Guild Wars 2

We all know Diamond Skin is a terribly designed trait: It is either a straight-up hard-counter or completely useless. So let’s talk about some options to improve it.

Here is my suggestion:

Conditions of the following types have no effect on you while in the corresponding attunement:
Fire: Burn does no damage
Air: Weakness has no effect
Earth: Cripple, chill, (and immob maybe) have no effect
Water: Bleed and torment has no effect

This is a very high-skill trait, and since no ele spec can camp any single attunement has lots of interesting counterplay.

Please post your own ideas below, as this needs to be addressed regardless.

Fire: confusion/burn have no effect
Air: weakness and slow have no effect

2nd Suggestion: Condition duration is reduced by 66% while attuned to earth

3rd Suggestion: Apply 2 and 1/2s of resistance boon when you swap to earth

Supreme.3164:

Fire: confusion/burn have no effect
Air: weakness and slow have no effect

2nd Suggestion: Condition duration is reduced by 66% while attuned to earth

3rd Suggestion: Apply 2 and 1/2s of resistance boon when you swap to earth

I like all of these. One of the major problems with eles is that our only REAL choice for condi cleanse is going water-line. Ether renewal would be another option, but trickery thieves just make it pvp-unviable. I was thinking of this while watching a podcast by shinryuku and arken on warrior/guardian traits. Warriors have condi cleanse options ALL OVER THE PLACE, including some good utilities to handle it too.

Eles have water as the only TRUE option. The fire trait is garbage, and with the loss of evasive arcana it gets even worse.

Your suggestions would make it more of an element swapping skill, which would make it more of and Arcane specialization trait than and Earth one.

I honestly like the first change suggested in this thread. Switching attunements on the fly to avoid specific condition stacks could lead to some really interesting and dynamic gameplay. Seems right up the ele’s alley in my opinion.

Simple suggestion: Gain 5s of Resistance when struck while above 90% health (5s CD)

I actually love it in its current state. Steamrolling those WvW perplexity cheese horsepoop builds without them being able to do jack kitten is just priceless. Kinda giving them some of their own medicine.
There’s those 2 servers in EU where literally EVERYONE who’s doing some kind of small scale roaming is running perplexity, regardless of class even, and I really don’t wanna miss my cheese build against theirs. 1v3ing a guild roaming group while staying at a healthy 95% HP because those guys decided a condi spamming necro isn’t enough and therefor went perplexity on their 2 kittening warriors is too glorious to rework.

Whilst in earth, conditions have no effect or When you attune to earth, gain Diamond Skin for 5s.

With EA moved to GM, the condi clear of ele will take a hit, a reworked diamond skin now would be ideal

how about -75% (number may vary) condi duration when not moving.

Dirame.8521:

Whilst in earth, conditions have no effect or When you attune to earth, gain Diamond Skin for 5s.

That’d be OP as hell. Even if it was resistance, that’d be like 57% uptime if you also go into arcana. Sounds pretty nuts. I’d be fine with a 4 sec Resistance (not full immunity) but as someone had said, it just doesn’t fit the idea of earth to be focused on attunement boons.

I would love, however, for them to add Resistance to elementalist somehow.

Remove conditions periodically when you have an aura on you.
Conditions removed : 1
Interval : 3 seconds

Just like the thief’s trait Shadow’s Embrace which is an adapt trait…

Could you make Windborn Dagger baseline too ?

with the difference that thieves gan go into stealth every 4s and auras have 20-40s cooldowns.

Lihne.4760:

Remove conditions periodically when you have an aura on you.
Conditions removed : 1
Interval : 3 seconds

Just like the thief’s trait Shadow’s Embrace which is an adapt trait…

Could you make Windborn Dagger baseline too ?

Unlikely, since the have a signet that basically does the same thing with a much longer CD (Signet of Water). I’d rather have them make this what the signet does.

Jekkt.6045:

with the difference that thieves gan go into stealth every 4s and auras have 20-40s cooldowns.

With some of the aura traits it could trigger more often, but the proposed trait would basically be useless without those others slotted, i.e. would just be for auramancers.

how about

get 2s of resistance for every earth skill you use that has a cooldown. this would at least make people use churning earth against condi classes lol.

How about instead of giving them more terrible ideas to ruin the class we first give them suggestions to fix the other terrible traits? Yes diamond skin is passive and blah blah blah, but it seems Arena net doesn’t know what to do with the elementalist anything that gives them an advantage until the other issues in fire, air and arcane are fix is a win win.

Also as for the first suggestion about making it attunement based, how would you know what conditions are incoming to change to the proper attunement? The only class you could predict is the guardian or other ele making the trait worthless. Passive play is bad yes, but the game is full of it and if you want to get rid of it, you should start with classes that are currently too powerful not classes that have been nerfed to the ground.

silvermember.8941:

How about instead of giving them more terrible ideas to ruin the class we first give them suggestions to fix the other terrible traits? Yes diamond skin is passive and blah blah blah, but it seems Arena net doesn’t know what to do with the elementalist anything that gives them an advantage until the other issues in fire, air and arcane are fix is a win win.

Also as for the first suggestion about making it attunement based, how would you know what conditions are incoming to change to the proper attunement? The only class you could predict is the guardian or other ele making the trait worthless. Passive play is bad yes, but the game is full of it and if you want to get rid of it, you should start with classes that are currently too powerful not classes that have been nerfed to the ground.

While I don’t agree with the suggested trait change you are responding to, you could also predict conditions coming for PvE enemies (again wouldn’t want this trait to happen, but you were clearly only thinking of the PvP side of the trait.)

Weyrd.2794:

silvermember.8941:

How about instead of giving them more terrible ideas to ruin the class we first give them suggestions to fix the other terrible traits? Yes diamond skin is passive and blah blah blah, but it seems Arena net doesn’t know what to do with the elementalist anything that gives them an advantage until the other issues in fire, air and arcane are fix is a win win.

Also as for the first suggestion about making it attunement based, how would you know what conditions are incoming to change to the proper attunement? The only class you could predict is the guardian or other ele making the trait worthless. Passive play is bad yes, but the game is full of it and if you want to get rid of it, you should start with classes that are currently too powerful not classes that have been nerfed to the ground.

While I don’t agree with the suggested trait change you are responding to, you could also predict conditions coming for PvE enemies (again wouldn’t want this trait to happen, but you were clearly only thinking of the PvP side of the trait.)

I hope you do know that all the post in these thread are speaking entirely from the PvP side. It is only in PvP where people are extremely against passive play, not to say PvEer are not but PvPer are far more.

I’m aware, but if you are talking about changing a trait for the entire class, then the effect needs to be looked at in terms of both PvE and PvP. If you’re just talking about what’s wrong with it, then sure you can ignore one side or the other.

When discussing change all traits actually need to be evaluated so that you can be sure you have a balance of traits that are useful for PvP and PvE (since it is not always possible to make a trait useful for both.) Of course that would be a nightmare to do on a forum thread and should be what the developers are doing in their own internal discussions.

Weyrd.2794:

I’m aware, but if you are talking about changing a trait for the entire class, then the effect needs to be looked at in terms of both PvE and PvP. If you’re just talking about what’s wrong with it, then sure you can ignore one side or the other.

When discussing change all traits actually need to be evaluated so that you can be sure you have a balance of traits that are useful for PvP and PvE (since it is not always possible to make a trait useful for both.) Of course that would be a nightmare to do on a forum thread and should be what the developers are doing in their own internal discussions.

That might be what you are doing but that is not what everyone else is doing and certainly not what the developers are doing.

BTW I am not saying you shouldn’t talk about PvE and just saying you are talking on the wrong page with the others.

Supreme.3164:

2nd Suggestion: Condition duration is reduced by 66% while attuned to earth

3rd Suggestion: Apply 2 and 1/2s of resistance boon when you swap to earth

I like these suggestions. It is so simple.

Weyrd.2794:

Your suggestions would make it more of an element swapping skill, which would make it more of and Arcane specialization trait than and Earth one.

This.

Its true that mostly no ele can’t camp an attunement. But that seems to be what they want to change.

With some changes (see my post on the other topic) I think earth attunement could be a good one to camp (when spec to it) for tanking. You can quick go into water to heal and fire/air to burst, returning to earth to mantain sustain. Arcana (if they fix lingering elements) would help making the swap fast, while keeping the protections longer.
Other option is to use conjures in earth. Having higher dmg with LH or high might stacks with LA but still keeping full earth attune defense.

BlackBeard.2873:

We all know Diamond Skin is a terribly designed trait: It is either a straight-up hard-counter or completely useless. So let’s talk about some options to improve it.

Here is my suggestion:

Conditions of the following types have no effect on you while in the corresponding attunement:
Fire: Burn does no damage
Air: Weakness has no effect
Earth: Cripple, chill, (and immob maybe) have no effect
Water: Bleed and torment has no effect

This is a very high-skill trait, and since no ele spec can camp any single attunement has lots of interesting counterplay.

Please post your own ideas below, as this needs to be addressed regardless.

Dude, I looked at this thread and immediately though: sth. with resistances depending on attunement would be cool, so I already like your basic idea.

It’s also true that diamond skin as it is now is just horrible.

I also like your proposed change, I think it’s a very good idea that allows for smart play for both the ele and his opponent. Much better than just having tons and tons of condition-remove, cuz at least the opposing player can keep CD’s of the attunemts in mind and add the right condis at the right time.

Based on attunment, removes single condition every sec. Removes all when atunning.
Fire- Burning/Torment/Weakness
Air- Bleed/Vuln./Blindness
Water- Poison/Chilled/Fear
Earth- Confusion/Cripple/Immobilize

It may be “immune” rather than “remove per sec”.

give it resistance as bonus (idc on what activation) or keep it the old way. I don’t wanna swap and camp my attunements because otherwise i get a crapload of condi on me.

Reduce incoming condition duration of damaging conditions by ~50-67% of your current health %age.

Reduce incoming condition duration of all other conditions by ~40% of your current health %age.

The exact value of condition reduction is entirely up for debate, but this seems reasonable. Having the damaging conditions reduction too high would make conditions that don’t have many duration increases (eg torment) essentially unapplyable initially (like the current trait) but with no real relief once 10% damage has been done.

As the ele takes more damage, their “diamond skin” cracks and becomes less effective.

My 2 cents:
You gain resistance when your endurance is full.
Duration: 2 s
Pulses every 2 seconds (When endurance is full)

This would really change your playstyle and would reward active play (only dodging when absolutely necessary).

Dragonic Elemental.2674:

My 2 cents:
You gain resistance when your endurance is full.
Duration: 2 s
Pulses every 2 seconds (When endurance is full)

This would really change your playstyle and would reward active play (only dodging when absolutely necessary).

More like passive play. Don’t dodge if you don’t want condi necro to kill you.

I as condi necro don t rly have a problem with Diamond Skin ( I run carrion), but I actually like these changes as it gives a bit of diversity from the other ele builds.

BlackBeard.2873:

We all know Diamond Skin is a terribly designed trait: It is either a straight-up hard-counter or completely useless. So let’s talk about some options to improve it.

Here is my suggestion:

Conditions of the following types have no effect on you while in the corresponding attunement:
Fire: Burn does no damage
Air: Weakness has no effect
Earth: Cripple, chill, (and immob maybe) have no effect
Water: Bleed and torment has no effect

This is a very high-skill trait, and since no ele spec can camp any single attunement has lots of interesting counterplay.

Please post your own ideas below, as this needs to be addressed regardless.

I actually like your suggested change! But I think Water one is too OP. Should be just bleed. Air seems to be abit weak, maybe immune to vulnerable too. Also instead of outright immune the incoming conditon, it should act more like resistance, that you’ll still get condition from it, just that it wouldn’t proc as long as you’re in certain attunement.

Toxsa.2701:

BlackBeard.2873:

We all know Diamond Skin is a terribly designed trait: It is either a straight-up hard-counter or completely useless. So let’s talk about some options to improve it.

Here is my suggestion:

Conditions of the following types have no effect on you while in the corresponding attunement:
Fire: Burn does no damage
Air: Weakness has no effect
Earth: Cripple, chill, (and immob maybe) have no effect
Water: Bleed and torment has no effect

This is a very high-skill trait, and since no ele spec can camp any single attunement has lots of interesting counterplay.

Please post your own ideas below, as this needs to be addressed regardless.

I actually like your suggested change! But I think Water one is too OP. Should be just bleed. Air seems to be abit weak, maybe immune to vulnerable too. Also instead of outright immune the incoming conditon, it should act more like resistance, that you’ll still get condition from it, just that it wouldn’t proc as long as you’re in certain attunement.

Yea, I was just picking conditions, more trying to communicate a concept but also considering what was flavorful/useful. For instance, weakness having no effect in air would REALLY help burst specs to keep pumping out that damage and keep their dodges coming. I was also thinking it would act like resistance, but condition-specific, in that those conditions can sit on you but with no effect while in the respective attunement.

As for whether or not water is OP, it depends on the play-style. Most eles want to get in and out of water ASAP so that they can get back to proccing those heals again. The number of times you would want to sit in water should be very small. At the same time, I could see how this could murder condi necros/mesmers if you just camp water and spam auto-attacks.

I think that it’s easy as Ele to be fixated on direct cleanse or targeted cleanse by attunement rather than other ways to manage conditions. It’s why I like Supreme’s idea:

snip
3rd Suggestion: Apply 2 and 1/2s of resistance boon when you swap to earth

There are other methods as well:
Diamond Skin

• Transfer x damaging condition(s) (Bleed, Burn, Poison, Confusion, Torment) to your foe on your next attack when you attune to Earth.
  • Right now I’m thinking x=2 as it is Grandmaster and Ele has relied upon approximately 2 cleanses per 10 seconds due to Cleansing Water/Cleansing Wave/Regen source before taking Utilities into account.
  • The loss of Healing Ripple when forgoing Water Magic means that you need a source of counterpressure (i.e. the Transferred condition) to make up for the lack of sustain. Targeted cleanse of damaging conditions is far more vital to Elementalist due to low base Vitality.
  • Utility Conditions (Immobilise, Chill, Cripple, Weakness, Slow) would thus be cleansed through other mechanisms, like Geomancer’s Training. There are synergies to be gained when comboing with offhand Focus (Magnetic Wave).

Beyond this I agree with the sentiment that there is a dire lack of traited cleansing capability for Elementalist outside of Water Magic or within utilities. The only direct cleanse from Utilities is still Cleansing Fire; and though there are now synergies to be gained from Casting Glyphs from Water Attunement with Inscription the Glyphs themselves need a lot of work before they can even come close to Cantrip power. So a second source of cleanse could come thusly:
Written in Stone

• Maintain the passive effects of Signets even when on cooldown
• 20% Signet cooldown reduction
• Cleanse conditions depending on what signet is activated
  • Signet of Fire: Burning, Weakness
  • Signet of Air: Torment, Cripple
  • Signet of Earth: Bleeding, Vulnerability
  • Signet of Water: Poison, Chill

The third source would probably have to come from either Glyphs or Fire Magic. However, Earth Magic being defensive should be where the counter-condi starts; just on a different line to how Water Magic does it.

Just lower health threshold. It’s hilarious because ele’s HP goes up and down in a blink of an eye since it’s a light armor class with poor HP scaling. It can maintain survivability with boons and healing, but it cannot stay above 90% (HP scaling too low), so it becomes kinda useless and offers no synergy at all, mainly in pvp. Not to say most condition-applying skills also deal some damage high enough to grab 10% of ele’s HP.

Valento.9852:

Just lower health threshold. It’s hilarious because ele’s HP goes up and down in a blink of an eye since it’s a light armor class with poor HP scaling. It can maintain survivability with boons and healing, but it cannot stay above 90% (HP scaling too low), so it becomes kinda useless and offers no synergy at all, mainly in pvp. Not to say most condition-applying skills also deal some damage high enough to grab 10% of ele’s HP.

Go try a condition necro or condition engi and say that again.
Their direct damage is so weak that they’ll never be able to break Diamond Skin.
It’s already kind of stupid to have this kind of complete counter, and you want it to be more OP instead of changing the skill entirely?

diamond skin: soaks up condition damage equal to 20-30% (number depending on balance) of your maximum health everytime you attune to earth, conditions start damaging again afterwards.

As a necro I like these changes. Haven’t faced a diamond skin ele in a while, but there was nothing more annoying then there being no possible way for my spec to kill one… These changes make counterplay more interesting and also make the trait itself more interesting.

Valento.9852:

Just lower health threshold. It’s hilarious because ele’s HP goes up and down in a blink of an eye since it’s a light armor class with poor HP scaling. It can maintain survivability with boons and healing, but it cannot stay above 90% (HP scaling too low), so it becomes kinda useless and offers no synergy at all, mainly in pvp. Not to say most condition-applying skills also deal some damage high enough to grab 10% of ele’s HP.

It’s actually quite easy to stay above 90% as Elementalist in PvP – but only against Condition Classes. For Rabid Necro or Rabid Engineer or even Rabid Ranger (Though that would be a rare beast indeed) Diamond Skin in its current form is like running up against a brick wall. I will yield you that point though as long as you are talking about Celestial or Power builds.

The proposition to lower the health threshold is problematic because:

• Direct damage builds don’t rely on Conditions to kill. Half the time they don’t even need CC conditions like Immobilise or Fear to kill either; because there are hard CC effects like Stun or Daze.
• It makes Diamond Skin an even harder counter to Rabid builds.
• Celestial Builds have enough direct damage due to certain high coefficient skills to power through the 90% regardless; and use conditions as pressure rather than as a primary source of damage. See: Celestial Warrior/Elementalist/Engineer. So again, lowering the threshold doesn’t really address the problem.

Jekkt.6045:

diamond skin: soaks up condition damage equal to 20-30% (number depending on balance) of your maximum health everytime you attune to earth, conditions start damaging again afterwards.

This is similar to Supreme’s Resistance Boon for 2.5 seconds on Earth Attunement, but far harder to balance due to the Vitality trigger.

• A Celestial or Carrion built Elementalist stands to gain massively from the trait; but they already have good Vitality to increase TTK against Conditions.
• Zerkers or Valkyries or other low Vitality Elementalist builds gain virtually no buffer zone; yet these are the builds that arguably need the Condition immunity more.

So your net result is a trait that is marginally good for the meta Celestial; but is outcompeted by picks like Cleansing Water/Auramancer/Evasive Arcana. And a trait that might be good for off-meta builds like Zerkers or Valkyries, but those builds lack the stats to fully exploit it.

It would be far more straightforward to go with Supreme’s idea of Resistance:

Supreme.3164:

3rd Suggestion: Apply 2 and 1/2s of resistance boon when you swap to earth

Now you have something that can be tuned around uptime of the Boon rather than a derived statistic unique to each player’s build.

As for proposals in general, I think I would be behind any suggestion that requires active play and management or an active trigger. So triggers like:

• On crit, On hit
• Receiving x amount of conditions
• % endurance, HP etc.
  Should be avoided, in my opinion. On the other hand, triggers requiring active play, like:
• On attunement
• On next attack
• On heal/utility/elite etc.
  should be considered. Actually, there’s no on-heal trigger so here’s one:
  Diamond Skin
• On healing, gain 3 seconds of the Resistance boon. Gain the unique Diamond Skin buff.
• Your next attack consumes the Diamond Skin buff. Transfer X damaging conditions (Burn, Bleed, Poison, Confusion, Torment) to your foe on successful hit.

I keep coming back to condition transfer because although it isn’t a flavourful profession mechanic, it does address the lack of sustain for Elementalists going into Earth for counter-condi. The idea that the Elementalist’s skin is somehow hardened against corruption or even reflecting corruption back to the source amuses me. It could just as easily be straight cleansing though.

Think of diamond skin much like other classes immune to one condition but for ele version they have no icd on the effect and it can hit more then one condition. So diamond skin is good for starting soft cc and condition dmg it should never be something you can keep up all the time.

Though after the update 6 earth 6 water 6 ar d/d ele is going to be nearly unstoppable and if burning becomes a lot like bleeding we may see a super tankly condition dmg d/d eles.

Jski.6180:

Think of diamond skin much like other classes immune to one condition but for ele version they have no icd on the effect and it can hit more then one condition. So diamond skin is good for starting soft cc and condition dmg it should never be something you can keep up all the time.

Though after the update 6 earth 6 water 6 ar d/d ele is going to be nearly unstoppable and if burning becomes a lot like bleeding we may see a super tankly condition dmg d/d eles.

I wonder…. where will you get from the healing power to maintain current diamond skin working? Eles about to lose 300 healing power, so:

- using celestial that is 240-250 SoR and 1300 healing ripple.
- no boon duration and so far they have only increased base duration of boon on elemental attunement…they won’t buff duration of soothing disruption or wave

Meanwhile you’ll be fighting panic strike/executioner thieves healing for 290 pts while stealthed, PU shatter chronomancers and powered…power necro ^^; don’t know how you can hope to keep diamond skin for more than 1s in the best case scenario.

Diamond skin will be the worst GM trait on eles after the changes, this is the reason why people want to change it.

@MonMalthias.4763

make it a set amount then, 5k condi damage soaked up.

Supreme.3164:

Diamond skin will be the worst GM trait on eles after the changes, this is the reason why people want to change it.

Actually, I don’t think it will be the WORST trait, but it is the worst design. In fact, I think it might be OP on earth/water/arcana eles who will now be focused on 1v1’s (because they are more selfish/less group support). Diamond skin is just frustrating for any condi user you come against, boring for the ele, and useless outside of 1v1’s.

Regardless of whether it is good or not, the trait is just TERRIBLE design. It isn’t particularly active or fun for the ele (who has to use SoR b/c our other heals have huge holes), and its just frustrating for your enemies. Making the problem even worse is that earth/water/arcana tank eles will have SO MUCH damage mitigation that any power damage a condi build can do is even LESS effective.

Hard counters are boring, unfun, and have the potential to be OP.

Toxsa.2701:

Valento.9852:

Just lower health threshold. It’s hilarious because ele’s HP goes up and down in a blink of an eye since it’s a light armor class with poor HP scaling. It can maintain survivability with boons and healing, but it cannot stay above 90% (HP scaling too low), so it becomes kinda useless and offers no synergy at all, mainly in pvp. Not to say most condition-applying skills also deal some damage high enough to grab 10% of ele’s HP.

Go try a condition necro or condition engi and say that again.
Their direct damage is so weak that they’ll never be able to break Diamond Skin.
It’s already kind of stupid to have this kind of complete counter, and you want it to be more OP instead of changing the skill entirely?

As I said , I run condi necro and I can burst diamond skin down, I run carrion. Life Blast and Putrid Mark deal quite alot of damage on a carrion build.

I main a Celestial / Undead Condition build with Staff using Diamond skin on High MMR sPvP.

Firstly, the proposition of the OP is rather bad. OP forgot about the Fear Condition. OP proposition is very weak since the condition can still be applied. Also, you will never know which condition comes next. OP wonders if DS should give immob, while doing so, he shows his or her lack of knowledge about the trait, which is the main reason why DS can be effective.

Diamond Skin (DS) is not just good 90% of the time. DS allows the Elementalist to;
1. Have a clear initiation: No blind, no Nightmare runes.
2. DS wrecks most classes and specs initiations. For instance, a Medi-Guard may not begin the fight with an immobilize on scepter, nor may he apply a burning or blind on Judge’s Intervention.
3. DS allows to mitigate the a lot of condition damage from hybrid classes.
4. DS allows to completely counter full condi-specs, which allows the build to run a minimal amount of condi-clean.

A few considerations. If Diamond Skin needs a rework, it cannot be reworked into a simple " x % condition duration reduction". Diamond Skin should be kept with a sort of challenging Threshold.

For instance,
Diamond Skin could be designed as such.
You gain Resistance whenever you attune at Earth above the 90% threshold. When first hit, the Resistance debuff will fade after x (5ish) seconds. When attuning to Earth, you and your allies gain resistance for 1 seconds.

What i suggested in the Ele report topic:

DS could provide Resistance when you apply an aura to yourself.
Obviously do not synergise with aura from trait (full signet build would be perma condi immune). Could synergise with combo or rune, donno if it would be OP, it a matter of discuss
Pro: GM worthy, counter play, no insane advantage in fight initiation
Con: Favors D/X a lot while we’re currently in a state where scepter and staff are pretty lack luster

Instead of -100% when above 90%hp make it -66% when above 75% or something like that. Reduce the effect but make hp threshold smaller.

New proposal :

“Diamond skin = gain 5s of resistance boon when swapping to earth, 30s CD”

30sec cd is stupid.
You have to switch to earth for your rotation meaning you’ll never use this 5sec efficiently unless you keep yourself out of earth …
Its almost as random as X% chance when stuck

Mattmatt.4962:

30sec cd is stupid.
You have to switch to earth for your rotation meaning you’ll never use this 5sec efficiently unless you keep yourself out of earth …
Its almost as random as X% chance when stuck

Yeah you’re right stupid idea, then I’d say this:
“Diamond skin= reduce inc conditions by 25% as long as you are above 50% HP”

Alekt.5803:

Diamond Skin (DS) is not just good 90% of the time. DS allows the Elementalist to;
1. Have a clear initiation: No blind, no Nightmare runes.
2. DS wrecks most classes and specs initiations. For instance, a Medi-Guard may not begin the fight with an immobilize on scepter, nor may he apply a burning or blind on Judge’s Intervention.
3. DS allows to mitigate the a lot of condition damage from hybrid classes.
4. DS allows to completely counter full condi-specs, which allows the build to run a minimal amount of condi-clean.

This^

The thing is, DS is a GM trait on a defense line. But its main use is as a starter burst safeguard. (a bit like the new thief trait that grant resistance if you get the first strike on combat)
In its current state it should not be a GM.
As a GM trait it should give something else for under 90% health. Like a flat 30% condi duration reduction.