Guild Wars 2

I was looking through the traits and skills the other day and just for kicks and giggles decided to see if I could combine a couple of them to get a really high speed air build. The 5 point minor in air claims to give a 10% speed boost. The Signet of Air claims to give a 10% speed boost. The Arcane IX major trait claims to give a 15% boost when using a dagger. If the percentages are added, then with just those I should be doing 35% but as far as I can tell, the actual speed increase is slim to none. The only trait that seems to give any noticeable increase in speed at all is Air IV which gives up to 25% speed for staying longer in air. However with the Signet of Air, Zephyr’s Speed, and Windborne Dagger, I should already be seeing a noticeable increase in speed that I’m not actually seeing.

So my question: Has anyone done any testing with these to see if any of them actually stack or how? Or are they bugged?

Speed increases do not stack (including swiftness!).

IE you get the biggest increase and ONLY the biggest increase. Yes that makes a significant number of Ele traits and skills completely pointless.

This is probably one of the more frustrating things about air. It has a lot of elements associated with increased movement speed, but because of how movement speed boosts work in this game, most of them are completely useless. The build I use keeps me in perpetual swiftness, basically. So the Signet of Air, Zephyr’s Speed, Windborne Dagger, and One with Air are worthless to me. It’s nice that I’m only actually forced to take one of those, but it’s rather upsetting. I don’t think there’s a single other profession or even trait line that has a problem like this, where it’s just packed with redundancies.

A smart move would be to make at least one of these bonuses be able to stack, or possibly roll them into each other, like making Zephyr’s Speed give the 10% but then gain One with Air’s growing speed boost, or perhaps, as cooldown-reducing traits combined with secondary effects become more common, combine Aeromancer’s Alacrity with One with Air, at least to make it a tiny bit more appealing.

Also, regarding One with Air, let’s be frank here: what elementalist actually stays in air attunement (or any attunement) for a full 50 seconds? Besides when travelling, which if you actually spec into air there are methods for keeping up permanent swiftness anyway? This trait either needs to have the boost grow significantly faster or just give the full bonus upfront. Also, it’s completely useless for a whole ten seconds? What the kitten?

Very disappointed with Elementalist, level 63 and still die in 1 hit. Average dmg with D/D (level 60 Rare daggers) vs same level mobs, damage just does not add up. When I see someone dropping 10000 damage in the amount of time I drop 500 damage is sad.