Guild Wars 2

Ok, I want to talk about the trait lines.

Right now, 0/10/0/30/30 is very popular. I would like to do a shout out to WoodenPotatoes for doing such a good job not just showing how good Water and Arcane are, but also showing other sub-optimal builds and explaining why they don’t quite match up.

In water 15 pts gets you a free heal on atunement. If you are speccing heal at all, this is very hard to pass up.

10 points in water gives you access to vigor/regen on cantrips or condition removal. Both of these are excellent traits.

30 points in water gives you access to both of the above and aura sharing or more condition removal. These are both excellent choices.

The arcane tree only improves upon the atune bonus of water by reducing the time between atunement swaps. Arcane is arguably a good trait line for any build at all.

If you put 10 points in arcane you can have the atunement boons trait which is excellent for protection and/or regeneration.

30 points in Atunement give you free heals on your dodge that are splash. Right now, there are no better ways to heal than Water/Arcane for multiple reasons.

Earth has some excellent traits but as someone has already pointed out, the base stats for Elementalists are soooo bad, that the extra toughness in Earth is a liability.

Air also has some excellent traits. The fury/swiftness boon on auras is great. The glyph’s CD is also arguably good and synergizes with the glyph boons trait. The glyphs boon trait is arguably very powerful, providing uninterrupted swiftness on your heal, uninterrupted regen on your heal, etc. It’s good.

So looking at fire the fire traits are almost all bad. Trait XII is amazing, and gives more power and condition damage than fire and earth put together. However, until you put 30 points in fire you won’t have it, and Trait XII is mostly for killing bosses because it takes some stoking before the fire is really hot. Fire is almost all damage, even more so than any other trait line I have seen in this game so far and I think that is bad.

Here’s some recommendations I would like to make to help fire.

1. Allow aura durations to stack so if I cast fire aura twice or three times I get three times the duration. Makes sense right? This helps with the burden of positioning and being a squish.

2. Add a +100% aura duration trait to fire.

3. Improve Burning Fire so that it provides 6 seconds of Vigor instead of extra burning on top of your burning. Most power trait lines have vigor and elementalists don’t need the current Burning Fire trait. Also, the juxtaposition with Soothing Mist would be cool.

4. Increase the damage on Soothing Mist. It’s really bad.

5. Reduce the cool down on the Air Trait XI as it’s too long.

6. Move condition removal to the Fire Traits? Could call it Cleansing Heat or Cauterized Heat or Cauterized Wounds?

These are just some small recommendations that would improve some current builds that could use a bump.
-Aura-Share would have options to use Soothing Mist and Burning Fire with Mist Form and for Fiery Greatsword for Regen and Vigor.
-Selfish-Signet build would be able to choose between Fire XI and Fire XII as well as Burning Fire and damage traits.
-Fire in general would be a little bit more enticing without being a big step.

I can’t say this would fix the situation, but it would be an improvement on a few weak traits and trait lines. Thanks for reading.

Bast

I think all the elementalist trait lines need to be scratched and rebuilt from the ground up. As they stand now they generally force you to be in that attunement to obtain any benefit. Except for (a) arcane, which everyone is practically required to take because we have to constantly switch attunements due to the huge CDs and (b)a good portion of water. And so (a) + (b) = everyone using the 0/10/0/30/30 build.

It also doesn’t help that many grandmasters are just really, really underpowered (fire 25) or so situationally limited to be functionally useless (grounded).

No other profession has trait lines of such limited value. Instead, (a) their trait lines are built on themes, (b) profession-specific traits are “cross pollinated,” most (if not all) of the minor traits give effects of general applicability, and many (but not all) grandmaster traits are based on skills or effects that are generally available or applicabile. That’s what keeps trait lines interesting and gives players tough choices to make. Warrior, Mesmer, and Guardian do it best IMHO.

How to do this? My suggestion is that instead of having a trait line lock you into an attunement, it should instead promote “attunment bleeding” into others and complement generally applicable elements of elementalist gameplay.

For example:

On minor traits – Fire could improve field effects, Air could improve “transformative effects” (conjures, elementals, other forms like Torando), Earth could add defensive or control effects to attunement swaps, Water could add healing or condition removal to other skills, and Arcane could probably stay close to the same (general improvement to attunement swaps or boons).

On major traits – make them more broadly applicable or, quite frankly, just suck less. Fire 11 should apply to all combo fields. Air 12 should apply to a broader range of effects or have a greater duration window since (a) we have limited access to stuns and (b) the duration is so short. In general, look at how Arcane Abatement works and replicate it across all of the other elementalist traits.

Also, either (a) spread weapon specific traits across the other trait lines and make them not suck (think about how worthless windborne dagger and vigorous scepter are compared to the Mesmer trait that gives reflect to all focus skills) or (b) make the attunement cooldown reduction skills more compelling . . . instead of just 20% recharge, 20% recharge + broad effect, like giving all fields reflect, additional conditions, or passive stat benefits.

Does this make sense? Is this helpful feedback? I really like playing my ele – I played a Bard in EQ, so I guess I just have a thing for pressing lots of buttons all the time – but after branching out more into my alts, I really see how flawed the class is from a design view.

McKeone, ya it is.

TLDR

-In general Fire/Air/Earth/Water traits are too atunement specific. Add more broad appeal.

-CD traits should offer further advantages, such as more damage and/or effects (like other classes gets)

-Sucky traits should be more compelling.

For me, a good change would be to move Renewing Stamina to Fire, and change Elemental Shielding to trigger on signets instead of auras. That would open up some new playstyles imho.

ThiBash.5634:

For me, a good change would be to move Renewing Stamina to Fire, and change Elemental Shielding to trigger on signets instead of auras. That would open up some new playstyles imho.

No! Not my Elemental Shielding!! Fire has IX Fires Embrace that gives an aura when you use a signet. That should just be bumped down to Adept, or they should throw in some better Adept Traits. It feels like a waste to put the first 10 points in Fire when I don’t like any of the traits for my build.
Also, Fire needs a better replacement for XI Persisting Flames. I am undecided on XII Pyromancer’s Puissance, as it seems great, but it really isn’t that easy to get a lot of stacks. The best way to do it is to auto-attack for 10 seconds. lol.

Something that made me think was… why not have different elemental signets proc different elemental auras for Fire’s Embrace? The healing signet could proc whatever elemental aura you are currently elementally attuned to.

I like how Elemental Shielding is tied to auras, because you can proc auras with combo fields.

The distribution of aura traits is a rare example of good trait synergy for elementalists. The problem is that the rest of the trees are generally bunk. I’d put together a broad list of the changes I would make with accompanying explanations, but I get the impression it would probably just be wasted.

Mckeone.9804:

I’d put together a broad list of the changes I would make with accompanying explanations, but I get the impression it would probably just be wasted.

I would certainly like to see it! However, you are right that the devs probably will not see it. D=

sapphyredragon.6437:

Mckeone.9804:

I’d put together a broad list of the changes I would make with accompanying explanations, but I get the impression it would probably just be wasted.

I would certainly like to see it! However, you are right that the devs probably will not see it. D=

The profession balance designer said in the last interview (less than a month ago) that he is avidly reading the forums, but that has been requested not to post much lest he take time away from working, so don’t be discouraged.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zCUvIrH2BlU