Guild Wars 2

I’m using “worst” to mean “most in need of changes”. My sentiments are from a WVW solo roamer/occasional zerger perspective.

• Elemental surge (30 arcane). Seems strong, but is very underwhelming in practise, partly because of how much survivability is lost by having to take arcane utilities. Not worth 30pts in current form.
• One with Fire/Flame barrier (5/20 fire). Filler is the only word that comes to mind.
• Arcane Precision (25 arcane). 10% chance on crit to proc ~400 dmg for 25pts, WTF? What’s an on-crit trait doing in a boon duration line anyway?
• Diamond skin (30 earth). OP in PVE and 1v1s vs full condi classes, and useless everywhere else. Compared to http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Automated_Response, the HP threshold is 2.5 times smaller, and immunity is at high HP when low HP would be so much more useful. Should be a10 or 15pt trait.
• Geomancer’s freedom (20 earth)/Stop, Drop and Roll (water 20). http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dogged_March offers the same reduction as GF, but grants regen as well, and it’s a 10pt trait. On the highest base defence class. SD&R is even worse.

Honourable mentions:

• Inscription (air 20). Not good enough to make glyphs attractive.
• Zephyr’s speed (air 5). +10% speed only out of combat. for 5 more points, other classes get full 25% speed.

With regards to Arcane Precision, it is a VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY (I can’t say this enough) stupid and useless trait, and is insulting to even consider this a GRANDMASTER minor trait. As the OP said, it’s a measly 10% chance to proc on a critical hit (Same chances as the Sigil of Rage which procs quickness, which at least makes it somewhat useful). If you run low crit rate, this trait may as well be non-existent. Even WORSE is how underwhelming the effects are for that low of a proc rate when this trait is triggered. Look here:

Fire: 1 second of burn damage…
Water: 1 stack of vulnerability for 10s…
Air: 3 seconds of weakness…
Earth: 1 stack of a bleed for 5 seconds…

The KITTEN Anet, at least jack up the proc chance of this to make this trait at least noticeable… Like 33% chance at the very least (Preferably 66% since the effects are so terribad) if it’s gonna rely on crit chance, or take the crit chance out as the OP said and make it a 10% chance on a regular hit, as a crit chance trait doesn’t really have a place in the arcane line. It’s seriously appauling that this is even a grandmaster trait.

One With Air: 1.5s of “haste” when attuning to air. This doesn’t even increase your attack speed.

• Soothing Wave (10 water): only useful when crit, and then, only provides a miniscule heal via regeneration (which is useless against spike damage)
• Arcane Resurrection (20 arcane): the revive speed boost is only 10%, and the effect is essentially dependent upon other players’ failures
• Ember’s Might (10 fire): increase the duration of burning, which very nearly has 100% uptime anyways
• One With Fire (20 fire): it’s a percent chance modifier based upon sticking to one attunement which acts on another worthless trait (see below)
• Flame Barrier (5 fire): only triggers when you are hit (and only in melee)… on the lowest HP/armor class in the game, only damages enemies in melee range, and only does so through a status effect which only stacks duration and is generally up 100% of the time

Yes, I felt the need to re-mention One With Fire and Flame Barrier because they are that bad.

All of the “reduce recharge on x element skills by 20%”. Every other class that takes these gets another large bonus, like range increases, bonus stats etc., but elementalists only get the reduced cooldown, which doesn’t particularly help anyway when you have a minimum ten seconds before you can switch back to an attunement and many cooldowns are less than that.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

All of the “reduce recharge on x element skills by 20%”. Every other class that takes these gets another large bonus, like range increases, bonus stats etc., but elementalists only get the reduced cooldown, which doesn’t particularly help anyway when you have a minimum ten seconds before you can switch back to an attunement and many cooldowns are less than that.

Yeah, have always thought the *Alacrity traits should also be reducing their respective Element’s attunement CD, ie:

X Alacrity: “reduces recharge of x element skills by 20% and reduces x attunement CD by 2sec”. Stacks with arcane CD reduction.

scerevisiae.1972:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

All of the “reduce recharge on x element skills by 20%”. Every other class that takes these gets another large bonus, like range increases, bonus stats etc., but elementalists only get the reduced cooldown, which doesn’t particularly help anyway when you have a minimum ten seconds before you can switch back to an attunement and many cooldowns are less than that.

Yeah, have always thought the *Alacrity traits should also be reducing their respective Element’s attunement CD, ie:

X Alacrity: “reduces recharge of x element skills by 20% and reduces x attunement CD by 2sec”. Stacks with arcane CD reduction.

That’s not a bad idea at all if alacrity aligned with element cd reduction so you could still flow with your rotations. I know Jon mentioned the thought of making alacrity reduced by 25% not sure if they are going to do that or not.

oZii.2864:

That’s not a bad idea at all if alacrity aligned with element cd reduction so you could still flow with your rotations. I know Jon mentioned the thought of making alacrity reduced by 25% not sure if they are going to do that or not.

I really really wish they do add elemental CD reduction for every particular alacrity traits. Like in the lines of:

20% reduction on X element spells
10% increased attunement recharge rate on X element

Only then will I consider ever traiting them.

flame barrier
Not only do you have to get hit, it also only has a chance to proc. The 1s burning is also negligible when you already have a number of ways to burn in fire attunement.

One with fire
Same as above. Even worse is that this is a master trait.

Zephyr’s speed
Won’t stack and 10% is hardly noticeable. It might as well not exist.

Arcane precision
Only has a 10% chance on crit. Even with 50% crit, that’s a 5% proc for very low duration conditions. An idea for a fix would be to replace it with elemental surge and introduce a new grandmaster here.

Arcane retribution
Because arcane power sucks. A single lava font that hit 5 targets and it’s gone with 1 tick. It could have some synergy with elemental surge, but is still underwhelming.

There are so many bad traits I can’t choose which 5 are tops or even where to begin…
Any “reduce skill cooldown by 20%” – on one of 4 “skill” lines. On Master tier to boot.

Flame Barrier and One with Fire. Really, what kind of sick masochist designed these 2 together? First you gotta get hit to activate at only 20% chance, and the MASTER trait requires staying in fire?!

Each trait by itself doesn’t seem THAT weak, but they just don’t synergize with other lines well at all. Each attunement is like in their own little world waiting to be used. I don’t see the same limitation on any other class where traits usually enhance their base mechanic while our only trait that seems to do so just got moved to Master tier…

1. FIRE

• One with Fire / Flame Barrier – A horrible concept on a class that certainly can’t take many hits to utilize.
• Persisting Flames / Pyromancers Puissance – If these two were combined into a single trait it may make a decent Master level trait. Individually they don’t even come close to grandmaster.

2. AIR

• Zephyr’s Speed – Only 15% away from being useful. Or at least stack with other movement speed abilities up to the 25/33 cap.
• One With Air – 1.5 seconds of running just as fast as you normally do.

3. Earth

• Diamond Skin – Between this and One With Air I am actually afraid to ask ANet to ‘help’ elementalists any further.

4. Water

• Bountiful Power – I once thought this was good, then I noticed then I saw warriors ‘Destruction of the Empowered’.
• Piercing Shards – This being limited to water is a cruel and sick joke.

5. Arcana

• Arcane Precision – A % chance of a % chance for a very short duration condition.
• Elemental Surge – The durations are far too short to be useful.
• Arcane Energy – Only half of what is actually considered useful.
• Arcane resurrection – Really?!?

There’s a reason why no one specs into fire lol.

Inscription is Air 10 and is powerful in a glyph build.

Enigmoid.1264:

Inscription is Air 10 and is powerful in a glyph build.

Maybe you are talking about Quick Glyphs.

Licantus.8495:

Enigmoid.1264:

Inscription is Air 10 and is powerful in a glyph build.

Maybe you are talking about Quick Glyphs.

Inscription i most definitely master tier.

Enigmoid.1264:

Inscription is Air 10 and is powerful in a glyph build.

I am yet to see an Elementalist, in any aspect of the game, since release, who is using a glyph build. Taking glyph of storms into AC exp by itself doesn’t count.

Licantus.8495:

Enigmoid.1264:

Inscription is Air 10 and is powerful in a glyph build.

Maybe you are talking about Quick Glyphs.

Sorry my bad, I was.

scerevisiae.1972:

Enigmoid.1264:

Inscription is Air 10 and is powerful in a glyph build.

I am yet to see an Elementalist, in any aspect of the game, since release, who is using a glyph build. Taking glyph of storms into AC exp by itself doesn’t count.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhImObyx5gjDIjCdg4RF4AcY5ROMD2AA-ToAg0CnICSFkLITQygsBNKYGC

been playing pvp with that build for the past 4 months, the only thing that has changed is 10 points from water into earth due the 10th of december patch.

scerevisiae.1972:

Enigmoid.1264:

Inscription is Air 10 and is powerful in a glyph build.

I am yet to see an Elementalist, in any aspect of the game, since release, who is using a glyph build. Taking glyph of storms into AC exp by itself doesn’t count.

Hi, I’ve been running glyphs pretty much since I started, in all aspects of the game, and I enjoy them and find them useful. Just so’s you know that we do exist.

Arcane Precision is an insult. Why this is a Grandmaster trait is beyond me.

Spell Slinger. IMO this is only useful when using Lightning Flash to land Earthquake/Churning Earth. MAYBE after Cleansing Fire too. Cantrips are defensive otherwise.

Flame Barrier and One With Fire; I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. Terrible traits.

One With Air. What is the point of this? Especially if you’re not running Fresh Air?

Bountiful Power should be un-nerfed, with how common boon hate is nowadays.

Earth has so many great traits though.

Bountiful power should indeed be 2% damage increase per boon. Perhaps cap it at 5 boons/10% damage, so it has a damage limit like many others.

Enduring Damage is just awful for PvP. 10% damage boost when over 50% endurance so that it can be worth something other places than PvE.

There are too many bad traits to choose from.. just felt like mentioning these two.

Bsgapollo.5364:

There’s a reason why no one specs into fire lol.

what is staff

Malcastus.6240:

Bountiful power should indeed be 2% damage increase per boon. Perhaps cap it at 5 boons/10% damage, so it has a damage limit like many others.

it used to be this, it was nerfed. agree that 1% extra dmg per boon for a 25pt trait is pretty kitten weak.

How has no one mentioned Lingering Elements? Seriously, this skill…. lol.

Even now that it actually works, its still garbage. It only works on 4 other minor skills, and most of those other skills suck themselves. Flame Barrier sucks. Zephyr’s Speed is lackluster. Soothing Mist already persists after swapping attunement as it is, so while SM is decent Lingering Elements doesn’t even do anything with it. The only trait that this is any sort of useful with is Stone Flesh. And its only 5 seconds, not all that impressive either. A 15-point minor trait that only becomes useful if you have one specific 5-point minor trait, and isn’t that useful even then.

The one thing that would make it useful is if it could extend some of the other attunement-specific traits, namely the +10% damage in X attunement traits. But the devs have denied giving it that functionality, saying it would be “too powerful”. Which is ridiculous.

Yes, IN THEORY having a 50% damage boost would be too much. But in practice, that would never happen. For one thing, all of the +10% boost traits are Master level (except Piercing Shards). That means you’d need 20 points in Fire, Air, and Earth, plus 10 in Water to get all of them, and on top of that 15 in Arcane to actually get Lingering Elements. Which is impossible. So that cuts it down to a 40% boost at absolute most, assuming you’re using Piercing Shards (30% if not). Still broken, you say? Based purely on numbers, yes. But then you have to account for the fact that Lingering Elements only lasts 5 seconds. Global attune cooldown exists, so figure -1 second per swap. That means that at most, you would get 3 seconds of 40% damage. 10% would fall off after 3 seconds, the other 20% would fall off after another second. That gives you time for one, maybe two attacks before your damage bonuses start dropping off.

And in the process of getting that 40% damage boost for a very short amount of time, you’ve put 2 of your attunements on cooldown without actually using them at all. And if you want to repeat your rotation and get 40% again, you have to put the 3rd on cooldown immediately as well, after using a couple attacks during your “power period”. And Piercing Shards means you need the enemy to have vulnerability as well. And that’s “broken”, really? You’re basically locking yourself into fighting in a single element 80% of the time in exchange for a 3-second period of 40% boosted damage every 13 (approximately) seconds on another single element. Two elements completely ignored, one relegated to a small period of high damage, sounds like a great idea for a profession so dependent on meaningful use of attunement swapping.

Electro.4173:

Soothing Mist already persists after swapping attunement as it is, so while SM is decent Lingering Elements doesn’t even do anything with it.

With lingering elements, it keeps getting refreshed for 5 seconds after you swap from water. That means you 5 additional seconds to swap back before you lose the buff. Soothing Mist’s duration is 10 seconds, meaning that unless you swap back on recharge, you won’t get full uptime. The extra 5 seconds give you extra time before you have to swap back again. Basically, it’s a gap filler.

Electro.4173:

And that’s “broken”, really? You’re basically locking yourself into fighting in a single element 80% of the time in exchange for a 3-second period of 40% boosted damage every 13 (approximately) seconds on another single element.

I can imagine it being fairly powerful in a Fresh Air build, which is already about spiking down targets…imagine if that got a 40% boost.

Elemental Attunement and Evasive Arcana are in my opinion the worse trait.

Not because they aren’t good, but because they are so good and mandatory that any elementalist willing to survive has to pick them.

These traits are the definition of build variety killers.

Folks, just go with the classic traits and specs of the DnD.