As has been said by many people in this forum, the nature of Attunement Swapping is counter-intuitive with trait lines that only affect Eles when they’re in that specific attunement.
This of course causes any Ele’s potential “trait efficiency” to be about 40% of the other classes, before tackling “meta” builds or the eventuality that certain traits will always be better than others (kind of like in GW1 how some skills just never saw use). An Ele that stays in only one or two attunements can make good use of traits, but this means half the class feature are basically irrelevant.
So I have a solution of sorts, and of course welcome criticism. Why not make the traits “theme” based instead of attunement based? What I mean by that is to make the traits always applicable regardless of attunement, and dependent on the target status. In addition, the traits would focus on the “flavor” of the element.
Examples:
Fire Traits would affect AoE size (of all Ele skills) so change Blasting Staff to Exploder, with the effect that ANY AoE skill has its radius increased. Damage increasing traits would hinge on whether the target(s) are Burning or not. Flame Barrier for example could offer a 20% to cause burning to all foes in the area if a burning foe hits you, regardless of attunement. A Master trait here would reduce CD on Staff skills across all attunements.
Air Traits would alter the range of all Ele skills, as well as adding Vulnerability effects to single target skills (like Cracked Armor from GW1). Thus, more Air Magic would make it easier to stack Vulnerability. Any speed increase traits would be located here and apply regardless of attunement. A Master trait here would reduce CD on Scepter skills across all attunements.
Earth Traits would add control effects like Knockdown and Knockback to all Blast projectiles and finishers regardless of which attunement. A Master trait here would reduce CD on Dagger skills across all attunements.
Water Traits would add extra damage to Vulnerable foes, with Vulnerability being inflicted by Air Magic (possible synergies). A Master trait here would reduce CD on Focus skills across all attunements.
Arcana would need some work, but it already pretty much applies for all Attunements. An alternative, and possibly easier solution to the above is to make traits from each line function like Elemental Attunement or Evasive Arcana, where the trait does something different depending on Attunement. For example, change Lava Tomb to Elemental Tomb, and it applies a different AoE effect on downed. Honestly, with all the variable skills and traits like Glyph of Storms and the Elementals, I’m surprised that ANet wasn’t better about making all traits applicable across all attunements.