Quite agree with the basic idea of that being too long and too much of a penalty if you don’t put points in arcana. It just contradicts the idea that no build should be better than all the others, here you have to put at least 20 points to be as versatile as you would like (ho kitten, I need that skill from air I haven’t used yet but I switched 4 seconds ago, let’s just die then).
However, it should not be too fast either : it musn’t be OP.
The only cool thing is that many traits in arcana line are very, very good, regardless your weapon.

The strangest thing I thought was : why having those 15 sec when you switch attunements out of combat ? Cannot it just be like weapon swapping ? :o

I also hate feeling trapped into 20-30 points in arcana. I really wish I could go for a different build, like TOTALY different build, but really as it is now we only have 40 to 50 points to everyone elses 70 to play with. I dont even know what the end of air/fire give, im so worried about arcana for stances and earth/water for survivability…if I am feeling daring I’ll go 10 water and go deeper in fire…but then I become squishy as all hell.

The Elementalist mechanic feels inherently flawed to me.
Do any of the other professions have to constantly swap between 4 weapons to be effective? No, and neither should we.
Will that ever change?
Probably not, but I’ll continue to play my Ele in the hopes that one day it will.

I like the whole elemental dancing, do I feel like that it could be improved some or elevate some of the base damage so that we actually are rewarded for how much we do to keep up with the others and the high skill cap? Oh definitely, but I highly doubt that we will see any buffs or fixes for a while since anet will be focusing more on PvE with the content updates. We might be lucky and some some more class balancing.

If you all find it somehow necessary to trait Arcana then you are doing something very very wrong.

boozer.7815:

If you all find it somehow necessary to trait Arcana then you are doing something very very wrong.

Its not necessary but if you don’t spec it you’ll lose alot of buffs/DPS.

Humposaurus.5764:

boozer.7815:

If you all find it somehow necessary to trait Arcana then you are doing something very very wrong.

Its not necessary but if you don’t spec it you’ll lose alot of buffs/DPS.

Oh really? How so?

Arcane gives extra boon duration +boons on swapping at arcane 20. Besides that it reduces the gcd of your attunements, thus making swapping and using combo fields to its fully potential to gain even more boons.

Ofc you can not spec into arcane and stay longer in each attunement, but you won’t be able to use combo fields that often and your boons won’t last that long (+20% crit chance is real nice for example)

It’s not that Arcana is necessary. It’s that Arcana is so good and applicable relative to the other trait lines, especially on a class that has as many boons and combo fields as it does.

All the other trait lines just feel like they have a narrow focus. Which is to be expected, I guess, and no different from the trait lines of other classes, but on a class that focuses on stance dancing, it doesn’t mesh that well. Outside of some specific examples (which are, not by sheer coincidence, popular for the same reasons as Arcana) like Cleansing Wave or Bolt to the Heart, most of the other trait lines are just restrictive. While in X attunement, Y happens. Do A while attuning to element B. Your J element spells are K more effective.

Lingering Attunements help mitigate some of this, but to what extent? The effect of these particular traits is often very ambiguous, while requiring micromanaging above and beyond what the class already demands (“Okay, I can only swap to Fire from Water so I can get the Powerful Boons buff on my Meteor Shower…”) to get the full effect.

If there is a solution to this problem (if it is even a problem, some would question) it is not one I’m able to come up with.

Humposaurus.5764:

Arcane gives extra boon duration +boons on swapping at arcane 20. Besides that it reduces the gcd of your attunements, thus making swapping and using combo fields to its fully potential to gain even more boons.

Ofc you can not spec into arcane and stay longer in each attunement, but you won’t be able to use combo fields that often and your boons won’t last that long (+20% crit chance is real nice for example)

Yes you can swap faster. Wont help you much when it does not decrease recharge on skill cool downs. Swapping back to water, for example, is nice for the regen and such, but when all your heal skills are still on CD it will be of little use. Individual attunement bonuses remain on swap (precision, crit damage, etc.) so that is independant of that and other than that, the traits you spec for make much more of a difference than the ability to rapid fire swap. The Auramancer/Sigil setup in particular has little need for Arcana or low cd on attunement swaps. I think if you build for Sigil or Glyph or Cantrips then your need to a 6s swap while nice, is really minimal in truth. I get by just find and dandy with a 15s CD and my skill CD’s seem to synergize with it a bit better anyway.

Not saying in any way that Arcana builds are not really nice, because indeed they are (I have tried and tested BOTH quite extensively), but there are many other builds where attunement swapping is really not that big of a deal, and the bonuses from speccing high in Arcana are really not necessary nor even needed to achieve better performance overall.

I run a 0/0/30/30/10 build, I was originally 0/0/10/30/30.

The attunement buff on the arcana trait line imo is too effective to go ignored as it effects everything we do, it’s the only traitline to fully synergies no matter the attunement we’re in so it’s no wonder as to why people feel pigeon holed into arcana, with the build I’m running I’d love to run 20 arcana, in a way I feel I need too however I can’t take any points away from earth nor water otherwise my build won’t work as well. So either way I don’t feel as if my build is working at 100% efficiency.

I do agree with reducing the GCD and removing it from the Arcana traitline, reduce the base GCD to 12 seconds and add a trait too arcana that further reduces the GCD. However we also need some changes to other traits in other lines 1st, what the ele really needs is a bit more synergy and some bug fixes and I think Ele will be more or less balanced.

When it comes down to it the only thing I see you all talking about is the boon duration bonus that you get from Arcana builds. Yes, it is a definite plus for the line but it is not the end-all be-all for an Ele., nor is it even really needed for some builds. I am not talking about Arcana traits here because I consider those separate from this discussion which is focused on what the OP believes to be a trait line that pigeon holes all Ele’s, which I do not think is true for many builds. For some builds it is true but that is as it should be, so all is well and balanced in that case. It is an important line for Boon stacking, so if your goal is to stack up as many boons as possible, then Arcana is the line for you. If you don’t care about that, then don’t spec into it and there is no problem and all is well. Build with the end goal in mind and build around stacking the bonuses that things like Sigils, Cantrips, and Glyphs can bring you and I think you will find that you really are not losing all that much, if anything at all, from NOT putting points into Arcana.

No one has mentioned Evasive Arcana (which I have heard is going to be nerfed?) I’m sorry but with a ranger or two in your group, as the one I run with has, evasive arcana makes us nigh unkillable, nothing like rolling around in their water fields for ~nearly~ endless heals.
I’m not too concerned about how quickly I can swap back into an attunement as for the most part my timing has become right in line with the cooldowns.
I guess when people become less dependent on healing (my normal group) and just take no damage I will feel more free to leave arcana (I really hate dying) Otherwise I am going to go into a high survivability build with gobs and gobs of blast finishers to cause massive aoe heals in water fields.

Like I have been saying all along, If they didn’t want to pigeon hole certain classes into certain roles (Ele as support more often than not) everyone should have been given the same amount of fields and finishers. As long as there are classes with literally 1 or 0 fields we will always be nothing more than a support class, the other classes need to be brought in line. I seriously think the developer who created Elementalist was the only one paying attention to mechanics as he thought out the abilities.

The arcane trait line promotes varying effects that occur across attunements, and faster attunement swapping to access different skill sets with a different variation of a certain effect.
Attunement specific trait lines promote increased efficacy of a specific attunement, and thus reduce the need to frequently swap attunements.

In theory in sounds ok (I wanna be a fire mage!) and this isn’t where I have issues with the Ele’s trait system. If you feel the need to swap attunements after every 2nd cast, then you’ll feel the need to take 20-30 points in arcane. That’s just how it is.
However, our trait system currently exhibits a large disparity between the usefulness of different traits (not that other classes don’t have this problem as well) thus creating a sense of being pigeonholed into a select few builds.

I’d like to point out what I feel are examples of useful (and potentially “necessary”) and not so useful traits that we have. I like to believe that Anet’s end goal is to have all traits provide a similar amount of utility, thereby creating a large number of viable builds. For brevity’s sake I’ll pick 5 traits for both categories, but in no particular order.

The Good

Evasive Arcana (Creates an attunement-based spell at the end of your dodge. Also a blast finisher)

For Staff users, this is the quintessential trait. Why? Because it allows you to finish your combo fields at will, and in an AoE fashion. The attunement-based effect from this trait is alone quite useful, but combine it with a blast finisher and you’ve got one helluva trait.

Healing Ripple (Heal nearby allies when attuning to water)

This is the 15 point minor trait in water, and it rocks. Use this often (with the bonus from arcane) to give yourself some nice survivability in extended fights.

Weak Spot (Crits have a 60% chance to cause vulnerability)

Another minor trait, and this time it’ll cost you 25 points in air. Very straightforward: the air trait line boosts your crit chance, so here’s a trait to help boost your direct damage. It probably has an internal CD, but either way combine this with the analogous weapon sigil to seriously pump out that debuff.

Written in Stone (Maintain passive effects of signets after you activate them)

A solid trait, worth the extra points in earth in you want it, but be no means required. This trait alone will make signets viable for a build, and gives a nice boost to survivability when coupled with Signet of Renewal. Traits like this go a long way to promoting build diversity.

Elemental Attunement (Provides an attunement-based boon to nearby allies when attuning to an Element)

Take it. The cost to benefit for this trait is absurdly good. Each boon synergizes extremely well with its associated attunement, and you shouldn’t need to change your build or playstyle very much to reap the rewards from this trait.

The Bad

Persisting Flames (Fire fields last 30% longer)

This would be acceptable as an Adept trait, but in the Grandmaster tier!!! We have four fire fields, and the damage from two of them (Burning Speed and Flamewall) is mediocre at best. I just don’t see how anyone could justify an extra second or two of duration on a maximum of 2 skills.

Stone Splinters (Increases damage by 5% when within melee range)

This trait is useful for mainhand dagger only, making it crummy to begin with. Additionally, MH dagger benefits from attacking just outside melee range where you can’t be hit by melee attacks. Could be useful against range attackers that can’t kite you, but that’s about it.

One With Air (Increases movement speed by 5% every 10s that you are attuned to air. Maximum 25% increase)

First off, it takes 50s of time to ramp up. Secondly, you already have a 10% speed bonus while in air (5 point minor). Thirdly, just use swiftness of equip Signet of Air if you’re going for a long jog. This trait has zero combat utility from my perspective, but maybe I’m wrong?

Conjurer (Conjured weapons have 10 additional charges)

Part of the problem with this trait is that conjured weapons are not viable at the moment. Fun, yes, but not viable. Either way, this trait actually compounds one of the issues with conjured weapons, the feeling of being “trapped” in a certain skillset.

Icy Mist (Inflict damage, chill, and vulnerability to nearby foes while in mist or vapor form)

So this trait takes a 75s defensive CD, and let’s you add 3s worth of offense? Even with the 20% cantrip CD reduction trait, this uptime on this trait is horrendous. Additionally, when I personally use Mist Form it’s to get away, so the chill effect could be useful, but vulnerability and damage? I’ll pass, thanks.

Wrapping Up
So that’s my 2 cents on some of the Ele’s traits. And I’m out of space… But please stay on topic

A significant buff would be adding shuffling dancing animations while attunement “dancing” because so many people expect classes to attunement “dance”. A-net shouldnt have nerfed the attunement “dancing” because “dancing” attunements is the way to go clearly.

so freaking sick of “dancing” gibberish, its called swapping, 100% nothing to do with dancing, no dance move is performed while swapping attunements, not even singing….

I do agree that there are several traits in our lines which are unworkable or flat broken. We also have many more that are in fine shape and its with those that we make viable builds, and there are plenty of viable builds. So far as being pidgeon holed into the Arcana line, I have to disagree because its just factually not true. Its not even true in the realistic sense in that there are many ways to have extremely effective builds while putting zero (0) points into the Arcana line. What I see going on here is that many people believe that the Arcana line is a “must have” line but they are actually handicapping themselves with this self imposed limitation. Try thinking outside the box a bit and experiment with many different build options and I think you’ll find that the Ele does actually have more viable builds that are not based in Arcana.

Burrfish.6408:

Conjurer (Conjured weapons have 10 additional charges)

Part of the problem with this trait is that conjured weapons are not viable at the moment. Fun, yes, but not viable. Either way, this trait actually compounds one of the issues with conjured weapons, the feeling of being “trapped” in a certain skillset.

Yes, they are plenty viable atm. Learn to use them effectively. This trait is fine as is. If you feel “trapped” by using Conjured weapons or this trait then you are flat out using these weapons wrong and the issue becomes a LTP problem, which is not game related. Your talking about a set of traits with your post and not really the weapons themselves. While I do agree that the weapons need some additional small tweaks to make them more viable in general to almost any build instead of the 2 specialty builds I have found them extremely viable in, the trait itself is in fine shape.

Boozer, I actually think I am going to take your advice on this and come up with a completely different build, taking traits that I have just been afraid to try so far. I might come out of my slump and start enjoying myself again. shrug

Maybe 30 air 20 fire 10 water =X …man thats just painful thinking about it.
Hmm, How about 20 air 20 earth 20 water 10 fire? o.O
….something fantasticlly different than what I have done so far.
30 air 30 earth 10 fire?

Now I want to go home….wonder if my boss will let me go early grumble

Efaicia, that’s great to hear! Keep an open mind with this class and you will always have a ton of fun with it. The fact is that I also once believed that there were only one or two viable builds with this class and when I broke out of that mold and started to experiment with just about every conceivable build possible that I discovered that this “pidgeon holed” mindset is just not true at all. We have a large number of viable builds, some more viable than others, but all of them workable and fun.

If you really want to try something fun, give a Conjured Weapons build a shot. You seriously have to break from the fold to try this one and build like a tank. Take all the conjures you can minus one (there are 5) and build yourself around the weapons themselves. Learning to use them effectively is the hardest part, but when you start to get the feel of how to use them properly and when to pop out of them and use your own abilities, its almost like your “stance dancing” not only between your own attunements but the different weapons as well. For a D/D build I think they add a whole new dimension and viability.

If nothing else, the ice bow gives a D/D build the ability to work at range when you need to. That said, the chill on AC3 is nice and the range AOE on AC4 (with confuse stacks!) can be pretty nice as well.

boozer.7815:

Yes, they are plenty viable atm. […] 2 specialty builds I have found them extremely viable in

Could you perhaps give a link to one of these builds? I’ve been searching for a way to effectively integrate these skills into a build since launch, but I haven’t been able to come up with anything that doesn’t have serious flaws. But if I’ve overlooked something it wouldn’t be the first time … (Quick note: I’m a PvPer)

And perhaps, if these conjure builds don’t rely on the Arcane tree, it’d help others to see that Arcane is by no means “necessary”.

I wish the Soothing Water trait worked as it should with the Ice Bow, when it does the Ice Bow will be a part of my set.

This has gone way off topic.

I support the idea that our attunement swapping should be faster on it’s own, without traiting for it. The suggested replacement (the combo field effectiveness) would be very good for me, as a staff user. But a lot less for the other weapons.

And to Anet: DON’T NERF MY EVASIVE ARCANA!

I think there’s another inherent assumption here that all elementalists use staffs. Yes, staffs easily give the class the most combo fields in the game, and therefore a lot of support possibilities, but I really don’t like the idea of this replacement. While the attunement swapping definitely needs some love, changing the final trait line to support combos would not only make those extremely powerful, but it’d just kitten on any dagger or scepter users, since neither produce any fields at all, only finishers.

Been saying forever that that trait tree needs to change and attunement recharge needs to be flat. I support any change that makes it the case even if it means removing the bonus from the arcana tree; yeah its that important.

While the attunement swapping definitely needs some love, changing the final trait line to support combos would not only make those extremely powerful, but it’d just kitten on any dagger or scepter users, since neither produce any fields at all, only finishers.

The active attunement could provide bonus power/cond.dmg/vit… Additional points in arcana would improve the bonus.

Or it increases power/vit/… depending on the attunement and the number of points in arcana (1-30% more power in fire attunement)

Any information or links to any comment on this Evasive Arcana nerf? I would like to see for my self. I really hope they don’t nerf it. Last thing the ele needs is MORE nerfs.

I don’t think I ever ran more than 10 points in Arcane for either the Vigor-on-cir trait or Buff-on-attunement traits, not for the Attunement swapping cooldown reduction. While it’s nice to have, it’s certainly not mandatory when you get to working around that. Rather, I think a 5 or 10 would be mandatory in any build if they kept Lingering Attunements at 5 instead of bumping it to 15…

For instance, when I go into a certain attunement, I mostly use all my skills if needed then switch to something else if I don’t need to spam auto attack. I dislike when I enter an attunement that already has half it’s skills on CD. Sure, sometimes I find myself stuck in an attunement for 2-3 seconds but that’s such a little drawback. Playing slower pays off in cooldown management.

Right now, I’m using a 30/0/20/20/0 build for WvW and PvE, swapping one or two major traits when I switch game modes. I’ll leave the traits up to your imagination.

The cooldown reduction goes hand in hand with attunement-specific cooldown reduction traits, however. Depending how you set your build up, this may be a very viable option for skill “spam”. This favors Control builds, in my opinion.

and while all this happens conjured weapons are still useless

the 40% recharge rate should be baseline, make the arcana tree do something with conjured weapons, anything at this rate

Whoever said to try a full conjure build doesn’t really play an ele – conjures are a death sentence, mainly because they lock out 75% of our weapon skills.

I am yet to find an ele build that doesn’t use arcane that isn’t significantly weaker than those that do.

I think arcane doesn’t need changes but speccing in any of the other elements should decrease the reuse timer for that element.

Ie, if you spec 30 air, your reuse CD on air ought to be really short, like 5 secs.

I agree with the point that the arcana trait line passive is too strong right now because attuenement swapping is at the heart of an ele’s playstyle, reducing the recharge is excetionally strong however i have to disagree with scrapping it as a passive.

What I would do is reduce the base cooldown to 12 seconds and then reduce the passive in the arcana tree by half (so 1% per point instead of 2%). To provide some math these are the recharges per 5 points in arcana as it currently stands (afaik recharge rate can be shown by number of times you can switch per minute so with a 15 second cooldown as base you can switch 4 times a minute):

• 0 – 60/(4*1.0) = 15.00
• 5 – 60/(4*1.1) = 13.64
• 10 – 60/(4*1.2) = 12.50
• 15 – 60/(4*1.3) = 11.54
• 20 – 60/(4*1.4) = 10.71
• 25 – 60/(4*1.5) = 10.00
• 30 – 60/(4*1.6) = 9.38

This means with 30 points into arcana your attunements recharge ~38% faster which is a massive difference. If we reduce the base to 12 seconds and reduce the bonus to 1% each points we get these numbers:

• 5 – 60/(5*1.05) = 11.43
• 10 – 60/(5*1.1) = 10.91
• 15 – 60/(5*1.15) = 10.43
• 20 – 60/(5*1.2) = 10.00
• 25 – 60/(5*1.25) = 9.6
• 30 – 60/(5*1.3) = 9.23

With these numbers it means that 30 points into arcana makes your attunements recharge ~23% faster which for a 30 point investment seems reasonable to me (it’s also arond a 40% reduction in the value of the passive). Compared to right now this would essentially give everyone a base investment of around 13 points into the arcana passive (if it were 2% per point).

@Shadow: That could be a great alternative, don’t know why we never thought of this.
Wonder if ANet would be willing to do this though.

I agree with OP. I have said it several times here and on other forums – Elementalist is the only profession that is burdened by the unique profession mechanic, while in other cases unique profession mechanic complements the profession itself. One that comes even remotely close to this is Engineer, but it can be played completely fine without any kits whatsoever.

Yeah reducing attunement recharge across the board and then halving the attunement recharge bonus per point of arcana is another good solution’ but I really think if you’ve invested 30points in an element, then that element’s recharge should be substantially reduced as a result.