Guild Wars 2

First off, just want to say I’m new to this class. I’m an altoholic, and the Elementalist is my 7th character. So maybe this is a silly question, but…

Why do traits only work with one attunement, each? It seems like the class is designed to benefit from swapping attunements, but unless I stick with the element I’ve traited, I’m playing without any trait points at all? (all the “only works when attuned to _” traits) I can spec two lines eventually, sure, but then I’m only using half my trait points, at any given time? How is that fair or balanced?

This seems like the most frustrating class to play, and at the very least, it seems like it’d help balance it, if they removed that restriction. It just really seems to sabotage the versatility of the class.

Honestly, just go ahead and roll up your 8th Alt right now. Come back to Ele when its got some decent buffs.

The 15 points trait in Arcane Power is supposed to grant you the boni of the previous attunement for 5 seconds after you swapped out of it; however it seems to work only for the “+10% damage while in x”-type of traits, not for the 5 points traits in every trait tree. Hopefully that’s not working as intended and will be fixed eventually.

<— level 80 character, none of the traits depends on an attunement.

thats also something you can do.. its your choice if you spec into stuff that only works in 1 attunement.

@ Warmage Timeraider 0/10

Honestly you are right, elementalist are broken by design right now, listen to Trump and roll up your 8th, it’s the best you can do, really..

I was curious, so I counted. For example, a Thief has 5 traits (none of them are minor, therefore all must be chosen by the player), that depends on weapon he´s holding (it´s kinda like attunement dependency), but on the other hand, Elementalist has 19 traits (if I wasn´t mistaken, and 8 of them are minor, therefore unaivoidable if you invest in that trait line) that depends on staying in one of our 4 attunements That seems ridiculous to me and kinda discouraging from attunement switching, don´t you think guys?
I chose Thief for comparison, because it´s my alt, so I know the class better than other classes, I don´t have any intention to suggest something against Thief, only comparing trait design.

Edit: The situation will be much different, if the “lingering elements” trait was working properly and got a little longer duration (7 secs or something like that, some spells like Meteor storm or Eruption have kinda long casting time so 5 secs doesn´t seem enough for me.)

I couldnt agree more with you, there is definitely something wrong with traits.

One approach is to buff one or two elements, swap out when you’ve used all your cooldowns or desperately need that shield from Earth or something, and get back into your primary as soon as you can.

Honestly though the elemental traits are all pretty weak. I run 30 arcana/10 all and it’s by far the best build I’ve tried because it applies equally to all attunements, gives a balanced stat spread and encourages swapping. With all the buffs I get from attunement swapping, I can keep all my major skills in all my elements on cooldown and get a pile of boons and passive effects in the process.

What needs to be changed is that once you’ve invested in one, the cooldown on that particular attune goes way down, to like 5 seconds. That way you can swap out when needed for utility and be back to your primary in no tome. IMO the 25 pt minor traits should all be replaced with this; it would allow specialization without hurting attune swapping. ATM though, Arcana is the way to go.

Traits should works with 2 attunements, not only with 1.
Other classes have traits used by 100% of the game time (elem also) or by 50% – bonuses to a variety of weapons – but we have a bonus fot the 25% of the time game – bonuses while attuned to specific att.
So I think this is one of the reasons why elem traits are so bad.
sry fo my english

I made an ele where only the minor traits are attunement specific. 10 Earth / 30 Water / 30 Arcana. You get insane bonuses for hopping through attunements. Ironically, water has the most points, but I usually try to spend the least time in it, so I can get bonuses on re-entering.

She doesn’t do “loldps”, but I’ll be kitten if she isn’t the most survivable build that I’ve played.

The elementalist heavily favors attunement swapping, but the advantages are a lot less clear cut that the advantages of making “always DPSing in fire” build.

As an example a full DPS build will often invest in fire and air, well if you don’t swap attunements you aren’t benefitting from Static Discharge and Sunspot at all. Also I’ve heard players say that they have both 5% more damage on burning targets traits, but burning doesn’t go away when you swap attunements, so you can apply that 10% damage to big hits in other attunements, and the fire line even adds up to 30% longer duration to give you more time to benefit while in other attunements. Arcane Fury also brings a lot of benefit if you are swapping often. While there are traits that only work while in one attunement, other traits only work when you change attunements. And many weapons have powerful cross attunement combos.

Even cooldown reduction traits must be judged relative to your attunement cooldowns. If you lower a cooldown that is still equal or longer than the cooldown of the attunement then you can easily swap attunements after hitting that skill and come back without any loss of efficiency. So while Pyromancer’s Alacrity might let you spam Lava Font more while staying in fire, you could easily swap away and come back before Meteor Shower comes off cooldown.

Take a S/D build with Ember’s Might, Internal Fire, and Pyromancer’s Puissance. But also with Arcane Fury, Bolt to the Heart, and Aeromancer’s Alacrity. Now you might start in fire and unload your blasts into your fire field, pop Fire Grab if it’s up etc. Now you have all these might stacks, is the best move to just stick to Flamestrike and Dragon’s Tooth until everything comes off cooldown? Instead try attuning to earth, you might even fit an Earthquake into your fire field, then hit Churning Earth and actually make that fat stack of might from your combos and puissance apply to heavy hitting skill. And right before it goes off you switch to Air and gain fury when Churning Earth lands, plus you have instant access to Lightning Strike, and static discharge, also with fury and might applied. And when fire comes off cooldown you get sunspot again too.

Or you could just get 10% more damage in fire and keep your might stacks constant, but you wont apply them to as many heavy hitting skills in the same amount of time.

It can depend a lot on weapon choice. Staff has much less damage in other attunements, so while you can gain tons of benefit from swapping it will be less in the form of DPS. However many people think that healing on the staff is weak if you don’t spec for it, which is not accurate. A huge chunk of healing potential comes from blast finishers which don’t even scale well with +healing. All healing in this game, and on this class comes from stacking many effects together, For example using Eruption + Arcane Wave + Evasive Arcana to triple combo finish a Geyser while also triggering Cleansing wave from evasive Arcana, and regen from Elemental attunement. And if you happen to invest in water traits it’s not simply the +healing that increases your healing power, it’s the ability to throw in Healing Ripple and Soothing Mist extended by Lingering Attunements on top of that combo. Even with zero +healing it’s possible to heal around 6k with a 30 Arcane build, and you are dealing damage with Eruption and Arcane Wave too. And that combo is actually fairly quick other than the cast time of Eruption, so you can really fit that into a quick 2s swap to water then swap out again.

Overall it’s easy for people to see 10% more damage in fire and think that means they have to stay in fire to get maximum DPS. But if you start off swapping attunements then you learn all kinds of tricks and combos and get so much more out of the class. If you keep trying to max DPS in fire you don’t learn nearly as much about attunements that you don’t use.

Stuff like +x% damage in y attunement don’t really restrict you that much, and shouldn’t be counted. It’s obviously supposed to read more like “y element’s spells inflict x% more damage” in which case, being a CD class, popping all of your CDs then switching is still the best thing you can do for yourself.