Guild Wars 2

Yes, this is about the removal of Evasive Arcana. It’s so bad now, it might as well be an empty trait slot now. Earth and Fire do pitiful damage. Earth is advertised as Churning Earth on dodge roll, but besides the looks it’s nothing like the actual spell.
So we have a useless spell by sacrificing half our dodge bar, for either pitiful damage, or a weak heal.

Evasive Arcana made playing Staff Elementalist somewhat fun. Now I wasn’t a fan of the staff, but it was ok to use in some of the dungeons. With Evasive Arcana on I could add nice support to me and my team by sacrificing endurance, which I don’t need much of in the backlines. It would add extra depth to an otherwise bland and boring playstyle. Promote careful positioning. I had to be aware of where my teammates were, and plan my combo fields in such ways it would benefit them most. I had to look for opportunities to cast strategically placed water fields within my current dodge reach to save teammate’s lives. It was an excuse to get into the frontlines, just to activate a useful combo field (risk vs. reward).
With the removal of Evasive Arcana I’m stuck in the backlines. I have no excuse to move from that position whatsoever. I’ll just stand there and fling spells at a comfortable 1.200 distance. What a fun I’ll have.
My fields will sit there, unused as they disappear before my teammates notice it’s there, or as they have their finishers on cooldowns, or are too busy struggling to keep themselves alive. They’ll only get triggered through luck, or maybe I should go on a voicechat with my PUG to tell them everytime I plan on placing a combo field near them.

As a dual dagger Elementalist it was the only reliable way to grant myself an extra few might stacks, for a little extra damage. I guess being on the frontlines as the profession with lowest base HP, lowest defence and lowest armour was considered too powerful with a few extra might stacks on them.

And there I thought traits were supposed to change my character’s playstyle. I suppose I was expecting too much.

To add something constructive to the post: If Evasive Arcana was abused, why not split it for PvP? Or why not add a 10 second limit on when the blast finisher can be activated again? Why is the blast finisher completely gone on the EA version of Churning Earth?

This post explains things so well that I’m inclined to swim across the Atlantic just to make sure some dev reads it.

They’d be too busy posting on the Warrior forum, and planning the next Mesmer buffs anyway.=P

For staff Ele’s, evasive arcana is now a complete waste of 10 point in arcane and a trait slot. It’s even a nerf for D/D and S/D users (cause they can’t might stack with it, and the healing component has been reduced) but they’ll still have to take it as it’s a significant chunk of their self-healing and they need faster attunement rotations.

I fully expected them to take away the blast finishers when the skills themselves weren’t activated (i.e., but blasts on the 10s cooldown)…

I never expected this.

I loved my healing/support staff build for solo PvE and WvW, I specifically played the class to fulfill that role, now it looks like all those folks I kept up with my healing are on their own. If there were going to take away 50% of our healing potential, they could have at least buffed some of our damage skills to make up for it. It’s not as if Ele’s were tearing up the world exactly. As it is, the class is now merely a subpar bunker (guardians and Engi’s will do it WAY better, hell Guardians already did BEFORE the nerf and they didn’t see the nerf bat at all, save fixing the block bug which was obviously necessary) and our glass cannon builds can’t hold a candle to thieves and mesmers (even AFTER the thief nerfs). What exactly are we good at now? The class as D/D will still make a decent roamer I suppose… /sigh

I’m simultaneously disgusted, distraught, and tempted to go do research on the Elder Scrolls online all at the same time. I’m not sure I have the stomach right now to work on my guardian alt… thanks for nothing.

Yes, and complaints about bunkers aside, it’s not as if they were all that difficult to counter. Snares, weakness and immobilizes all worked great. And you could see them coming from a mile away too: if an ele put down a geyser, then you knew what was coming next.

It was too good before, endless blast finishers didnt seem intended. it probably needs a buff now though.

Yes, but nobody’s claiming the endless blast finishers shouldn’t have been fixed. What we complain about is the fact that they were moved entirely.

It just needs to work as the tooltip describes. If it actually cast a proper Churning Earth, instead of the pathetic mini-shockwave, that alone would almost qualify it for being stupidly good again.

If the tooltip is to be believed, CE is the only dodge that should ever have procced a finisher.

I think it’s a shame that when they were ‘fixing’ it, they didn’t fix it all the way, and instead left it half finished, and almost universally garbage, but it definitely comes as absolutely no surprise that it lost the finishers it was never supposed to have in the first place.

Arc.9374:

It just needs to work as the tooltip describes. If it actually cast a proper Churning Earth, instead of the pathetic mini-shockwave, that alone would almost qualify it for being stupidly good again.

If the tooltip is to be believed, CE is the only dodge that should ever have procced a finisher.

I think it’s a shame that when they were ‘fixing’ it, they didn’t fix it all the way, and instead left it half finished, and almost universally garbage, but it definitely comes as absolutely no surprise that it lost the finishers it was never supposed to have in the first place.

This I would agree with. If they want to give me a full Churning earth (including the 7 stacks of bleed and the full direct damage coefficient) I could respec from healing/support and go more glass cannony to use EA offensively. I wouldn’t like it (cause I prefer to heal/support) but I could live with it.

As it is, EA is now a wasteful trait for any staff user. D/D and S/D users might still grab it as that setup requires faster attunement swaps and benefits greatly from the marginal heal attached to the dodge-roll in water…

Yes, and complaints about bunkers aside, it’s not as if they were all that difficult to counter. Snares, weakness and immobilizes all worked great. And you could see them coming from a mile away too: if an ele put down a geyser, then you knew what was coming next.

This is the other part I don’t understand. Was the full staff-bunker Ele overpowered? Probably. Especially considering they nerfed burst from others classes (e.g., thieves). But we weren’t even the best bunker out there, guardians did it better. They get the predictable block bugfix, and a few minor tweaks here and there. We get a 50% healing nerf and a near complete class redesign. Guardians are going to be EVERYWHERE in tPvP now, they will be nigh-unkillable. Burst was nerfed, and the best bunker stayed the same. Good freakin’ luck! I for one welcome our new guardian bunker overlords.

/sigh

Well said and I agree 100%.

Complete removal of blast finishers from Evasive Arcana makes the trait nigh useless and significantly impacts the enjoyment of play for many, many staff Elementalists.

As nearly every post on the first page of the Elementalist is imploring: Please consider putting some form of blast finisher back into Evasive Arcana. Nerf is fine… complete and utter removal is overkill.

Thanks.

What needs to happen if Evasive Arcana was meant to be a useless trait slot is to make other traits more attractive.
Right now I’m looking into re-speccing, but the only choice I have is between kittens and kittens…

Milennin.4825:

What needs to happen if Evasive Arcana was meant to be a useless trait slot is to make other traits more attractive.
Right now I’m looking into re-speccing, but the only choice I have is between kittens and kittens…

Yeah, I’ve been pining over the build editor all day… trying to find SOMETHING even remotely as fun as EA/Staff… I’ve no desire to even check out any of the Lost Shores stuff until I can figure out my Elementalist.

The fact that I wasted probably a hundred hours of my life building up my gear to go with my staff/EA build… is another story altogether.

The SPCA doesn’t have enough kittens for me to unleash right now. >.<

Sokay, new wonderful gear treadmill now so we have to re-gear anyways. Eh…./shudder.

Uhm, hopefulley someone can figure out a spec that was as fun as the pre-nerf EA staff builds. Daggers are cool and all but I really dug the staff and it’s hard to simply just drop it……but I doubt it though, I been over those traits a buncha times and I can’t see it ever happening.

Maybe some form of Arcane finishers build. That way at least you’ll have some form of flexability.

Could do that, have to drop my cantrips though. I love me cantrips. /hugs teleport and wont let go!

Won’t be the same though and on long CDs too.

I played primarily dual daggers, and I still miss Evasive Arcana a lot. It was a lot of fun, and added an extra layer of active gameplay over the already active DD gameplay. Like being in the middle of kicking butt, seeing your Ranger teammate at low HP standing in a Healing Spring. Quick! Dodge roll into it, heal yourself and your teammate back up, and get back into the fight with Ride the Lightning like a badkitten.
Meh, I’ll just stuck to kicking butt now. I enjoy dual dagger gameplay, but I’ll miss that extra layer of support that Evasive Arcana gave me.

As for Staff. I don’t think I’ll bother with it anymore. If I wanted an afk profession I’d go back on my Guardian. Fun and active combat on my staff Elementalist is pretty much gone now…