Guild Wars 2

So we’ve all had a chance to get some experience with the new GrandMaster traits. So let’s start a poll here… How would you rate the Grandmaster Traits against each other? Taking all things into consideration (alternative GM traits, Trait Tree, meta builds, etc)

Example:

My list is as follows, in descending order from Best to Worst:

1. Lightning Rod
2. Aquatic Benevolence
3. Stone Heart
4. Blinding Ashes
5. Elemental Contingency

Bonus Question

Of all the new GM traits, do you use any of them in your ‘Go-To’ build, and why?

I completly agree with the list.
I am having a blast with 0/6/0/2/6 with dueling in OS and sometimes in yoloque as conditions devour me.If i use my interrupts wisely i can retain a steady pressure on any power build.

0/0/2/6/6 in wvw with cleric.The healing is nice but i think the old version is better as you need to be in a melee party where Stability is a must.Many times getting roflstomp even with the huge amount of healing.Also feeling kinda useless sometimes as dmg is terribad.

Not much to say about the other 3.Haven’t found any traits that i like with stoneheart.More than 25 points in earth seemed always as an overkill for me.

They are all useless in PvE.

As for Elemental Contingency I fail to understand how Anet could come to think it would be appreciated: the players have expressed times and times again their dislike for this kind of mechanic.

I <3 my Lightning Rod. Hell, I’ve been using the same spread as Graendall for that one.
I don’t mind Blinding Ashes, but its frequency of triggering seems a bit off.
Haven’t unlocked the remaining three yet, and I’m honestly no fan of AB, since it’s yet another “be support or gtfo” Trait. I (personally) prefer Nukemode.

they are all pretty much the last thing this profession needs, but i don’t expect arena net to fix it anytime soon.. so whatever

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

So we’ve all had a chance to get some experience with the new GrandMaster traits. So let’s start a poll here… How would you rate the Grandmaster Traits against each other? Taking all things into consideration (alternative GM traits, Trait Tree, meta builds, etc)

Example:

My list is as follows, in descending order from Best to Worst:

1. Lightning Rod
2. Aquatic Benevolence
3. Stone Heart
4. Blinding Ashes
5. Elemental Contingency

Bonus Question

Of all the new GM traits, do you use any of them in your ‘Go-To’ build, and why?

Elemental Contingency: Agreed on elemental contingency being the worst, being the class with lowest armor and hp pool I wouldn’t risk getting one shotted for boons I can get simply by switching attunements (besides retal.)

Blinding Ashes: Not bad, free blind every 5 seconds. Good timing can kill someones burst but isn’t worth losing my free might every fire spell

Stone Heart: No, not worth the deep investment into earth

Aquatic Benevolence: I don’t believe in healing (others)

Lighting Rod: Saved my butt a couple times mitigating bursts to give time to RTD away

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

My list is as follows, in descending order from Best to Worst:

1. Lightning Rod
2. Aquatic Benevolence
3. Stone Heart
4. Blinding Ashes
5. Elemental Contingency

Bonus Question

Of all the new GM traits, do you use any of them in your ‘Go-To’ build, and why?

I agree with that order.

I would say Lightning Rod and Aquatic Benevolence are about on the same level. And both for staff builds. Lightning rod could definitely have some value for zerker staff builds in WvW.

Stone heart (vs burst) and blinding ashes (1v1 I guess) seem very limited and I would never consider using them. Elemental contingency is all around useless due to extremely poor design with global ICD and purely passive skills like this don’t exactly promote skilled gameplay.

I have not tried any of these skills yet but probably will try lightning rod at some point.

Try using fresh air instead and activate glyph of elemental power in air attunement, you will apply 6s of weakness roughly every 5 seconds. Quick glyphs trait makes this glyph only have 6 seconds of down time. How do you feel about your lightning rod now? :|

I actually love them all, but I can’t find many uses to them except for pvp.

Stone Heart is just great as it is and except for D/D builds it will only serve as a retreat build.
Aquatic Belovelence is awesome for WvW, having 2-3 Cleric eles in a zerg is great. But if it gets popular and every Ele goes this way is really bad for the zerg.
Elemental Contingency, I can’t find a suitable use for this one although I love these effects because we get access to new boons. I would love if it would move down a tier.
Lightning Rod works for me only in WvW as Static Field is the bomb. Fresh Air,a nd even Tempest Defence is a lot better.
Blinding Flashes, it’s good, but it’s very build specific. Thief blinding is a lot better compared to this.

My list:

1. Stone Heart
2. Lightning Rod
3. Aquatic Benevolence
4. Blinding Ashes
5. Elemental Contingency

I have to admit here, i was wrong. When i heard about the trait i thought man that its terrible but it has won me over, Stone Skin is SO useful and works in pretty much any build. Helps against burst SO well. The most i have taken is like 3k from a Kill shot, we were just testing it compared to other attunements. In water i took nearly 6k damage, in Earth with the trait i took just over 3k damage.

The biggest issue i had (and still have) is the usefulness of being in Earth, especially D/D with its terrible auto attack. Ring of Earth is okay (would like Torment!) Magnetic Grasp bugs out SO much but useful when/if it decides to work. Earthquake is decent but on an insane cool down and Churning Earth, we all know about Churning Earth – insane cast time, no threat or punishment for just walking out of AoE and the cool down is insane. Really think it needs like the Cripple increased to 2-3 seconds per an application and have Torment in it as well as a threat so the player(s) have to choose – go out and take big Torment damage or stay in take less torment damage and try and dodge, invul, interrupt the cast.

Lightening Rod, i can’t comment. I havent used it so i think it would be pointless to say. The others i would say are poor. The healing, how does that help the ele? the class that needs it the most and gets no benefit? Pointless.

Blind a target every 5 seconds? Wow, totally worth going 30 into a terrible traitline..Oh wait. Its not. I was REALLY hoping for a Burning Damage increase or maybe something that makes having Burning and Chill on the target inflict a new ele only (and stay ele only!) condition. The Arcana one, pointless. Less than useless. a average set of boons most of which we already have access to tied to getting HIT the ONE thing we don’t want and even then the duration and stacks are pathetic combine that with the 10 second shared (as far as i could test) cool down makes it useless in every build.

Agree with the op’s list I haven’t given aquatic benevolence a good look yet.

I’ll need to do some testing with that trait I think it’s power is in speccing slightly into some healing maybe just a few clerics pieces rest into dps but still put out good healing. Just have to find the balance. I have a overkill set with monk runes I’ll probably try it this weekend.

Elemental Contingency is bad.

However, being hit to trigger the effect is not the problem. In fact, considering that you’ll always get hit somehow, no matter how much you may dodge or block, even if by a tiny burn tick, a random arrow, or a cleave auto-attack, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a 100% on hit effect.

The real problem with the trait is the global cooldown, and it’s not a small thing. It completely ruins the entire thing.

Blinding Ashes also suffers greatly – although not as much – as the arcana trait because of the global cooldown. It’s currently a trait that, on the surface, looks very exciting, but on practice, the global CD gives it plenty of hidden rules that makes it not work in almost every situation.

Lightning Rod is… perhaps decent for WvW zergs? The effect itself is nice, but I have a hard time triggering it in pvp. Fresh Air adds a lot more damage with a lot less effort, and generally the weakness duration is not enough to account for how rarely this effect triggers.

Stone Heart is a beauty. Except in PvE, but that’s because PvE’s monster design is horribly bland, as everyone knows.

The water trait looks cool, but it seems the kind of thing that works better in organized teams.

Sorry but other GM traits are far superior and cant drop them for any of those ones. Besides, almost all of them are not stronk enough to be a gm trait.

rhodoc.2381:

Sorry but other GM traits are far superior and cant drop them for any of those ones. Besides, almost all of them are not stronk enough to be a gm trait.

This thread isn’t about comparing the new traits to the old traits, it’s about ranking the new traits amongst themselves…

Huh, i actually have lightning rod and blinding ashes in swapped positions…. I’m not a fan of Lightning Rod at all, I don’t see the point of bringing that over say, Fresh Air + Glyph of Elemental Power, not to mention you have to interrupt someone and unless you’re running dagger/dagger we don’t have very many of those.

The Elemental Contingency trait could be really good if the CD wasn’t so high, if it was something that had like kitten CD? My god yes i’d rank that as one of the best traits we have because it’d make us something you didn’t wanna hit unless you were gonna try and burst us down. But with a 10s CD it just makes it sorta lack luster…

PS: Not saying Lightning Rod is BAD, just not as good as the other 3, not too big of a gap between the top 4 imo, but there’s a pretty big gap between 4 and 5 on my list…

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

Bonus Question

Of all the new GM traits, do you use any of them in your ‘Go-To’ build, and why?

Yes. Stone Heart. SO useful in pretty much any build but works really well in my condition D/D build. Of course it gets swapped out for Diamond Skin against Condition builds though.

rhodoc.2381:

Sorry but other GM traits are far superior and cant drop them for any of those ones. Besides, almost all of them are not stronk enough to be a gm trait.

That was a response for Bonus Question.

1 Lightning rod
Its fun and i use it in www.

2 Blinding ashes
Potentially fun but underpowered due to bad design (you can hit structures, pets and similar…).

3 Stone heart
Don t like it being on earth trait, it could be a nice active defence if the game didn t have evades already.

4 aquatic benevolence
Doesn t matter if it works or not.
Its contrary to game design to push ANY profession into the healer role.

5 elemental contingency
Useless

I think most of the new traits are useful in certain builds except Elemental Contingency. That trait just lookse useless.

I started playing my ele in WvW a lot lately And i’m really loving Aquatic Benevolence… The thing is, Cleansing water is really good as well which makes it hard to decide. I guess it comes down to if ur raid already has a lot of condi clear or not.

I feel like i’m the only one who really loves this trait. The only downside to it is that it doesn’t affect yourself.

I’d rank them like this (seen from a WvW perspective)

1. Aquatic Benevolence
2/3 Blinding Ashes / Lightning rod.
4. Stone Heart.
5. Elemental Contingency.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

My list:

1. Stone Heart
2. Lightning Rod
3. Aquatic Benevolence
4. Blinding Ashes
5. Elemental Contingency

I have to admit here, i was wrong. When i heard about the trait i thought man that its terrible but it has won me over, Stone Skin is SO useful and works in pretty much any build. Helps against burst SO well. The most i have taken is like 3k from a Kill shot, we were just testing it compared to other attunements. In water i took nearly 6k damage, in Earth with the trait i took just over 3k damage.

The biggest issue i had (and still have) is the usefulness of being in Earth, especially D/D with its terrible auto attack. Ring of Earth is okay (would like Torment!) Magnetic Grasp bugs out SO much but useful when/if it decides to work. Earthquake is decent but on an insane cool down and Churning Earth, we all know about Churning Earth – insane cast time, no threat or punishment for just walking out of AoE and the cool down is insane. Really think it needs like the Cripple increased to 2-3 seconds per an application and have Torment in it as well as a threat so the player(s) have to choose – go out and take big Torment damage or stay in take less torment damage and try and dodge, invul, interrupt the cast.

I’m really happy for you that you can appreciate it now

When fighting against thieves I would usually just sit on Earth and wait for him to burst or run away. If he decides to attack me I have confidence that I won’t get bursted so I can switch to offense anytime I decide to burst him. I really hope they add torment on Ring of Earth and rework Churning Earth so it can actually be useful in 1v1s or small scale fights.

@topic
1. Stone Heart AND Blinding Ashes
2 Aquatic Benevolence
3. Lightning Rod
4. Elemental Contingency

P.S
I haven’t tried LR in DD yet.

I haven’t started playing my ele again that much yet, but I’m curious how you guys are making Lightning Rod work? Doesn’t seem that good on paper at least. Are you just seeing it proc when you throw static field down? That enough to warrant its use?

I’m honestly a fan of scepter so was probably going to run a fresh air build but being able to simply swap to lightning rod and blasting staff and change to staff when running with a zerg seems cool too.

I think they’re all bad.

Stone heart is a good concept but there’s no good reason to spend any amount of time in earth, which means SH is 100% useless at least 75% of the time.

Blinding ashes is ruined by the 5sec GCD, which makes it far too unreliable.

1. Blinding Ashes: The best new addition hands down. Yes you still have to go through the fire tree, but it is a good GM trait for investing 30 in it compared to the other two and probably the whole line I would say it is the best trait.
2. Stone Heart: Niche but good, I don’t much care for passive stuff, but I will say they at least did this one right. If it was in effect out of earth attunement though I would name it as the worst addition but probably name it as best in slot.
At this point the new traits just get outshined by pre-existing ones.
3. Elemental Contigency: I gave it a try, and did find it was interesting, but just did not support the build better then both the current ones. In WvW I run an Arcane Ele and in sPvP DD when I play ele in it. So as much as this may have looked great on paper, it just did not play well over the other two. Evasive Arcana just out-shines it way to much. The retal on fire was about the best thing it gave me.
4. Aquatic Benevolence: A very niche trait built for more of running a support class, in PvE it doesn’t out-shine the zerker meta and in WvW and PvP you have a much better choice in Cleansing Water and for team support I would more then likely take Powerful Aura over this, granting an aura and whatever boons your traited to give with it is much more team help in my book then a bit more healing.
5. Lightning Rod: Why would you go this when you have a much better trait in slot called Fresh Air, as well Tempest Defense has great viability working on a similar mechanic to this. I really see no use for this at all compared to Tempest Defense but still Fresh Air will pretty much dominate the Air line.

In the end I do like what they are moving towards, but just hope they do some fine tuning or additions of some Master and Adept traits. It would be nice seeing Fire more viable in the lower end apart from conjure builds. It does show they are looking to open new builds and ideas. And I only rank Water below Arcane because of the choices apart from it are better in Water. Where as Arcane it is build dependant if the Arcane one is viable and otherwise you only have Evasive Arcana thus making Contigency a bit higher on the choice bracket.

Klocknov.8219:

1. Blinding Ashes: The best new addition hands down. Yes you still have to go through the fire tree, but it is a good GM trait for investing 30 in it compared to the other two and probably the whole line I would say it is the best trait.

Clearly you haven’t had random pets/critters/players stroll into your fire field and consuming your blind proc… This trait is bad because it’s not deterministic – you can’t choose who gets blinded unless it’s a single target burn or you’re only fighting one enemy in an empty field.

I’m actually really surprised at how many people have found Stone Heart to be a positive choice. I will have to go back and look at it again.

I didn’t like the idea of going into a tree with condition damage unless my plan was to use a condition build… and I have imagined to be lacking when comparing it against other classes. Perhaps I was mistaken? Have you guys had better luck with these condi builds?

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

I’m actually really surprised at how many people have found Stone Heart to be a positive choice. I will have to go back and look at it again.

I didn’t like the idea of going into a tree with condition damage unless my plan was to use a condition build… and I have imagined to be lacking when comparing it against other classes. Perhaps I was mistaken? Have you guys had better luck with these condi builds?

>Cue Ash showing up to talk about his condi build.

It does make sense though to have something like Stone Heart with a tree full of condi damage.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

I’m actually really surprised at how many people have found Stone Heart to be a positive choice.

Likewise… especially seeing as it’s 100% useless 75% or more of the time. Crazy.

scerevisiae.1972:

Klocknov.8219:

1. Blinding Ashes: The best new addition hands down. Yes you still have to go through the fire tree, but it is a good GM trait for investing 30 in it compared to the other two and probably the whole line I would say it is the best trait.

Clearly you haven’t had random pets/critters/players stroll into your fire field and consuming your blind proc… This trait is bad because it’s not deterministic – you can’t choose who gets blinded unless it’s a single target burn or you’re only fighting one enemy in an empty field.

Someone please correct me if I’m mistaken. From what I’ve observed, the Blind prioritizes your target. I’ve fought countless petting zoo builds and somehow I notice that I still blind my target. Yes, I run 6/0/0/2/6 build in dueling and team Queues.

Maybe I’m just really lucky or maybe this is how it really works. Need someone else to share their experience

Hey, I’ve been gone for quite a while. Two quick questions about the new traits:
1. Lightning Rod doesn’t have a cooldown, so that mean it affects all interrupted foes right? Like, if I interrupted 3 people with earthquake, they all get affected by it?

2. I’m guessing the answer is no, but does Stone Heart work with lingering elements?

Navzar.2938:

Hey, I’ve been gone for quite a while. Two quick questions about the new traits:
1. Lightning Rod doesn’t have a cooldown, so that mean it affects all interrupted foes right? Like, if I interrupted 3 people with earthquake, they all get affected by it?

2. I’m guessing the answer is no, but does Stone Heart work with lingering elements?

1) You’re correct

2) I’m almost positive it does since lingering elements makes you stay in your attumenets for X seconds after it ends. If you look down above your utility skills when you shift attunements while lingering attunements is equipped you’ll technically still be in the previous attunement.

Durzlla.6295:

Navzar.2938:

2. I’m guessing the answer is no, but does Stone Heart work with lingering elements?

2) I’m almost positive it does since lingering elements makes you stay in your attumenets for X seconds after it ends. If you look down above your utility skills when you shift attunements while lingering attunements is equipped you’ll technically still be in the previous attunement.

Im afraid you are wrong. The devs have already confirmed that Lingering Elements only affects the 5point traits and does NOT work with Stone Heart

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Durzlla.6295:

Navzar.2938:

2. I’m guessing the answer is no, but does Stone Heart work with lingering elements?

2) I’m almost positive it does since lingering elements makes you stay in your attumenets for X seconds after it ends. If you look down above your utility skills when you shift attunements while lingering attunements is equipped you’ll technically still be in the previous attunement.

Im afraid you are wrong. The devs have already confirmed that Lingering Elements only affects the 5point traits and does NOT work with Stone Heart

This is why lingering elements should be combined with the 1 point trait in Arcana… Also wish they would make Elemental Attunement a natural part of changing attunements so the Ele had more potential hybrid builds.