Guild Wars 2

With this new trait (conditions cannot be applied when ele is over 90% hp)

If I am sitting at 45% hp and then heal to 100% using my heal and healing water, will all my conditions then be cleared?

No. The trait will only effect incomming conditions similar to mistform.

Belorn.2659:

No. The trait will only effect incomming conditions similar to mistform.

Meaning you have to cleanse the shizt out of you in order not to go below the 90% threshold again.

It would be far more useful if it was like the engineer trait where they can’t get conditions applied to the when their hp drops down low enough. Good luck staying at 90% hp as an ele. Given our lack of mobility, overall low defense, and lack of sustainability……even a stray rabbit hitting us will put us well below the 90% threshold within seconds of engaging in combat.

Nikkinella.8254:

It would be far more useful if it was like the engineer trait where they can’t get conditions applied to the when their hp drops down low enough. Good luck staying at 90% hp as an ele. Given our lack of mobility, overall low defense, and lack of sustainability……even a stray rabbit hitting us will put us well below the 90% threshold within seconds of engaging in combat.

Are you talking about the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog?

H N Al K Cu Au.2817:

Nikkinella.8254:

It would be far more useful if it was like the engineer trait where they can’t get conditions applied to the when their hp drops down low enough. Good luck staying at 90% hp as an ele. Given our lack of mobility, overall low defense, and lack of sustainability……even a stray rabbit hitting us will put us well below the 90% threshold within seconds of engaging in combat.

Are you talking about the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog?

No, I think he’s referring to the Enchanted Bunny wielding the Carrot of Power from the Mystic Warlords of Ka’a.

Kidding aside. The new Diamond Skin looks good in theory but it’s hard to imagine a situation where you’re in the thick of a fight and still manages to keep your HP above 90% most of the time unless you have either high vit high tough and manages to dodge or negate most of the direct damage coming at you or very high healing power. But still in the second case, it’s not like you never go below 90% but rather always get back up to 100% pretty easily from way below that threshold to as low as 20% very easily. So the times that you are in fact in the process of healing back up are quite a lot of opportunity to still be spammed by a barrage of conditions unless you also specced for heavy condi removal.

But I think I’m just being pessimistic here.

Peow peow.2189:

With this new trait (conditions cannot be applied when ele is over 90% hp)

If I am sitting at 45% hp and then heal to 100% using my heal and healing water, will all my conditions then be cleared?

Nope.

I’m looking forward to this change though..
As condi ele, I already use 30 earth, but I feel like I lack traited cleansing, since I have to pick one (0/0/30/30/10 – 0/0/30/10/30) or lose both (0/0/30/20/20) evasive arcana and cleansing water. I agree this ~should~ be a shield against initial condition bombing, I wonder if it’s going to work against fear walls/shouts and boon corruption, does the engi trait works against those?
Also, less immobilizes, cripples and freezing surely won’t hurt our mobility..

Consolidated key posts by devs about DS for your convenience;

Roy Cronacher.1576:

vangedas.7358:

Diamond Skin
- this can be absurdly broken. Please, please, do not … passive immunity to conditions is very powerful, cheesy and and cannot be counter-played, but this new trait would literally kill specs like trap ranger, not to mention it would hurt necromancers …

There actually is counter play to this trait unlike some other similar mechanics. The goal of the elementalist with this trait is to stay above 90% hit points while the counter play is to do a bit of physical damage to the elementalist to drop them below this threshold in order to get the conditions rolling on them, which will in turn help keep them below that threshold.

In SPvP an elementalist can reach a maximum of around 20,000-21,000 hit points. This means that 2100 would be the most damage you would need to do to an elementalist to break through this trait and in most cases it would be a lower amount than that. That is not very much damage needed to do in order to start applying conditions. This still leaves room for the elementalist using healing traits/skills and kiting to try to stay above that threshold to increase their survivability vs conditions.

We have been doing internal testing and it feels like it in a good place for a tier 3 trait. That being said though and as a reminder, none of these changes are set in stone yet and are subject to change.

JonPeters.5630:

xiv.7136:

JonPeters.5630:

… bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov. 26th as well.

… Don’t be afraid of changing too much when a lot needs changing.

First of all, try Diamond Skin at 80% and see if anyone takes it. 90% is kind of pointless, esp for a grandmaster trait. I don’t even know if it’ll see much play at 80% …

Right now I am thinking 85% on diamond skin as high health eles could break this at 80% imo …

Seemingly off-topic, but, this had to be seen

Jacks.5367:

Jacks.5367:

… Windborne Dagger. Can this be buffed [so] that it work in and out-of combat?

… I think it would be a fine buff …

</em cheer> If you go Armor you might need this speed. Just a thought.
——

Armor will be just as much a waste as it always has been. I wrote a thread about Armor Efficiency. Bottom line, without counting healing, Armor is most efficient at 10% of your Health. That is the magic ratio here, 10 health : 1 Armor. We must account for damage that bypasses Armor when we account for healing.

(Optimal Armor) = (Health + healing – (damage that bypasses Armor)) / 10;

It is that simple. How optimistic are you that you will be healed? Gauge your points in Toughness according to your answer. Add 1 point of Armor for every 10 points of Health and for every 10 points of (healing – (damage that bypasses Armor)).

The current Diamond Skin is only helping an Ele in a good group because they will gain healing, protection, cleansing, etc. That is when a high health Ele could make DS appear to be overpowered. Like many other design choices it is meant to push team play. Consider DS used in those situations to understand the design concept of this trait. All circumstances of use must be addressed in any suggestion intended to be regarded as reasonable.

Nikkinella.8254:

It would be far more useful if it was like the engineer trait where they can’t get conditions applied to the when their hp drops down low enough. Good luck staying at 90% hp as an ele. Given our lack of mobility, overall low defense, and lack of sustainability……even a stray rabbit hitting us will put us well below the 90% threshold within seconds of engaging in combat.

You mean the trait, where you drop to 25% by having 25 bleed stacks, burning, poison and fear on you and just die 3 seconds later? Having the immunity front loaded is way better. If you are at 25% hp, you need a full condi cleanse right there in order to survive. On the other hand, an ele with this trait is hard to initiate on and even harder to counter-initiate against. You can’t be bounced off by fears anymore when initiating on a foe and someone trying to burst you down will have a hard time hitting that immobilize, means, you will simply dodge the quad shatter or whatever he’s trying to throw at you…
Basically, it is a safeguard against being nuked down, means, you can preserve stuff like mist form or armor of earth for later in the fight.
Against heavy condition pressure, this trait is not as good, as it seems. It gives you a headstart in a condi fight and that’s all. As soon, as you drop below the treshold, you will have problems getting your hp up again, unless you manage to channel a full ether renewal.
Anything with severe condition pressure will eventually get past your neck and not look back again, the question is, how much you can achieve in this time.
On the other hand, condition+regen(esp. shout bunkers, not as much beastmasters) rangers might have serious problems against a full toughness+healing setup.

I envision two possible builds around this trait for PvP.

One is in an extreme burst build, where a few seconds can make the difference between victory or death. Within those few seconds, some of the heavy condition players will have to dedicate their time to drop your HP first, and that time is precious for you.

S/D or S/F are the best for this build, with perhaps 30 in air (bolt to the heart, air training, fresh air), and maybe 10 in arcana (if renewing stamina stays there) or 10 in water (+10% damage while health is above 90%). Earth traits would be stone splinters, and something else in master tier. Runes of Scholar, Berzerker Amulet + Jewel, Sigil of Force and Sigil of Fire or something. Arcane utility skills and Lightning Flash.

Another build would be an earth/ water bunker build that would have enough healing, but also decent condition removal for when DS is not active. The problem with such build would be the lack of damage, but perhaps that can be compensated for huge might stacks.

20 fire (spell slinger, new burning fire), 30 earth (earth’s embrace, rock solid, diamond skin) and 20 water (cleansing wave, soothing disruption). Full cantrip utility skills, runes for more boon duration perhaps, sigil of life and sigil of battle or of energy. Cleric’s Amulet.

With S/D, this bunker build would have enough healing skills, cantrips, regen, vigor and toughness to hold, while getting massive might stacks in the process for decent direct damage and decent condition damage. WIth 5 cantrips, that’s up to 15 stacks of might in best-case-scenarios. With sigil of battle, that’s up to 6 stacks. And scepter/ dagger itself can easily generate at least 9+ stacks, up to 12 in best-case scenarios. That’s more than 30 stacks, but considering that you won’t get them all at the same time, and that you won’t be always so lucky, it should be enough to maintain a 15-25 stack count. That averages a 700 power and condition damage increase, which is huge, while going for a bunker spec.

This trait is completely broken. It’s extremely worrying that the devs are even considering it and makes me fear for the future of this game that they think it might need to be 85% or even master tier.

This is coming from an ele with over 3k hours played almost all in WvW and sPvP. I’ve played a build centered around staying above 90% health for vital striking and scholar runes for much of that time, and it’s not some impossible task that people make it out to be.

The ability to automatically win every 1v1 against condi classes isn’t overpowered; it’s broken. ANet, please take note of the people who think this is underpowered and then never listen to anything they have to say. Ever. That includes Jon Peters.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say “auto win”…. It will sure be a little more gimmick for condition appliers to negate an elementalist, but do note that going 30 earth means less cleansing and less healing for the ele. Though even with those losses it will not be very difficult to stay within the threshold, if it was, this would be another useless grandmaster trait…

Caffynated.5713:

This trait is completely broken. It’s extremely worrying that the devs are even considering it and makes me fear for the future of this game that they think it might need to be 85% or even master tier.

This is coming from an ele with over 3k hours played almost all in WvW and sPvP. I’ve played a build centered around staying above 90% health for vital striking and scholar runes for much of that time, and it’s not some impossible task that people make it out to be.

The ability to automatically win every 1v1 against condi classes isn’t overpowered; it’s broken. ANet, please take note of the people who think this is underpowered and then never listen to anything they have to say. Ever. That includes Jon Peters.

If you are able to stay above 90% health on a regular basis in your fights, you aren’t fighting very challenging opponents.

Staying at 90% health, while unable to spec 0/0/30/30

Sure, you can have water, or arcana, but not both.

Caffynated.5713:

… This trait is completely broken. It’s extremely worrying …
… This is coming from an ele with over 3k hours played almost all in WvW and sPvP …
… staying above 90% … not some impossible task that people make it out to be …
… never listen to anything they have to say. Ever. That includes Jon Peters.

I have not said this to anyone before, but any time you are ready I will be. Jump on your Ele and we can see whose boss, and who knows their stuff. Don’t drop below 90%, and definitely don’t die.

If you make a list of situations in which this trait is good, you’d end up with a very short list.
I can see why dire geared condi necro’s are fearing it (badum tss) but any other heavy condition spec has many ways to drop an ele below the threshold easily. Engineers, warriors, rangers, even mesmers shouldn’t have too much problems with it.
This will be a situational trait at best, annoying to fight against in a 1v1 if you’re 100% focused on conditions but completely useless in any other situation.

i don’t even play elementalist i can tell you this trait is completely worthless.

ele’s have a base hp of 10,000. so if you can do 1,000 or more damage to them it becomes useless. if you go 30 points into water magic it becomes 13,805 hp. so 1,400 or more damage and its useless.

my sword auto attack on my warrior, fully speced into condition damage does around 400-500 damage each attack. so hypothetically saying you went full tank and are wearing soldiers gear, with 30 points into water magic you will have 20,000 hp.

so 4 to 5 auto on your pure tank ele destroys this trait from a build not geared for direct damage.

i think the threshold on this trait should be 75% to be worth it

I just don’t see how this trait will get us out of Water…I mean, it just screams ‘stonger heals and more hp’ to me.

Caffynated.5713:

This is coming from an ele with over 3k hours played almost all in WvW and sPvP. I’ve played a build centered around staying above 90% health for vital striking and scholar runes for much of that time, and it’s not some impossible task that people make it out to be.

How exactly are you staying above 90% hp in WvW? From my exeperience, even if I’m at a safe position in a fight and not being attacked my health will go below 90% just from random retaliation boons on the enemy players.

My only concern with diamond skin is that when pair with Ether Renewal, it can be too powerful against classes that rely on condition as their main source of damage.

Ether Renewal is already a very powerful healing skill that remove a total of 8 conditions every 15 seconds. When pair with diamond skin, it not only cleanse all the remaining condition on the ele, it also constantly heal ele so it can maintain above 90% hp when channeling, so a total of 4 seconds immunity to condition every 15 seconds.

This would be very unfair in 1 on 1 situation to necro and engineer who rely almost entirely on condition damage as their main source of damage.

Aomine.5012:

My only concern with diamond skin is that when pair with Ether Renewal, it can be too powerful against classes that rely on condition as their main source of damage.

Ether Renewal is already a very powerful healing skill that remove a total of 8 conditions every 15 seconds. When pair with diamond skin, it not only cleanse all the remaining condition on the ele, it also constantly heal ele so it can maintain above 90% hp when channeling, so a total of 4 seconds immunity to condition every 15 seconds.

This would be very unfair in 1 on 1 situation to necro and engineer who rely almost entirely on condition damage as their main source of damage.

Ether Renewal’s extreme cast time easily balances out its strong condition control imo.

Morelia.6835:

Aomine.5012:

My only concern with diamond skin is that when pair with Ether Renewal, it can be too powerful against classes that rely on condition as their main source of damage.

Ether Renewal is already a very powerful healing skill that remove a total of 8 conditions every 15 seconds. When pair with diamond skin, it not only cleanse all the remaining condition on the ele, it also constantly heal ele so it can maintain above 90% hp when channeling, so a total of 4 seconds immunity to condition every 15 seconds.

This would be very unfair in 1 on 1 situation to necro and engineer who rely almost entirely on condition damage as their main source of damage.

Ether Renewal’s extreme cast time easily balances out its strong condition control imo.

Note that you’re throwing 30 points in Earth already.
Free stability, as well as immune to fear because your health is already 90% and above when you cast your ether renewal.

Aomine.5012:

Note that you’re throwing 30 points in Earth already.
Free stability, as well as immune to fear because your health is already 90% and above when you cast your ether renewal.

That’s irrelevant as you’re still spending 3.5 seconds healing yourself while your opponent can unload on you whatever he wants. Most people already pick the signet because not wasting time is crucial in sPvP.
Also keep in mind that all that condition cleanse will be far less effective against power builds.

Morelia.6835:

Aomine.5012:

Note that you’re throwing 30 points in Earth already.
Free stability, as well as immune to fear because your health is already 90% and above when you cast your ether renewal.

That’s irrelevant as you’re still spending 3.5 seconds healing yourself while your opponent can unload on you whatever he wants. Most people already pick the signet because not wasting time is crucial in sPvP.
Also keep in mind that all that condition cleanse will be far less effective against power builds.

Switching to Earth element grants you 2 seconds of stability (3 if you spec for boon duration) on a 10~13 seconds CD (according to the new arcane change) .
So tell me what’s so hard about switching to earth when using ether renewal?

Note that in my post I mention nothing about the power build you just mentioned.
Also I’m talking specifically about 1 vs 1 situation.

No counter play to diamond skin in 1v1. I feel it should do something like -100% condition duration over a 75% health threshold. But then again, no one complains about the same ability on engineers at 25% health.

Morelia.6835:

How exactly are you staying above 90% hp in WvW? From my exeperience, even if I’m at a safe position in a fight and not being attacked my health will go below 90% just from random retaliation boons on the enemy players.

Staying above 90% doesn’t mean you never drop below it. It means that when you do, you heal back up immediately so that you’re above 90% health for most of the fight.

Guardians and occasionally mesmers are the only classes that I see much if any retaliation from while roaming in WvW. In zerg fights, you have to expect to get hit with retal and be ready to heal back up (e.g. keep water attunement available).

FrownyClown.8402:

No counter play to diamond skin in 1v1. I feel it should do something like -100% condition duration over a 75% health threshold. But then again, no one complains about the same ability on engineers at 25% health.

Concluding that Diamond Skin has no counter play is a bit over the top I think.Condi builds have crappy direct damage but they sure ain’t zero damage so poking into that threshold (we’re talking about 1k-2k hp here) would not be impossible. It’s not immortality as everyone makes it out to be. It’s not stability wherein you can’t cancel the ele’s heal with stuns and dazes and other forms of CC while you are hiting with direct damage. They are immune to conditions but they are not immune to everything else. They can still be CC’ed and damaged directly. That’s basically the reason why no one complains about engies Automated Response that much.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

FrownyClown.8402:

No counter play to diamond skin in 1v1. I feel it should do something like -100% condition duration over a 75% health threshold. But then again, no one complains about the same ability on engineers at 25% health.

Concluding that Diamond Skin has no counter play is a bit over the top I think.Condi builds have crappy direct damage but they sure ain’t zero damage so poking into that threshold (we’re talking about 1k-2k hp here) would not be impossible. It’s not immortality as everyone makes it out to be. It’s not stability wherein you can’t cancel the ele’s heal with stuns and dazes and other forms of CC while you are hiting with direct damage. They are immune to conditions but they are not immune to everything else. They can still be CC’ed and damaged directly. That’s basically the reason why no one complains about engies Automated Response that much.

True. I wonder what would make it better; more healing and less vitality or more vitality and less healing.

I think you’ll need more heal, as healing yourself back to full will be the key factor here. What I assume this trait is gonna give us are brief moments of condi invulnerability at the beggining of fights and at the end of our healing cycle, which is usually when smart enemies would condition nuke us… Though some people claim healing scales poorly, I run a high healing/thoughness build and I’m generally able to fully heal.

Caffynated.5713:

Morelia.6835:

How exactly are you staying above 90% hp in WvW? From my exeperience, even if I’m at a safe position in a fight and not being attacked my health will go below 90% just from random retaliation boons on the enemy players.

Staying above 90% doesn’t mean you never drop below it. It means that when you do, you heal back up immediately so that you’re above 90% health for most of the fight.

The problem with that is that you’re below 90% while dealing your damage, it’s useless to heal back up to 100% in between if you don’t get the damage bonus while you’re actually trying to attack.
Of course if you’re roaming there won’t be nearly as much retaliation but don’t expect to benefit from these traits in bigger groups much.

Wonder if it works on agony…. :P

The only good thing i can imagine for this trait is when we roam in wvw. we met a zerg turn around and they can;t chase us because we can’t be immobile or crippled or chilled. cause usually the one who can chase ele mostly thief spamming 2 to chase us and GS warrior…
it’s only useful in pve i think when we’re not getting hit as much as in wvw. and a normal hybrid necro spamming 3 marks will hit more than 2100 to a full ascended eq soldier ele

So what happens when an ele is above the threshold with the DS trait, has some boons up, and then a necro cast Corrupt Boon on the ele? Will it state “Immune” and does nothing? Will the ele lose his boons but not receive the corresponding conditions?

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Will the ele lose his boons but not receive the corresponding conditions?

That should be how it’s going to work.

Everyone realizes that Diamond Skin would not block “stun” nor “daze” correct? Those are effects and not conditions.

I just wish wish they would make a ring or something I could equip that would make me immune to conditions but had no other stats on it as the downside. I’d gladly lose a large chunk of stats to not have to worry about conditions. Then I could stick my stats where I want and not have to take all these mandatory traits just to survive the ridiculous condition spam.

one ring for immune to condi, another one for direct dmg.

Then we all could play like warriors! :p

zitounae.4803:

one ring for immune to condi, another one for direct dmg.

Then we all could play like warriors! :p

one ring to rule them all….
seriously though, I could see them doing something like that in the future. No one likes the condition spam, except for the ones doing the spamming. I’d gladly lose a large chunk of stats to be completely immune to it and laugh at those people. If they put something like that in the gem shop, no matter how much it cost, I would buy one for every single character I have in a heartbeat.

December tenth. Prepare yourselves for QQ storm.