Guild Wars 2

juno.1840:

Senjun.8149:

The only time this is any good, is runinng away at 100% hp or if a necro comes up and randomly blows all of his wells on you first thing.

But what he can do is have his golem ram you for like 3k dmg, then blow all of his wells on you and you aren’t recovering from that because u now have a useless GM trait.

Not true — the trait is not suppose to be “god mode”… nor is it “easy mode”. It’s simply another tool available to you as a player (and it’s a good tool).

If you get hit for 3k, then top yourself off so you’re back above 90%.

What did players expect for this trait? Seriously? I think it’s very good, but I see many complaints about the 90% mechanic. I’ll ask you this: What threshold would make this trait “good” for you? Can you provide an answer that doesn’t make people laugh?

I’d be game for 90% threshold or even 85% against damage. It needs to not work against chill, cripple, or immobilize (I’ll even go with it working against fear). If you are a necro (I am. 80 everything but War) you can’t even close to fight if you are a condi build.

Wearing my (Staff) Ele hat something needed to be done about having a low hp pool and conditions melting us. A staff ele is still going to have issues dropping below 90%. But your d/d ele with easy condi clear, easy healing, and easy mobility is OP against pure condi builds.

Enjoy it while we can (I plan to run it) cause the devs will come back to their senses eventually.

I really Hope that Diamond Skin isn’t going to be the Ele’s Dhuumfire. If it is, then prepare to get every condition defense you have nerfed other than this trait.

Condition spammers cry a lot especially with 1v1 if DS traited. Teamfights, it’s barely noticeable or rather useless most of the time.

Other than that, I’m better off still going 30 water with the new Soothing Wave since it’s a party-wide effect. DS is pretty selfish.

ive seen necros use axe instead of scepter to get me down passed that 90%.

I just fought Fire Ele with DS. Fire Ele completely ignored it. The reason why is that if an attack knocks hp below 90%, any conditions the attack applies go through. Fire ele did this frequently. The only times it didn’t do that, my hp was already lowered.

Earlier, I took DS into a Melandru Temple run. It did better there, but a big part of that was due to having others around. This seems to be a trend. DS is at it’s strongest when others are able to keep attention away from me or help healing when mine’s cooling. While soloing, the trait quickly gets bypassed by normal monsters. It can help at the start of a fight, but doesn’t last more than a couple seconds.

It feels rather weak. So far, about the only neat thing DS did was let me run over some red circles in Cursed Shore without harm.

Meh %10 treshold is nothing compared to Ele health. First i was excited about it, then i tried it and meh. It is still not good for a grandmaster.

I could prefer like “Blocks next 5 condition every 20sec” etc.

Mochann.5298:

The way I see it, Diamond Skin is going to be useless to most people running Dagger builds. Diamond Skin is the kind of trait that doesn’t work for melee classes.

On the other hand I think Staff Eles are going to love it. As a Full Zerk Staff Ele, I am used to running away, kiting, and basically avoiding damage altogether, because usually I die the moment I get hit by anything. This should help a bit.

The only problem is that, as an offensive Staff zerker ele in WvW you probably picked the offensive traits (with few defensive?). I believe you had 30 in Fire? Anyhow, with such playstyle and build I’d hate to go 30 in Earth trait line. 30 points is just a lot for a trait in a trait line where the other traits don’t benefit you much. I guess only thing is that you now have a reason to pick stability while attuning to earth.

rock solid is amazing so is elemental shielding and stone splinters… earth line has good traits

Earth Magic has always had good traits. The problem is that Water and Arcana were/are so necessary.

Diamond Skin is horrible, you can’t even take advantage of immunity since EVERY attack that deals conditions also has a basic damage that’s pretty much enough to get you below 90% in a blink of an eye. I’ll pass.

I watched a vid of a condition engineer 1v1 with a d/d ele on the new WvW map. The engineer was wearing full dire armor set and the ele had the diamond trait.. guess who lost? well the ele of course.

ArenaNet is structuring the ele in a very squishy way as patches come in and out, we’ll turn out to be an even more laughable class until we’re completely useless; changes here and there, putting crap and taking last good things an ele had… awesome plan…

I haven’t tested it enough. Mostly because I know it isn’t worth 30 points in earth for the most part.

Comparatively, vitality points are worth more than armor points as far as bang for your buck goes, and I’d rather have 30 points in water, also get thirty points in Arcana.

My build would be limited to 0-0-30-20-20 if I went with Diamond Skin. Still can be good, but I’m not sure how I feel. I’d take stability on earth attune, and it might do well. I’ll do some more testing, but they failed us by not making it 85% like they promised.

lately I am finding it not working….. have been receiving many conditions without getting damage. Seems like it has a sort of “limit”, and exceeding it will apply conditions anway, damage or not. I don’t like this, unless it’s broken it ain’t worth Grand Master tier…

I tried it out in WvW and to me it was not worth it. Perhaps it has a use in PvE or sPvP?

I’ve posted many times in this topic (and a few others) about how enjoyable this trait has been in large group WvW.

After using it in small groups and solo roaming in WvW, it’s definitely niche. I find it lack luster in those situations, to the point where I don’t trait it.

In PvE I find it situationally useful. In most situations it doesn’t provide enough benefit as the ele will drop below 90% very quickly. There are a few where it shines though (try opening a gift box full of princess dolls).

In short I’m not using it any longer as there are better traits for my investment. I’m really enjoying a 0/30/10/20/20 fresh air build with S/D. The DPS is pretty amazing with celestial gear — my survivability is still fragile (I’m not sure this is unavoidable on the ele tbh).

Another one of those level 90 builds. So overpowered.

Malcastus.6240:

Another one of those level 90 builds. So overpowered.

It’s funny because I didn’t notice at first.

I don’t see how condi Engi loses to DS. They always run rabid gear (+condi damage, precision, toughness) and ALL their condi appliers have direct damage which frequently crits for around ~400-600 damage, e.g. grenades or pistol. The ele should drop below 90% after the very first round of grenades.

That pretty much leaves condi necro (carrion) as the only build that truly gets hard-countered by DS.

Wintel.4873:

I don’t see how condi Engi loses to DS. They always run rabid gear (+condi damage, precision, toughness) and ALL their condi appliers have direct damage which frequently crits for around ~400-600 damage, e.g. grenades or pistol. The ele should drop below 90% after the very first round of grenades.

That pretty much leaves condi necro (carrion) as the only build that truly gets hard-countered by DS.

And condi mesmers, who rely on staff clones to apply conditions for the most part (if you don’t know, these do roughly 0 damage per hit at level 80) and have only a small amount of direct damage burst.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

And condi mesmers, who rely on staff clones to apply conditions for the most part (if you don’t know, these do roughly 0 damage per hit at level 80) and have only a small amount of direct damage burst.

Hmm ok.
Rarely come across condi mesmers, most run that cheesy shatter build or w/e it’s called that lets them send in ARMIES of clones while they sit behind cover -_-

Yay for this thread, guess I missed this new trait, good to know. I had run into 2 different ele’s recently and could not figure out why not one condition stuck. I laid every Mark, BiP, switched to scepter nada…nothing stuck on them and health barely registered being almost pure condi. Solo necro’s nightmare.

I estimate 1% of eles are actually using this in WvW.

I’m just gonna say im a scepter/focus condi ele and not to long ago i fought a level 80 gs/sw war, a lb/sb ranger and a staff/scepterx necro. Beat them all only falling below 90% for a short while.

After I aggravated a condi Warrior in a 1v1 and they called this trait “cheap,” I decided I loved it. I’m no longer an easy kill.

And Diamond Skin’s nicheness is a welcome throwback to the old Guild Wars buildmaking system. Many of those builds had a peculiar specificity—must be in a stance, target must be under the effect of an enchantment, etc—and that was one of the reasons I loved that build system so much. That oddness made it fun.

PSX.9250:

I tried it out in WvW and to me it was not worth it. Perhaps it has a use in PvE or sPvP?

PvE nope because a dps spec is still better for pve group plays. As for s/tPvP it is even worse than WvW. You can go tanky like 0/0/30/20/20 to keep DS up or some trait variation with like soldier/zerk jewel amulet combo. The thing is that with this you don’t do enough damage to certain classes like Warrior and you can countered by bunker burst builds. Outside of that you can bunker a point down but beyond that you can’t do much. If you trait for more dps like 0/30/30/0/10 then you lack enough sustain/hp to keep DS up which means it will be useless to you most of the time. After playing matches in spvp since patch using d/d, s/d, s/f I find that DS isn’t worth it.

WvW has its uses and it depends on the situation. It works a bit better in WvW than s/tPvP for sure.

Of course you can’t make use of it 100% of the time, because that would be really OP. If you run with enough HP/armor I think it’s quite possibly a viable trait in WvW. Only tried it out this evening though (changed to pvt build for this), still need to run with it more often, but so far it’s quite nice. One fight i rushed into an enemy zerg, saw many wells etc. But came out of it with full health. I wonder why :P

Take in mind, you’re only immune to conditions, so control effects like stun, daze and pull still work on you with this trait.

Retsuko.2035:

Of course you can’t make use of it 100% of the time, because that would be really OP. If you run with enough HP/armor I think it’s quite possibly a viable trait in WvW. Only tried it out this evening though (changed to pvt build for this), still need to run with it more often, but so far it’s quite nice. One fight i rushed into an enemy zerg, saw many wells etc. But came out of it with full health. I wonder why :P

Take in mind, you’re only immune to conditions, so control effects like stun, daze and pull still work on you with this trait.

I don’t expect it to be up 100% of the time. But you have to see if a trait is useful for a good chunk of situations you would be in. For example, Elemental attunement is great for D/D because they swap a lot between attunements so you will proc this trait a lot. Whereas S/D may not need Elemental attunement a lot because a dps s/d build may try to stay in 1-2 attunements for most of the fight rather than the swapping out as soon as possible like a D/D ele. Fresh Air is the same way. There is some downtime but if your critical chance is low the value/usefulness of that trait is low as well because you will proc it less often.

Diamond Skin feels this way. There are situations like any other trait where this will be extremely useful like against full condition damage necro or against RRR condi Ranger or against specific group comps (like 10 full condi necro in a 20 group force for example). It is like the signet mastery trait where it is useful for the Ele’s heal signet however you cannot make full use of the trait because there aren’t any signets that people would take over cantrips to maximize the use of the trait.

All in all Eles have to play the same way. Diamond skin allows them a tiny bit of condition immunity but they still have to evade or positions themselves away from direct damage since it puts them under 90%. And if you disregard DS for a sustain build like 20 water then you will still need to make sure you don’t take a lot of damage so your sustain can keep you in good shape. If you spec for more hp/armor to keep DS up then your dps will be lacking and if you try to spec for high dps then it is much easier for other people to keep you under 90% so that you will not have DS.

I just love how some necro hesitate now when I run into them all alone. you can almost hear them muttering to themselves trying to decide if you got diamond skin on or not.

I still think they should jsut remove this as a trait and rework signet of water to work in a similar way. Make signet of water make you immune to conditions if youre above 75% hp (90% is way too weak. most autos on pure condi builds will go right through that) And the active for the signet would be to transfer all conditions you have on you to your opponent.

that would make ele an efficient counter of smthing, won’t work.

Srsly, the 75% point and transfert would be too op imho, but i d love to see the feature transfered on signet

zitounae.4803:

that would make ele an efficient counter of smthing, won’t work.

Srsly, the 75% point and transfert would be too op imho, but i d love to see the feature transfered on signet

fine then how about immunity at 75% and just cure conditions you have on you when you activate it? that wouldn’t be op. or even better, make it a stunbreak on activate but nothing else and the 75% immunity thing as the passive. i’d gladly lose the chill on it for immunity plus a stunbreak.

It’s a broken trait designed to hard counter one specific build because apparently it’s easier to balance one build by adding new traits and abilities to other professions.

I think it would be prudent to watch this when discussing the trait (skip to 20:00 for the section about Diamond Skin and 28:00 for how to beat Diamond Skin via autoattacking while eating a sandwich):

amiavamp.9785:

how to beat Diamond Skin Elementalist via autoattacking while eating a sandwich

German.. I dont understand a shet Xd

Big Tower.5423:

German.. I dont understand a shet Xd

A power necro in lich form killed a glass cannon ele with auto attacks.

Caffynated.5713:

Big Tower.5423:

German.. I dont understand a shet Xd

A power necro in lich form killed a glass cannon ele with auto attacks.

Even without any power built the lich form can easily deal 2200 damage in a matter of seconds.

wonder how it would be if it trigger at like 20% or w/e hp instead… Not beeing able to survive from escape because of our high cds on last ticks of a low condi is just too frustrating

Yes, DS is somewhat gimmicky, however, I have had great success with it in small scale roaming in WvW. Running Omni Pies + SoR does make is pretty easy to keep yourself topped off early during the fight, especially if you go in with the protection and stability of AoE, and later on you can typically kite/heal pretty well with water abilities coupled with Earth III.

Understandably, there are and will always be the flavor of the month classes that will give you fits (read: Warriors, Mesmers), however, I find that DS does a world of good, and at times is borderline overpowered, against necros, engies and condi warriors.

That being said, it’s still painfully obvious that playing an ele is GW2 “Hard Mode”, but what fun is a game if you don’t challenge yourself.

My build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmgbzx4wjEIEFugJMeECdQHKK8AlC5AA-jEDBYfIYjBkEJIUBgJqFRjtMsIasqaAKkYaXJVFLyWzDRziO1SBUuwI-w

Approximately 97% of skills have a base damage accompanying the condition, approximately 99% of #1 skills do enough damage to get you below 90% before you even noticed you existed.

DS is not worth, you have immunity till you sight someone, maybe toughness or vitality are broken for elementalists (please debug elementalist’s attributes before putting to live server), else it’s just another useless thing people will never use.

It’s been nearly a month now and I haven’t heard boo-hoo about diamond skin. I also don’t know any ele’s actually running with it at this point in WvW (although that’s the only place where I found it useful).

So what’s the verdict on this trait now that we’ve had it for a month?

My personal verdict is: useful in this meta if you’d like to be an interesting tank. You’ll have little damage available if you go this route.

Dueling necromancers, mesmers and engineers, it too has its uses. Take it for what you will, but I’m not behind hard counters, and I do not support this trait.

As far as I’m concerned, our last balance patch was also a nerf.

I would say this trait is kind useless. As many said previously, we’ve got the lowest hp base, and 10% represent actually 1080 hp if no vitality. it’s not that much, even when running with soldier gears. We may have more hp and thoughness, like 18k and 2500 armor, but as a tank I think it’s still too low …
I didn’t find any good compromise between vita, thoughness and healing power while playing D-Skin.
I would also add, this trait is a big mistake.