Guild Wars 2

So as many elementalist players agree, the fire trait line is pretty bad, along with some other traits in other trait lines. As it stands, almost no builds run any points in fire except for either aura builds or might/fury stacking builds.

Reasons are that most of the traits are horribly underwhelming, so what could be some good changes? This is meant to be a discussion of ideas and suggestions.

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Fire 5 point minor: Flame Barrier – You have a 20% chance to cause burning whenever a foe attacks you in melee. Only triggers when attuned to fire.

The problem – No elementalist worth their salt would sit in one attunement for very long. The apparent trend for the fire trait line is for people who want to sit in fire attunement and not swap at all, which defeats the purpose of having 4 attunements. Not to mention, this is only a 1 second burn.

The solution – Make Flame Barrier work the same way Soothing Mist (the 5 point water minor trait) does, except without sharing with the group. It would last for 9s and refresh every 3s while in fire. Hell, maybe even have it share with the nearest 5 people, it still wouldn’t be game changing, but it would be somewhat useful.

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Fire 10 point major: Burning Precision – 30% chance to cause burning on a critical hit.

The problem – 1s burn with low chance to activate.

The solution – Make it burn for an extra second or 2 and with a higher chance to proc on crit. Maybe have it work similarly to the Engineer trait Incendiary Powder

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Fire 15 point minor: Sunspot – Inflict damage at your location when you attune to fire.

The problem – All it does is damage. And not very much.

The solution – Have it inflict burn for 2s.

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Fire 20 point major: One with Fire – Flame Barrier’s chance to burn foes goes up the longer you are attuned to fire.

The problem – Flame Barrier is terrible and this trait only promotes the “sit in fire and AA” mentality that NO ONE should follow.

The solution – Change the trait completely or make it so Flame Barrier is shared with allies, and works similarly to Soothing Mist.

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Fire 25 point minor: Burning Rage – Deal 5% more damage to burning foes.

The problem – There is a 10 point major in fire which does the exact same thing.

The solution – Make it 10% more damage, change the 10 point major, or put something completely new here.

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Fire 30 point major: Pyromancer’s Puissance – Each fire spell you cast adds might for 10 seconds.

The problem – Once again, this promotes the “sit in fire and AA” mentality.

The solution – ANet decided to buff this, since it used to give might for 5s. I personally think this should be replaced completely.

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Suggestion: Fire 30 point major – Conjurer – Conjured weapons recharge 50% faster, deal 10% more damage, and are instant cast. Does not affect the cooldown of Fiery Greatsword.

What it would replace – Pyromancer’s Puissance and Conjurer.

Reasoning – Conjured weapons are pretty bad right now. Lightning Hammer sees some play in PvE for massive DPS and in very niche areas in PvP for point control. Most other conjured weapons are completely useless. Fiery Greatsword is very good though, which is why the cooldown of it isn’t affected. However, it will still get the damage boost and will still be instant cast. And I’m sure a lot of you ele players roaming in WvW know what it’s like trying to run from a huge zerg and have to stop to cast FGS, only to have them catch up and kill you during the 1s cast time.

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These are just some suggestions, I may not have the best idea of balance and how this would effect eles in the long run or when combined with other traits.

If you have any thoughts about this post, whether it’s something that could be changed or something new, feel free to respond. I’d like to get some healthy discussion going.

Also, make 5 point air minor add 5 crit (or 25+level percision) rather than it’s current function.

Personally, I think fire barrier would still be pretty useless like that. Maybe they could make it a guaranteed burn with a cd, but I think it might be better just to scrap it altogether. Maybe just slap in burning precision instead.

Definitely agree with sunspot.
One with fire- I support reworking it. It could be a proc on swapping into fire attunement effect or buff fire utilities to make elemental themed builds possible.

I think your burning rage could work without being too much. It’s deep into the line after all, and equal to the guardian adept trait (they’re also able to upkeep burning fairly well if they want to). That or merge the current burning precision into it (assuming you don’t want it to replace the minor).

Pyromancer’s Puissance- Another one that could be good with a swapping into fire attunement mechanic if you want to keep similar buff effects. You could also have it proc on each time you burn a foe.

I don’t really think the new conjurer would be used much though, except for even more lightning hammer usage anyway. The cd on the conjure skills are the main reason I think that. Besides, we can already somewhat do it with the spare conjured weapon if someone doesn’t pick it up.

I think you would be better served by just spending your time trying to get anet to admit there is a problem with the class. Step 2 would be to tell them simple ways to fix it.

@Navzar Yeah, changing Air 5 into something more useful would be nice, but the air traitline is far from weak at the moment. I would probably steer away from bonus stats though because it would probably work similarly to earth 5 point minor (80 toughness at level 80 while attuned to earth).

Flame Barrier wouldn’t be amazingly good if they changed it, but it would be another small thing. Eles are powerful because of all the small things that add up. Soothing Mist, plus all the heals and regen allow us to stay alive. Granting yourself or your allies as well the possibility to burn an enemy when they hit you can be pretty powerful. Also you have to consider this is a 5 point trait, so it can’t be TOO powerful.

@ARM The class isn’t broken, far from it. It’s got a lot of potential. I’ve been using D/D ele as my main since around December. At one point they were “too strong” and now they’ve been toned back. Maybe a bit too much to some people, but it’s clear ANet has been working on the class as a whole.

For example, staff got buffed so that all the skills flowed better and had short aftercasts. Focus was buffed (though fire and water skills need looking at). And the addition of Fresh Air gave eles a lot of burst potential.

There’s no problem with the class, it’s just certain parts that need working.

I just really don’t like the idea of chance to burn after being hit in melee, especially for a build speccing into fire. The matter of limited range is already there anyway. Which I guess leads to another option- just make it for all attacks.
I do agree that if it affected allies as well it would be okay, but I like to steer away from things like that since minor traits aren’t optional, so I feel like putting party support at the price of your own ability in the base traits kind of limits your options since that’s more situational… if that makes any sense.

As for air 5- I don’t think being like the earth one is really that bad compared to what it is now. I just want the trait to actually exist. As it is now, it makes no impact.

I agree with a lot of your analysis, OP. One thing I would like to point out, however, is that it is not bad if there are major traits that reward you for sticking in fire, as long as there are the proper traits to make doing so possible. There are a lot of PvE players who want to be a pyromancer and “BURN IT ALL TO THE GROUND!! ALL OF IT!! EVERYTHING!!!” and I’m fine with that. That being said, the traits that support that could also be buffed to make them usable in PvP. For example, all “X-alacrity” skills should decrease the cooldown of the skills in that attunement by 30% and that attunement cooldown by 20%.

Also, the 5-point minors need some work, and need to work properly with “lingering elements.” Fire should improve the power of you and your allies, or something offensive for the offensive line. Air should give an effect that isn’t completely cancelled out, or is useful on its own (10% speed in air only, which gets cancelled by swiftness or signet of air.) What would be a million times better is a 4-5% speed boost that DOES stack with other sources, making the trait actually worth taking. I might even just go 5 into air so that my signet of air is slightly more effective.

I can see your point for wanting the KILL IT WITH FIRE.

In terms of 5 point minors, the way I see it is it should be useful, but not TOO useful. If it’s one of those things where it’s so good that everyone should grab those 5 points to get it, then ANet will nerf it. It happened to Rangers, it happened to Mesmers, it would happen to eles.

I do like the idea of the stacking speed boost, though I’d suggest that it wouldn’t allow it to go past the effectiveness of swiftness. For example, those 5 points and Signet of Air give a 30% movespeed boost, and swiftnees would only bring it up to 33%, not 38%. Otherwise it would make Runes of Swiftness completely useless (even though they kinda are.)

Buffing fire traits won’t do anything. Arcane and water are too essential to give up, so even if the fire trait line were really good, it would just compete with air/earth for points. Fire would have to be severely overpowered for anyone to take it over water/arc.

Biggest problem with traits isn’t actually the traits themselves, it’s the general weakness of the class that forces elementalists into arc/water to make up for it. And sure 30/30 isn’t necessary at all, but not taking at least a decent amount of both is just suicide for pvp.

If they buff the traits without fixing the core problem, it’s just going to make the situation worse.

dreztina.4820:

Buffing fire traits won’t do anything. Arcane and water are too essential to give up, so even if the fire trait line were really good, it would just compete with air/earth for points. Fire would have to be severely overpowered for anyone to take it over water/arc.

Biggest problem with traits isn’t actually the traits themselves, it’s the general weakness of the class that forces elementalists into arc/water to make up for it. And sure 30/30 isn’t necessary at all, but not taking at least a decent amount of both is just suicide for pvp.

If they buff the traits without fixing the core problem, it’s just going to make the situation worse.

In the pessimistic view that the core problem won’t be fixed, they could buff the lines by adding traits that help make up for those weaknesses in other lines.
Example: X% of your power is converted to vitality. [possible secondary effect]
Of course anet has made traits like these somewhat underwhelming at only 5% with no other effect, so that would only be good if they got around to changing that too . That or possibly put it into a minor trait slot.
As for arcana, there’s been many suggestions for reworking that one.

dreztina.4820:

Buffing fire traits won’t do anything. Arcane and water are too essential to give up, so even if the fire trait line were really good, it would just compete with air/earth for points. Fire would have to be severely overpowered for anyone to take it over water/arc.

Biggest problem with traits isn’t actually the traits themselves, it’s the general weakness of the class that forces elementalists into arc/water to make up for it. And sure 30/30 isn’t necessary at all, but not taking at least a decent amount of both is just suicide for pvp.

If they buff the traits without fixing the core problem, it’s just going to make the situation worse.

Arcana is specced into for utility, not for defense, though one could argue Evasive Arcana is for defense. As for water, go look up threads for known ele players. Many if not all will say that speccing 30 into water is a waste now unless you’re going for aura sharing especially since Bountiful Power and Cleansing Water were nerfed. At max they say to spec 20 in. I personally spec 15 into water for the heal on attunement swap, but many Fresh Air builds run 10, or even 0 in water.

I will agree that the long delay on attunement swapping is a problem. The way things are right now I can’t play ele effectively unless I have 20 in arcana at the very least.

@Navzar Maybe if they replaced Soothing Winds so that it gave vitality rather than healing power? Though there are too many good traits in Air for me to even think of grabbing that. Adding some of those % conversion traits into fire as a minor or major would probably help a bit.