Guild Wars 2

It was a step in the right direction, but by all means it was way too situational to take seriously.

Notice all the necroes who were complaining about it the day it was released? lol i havent heard a peep from them since. funny if you ask me.

The Game Slayer.7632:

It was a step in the right direction, but by all means it was way too situational to take seriously.

Notice all the necroes who were complaining about it the day it was released? lol i havent heard a peep from them since. funny if you ask me.

You should take a look at the WvW discussion sub forum to “hear another peep” from necros.

for the uninitiated… what the heck is a D-Skin? I tried searching for it, but got D’armure, D’arme, and D’espadon as results…

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

for the uninitiated… what the heck is a D-Skin? I tried searching for it, but got D’armure, D’arme, and D’espadon as results…

It is a made up abbreviation for diamond skin.

It’s funny, but that ability should be relatively hit or miss. Either your at or above 90% health, or your already dead so it doesn’t matter. So I fail to see the problem with it being a 90% threshold (I am assuming that is the problem the OP has with it?). Plus the trait is in about the worst trait line that we have, so why even bother?

^ 30 in Earth. It’s a sacrifice to even get it. Really, it’s only got limited/specific use for trolling certain builds.

LightningBlaze.4913:

The Game Slayer.7632:

It was a step in the right direction, but by all means it was way too situational to take seriously.

Notice all the necroes who were complaining about it the day it was released? lol i havent heard a peep from them since. funny if you ask me.

You should take a look at the WvW discussion sub forum to “hear another peep” from necros.

WvW balance is a joke. Condition necros have very little to be complaining about.

Deviija.7869:

^ 30 in Earth. It’s a sacrifice to even get it. Really, it’s only got limited/specific use for trolling certain builds.

I agree. cleansing wave and water being both grandmaster traits now doesnt help either. I like ether renewel but how easily it gets interrupted is infuriating. yes, I know, armour of earth- arcane shield etc but in the time im relying on ether renewel to remove conditions on me i think its fair to say more conditions are probably being applied and its not like im fighting while trying to heal myself.

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

It’s funny, but that ability should be relatively hit or miss. Either your at or above 90% health, or your already dead so it doesn’t matter. So I fail to see the problem with it being a 90% threshold (I am assuming that is the problem the OP has with it?). Plus the trait is in about the worst trait line that we have, so why even bother?

I disagree with earth being a bad trait line. It is actually a very good trait line. Rock Solid, stone splinter’s are popular traits along with earth’s embrace elemental shielding. The rest of the traits aren’t to great imo. 30 earth written in stone is decent but our signets aren’t except restoration imo but that has more to do with the signets then the traits.

Earth can let you pick up much more damage then you get in water with serrated stone and stone splinters both are easy to take advantage off.

Water has traits that need work also but the stable traits are even with earth I feel. Water has the advantage of vitality tree.

I currently prefer earth over water trait line. I just spec water for the 15 minor trait. But 15 points just for that is abit too much of an investment.

Almost any traitline is heavy gimmicky. There are alot of trash rated traits no sane man would pick. Not only for the ele tho.

I allways end up picking earth line recently. Giving me 20% more dmg. Diamond Skin is just a filler since there ain’t too many options.

Traits should be about choosing the best ones for your build. For me it feels like Anet allready chose for me, since there ain’t too much solid options in those lines.

DSkin is very useful especially versus mesmers (shatter mesmers won’t ILeap snare you) and necros (most start the fight with a fear, even power ones). It saved my butt a couple of times. I don’t run a heal build to keep me up above the 90% and i don’t run tanky (zerker + valk).

I’d always prefer always-usefull skill over those situational one. it would be more more better if it was like
-Lose condition every x sec
-Reflect on condition.Cd x sec
-Or %50 condi duration
whatever goes well with the balance. But the current one is -as stated- interesting yet not viable for 30 points.

silvershadez.8421:

I allways end up picking earth line recently. Giving me 20% more dmg.

20% more dmg if within 600 of target and if endurance isn’t full. That is, most of the time you’re not getting 20% more dmg.

DSkin is very useful especially versus mesmers (shatter mesmers won’t ILeap snare you) and necros (most start the fight with a fear, even power ones). It saved my butt a couple of times. I don’t run a heal build to keep me up above the 90% and i don’t run tanky (zerker + valk).

Strongly disagree. Unless they totally take you by surprise or start within 600 of you, shatter mesmers will almost always open with iZerker (GS) or iWarlock (staff) and 1-hit from either of these plus an auto-attack or 2 will definitely take you below 90% HP, in which case DS becomes 100% useless.

Beside the general uselessness of DS in practical terms, i.e. unless you’re 100% bunker you will spend most of the fight below 90% HP, there’s also the stat advantage of water.

Your 30 earth gives you an extra 300 toughness. On top of say 2.3K armour, 300 toughness translates to ~11.5% less direct damage. Versus a 10K shatter combo, that’s ~1150 less dmg you’d take with 30 earth.

With 30 water, you’d have an extra 3000HP, which together with the extra 300 healing power (an extra 300HP healed by healing ripple alone), is way more useful versus burst classes as it can (and often does) mean the difference between surviving a burst or not.

oZii.2864:

I disagree with earth being a bad trait line. It is actually a very good trait line. Rock Solid, stone splinter’s are popular traits along with earth’s embrace elemental shielding.

Yeah they’re the only 3 good traits. Earth is a bad line because neither of the GM traits are good and the 25pt trait is also pretty bad.

The other thing is that condition damage is pretty poor on Ele, so 300 condition dmg kind of feels like a waste… a bit like how i’d like to spec the trickery line on my thief but can’t justify 300 stat points wasted on condi dmg.

30 earth written in stone is decent but our signets aren’t except restoration imo but that has more to do with the signets then the traits.

Agree. Signet traits are pretty decent, but the signets themselves aren’t good enough, specifically, they don’t offer anything comparable to cantrips. SoR was overnerfed.

Earth can let you pick up much more damage then you get in water with serrated stone and stone splinters both are easy to take advantage off.

Water has traits that need work also but the stable traits are even with earth I feel. Water has the advantage of vitality tree.

IMO it’s still on par with Fire for worst trait line, because Ele can get its stability and damage bonuses elsewhere. The problem is there’s nothing really compelling or unique in Earth that’s comparable in overall offense/defense/utility to water/arcane.

scerevisiae.1972:

20% more dmg if within 600 of target and if endurance isn’t full. That is, most of the time you’re not getting 20% more dmg.

Well first off, it is 10 % dmg when your endurance is full. Quite good with perma vigor and if you don’t dodge around like a brainless monkey on about every skill thrown at you.
Secondly: I’m within 600 range almost all the time anyway. In tPvP you are basically force to go close to contest points. ALso there are plenty of melee classes. Most of the classes will try to close up on you. So it’s far easier to pull off then the 10% dmg on burn (in fire) or 10% dmg when health above 90% (water)

Strongly disagree. Unless they totally take you by surprise or start within 600 of you, shatter mesmers will almost always open with iZerker (GS) or iWarlock (staff) and 1-hit from either of these plus an auto-attack or 2 will definitely take you below 90% HP, in which case DS becomes 100% useless.

Beside the general uselessness of DS in practical terms, i.e. unless you’re 100% bunker you will spend most of the fight below 90% HP, there’s also the stat advantage of water.

IZerker /IWarlock are so easyly dodged for anyone that has dueled mesmers more then 10 times.
I’m a zerker. Most of the fight is almost over within 10 seconds (and even that only if the fight went long enough). DiamondSkin is basically not what my build is aiming for, but well I got 5 points to spare and no other minor trait is worth it.
It helps ME a ton with necros and mesmer. Sure a good player will find a way to play around, but that one initial fear blown away by the necro can really make the difference. Same for shatter immo bomb.

Your 30 earth gives you an extra 300 toughness. On top of say 2.3K armour, 300 toughness translates to ~11.5% less direct damage. Versus a 10K shatter combo, that’s ~1150 less dmg you’d take with 30 earth.

With 30 water, you’d have an extra 3000HP, which together with the extra 300 healing power (an extra 300HP healed by healing ripple alone), is way more useful versus burst classes as it can (and often does) mean the difference between surviving a burst or not.

With S/F I don’t have many heal skills. Earth on the other hand gives me -20% recharge on earth skills. The earth focus skills are the key to my survivability. Once you have truly gone focus you will not return to dagger offhands.

I value 20% dmg, 300 armor, -20% recharge on my key suvival skills, and an occasionally useful Diamond Skin more useful then anything water could offer. I really only miss the water 15 trait.

It’s a step in exactly the wrong direction, it has a solid use (better than the useless traits we’ve had) but it’s use is entirely binary. Strong against X weak against Y. If this trend continues throughout the entire game GW2 might as well be renamed Rock Paper Scissors.

Diamond Skin is a terrible step in making the game even more passive/buildwars. Attributes that further removes this game from being e-sport worthy.

It’s broken in the sense that it is either A) totally useless when getting focused in anyway whatsoever and against power builds or B) ridiculously OP in 1v1 situations against condi builds where you can just faceroll the opponent and chase them around the map till they ragequit since they can’t get past the 90% health threshold and there’s absolutely no counter-play they can make as an individual.

It’s nice to have something to utterly beat condi builds with but it’s changes like this that makes the game worse by adding to the passive, no counter play culture of this game that no serious PvPers are interested in.