Guild Wars 2

I thought I’d make a topic where we could suggest small bumps to any area of the ele in order to allow for a more versatile, fierce class without actually making it overpowered as many suggestions have. Feel free to make any suggestions for alterations of traits, skills or weapon skills here.

Disclaimer: As ArenaNet’s class-balance philosophy is to make small boosts in certain areas over the course of multiple patches, I think it’s best to not go crazy. In fact, I might even advocate making a slightly unimpressive change or addition, because let’s be honest, these are the changes that are more prone to happen.

I’ll start with a few ideas I have been bouncing around in my head that propose changes to some traits.

• Fire Adept Minor – Flame Barrier: Boost trigger chance from 20% to 50% while attuned to fire.
• Fire Master Minor – Sunspot: Add 2 seconds of burning to this trait in a 240 AoE. Increase the damage radius to 240 to be more in-line with other attunement effects. Reduce affected targets to 3.
• Fire X – One with Fire: Completely remove current effect and create new effect: burning applied by you deals 10% increased damage (I get that this is the guardian’s bit, but this trait would (and should) be considerably weaker. I thought about 1 second of quickness when attuning to fire but I think that would be a little too powerful with meteor shower.)
• Fire XII – Pyromancer’s Puissance: Removed. Replaced by new grandmaster trait Rapid Fire: Recharge Fire Attunement when you execute a blast finisher. 5 second internal cooldown (Two main problems here: potential to be overpowered and the removal of PP. However, air has a similar, stronger trait and it created a whole new build without being QQ’ed about by the playerbase much.)
• Fire XIII – Blinding Ashes: Reduce internal cooldown and blind duration to 2 seconds for obvious synergy with Burning Precision. AoE applications of burning now blind all affected targets if the trait is off cooldown. This would allow the ele a good option for defending its squishy body in a power build with a 6-point investment. I think this is fair.

• Air Adept Minor – Zephyr’s Speed: Movement speed increased to 20%, or even 25%. This would only work while attuned to air, so it would mainly be useful for travel. My thoughts when boosting this trait revolve mainly around the focus – does anyone else enjoy being a turtle in WvW just to use the (severely underused, mostly due to mobility issues) focus? I don’t.
• Air IV – One with Air: Increase superspeed duration to 2.5 seconds.
• Air VIII – Inscription: Increase might granted while using a glyph in fire attunement from 1 stack to 3 stacks.

• Earth Master Minor – Earthen Blast: In addition to its current effects, this trait now causes attuning to earth to be a blast finisher centered around the player.
• Earth IX – Geomancer’s Freedom: In addition to its current effects, this trait now grants 3 seconds of vigor when you are affected by chill, cripple or immobilize. 10 second ICD.

• Water II – Shard of Ice: Renamed to Flash Freeze. Remove old effect. New effect: Inflict 2 seconds of chill and 5 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds when attuning to water. 240 AoE, 3 Targets.

• Arcane Grandmaster Minor – Arcane Precision: Changed from 10% chance to apply conditions on critical hit to 10% chance to apply conditions on hit. Burning duration increased to 2 seconds. Weakness duration decreased to 2 seconds. Bleeding duration increased to 10 seconds. Vulnerability application while in water changed to 2 seconds of chill.
• Arcane VIII – Elemental Attunement: Might duration from attuning to fire reduced to 10 seconds. Increase might gained when attuning to fire to 3 stacks.
• Arcane IX – Arcane Resurrection: Revive speed increase set to 25%. Auras gained upon revival increased in duration to 6 seconds.
• Arcane X – Arcane Energy: Change effect to give 25% of your endurance back when using a utility, heal or elite skill.
• Arcane XIII – Elemental Contingency: Changed to use the Evasive Arcana style of internal cooldown where the 10 second ICD is individual to each attunement.

These were the major ones I could think of for the time being, and I’m sure some of them could cause reductions to be made elsewhere. I have ideas for weapon skills and utilities as well, but I’m sure some of you have your own ideas. I’d love to hear them, as long as they don’t involve the creation of new and ridiculous game mechanics or cause complete pre-nerf hambow syndrome. Maybe we could catch the attention of someone from the balance teams if our suggestions are reasonable!

Water grandmaster minor swapped with arcana grandmaster minor. New water grandmaster minor: Auras grant regeneration for obvious synergy with both powerful aura and cleansing water. I really feel we need more aura traits.

New fire grandmaster to replace PP: thermal shock. Having both chill and burning up on the target at the same time has a devastating side effect (similar to terror, deals substantial bonus condition damage). This would make for an interesting flavor to the condition ele while still allowing a good bit of counterplay. Suddenly the rune of the elementalist makes sense Can be changed to either daze or immob the target when both chilled and burning instead of damage(makes sense thematically).

I think that given eles are much more at risk rooted in melee range than warriors, and that Churning Earth’s cast time is comparable to 100b whilst having fully backloaded damage, for PvE I think it would be fair to increase the skill’s damage coefficient from 3.25 to 5.1 (a bit less than 100b to adjust for the bleed and cripple, as useless as they are).

(PvP is more debatable, I personally think given how much you need to set this skill up to hit anyone who knows what they’re doing, 5.1 isn’t totally unfair, but I’m not an expert on PvP)

agree with Xae
We need a skill review before traits are even considered.

Here’s an idea I’ve been toying with for a while. It would obviously go in arcana at master, gm, or gm minor.

Elemental Purity:
Changing to an attunement removes conditions.
Fire:Chill, Bleeding
Air:Blind, Immobilize
Earth:Cripple, Torment, Vuln
Water:Poison, Burning

Earth got three due to the relatively low value of vuln and cripple but it could be changed. I tried to keep them in line with the element that would counter specific conditions, but I could easily see poison on earth and torment on water.

Anywho, just an idea and these are the forums, so flame on :p

Edit: Phone added an extra duplicate line

Change the cast time of scepter 1 from 1 1/4 seconds to 1/2 a second?

Same for scepter earth 1?

Is that unreasonable? Having an auto with a >1 second cast time is nonsense.

So I got to thinking about the alacrity traits and came up with this idea. The trait would read like the following:

Fire VII – Pyromancer’s Alacrity: Reduces recharge on all fire weapon skills. Reduces recharge on all fire-based utility skills. Increases recharge rate of Fire Attunement.

• Weapon skill recharge reduction: 20%
• Fire Signet, Cleansing Fire, Conjure Flame Axe recharge reduction: 20%
• Attunement recharge rate increase: 20%

Repeat for all four attunements and their relevant utility skills. I don’t really feel like this would be overpowered. There is already precedent for double-CDRs with Mesmer’s Clone/Phantasm skills, and the alacrity traits are extremely niche. The only part that has the potential to be overpowered in my view is that, in conjunction with 6 points in arcana, you could have a 7&3/4 second recharge rate on any specific attunement you traited this way.

I feel like a trait like this could REALLY help us get out of arcana and open up more build options.

My thoughts on the suggestions in the OP:

Fire : OK, but don’t forget that Flame Barrier can carry over to other attunements with Lingering Elements. Also, I think that rather than just making another Fresh Air, it ought to be somewhat more constricted / have a different style. Something like, X action instantly returns you to Fire Attunement, rather than putting it off recharge for you to return to whenever would be cool.

Air: Minor traits will never see significant speed boosts, better to rework it into something else entirely. With Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Attunement, swiftness uptime is high anyway.

Earth : We have too many blast finishers as it is. Having three finishers on demand in one attunement is just a bit over the top. You may say that it’s 3 pts deep in Earth, but you could easily go 0/2/3/3/6. I agree Geomancer’s Freedom needs to be spiced up to be brought in line with Dogged March, not sure Vigor is the best idea, already have so many traits related to endurance regeneration. Maybe Retaliation?

Water: Mini Hydro sigil, yeah OK. Better than what it is now, which is junk.

Arcane: Too much might for passing into Fire, think about the interplay with a Fresh Air – like Fire trait, could be 9-12 stacks of might just from hopping into Fire.

Machspeedtwo.1342:

So I got to thinking about the alacrity traits and came up with this idea.

This is actually a really good idea! I think even without the attunement recharge reduction it would be a strong set of traits. I imagine extending this in such a way that all utilities would have a secondary utility type which would correspond with their element (i.e mist form would be a secondary water type, signet of earth would be earth, etc) and then have traits that enhance those elemental utilities in some way. For example, a master trait that affects water-spell would, for instance, make them remove chilled or grant regen when activated. A theoretical grandmaster trait in this vein would, for example, change earth shield to instant cast, so it would function sort of like kits. So it would in the end be beneficial to run something like, armor of earth, signet of earth and earth shield.