So there are three main forms of attacks in this game, heavy cc, damage, and conditions. The new GM traits were supposed to beef ele’s up a little to make them more tanky. I’m just going to go in order and give my opinion, feel free to disagree or whatever.
Blinding ashes-
Vs heavy cc, you can maybe get lucky and blind part of the cc combo but this trait alone won’t save you vs a three hammer moves or a fear chain. It could make a small impact though.
Vs damage it is a minimal impact in terms of % damage reduced, the lack of insta cast, controllable burns makes it so you can’t really use it to time for adrenalin skills so you kinda just have to hope it works out well.
Vs conditions it again is super minimal. Most conditions in this game are from super fast attacking auto attacks, and stuff like signet of spite won’t be cast by a smart player when they are blinded, so you might stop one of those 5 quick pistol shots, but that isn’t going to help in any meaningful way.
Lightning Rod
Vs heavy cc this trait does nothing. Weakness won’t prevent you from being stun locked into oblivion.
Vs damage this trait probably isn’t gonna help too much either. The weird thing about this trait is you apply weakness right as the person your fighting is doing little or no damage (the point in the match where they are stunned or dazed).
Vs conditions, again this trait does nothing because weakness does not effect condition damage.
Stone Heart
Vs heavy cc this trait does nothing, you will still be tossed around like crazy even if those hammer stuns are doing less damage.
Vs damage this trait can have an impact, being able to negate a big part of full zerker build’s damage is actually accomplished here.
Vs conditions this trait has a minimal impact, it stops some of the on crit procs but one of the main condition classes in this meta which is the p/d thief doesn’t run any crit chance.
Water Thingy
This is kinda just a weird stat increase and I hate traits like this, nothing to say here.
Elemental Contingency (protection + vigor)
vs heavy cc this doesn’t really work since it procs on hit and the first hit will get you nailed into the cc chain so even added vigor to dodge won’t save you.
vs damage the protection might do a little benefit but the 30% base uptime while your in earth which in reality is going to be way less than 30% overall might have an impact. That impact is 60% of the impact of switching to earth with EA lol.
vs condition damage this trait does nothing, you might be able to dodge some stuff with more vigor but meh.
Overall takeaways. Some of the traits were trying to increase ele survivability. Heavy cc and condition damage isn’t addressed in any of these traits. Damage on the other hand is slightly effected. I’d love to see some GM traits or just more traits in general that could help out with heavy cc or conditions.
I would like to see blinding ashes improved somehow. I don’t think a separate cooldown for each burn is great because unfortunately there is an auto attack that burns and an AoE burn on the staff they are probably thinking about a lot when they made this trait. I feel like this trait is simply punished by the idea of someone running around spamming Fire Scepter auto attacks and no one does that. Maybe make it do 1 stack of vuln on top of the blind so you can bury your hard hitting conditions easier.
I would like to see lightning rod transformed into an on crit ability with an ideally low icd. Adding weakness to a stunned foe doesn’t even make sense imo. Most ele’s have very few interrupts, at most a couple on weapons and zero from utilties so GeeGee. Changing it to on daze and stun also does not fix the problem at all. However an on crit one could be a viable defensive option real builds could actually use.