Guild Wars 2

With the removal of Celestial, a lot of the “sustain” of the Elementalist/Tempest will be removed, which while I agree is certainly more balanced than the current situation we’re in, will need to be addressed somehow.

We need a way to “have” some healing power in our build without necessarily getting it default from our amulets. We need it to be something that we have to earn rather than being passive and “free.” This is why I propose the following suggestion to add some new functionality to an underused trait:

Piercing Shards:

While attuned to water, your spells deal more damage to vulnerable foes. Vulnerability lasts longer. Gain 50 Healing Power each time you apply Vulnerability to a foe while Attuned to Water. Max stacks 10.

Damage Damage Increase: 20%
Vulnerability Duration Increased: 33%
“*Soothing Fragments*” Increased Healing Power per stack (8s): 50 Healing Power
Maximum Stacks: 10

The duration is just long enough to maintain it if you can consistently land Ice Spike or Shatterstone with Staff and Scepter respectively, or if sustaining your Vapor Blade with Dagger. Alternatively, you could Glyph of Storms Air then swap to Water for very rapid stacks.

This would really change a good portion of “how” Water Attunement is used for healing, as you ideally would want to stack up Vulnerability with the offensive skills before using the Healing skills to get more bang for your buck.

Additionally, this may improve some builds which want to camp Water for supportive reasons.

To me, this is a very health change because it promotes actually staying in Water long enough to use a variety of skills instead of merely flying through Water, blowing cool-downs on the heals, and swapping out. It also lets non-Healing Power amulets have access to more sustain if they work for it.

I think this could go a long way toward “filling the sustain gap” that will be missing once Celestial Amulet is no longer available, and I know on my damage or healing builds, I could definitely find use for this trait.

Coupled with some healthy changes to other Water attunement abilities on Scepter and Focus, I could see this being a very fun trait to work with.

Sounds powerful, but not too powerful considering our loss. You have my support

If only scepter auto water would have vulnerability on it or number 2 applied more

I mean what’s the point? First of all, it’s a trait made for dps, the fact it doesn’t work is another thing, but why would any burst spec want this? The bit of healing power they get will be pretty meaningless for them since stuff doesn’t scale that well and they do not have that much access to healing anyways. Adding more healing as defense is not really that great either, since what ele needs is more active defense, not running around in circles and healing.

Second of all, why would any support spec take this? They would be forced into traits that apply vulnerability, which would colide with other support traits. Makes no sense for me. Or just depend on the few vuln stacks from skills and imo that’s not worth it. LIke really, the worst thing you can do is to camp water on DD and spam AA. We need less camping, not more.

Tldr, Soothing Ice still would be better.

Henrik.7560:

Sounds powerful, but not too powerful considering our loss. You have my support

If only scepter auto water would have vulnerability on it or number 2 applied more

Agreed! I really hope they consider the suggestions for adding Vulnerability to it and making it a bit more “interacting” with the rest of the kit from Water Attunement weapons.

I seriously hope it gains some benefit when hitting Chilled foes, like additional damage or Vulnerability. I’d love to see Water Scepter all about setting up and exploiting burst options after a bit of a build up.

My idea on the other post is to have Scepter and Focus pair really well in Water Attunement for consistent damage with some burst periods, while still providing sustain, so that Glassy builds like Berserker and Marauder would still have a reason to use Water attunement for more than a quick fly-by, and some dedicated builds could be designed for more supportive builds that camp water a bit, much like how there is a viable option to currently do so with Staff’s auto.

Laraley.7695:

I mean what’s the point? First of all, it’s a trait made for dps, the fact it doesn’t work is another thing, but why would any burst spec want this? The bit of healing power they get will be pretty meaningless for them since stuff doesn’t scale that well and they do not have that much access to healing anyways. Adding more healing as defense is not really that great either, since what ele needs is more active defense, not running around in circles and healing.

Second of all, why would any support spec take this? They would be forced into traits that apply vulnerability, which would colide with other support traits. Makes no sense for me. Or just depend on the few vuln stacks from skills and imo that’s not worth it. LIke really, the worst thing you can do is to camp water on DD and spam AA. We need less camping, not more.

Tldr, Soothing Ice still would be better.

TLDR reply: I’d personally find it very useful for many builds over using Soothing Ice or SDR.

The point if it is to provide sufficient healing power for the Elementalist to provide at least a moderate amount of healing with any build if they “build up” to it, rather than simply having a passive trait that just gives the stats.

As the profession with the absolute “least” amount of passive baked in “toughness” and “vitality” in the form of base armor and health values, it stands to reason we need more options available in our traits to help cover these innately lower defenses.

With this trait suggestion, there is the potential to add 500 Healing Power to a build if you are good at maintaining the condition of applying Vulnerability before dropping the heal skills. If Anet ever decides to make Healing Power more valuable by lowering the base healing of skills and making the HP scaling better across the board, a trait like this will be incredibly useful, but even with current values, 500 HP isn’t really that bad, especially in fights where your healing skills are able to hit multiple allies.

While I agree that Eles need good active defenses, I think healing is, and should remain, a core part of their survivability, and its a role that they should be able to embrace to at least a moderate amount while using Water Attunement with any build that is equipping it as a trait line, regardless of if their amulet has healing power on it.

Seems very interesting and brings a rewarding “mini game” to the water attunement. Especially Ice Spike, which can deal an interesting amount of vulnerability.

Though, I do not like the problems faced when swapping out of water during cast will block the passive.

Though, greatly reduce the number of stacks to balance the on-hit ratios. Otherwise, dagger 1 becomes way stronger than ice spike.

1. Reduce Stack amounts to at least 5.
2. 80 or 60 healing power per stack.
3. Does stack refresh each other, or do they have an individual duration?

In addition, Weak Spot (Air Grandminor) needs to be 100% chance per crit to apply vulnerability, or apply 2 stacks of vulnerability at the same time.

tbh if you want something that fits the name.. all skills while in water attunement become unblockable and deal vulnerability.

I can see this as an idea to boost a very specific build that spams water staff 2 while healing… tried it, it’s interesting but falls short on damage, the new runes would help but it lacks healing …. why not trying runes instead to cover this up? I like the idea and the build, but really don’t see it going with the trait theme as mentioned above…. I wish they could move it to air attunement, and bring the swiftness on aura to water as replacement.

I always use this trait on my Ele (Water Ele in heart), and I too, hate people associate water with pure healing. I like what you suggest here, or perhaps this…?

(While attuned to water, your spells deal more damage to vulnerable foes. Vulnerability lasts longer. Vulnerable foes also take damage from Chill condition!) Ele’s chill really should be able to deal damage! It make no sense only necro can.