Guild Wars 2

After allot of hours spent on an Elementalist, here are some of my
thoughts on the Utility skills. Hopefully more posts come up like
this to provide Anet with more insight from the player base. If nothing
else, to come up with new ideas.

Utility Skills:

Arcane: No proposals

Cantrips: The only one I think that needs to be changed is Cleansing Fire. It has
a long CD with a burning effect. The effect assumes you would be at
melee, and if you are, you are probably a d/d ele anyhow, and have no
problems with dropping conditions to begin with.
Considering how all of the other cantrips are defensive in nature, replace
the burning effect with something else, like a boost in xxx stat for xxx
seconds (or a regen).

Conjure: My biggest issue. Make the current ones like the Glyph of Elementals, in
where what you get is what attunement you cast it from. The GoE didnt
break each elemental down into four seperate skills, so why do it on this?
Combine the current 4 into one skill, which gives you the item based on
your current attunement.
The main problem would be coming up with 3 other Conjure spells, and
heres a few ideas:

1) Conjure Wall: Wall based on attunement (Fire, Ice, Stone, Air)
2) Conjure Imp (or some other creature)
3) Conjure Food/Food Table: Food last until dying or zoning, or has
an expiration. Make it non tradeable once acquiring. This is my
least favorite option, Im just brainstorming.

Signets: Out of all of them, I think Signet of Water needs changed, both the
passive and the active. Make the passive a small regen, and the active
the removal of 1 or 2 conditions. As it stands now, the passive is
lackluster.

Elites: As we all know, Glyph of Elementals is heaviliy favored. In terms of what
to do about the other two, thats open to discussion (someone also started
a post on Elites today).

Ive noticed in the other class forums, Anet started topics on feedback and Ive yet
to see one for Elementals, so my intent is to get some ideas going to provide them
with more ideas on what people think about the current skills and there usage.

Cantrips in general, are ok. The fact that they break stuns make them pretty much musthave skills, and on paper at least, Conjure Flame is a great skill. It can remove all snares, roots and stuns, which are basically the main threat to any elementalist. However, I realize that in practice it gets outclassed by the other cantrips. But to be honest, I wouldn’t know of an easy fix. Especially since cantrips can be boosted so much by traits.

The main issue with your conjure idea is, I think, that Anet has been working very hard to lessen the potential number of skill combinations. A change like that would increase them again, and I feel they might be unwilling to do so. Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea…but I fear it goes against Anet’s overall plan, and thus is unlikely to happen. Personally, I’d feel that if they made some of the weapon skills slightly better (stuff like increased range, maybe a wee bit more damage) they’d be viable for use.

Signet of Water…the condition removal idea may be ok, but an active regen would be added on top of all the other active regens we already have and could lead to potential stacking abuse.

As for the elites, I like GoE so much that I’d probably keep using it regardless of what happens to the other two…so I’m not the right person to comment on them.

I’m not sure how you can find anything wrong with Cleansing Fire. Bar Stability application, it’s completely superior to Armor of Earth. It burns 3 conditions without traiting into cantrip condition removal (allowing you to save your water attunement for a better opportunity), breaks stun, applies burning that works great for condi builds and chains well into d/d power builds, and has an amazing recharge to boot. I haven’t looked back since I started taking it instead of AoE.

No doubt it can be useful, but Im surprised thats an option over the
other skills.

As far as the range mentioned above, Ive said since day 1 I think a
staff on an ele should have better range (considering a ranger 1500),
but Im thinking they would not do that because the AOE would go
to far into enemy keeps.

Thunderbrew.7034:

No doubt it can be useful, but Im surprised thats an option over the
other skills.

As far as the range mentioned above, Ive said since day 1 I think a
staff on an ele should have better range (considering a ranger 1500),
but Im thinking they would not do that because the AOE would go
to far into enemy keeps.

Staff’s main flaw right now is a few of the skills doing no damage and lacking good pathing for some projectiles. The CC is also subpar at a single-target level considering CC is necessary to get any damage in a 1v1/1v2 setting.

Cantrips
-Cleansing fire is fine as it is, given traits like soothing disruption and cleansing water

Conjures
- My current suggestion is to make each conjure substitute the corresponding element on use, while still able to switch attunement, should my idea be considered too OP, we could go with your idea..but here few changes:

1)Fire= Fire Blast ( 1400 base dmg , 3s burning, 360 radius PBaoe)
2)Water= Ice storm ( same as the Ice bow skill4)
3)Earth= Fortify ( same as earth shield skill 5)
4)Air= Wind Blast ( 600 base dmg, PBaoe launch, blowout 450)

Signets
Add instant cast to all of them!
- Signet of Air= 30s CD , 2s Daze, 25% speed increase
- Signet of Fire= 25s CD, 6s Burning+4s cripple, 8% crit chance
- Signet of earth= no change
- Signet of water= no change

Elites
-Tornado= reflect projectiles, faster movement or pull in skill
-Conjure FGS= Conjure Element ( one conjure elite for element)