All I can say about this thread is… what? You guys sure you’re thinking of the right set of elementalist skills? Because, let me see if I have this right.
Glyphs have 20 different activations, 12 of those activations apply a condition, two more apply two conditions. That’s 70% condition application. And yet they are “not condition skills”.
They’re ‘core’, something meaning they are necessary and common to the general strategy of the class, even though they have never been commonly used in any game mode in over three years of gameplay. Glyph of storms had a place in dungeons, glyph of renewal had the briefest stint in PvP of any skill ever, only lasting two weeks before being nerfed. Cantrips are core, the water tree is core, the very thought that glyphs have ever been core is laughable.
And did someone seriously suggest, that a class that has never had a single condition build that could survive against anything with even one condition clear, have the conditions removed from an entire set of skills in favor of ripping off a necromancer mechanic?
And are you kidding about not needing a lot of work!?
1. The glyph trait needs to be moved out of the air tree. Glyphs are attrition skills (defensive utility, damage amp, conditions), air is a full on spike damage tree. It makes no sense and completely breaks any attempt to build around them by requiring you to take a bunch of traits that do not apply at all to their play style.
2. The Fire and Earth elementals need to have their speed, attack speed, and range/reach increased so they can actually HIT a non-stationary target once in a blue moon.
3. The Elemental’s activated abilities need to activate when you have a target. I can understand that the developers prevented them from being used out of combat to prevent an excessive amount of OOC boon stacking in PvP and WvW. But it is absolutely ridiculous that these elementals will stare at a perfectly viable target and then waste an ability with TWO recharges for no logical reason.
4. The Glyph of Harmony and Glyph of Elemental power are currently bugged to not function with the CD reduction of the Inscription trait.
5. Glyph of elemental power is redundant when used in the air and earth trees, earths cripple lasts five seconds and ideally procs every five seconds, airs weakness has the same problem at six seconds. They are both worthless with their only applicable stat, condition duration.
6. Glyph of Renewal flat out needs to be replaced, it is never going to be balanced, if it ever becomes viable (which has only happened once, because glyphs really are that bad), it is immediately put on the chopping block, just like when any other resurrection skill has ever become viable.
And that’s just their functionality problems, fix that and they’ll work but they still wont be used or competitively viable. If we actually want to see that then:
1. The OPs suggestion is solid, save for the Elemental Storm the uptime on these skills feels wonky, unfun, and just plain wrong. Additionally, double CDs are a fun mechanic to play around with, nowhere, ever, period.
2. Either Glyph of Elemental Harmony needs to have its boons last significantly longer and have its heal increased, or its CD needs to be significantly reduced.
3. Glyph of Elemental Power needs the RNG proc removed, it should just be a flat uptime. They already addressed this problem in the big run/sigil pass and the same principle applies here.
4. GoEP should also have its damaging conditions increased (because, as the expansion content is proving, support and utility still needs to output a reasonable amount of damage)
5. Inscriptions needs to match the theme of multi-elemental support and attrition combat. Just applying boons feels like a ripoff of a dozen or more other elementalist traits, all of which are better options in nearly any situation, especially given that, again, the trait is placed in a tree which lacks any other support/utility/attrition.
