Guild Wars 2

Probably obvious, but why do an Elementalist’s recharge traits work the way they do?

Take Pyromancer’s Alacrity for example. A Master trait (meaning 20 points into Fire, tough to justify for any competitive build atm) that reduces fire weapon skill recharge by 20%. MAYBE decent if you are a staff user and only stay in Fire, but that seems like it runs counter to ANet’s intent of the Ele as an attunement dancer.

The other thing is that any of the “Alacrity” traits (Water being the only Adept, probably due to low DPS) only affect 25% of our skills at any one time. With other professions, their recharge traits affect at least 50% of their available skills, and some, like the Guardian’s “Two-Handed Mastery” can affect 150% of their available skills (Greatsword, Hammer and Staff)!

Between the lower damage range on our skills (the rationale being that we have access to more and need to chain to deal damage, which of course doesn’t take into account casting times and the overall longer amount of time taking into consideration movement, dodging, etc.) and the lockout on weapon switching keeping us at a certain range, isn’t this all a little nerfy?

What I propose is a change to the Alacrity traits. Each weapon we have access to could be said to share a theme, such as a Staff identifying with Fire, Dagger with Air, etc. What I would have ANet do is identify that theme, and attach a weapon to it. For example:

Blaster’s Alacrity – replaces Pyromancer’s Alacrity, all Staff skills recharge 20% quicker.
Cutter’s Alacrity – replaces Aeromancer’s Alacrity, all Dagger skills recharge 20% quicker.

Focus could go to Earth and Scepter to Water. As the current crop of Eles tend to focus on D/D Water/Arcane, some sacrifice would be needed to move enough points to Air to take advantage of the Master trait there.

I think given that an Ele needs to output two to three times as many skills as the next class to do even close to comparable damage, that this is not out of the realm of reason. Not to mention that many of our skills are on prohibitively long cooldowns. Compare Churning Earth for example to Whirling Wrath or Hundred Blades (and in the Warrior’s case, his greatsword recharge reduction also comes with Might on crits).

We have a lot of traits that benefits only 1 attunement. I agree; it goes against the design intent of the Elementlist. It looks like the people who created the traits weren’t the same people who created the Elementalist.

I would put scepter with earth, because it seems to be a condition weapon to me and would benefit from the condition damage in earth Otherwise this sounds like a great idea.

I am against this gung-hoe. The way it is now is not great-But it certainly does not lock weapons into traits. You don’t have to be a FIRE ELE to weild a staff right now. If we go along the proposed ideal-That would mean that if I ever want to be Faster usesing a staff, I HAVE to be a fire ele, I have to take that power trait. That is wrong.

Then we get pushed back into 3-builds that everyone runs because everything else sucks.
Fire/Arcana Staff ele
Air/Arcana Dagger Ele
Earth/Arcana Scepter Ele.

That is way to limiting. Not to mention I have 2 alacrities, Hydro and Geo and combined with fast attunment swapping I actually USE all of those on cooldown. Yet in the middle of a dungeon if I need more survivability I can grab my focus and scepter and still work it. I am not locked into being a staff fire ele. It would just really harm the ele if anything.

The recharge idea may work if it affected all your skills while in a certain attunement. That would include utility skills and conjure weapon skills. However, it would have to be 20pt skills at least. And maybe 10%.

frostflare.6390:

I am against this gung-hoe. The way it is now is not great-But it certainly does not lock weapons into traits. You don’t have to be a FIRE ELE to weild a staff right now. If we go along the proposed ideal-That would mean that if I ever want to be Faster usesing a staff, I HAVE to be a fire ele, I have to take that power trait. That is wrong.

Then we get pushed back into 3-builds that everyone runs because everything else sucks.
Fire/Arcana Staff ele
Air/Arcana Dagger Ele
Earth/Arcana Scepter Ele.

That is way to limiting. Not to mention I have 2 alacrities, Hydro and Geo and combined with fast attunment swapping I actually USE all of those on cooldown. Yet in the middle of a dungeon if I need more survivability I can grab my focus and scepter and still work it. I am not locked into being a staff fire ele. It would just really harm the ele if anything.

Really? Too limiting? Exactly how many Ele players take ANY of the alacrity traits? Take your average 0/10/0/30/30 D/D bunker. Zephyr’s Speed is usually mandatory, the Water traits all deal with cantrips and condition cleanse, and the Arcane traits deal with boons, usually vigor, and almost always EA. No cooldown traits.

Other builds, such as 30/30 Fire and Air, also rarely if ever take alacrity traits because they’re not so useful. Even if you only stay in Fire and Air, with the occasional dip into Water for heals or Earth for a snare, you’d have to take two alacrity traits to get the 20% recharge on only half your available skills.

The point is, at any point in time, taking any of the current alacrity traits only applies to 1/4 of your available skills. If we’re talking balance, and we are, you have to compare it to other class traits in the same vein.

The alacrity traits WOULD make sense if Eles had an in-combat weapon swap, and I think this may have been how it was initially designed, and then never changed. A Staff user dropping a Meteor Storm and Lava Font, then switching to Daggers and Burning Speed-ing into a packed group would make total sense to take Pyromancer’s Alacrity.

But, we have to work with what we’ve got. As Ele builds go, there is the potential for a lot of variety, and if there are ever changes to Arcane to make it not so necessary to play the class competitively, then I can see spreading trait points around a lot more.

And as for being locked into a certain trait line if you’re using said weapon, why? As I said above, most Ele players get along perfectly well with no cooldown reduction, since we’re cycling through skills and attunements so quickly. I can play any weapon on Ele with no cooldown reductions and usually always have skills open in my rotations. But if I wanted to focus on Staff DPS, I’d have to take at least PA in Fire for damage, and AA in Air for CC and some additional damage. Seems hardly fair when the Guardian for example can take Two-Handed Mastery and have 20% CD reductions on 15 skills across three different weapons.

only reason I can see us need a recharge is if your more prone to shifting between a certain set of skills and want the bigger cooldowns lowered.
That or you linger on that element and only shift on need and quickly go back once your done.

frostflare.6390:

I am against this gung-hoe. The way it is now is not great-But it certainly does not lock weapons into traits. You don’t have to be a FIRE ELE to weild a staff right now. If we go along the proposed ideal-That would mean that if I ever want to be Faster usesing a staff, I HAVE to be a fire ele, I have to take that power trait. That is wrong.

Then we get pushed back into 3-builds that everyone runs because everything else sucks.
Fire/Arcana Staff ele
Air/Arcana Dagger Ele
Earth/Arcana Scepter Ele.

That is way to limiting. Not to mention I have 2 alacrities, Hydro and Geo and combined with fast attunment swapping I actually USE all of those on cooldown. Yet in the middle of a dungeon if I need more survivability I can grab my focus and scepter and still work it. I am not locked into being a staff fire ele. It would just really harm the ele if anything.

Hmmmmm….

20pts in Fire =200 power. Cool.
Blasters alacrity= 20% lowered CD on ALL staff skills? (Earth, Wind, Fire, Water…Heart?)

50pts left for whatever you want?

I…I don’t see how this would limit us.

one trait should be lower cd in all attunements, one should be increased casting speed in all attunements, etc etc.

All traits should support attunement dancing imo, but with a flavour relevant to the traitline it’s in.

I definitely don’t want to be limited by weapons as proposed. I run S/D right now and have aeromancer’s alacrity, or w/e for the 20% cdr for air skills. Your idea would destroy the little synergy I had with 1/4 attunements. There are problems with attunement-specific traits, but this isn’t a solution.

Shadowflare.2759:

I definitely don’t want to be limited by weapons as proposed. I run S/D right now and have aeromancer’s alacrity, or w/e for the 20% cdr for air skills. Your idea would destroy the little synergy I had with 1/4 attunements. There are problems with attunement-specific traits, but this isn’t a solution.

How would it destroy it? With Aeromancer’s Alacrity as it is now, you’re getting with your build reduced CDs on only the air skills. Scepter Air is already quite fast recharge, of course its RTL and Updraft that need the CD reduction and with your current build you have it.

Now assume we change Aeromancer’s Alacrity as I proposed, with your current build instead of only reducing Air skills, you only reduce Dagger skills. So you’d STILL get reduced CDs on RTL and Updraft, as well as RoF, Fire Grab, Frost Aura, Cleansing Wave, Earthquake and Churning Earth. Are you really going to try and argue that 1 second off of Lightning Strike and 2 seconds off of Blinding Flash are more valuable than the skills I just mentioned having a reduced CD of 20%?

The way my proposal works already fits in with a lot of builds. Aggressive Staff builds usually take at least 20 in Fire, aggressive Dagger builds sometimes go 20 or even 25 in Air, etc. Focus should probably be a Water weapon, since its more defensive in nature, while Scepter becomes the Earth weapon with its emphasis on bleeds and conditions. If we ever get access to more weapons, they can just be added under the already existing traits, i.e. bladed weapons like swords would go under the Air trait, any type of bow could go to Fire, crushing weapons like maces or hammers under Earth, and other off-hands like warhorns to Water.

I just think its a shame that ANet designed such an interesting and fun mechanic into a caster class, than hamstrung its abilities, nerfed its skills and traits, and made the traits themselves not really have a lot of synergy with the class mechanic.