Guild Wars 2

Talking Role
the current role of the elementalist is to support teammembers in skirmishes or teamfights by giving them boons, cleansing conditions, healing them and ccing enemies.

yesterday was shown that the trait elemental attunement will be moved to the grandmaster tier, resulting in the forced choice between it and evasive arcana.

what does this mean for the elementalist’s role and its place in the current meta?

first of all this change will result in 1 less cleanse for the team because you either lose the regeneration on water attunement or the water dodge roll, both reomivng one condition.

furthermore you will either lose your aoe boons or your water heal, both very important in a team fight and will thus cripple the ele’s role.

Concurrence
there are several classes that take on the role of a team supporter, the two strongest (not including ele) beeing shoutbow and altruistic healing shout guard.
both of these specs (correct me if i’m wrong) have been buffed yesterday.

guardian is currently less viable because of the fact that this build can’t accomplish much on its own compared to ele or warrior.

warrior on the other hand is highly demanded and almost every team is running at least one.
the devs told us yesterday that mending will now also become a shout, making it heal for 5751 + 2055 on a 16s cooldown while removing 4 conditions and will therefore outclass healing signet which is on a 392 hp/s.

this change will bring your team additional 2055 heal and a condi cleanse.
i don’t want to complain about warriors here but list the results of yesterday’s proposed changes.

Conseuquences
what will this mean for the elementalist?

the elementalist is now able to pick the full earth line, giving it access to rock solid and stone heart, very strong traits; at least in 1v1 situations.

the changes to elementalist take away his effectiveness in teamfights but increase his strength in a 1v1 fight.
the damage output of an elementalist, compared to an engineer for example, is not that high and fights will generally take too long to bring them to an end before reinforcement arrives due to rotations.

what does the elementalist have over, for example, a shoutbow?

assuming we take evasive arcana over elemental attunement, the elementalist will not be able to give his team protection anymore. with rock solid on the other hand we will be able to give our team 1 stack of stability (2s) every 10s which is quite strong.
stability is generally used to stomp downed enemies. with meditation guards in the meta there is already access to stability and makes this less important even if it’s on a shorter cooldown than the virtue.

the elementalist offers great mobility and a fiery greatsword, let’s not forget this. the question is, is it necessary? is it better than a banner? (again, not attacking warriors, but warriors are in the same role and the ele’s concurrence).
there are also ele’s good soft and hard ccs that we shouldn’t overlook.

Conclusion
Overall the elementalist gets pushed out more and more of the meta, not because the build will be weak but because there is no place for the tanky 1v1 build that celestial d/d is going towards to.

other elementalist builds have not really been buffed either, as the other semi viable build, s/f fresh air, has lost a portion of its damage while gaining more active defense in return. this is nice in a way but then again other berserk predators like the thief have also been buffed in a, in my opinion, disturbing way.

so if the devs read this:
please take another look at the ele changes, i don’t mind if you change d/d to the point where it’s not viable as a support role anymore but if you do that then buff other builds so that they will become viable on a high level. if you can’t to that then keep elemental attunement as a master trait, and not a grandmaster.

BUMP #ELESUNITE LET US BE HEARD

Let’s be honest here, these new changes do not really benefit the elementalist in a significant manner when you compare it to other classes.

So we have more builds, that is cool and great but out damage has been destroyed completely. Some builds like fresh air are now worthless. Staff is still a worthless weapon, due to how slow its attacks are. D/D will simply moved to a earth, air and arcane build and end up with a lesser damaging build.

Our ultilities suck when compared to cantrips so you know most people are going back to cantrip. Conjures are getting nerf and still suck since you loss access to all your skills for mediocre one.

With the current changes, everybody in PvP is going for 3 to 4 cantrips. The developers must bring our other skill types to the level of cantrip or we are going back to mainly cantrip builds.
TL;DR

Arenanet did a great job of creating more builds by virtue of allowing us to have 6/6/6, however this was actually a very significant nerf tot the elementalist damage in both PvE and PvP. This changes doesn’t improve fire , it simply guts air and Arcane. If they want build diversity Arena net should consider fixing the fire trait lines instead of nerfing air and Arcane.

Maybe they can finally reverse the pre-release/beta damage nerfs Ele got, so at least we have 1 role? I’d honestly need to see all the changes implemented before I can say we are over/underpowered or anything that would make sense.

D/D is taking yet another hit:

Josh Davis.6015:

The amulets will be rebalanced to compensate for the loss of stats originally gained from trait lines.

This is probably as good of a place as any to mention that we’ll also be using this opportunity to rebalance PvP’s celestial amulet to be slightly less effective. We’re probably looking at a 10%~ decrease in overall stats, but this number can change as we draw closer to releasing the core specialization changes.

(source)

While this is not a nerf that only targets eles, since Shoutbow warriors or engis also use that amulet it’s still noticable on top of the Elemental Attunement change.

Edit: To be clear here, shaving off some stats (~5%) of celestial is OK in my opinion, but moving EA to Grandmaster level seems like too much and it’s pushing Eles into yet another defensive line instead of being able to pick some offensive traits.

Just play an engie:

They are getting more fields from mortar to complement healing turret.
They are getting our blast on-dodge (OPAF with healing turret).
They already have way more damage.
They are getting more mobility with improved swiftness.
They already have way more CC to set up bursts.

Engineer IS what you used to enjoy about ele. I am predicting ele is going back to the trash-bin for another year until they buff it back up to heaven for a year (and the cycle continues b/c they have no idea what makes eles work).

While d/d ele is getting SOME buffs to counteract the nerfs, its about as strong as it used to be. Every other class got buffed sky-high and even today’s D/D would seem weak in comparison. Also, they are further pigeon-holing you into cantrips further. Sigh…