Guild Wars 2

Are u using any of the new GM traits in daily PVP or PVE.

I mean Fire is useful for dueling, Air is useful against War/Thief, I guess Earth is usefull in a general sense for bunkering, Water is not usefull for PVP\PVE context If men goes to GM it have to take Cleansing and arcane it is so hard to give up evasive arcana.

So did anybody managed place those talents to daily activities?

Nope, not a single one of them.

The fire, earth and air traits have interesting concepts, but they are massively underwhelming.

The arcane trait is a joke and I will laugh at it like I laugh at lingering elements and arcane precision. Praise Anet for their sense of humour, it never fails.

Anet has a hard time understanding that, from a pvp perspective, eles are squishier than thieves and mesmers. Yet mesmers and thieves have stronger inbuilt defensive mechanics. As a result we will almost always invest in defensive options, be that by increasing our sustain (d/d, staff) or by preventing the intake of damage by bursting foes before they can kill us (s/f). In addition to this, it just happens that our defensive skills and traits are much easier to make us of than our offensive abilities (it’s easier to heal than to land a big hit: look at firegrab). So in the grand hp-differential scheme of things, we will always be dragged to defense or burst.

So yes technically the new GM traits conceptually give us defence, apart from the arcane one which is a joke. But they are oddly designed and their trait lines are so lacking… there is no good option for master tiers in fire and air, and the adept tiers are barely decent.

The new GM traits have several design flaws, to the point that they even contradict anet’s own balance philosophy.

In the same patch where our cleansing water GM trait got its cooldown removed for the purpose of giving us more freedom to find our own combos, isn’t it ironic that the fire and arcane traits were shipped with clumsy cooldowns, which pretty much ruined their potential?

Fire’s cooldown should be applied per target, and not globally. Or else, it has negative synergy with the way the very own profession works (aoe burning) versus the design’s intent of having blind be applied on the first hit only. It would work on a profession with focused single target burning like the Guardian. It does not works on the profession it was meant to. Besides, even the fire’s adept minor trait can screw it up, and apply its effect randomly on a pet.

Arcana’s global cooldown is even worse. If this trait ever had any potential to be an alternative to evasive arcana, it was if it had a cooldown per effect/ attunement. I could see some attempts at making tankier elementalists with this trait. But the global cooldown, combined with the fact that this trait has four different effects, and that they are triggered by the opponent, makes it so, in practice, it almost completely simulates randomness! You can’t trigger it, and you have no control to which effect should be triggered except at the beginning of a fight. You can’t rely on any single effect. You can’t have protection or retaliation when you need it, unless you are lucky. It’s really bad.

From the mouths of the same devs that have said that skills should be analyzed within the context of their class, isn’t it ironic that air’s GM trait is pretty much mesmer’s adept trait with weakness thrown in, and at two tiers above? Yes, mesmer’s version is already strong, and maybe yes, mesmer’s version with weakness on top of it could be GM-worthy… on the mesmer. As it is, even if this trait was adept tier for the elementalists, and even if it was blatantly stronger than the mesmer’s to justify being at the adept tier, within the context of our profession, the mesmer’s version would probably still be stronger. Or equally useful.

Air’s GM trait needs to be fused with Tempest Defense. Let’s say that both traits are unsuccessful attempts at acchieving the same goal: TD has a more reliable trigger (stun and KD, instead of interrupting) and built-in synergy (shocking aura), but you can’t make use of its damage increase when you’re stunned yourself. Meanwhile, LR’s damage boost is an instant air bold… which would be perfect for Tempest Defense…

I personally find Stone Heart strong enough, it just lacks synergy. Oh, and it’s pointless in PvE, because for some reason, the rules for PvE are so different than those from PvP (enemies very rarely critically hit there, and they very rarely pressure you with many hits), while skills (and the entire combat system) are designed with PvP in mind.

I agree with the above

I would also add that stone heart actually destroys synergy: it prevents us from using soothing wave in earth

Most of the new GM traits on any class suck completely. Look at the mesmer ones, disrupters sustainment is a joke for downed state retal builds while the others are conceptually cook but underwhelming or impractical because some of them could easily be made to be too strong like power block before the hot fix or maim the disillusioned if it’s torment were longer or more stacks. But yeah the ele ones are terribad. The only decent new ones I know of are path of corruption on necromancers and phalanx strength on warriors. But did warriors really need a trait like phalanx strength? I found that to be insulting while other classes that can’t stack might languish to be discriminated by pugs forever.

As for the eles burst or bunker role conundrum in pvp I feel like many other classes work that way too. Necromancers pretty much only run bunker minion builds, clunky high autoattack damage power builds, or condition builds thay rely on burst from spite signet, corrupt boon, and fear chaining to do anything. The concept of attrition is lost on them. Same goes for ranger: condi tank or glass pew pewer. Thieves and mesmers are the only ones that only seem to have viable burst options and no real viable bunker options, unless you count S/D to be an evasión tank buold. That has to do with the capture point nonsense of pvp in this game. I play S/F ele a lot and I can tell you right now that I wouldn’t lose most of my matches if I were playing a game mode other than conquest, because solo Q is simply luck of the draw, and it’s hard to be on point when you’re the glassiest spec in GW2.

Also pardon my spelling and grammar. Am on phone right meow.

Thk god i am not the only one who cant manage the GM traits to work in a general context.

90% of the traits in GW2 are useless. It’s really weird. This certainly isn’t a problem unique to Elementalists in any way. All professions have the same exact complaint.

I guess they want us all to roll warriors , troll build theives and PU mesmer builds

Fuzzion.2504:

I guess they want us all to roll warriors , troll build theives and PU mesmer builds

PU mesmer is just so terrible … I don’t get it why people complain about it

Now now, they had some good ideas, they just didn’t get carried away and make everything insanely op. Now they can tweak them up to par slowly. Just give them time…a lot of time, unfortunately. :\

i like the fire one, a lot of ppl use it for dueling, s/f 6 6 0 0 2 traitline

fire one is also good for condi builds

the one in air is fun if u zerg w a staff, drop earth 4 or air 5 in enemy zerg, u see all the weakness procs, has no icd

water one, meh idk, healer isnt viable yet..

arcana is garbage, earth could be built around w some skillful ply , like switching to earth before some guy is gonna burst u

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Fuzzion.2504:

I guess they want us all to roll warriors , troll build theives and PU mesmer builds

PU mesmer is just so terrible … I don’t get it why people complain about it

It’s a very strong dueling spec. Many people’s PvP in this game consists of just trying to duel others in WvW. For those people, their perception of PvP is very different from say, a person who plays Solo Queue or Hotjoin in sPvP. In Conquest, PU Mesmer is a lot weaker since stealth doesn’t hold points.

Neko.9021:

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Fuzzion.2504:

I guess they want us all to roll warriors , troll build theives and PU mesmer builds

PU mesmer is just so terrible … I don’t get it why people complain about it

It’s a very strong dueling spec. Many people’s PvP in this game consists of just trying to duel others in WvW. For those people, their perception of PvP is very different from say, a person who plays Solo Queue or Hotjoin in sPvP. In Conquest, PU Mesmer is a lot weaker since stealth doesn’t hold points.

while pu is pretty awesome, it has a skill cap (its just awesome to a fixed point, no mather how good the mesmer playing it is) on my s/x ele or shattermesmers i mostly (when roaming) kill most of them, or if it looks bad i run away, in pvp they can be potentially strong, but due to them beeing in need of u to destroy their clones its not that awesome

i fear skilled shattermesmers most, they can instantly kill u, and still manage to kite u to hell during fights , they r far from op tho, in fact, i think shatters need some kind of buff

the trait pu needs some rework

Yes PU needs major rework.