If they improve Fire to affect other trees more and offer more synergy with burns then it might not be so bad for a Condition based build that’s built around Carrion gear (massive Vitality), Toughness from Earth, and large amounts of condition duration/damage.
This is essentially my build.
I run 20/0/30/20/0 right now with Carrion Amulet and Shaman’s Jewel for PvP. Just switched from 30/0/30/10/0 because Fire’s Grandmaster Traits are pretty useless. I also needed condition removal which is (annoyingly) only a water thing.
I don’t agree that Condition Duration is particularly useful, though. I need more ways of getting stacks because they remove them so easily. Especially with a Necro around… And Necros tend to have the highest health.
GrandmaFunk: And my point is that if you were trying to show variety in builds, you fell short. You still focused on Water and Arcana which proves the lack of variety.
It’s not “focus” if i invest equal value in those trait lines as I do in others. ie: if you go 50/50, you’re not focused in anything.
Your stance seems to be that you can go all-or-nothing in one of two ways, mine is that a balance approach with points in 4 of the trait lines is also completely valid. Your approach seems to limit builds to two options(all-in on water/arcane or all-in on fire/earth), whereas I’m including at least one more, how is more options not a sign of variety?
Eles trend towards bunker because they have low hps, weak armor, and very little in the way of evasive mechanics built into their weapons. Arguable if you want to call RTL an “evasive mechanic”, I guess you could. That’s more just deciding “I don’t want to fight” rather than using a move to avoid an attack and continue on. Talking stuff like mesmer sword 2, thief dual dagger 3, ranger greatsword 1 evade and that kind of thing. The kind of stuff you can use as a “skillshot” to stay in the fight while still evading outside of your limited dodges.
As such all survivability must come from active choices in the trait and utility selection.
I’ve ran fractal 60+ as a berserker ele with only 1k toughness. Berserker is fine in PvE. With that said, you will still spec into 20 water and 20 arcane for a very simple reason — boon duration provides a greater DPS return with might stacking and fury uptime, the crit on vigor trait is pretty much mandatory in PvE for extra dodges, and water provides you an invaluable group heal/condi removal. 30 points go into air for the crit dmg bonus.
Bunker builds are only necessary for PvP for a very simple reason — ele burst is long cooldown based, and most classes have stalling cooldowns like invulnerability or stealth to waste your burst cooldowns and then cut you down.
My mesmer gets 12 sec cd shatters and similarly short cd blurred frenzy. The thief really has no cd on his burst.
My ele has a 45 sec cd on Fire Grab, a 30 sec cd on arcane wave, and a 20 sec cd on arcane missile. Burning Speed is easy to dodge and at best hits for 4k against a player with any toughness.
Landing burst as an ele is much harder than a mesmer or a thief that with 1-2 button presses do the spike damage it takes an ele 4-5 different button presses to do.
I love you guys for posting great, intelligent things. I agree with Minion of Vey, TheGuy, and Zenith wholeheartedly! <3
GrandmaFunk, I get that it is a balanced build. But it still uses what everyone considers to be the minimum required traits from Water and Arcana. Which is what this thread is all about. We think they need to make it so that we can branch out a little more. It doesn’t need a full overhaul or anything, just a revamp.
No, builds tend to go towards bunker because damage is not enough to justify doing otherwise. adding damage does not add enough damage to kill the enemy within a reasonable amount of time as spell damage is underpowered.
Even when I’m running something with a tad more burst I end up with about 15 in water and arcana respectively. I can’t pass up at least some self healing and a reduction in elemental recharge. High spec in air magic makes up for the low base power as it has many traits that increase damage by meeting certain conditions. Fire magic is really only good for the 10% increase while attuned to fire; anything else can be accomplished via other means.
