Guild Wars 2

The trait itself sounds like a great trait against thieves, warriors and other zerkers. But my concern is that it’ll be too good. Because instead of toning down insane bursts, or making eles a bit tougher, Anet opted to make a hard counter to them.

I fear that now, ele defense will be balanced around the assumption that they’ll use Stone Heart against burst builds and Diamond Skin against condition builds. This means that builds that use neither will nog get buffed, simply because ‘the ele is in a good place against build x’. My fear is that, because we now have hard counters, we are effectively told to shut up in terms of balance complaints.

And I don’t like that prospect…

i dont think it’s gonna be too good. since only thiefs do burst dmg. warriors kill you with fire, bleeds and torment. the rest of the meta are condispecs.
so, you need to spec 30 into earth to withstand thiefs and deal no dmg since you dont have anything in air. thief wins either way.

Looking at the new signet changes (specifically sig of intelligence, 3 guaranteed crits on wep swap), I’m beginning to feel stone heart is almost going to become mandatory for survival.

I don t really think you can ask to switch to earth to answer an attack….
Its not the proper game to do that and if possible there are lot of easier answers for better results (see 100% immunity+ damage).

Imho devs with this and what they said about dagger fire 3 forgot how attunement works…

They think we are sitting in a single one and they have no cooldown

They should remove the switch timer on atunements, or make it 5 seconds and make the arcane stat something better. I don’t see why it’s a base 13 seconds with the ultra long skill cooldowns we have. I could have understood if it was 10 seconds base.

I agree. I think this wasn’t the best idea when deciding on new traits. Now the assumption is people will either be immune to conditions when above 90% health which itself is a joke thanks to our low health it is VERY easy for even condition builds to get us below that line and now we will have a trait that makes us immune to crit when in a attunement that is simply awful.

It does not matter if you can’t be crit hit in Earth seeing as Earth itself is no threat what so ever. It will just mean it will take a little bit longer to kill you and you will still melt to the constant burst condition builds that can apply insane numbers of conditions in seconds and just laugh at you while you fail to remove them all. Knowing that they can reply them and more in seconds.

What happens when after being in Earth for so long and the enemy being still at high health due to how weak and pointless some of our skills are in Earth when we are getting low, forced to change attunement to heal, now locked out of it for at least 10seconds and with the fact that Lingering Elements will not work with it means that we are going to be toast. Everyone will just spam attacks until we are forced to change attunement and then wait for that to burst us into death….

So we take one or the other…Then weak against the other so much so that it is pretty much death no matter what way you go, the difference will just be the builds that are easily killing you. people going on about stopping the on-crit procs like that will be something amazing – who relies on on Crit effects anyway? No one.

i can see MANY of the new traits either getting adjusted or full out redesigned when it comes to release. Because some of them are straight up broken – A class that spend 90% of a fight in stealth getting a 50% damage reduction in stealth…Yeah great idea. Some of the Warrior ones are rather stupid as well.

I dont think Stone Heart is going to be worth while for the most part (unless you’re going full condi build anyways).

As has been mentioned… Thieves will just wait for you to switch out of earth, and then burst you down—rendering the trait useless.

The only reason to take it would be if you planned to sit in earth for an extended period. There aren’t a lot of reasons I can see an ele wanting to do that unless you’re just running away.

Its not going to be that great you must stay in earth to get use out of it. Now earth alone is not that good but if you combine it with say conjured weapons then you can see fun going on. The thing is a real ele should be using every thing and just sitting in earth is going to be a major problem for ele to pull off.

I agree, there is some synergy for stone heart and conjured weapons. But it still seems like a huge waste to give up on 3/4 attunements and your utility slots just to make use of one trait.

It’s still a powerful trait, no doubt. So it will be interesting to see. But I won’t be calling in the nerfbat anytime soon. I strongly suspect this one will go the way of Diamond Skin and be used only for very specific purposes.

If shatter mesmers and Eles both re-emerge in the s/tPvP meta together I can see stone heart being very important for Eles to deal with shatter mesmers’s.

To the ThiBash they are toning down burst damage with the crit damage changes.

ThiBash.5634:

The trait itself sounds like a great trait against thieves, warriors and other zerkers. But my concern is that it’ll be too good. Because instead of toning down insane bursts, or making eles a bit tougher, Anet opted to make a hard counter to them.

I fear that now, ele defense will be balanced around the assumption that they’ll use Stone Heart against burst builds and Diamond Skin against condition builds. This means that builds that use neither will nog get buffed, simply because ‘the ele is in a good place against build x’. My fear is that, because we now have hard counters, we are effectively told to shut up in terms of balance complaints.

And I don’t like that prospect…

You can actually deal with conditions while using stone earth picking the stability trait and ether renewal.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

As has been mentioned… Thieves will just wait for you to switch out of earth, and then burst you down—rendering the trait useless.

I think you’re overestimating the intelligence of thieves. “If it moves backstab it. Blocking? YOLO. Invuln? Spam it till it works. Ima whip you with my pistol, so skill.”

I think you underestimate the potential for thieves to be good. Who cares if the trait works against bad thieves? You should be able to beat bad players of ANY class with any other class if you are good. Who wants to take a trait designed to counter bad players?

Now, the fact that eles are so hard-countered by thieves that even bad thieves can prevail against a good ele is a whole ’nother problem.

Also agree with op. Soon people will be rationalizing ele weakness with the magical x/x/60/x/x build that somehow manages to take both diamond skin AND stone heart.

I don’t find thieves counter Eles at all. They’re the one class I feel confident in killing actually. It comes back to good and bad players and their experiences I guess.

SonOfKrypton.4357:

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

As has been mentioned… Thieves will just wait for you to switch out of earth, and then burst you down—rendering the trait useless.

I think you’re overestimating the intelligence of thieves. “If it moves backstab it. Blocking? YOLO. Invuln? Spam it till it works. Ima whip you with my pistol, so skill.”

Rolf I like this guy!! Was on my engi last night S/D thief double dodging, flanking spam into my bombs, heartseeker preloading while I have tool kit block up, etc…

It’s like many go through the motions this guy was evading,withdraw, double dodging just to do it like it was cool. I love S/d it’s my fav thief set but there are a lot of bad players out there and a lot of average players that assume your bad. You know you got them when they come back for revenge kills.

If people slow down a little they would improve a lot. Half the time you can kite around and watch people blow their main load. There is a lot going on but thieves are the best class to fight against while being patient.

I think people are underestimating the trait as well as overestimating thieves. There is no reason a thief will wait it out while you’re sitting in Earth because the best time to pop Earth is when you see them go into stealth (D/D and D/P). If they choose to wait they will run out of stealth waisting it. There’s no reason for that, they will still attack you since back stab has no initiative cost and it will save you from crit. The only other attacks they have to use is auto attack which isn’t enough. I don’t see why people are thinking thieves will kill us when we are earth attuned or wait it out when they only have auto attack besides back stab.

Then you have pistol whip thieves (S/P) which will he just as easy to block since pistol whip has a decent animation time once you get immobilized from teleport so you can either break free and get out of there or if you have no condi cleanse left you can switch to earth before they start doing damage with the pistol whip attack. We will have multiple defenses instead of just condi cleanses to get out of the thieves spam.

I can’t wait to use the trait personally and see how well it truly works.

ALSO, to the op. I believe you are quite wrong when it comes to the ability being OP as it requires skillful active play. It is not like diamond skin where it is passively active the whole time. You must time the use of it by switching to earth attunement. People are overreacting and under reacting in my opinion.

Cush.4063:

I think people are underestimating the trait as well as overestimating thieves. There is no reason a thief will wait it out while you’re sitting in Earth because the best time to pop Earth is when you see them go into stealth (D/D and D/P). If they choose to wait they will run out of stealth waisting it. There’s no reason for that, they will still attack you since back stab has no initiative cost and it will save you from crit. The only other attacks they have to use is auto attack which isn’t enough. I don’t see why people are thinking thieves will kill us when we are earth attuned or wait it out when they only have auto attack besides back stab.

Then you have pistol whip thieves (S/P) which will he just as easy to block since pistol whip has a decent animation time once you get immobilized from teleport so you can either break free and get out of there or if you have no condi cleanse left you can switch to earth before they start doing damage with the pistol whip attack. We will have multiple defenses instead of just condi cleanses to get out of the thieves spam.

I can’t wait to use the trait personally and see how well it truly works.

ALSO, to the op. I believe you are quite wrong when it comes to the ability being OP as it requires skillful active play. It is not like diamond skin where it is passively active the whole time. You must time the use of it by switching to earth attunement. People are overreacting and under reacting in my opinion.

Very, VERY well stated. I was thinking along a similar train of thought. We shouldn’t be thinking of this trait as a passive buff, but rather a timed “shield.”

As i said with diamond skin….
I ll say here again..
Trash trait totally forgotten in 1 month.

Nobody will get this as grandmaster trait in the worst trait tree for elementalist.

LordByron.8369:

As i said with diamond skin….
I ll say here again..
Trash trait totally forgotten in 1 month.

Nobody will get this as grandmaster trait in the worst trait tree for elementalist.

The problem with Diamond Skin was the threshold though. A couple of auto attacks rendered it useless. If it was lowered to maybe 70% ~ 80% the results would’ve been different.

On a side note, I think Earth Magic is a good trait line. If ever they decide to change Stone Heart to what others want, a passive defensive mechanism that works on any attunement, I’d suggest to make it:

Grant 3 seconds Protection when Critically Hit with a 10 second CD. The idea is the same, give Elementalists more survivability against Power Builds except that it would promote more passive play contradictory to what Anet aims which is Active play.

kyon there are lot of tanky ele build…
We need some form of survivability that can be applied to balanced and zerk.

And “when hit” i something shouldn t even appear in elementalist traits…..
(you get protection when you have so low HP that you won t really care about protection)

LordByron.8369:

kyon there are lot of tanky ele build…
We need some form of survivability that can be applied to balanced and zerk.

And “when hit” i something shouldn t even appear in elementalist traits…..
(you get protection when you have so low HP that you won t really care about protection)

“When Hit” traits are already in the Elementalist traits. I think no matter what class you play you can’t avoid getting hit. I think protection is good, it’s a 33% damage reduction overall regardless of your HP. Yes, it won’t stop people from attacking you but it still helps.

What would you suggest as a GM trait for Earth that promotes defense against power builds?

Well, yeah, they’ve given us a way to fix the survivability problems everyone’s been complaining about. I don’t get it, do you want them to buff the Elementalist’s survivability for all builds?

Axelwarrior.9084:

Well, yeah, they’ve given us a way to fix the survivability problems everyone’s been complaining about. I don’t get it, do you want them to buff the Elementalist’s survivability for all builds?

Yes because the biggest problem with eles is that they are too weak baseline and need traits to become decent which pidgeonholes them to bunker or glass with no form of survivability.

This post summarizes it perfectly.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Elementalist-survival-PvE/page/2#post3807363

Edit: if baseline ele is buffed some traits might need to be nerfed but that is perfectly fine.

LordByron.8369:

As i said with diamond skin….
I ll say here again..
Trash trait totally forgotten in 1 month.

Nobody will get this as grandmaster trait in the worst trait tree for elementalist.

Actually, Earth Magic is an extremely good traitline, at least in PvP (where I play the most).
I already go 20 earth in most cases instead of 20 water because of Rock Solid, I think it would be no issue to go 10 futher into earth to take Stone Heart.

LordByron.8369:

kyon there are lot of tanky ele build…
We need some form of survivability that can be applied to balanced and zerk.

And “when hit” i something shouldn t even appear in elementalist traits…..
(you get protection when you have so low HP that you won t really care about protection)

There is Blinding Ashes.

Also, Stone Heart is extremely good also on balanced and zerker builds (stat-wise). You really understimate the damage mitigation of that trait.

sorrow i m talking about WWW.
And in WWW you need burst and mobility… (except for the staff buffbot builds….that i hate with passion)
Means if you are critically hit you are probably under 50% of your HP….protection won t help.

LordByron.8369:

sorrow i m talking about WWW.
And in WWW you need burst and mobility… (except for the staff buffbot builds….that i hate with passion)
Means if you are critically hit you are probably under 50% of your HP….protection won t help.

I don’t get it.
Most people run 30 water, but still, water does not provide better mobility, neither better damage compared to earth.

Also, you forget that on the next patch, a critical hit on full berserker will hit you for about 33% less damage (not sure about the numbers, though), so it won’t be a hit or die as it is now and it will be way more similiar to how PvP is right now about berserkers.

i tried 30 water….its too much.

But at least it provides cantrip reduction (see mobility) and cond cleansing.

WWW is totally unbalanced with profession like mesmer, thief and warriors being free to attack, disengage and attack again….and differently from PvP you “lose” if you don t kill them.

If they run away they still can harass many players making them lose time (1-2 can troll a spawn), they can kill camps, take away your captured ruins and stuff like that…..

I m extremely concerned about the dps loss or i wouldn t even think to change my build….
Ele since nerfs its to easy to kite….you don t have mobility nor stealth to catch up your target.

LordByron.8369:

i tried 30 water….its too much.

But at least it provides cantrip reduction (see mobility) and cond cleansing.

WWW is totally unbalanced with profession like mesmer, thief and warriors being free to attack, disengage and attack again….and differently from PvP you “lose” if you don t kill them.

If they run away they still can harass many players making them lose time (1-2 can troll a spawn), they can kill camps, take away your captured ruins and stuff like that…..

I m extremely concerned about the dps loss or i wouldn t even think to change my build….
Ele since nerfs its to easy to kite….you don t have mobility nor stealth to catch up your target.

It wouldn’t call 4s of recharge reduction on Lightning Flash “mobility”.
I understand that WvW is imbalanced, that’s why I don’t play it at all, but hopefully the rune changes will bring also a nerf to perplexity runes.

lightning flash + magnetic grasp is the only thing that keeps ele working (with a huge risk and lot of effort).

Also earthquake + LF

At least for me….
WIthout it as i said i would be kited forever.

LordByron.8369:

lightning flash + magnetic grasp is the only thing that keeps ele working (with a huge risk and lot of effort).

Also earthquake + LF

At least for me….
WIthout it as i said i would be kited forever.

As I said, it is just 4s on a major trait investment. Not worth that much imho.

losing the skill does.

Withotu water you need to slot cleansing fire.
Wich would your utilities be at that point (consider WWW not PvP)?

Stone Heart will work in a similar way as piercing shards does – Conjures.

LordByron.8369:

losing the skill does.

Withotu water you need to slot cleansing fire.
Wich would your utilities be at that point (consider WWW not PvP)?

Again, without water you don’t need to slot cleansing fire, you need to slot Ether Renewal.

Your utilities will still be the same.

Ganathar.4956:

Axelwarrior.9084:

Well, yeah, they’ve given us a way to fix the survivability problems everyone’s been complaining about. I don’t get it, do you want them to buff the Elementalist’s survivability for all builds?

Yes because the biggest problem with eles is that they are too weak baseline and need traits to become decent which pidgeonholes them to bunker or glass with no form of survivability.

This post summarizes it perfectly.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Elementalist-survival-PvE/page/2#post3807363

Edit: if baseline ele is buffed some traits might need to be nerfed but that is perfectly fine.

As far as I know, Elementalists have a lot of defensive skills. The only problem with their survivability is their low base HP.

Axelwarrior.9084:

Ganathar.4956:

Axelwarrior.9084:

Well, yeah, they’ve given us a way to fix the survivability problems everyone’s been complaining about. I don’t get it, do you want them to buff the Elementalist’s survivability for all builds?

Yes because the biggest problem with eles is that they are too weak baseline and need traits to become decent which pidgeonholes them to bunker or glass with no form of survivability.

This post summarizes it perfectly.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Elementalist-survival-PvE/page/2#post3807363

Edit: if baseline ele is buffed some traits might need to be nerfed but that is perfectly fine.

As far as I know, Elementalists have a lot of defensive skills. The only problem with their survivability is their low base HP.

I might as well add that these defensive skills have ridiculously high CDs as well.

I see Stone Heart only usefull in 2 scenarios,

you have Ether Renewal, you switch to Earth to get Rock Solid so you will not be interrupted the next 3.5s when you are running like a headless chicken and would not be critted that time but consider sPVP there is only %60 crit damage (will be lower with the changes) will it worth to burn GM trait for that %60 I don’t know.

Or you will try to use only offensive spell worth mentioning in Earth. Churning Earth so you will not be the punch bag for some thief.

If you see stay any longer in the Earth Attunement longer then that in Earth you will be a punching bag.

Kyon.9735:

Axelwarrior.9084:

Ganathar.4956:

Axelwarrior.9084:

Well, yeah, they’ve given us a way to fix the survivability problems everyone’s been complaining about. I don’t get it, do you want them to buff the Elementalist’s survivability for all builds?

Yes because the biggest problem with eles is that they are too weak baseline and need traits to become decent which pidgeonholes them to bunker or glass with no form of survivability.

This post summarizes it perfectly.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Elementalist-survival-PvE/page/2#post3807363

Edit: if baseline ele is buffed some traits might need to be nerfed but that is perfectly fine.

As far as I know, Elementalists have a lot of defensive skills. The only problem with their survivability is their low base HP.

I might as well add that these defensive skills have ridiculously high CDs as well.

Because they’re very strong. If Obsidian Flesh was on a 30 sec CD, it’d be ridiculous.

I truly think this idea is pretty good, because it’s not making you immune to damage, but gives you mitigation, on top of protection. And as many people pointed out, you can not sit in earth all game. As long as a well timed switch is the difference between taking 50% of your health or instantly blowing up, it should be rewarded imo, coz the protection alone on earth switch isn’t doing enough currently, even combined with frost aura (which is telling how fragile we are, if 43% total damage mitigation can’t prevent us from bruttaly dieing). It’s also an active play, designed way better than diamond skin.

Also, I think the whole ele playstyle should be rewarded this way. We are supposed to have such low hp, because we have access to such great potential. Higher base vita and toughness would just make the class ridiculous at worst, no brain at best.

LordByron.8369:

As i said with diamond skin….
I ll say here again..
Trash trait totally forgotten in 1 month.

Nobody will get this as grandmaster trait in the worst trait tree for elementalist.

It’s not the trait line that is the issue. It is the attunement.

Staff – Terrible auto attack that is easily dodged. Eruption decent skill, decent damage but takes to long to go off.Magnetic Aura rocks.Unsteady Ground decent but SO many groups have easily obtained AoE Stability making it useless most of the time. Shock wave rather poor, i have seen TRAITS that are FOUR times longer duration on the same cool down.

Dagger MH – Another awful auto attack. Ring of Earth is decent, nothing more. Magnetic Grasp is SO bugged it ca miss people right in front of the ele.
Dagger OH – earthquake way TOO long of a cool down. Churning Earth insane cool down and insane cast time makes it near useless against anyone that has seen it.

Scepter – Decent Auto attack. Damge is a bit low for getting sharp shards of rock hitting you. Rock Barrier is rather meh, nice Toughness but useless second part (Hurl) Dust Devil decent line Blind long cool down for what it really is though.

Focus – Magnetic Wave is decent but Obsidian Flesh is rather terrible for a 4 second duration Invul it has an insane cool down.

What i would do:

Staff – Add Bleeding and/or Cripple to the auto attack. Speed up Eruption so that even people in the centre of it can’t just walk out before it goes off. Increase the Bleeding Stacks but decrease the duration 12seconds is to long and the stacks will be lost way before then. Increase the Bleeding and Immbo on Shockwave.

Dagger MH: Total redesign of the Auto attack so that it hits multiple foes. Ring of Earth, again reduce the duration of the bleeding but increase the stacks. Maybe remove Cripple and add Torment instead. Magnetic Grasp, make it so that it actually WORKS add a 6 second Cripple.
Dagger OH: Reduce the cool down of Earthquake by a reasonable amount, Add Torment and Cripple to it. Churning Earth needs its cast time reduced by 50%. Increase the Cripple to 2seconds per a tick and add Torment high enough stacks so they have to decide what would be more damaging taking the Churning Earth or running from it.

Scepter: Stone Shards could do with a tiny bit of increase in direct damage. Hurl (Rock Barrier skill) should be 100% Crit hits for each hit with Each hit from it inflicting say 3 stacks of Torment for 10seconds. Dust Devil not to sure, its decent but could use something – maybe cripple?

Focus – Increase reflection duration to 5 seconds. Add Bleeding and/or Torment to it as well. Obsidian Flesh needs to have a much lower Cool down. Maybe have it have a secondary part of the skill something like:

Obsidian Explosion – repel your stoney armor knocking back all foes in range and dealing high damage. All foes in range and inflicted with 10second Cripple and 5 stacks of Torment for 10seconds.

or something like that.

2 of these weapons (Scepter and Focus) have issues in the other attunements as well in my opinion but i won’t get into that here.

Marcos.3690:

ThiBash.5634:

The trait itself sounds like a great trait against thieves, warriors and other zerkers. But my concern is that it’ll be too good. Because instead of toning down insane bursts, or making eles a bit tougher, Anet opted to make a hard counter to them.

I fear that now, ele defense will be balanced around the assumption that they’ll use Stone Heart against burst builds and Diamond Skin against condition builds. This means that builds that use neither will nog get buffed, simply because ‘the ele is in a good place against build x’. My fear is that, because we now have hard counters, we are effectively told to shut up in terms of balance complaints.

And I don’t like that prospect…

You can actually deal with conditions while using stone earth picking the stability trait and ether renewal.

+ stone heart shuts down all condiapplication via crit-procs on runes, sigills or traits.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

LordByron.8369:

As i said with diamond skin….
I ll say here again..
Trash trait totally forgotten in 1 month.

Nobody will get this as grandmaster trait in the worst trait tree for elementalist.

It’s not the trait line that is the issue. It is the attunement.

Staff – Terrible auto attack that is easily dodged. Eruption decent skill, decent damage but takes to long to go off.Magnetic Aura rocks.Unsteady Ground decent but SO many groups have easily obtained AoE Stability making it useless most of the time. Shock wave rather poor, i have seen TRAITS that are FOUR times longer duration on the same cool down.

Dagger MH – Another awful auto attack. Ring of Earth is decent, nothing more. Magnetic Grasp is SO bugged it ca miss people right in front of the ele.
Dagger OH – earthquake way TOO long of a cool down. Churning Earth insane cool down and insane cast time makes it near useless against anyone that has seen it.

Scepter – Decent Auto attack. Damge is a bit low for getting sharp shards of rock hitting you. Rock Barrier is rather meh, nice Toughness but useless second part (Hurl) Dust Devil decent line Blind long cool down for what it really is though.

Focus – Magnetic Wave is decent but Obsidian Flesh is rather terrible for a 4 second duration Invul it has an insane cool down.

What i would do:

Staff – Add Bleeding and/or Cripple to the auto attack. Speed up Eruption so that even people in the centre of it can’t just walk out before it goes off. Increase the Bleeding Stacks but decrease the duration 12seconds is to long and the stacks will be lost way before then. Increase the Bleeding and Immbo on Shockwave.

Dagger MH: Total redesign of the Auto attack so that it hits multiple foes. Ring of Earth, again reduce the duration of the bleeding but increase the stacks. Maybe remove Cripple and add Torment instead. Magnetic Grasp, make it so that it actually WORKS add a 6 second Cripple.
Dagger OH: Reduce the cool down of Earthquake by a reasonable amount, Add Torment and Cripple to it. Churning Earth needs its cast time reduced by 50%. Increase the Cripple to 2seconds per a tick and add Torment high enough stacks so they have to decide what would be more damaging taking the Churning Earth or running from it.

Scepter: Stone Shards could do with a tiny bit of increase in direct damage. Hurl (Rock Barrier skill) should be 100% Crit hits for each hit with Each hit from it inflicting say 3 stacks of Torment for 10seconds. Dust Devil not to sure, its decent but could use something – maybe cripple?

Focus – Increase reflection duration to 5 seconds. Add Bleeding and/or Torment to it as well. Obsidian Flesh needs to have a much lower Cool down. Maybe have it have a secondary part of the skill something like:

Obsidian Explosion – repel your stoney armor knocking back all foes in range and dealing high damage. All foes in range and inflicted with 10second Cripple and 5 stacks of Torment for 10seconds.

or something like that.

2 of these weapons (Scepter and Focus) have issues in the other attunements as well in my opinion but i won’t get into that here.

just lol.

Axelwarrior.9084:

Kyon.9735:

Axelwarrior.9084:

Ganathar.4956:

Axelwarrior.9084:

Well, yeah, they’ve given us a way to fix the survivability problems everyone’s been complaining about. I don’t get it, do you want them to buff the Elementalist’s survivability for all builds?

Yes because the biggest problem with eles is that they are too weak baseline and need traits to become decent which pidgeonholes them to bunker or glass with no form of survivability.

This post summarizes it perfectly.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Elementalist-survival-PvE/page/2#post3807363

Edit: if baseline ele is buffed some traits might need to be nerfed but that is perfectly fine.

As far as I know, Elementalists have a lot of defensive skills. The only problem with their survivability is their low base HP.

I might as well add that these defensive skills have ridiculously high CDs as well.

Because they’re very strong. If Obsidian Flesh was on a 30 sec CD, it’d be ridiculous.

Obsidian Flesh is exclusive to Focus which is a Defensive Weapon. What other Elementalist defensive skill is as strong as Obsidian Flesh?

hooma.9642:

+ stone heart shuts down all condiapplication via crit-procs on runes, sigills or traits.

Sorry to tell you this, this trait will have NO affect on condition builds. None. Sure you stop the odd on crit trait from proccing. Shame that NO condition build actually relies on on Crit effects when they have SO much access to conditions without the need to crit. This will be as helpful against condition builds as Diamond Skin is – None.

Kyon.9735:

Obsidian Flesh is exclusive to Focus which is a Defensive Weapon. What other Elementalist defensive skill is as strong as Obsidian Flesh?

…When all of our defensive skills actually have problems this means nothing. They all have insane cool downs for a start, we have one that is pretty much a self stun for 3 seconds that drops all bundles are are using (Mist Form)

When we actually get GOOD defensive skills then it would be reasonable to judge them against each other, until then. They are ALL lackluster compared to other classes.

Also, you stae the Focus is a defensive weapon. Just curious – why does the “defensive” weapon have no healing skill for? I mean even Dagger off hand has a healing skill and you can’t really call that a defensive weapon. Pretty much ALL weapons except for the “defensive” weapon has a heal…

Strange that.

My issue isn’t about the trait itself, but the fact that eles get so many ‘super defense versus specific build’ rather than ‘weak but generic defense’ traits. It kinda forces us to go rock-paper-scissors(-lizard-Spock). Meaning any balancing against other classes will now likely be done assuming we use said traits, leaving those that do not underpowered.

It’s the concept I dislike, not the trait itself.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Also, you stae the Focus is a defensive weapon. Just curious – why does the “defensive” weapon have no healing skill for? I mean even Dagger off hand has a healing skill and you can’t really call that a defensive weapon. Pretty much ALL weapons except for the “defensive” weapon has a heal…Strange that.

Maybe because it’s a defensive weapon, not a recuperation weapon?

ThiBash.5634:

Maybe because it’s a defensive weapon, not a recuperation weapon?

Is it though, I mean what does it really have?

Fire – a Terrible flame wall. I would take Ring of Fire over it which also has a shorter coo down. The Fire Aura is decent but like with all Auras the ICD and the cool down really hurt it. The Might is rather pointless thanks to the ICD.

Water – Freezing Gust is rather poor. Now while it has half the cool down of Frost Aura that is countered by the fact that frost Aura grants damage reduction and will have a longer duration Chill – even if only hit twice during it. Comet is decent, the radius is rather low but the Daze is nice. How ever, again i would take Cleansing Wave for healing and condition removal.

Air – This one is tricky. Swirling winds is nice, useless against melee though. Compare that to Ride The Lightening has uses against both Melee and range classes. Think this one is down to opinion. I would lean towards Ride The Lightening as it has more uses. Gale Vs Updraft is another interesting fight. While Gale has range, it also has a higher cool down and lacks the swiftness and the multi-target appeal of Updraft. So here i think i would go with Updraft.

Earth – Again, both of these skills are aimed at different situations. Going defensive wise i think it would have to go to Focus (the first time) but that is due more to the issues of the Dagger Earth skills than how amazingly good the Focus skills are. Projectile reflection is nice, even if it is rather short on duration. The Invul is nice but the cool down is too high. Earthquake is nice but weak against range and Churning Earth well that just sucks 99% of the time thanks to the insane cool down and cast time.

I wouldn’t really call the Focus a Defensive weapon. It is more a mix, it has some nice defense, even if the cool downs on them are insane but it lacks in pretty much every other attunement.

I think Stone Heart was basically meant to turn earth attunement into a anti-spike state that you pop whenever you see a thief running at you, or a warrior CC and 100blading you. Combined with protection, stability, and other earth attunement buffs, you won’t even need to use a skill like obsidian flesh to mitigate burst.

Xenon.4537:

I think Stone Heart was basically meant to turn earth attunement into a anti-spike state that you pop whenever you see a thief running at you, or a warrior CC and 100blading you. Combined with protection, stability, and other earth attunement buffs, you won’t even need to use a skill like obsidian flesh to mitigate burst.

The problem is, ALL the classes have fast and easily accessible burst. You might prevent the first burst attempt. Unless you stay in the attunement that is no threat you will just be hit with the next one.

This sort of style will still end the same way – The burst WILL come and we have very little we can do about it. This trait makes it even worse in that Anet doesn’t see that. They think we will be able:

1) See burst coming. Go Earth
2) Negate the burst
3) Be a threat
4) Move to another attunement
5) attack them
6) see burst coming. Go Earth

It won’t work like that, especially against classes that have burst on cool downs lower than our attunement cool downs. They will just keep attacking, force us out to heal and then burst us know that we have at least 10seconds of being at high risk.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Xenon.4537:

I think Stone Heart was basically meant to turn earth attunement into a anti-spike state that you pop whenever you see a thief running at you, or a warrior CC and 100blading you. Combined with protection, stability, and other earth attunement buffs, you won’t even need to use a skill like obsidian flesh to mitigate burst.

The problem is, ALL the classes have fast and easily accessible burst. You might prevent the first burst attempt. Unless you stay in the attunement that is no threat you will just be hit with the next one.

This sort of style will still end the same way – The burst WILL come and we have very little we can do about it. This trait makes it even worse in that Anet doesn’t see that. They think we will be able:

1) See burst coming. Go Earth
2) Negate the burst
3) Be a threat
4) Move to another attunement
5) attack them
6) see burst coming. Go Earth

It won’t work like that, especially against classes that have burst on cool downs lower than our attunement cool downs. They will just keep attacking, force us out to heal and then burst us know that we have at least 10seconds of being at high risk.

I think you are getting up in your head too much. Obviously you aren’t supposed to sit in earth attunement all the time. You’re supposed to switch in to it to mitigate damage, then switch out of it to deal dps.

I don’t profess to be an expert on Ele, but 10-13 seconds cooldown on an ability which can give you:

- crit immunity
- 33% damage reduction
- 120 toughness
- aoe cripple
- powerful defensive weapon skills

It would be nice if someone could calculate the effective % damage reduction gained by having crit immunity to a standard zerker build. Like, how much dps does a zerker lose if they never crit?

Xenon.4537:

I think you are getting up in your head too much. Obviously you aren’t supposed to sit in earth attunement all the time. You’re supposed to switch in to it to mitigate damage, then switch out of it to deal dps.

I don’t profess to be an expert on Ele, but 10-13 seconds cooldown on an ability which can give you:

- crit immunity
- 33% damage reduction
- 120 toughness
- aoe cripple
- powerful defensive weapon skills

It would be nice if someone could calculate the effective % damage reduction gained by having crit immunity to a standard zerker build. Like, how much dps does a zerker lose if they never crit?

- Crit immunity means nothing if you are no threat until you swap out. Once that happens you are going to be a BIG target for burst.

- 33% damage reduction? How so. If you are counting the protection from going into Earth, that is a 20point trait in Arcana.

- Toughness is nothing compared to the insane burst some classes can do

- Oh yeah a MINOR cripple that lasts 3 seconds, oh yeah thats a REAL threat…

- “powerful defensive skills” Yeah, Earth has like Three on different weapons and only two can be used together and which really overlap. Them being Magnetic Aura(Staff) and Magnetic Wave and Obsidian Flesh (Focus) everything else Earth offers is simply not a “powerful defensive skill”

You are also missing the point. They WILL crit. They just won’t crit all the time. The moment you leave Earth which you will have no choice but to either to heal or if you actually want to deal damage then you have a HUGE target on your head.

I can actually see this being WORSE for the ele, classes will just tickle the ele, doing enough damage to get the ele into Earth but holding enough burst back for when they are forced out of it. This could just end up meaning that players will just burst even harder the moment they know the ele isn’t in Earth and hold back enough when they are.

Xenon.4537:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Xenon.4537:

I think Stone Heart was basically meant to turn earth attunement into a anti-spike state that you pop whenever you see a thief running at you, or a warrior CC and 100blading you. Combined with protection, stability, and other earth attunement buffs, you won’t even need to use a skill like obsidian flesh to mitigate burst.

The problem is, ALL the classes have fast and easily accessible burst. You might prevent the first burst attempt. Unless you stay in the attunement that is no threat you will just be hit with the next one.

This sort of style will still end the same way – The burst WILL come and we have very little we can do about it. This trait makes it even worse in that Anet doesn’t see that. They think we will be able:

1) See burst coming. Go Earth
2) Negate the burst
3) Be a threat
4) Move to another attunement
5) attack them
6) see burst coming. Go Earth

It won’t work like that, especially against classes that have burst on cool downs lower than our attunement cool downs. They will just keep attacking, force us out to heal and then burst us know that we have at least 10seconds of being at high risk.

I think you are getting up in your head too much. Obviously you aren’t supposed to sit in earth attunement all the time. You’re supposed to switch in to it to mitigate damage, then switch out of it to deal dps.

I don’t profess to be an expert on Ele, but 10-13 seconds cooldown on an ability which can give you:

- crit immunity
- 33% damage reduction
- 120 toughness
- aoe cripple
- powerful defensive weapon skills

It would be nice if someone could calculate the effective % damage reduction gained by having crit immunity to a standard zerker build. Like, how much dps does a zerker lose if they never crit?

Give up. Those who mindlessly swap attunements to mindlessly spam available skills will never understand the purpose of Stone Heart being unique to Earth Attunement. The fact that “someone” suggested to make it into a passive “x% of something is converted to toughness” is proof enough that they don’t want to play actively.

New traits will make new builds. I can’t even fathom how people expect to play the same way they did before the new GM trait was introduced. You can’t expect to play the same way you did before if you’re transferring X skill points to another trait line which you had less points before. They QQ simply because it doesn’t fit their old playstyle and they don’t want to explore new possibilities.