Guild Wars 2

I’d like to know from you what water adept trait now is worth taking. I like to be supportive for the party, but they moved all the interesting traits to Master tier and now I don’t know what trait pick. I’m thinking also that peraphs it’s better to not invest in water at all.

Water Adept is absolutely worthless now, something well have to deal with until ArenaNet stops being stupid with traits.

Better than Grandmaster Earth still.

adept traits are in a really bad place now.
they increased the points required to benefit from water trait like you do prepatch about 10 points now.

-20% Cantrip cd seems well wroth it.

Only if you use Cantrips and I personally prefer Arcane Skills. Usually I have one Cantrip in my skill bar, but most of the time I don’t need that it recharges more often. Also we have 4 Cantrips, 5 Arcane, 5 Signet and 6 Glyphs. Pretty unbalanced distribution.

Licantus.8495:

Only if you use Cantrips and I personally prefer Arcane Skills. Usually I have one Cantrip in my skill bar, but most of the time I don’t need that it recharges more often. Also we have 4 Cantrips, 5 Arcane, 5 Signet and 6 Glyphs. Pretty unbalanced distribution.

There the fall skill to its a heal (would love to see it be a water filed not just a heal) or knock down or fire/burn filed or a stun/air field. That seems worth it too.

The choices in Adept really are worthless now, apart from Cantrip Mastery if you use more than one cantrip.

I wish they’d of left Cleansing Wave or Aquamancer’s Alacrity in there. Really screwed up my support build.

in WWW i find cantrip mastery to be good >.>

i still use mistform and lightning flash.

I wish thy would change soothing wave to gain regen on aura. That would make aura share builds a little more supportive

i used to use cleansing wave but it moved to master trait anyway. basically switched with what i was using there, lol. anyway for adept i’m comfortable with piercing shards for the 20% dmg while using fiery gs or lh, or vital striking for 10% dmg while health above 90%. it’s situational though so i keep switching if i need to.

I took Vital Striking pre-patch out of choice. Now it seems Vital Striking is the best option out of necessity. I feel for pure support ele. This patch must be a bitter pill to swallow.

When today I logged my ele to re-put up her traits I swear.. I got almost moved into tears. How to screw up decent pve dungeon builds with this crap.
I used to run 30/0/0/30/10 – derivation of a cantrip build, dmg on boons, having decend dps (crit adjusted with equipment) and decent support ( some nice in shot cleanse) if guard was fail. I’ve always been against a total suppport cause the nature of the game doesn’t encourage those choices, and liked a lot ele because i could run something hybrid and greatly fine with it.
Now, water magic, everything usefull moved on Master tier, Adept tier to kerb…. Cleansin Wave moved to GM tier…. Arcana.. the only decent trait of Adept tier moved on master tier again. Seriously?
I cant experss how much annoyed i am right now.

It’s horrible the way it is now.

If you want a specific type of build, you’ll need to specialize into it. That’s the point of the entire trait system.

I know this might seem annoying, because you’ll have to adapt, and the old building philosophy no longer works. Imagine when GW2 was in beta, and trait tiers didn’t exist. Do you know what happened? Everyone picked the strongest, grandmaster-worthy traits with only a 10 point investment. There was no specialization. When Anet added the tiering system, the gw2 guru forums exploded, and everyone was complaining that they had no freedom to create their own builds anymore. But I ask, what freedom? Picking all the best traits with no sacrifice only leads to an ultimate, broken build.

Perhaps you don’t find very fun how the trait system is meant to work, which is fair, but the reason why tiers exist and why they are used as a buff/ nerf mechanism, is to force players to make meaningful choices. Not just put 10 points in and get all the stuff they need. In the end, things are more “balanced” now, even though they might be less fun to you, which is a fair criticism.

I do agree that water’s adept traits are a bit restricting now, because the new soothing wave only really works in pvp environments.

If you want party support, you need to invest into it. 20 earth for Rock Solid. 20 arcana for Elemental Attunement. 30 arcana for Evasive Arcana. 15 water for Healing Ripple. 20 water for Cleansing Wave and Aquamancer’s Alacrity. 30 water for Powerful Auras and Cleansing Water. 30 fire for Persisting Flames.

J Night.3468:

it’s situational though so i keep switching if i need to.

Yeah, this is the problem: the water adept traits now are too much situational and not predictable.
Piercing Shards —> Deal more damage only if in water and foes have vulnerability
Vital Striking --> Deal more damage only if you have 90% or more health
Soothing Wave —> Regen only when somone crit you
Arcane Abatement --> Area effect only when you take fall damage
Shard of Ice —> Never seen this usefull on its own
Cantrip Mastery --> Only usefull if you use Cantrips
So if you take Water Magic you have to use Cantrips or hope that the situations you meet will make the trait you have equipped usefull.

DiogoSilva.7089:

If you want a specific type of build, you’ll need to specialize into it. That’s the point of the entire trait system.

I want to specialize in Water, but now I don’t find a worthy adept trait! It’s very annoying that I waste a Major trait in this way, even if only an Adept one.

I would like to see Piercing Shards and Shard of Ice to be revamped to something more meaningful. Yes, I know one of them is used for LH builds, but it’s boring otherwise.

Piercing Shards

• Whenever you apply chill, you also inflict 6 seconds of Torment to your foe.

Shards of Ice

• The next arcane or signet you activate applies 3 seconds of chill and 9 stacks of vulnerability for a low-duration as well (3-4 seconds).

Seagloom.1263:

I took Vital Striking pre-patch out of choice. Now it seems Vital Striking is the best option out of necessity. I feel for pure support ele. This patch must be a bitter pill to swallow.

I’ve been running 0/30/0/20/20 with Vital Striking, Piercing Shards and scholar runes in pve since fresh air patch. I’m able to pull off 15k-19k fire grabs, pretty fun to play

Nyxion.9142:

Seagloom.1263:

I took Vital Striking pre-patch out of choice. Now it seems Vital Striking is the best option out of necessity. I feel for pure support ele. This patch must be a bitter pill to swallow.

I’ve been running 0/30/0/20/20 with Vital Striking, Piercing Shards and scholar runes in pve since fresh air patch. I’m able to pull off 15k-19k fire grabs, pretty fun to play

nice. i assume you’re using bull zerker gear? and ugh that cd duration on fire grab is still depressing lol.

J Night.3468:

Nyxion.9142:

Seagloom.1263:

I took Vital Striking pre-patch out of choice. Now it seems Vital Striking is the best option out of necessity. I feel for pure support ele. This patch must be a bitter pill to swallow.

I’ve been running 0/30/0/20/20 with Vital Striking, Piercing Shards and scholar runes in pve since fresh air patch. I’m able to pull off 15k-19k fire grabs, pretty fun to play

nice. i assume you’re using bull zerker gear? and ugh that cd duration on fire grab is still depressing lol.

Almost full zerk. It’s all about crit dmg so you can use valk or cavalier as well. I have mixed trinkets for extra hp and armor, though I’m not sure if it’s worth it. Less precision is less dps, but on the other hand dead=0 dps.

Nyxion.9142:

Seagloom.1263:

I took Vital Striking pre-patch out of choice. Now it seems Vital Striking is the best option out of necessity. I feel for pure support ele. This patch must be a bitter pill to swallow.

I’ve been running 0/30/0/20/20 with Vital Striking, Piercing Shards and scholar runes in pve since fresh air patch. I’m able to pull off 15k-19k fire grabs, pretty fun to play

Yeah, but this isn’t a supportive setup
I think that Water Magic line was created to be more supportive than for dps, but now it’s not so.

Ancient Ranger.3276:

I wish thy would change soothing wave to gain regen on aura. That would make aura share builds a little more supportive

But that would make too much sense.

Jokes aside, I would love to see that + a 10 point trait in fire line that gives Might on aura, would match the earth 10 point trait for Protection and air 10 point trait for Swiftness/Fury. Could see using a 10/10/10/30/10 build the maximize auras.

That is why the classic DnD spec still works perfectly in WvW. Not sure about pvp or pve but in wvw roaming and zerging, we pwn.

arcane abatement is the only adept water trait worth taking

It’s ridiculous that they put the most situational abilities in the tier that’s supposed to be the most accessible. Bravo.

No other profession has so many useless abilities for their 5 point minor traits. EVERY SINGLE TRAIT in our adept tier is situational or garbage – something no other profession has to deal with. Mesmers come close as their traits only really step in when they unlock the master tier, but at least once they hit 80 their adept tier isn’t useless anymore and synergizes smoothly into any build.

Anet has taken a completely different approach to balancing the elementalist traits than they have for every other profession. Every other profession has universally useful and powerful traits in the adept tier, more specialized abilities in the master tier, and exceptionally powerful but build-dependent abilities in grand master. You can play around with your traits like a kid on christmas with too many toys as soon as you hit level 20, whereas elementalists have to wait until the 40th for a government handout to give them the bare minimum to survive, with absolutely nothing resembling a build choice starting to come about.

I do agree water adept now needs some love. The choices there where easy cause the good traits shined and people ignored the rest. I think soothing wave is fine at adept but it needs 30 water to be decent on its own it is pretty bad. Cantrip mastery is good at adept. I like diogo suggestion to help the other traits.

I kind of see what they did was have weapon cd reductions move up and utility traits down to adept. So arcane, cantrip, glyphs, signets, conjure cd reductions are all adept now. Once they fix the traits affect traits it will be better. Like cantrip mastery works on burning fire trait but not armor of earth.

Nyxion.9142:

J Night.3468:

Nyxion.9142:

Seagloom.1263:

I took Vital Striking pre-patch out of choice. Now it seems Vital Striking is the best option out of necessity. I feel for pure support ele. This patch must be a bitter pill to swallow.

I’ve been running 0/30/0/20/20 with Vital Striking, Piercing Shards and scholar runes in pve since fresh air patch. I’m able to pull off 15k-19k fire grabs, pretty fun to play

nice. i assume you’re using bull zerker gear? and ugh that cd duration on fire grab is still depressing lol.

Almost full zerk. It’s all about crit dmg so you can use valk or cavalier as well. I have mixed trinkets for extra hp and armor, though I’m not sure if it’s worth it. Less precision is less dps, but on the other hand dead=0 dps.

i’ve been really comfortable with my soldier gear. i just got full zerk recently but i’m not enjoying it that much. i honestly got tired of full zerk ages ago. i only use it now rarely on my main (thief) if i’m not using valk.

Move Cleansing Wave back to V, problem solved.